Chapter 27

The Price of an Idea

“I saw a man clad in pure gold, a blade of shadows in his hand; he swung and split the mountain in front of him. I was confounded.”

My Dawn, Vol. III

Noah hung on the side of a mid-sized sail, looming over, enjoying the pleasant breeze while observing the shuffling river beneath. The day, altogether, was rather pleasant, which ought to make their journey down the Sumnner’s River and toward the Brightfloods quick. It would still be at least ten to eleven days, which he was not looking forward to spending on the ship. Even back on Earth, he didn’t enjoy long treks across the sea, be it on the ships or the submarines; people get agitated and angry rather quickly, food deteriorates, and boredom usually kicks in four to five days in.

Sailing a ship with no entertainment whatsoever was bound to accelerate all the negatives of the journey, but he had no other choice – it was, by far, the quickest and even the safest route. Besides him, Sash and Myrell, he saw eight other passengers board, none of which caught his eyes, which was why he had spent most of the days either in the small, cramped room they called a ‘private chamber’, studying the nature of the Brightfloods and the Myrsell House, or out here, on the deck, enjoying the faint gleam of the sun and the pleasant touch of the wind.

Sash always remained by his side, acutely a few steps away, with an awkward hold on the sword’s handle. However, due to who he was by birth, others didn’t approach Noah, either paying a curious glance or one of disgust.

Glancing at Sash for a moment, he chuckled and drew back beneath the deck, into his ‘cabin’. In reality, it was an incredibly small, cramped room that he had to curl up to sleep in, with no table or desk to speak of. Sash remained on the outside, while Myrell had a ‘cabin’ of her own next door, an even smaller one than Noah’s.

Across what Noah assumed was at one point a child’s bed, a sludge of papers and parchments extended. He kneeled in front of it and started sifting through them, reexamining what he had already learned, and seeing whether he missed something. Brightfloods stood adjacent to the Weepwoods toward the north and the Ferlands to the east, where House Revvor took a hold. To the south was the Sumnner’s River and the famous Silent Crossing.

All this, together, made the Brightfloods a somewhat turbulent region, especially due to the moderately regular raids coming from the other side of the Sumnner’s River. Culturally, as far as he could tell from the papers and the stories, it was quite similar to the capital; this, also, extended over to how its economy and rule operated. A massive Dukedom heralded by Sylene Myrsell levied chunks of land to the lesser houses by the Writ of the Royal Seal, collecting what Noah essentially viewed as taxes, but were officially called 'gifts'; the vast majority of these 'gifts' were then transferred over to the Crown, some stayed in to maintain the Dukedom, and a few stuck to the House's pocket as the form of a reward.

Just like it was the case in the capital, one had to have a Royal Seal to start any business, but, at least according to the documents procured by Olivia, Vorvil, and Myrell, Myrsells overlooked a lot of the illegal trade going on within the bounds, as a lot of it had to do with the direct market that they profited from – exotic trade. Amongst the 'gifts', a massive exemption existed for the Port Wevvas as, technically, it existed outside the Kingdom’s borders, and was simply ‘protected by the parties of interest’, the main one happening to be House Myrsell.

A lot of goods shipped there find their way to the low-down market, and overseeing such a massive influx of goods every few months was not something that single house, even Duke's, could maintain. For that reason, they oversee only the major sales and transfers, while most of the lesser ones – like food, alcohol, and trinkets – are divided around the Kingdom illegally.

Noah was never good with numbers, which was why trying to understand the Kingdom’s general growth and market rates spun his head high into the clouds. He understood trends, he understood natural tendency toward certain items, but he almost never crunched the actual numbers himself – especially so now that he had no access to any calculator besides the one stuck inside his brain. Which was, at the very best, painfully subpar.

In addition, the Houses are not known for their transparency; any public records, even the ones that only Olivia can get her hands on due to her status, would be, at best, slightly off. Trusting in them blindly was a fool’s errand, but they were a good baseline for what he had planned to do. He had every intention of visiting the Houses even without Quickett’s situation, as it was simply necessary to establish connections immediately with them so he can properly nurture them over the years. And, trying to get Claire back to Elucido was really just a minor part of his goal. The first one was to establish dependency.

