I was almost bowled over by Edward as he ran into the town hall. As I was just leaving.
He had a grin on his face as he shouted, “We may have found what we are looking for!”
I held up my hands to ward him off. “Edward, first, you smell like you haven’t bathed in days, so I am guessing you have been spending all your time away from home, and two, what worked?”
Edward ignored my first comment and plunged ahead with the explanation. “The cast lead letters?”
My eyebrows rose. I hadn’t expected them to find a solution anytime soon. I honestly thought we were up against a brick wall on that one. “Excellent, how did you figure it out?”
“We didn’t. And really, we are not sure if it will even work yet. It was the new jeweler that John brought with him to train Mathew. At first, he was hesitant to speak with us. He thought we were trying to steal all his secrets.”
I laughed. “We are.”
“Yes, well, we were asking him about anything he has used with lead to harden it and make the edges sharper. He was tight as a clam until the smiths shared the white crystals from the people in the Barren Lands. After he used it and found it significantly increased the ease of molding the gold and silver, as well as making it easy to weld two pieces together, he opened up to them. A few conversations later, he mentioned that although he did not often work with lead, he knew of hard lead far to the south. It is past Turabe on the main continent.”
“That is pretty far. It will be pretty expensive to get.”
“Maybe, but it might not be. From what he says, the Darivin have a silver mine down there of exceptional quality. The purity of the silver is exquisite, something all jewelers dream of crafting with. Yet it is something that someone like him could never hope to afford. However, there is one problem with their mines: there are pockets of waste metal mixed with lead and silver that reduce the amount of silver they can extract from it. The small amount of silver they do get from those pockets is not worth the effort.” Edward said in a lecturing tone.
“And what does this waste metal do for us?”
“They have tried many things to make it useful; one such experiment was to mix it with tin. It wasn’t useful in any way because you just get a hard, tough, heavy lead that takes more time to process than it is worth. So when they run across the deposits heavy with the waste, they just move to the next deposit that is easier to get silver from. They have large pits full of the refuse-ore.”
“So we might be able to buy the stuff for cheap and make them into type. If they will also give us the method of turning the raw product into the hardened lead.”
Edward grimaced.“Cheap might not be the right word. The material itself is cheap — just the refuse from their silver workings. But getting it here won’t be. It’s heavy, filthy, and worth little, so no merchant will give it space unless we pay for the inconvenience. The Rabiss or the West Cove traders would have to carry it north over the course of their route, and the jeweler says the mines are almost a month’s travel away. After that, we’d still need a smith from those mines, one who knows the trick of turning it into the hard-casting lead. I wouldn’t expect it to cost less than ten gold crowns in the end. Minimum. If the Turabe are fighting with them again, then the price will be no less than twenty-five crowns.”
It was my turn to make a sour expression. I was already wasting so much money on other things, and I had to really think of how much this gamble was worth. If it truly worked, the income it brought in would be more than worth it.
I turned to where Benjamin had been trailing behind me. “Your thoughts?”
I almost burst into laughter as Benjamin pushed his new wooden-frame glasses up on his face. The world's first glasses-wearing nerd about to give his astute analysis of a situation.
“If the lead type can increase our output of books over the wooden stamps that are prone to shattering or the bronze that are not as sharp, then I would say it is worth it. Even a 10% increase, let's say five additional books a month, would pay for itself quickly. If it is even more, as we suspect, then the cost will be a drop in the cove compared to what we would make.”
“So the risk is worth the reward,” I said with a nod. “Edward, how long do you think it will take to get the ore?”
Benjamin spoke up instead. “My lord, this is going to be a lot of work finding someone to transport it. I expect we will not have it here before next year. We are going to need a few tons of the ore, and that is a lot of space for a merchant to plan for.”
“Ugh, a year for a bunch of worthless rocks. Benjamin, put FedEx on my list of things to create,” I said.
“Fudux?” Benjamin said with a questioning look.
