"So the Temple's policy is that deaths among the pre-baptism children don't count?" Rin said, barely controlling her anger well enough for it to come out in a normal even tone.
Rin had known that first the Blue Robes would eat and then pass it on to their attendants, who would eat their fill and then pass it on to the orphanage, but she had no idea that the orphanage also had a hierarchy, where the baptized orphans would eat and then the pre-baptisms children would get whatever was left, if there was any.
Sixty-five children in total, all of them at the brink of death... and five frozen corpses.
"After the Civil War, the number of Blue Priests in the Temple was more than halved. Naturally, the amount of funding that came from the Blue Priests decreased and the amount of food going to the orphanage decreased along with it. But so long as no baptized priests died, it wouldn't be reported. That is the national policy." Ferdinand said calmly, as if there wasn't any problem.
There was a HUGE fucking problem.
Rin wanted to snap at the man that people were dying and the Archbishop was embezzling enough money to feed a hundred more orphans than they had, but such an outburst would get her nowhere, and with spies of the Archbishop around, he would certainly hear about her bad mouthing him.
"I see, so the Temple simply lacks the funds to take care of the orphanage." Rin said. "Then I suppose you wouldn't mind if I took it over."
"I was going to suggest it." Ferdinand said in his matter of fact tone. "If you feel so strongly about this, then doing it yourself is the only real option for you."
"Is there any paperwork I need to fill out for this?" Rin asked, immediately having it handed to her.
"You are now the orphanage director. Fran can show you to the director's office. Though it will need to be cleaned." Ferdinand said, getting a slight wince from Fran that went unnoticed by the High Priest.
"Then I will need to start immediately." Rin said, filling out the form and then holding out her arms, signaling for Lizzie to help her out of her chair. She was halfway back to her quarters when she started to give out instructions to her attendants, telling Lizzie to organize the cleaning up of the orphanage in the girl's wing while Fran did the same in the boy's wing.
In the meantime, she and Nicola put on normal clothes and went down to the Gilberta Company in order to speak to Benno.
Strictly speaking, she was supposed to summon him to the Temple, but she was in no mood to wait, even for a short while.
"So you've decided to take responsibility for over four-hundred individuals in the middle of Winter?" Benno said in complete disbelief.
"That is what money is for." Rin replied, not wanting to admit that she had acted on impulse. "The problem is that I won't be at the Temple forever. Sooner or later, I will attract the eye of an Archnoble and be adopted. So there needs to be a system in place for the orphanage to function without the help of the Blue Priests once I am gone, or else this situation will just repeat itself. So I'm planning on setting up a workshop in the orphanage."
"...Are you allowed to do that?" Benno asked with a raised eyebrow.
"If they can use the House of the Gods as a whore house with the orphans acting as prostitutes, they have no right to complain if I give the orphans honest jobs." Rin said flatly. "I've been appointed as the new orphanage director, so I am basically allowed to do whatever I want with the orphanage."
Rin didn't know if this was true, but it didn't matter if she was allowed to, because she was going to.
"We have nearly three hundred people of an age where they are capable of labor but don't have any sort of job. So let's put them to work. Mark, bring us some boards so that we can arrange the material orders." Rin said, to which the man immediately responded.
With barely any ingredients required, papermaking was the best option, given that they wouldn't be able to find the ingredients for anything else during the middle of Winter. Not after so much stuff was bought up already for Wintercrafts. But they only had a few of the frames necessary to make paper with, enough to keep around thirty people busy, not four hundred.
"What if the healthier orphans gathered wood from the forest? We need a lot of it, both for paper making and for the fires." Benno said as an option. "It would give them something to do, and there is also a few Winter plants that can be gathered for food."
"Do you have anyone who can guide them out there? Remember, none of these kids has ever left the orphanage before." Rin reminded him.
"I'm sure Gunther would be willing to do it." Benno said, causing Rin to momentarily freeze up. "He and Tuuli could use something to distract themselves too."
"...Have they been doing alright?" Myne asked, fully aware that Nicola was in the room, but not able to help herself. Benno could see worry in her eyes.
"As well as can be expected. It's only been half a season. Effa has been trying to keep it together by focusing on making Tuuli's baptism clothes. With how much effort they are putting into them, I'm sure they are going to be a sight to behold." Benno replied.
