The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 737: Job Duties

Dominic watched as the impromptu job fair began to settle into more serious negotiations. There were more jobseekers than there were positions, so a few had decided to simply enjoy the Manor’s hospitality, but it looked like most who had come to find work would get something.

Interestingly, the Nobles hadn’t gone for the apprentice aged applicants first.

From what Dominic had seen in the Capital, getting a new servant right from the start of their career was the preferred method. It built loyalty, prevented spies from being sent by other Noble houses, and allowed you to finish their training yourself, so they learned to do things your way and only your way.

Instead, many of them had gone for applicants with closer to a decade of experience. Ones who knew the job, could adjust more quickly, but who would also be somewhat set in their old habits.

And then there were the wives who simply didn’t want young women around their husbands.

As Dominic had suspected, once the older women gave them a chance, they immediately began to warm up to the women that their husbands would never consider in a lecherous way.

It was a great victory for his estimation of what the new hires needed.

The event ended early in the evening, as everyone wanted to go home and show their new hires around before they started work the next day.

They were not going to have as much time as they had hoped to simply relax and settle into their new homes. The soldiers had a head start on them, and they were nearly finished touring the Baronies of Wistover Duchy now.

After that, it was a nearly empty passage until they got near Lympsbury, so they were going to be sending reports and would be calling on some of the employees to come assist with the issues that the local Nobles were wanting to send to the Governor.

The three major cities would have permanent representatives of the Governorship so that the Nobles could have a constant point of contact.

Each of the first group of men chosen for the jobs in the cities were single, a deliberate choice on the part of the advisors, as they fully intended to move them between the three cities at least once per year.

If they had a family, that would be incredibly disruptive, or they would be away from home constantly.

But if they left them in the same city for too long, it would eventually breed complacency, and give them the impression that they could get away with more than they were authorized to.

Their jobs were to report back to Dominic as the Governor, not to determine whose input mattered.

That level of complacency and overreach was a common form of what the Nobility considered benign corruption. It was so common that it was considered part of the job for most Nobles. But the Advisors had decided to mitigate that by moving them around, keeping them as a somewhat new face to the Nobles.

They also wouldn’t remain on city duty forever, they would be cycled into the rural area census team, the paperwork teams, or anything else that the Advisors thought suited their skills.

There was also the chance that they would be promoted past the entry-level jobs that they had been given, but that was a matter for later. Currently, Alistair was their supervisor, but after they were fully trained and settled into the jobs, he would appoint middle management to take on more of the workload.

But now that the soldiers were about to reach Lympsbury, they were going to get an influx of information for them to sort, a stress test to start their employment.

Jack had been the one that approved this idea.

If they couldn’t handle the weight of a few months of complaints and suggestions from the Nobles in the three cities, they were far from ready from what they would have to handle when things were actually going wrong.

But also, they were nearing the end of the wet season, so the first reports of harvests and food supplies for the dry season would be coming in.

Not only was that important information for the shipments that needed to be made to ensure properly supplied cities, but it was also a gauge of how well the cities were doing. If they were looking short on food, or significantly short on something else, it would tell the Advisors that action might need to be taken that wasn’t directly related to the shortage.

A lack of everything but grain crops wasn’t just a matter of shipping them other things.

It was a sign that either they needed to work with the Barons to ensure more crops were planted, or to ascertain what had gone wrong with the other crops. It could be a crop disease, poor farming techniques, pests.

With the whole region being on its first full crop since Cygnia took over, all the Nobles were new to the region, and none of the Advisors expected them to have things under control yet.

That was going to be the real test of the newly appointed Cygnian Nobles.

If they couldn’t keep things running smoothly enough that their people were in acceptable shape, according to Dominic’s estimation, they were in real danger of having an "Advisor" appointed to remedy their governance of their territory, for the sake of the Cygnian Kingdom.

And nobody wanted that level of humiliation.

He wouldn’t jump right to it as a remedy, but Dominic wasn’t going to let an entire Barony worth of people starve because someone couldn’t figure out their duties.

Noble blood was Noble blood. But some men couldn’t organize a good time in a brothel.

However, these Nobles were chosen by the King to come here and take over land that was known to be in rough shape, and Dominic did have some faith in the King’s judgment. As long as everyone lived up to expectations, all would be well.