Kraft and Holo arrive in the bustling merchant town of Pazzio, which is so big Holo is amazed it’s not ruled by a king. She’s also immediately smitten by the excellent apples on display in the market, and purchases an entire silver coin’s worth of them. While this initially seems like freeloading as Kraft was the one who paid, Holo soon earns her keep by delivering a clever sales pitch to increase the money the Milone Trading Company pays from 140 to 210 silver coins.
Kraft and Holo celebrate their windfall with some wine and edamame, and then meet with Zheren about his currency speculation plan. Kraft may not trust Zheren 100%, but trusts him enough to front him 10 silver coins he promises to return if he ends up taking a loss. It’s a minimal investment in which he’ll break even at worst.
Kraft teaches Holo about all of the dozens of different silver coins, each of them minted by a different king or church official, and each of them having different relationships to the spending public. Whatever their actual silver or gold content, it is the people’s trust in a coin that matters.
Holo learns (after being relentlessly hit on by a currency-examining friend of Kraft’s) that the coins are actually falling in silver content. While at first Kraft believes he may have been taken for a fool by Zheren (like the Milone merchant was with Holo’s apple-scented sales pitch), when she mentions wolves occasionally climbing trees, he considers a new perspective.
Perhaps rather than tricking them for his own gain, Zheren was instructed to do so by someone else. And that there may yet be a way Zheren intends to profit off of the reduction of silver content in the coins as opposed to the opposite as pitched to Kraft. Once Kraft and Holo confirm what that is, they’ll still be in a good position to clean up.
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