The new and old employees arrived at different times of day, a group of almost thirty people Ren recognized immediately.
Some had already been working at the previous house, and all were former neighbors from his old home, people who had shared the misery of frontier life and now had the opportunity to work in infinitely better conditions.
Among them, Ren finally saw faces he had been waiting for.
"Ren!" Li practically jumped on him, without a trace of the formality the butler clearly expected. "Brother, look at you! When did you get so tall?"
Tao followed closely, grinning widely. "And so fancy. Is that tunic made from real black moth scales? By all the dragons..."
But it was the third who made Ren pause to observe.
Anuar... His family also ended up under Ren's wing eventually. They had always had a bit more financial freedom when Ren was small, with several bronzes in the family instead of just irons… "The snobs of the neighborhood".