"Then please do." Rin said, before quickly changing the subject. "But it would be nice if we could plan a few Wintercrafts for the smaller children to do as well. Do you mind contacting the carpentry workshop for me? We will be needing inks as well."
"What are you planning?" Benno asked with a raised eyebrow, smelling money in the air.
"Not much. Just making some karuta and playing cards." Rin said with a shrug.
"...And what is that?"
The power of money was truly impressive, as within three days, everything that Rin had asked for was at the Temple and everything was underway.
She had warm, if old, clothes bought for everyone in the entire orphanage, thicker than the gray robes they always wore, and sent many of them out to the forest to gather, while some of the older boys and girls were learning how to make paper.
While this was happening, Rin taught Wilma and the younger children who were still recovering from starvation about stencils and got them to start making playing cards out of thin wooden boards.
The basic shapes were easy to handle, and the stencils were quickly made for them, while Wilma focused on making the more complex karuta cards.
Karuta was a common game in Japan shown to children to teach them to read. To which Rin figured would be a good way of passing the time for the children whenever blizzards came rolling around and they would be stuck inside.
"Wow!" One of the pre-baptism girls, a girl named Delia, said as she used a stencil to make a red two of 'chalices' as the children wanted the suits of the playing cards to be chalices, spears, shields and staffs, instead of hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs. "This is so easy."
"Everything usually is, when you know what you are doing. The key is to work smarter, not harder." Rin told the girl as she pointed towards the stack of identical cards next to her. "If you wanted to do all of that drawing normally, it would take days."
"Days!?" Delia said in disbelief, looking at what she had done in just a few minutes.
Delia and most of the other children all looked at Rin with eyes full of worship that had nothing to do with her Blue Priestess status, despite her not being any older than they were.
Rin smiled and watched the children work happily, until Jenni, the Archbishop's attendant, came to fetch her. "Sister Tohsaka, your presence has been requested for one of the Blue Priests ceremonies." Jenni said respectfully.
"Is that so? Thank you for informing me." Rin said before glancing back to the children. "Work hard, and when I return, I will start to teach you a few games you can play with them."
The children enthusiastically said their goodbyes, getting scolded for the inappropriate behavior towards a Blue Priestess, early a small smile from Rin as she followed Jenni out with her attendants.
"I see that you are serious about managing the orphanage." Jenni said as they walked through the halls, not facing Rin. Rin almost thought she could hear bitterness in the woman's voice, but if so, it was well disguised.
"I am serious about everything I do. I don't take up tasks with the intention of failing them. Nothing short of the highest quality results is acceptable." Rin said with confidence, before prodding the woman. "This doesn't upset you, does it?"
"...Not at all." Jenni replied, but this time the bitterness was unmistakable.
Rin understood that Jenni's job as an attendant was less about assisting the Archbishop, and more about her body. Perhaps she was bitter that she had to sell her body in order to secure her three meals and then everyone in the orphanage started to receive better treatment without having to make such a sacrifice.
Rin filed this away as something she might be able to exploit later.
Rin was among the last to arrive at the inner prayer room, and reserved barely a look of boredom out of the surrounding Blue Priests who hardly could be said to take their jobs seriously, these rejects of noble society.
Even before the Purge caused Blue Priests and Priestesses to either be returned to noble society or to be sent to the Sovereignty's Temple, Blue Priests were more common than Priestesses. This was because boys couldn't be used for marriage contracts, making a lower quality male inherently less valuable than any girl.
So the Temple was a sausage fest, with twenty-two Blue Priests, but with Rin as the only Blue Priestess.
Another interesting thing to note was that all of them were over the age of eighteen, as new blood had dried up following the purge and all of the Priests that were less than fifteen years old at the time were recalled.
After a short bit, in which Rin exchanged pleasantries with what few Blue Priests weren't vegetables, the Archbishop and High Priest showed up and the meeting started. They gave the standard prayers before a map was laid out before them.
"Winter is coming to an end, and so we need to plan for the Spring Prayers." The Archbishop said, getting groans from the surrounding Blue Priests.
While the Autumn Festival usually involves a lot of alcohol and bribes, the Spring Prayer is just a lot of work for the Priests. Seven or eight days of basically non-stop traveling and offering up mana.
