Dressed in a stiff tuxedo, Lorraine and Hina sat in the gilded, tacky parlor.
Across from them was the owner of the room, Mr. Frey, a glassware merchant of Blackport.
"Mr. Frey, I sincerely thank you for your willingness to accept our request for a meeting on your busy schedule."
"Uh-huh."
"We have plucked a boatload of exquisite glassware from the Kingdom of Norway, not master craftsmanship, but clearly shaped and patterned and of excellent quality. I wonder if I could waste a little of your time and have a little look at it?"
"Didn't you bring it already? Not letting you take it out would probably delay me longer." Frey drew out his silk scarf and slowly wiped the emerald from his fingers, "Time is money, young sir."
"I feel the same way about that."
Lorraine smiled like a spring breeze and waved her hand, allowing Hina to bring out the four-sided wooden box and open it towards Frey.
Frey glanced at the back of Haina's coffee-colored hand in disgust, "Moors?"
"She's Coptic, sir."
"Ch, it's no different."
Oblivious to the fact that he had just walked on the line between life and death, Frey gathered up his silk scarf, pulled a pair of white gloves from his pocket, and carefully lifted the glass bowl from the case.
It is a large bowl with a curved diagonal pattern, crystal clear and blooming like a flower.
It has carvings on all four sides, respectively, the Virgin Mary, the embrace of Christ, the Son to save the mother, and the Trinity four religious pictures, carvings stained with variegated color, especially see the handmade exquisite beauty.
Frey examined it lovingly for half a day, and suddenly asked, "Young sir, you must be under twenty?"
"Sixteen, sir."
"At sixteen ... sixteen, I was still soliciting in a relative's store, and my father didn't want me to touch the family store at all."
Lorraine knew exactly what Fray wanted to ask, because similar questions he had heard many times over the past few days.
He shook his head, "Sir, I'm English. It's not unusual for an Englishman to be thirteen or fourteen on a ship."
"But their positions are limited to trainees, perhaps the best of them can become seamen, but never captains." Frey put down the basin and narrowed his eyes, "I am curious, young sir, how is your family assured of your safety at sea?"
"Maybe ... this is the benefit of not having a family?"
"No?" murmured Frey, sweeping the sides of the glass basin, once, twice, and finally stopping, "Good quality, and if all you have are of that quality, I'd be willing to bid £2.50 each, as many as there are, and collect as many as you have."
Lorraine gently closed the case and rose to leave the table, "Mr. Frey, excuse me."
Frey sat upright with good humor and crossed his legs, "Young people should be realistic. You don't have a resident agreement, and it won't be easy to find a buyer ... who will outbid me in Belle Mayo."
"Thank you for your heartfelt advice, goodbye."
...
Spain, Port of Belmeaux Noir, on the seventeenth day of the Atis Beauty's mooring, Lorraine still hadn't been able to sell his glass.
Each Black Harbor has her own distinctive features.
Cherbourg is characterized by chaos, Elgin by order.
While Stavanger is as reckless and xenophobic as a Viking, Bermeo is like a sunset Spanish kingdom, open on the outside and conservative on the inside.
The business model of this black harbor was an eye-opener for Lorraine.
First of all, unlike other black ports, she does not set a threshold of entry for traders traveling to and from the port; anyone can come to the port to do business, and everyone can enjoy the protection of the system.
Here there was no need to worry about forceful buying and selling, nor was there any need to worry about encountering something as bad as Lorraine's in Cherbourg, where she was sold but still counted the money for others.
However, Belle Mayo, which has one of the fairest business environments in Black Harbor, has failed to be truly fair.
Bounded by the MC's tax rates, the local business community has built up tight trade barriers, cum adopting a very different valuation system for resident and traveling merchants.
Resident merchants can buy low and sell high in Belle Mayo while enjoying lower port tax rates, while traveling merchants like Lorraine must take on higher taxes while accepting to buy at par and sell at low prices.
When he first entered the harbor, Lorraine thought that this was a short-sighted approach by the local merchant group to kill the chicken and get the eggs. But after three consecutive rejections of his application for resident status, his opinion changed again.
This quirky secondary market is likely not the spontaneous behavior of traders, but a premeditated government action.
