Warin
“Have you seen the latest numbers on the estates?” Bethany asked Warin as she sat at the desk in their quarters on Skyhold.
Warin shook his head, and let out a long yawn. “No,” he finally said.
Beth shook her head. “Five estates on New Holm, their incomes are not unlimited,” she said, and Warin could see how tired she was. He nelecged his duties as lord of those estates, but he had left competence people in charge in his stead, but Beth watched over them from Skyhold, or where ever they happened to be.
“I mean they are doing better than I expected. The masters have improved their incomes, and revenue from when they belonged to members of the faith,” Beth told him.
Warin moved over, and rubbed her shoulders, and kissed the side of her head. “So no one is stealing from us, and no doubt the faith would like to regain the estates for their own use.”
“No,” Beth said quickly. “Not that I thought any of the masters would. But they have seen an influx of people requesting to enter your service as well.”
“So write the masters, and stewards back, and tell them to accept them, and put them to work,” Warin said as he continued to gently massage Beth’s shoulders.
“They have,” Beth said. “But their rate of growth is too great. There is only so much work that can be found, and only so fast the estates can be improved, and grow.” She shook her head again. “Warin the five estates had a population of less than two thousands between them. They were small farming estates now we have a population of almost fifteen thousand Warin. Hell, Fairview Gardens went from a population of just over four hundred to more than four thousand.”
“Fuck,” Warin said in shock. “Thats some growth.”
“Some growth? I don’t know how they are keeping it all together. I bet we wouldn’t even recognize the places.” Beth let out a long sigh. “There is no way they can be self sufficient any longer, at least not for the short term.”
Warin shrugged. “Hey, it’s all good. This is a good thing, it’s the start of a power base if nothing else.”
Beth let out another sigh. “Warin we can’t afford it,” she said finally. “At the beginning we recieved a good income from them, but the more people that go there, the more they need to build, the more things cost, the less incomes we recieve, and we are already struggling to pay the crews of the ships we have, and you keep accepting more into your service.”
Warin smiled, and kissed Beth on the back of the head. “I’ll speak to my father. I get it, money is tight, but lets not forget that most of the crews are now getting their pay from the coffers of Skyhold as our personal guard. Tell the masters to keep the funds for now, put it towards investments, and the estates. I’ll speak to Ozma, she knows some people, and we can put the crews to work on Holderness for extra credits. Security jobs, and maybe even line up the frigates for some escort, and trade missions while we handle affairs here.”
“I don’t know if that will be enough Warin,” Beth said softly.
“It will be, we will make it work,” he smiled a toothy grin that he knew she couldn’t see. “Put this aside for now, tomorrow we will go through the books together, and instead of just counting the money, we will put our heads together with the rest of the household, and find ways to make credits to keep everything going.” He let out a sigh. “Things are good now, but they wont remain that way, they never do, solets take advantage of it while we can.”
“Okay, tomorrow, you promise?” Beth asked as she turned in her seat to look at Warin.
“I swear, tomorrow we will figure out how to keep things a float, and I will speak to my father. He is a wealthy man, at the very least I’ll be able to pull some credits out of him to hold us over a few months.”
“You wont like begging to your father,” Beth said.
Warin shrugged again. “We do what we must, but you can make it better by coming to bed.”
