WeTried Translations
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Wind and a Cluster of Stars
Chapter 15
──────
In London, A New Route
28. In London
April 21, 5 p.m.
Because this fluyt was built to run best with fair winds, we entered London later than I expected.
The flannel did not make the ship unbearably heavy, but it still had real weight,
and the distance itself was no joke...
From far away, I was glad to see the suspension bridge over the Thames and the jet-black smoke hanging over London.
Countless ships, large and small, painted in all kinds of styles and flying flags from all over the world, streamed in and out and packed the harbor.
Even from a distance, all you had to do was follow those ships, with no signposts or special markers, and you would reach the giant piers at the river mouth,
the endless docks, rows of cranes, and even more people than cranes...
It looked exactly like the center of North Sea maritime trade.
That was why I used London as my base.
The biggest reason was that I was born and raised here, but this was also a place where demand was always high and goods were easy to secure.
And for an Englishman like me, this place was no different from my own front yard.
Soon, my pale red-tea-colored fluyt slowly dropped speed, slipped through the ships, and docked safely.
If this pine-built fluyt collided with another vessel, mine would probably take worse damage.
Pine was easy to work with, so it was easy to mass-produce fluyts,
but there was no getting around the fact that, as timber, it was less durable than other woods.
Even so, this ship had excellent design.
You could see careful planning in how space and convenience were arranged for each purpose.
And no matter how big or fast another ship was, could it really be better than mine right now?
...
I had to sell the goods at the exchange first, so we headed there before anything else.
If I hauled all this bulky cargo out and the price crashed, I would be forced to load it all back in with no backup plan, so I brought only one sample first.
In the meantime, I sent Amy with the signed guild papers we had received so she could process the payment documents.
The textile exchange owner turned the flannel over carefully and inspected it from every angle.
"How much of this do you have?"
"Four hundred eighty rolls."
"Not bad. Cloth prices are decent these days."
"So what are you offering?"
"For flannel, 102% of the average price."
The exchange owner flipped through the inventory and gave a verdict.
"How does the trend look from here?"
"This is the peak right now.
A textile merchant came in this morning too, with flannel and velour.
I doubt you can pull much more profit than this. I think prices will fall from here."
If profit was only around this level, I had planned at least one or two round trips in that window,
but that idea was dead.
"Then... I should sell the entire lot. The quantity is pretty large, so could you raise it a little?"
"Hmm... the market is good right now, sure, but..."
The exchange owner also made money from market spread, so haggling was never easy.
"The weather will warm up soon too."
So that meant no increase.
If I waited a little longer, prices would naturally drop.
"Then I will sell at that price."
"I will send workers."
It was a short distance, but the exchange owner still sent wagons to move the loaded goods.
Just from the flannel sale, I could clear the bank debt from last time.
Still, my capital was so thin and the swings were so wide that bankruptcy was always one bad turn away.
I had spent every day with sweat in my palms,
so this time I wanted to recover properly and secure stable funds.
"Captain, this."
Amy returned from the guild and brought me the transfer papers,
along with the compensation tied to them.
This had been more of a side job mixed in with other work than a primary commission, so the pay was not generous, but in our current situation it helped quite a lot.
...
"With this, your ship is released from collateral."
The banker took the money and removed the yoke tied around my ship.
It felt like the ship itself had become free.
And like I had been freed from the shackles of that debt too.
How wonderful was it to have nothing left to repay?
When you carry debt, every single thing you do comes with that weight attached, and you have to think about the debt first.
People are so sly. Even borrowed money can feel like money you earned yourself when you spend it,
so when the time comes to repay it, the sting and regret are hard to avoid.
Anyway, I still had enough left, so I bought the spare sailcloth and personal gear I had planned.
First, the most important personal defense items, daggers, swords, muskets, things like that.
I bought around a dozen from a gun merchant and handed them to Zenon.
He stored them in the armory and locked it, and it would stay closed unless something unusual happened.
...
"I am free!"
At sunset, on the street, I stretched both arms to the sky and shouted.
I was so happy that luck, and plenty of hardship too, had let me clear my debt quickly, so I bought a handful of candy from a street stall and shared it with Zenon and Amy as they followed me.
Then I put a candy in my own mouth and hopped around, chasing a waddling seagull,
then ran after a fleeing cat.