“Just put it down so I can laugh about it later.” I turned back to Edward. “Ok, we will have to continue with what we are doing right now. In the meantime, books will still be handwritten. You mentioned the wood and the bronze. Any further progress with that?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Not really, wood and bronze are not right for anything but small runs like county-wide decrees. We’ll also need to start figuring out the best way to cast lead into type. By the time we get the ore, I want a method to make the type as fast and clean as possible.”
“Good point. Remember the SOP for working with lead. I know out metalurgist are all familiar with it, but mistakes have been made lately due to people being in a rush or just plain carelessness. Fume hood, waterproof leather gloves, mask, and damp cloth when grinding.”
“It shall be as you say, Lord Amos,” Edward said with a bow.
As he hurried off back to his publishing house. I shouted after him, “And take a bath.”
“Do you think we will be able to find a merchant to bring us the ore?” I ask Benjamin.
“I will begin writing letters this afternoon.” He said.
“Oh, that reminds me,” I said as we started our walk around Pine Grove. “How is the hunt for administrators going?”
“Very well, actually. Two young men were at the top of their class in an etiquette training program and had a basic understanding of math and writing. I am designing their curriculum for administrative training. If all goes well with it, we should have a way to quickly train graduates of your basic education class into proper stewards.”
“Excellent, another thing we can add to the trade school. We—” Just then, Emily came out of the paper-making shop, and when our eyes met, she froze. After a brief hesitation, she turned as if to go back into the shop.
“Emily, I need to speak with you.” She stiffened and turned back. She kept her head down. “Benjamin, let’s continue this later.”
He bowed, “Of course, my lord.” Then, quieter, he said, “Good luck.”
Cheeky jerk.
I walked up to Emily and paused. She refused to look at me. “Will you please take a walk with me?”
I started moving without waiting for her to respond. She fell into step beside me. We walked in silence until we got to the river. Then she abruptly stopped. I looked over to see that her head was still down. She was clutching the sides of her dress, her knuckles white. I was about to speak when she beat me to it.
“I’m sorry, Amos.” A single tear rolled down her cheek. “That was so stupid of me. I-I just…”
The next words came trembling out in a rush as if they had been held in too long. “When Will proposed to me, I got scared. I knew you would never marry me, but I don’t want to leave you. I love you, Amos.”
I wanted to say something, but I kept my mouth shut. She needed to get this off her chest.
“I know what you think of me and why you won’t marry me. I’m not good enough for you. I—”
“That is not true. You are my best friend.”
She spoke up before I could start listing all the reasons she was so great.
“I’m sorry, that isn’t what I meant. I meant I am not right for you. You need to marry someone of your status. Even if you were willing to take a second wife, it should be someone better.”
I ran my hand through my hair. This wasn’t going how I planned. “Emily. Looked at me.”
She looked up, her eyes puffy. “Trust me when I say this, Em, you are good enough. Social standing may stop you from being able to marry a high noble, but that does not mean you are not good enough to marry a high noble. I believe that, social standing aside, you would be worthy of any man that I approve of, king or commoner.”
That snapped her out of the funk. “Any man you approve of.”
“Of course,” I said, lifting my chin. “Don’t you remember, friends don’t let friends marry jerks.”
“Amos, I just dumped everything I was feeling on you, and that is what you say.” She said, her tone going sharp.
“Fine, sorry, this is just so awkward, and you know how I act around my friends when things get awkward.”
“Stupid jokes, I know.”
“Look, Em. This is my fault, too. I just don’t know how to fix it.” I said.
“Grandma said it would just fix itself. I will suffer, you will suffer, and then we move on.” She said quietly.
“Kind of sucks though.”
“Yeah.”
“So… What do we do?” I asked.
There was a long pause. “Can we just keep pretending it doesn’t suck?”
I could see the pleading in her eyes. I rubbed my forehead. “Isn’t that what got us in this mess in the first place?”
“Yep,” she said in a glum tone.
“This is so messed up.”
She didn’t say anything.
Finally, I let out a sigh. “Fine, let’s keep this screwed-up relationship going until we can’t.”
