Lord Mayor Jilia Bainilus had very few servants. A certain number, to keep up appearances of a significant local noble who was entrusted with a city by its burghers and Queen. But not many more than that. Her personal needs were not great, and she preferred to keep a small number of servants who had mostly been serving her family for two generations to take care of them.

What she did have many of, was staff. First-circle wizards. Former street urchins good at hearing news and bringing it where it's needed. Good talkers who could sit down in any tavern and make friends fast enough to hear a little and say a lot, and drink little enough to do it again later in the night, often twice. People who had valuable professional skills and could sell them to a dozen merchants in the city, who worked for the mayor instead, because she paid more regularly and almost never framed anyone who worked for her for a crime the priest discovered.

Is this all that different, really, from being a senior servant? A butler or housekeeper is a skilled trade, after all; someone the master likes a lot cannot just be promoted to butler and expect to do the job. It takes years of experience, and often deliberate training, and then familiarity with the household if you want to do it right. But it is a larger difference to the staff; they are professionals; skilled tradesmen who could take their business elsewhere at any time. They work for their Lady not because that is where there is work for their type, but because that is where the best customer is. And they do not work in the house or the household; they work in the office, and live independently, and are paid more than senior servants. (Does that extra pay exceed the cost of room and board? No, no it does not. But it matters to their Pride, and this was Asmodean Cheliax.)

Archduchess Jilia Bainilus inevitably has many more servants. She has a whole castle as her archducal seat, forbidden to the Lord Mayors of Kintargo since the time of her great-grandfather and the fall of the Silver Ravens. And this is no longer Asmodean Cheliax, so Pride is not considered a virtue.

But she still understands the vital difference, in the minds of her employees. Servants are tied to a house, at the house's mercy, but under, to an extent, its protection, especially against other houses. To be a servant to an archduchess is prestigious, and even better-paid than for minor nobility, and some people value this very much; no baron or landed knight will press himself on the women in Jilia's house now, and the sisters and daughters of men who work for her have similar protection. But the point is to be tied to a protector.

Her staff, though, are tied to no one. They work for her, not her house. They will work for Sofia, in time, not because Lady Sofia is her heir but because she is her apprentice and trained successor; if Jilia bears children, Sofia will still take her staff unless their mother dies while they remain children. If she dies unexpectedly Sofia will ask them to stay on, and Rexus will be elected Lord Mayor and ask them to work for him, and they will choose which work they prefer. They would not conceptualize their attachment to her as loyalty, because loyalty is not a virtue Asmodeus permits, but they are, on the whole, loyal. They are, in a sense they can feel if not articulate, free, and choosing to work for her because she is a good boss.

Not everyone on her staff is a good person, though by her own idiosyncratic definition nine of every ten are. Few of them are Good people. But she has made her offices a place that encourage it, encourage getting better results by rewarding them and giving them latitude to accomplish it. And in the process she's made it a place that makes her better, too. Openly, even, these days.

Now there is a convention in Westcrown, and she has to, or at least definitely should, leave Ravounel to spend weeks, and probably months, there debating a constitution. At least she was able to find some Andoren immigrants (Milanites, naturally) who can explain how this is meant to work. And she managed to discourage Jackdaw from standing for election to the convention, through a mix of reverse psychology and arguments that attending it as a delegate from Ravounel would be legitimizing Cheliax's claim to Ravounel. Well. Probably. She still doesn't know exactly who Jackdaw is.

She picks stewards and staff to give responsibility while she's away, and a larger selection of enchanted items from the archducal vault, and then bodyguards to bring with her - after the years she's had, she's entitled to a little paranoia - and makes her way to Westcrown. Rexus Rictocora is officially Vice Mayor now and will handle anything but a major crisis.

And she'll just hope there isn't one.