The aim was to force a trade surplus by means of veiled administrative interventions, slowing down the outflow of the country's gold and silver reserves while finding dumping outlets for Spanish goods.
This kind of beating around the bush is very possible in Spain.
The once mighty Kingdom of Spain is long past its prime.
Royal extravagance, political conservatism, as the leader of the Great Age of Sail, she failed to cultivate a solid and reliable middle class in this unparalleled geographic discovery, and the result was an impoverished blood-creation capacity of the market, and after passing the dividend period of colonial reclamation, the economy showed a tendency to a substantial recession.
On the one hand, the people were in distress and their domestic purchasing power was weak, while on the other hand, the colonies, which were becoming more sophisticated, were constantly bringing their products back to the country and piling them up in their silos.
As a result of these two contradictions, overseas products, which are in short supply throughout Europe, are in a strange surplus in the Spanish market.
That's why black ports like Belle Mayo are there.
In the shrewd calculations of the Spaniards, it never occurred to them at all to admit the manufactures of other nations through these offshore black ports; they only wanted to sell the colonial merchandise piled up in the country, the more the better, by the use of the traffic of the black market merchants.
After figuring this out, Lorraine completely gave up on the intention of changing ports.
The whole of Black Harbor on the Bay of Kaibes is thought to be the same.
It's not even just Black Harbor, but perhaps even the regular Spanish ports are doing this. Why else would a superb port like Bilbao fall into disrepair so quickly, so quickly that people are caught off guard?
Isn't this ... getting me in trouble!
Walking out of Mr. Frey's Exchange with Hina, Lorraine dropped her disguise and rubbed her brow wearily.
"Hina, how many is this?"
"Ten."
"The highest price offered was two pounds twelve shillings, and the lowest one pound sixteen shillings. Are these Spanish merchants so good at counting, or are they too good at business? Or are they not good at business?"
The two walked with a sense of disinterest, to a small plaza, and found a random bench to sit on.
Lorraine is in the middle of a dilemma.
On the one hand, overseas goods were the most important part of the triangular trade ring designed by Lorraine, which ensured the diversity of goods in the Chamber of Commerce and was conducive to Lorraine's rapid accumulation of contacts.
The special market conditions in Spain, which is eager to sell goods from abroad, is something he absolutely can't let go of.
On the other hand, accepting an unequal treaty for traveling merchants would have drastically slowed down his accumulation of wealth, to the point of ruining his good start in Scotland and Norway, and ultimately causing him to be stuck in the tiny trading circle of black marketeers for the rest of his life.
The best way to solve this dilemma is to get Belle Mayo's Merchant-in-Residence status.
He had already inquired about the fact that the Belle Mayo Black Harbor Management Committee consisted of seven gentlemen, and had to be approved by four of them at the same time in order for the application for residence to be approved.
Lorraine was so unfamiliar with the area that it was difficult to reach this condition in a short period of time.
Fortunately, he had another way out, Viscount Alfonso.
The Viscount was a member of the seven members of the Management Committee, with a grand reputation and a strong influence on the other members. Only by getting his help could Lorraine open up Belle Mayo.
But ...
"Both parties are not relatives, and the Viscount is often absent from the harbor, how should I get on with him?" Lorraine thought with all her heart and mind, and without realizing it, she said what was in her heart.
Hina raised an eyebrow, "We can find out his home address, I'll kidnap his kids in disguise, and you'll save the day and fight me off in front of him. That way, a friendship is established."
Lorraine cried and laughed at this, "Such a deliberate script, do you think the Viscount is a fool?"
"It could be done for real." Haina killed, "Like when I'm rescuing, I'll poke a few holes in you and bleed more. Out of guilt, the Viscount won't be easily suspicious."
"You ... can't be serious?"
Hina was serious.
She'd had enough of it in the last few days and was too full of wanting to poke transparent holes in people to make any false claims at all.
Lorraine looked out, jaw dropping in horror.
He swallowed forcefully, his eyes wandering, when he suddenly saw a dozen colorful domed caravans pulling out of the end of the square, circling a corner of the square on their own.
The Gospel from Heaven!
Lorraine, ecstatic, digressed sharply, "Look, Hina, there are actually gypsies here!"
Deadly Silence ...
Haina looked at him coldly and said, word for word, "You're the gypsy! Your whole family are gypsies!"