That caused a smile to spread across her face.
“We need to find you a husband,” I said.
“One that’s not a jerk,” she said. Trying to hide the anguish at my words.
I nodded slowly. “One that’s not a jerk.”
*
It was the next month when I finally received the person I was waiting for, Baron Sophis. I was both excited and nervous. Excited because he was a source of information, and nervous because I was a source of information. Much of mine I did not want to share.
The ship was a standard dual-deck Falmoren Ship. The rigging was similar to the Rabiss, but the Rabiss had a far superior hull. Both ships were a nightmare compared to what I was trying to achieve, though. If we were ever able to finish them.
I was slowly building a stockpile of wood on the far side of the cove where we were hiding our other two boats. We decided, rather than rushing to build a dry dock here, we would keep the location remote and hidden. The dry dock was going to be large enough to fit a ship up to the size of a schooner. I thought about having it big enough to hold a brig, but I figured by the time we were ready for brigs, I would want two docks. So slowly but surely, the dock and my wood stockpile were growing.
When Sophis walked into the pier I could tell he was ill from the journey.
He was about to bow when I held my hand. “No need to bow, my friend. You look ill enough and might vomit if you do any movements like that.”
“Indeed, thank you for your gracious understanding, Count Bicman,” he said letting a sigh escape.
“Come now, Baron, you may skip the formality, call me Amos.”
“Then you may call me Sebastian,” he said weakly. “And I will have to say that I will never travel by sea again. That was awful. And the last part along the cliff was terrifying.”
“Was it really that bad?”
"The captain said that if we were in a smaller ship, we would not have made it here by the time the sun set, and there is no place to stop along the cliff,” Baron Sophis said while trying to maintain a dignified composure.
That wasn’t the first time this complaint had been brought to my attention. For the boats of this time period, that stretch of cliffs was exceedingly dangerous.
“Yes, it is a concern and a good reason why this cove has never really been used. A lot of effort and risk for not much of a reward. I imagine prior explorers who did make it past the cliffs. Found nothing but a cove surrounded by swamps, and beyond the mountain a barren wasteland. Nothing worth the risk of a ship over.”
“Or my life,” the Baron said. “You are very fortunate to have the Rabiss vessel.”
I nodded. “I wish it had not come at the cost of so much suffering."
“And then there is the rumored ship. A small vessel. Something fast and light that somehow can make it past these cliffs faster than a ship with two banks of oars.” His eyes studied my face looking to see if I would give anything away.
I had practiced my poker face just for this.
I tried my best to look surprised and confused. He was, of course, talking about the Wind Chaser, the small ship we used for fishing and getting sand from the Barren Lands. There had been a few trips down to Oceanside, testing its speed on the crosswind. With its Bermuda and Jib sail, narrower V-shaped design, and keel that cut through the water, it could match or beat the Rabiss double deck ship down the coast. With a handful of deckhands.
I was actually not surprised that the information leaked. Plenty of people on the cove had seen the ship and people are prone to boast. I was actually more surprised that it was seen as a rumor and not the entire design being known. Not that describing the ship would help someone actually build it without the technical specs.
I decided to just play it off with ignorance. “Someone has built such a ship. Was it the Rabiss? If so, I would like to get a hold of the design.”
The corner of one lip raised on the baron’s face. “Actually, if stories are to be believed, it was built here.”
I laughed. “Well, that is the thing, stories are not always meant to be believed, especially when they come from sailors.”
This earned me a true smile. “Indeed.”
He knew that I was hiding the truth. Sebastian was too smart a man to bring it up if he felt it was just a drunk sailor's boast. But he also realized he would not get this secret out of me unless he paid dearly for it. And thus the tone for all our interactions was set. Transactional.
For a man with a landlocked barony, it was probably not worth it. He would try stealing or blackmailing to get the designs first.
“Come, let me show you the town. It will give you a chance to stretch your legs and settle your stomach.”
“That would be nice,” he said.
