I was led into one of the conference rooms. There was only one big table made out of mahogany wood. A leader in one of the chairs looked impatient as he kept drumming with his fingers on the table before he looked directly at me, penetrating me with his sharp gaze.

"Well, it was about the time that you returned. There is plenty of stuff that needs your attention. You wanted to be a ruler, so act like a one."

'He looks pretty angry. Should I get angry about him getting angry at me? Nah, he is right. I need to act like a ruler.

"Ehmm", I cleared my throat and spoke, "I am here now, so what should I do?"

He nodded at me approvingly and spoke with his crystal clear voice, "First thing that you have to do is meet with guilds of a city. All you need to do is to sit quietly and let me do negotiations. Just watch and learn."

I crossed my arms as I felt a little bit angry about him forcing me to just be quiet, but I understood his reasons, "What guilds? I know only about two..."

"Craftsman's Guild, Magic Guild, Adventurer Guild, Mercenary Guild, Alchemist Guild and finally the most important one Merchant Guild."

My head was spinning under the flood of guilds. I was expecting three or four at max, not such a ridiculous number.

"I will be there", 'Heh, this works perfectly for me as it will be a nice opportunity to send some messages.'

A few hours passed, and I sat in the bigger conference room in the great, heavily decorated chair. Other chairs were occupied by a really diverse group.

"Let's introduce ourselves," said a fat man with a moustache wearing a heavily decorated vest with wide sleeves over the white shirt with golden ornaments, "I am Flint head of the Merchant Guild, and it's an honour to meet a new overlord of this city. Especially ruler of such beauty and wits such as you."

"Thchch" a short young woman with long purple hair interrupted him, "I am a leader of Alchemists in this city, Juliane Steinmark."

It took a few more minutes until all of us finished our introductions. In short, a big muscular man dressed in red chainmail with short greasy hair was a Roderick, chairman of the Mercenary Guild. Next to him was a thin man with glasses that kept snorting during a Rodericks introduction. His name was Ivan, and he was guild master of Adventurer guild. The last two persons were a heavy-looking dwarf wearing plate armour covered in glowing runes, his name was Zwein, and a blue-eyed elf with black hair that went until his shoulder wearing long blue robes. His name was Eldorant. They were leaders of a Craftsman Guild and, Magic Guild respectively.

The leader spoke as I kept sitting quietly, "Let's get right to the matter. You are probably anxious about new changes that will happen in this city. There is nothing to be afraid of. We are not planning to change much about the economic side of the city compared to how it worked until now. There will be only two changes for now. The first one is that portion of goods that were banned in the city will be unbanned. You will obtain the full list after a meeting. The next change is that we will allow a practitioning of any type of magic as long as a proper security measure would be taken."

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Everyone kept their business faces, not showing any emotions, well, except for the elven mage whose eyes shined with happiness.

Merchant Flint spoke with a voice full of fake pithiness, "You see, you taking over the city will cause a drop of our earnings as there will be fewer customers. Plenty of people will lose their jobs. So to help us with this problem, we would like to request lower taxes for at least one year."

Other people nodded in agreement, well, except for an elven mage who was dazing off, probably thinking about new magical experiments.

The leader put his fist under a chin as he thought for a few seconds before answering, "That is acceptable. As long as you would not cause trouble, we can afford to decrease taxes for present guilds by 30% for a term of one year".

An awkward silence came as everyone, including me, expected a Leader to refuse or at least try to haggle about that tax matter. Using that silence, I suddenly joined a discussion, "Do you have the means to spread a message out of the city?"

The leader glared at me, but I ignored him and looked at the guild masters.

The merchant guild leader immediately took the initiative with greedy eyes before any of his colleagues had a chance, "Of course. I can help you with that, of course, for a fair price."

"Well, in that case, spread a message that I will be holding a tournament to pick my guards. The history of participants doesn't matter as long as they are not traitors. Name your price for that."

The leader kept an emotionless face, but I would bet that he was pretty angry about me bypassing him with my request. 'I need my own guards. Darks have their own agendas, and I can't be sure what they really are, so my own guards to check on them are good failsafe mechanism. Yes, and my guard would be watched by the darks at the same time. This way, there will be a lesser chance of either of them betraying me without me knowing. And as a final measure, I will let troops supplied by a Bifrons to watch both sides.'

"That is doable, and as for a price. I am a generous man who knows that a city is in a hard financial situation after a takeover. So I will rather request a favour from you, and I will use it after the city recovers. And what is a date for that tournament?"

'Such a sneaky bastard, he knows that one can ask more from a favour than asking it beforehand. Still, it's better to get this done quickly, and accident can always happen to him if he tries to be too greedy.'

"We have a deal. About that date, I am not sure? How long will it take for the message to spread and people to arrive here?"

"One month should be sufficient."

'That is faster than I thought. But I guess magic can speed things up in this world.'

I smiled at the fatty, "So be it."

Then it took another thirty minutes to discuss about different tariffs and other boring stuff between leader and guild masters before it ended.

I already left a room together with a Leader as the meeting ended. We were already far enough from the meeting room, so he spoke to me, "I told you to be quiet and learn how to lead the proper business talk. You said something that may give them some wrong ideas about the mistrust between us. Or is the truth that you are not trusting us? I don't know what hardships you had met before, but you have to learn to trust us."

I looked directly at him and played my role of a foolish young girl, "Uhh, mistrust? I just wanted more guards to equip them with some stylish uniforms with cloaks as honour guards. You know I always liked flashy stuff, and by the way, I was expecting them to be... you know, angrier about users of forbidden magic and dark arts taking over the city."

He dropped the matter of the mistrust as he believed in my excuse, or at least he looked like that. "There is only one thing more powerful than faith and traditions. That thing is called gold. They would gain nothing from antagonizing a new government. That way, they would only lose lots of money. Some of them may try to do something in the shadows, but they have a low chance of succeeding. We were living in the shadows our whole life. We know them better than anybody else."