A pleasant morning slipped by, with my girls getting a chance to just relax and chat. Thomas engaged with each of my girls, behaving like a proper gentleman and discussing their hobbies, interests, and passions. It was rather enlightening to watch the young man work once the meal was over and his mother excused herself to handle matters of state.

  I knew exactly what the prince was doing, though. He would shoot the occasional glance toward myself or Rieka, and it was obvious he was ensuring that he did not overstep himself while he sounded each of the girls out for business opportunities that he might be able to exploit.

  Kassandra was the best equipped to fence with the prince, which was fortunate because she was also the most likely to have information that he could use. The two of them had quite a good bit of fun discussing different markets, potential investments, and upcoming inventions.

  Shayla and Jane mostly discussed hobbies and interests, which resulted in Thomas recommending several stores to them that had supplies which they might be interested in. That he outright told them they were stores he owned controlling interest in was a point in his favor.

  Thomas also didn’t spare me scrutiny as well, especially after his mother left and he was allowed to dig into ‘business talk’ without her glaring at him for it.

  “Honestly, the biggest barrier is going to be transport,” I explained to him while the young wolf prince swirled his tea thoughtfully.

  We had shifted from the dining room to a lounge, with each of the girls bringing something to distract themselves while we relaxed together. Shayla had her sketchbook out, Jane was working through a thick book, while Rieka and Valda were reading through personal letters. Kassandra was pursuing her favorite hobby: harassing me.

  “I imagine that would be the major issue,” Kassandra said from her spot seated on the back of the low couch. Her coils were draped around my shoulders right now and my head rested against her warm stomach while she toyed with my hair. If I didn’t know better, she was putting it up in small, elaborate braids—a suspicion further confirmed by the smothered laughter of the girls and Thomas’ own smirk.

  “Yes, the fact that you are limited in how much you can transport at one time would be an issue.” Thomas nodded slowly as he spoke, glancing up from his steaming cup of tea before hiding a smile behind the porcelain. “At least you have a very exacting limit that you can measure for, correct?”

  “Fifty pounds,” I answered with a sigh. “Or four square feet of space, whichever comes first. So if it was gold, it’d be…” I paused for a moment to calculate mentally. “About three inches square and eight inches long, if my memory of the density of gold is right.”

  Thomas stared at me in surprise for a moment before shaking his head with a wry smile.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised that you have such esoteric knowledge at your fingertips, Liam,” the young man said. “Honestly, what would be the most valuable would be that sort of knowledge. Trade goods have a solid and intrinsic value—and yes that can fluctuate, but only within a given range unless something catastrophic happens. But knowledge…”

  “The problem with knowledge is that all too often it can be used badly,” I replied with a grimace. “Trust me, I’ve been thinking about how I could best improve life here for the people I care about. But even something as simple as documents about how intensely we’ve studied something like sanitation could be used to hurt people.”

  Jane must have been listening more than I had thought, because she peeked over the edge of her book and stared at me, her large ears wiggling curiously as she spoke.

  “How so, Liam? I mean, it’s just poop, right?”

  Valda answered the question before I could, which honestly didn’t surprise me. The warrior woman had been trained to think about threats like this, after all.

  “Diseases,” Valda said simply. “If you look at the practices needed to keep a population from getting sick, you can reverse that in order to infect them with all sorts of problems.”

  The scaled woman set her letter down and held her hands out. Lifting one, she gave an example.

  “Think about wells. We all know that wells are necessary for the citizens to get clean drinking water. Even then, many boil their water to ensure it is safe.” Valda switched which hand she was holding up and continued. “Poison those wells—especially with something that is largely undetectable in the short term—and you can bring a population to its knees with plague.”

  “Basically,” I said. “But also take into consideration that this same knowledge has been used to study exactly what sorts of toxins exist in different types of refuse. If you wanted to infect a city with something like cholera, then these books on sanitation could be used to figure out how to isolate large amounts of the sickness.”

