Section Seven: The Young Man’s Secret (Part One)

After a joyful banquet, the companions who had spent more than two years together finally parted ways. Captain Kaplan and First Mate Anderson chose to remain in Heldasin. Even though they would not be embarking on deep-sea voyages for the time being, they were so accustomed to life at sea that they would allow themselves only a few days' rest to reunite with their families—especially as the debt from purchasing the Celeste still weighed heavily on Kaplan. Other sailors, deciding to take a break, set out from Heldasin with their newly earned wages. Some went off alone, seeking a bit of pleasure, but most took their money back to their families in the countryside, where their loved ones and children had long awaited their return.

Wei Wuji and Amango boarded a carriage from Heldasin to Valencia. It was a spacious vehicle drawn by two horses. Every hundred to two hundred kilometers or so, there were waystations where these passenger carriages could stop and rest. In the past, these waystations were reserved solely for the royal family, nobility, and military—even merchants were excluded. But since the fall of the Tianlun Dynasty, the parliament of the Landia Republic had unanimously voted to open some of these facilities for civilian use, in order to support the enormous expenses of maintaining the waystations. Clever merchants banded together to form small groups, calling this system of proportional investment and shared rights and responsibilities a "company." As companies, they purchased the right to use the waystations from the cabinet.

The parliament and cabinet of Landia fully endorsed and promoted this model. By selling partial usage rights to merchants, the state allowed those merchants or merchant groups—more properly called companies—the ability to use the waystations for transmitting business messages and forming transportation networks that underpinned trade. Naturally, this all came at a price, and the rights lasted only three to five years.

For example, the carriage they were riding belonged to the newly formed Maersk Company, which had purchased exclusive civilian usage rights to the waystations along the route from Heldasin to Valencia. For the next three years, only the state and the military retained parallel access. No other individual or merchant could use these waystations without Maersk’s permission. This was a lucrative source of income, and Anthony of Heldasin had long bemoaned his earlier short-sightedness in failing to bribe officials and secure the rights before these smaller town merchants banded together to form Maersk and won the bid. Now, when Anthony wanted to transport goods to Valencia, he couldn’t even get a drink of water at a waystation without Maersk’s approval. His only options were to pay Maersk a high fee for permission to rest at the stations, or to push his freight wagons to travel through the night and camp in the wilderness or in villages, which only drove costs higher.

At first, sharp-minded Anthony staunchly resisted, but he soon realized that avoiding the waystations and traveling through the night increased risks and did not actually save money. The drivers, trying to avoid sleeping in the wild, would head for towns instead, where they’d have to pay for lodging anyway. Pushing the animals too hard led to greater losses and drove costs up even further. Anthony’s family had already lost several shipments this way, and the pain of it was etched in his thinning face. Left with no alternative, Anthony was forced to use the rights he’d managed to purchase at a high price from another company on a similar route as leverage to strike a deal with Maersk. The two companies signed an agreement granting each other the right to rest at and resupply in one another’s waystations at market prices.

From a business perspective, the Anthony family didn’t suffer much loss from this exchange, but they still felt deeply aggrieved. It meant they faced new challenges—challenges, as they soon discovered, that couldn’t be resolved by old methods. This was no longer the Tianlun Dynasty; the Republic was in power. In parliament, it wasn’t just grandees like Anthony who had a voice—small merchants were represented too. At least, the law now stated that private property was sacred and inviolable—a declaration made by Prime Minister Hollenheiter, supported by four hundred members of parliament, and greeted with a day-long celebration among the people. No matter how powerful Anthony was, he dared not openly challenge this law, lest he become a public enemy. So he could only hire a great many people to scrutinize the new republican codes, hoping to find loopholes and flaws that, perhaps one day, would be his opportunity to profit.

This was an age of change. Since the founding of the Landia Republic, the world was transforming day by day. Merchants were raising their heads, stepping onto the political stage to defend their interests. Neighboring countries were also changing—some, like other southern nations, were following Landia’s lead, developing maritime trade and competing with the traditional sea power, the Golden Broom. Others remained neutral, such as the northern Lot, too distant and separated by intervening states. Some, particularly those in the east heavily influenced by the Church, harbored a subtle hostility.

After two days and a night of travel, it was, for Wei Wuji, decidedly an unpleasant journey. He could have reached Valencia much more quickly his own way, but, for Amango’s sake, he endured the slow pace of the carriage.

Valencia, however, did not disappoint. Heldasin was wealthy, but its prosperity was born of newly flourishing maritime trade and lacked deep foundations; its urban development couldn’t compare to Valencia’s. Valencia, inheriting the legacy of the Tianlun Dynasty’s royal capital, was splendid and magnificent, filled with grand buildings, the ruins of the old palace, and churches of the Radiant Church. Merchants, not to be outdone, had poured their wealth into building even more imposing mansions. No one welcomed the law of the inviolability of private property more than they did.

Amango walked cheerfully along the streets, introducing the city to Wei Wuji. He had been away for three years, and some places had become unfamiliar even to him. But this was the city where he had grown up, and he soon found his way home. In the months they had traveled together, Wei Wuji had mastered the common tongue of the Western Continent as fluently as a native. Along the journey from Heldasin to Valencia, he had also picked up a fair amount of obscure slang. Now, standing on any street corner, he could understand almost everyone and express himself as fully as he wished.

This surprised Amango, but his friend explained that as a boy, he had studied some ancient Far Eastern scripts for the sake of learning and researching mysterious forces. Those arcane incantations were far more complicated than any language spoken here.