"When are you making the ninth film?"
The Truman Show had been met with rave reviews. Annan was about to share the good news with Olmedo, but he looked up at the sign again, wondering if he had come to the wrong place.
"Didn't I just..." Annan pointed behind him, as though the Theater stood there.
"You've rested for five whole days. A civilian would have starved by now."
"Even if you put it that way, I still need a break. Copying... creating nonstop is exhausting, you know?"
Annan relaxed instead and asked Olmedo, who seemed to be in a good mood, "Did we pass 7.5 million gold Narls?"
Olmedo pulled a sheet of parchment from among four piles of official documents and laid it on top. "By a wide margin. Even after we put some of it to use, there's enough left for the Gold Depository to maintain its cash flow."
Annan crept over and picked up the parchment, as though afraid of waking a beast sleeping on Olmedo's desk.
Two hundred and three commercial streets, two hundred and three Gold Depositories. Total deposits in the first month: 9,304,313 gold narls, down to the last coin.
And that was only the first month, when people still did not quite trust the Gold Depository.
More people would deposit their money from here on, though their rivals would be catching on about now.
Katelina had said plainly in her letter from the Flower Capital that, while pressure from the Empire kept the Southern Alliance from using its usual dirty tricks, it would certainly establish Gold Depositories of its own.
The Gold Depositories opened by lords would have a natural advantage on their home turf.
Neither Annan nor Olmedo was worried. They had natural advantages of their own: interest and trust.
Go