  “And that is a lot to trust to people you may not know, and thus not something that could be sold,” Thomas said thoughtfully. “So at best, you might be able to bring over some knowledge that is directly applicable to the work of someone you know and trust…”

  “Basically,” I replied and gestured toward Shayla. “Like the magnifying glasses that I brought for Shayla weeks ago. You have them here in lesser forms,” I pointed at Kassandra’s glasses meaningfully and got a kiss to the tip of my finger from my naughty noodle. “But the ones that I brought from Earth were far more precisely created than the handmade and polished glass of this world.”

  “Fascinating,” Thomas muttered, tapping the rim of his cup to his chin. While he thought, I continued to speak.

  “Honestly, I’m not against bringing things from Earth to Cortha or back again, the issue is mostly in ensuring that I don’t destabilize things. Sure, I could easily take an appreciable quantity of gold bullion back to Earth in exchange for the funds I’ve accumulated here, but that may actually damage the local economy here if I do that.”

  “Which is why trade goods are a better choice,” Kassandra said happily, wrapping her arms around my head from behind and hugging me. “You know, I could get in contact with my uncle, the one who deals in fine hardwoods, and see if they could sell you some of the specialty rare wood. He’s always looking for new buyers.”

  “I’d have to look into how selling it might work,” I replied, leaning back to smile up at Kassandra. “Unfortunately, Earth doesn’t have things as simple as a local market or the Carpenter’s Guild that I can sell to. At least I don’t think so?”

  “I think you are just worried about running into all my little cousins again,” Kassandra teased, grinning down at me.

  “I’m surprised none of them managed to sneak into my pack before we left,” I countered. “Those little ones were more clingy than even you are, Nugget.”

  Before we could continue, a knock at the door interrupted the conversation. It was answered by Lorelai, who had been standing by to attend to Rieka’s needs. The maid answered the door pleasantly, and the surprised exclamation told us exactly who it was that had stopped by.

  “May I—oh! Welcome Viscount Silverscale!”

  “Hello miss, my daughter wouldn’t happen to be hiding in there, would she?” asked the familiar voice of Matthias Silverscale.

  I felt Kassandra’s serpentine length tighten around me suddenly as she stiffened. Patting one of her coils gently, I calmed her down as more heads came up curiously in the room.

  “Slide down,” I murmured to Kassandra. She pouted faintly but did as I requested right as Lorelai opened the door wider to admit Kassandra’s father.

  The elder Silverscale was dressed as finely as the last time I’d seen him, wearing a red velvet tunic decorated with amber buttons that shone as brightly as his smile.

  “Ah, the lot of you are here, good!” Matthias exclaimed, his eyes twinkling as he studied the room and noticed the other nobles present. “I hope that I am not intruding, Lady Rieka, Lord Thomas?”

  “Not at all, Matthias,” Thomas replied with a cheeky grin. “And you know you can call me Thomas in private like this.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Matthias replied with a genial smile. “I had been hoping to pick my daughter’s clever brain about some investment ideas regarding her Liam. I have a feeling that with business in the air around you, I shouldn’t let myself relax.”

  “To be fair, we’ve been talking business for the last hour,” Thomas admitted. Rieka nodded along with a small grin, seemingly content to let her brother handle the talking right now. “But you are welcome to join us. It might allow your daughter to relax some knowing that I’m outnumbered.”

  “You were outnumbered before,” Kassandra replied primly. “Liam was just being polite.”

  Thomas acknowledged her point with a nod as Matthias coiled around to take up a seat between myself and the young prince. There was a pause while Lorelai bustled about preparing tea for the elder noble. All the while, Matthias kept shooting me odd looks while smirking faintly.

  Kassandra took that opportunity to adjust her coils so she was only wrapped around me twice like an oversized belt. I was used to this and adjusted without complaint while my serpentine lover got settled ‘sitting’ beside me, rather than straddling my back.

  “Liam,” Thomas murmured questioningly. When I glanced his way he pointed at my head, or more specifically, at my hair.