Then the candy caught in my throat and I coughed like I was dying...
Well, this was fun.
"The Captain is fired up. Good for him while it lasts."
Zenon said it calmly and did not even try to hide how pathetic he thought I looked.
"Dinner is on me tonight!"
In my good mood, I grabbed a table at a tavern even though it was still early.
For the sailors, I paid the tavern owner and asked him to send two crates of rum to the ship.
"Hmm... this is taking a while."
The food took time, so each of us sat with our own drink, scraping the table or closing our eyes.
As usual, the cat came too, Amy brought it, and it sat calmly on her lap as if to declare itself a full member of the group.
The tavern owner did not say much about the cat. Sailors dragged all kinds of things around anyway.
Besides, the table next to us had something worse than a cat.
"What are you staring at, idiot?"
That "something worse than a cat" threw a line at Zenon.
In clumsy but clear Dutch.
I translated for him, and Zenon just let out a short laugh in disbelief.
It was a glossy black myna bird.
Its owner flinched and tried to stop it, but the bird took that as encouragement and worked its yellow beak again, adding one more line.
"Want to get hit?"
"Ha!"
Zenon laughed, stunned.
"Where did you get that thing?"
Zenon asked the myna's owner.
"I brought it from India. It talks pretty well now."
He answered in English with a German accent.
There was probably some foul-mouthed Dutchman around him at some point.
And if he had sailed all the way to India, he was likely a very capable navigator.
We spent time with the myna until our order arrived.
Even after that, it kept spouting absurd Dutch phrases now and then.
Right when the food came out, it gave one final shot.
"Dieses Arschloch!"*
(It was a German insult, basically "go eat shit," so the one who taught it that was probably its owner.)
29. A New Route
April 22, 9 a.m.
"Ah... my head..."
My skull felt like it would split open, and my throat was dry.
We had started early last evening, and it had dragged on deep into the night.
While we were playing with the myna, roasted turkey and vegetables came out,
and we kept drinking with that as side food.
Amy drank weak ale, Zenon drank strong sherry, and I only had a little wine...
The tavern owner must have started me on the good stuff, then switched to cheap swill once I got drunk. That had to be why my head hurt like this.
I staggered up, fumbled for the water by my pillow, and drank half of it while spilling the rest.
It was pure misery.
"I feel like I am dying..."
I barely held back the urge to vomit,
then stayed facedown on the floor for a while, quietly enduring the dizziness.
I swore I would never drink blindly like that again.
...
In the end, time was the only thing you could trust.
People said time solved everything. After a bit, it did get bearable.
Still, I could not even think about breakfast.
I forced the door open and stumbled downstairs.
Zenon was perfectly fine, absurdly fine, crumbs in his beard, eating away with full enthusiasm.
"Come on, if that got you, I would believe you get drunk on water too. Right, cat?"
"Meow..."
The yellow cat was sitting on a chair next to Zenon instead of clinging to Amy, which meant Amy was almost certainly still passed out.
The cat had white around its mouth, probably from milk.
It even answered back like it owned the place.
"That damn cat..."
It had been eating well and living well, so it had filled out nicely.
On ships it usually ate porridge made from grain flour or ship's biscuit,
and when possible, milk now and then,
plus moist fish flesh or dried fish whenever it could get them.
So to sum it up, it did absolutely no work and ate the best.
Anyway, my head was splitting and I felt half-dead,
and the tavern was full of tobacco smoke and food smells, so I stepped outside first.
...
I sat on the harbor breakwater.
The morning sun was muted by haze, not exactly bright weather.
For a while I forgot my headache by watching an old fisher cast from the breakwater.
"Cats here too."
The old fisher was skilled. While I watched, the fisher caught six or seven fish.
They were large horse mackerel and sea bream types.
Around the flexible branch-woven fish basket were cats, mottled ones, yellow ones, and spotted ones.
Three or four cats sat politely as if they were watching the fishing itself, waiting with impressive patience.
When the fisher finished, they cleaned the fish right there.
The fisher removed the innards, things like the swim bladder, and gave the fish heads to the cats.
They looked very used to doing this.
Then the cats received the fish heads with both paws, almost politely.
As the fisher stood, they stood too, pawing the air to take their share.
It was a funny sight.
After that, I spent a while longer watching clouds over the sea
and the water rippling below my feet.