At the moment, he had nothing to levy against the Houses – even lesser ones, to say nothing of the major ones. His wealth was a joke, his knowledge was a joke, his strength was a joke – everything, really, in their eyes, was a joke. He did, however, have one thing – one thing that even back on Earth could have made a sewer boy into a front-cover prince – ideas. In general, ideas are priceless, not due to how great they are, but due to how abstract they are. They are sold at whatever value one can push them. He was not so blind in egoism to believe he was the only one in the Kingdom to be aware of this, but he did have an entire world, a completely different world, to reference from.

He may have limited knowledge, but there are countless smart people here, as there were on Earth. The ‘idea’ people were rarely the ones that manifested the idea into an actual object, a thing. Even if he himself is unable to build a speedier wagon or a carriage, he can explain to someone else the idea behind the aerodynamics of movement and, through trial and error, a quicker carriage is constructed.

This, especially, would be useful with Myrsells due to their connection to all-things-exotic. Whereas other houses may have dismissed some of the ‘out there’ ideas, Myrsells may embrace them simply because of how ‘out there’ they may be. There were naturally some things that could not be built no matter how much explained them, namely all electronics as his knowledge in the department was at a level of fourth-grader, but there were just as many that could. The one that he was tinkering with ever since he decided to travel to Brightfloods had to do with the object he was on at the moment – the ship. The distance between Port Wevvas and the Brightfloods was massive – even in optimal conditions, with the fastest ships, it took three months to journey in one direction. And this was not just for goods, but also for information as well. As far as his research could tell him, there was no subsidy of Light that enabled long-distance communication, and no animal that can be trained for it.

Decreasing the duration of the trip is the best way for him to build up some goodwill with the House. Naturally, it would take a while until his ideas were realized, which was why he dug out some of the things in the Weepwoods that he carried over from the Earth, simply as to ‘wow’ and convince his words had some merit, and perhaps to use them as a form of trade for Claire.

In terms of how to decrease the duration of the journey, however, he was a bit stumped; after all, he knew next to nothing about the ships. As a matter of fact, he knew more about the airplanes than he did about the ships – but that didn't mean he couldn't try. One important thing that he did know, however, was approximating the ship's speed – which was why he spent a considerable amount of time on the deck. His rough estimate was that the current ship was traveling at almost two knots, or roughly two-point-three miles an hour – which, even if he knew next to nothing about the ships, seemed painfully slow.

Changing the ship’s design, adding sails, repositioning the mast… he could tinker with the ideas in his head and present them elaborately enough. After all, his ideas didn’t necessarily need to work; by the time they can be tested, he will have nipped into what the House needs the most – and would have, hopefully at least, come up with another idea for it.

The biggest problem, now, was gaining access to anyone of importance within the Brightfloods; he might have been able to get someone to meet him if he went in with the identity of the Royal Dacent, but that was too risky. His best bet was to get the rumors about his ‘wares’ circulating the city as well as the nearby areas and hope they somehow reach Myrsells. There might be direct access, he mulled over the ideas, stroking his chin as he leaned against the slightly wet wood. Maybe they have something like an unofficial, open channel for anyone with ‘exotic’ wares? Or even open admissions? Yeah, no, that’s not happening. Hmm…

He shrugged in the end, sorting the parchments and putting them beneath his head as a form of a pillow as he curled up on the small bed, closing his eyes, readying for a nap. The major reason why he didn't outline a complete plan before traveling was that he didn't trust anything he read about the Brightfloods – even on Earth, he’d at best have an outline before personally traveling to the place of interest and researching it. Records are easily faked, rumors tainting the reality, and when your life depends on you not angering whoever reigns over you, only sunshine and rainbows will flutter out of your lips. If there is no established avenue of access, he will make one – he always did. And he was certain he always would. He may not have confidence in calculating more than three numbers in an equation, but he had confidence in manipulating an entire city to do his bidding within a short timeframe – no matter what kind of a city it may be.