  Ah, yes, Kassandra’s handiwork, I thought. Do I get rid of it and risk annoying her, or just own it and act like it’s nothing?

  A darted glance at Kassandra revealed she was blushing and gnawing on her bottom lip in concern, which told me all I needed to know.

  Pushing with Shape-Shifting, my hair melted back into my head as scales flowed into place instead. Letting the shift settle for a moment, I slowly reversed it and allowed my hair to fluff back into place. It wasn’t perfectly styled, but it wasn’t in a mess of tiny braids anymore.

  The beaming smile Kassandra shot me a moment later told me that I’d guessed right. Glancing toward her father, I noticed that his smirk was gone, replaced with a respectful expression. Thomas was serious once more as well.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Ah, and the casual use of the ability reminded them of my power, I thought. I’m just glad Kass and Rieka normally handle the noble power games and the people that interact with the rest of us generally don’t bother.

  Once Matthias was settled with his tea and a small plate of delicate-looking cakes, the elder Silverscale got down to business.

  “It is actually something of a blessing that you are here right now, Thomas,” Matthias said, dipping a slim cookie into his tea and taking a small bite. “I had a proposal for Liam and my daughter that could be expanded through your contacts as well.”

  “As I had said,” Thomas replied genially, pausing to let Lorelai refill his cup. “We had been discussing that sort of thing earlier, though mostly keeping to theoreticals. Liam was just explaining the limitations of his abilities to me. Fifty pounds of material is all that he can bring at one time—”

  “For now,” I interjected, as we hadn’t gotten to the part explaining beyond that. “I expect there to be at least one more rank in that power and it is growing relatively quickly with the things that I bring for the girls to enjoy.”

  “Oh yes, the sweets are delicious,” Kassandra cooed happily. “Do you have any more of that chocolate confection? The one with the odd brown butter in the middle?”

  The way that Kassandra batted her eyelashes at me, one would think she was inquiring after another expensive Gucci purse. Since it was something far easier to provide, I held my hand out and summoned another of the Reese’s cups from my Dimensional Pocket.

  Kassandra let out a happy little squeal and snatched it from my hand. I’d bought a bag of the chocolate treats while shopping and unwrapped them all to save on a little bit of mass, so all she had to do was peel the brown paper off the bottom and bite into the treat.

  Lorelai, having already seen me do this before, appeared at my elbow with an empty and clean plate without needing to be called. I summoned four more of the treats onto the plate, glanced over at Mattias and Thomas, then added three more.

  “The last one is for you, Lorelai,” I said gently. “Please make sure that the prince and Lord Silverscale get one as well.”

  Lorelai curtsied without meeting my eyes, though a delicate blush colored her cheeks. The maid dutifully moved about the room, handing out the treats to each of my girls first before giving one each to the prince and Matthias. The last one I saw her set aside under a small plate and smiled, guessing that she was saving it for later.

  Makes sense, it’d be rude for her to eat it in front of her mistress, I thought while Kassandra nibbled happily on her treat. My girls didn’t waste time enjoying theirs as well. Matthias and Thomas were a bit hesitant at first, but after watching the girls enjoy their candy so happily, the two men gave in and tried a bite.

  “That was delicious,” Matthias complemented after wolfing down the little circle of chocolate and peanut butter. “How many of those do you have, Liam? I think that my wife will skin me alive if I don’t bring at least one back to share with her.”

  “I’ll make sure you have some to take back with you, I’d hate to get on her bad side as well,” I replied, sharing a smile with the older man. “Where is she, by the way?”

  “Meeting with the queen I believe,” Matthias replied with a shrug. “I believe she wanted to discuss some family business with Queen Gemma while I distracted our daughter.”

  “Father!” Kassandra protested, but my dwarf lamia didn’t move to get up.

  Matthias just shot his daughter a smile and took another sip of tea before diverting the conversation back to trade.

