Chapter 149:
“Ah, Bataxin, as a merchant, this is where I started, and I’ve come back again.”
The carriage bearing the Count of Kadman’s crest slowly approached the city whose silhouette had already appeared. Inside the carriage, Blanche Palen Fedo looked ahead at the not-so-impressive scenery with profound sentiment.
Although it had only been a little over two months since her last visit to this small border city of Transia, it seemed like a lifetime ago.
The ups and downs of life had made this shrewd and capable businesswoman as melancholic as a rich young lady, lamenting the changing seasons. However, born in the bitter cold of the Ice Bay region and raised amidst migration and hardship, she quickly regained her composure and focused on the important task at hand.
Here, she had to reach a series of preliminary agreements with the smuggler merchants from the north and ultimately facilitate a major deal between the Count and the occupying Winter Wolf Army of Nordtov.
This business activity would directly determine whether the Count of Kadman’s territory could survive the coming winter and her own prospects under the Count’s command.
Although nearing forty, Palen’s ambition had been reignited by Murphy’s “evil secret arts.”
As a pure-blooded Nord, barring illness or injury, she could live up to 140 years. She hoped to possess everything she had yearned for in her youth by the age of eighty and leave enough wealth for her two blossoming daughters to change their class and lives before her decline.
With forty years left, perhaps she could try her best to make up for her unremarkable first half of life!