We walked around Cove Town, me leading the tour. “These are our long houses. They were where most of the inhabitants of Cove Town lived when we first arrived. Now our people live farther east, near the hills. Hopefully, once the land has drained we will be better able to utilize it..”
“And is your land good for anything?” he asked curiously.
The sly fox probably already knew the trouble the drained swamps had. Living near the marsh, my people were familiar with the possibility that our soil might be bad, but it was only in the last few weeks that things had really taken a turn for the worse. The plants started off fine, but within a month, they began to brown. Only those fields that had been experimented with chalk seemed to be lasting, and there was no guarantee that they would last long enough to bring in a harvest.
Fortunately, last week we discovered the probable cause. The red cabbage had grown enough to produce a purple juice. When the soil was introduced to the liquid, it almost immediately turned pink. I don’t know how bad that was. But I knew that lemons turned the juice pink from science class. I do not know what the other direction did for a base.
So the soil was acidic. What we found is that guano made it more so, and the chalk brightened it back to a purplish hue. So the plan was to chalk all the fields we had plowed and prepare the soil for next year.
The only problem was that this year's harvest had already been largely destroyed, and if it weren’t for our exports of other goods, we wouldn’t have the capital to buy grain. My people would have starved. All my influx of cash now was going straight back into buying seed and food. Overall, though, it wasn’t that bad. We calculated that if we sold thirty books and a few paintings to Yarbeth, Plimgus, and Malcomp at a reasonable price and they resold them, we could secure their surplus grain, which they would have plenty of due to the plow. I could also bring in livestock from Vaspar. So even though this set us back, it wasn’t a disaster. I just had a location that would have to be more focused on industry rather than food sooner than I thought.
The other problem was that it was going to take a staggering amount of chalk to change the soil. I had stopped all the southern trade in the chalk, and the Karr were shipping it to Cove Town.
I turned and looked at the baron, plastering a smile on my face, “It will take a lot of work, but I believe we may have found a solution.”
He stopped. Scrutinizing my face. “You have found a way to tame a swamp? Is it the method you are using in the southern baronies? Rotating your crops three times rather than flipping every year.” He shook his head. “No, I doubt the beans would be able to grow in the soil, or I would have heard about it. So what is it?”
I laughed. “You want the secret for cleansing soil, for free?”
I was not surprised that he knew everything that was going on in the south baronies, the three-field crop rotation included. Even if my people were keeping their mouths shut, the new people that were trickling in from Yarbeth’s Barony, as well as the Baron himself, were not going to stay silent.
He probably knew that we had stopped sending chalk south as well. But he may not know what we’re using it for.
He shrugged, “It was worth a try. I am glad to see you are learning. Besides, I have more important things I want from you. I want your armor.”
That froze me. “I cannot give you my family's armor.”
“You misunderstand me. I need the method to create the armor sent down to the war with your men. The cloth armor.”
I nodded. “And that is why you are really here. How did you get hold of that? I assume that you have acquired some since the appearance is not much to look at. You must have tested it.”
Excitement tinged his voice. “Everyone who gathers information has tested it. The fact that even your common soldiers had it was curious to some, and I believe the first set was stolen within a week of arrival. It was first tested for strength and durability. It was found to do well against slashing and decent against jabbing thrusts. They started to dissolve the glue. A difficult feat, I hear. They complained that it was all so firmly pressed together it was almost a solid block. When they were finally able to peel off a layer, they found it to be cloth woven so finely that nobody knew how it was made.”
“I can see you understand the value of this information. All you Starlight Mars together are not worth this secret.” I said, crossing my arms.
“Oh, we won’t be dealing in Mars this time, we will be dealing in men. Specifically, your men. What is left of them?” He said solemnly.
I took a step forward. “Are you threatening my men?”
He held up a hand. “Come now, Amos, I would never do something so crude and barbaric.”
I doubted that.
“There have been a few attacks on your people, and their armor stolen. A couple died.” He said.
“I am guessing by other Falmorens.”
“Yes.”
“And you can protect them.”
He smiled. “Better than that, I can bring them home.”