  “So those sweets could potentially make quite a splash amongst the noble circles. Especially if they are of limited supplies. I know of at least four families that would love to have something like that as the centerpiece of an upcoming gala and would pay good coin for it.”

  “To be fair, I’d be more comfortable providing that than gemstones, spices, or precious metals, which would normally be what you’d think of for ‘high-value, low volume’ exchanges,” I replied, leaning forward to collect my cup and take a drink of the cooled tea. It still tasted good despite having gone cold, something I attributed to the fruity nature of this blend.

  “He was making good points about not harming the local economy,” Thomas added. “Insights that a seasoned economist might miss, such as the future effects on the market of taking quantities of precious metal out of it to another realm.”

  “Would it really have that much of an effect?” Matthias asked pointedly, looking back at me. “We trade with other countries all the time, and the locally minted coin is used then. Sure, some of the weight in gold comes back in the form of other nation’s coin, but it takes time.”

  “Admittedly, I’m probably worrying about it too much,” I conceded. “But I don’t want to be responsible for making the life of people here worse if the economy fluctuates too much on what should be cornerstone prices.”

  “How would you do something like that?” Matthias asked, his brow wrinkling in thought. “Your self-admitted limit of weight would make it take a ridiculous amount of time—”

  “Matthias,” I interrupted, holding a hand up to stop him. “You have to appreciate something. I could destabilize the local economy with surprising ease if I wanted to.”

  The older lamia frowned, his brows drawing together in disbelief, but he let me continue so I explained.

  “Think for a moment, what would happen if I were to dump fifty pounds of diamonds into your markets without warning? Or five hundred pounds?”

  Matthias scoffed at that, but from the nervous twitching of his scaled tail, I saw he was getting nervous.

  “There is no way you have that many diamonds at your fingertips,” Matthias replied with a shake of his head. “The queen doesn’t even have that many raw gemstones in the treasury, I’m sure of it. In fact, I struggle to imagine what that might even look like.”

  My collection of random knowledge came in handy then and I took a moment to think about it and come up with a comparison.

  “On my world, they measure diamonds by a measurement called carats,” I explained. “And no, not the vegetable. It’s a measurement of weight specific to precious stones. A pound of diamonds would contain around twenty-two hundred carats of diamonds, give or take about a hundred. And a single carat diamond is, on average, the size of a pea.”

  Matthias was pale at the thought, while Thomas just shook his head back and forth with a grim look.

  “You don’t have access to that many stones,” Matthias almost begged me.

  “I don’t have them,” I replied and saw both Thomas and Matthias relax while Kassandra’s tail around my waist gave a reassuring squeeze. “But it is something I could get hold of.”

  Both men were scowling now, and I could tell that my point had gotten across to them. Which was good, because I didn’t want to mention the fact that the gemstones would be lab-grown. It wouldn’t honestly matter to the people here, since diamonds would be diamonds regardless of whether they were natural or lab-created.

  At least I believe so, I thought. Never know what magic might do with it. I should check with Kass and see if gemstones can be used in any of their ritual or enchanting work and if the clarity and perfection of the stone helps. Lab-grown stones are known for being unnaturally perfect, which is how they are told apart from naturally-occurring stones.

  Putting that aside, I focused back on the two men in front of me. Thomas was nibbling idly on a slender cookie, while Matthias was staring into his teacup like he was hoping it would turn into whiskey.

  Thankfully, Kassandra came to the rescue to break the two men out of their funk after I’d so neatly shown how I could ruin the local economy.

  “It’s a good thing that our Liam is concerned about such things,” Kassandra chirped happily. “With that keen mind of his, I’m sure he’ll see any problems well in advance.”

  “I try,” I said, turning a smile toward my redheaded lover. “Honestly, Thomas’ earlier idea of bringing knowledge over is one that I’ve been considering the most. Sure, it can be abused, but so can just about anything. It’s just a matter of controlling the spread of that information so it doesn’t get into the hands of those who would abuse it, at least until there are safeguards in place.”

