Chapter 160: Interlude: Lumin
Chancellor Lumin sighed as another stack of reports was laid in front of her.
Ever since the siege started, she’d converted her family manor into a command center of sorts, and that meant that she was at the center of the goings on in the city as more and more nobles escaped by ship.
She’d alternated her duties to the city with shoring up the worst cracks in the city barrier, and she was, in a word, exhausted. Only the Mayor and the Meister of the Adventurer’s Guild staying around had saved her from taking on all of the city’s needs herself.
Fortunately, she had full access to the only supply of coffee in the world, and she was going through it as fast as it could be made, with a full team of druids now cultivating the beans on her property day and night while her butler, a mage in his own right, had the means of processing them with only a week of experimentation and Professor Urvi snapping at him every other moment.
The pangolin-like beastkin woman was only slightly less of a coffee fiend than she’d become. If she survived this siege, Urvi would be a rich woman thanks to the miracle of coffee...
Lumin’s thoughts ground to a halt as she finally processed what she was reading.
"Terry, why am I reading about Syndicate business?" Lumin asked with a scowl. "That’s the Mayor’s prerogative." Lumin had no taste for the Syndicate. She would have banned them from the city if she’d had the clout to alienate the majority of nobles.
Her avian butler couldn’t smile, but she detected a slight satisfaction in his neck feathers. "Because as of last night, there is no more Syndicate business in the city."
Lumin tilted her head in confusion. The Syndicate never missed a chance to parasitize a situation. After the siege began they started offering passage for people willing to indenture themselves, and what accompanied them was the usual rash of kidnappings and disappearances as they stole anyone they thought would sell for enough profit.
Her curiosity piqued, she turned back to the report and didn’t stop reading until there was nothing left.
"Is there more? What about the mercenary captain?" Lumin accepted a fresh cup of coffee.