Right now, they were dividing up who went where, and it was pretty clear that the Archbishop was assigning himself and his followers the easiest paths, while those who weren't in his good books got mountainous terrain and the areas of the Duchy that were likely to still be covered in snow.
Of course, the one who got the worst of all was the High Priest.
"Since you are able to travel around by Highbeast, it is only natural that you would be the one to visit the furthest territories." The Archbishop reasoned, despite the large arc that Ferdinand was assigned to not making any sense at all.
"Naturally." Ferdinand said, not complaining in the slightest. Rin wondered what exactly a Highbeast was, if it would make something like this seem reasonable. And it was while she was pondering this that she was thrown for a loop. "I'll be taking Tohsaka with me."
The Archbishop frowned, having not assigned Rin any sort of work before, on account of her age. "And why would you do that?"
"Because she is a troublemaker who can't be trusted to be left alone. I had already found her snooping around in my office alone after dark once. I don't want to imagine what she would do with all of the Blue Priests out of the Temple." The High Priest replied, not saying that it wasn't just in his office, but in his secret room that he had found her.
Rin scowled at the man, not liking that he had revealed such information in front of everyone. "Is that so?" The Archbishop said before nodding his head. "Alright then. Take the child with you, but be careful to make sure that nothing happens to her."
A few moments later, all of the Priests had their final assignments and were told to start making plans. They would all be heading off in two weeks, unless unexpected bad weather hit. But as all of the Blue Priests were leaving to return to their daily lives, the Archbishop called out to Rin. "Tohsaka stay behind for me, would you?" He waited until they were alone before continuing. "I know I said to keep an eye on him, but sneaking into his office after dark is too bold." The old man chuckled.
"I thought that the Gods favor the bold." Rin said, looking away as if embarrassed at being called out for her childish methods. It seemed that the Archbishop had interpreted Rin going into the High Priest's office as her being his spy.
"Maybe, but please don't do something so rash again. Just watch him normally." Bezewanst said before changing the subject. "I understand that you have taken over the orphanage director's position and started to turn the orphanage into a workshop. Tell me, why did you not think of asking for my permission before you did this?"
"Ah, that's right. I'm sorry, Archbishop, it didn't occur to me to." Rin said. Asking for forgiveness was always easier than asking for permission, especially when you were a child. "I merely saw the wasteful nature of the orphanage and couldn't help myself. My merchant's upbringing is certainly to blame, but I could not stand to see so many idle hands."
"Is that so?" The Archbishop hummed.
"Of course. It isn't right for commoners to simply sit around all day living off of their betters. If they want to live in our house, then they should work for their own food and clothing, should they not? Even children who had yet to be baptized still gather in the forest in the lower city, yet adults in the orphanage do not lift a finger to earn their own bread?" Rin said, twisting things to be the way that the greedy Priest wanted to hear.
"I can see your point, but it isn't how things are done in the Temple." Bezewanst said, scratching his beard.
"I saw no mention of how the Temple should be run in the scriptures. Nothing about the rules are set in stone. The orphanage has always been a place to train commoner servants for the nobility, but that training and basic labor are not mutually exclusive things." Rin commented. "If the Archbishop truly wishes for me to stop, I will, but it would be such a waste to not set those Gray Priests to work."
"No. I don't believe that you need to stop. However, if the workshop is to be on Temple ground and using Temple manpower, I want a portion of the profits to be paid to the Temple." Bezewanst said.
"Of course. I fully intended to discuss the finances of it with the Fake Priest once we had a better understanding of just what the orphanage workshop would produce. At the moment, everything is only basic Wintercrafts, rather than a permanent industry. Until the markets start opening back up in the Spring we won't know what kinds of profits we are looking at." Rin told the man.
"Then everything is alright." Bezewanst said, not caring about a thing so long as he was making money without having to work for it.
Disgusting pig.
In the beginning, Myne's perspective of herself had been Myne instead of Rin, because she was able to rationalize that while she had Rin's memories, her mana was fundamentally different and she was therefore not Rin.
After splitting from her family, she ONLY mentally refers to herself as Rin because she is attempting to distance herself from the pain of being Myne after separating from her family. The things that Rin had experience are now things that SHE had experience in her previous life, rather than someone else's memories. She only slips up when confronted with what she is running away from head on.
So no. Me saying MYNE earlier in the chapter wasn't a mistake. Not to say that mistakes like that won't happen, this was just not one of them.