  “True,” Thomas said, giving himself a shake that made his pointed wolf ears bounce. “Spreading accurate information has always been a challenge, especially with the issues of transcribing books taking so long.”

  “Oh that’s easy,” I replied, which made both men freeze and turn to look at me with serious expressions. Jane’s head also came up from her spot at the table, and I saw my mousy scholar’s tail flailing in the air behind her.

  Should have known she’d be listening since her favorite subject came up: books, I thought with a wry grin.

  “Liam, are you going to elaborate?” Kassandra prodded, squeezing me with the coils she had around my waist.

  “There is a machine from history on my world,” I explained without drawing it out further. “It is considered to be responsible for the rise in literacy and also aided in spreading news and information far and wide. It was named after the man who created it, but it is what is called a ‘printing press’ and allowed people to rapidly produce pages and pages of written words in a standardized and easily-readable writing. I know that I’ve heard you girls complaining about the handwriting of certain scholars in the books you’ve been studying.”

  “That would eliminate so many problems!” Jane exclaimed, bounding down from her seat at the nearby table and scampering over to join our talk. “Liam, if you have a way to rapidly reproduce books, then that is something you have to share with us!”

  “I want to,” I told her with a small smile. “But like with everything else, I have to think about how it will impact the current state of things here.”

  “How could that negatively impact the state of the world?!” Jane demanded.

  “Lost jobs and industry, for one,” Thomas supplied before I could. “There are whole businesses dedicated to reproducing books for sale, and those sales go to funding more research in different fields.”

  “They can transition to this new method!” Jane insisted. “It’s not as if the first-editions and hand-copied volumes wouldn’t still be valuable, and I highly doubt that Liam will be able to snap his fingers and produce five hundred of these printing presses.”

  “I don’t know if I could even bring over one of them,” I interjected with a grin. “They were heavy things. And the impact will be minimal in the short term. While precious stones and metals in bulk could ruin a market, these presses would take years to properly build up and expand, especially as the demand will still remain small until there is a larger market.”

  “Oh there will be a large market,” Matthias insisted, some color having returned to his cheeks now while he rubbed at his chin with one hand. “Most students in the younger years are taught with chalk and slate, and the instructor has to transcribe lessons often. If we can print primers for them to hand out at reasonable prices, then it’ll be much easier for schools to afford and they can be reused. The chalk and slate markets will remain unaffected as they are needed to practice with.”

  “It’d take a generation or two to really catch on,” Thomas added, getting more excited by the moment. “But I could see this causing a major increase in learned citizens. That would open up new markets like more booksellers, paper shops, and a demand for ink. Craft-masters would be able to print instruction guides for their work, allowing them to take on more apprentices at once…”

  Silence descended for several moments as everyone was listening now, and they all considered what sort of effect this might have on the future of the Coldeye queendom.

  “I have to speak with Mother about this,” Thomas declared, setting his teacup aside with a click. “Before we go any further on planning, I have to make sure she is on board.”

  Jane’s expression went through a mixture of fury and concern before settling on grudging acceptance when I held my hand out to her. She stepped forward and took my hand in hers, rubbing my palm against her cheek. The touch clearly reassured her because she relaxed a moment later.

  “Go ahead and speak with the queen about it, Thomas,” I said, turning my attention back to the prince. “If she approves, then I’ll see about bringing over diagrams for one. I’m sure I can locate them since it’s a historical artifact on my world. Honestly, with what I’ve been seeing on Cortha, your people are probably not far from inventing it yourself. So it’s not likely to destabilize things.”

  “And about investors…” Matthias quickly interjected.

  “We can discuss it later, Daddy,” Kassandra interjected, her affectionate tone reassuring the older man. “The first step is getting the queen’s approval on this. If she approves, then we have the crown’s endorsement on this business and can proceed.”

  “Yes, but you aren’t going to cut your father out of this deal, are you?” Matthias pretended to beg, and Kassandra smiled at him.

  “That entirely depends on how good a deal you offer,” she said as her smile turned devious.

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