...
Amy woke late, but she was in better shape than I was.
Her head did not seem to hurt much. She only looked a little disheveled.
"Better to just keep sleeping. Once you wake up, the suffering starts."
That was Zenon's review.
What was I supposed to do if I woke up in the middle without meaning to?
Soon we had a simple lunch and got up.
Lunch was buttered black bread, milk, and pickles.
Then we split up and agreed to meet back at the tavern by three.
They would make rounds through the guilds and merchant houses to check suitable goods, market prices, and possible jobs.
...
3 p.m.
When I came back after a wasted run, with nothing better than errand work from one merchant house, they were already there.
Amy and Zenon were talking in one corner of the tavern, and by the look of it, they had found something.
They handed me a list.
First, Zenon's.
-----------------------------
-Find the owner of a book left behind, London -> Marseille
"This is insane. Which lunatic loses a book like that..."
-Provide sailing experience for a noble youth
-Short-range round-trip vegetable freight
-Write a wine market trend and quality assessment report
...
...
...
---------------------------
Next, Amy's.
----------------------------
-Find a red-haired teenage boy
-Collect toxic components from a red frog
-Procurement request for red turnips
-Request for help salvaging a Baltic shipwreck
...
...
---------------------------
"What is this, all red?"
"Uh, it just happened that way..."
"Either way, we do not handle just one type of goods or only one route, so I think we should build our route around commissions."
"I was saying that with Miss Amy before you came, Captain."
"Which one?"
"I have been to Africa before. I remember that trip.
Back then, we made a decent profit with nothing special, just daggers and cheap ornaments."
"Tell me the details."
"We traded cheap glass beads for gold dust, and one horseshoe for one pound of ivory, that sort of deal.
I do not know how it is now, but there are plenty of small and mid-sized coastal villages, so I think there is still some profit to be made."
"I will keep that in mind. I have heard the natives like those kinds of things. What about the route?"
"A direct route via Saint George's."
"West Africa, that is very far... do you have sailing experience there?"
"Of course. That part is fine.
More than anything, if we keep to a coastal route, there is not much to worry about.
There are many stopovers in between, and if we stick to major routes, pirates are not a huge concern either.
Look at what Miss Amy and I brought."
He showed me an underlined line on a slip of paper.
-Army long-service troop rotation disruption (Saint George's)
This was probably why they had picked Saint George's.
"You picked this because...?"
"The advance payment is pretty big... we need details, but still."
"I will keep it in mind. What next?"
-Meerkat investigation
"This one has 'cat' in it, so our mate grabbed it right away..."
"Well... that is not wrong... ahem, anyway, it passes through a similar route.
The academic society says they need a survey this time.
They said they would pay more if we captured one and brought it back stuffed..."
Her expression was not great while she said it.
"We do not have a taxidermist."
"I need more details too, but I do not think it needs highly specialized knowledge.
And maybe we do not absolutely have to stuff one..."
"Let us check the details first."
Nothing was fixed yet,
but we had to know the exact conditions first, so we decided to visit the nearby Adventurers' Guild.
...
3:50 p.m.
"Ah, a request..."
An older Adventurers' Guild staffer with pince-nez searched through stacks of new request papers and sign-in sheets to find that item from earlier.
The file we wanted was buried in the pile, and it looked like it would take a while.
Behind him sat a stuffed yellow owl on top of paper bundles, staring at us with round eyes.
Around us were plant specimens gathered by enthusiastic adventurers for scholars, strange insect shells, unknown powders...
And books and parchments crammed onto every shelf and desk.
"Oh, here it is. This is a request to investigate an animal called a meerkat. It was reported to the society quite a while ago,
but there is still not much information.
Only a few bits and pieces, so the society wants more detailed findings."
The staffer frowned, deep lines creasing the brow out of habit.
Maybe that happened whenever handwriting was tiny or messy.
"They said they will pay extra if you bring back a stuffed specimen. They might pay even more if you bring one alive.
In any case, you just need to gather as much information as possible.
As long as you have circumstantial evidence or physical evidence, you get at least the base pay.
Then the Animal Society judges the value of your information, so I assume you know what that means.
Crazy bastards, putting money on animals."
The guild worker sounded like they could not understand the client at all, even though they were paying customers.
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