Reborn as a Mind-Reading Empress
Chapter 983: Meeting with the Merchants

Chapter 983: Chapter 983: Meeting with the Merchants

It might even be better for Ivan’s future.

Furthermore, Arabella did not plan to keep him as her assistant for the rest of his life anyway. She knew there were brighter paths for him where he could shine his best.

Being her assistant was simply to give him a chance to shine, a stepping stone, so he could reach greater heights.

Likewise, from helping him, she could use his genius to her benefit. But she did plan to release him once he was ready to leave and he had helped her enough.

Finding a way to treat this disease was already a major contribution.

{Fine. But let’s leave it up to his choice. Surely, he would be curious and would try it. But while he is learning, he can remain my assistant.}

Arabella let up since tying down Ivan would only liken her to his former superiors.

Just as they were done talking, they reached the conference hall for the meeting with the merchants.

Arabella then focused on the task ahead of her.

They would speak more about Ivan learning magic later.

"Greetings to Her Imperial Majesty!"

The merchants bowed and greeted once she entered the hall.

Arabella gave them a short speech recognizing their challenges as merchants and assured them they would also hear their plight and help them recover from their losses.

After all, merchants were among their largest taxpayers.

They were small in number compared to commoners but their taxes may equal the total amount of taxes collected from commoners.

In areas where there were a lot of successful merchants, their total taxes were even higher than the total taxes collected from commoners since they had higher income.

There’s also a different tax for the goods they import and export aside from their income tax.

Thus, it was only right that there is a separate meeting for them.

This time, she let Felix and Denzel have the helm since they were from territories with the most successful merchants outside Riva.

The two understood merchants well and sincerely listened and related to their plight from experiences in their territory. Thus, they were the best for this role among her assistants.

The merchants talked about their losses and presented that with the Imperial Palace providing for the needs of the people here, they would further incur losses since no one would buy from them anymore if all their needs were provided by the Empire.

Arabella assured them though that only food supplies and those from the pledges will be provided by them.

Thus, other goods will still be bought by the people.

Merchants who sold food already run out of supply either from being sold out or from the pest infestation. Merchants like them would receive aid and loans at a low interest so they could start again once the lockdown was over.

As for other sources of income they could do now, Felix and Arabella’s assistants discussed the projects they plan to implement where the merchants could be involved.

Aside from the games, the merchants could refocus on jewelry-making, handicrafts, metallurgy, and mining investments which were among the focus of the projects.

The merchants could shift there in the meantime or partake in the games which would last for the rest of winter or even further.

With Felix and her other assistants taking care of the talk with the merchants, Arabella only had to listen and speak when necessary.

The meeting with the merchants ended successfully.

Once it was over, Arabella returned to the Imperial palace to do more paperwork.

Meanwhile, her assistants remained in Sibruh to complete their information gathering and preparations for the projects assigned to them.

The theater plays will begin in a few days so Narcissa was coordinating with the Marquess for the venue.

Since it was free, a lot of people were likely to join so they set up a schedule where they would have two different plays in a day in two different venues so the people would be divided depending on their preferred and watch the other on the next schedules.

As for the actors and actresses and the production team, they were ready to present anytime since they had prepared for the plays countless times in case someone hired them.

When it was Narcissa Ryvaleh who spoke with them and payment would be from the Imperial Treasury, of course, everyone eagerly prepared knowing that they would be paid handsomely.

Narcissa was doing well with the preparations so Arabella simply monitored how things were progressing and let her do her tasks independently.

The same with the others. All of them were doing well in their assigned projects so Arabella simply monitored them.

She had short meetings for updates with them every morning before they headed to Crux to check on their progress so far.

Narcissa’s proposal was already complete and approved by her so they were focused on implementation now.

Denzel’s preparations for the storytelling caravan is almost complete as well so Arabella was simply waiting for his finalized version of his proposal. It would be implemented next after the theatrical plays.

As for the others, since the tasks assigned to them needed more communication with the locals, they were taking a bit longer but they were also progressing well.

With them to rely on, Arabella could sit back and do her work in her office without fretting about the projects.

Having capable assistants who could work with minor supervision was indeed great.

However, if they continue to be this busy, she might need to hire more soon as she let her older assistants handle major projects and let the new ones take care of the usual paperwork.

But having a lot of people work under her also meant she had more people to oversee.

And she would be hiring more maids soon too during the winter events.

Just thinking of balancing it all is already giving her a headache.

After all, it meant there would likely be more fights among her staff, and she would have to mediate.

She also needed to be wary of them since any of them might be spies from their territories or among the ones who betrayed Valeria in her past life.

These were the perks of her circumstances.