Buying the Old Western Garrison turned out to be considerably more difficult than deciding that he wanted it.
Sage discovered that the following morning when Pax led him, Mina and Boren into the administrative quarter adjoining the Royal District, where the streets were filled less with merchants and adventurers and more with government officials carrying document cases between enormous stone buildings.
The Bureau of Crown Lands occupied one of those buildings, a broad six-story structure whose entrance displayed the Royal crest above two uniformed guards.
Unlike the noble estates Sage had visited during the property hunt, there was nothing particularly luxurious about the place.
It existed to manage Crown-owned land throughout the Capital and surrounding territories, which meant its halls were crowded with surveyors, clerks, lawyers, merchants seeking leases, contractors submitting development proposals and ordinary citizens waiting beneath numbered signs.
