"Yeah."

"What other things does the city administer?"

"I'm not sure what you count as administering and what you count as the city. Some of the money goes to the electrical grid and the water filtration and such, but that's all run by one specific person pretty much."

"Is there like, a city accountant at all, or just individuals handling money on behalf of a public amenity?"

"There's me? I can show you all the specific expenditures if that's what you're interested in."

"You've got a lot of single point of failure here."

"... yeah. Would have less if they hadn't elected me mayor."

"I mean, as mayor you're presumably empowered to alleviate the problem, but I do think you should probably do that."

"Bringing you on board would help - I actually really like the accounting part of the job and don't want to give it up." 

"I don't think it's a problem if you want to do the accounting, just if you're doing the accounting for the city under your own name and keeping it straight on the purest of honor systems instead of having separate accounts."

"What do you mean by under my own name? I keep the notes separated and don't mingle my personal funds with the ones that are for the benefit of the city."

"Not your name, then, maybe I misunderstood. On your own sole recognizance."

"Oh, do you think I should publish the records or hire someone independent to look through them or something?"

"Publishing them sounds like it would happen in a mature government of this form though I don't know if it's the right place to spend marginal energy and materials right now. I don't know who your independent auditing options are. But I'd expect a second pair of eyes, even if they weren't completely independent eyes, to be salutary in some ways."

"Well, you are extremely welcome to look over my books." Why did that sound dirty.

She's not sure either but it's allowed to, they're already fucking. "Absolutely."

"Is the market most of your job?"

"Not directly - I'm here for two shifts of three hours each every day it's open, and then I have a lot of meetings - about a third of which are tangentially related to the market."

"Who're you meeting with on a typical day?"

"It varies a lot - major foreign merchants, people running other towns, the engineer I mentioned who runs the electricity and such, the midwife that everyone listens to, rangers, and the leaders of various factions in town."

"Do you ever have to travel? What are the factions?"

"I had to travel a few years ago, but nowadays we are big enough that I can either send someone else or get someone to visit us. Uh, there's a gang that owns one of the brothels, a few of the richer merchants who have mercenaries on their payroll,  a group of rangers who have opinions on things when they're in town, and an artisans guild."

"What does the gang do besides own a brothel?"

"I think some of the bars pay them for protection, and they deal with other gangs that try to acquire territory in Kenton."