- And if they don't?
- Well, how could they not... There you go... Frosts! They always do, Your Grace!
- Where does the food come from? - Alexander came in from the other side.
- From Zalon, Your Grace!
- What's in Zalon now?
- What?" the man was genuinely surprised.
- We have a rebellion in Zalon, and there will be no provisions from there, - having lost interest in the manager, the vampire turned to the centurion, - How many soldiers and mages are in the fort's guard?
- Twenty-five soldiers and no mages, Your Grace," the officer answered instantly.
- As it will not be, - whispered the man still sitting on the ground, apparently only now realizing what was said to him, - They always bring them. Frost...
Alexander ignored this monologue and turned to the archmage.
- Here are the answers. And why we were called here and why the fort has remained loyal to the king.
- The manager is a complete idiot, and the guards are simply not needed by Elos! - Dukun nodded, "Sotnik! I'm stripping the steward of his authority, you're in charge now! Let's go inside and talk!
- But Your Excellency, there is a deputy manager...?
- You're interrupting me?! - the Archmage has gone mad again.
- Negative, Your Excellency! Everything will be done, Your Excellency! - shouted the centurion and rushed to open the doors, inviting the guests of the fort and the mine to come in.
Alexander silently walked around the former manager who was still on the ground, still muttering to himself.
- How could it be... Frost... Friendship.....
The vampire only grinned when he heard the last word. While he'd been cleaning up the man, he'd naturally gotten a taste of his blood. It was a sin to deceive the wretched, but Elos didn't know that. So he personally visited the nearby fort several times a year and expressed his deep admiration for the manager's work and assured him of his friendship.
In return, he received... convict women. With whose bodies he won the loyalty of the king's officers. The mystery of how Archimagus Zalon got so many whores has been solved. According to the papers, there were almost eight hundred female prisoners at the penitentiary, but in fact there were not even five hundred.
And this is not counting those girls and women, who had already been written into the dead, as allegedly killed under the collapses of the mine. By the way, collapses in the mine happened all the time and many convicts died in them, of course only according to the papers. This justified the low production and wrote off actually missing prisoners.
Such a cunning venture was not in the mind of the manager. He was advised by his deputy. A tall, thin man in his forties. And it seems that he was the chief at the penal colony, and also conducted the main business with the archmage, hiding behind the official chief as a screen.
"We'll have to press him in a dark corner and feel him" - Alexander decided and finally entered the main building of the penal colony.
The hastily assembled meeting of the mine's management began with the archmage's angry shouts and promises of terrible karas to all present. But then it quickly came to nothing. After shouting, Dukun obviously didn't know what to do next, because usually all his leadership and was reduced to shouting and threatening his assistants, and they already did all the work. And the man's duty was only to control the fulfillment of his own decrees and select talented executors. Which he always did brilliantly.
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