New Employees

After spending 2 days in the torture chambers, the bandits were reportedly rather traumatized. Then, after cleaning them up, they were escorted by our men to their new dormitories, and each assigned a room. Although they weren't allowed to be in there unaccompanied, guards stood at the door and watched them marvel at the modern bedrooms, outfitted with daily items.

They also took a tour of the grounds. After which, they were brought to the dining area and allowed to eat whatever they wanted. After 2 days of starvation, they sampled all the food the dormitory kitchens had to sample, in addition to desserts. At the end, they were given a bag of 3000 taels each, and told that they could move in whenever they were ready, and given their remaining 3000 taels each.

If tried to steal or break into the premises, we had guards, and if they told anyone about what happened during these few days, we would track them down and kill everyone who heard about it, after a stint in the torture chambers of course. Then, they were set free.

We didn't hear from them for a week. In the meantime, Yu Hui and Fei Yan were very busy. The few of us worked to contact contractors, draft documents and sign them, as well as meet partners. Luna Marche logistics department was officially born. We also discussed the job scopes and positions of the incoming employees, and Fei Yan went out to recruit people.

Although they were working on the logistics division, Hua Ling and I hadn't dared to tell them about the bandits yet. Then the news came that the bandits had returned to the outpost. They didn't know where it was as they had been blindfolded, but they were caught loitering around the general area trying to find it by our guards and apprehended.

I wasn't sure what I had been expecting when I got there, but certainly not a room of very eager looking bandits. The 3 of them had went away, spent all their taels, and also brought about 20 other friends with them.

"Noble Concubine, all of them want to sign an employee contract with us." Yun said. I stared at them in disbelief. Upon seeing me come in, all started shouting. "Noble Concubine, please take us in!" "Noble Concubine, let us be your double agents!" "Noble Concubine, we'll give you the right information!".

Hua Ling turned to our men. "Have we collected their information?" she asked. He nodded. "Yes, here it is." One of our men passed us booklets with the information of the 2 dozen bandits. Turns out most of them were either from White Fang or other medium sized bandit groups. This was a good range to start with. I gave Yun a look.

"You all are aware we know if you're giving false or misleading information, and we can exterminate your whole group if we see you being traitorous?" she shouted. I looked at her in awe. We're exterminating their group?

This must be a scare tactic, I assured myself. After supervising the documentation and official procedures as well as answering some questions, we left it to the guards to wrap things up. As we left the room, I glanced at Hua Ling. "Hua Ling..." I started. "Yes?" "How are we going to tell Fei Yan she needs to control bandits?" I asked. "Oh..." Hua Ling was at a loss too.

Although Fei Yan was highly successful and had worked in a number of trades, she was successful precisely because she was caring, warm and matronly, giving lots of encouragement, support and empathy to our employees, who mostly just needed someone to give them a hand to get back on their feet. Neither of us were sure how she would fare with bandits, who were used to getting their way. "How about we ask Fan Yi to supervise the bandits, and Fan Yi will report to Fei Yan?" Hua Ling suggested.

Fan Yi was the head of the local security division at Luna Marche. Although Yun was very helpful, she was after all a bodyguard in a seperate division conferred by the palace. It wasn't appropriate to ask her to take on these tasks. Luna Marche didn't exactly have a security division.

It was more of a group of guards and assassins we had for escorting purposes, missions, intel-gathering and under-the-table dealings. They had a proper reporting structure, usually worked in teams and had a main outpost on the outskirts of the capital as well as a couple other secret outposts and residences scattered around the neighboring cities.

"Didn't Fan Yi use to be a bandit?" I asked. She nodded. "For a brief period of time in his youth, he said." Hua Ling said. As the shop manager cum logistics manager of Luna Marche, Hua Ling was familiar with a lot of people. She had a likeable character and could be said to hold a lot of power due to her network.

Fan Yi... was a truly terrifying guy. His career included bounty hunting, being a bandit, doing assassination jobs... he had a lot of contacts in the underground. The only reason we were able to hire him was because he was Gu Wei's old contact from back when she was working in the red light district. "All right. It's settled then." I said.

We went to inform Fan Yi, who was fine with it and said he was happy to "train" some new people, and then broke the news to Fei Yan, who felt much better hearing she wouldn't be dealing directly with them. Since the issue was solved, we could continue to on getting the logistics division up. Since we had a long few days, I gave myself a break and decided to sort it all out in the morning and returned to the palace first.

"Young Miss, the Emperor is here!" Qiu Le approached me as soon as I returned. What? Why was he here? "He's waiting for you in the outer room." she continued. Now then I looked at it properly, it was already evening, but Lunar Palace was still lively, albeit a quiet liveliness. Clearly everyone was high strung by his arrival.

"How long has he been here?" I asked. "About an hour." she said. As we turned the corner, Qiu Le stopped at the door and announced "Noble Concubine Ling has arrived.".

"You're late." Lu Qing Yu said.