For the first few days, Daenerys stood at the bow of the ship, fascinated by the scenery. She even emulated Jack and Rose, shouting, "I am the king of the world!"
She shouted this from behind Big Black, her voice filled with confidence, and in Chinese, so she wasn't afraid of being overheard.
But as time passed, the endless blue of the sea and sky became monotonous, and she lost all interest.
Two minor incidents are worth mentioning. First, the centaurs proved remarkably resilient. After their initial bouts of seasickness, they grew accustomed to the motion. Ilijiki, whenever she had free time, would run to the side of the ship and watch the dolphins swimming alongside with a silly grin.
The second incident...
At first, the crew was terrified the dragons would burn down their ship. Blackbeard Grolai grew as nervous as a young girl when he saw the three dragons circling the main mast.
He loudly ordered the sailors to fill empty wooden barrels with seawater and hang them along the ship's sides as a fire precaution.
Later, they discovered the dragons only breathed fire under two circumstances: when Daenerys gave the order, or when they encountered fresh food.
Their fears eased, but the sailors were astonished to see rats fleeing in a frenzy wherever the dragons flew.
Then, Daenerys led the dragons to the bottom of the hold. That night, the crew enjoyed a new dish: braised giant rats in oil.
The rats, as if driven mad, rushed across the deck and leaped into the sea.
A total of 146 rats were found across the three ships, the largest weighing over half a pound.
Daenerys didn't eat the rat meat, but the centaurs, who loved it almost as much as horse meat, were particularly fond of it.
Gradually, as the sailors watched the dragons soaring through the sky, a strange and fierce pride welled up within them. They often said, "We are the Queen's subjects, fighting and dying under the wings of true dragons, for her glory and the glory of the great dragons."
The centaurs enjoyed resting on the ship's railing and watching dolphins, while everyone from the captain to the kitchen boy loved watching Big Black and the other two dragons fly.
Bored in her cabin, Daenerys practiced the "108 Letters Standard Pronunciation Table" she had learned in the Hall of the Undying, the foundation of Ancient Valyrian spells.
"Ahaigele—mu," she stumbled through, reading to the iron tablet.
The "108 Letters Pronunciation Table" only taught Daenerys how to pronounce the characters, not their meaning. It offered no guidance on advanced topics like channeling magic or meditation.
With no complete spells to practice, she finally took out the identity tablet she had found on the Dragon King's corpse and began reciting its runes, like a child sounding out pinyin.
On the reverse side of the Celestial Empire's one-yuan silver coin, outside the chrysanthemum, is a circle of letters: "zhongguo renmin yinhang," arranged in pairs with spaces in between.
The iron token in Daenerys's hand bears a continuous string of characters and letters, and she doesn't even know how to add punctuation.
Even a Celestial Empire native would stare blankly at "zhongguorenminyinhang" for a while before recognizing it. What about a foreigner who knows no Chinese at all?
This is exactly Daenerys's situation. With the "108-letter alphabet," she can read "a, b, c, d" strung together, but she doesn't understand their meaning or how to pronounce them.
"We're in trouble, Khaleesi," Doreah said, entering the room with a clay pot reeking of fresh milk.
Lys, a maid accustomed to the sea and having spent days among Dragons, kept her distance from the sailors and centaurs on deck.
"What trouble?" Daenerys asked casually.
After pouring Daenerys a large bowl of fresh mare's milk, Doreah replied with a worried expression, "The wind on the sea is dying down. Soon the ship will be stranded motionless on the waves."
This world is bordered by five great seas, all deeply intertwined with human civilization: the Jade Sea to the east; the Summer Sea, a vast expanse south of Essos, stretching from the Jade Sea through the Quarth Strait; the Shivering Sea to the north of the Essos continent; and the Narrow Sea, a strait between Essos and Westeros, averaging 500 kilometers in width.
The people of Westeros are commonly referred to as "Andals" or "visitors from the Land of the Sunset." Though Westeros lies at the westernmost edge of the world, a vast ocean also stretches to its west.
Daenerys's fleet took a full day to exit the Quarth Strait and had only been in the Summer Sea for two days. They still had some distance to go before reaching New Ghis, the easternmost city of the Summer Sea, and Slaver's Bay lay even further west, still out of sight.
Daenerys left her cabin and found Blackbeard Grolai to inquire about the matter. He shrugged nonchalantly and said, "We have two oared ships!"
At first, Daenerys didn't understand why sea vessels would need so many oars. The Summer Sun alone had a full three hundred of them.
In the afternoon, when the wind completely died down, Blackbeard gave the order. Sailors on the mainmast's crow's nest waved flags, and two narrow ships ahead dropped two small boats.
On the small boat was a thick coil of hemp rope, piled higher than a man. The rope was as thick as Daenerys's wrist. As the boat released the rope, it approached the large sea vessel. Finally, the iron chain at the end of the rope was secured to the ring on the protruding keel at the bow.
As the flag swayed, rhythmic drumbeats suddenly erupted from the two oar-powered boats. Daenerys saw a white waterline surge along the sides of the boats—the result of hundreds of sailors rowing with all their might.
"Thump—creak, creak."
The rope, which had been submerged, suddenly sprang up taut. Water mist swirled around the hemp as the rotund ship shuddered and began to inch forward with a groaning sound.
The lead oar-powered boat was sixty meters long and about twelve meters wide, its narrow shape resembling a plowshare. The massive sea ship behind it looked like a fat man with a swollen belly.
The three ships now moved slowly across the sea, their progress synchronized by the steady drumbeats. They looked like three ants marching in unison across an endless blue canvas.
"This won't hold for long," Daenerys murmured.
"It won't need to. We're not far from the Ghiscari Strait. We can stop at New Ghis for a while and wait for the wind to die down," Blackbeard said calmly.
The old sailor proved his experience. By noon the next day, Big Black, soaring through the sky, brought them the scent of land: a charred sheep's leg.
As evening approached, the lookout on the rowing boat ahead shouted, "Ghis Island is here!"
Ghis Island was similar in size to House Mormont's Bear Island, with a maximum length of no more than 100 kilometers. Yet its value was entirely different. Bear Island lay in a remote corner of the world, where foreign merchant ships rarely appeared.
Ghis Island, however, was strategically located midway along the shipping route between Slaver's Bay and Qarth, with the bustling port of New Ghis at its southern end. Most ships traveling between the eastern and western continents stopped there for supplies, making it the jewel of the Summer Sea's eastern edge.
Blackbeard Grolai also planned to wait there for favorable winds.
*If the Mormonts' domain were Ghis Island, his wife would never have run away.*
"The Ghisi people don't welcome outsiders on Ghis Island itself, but New Ghis Port at the southern end is open to all. If we anchor in the bay and avoid the port, they won't even charge us taxes," Blackbeard Grolai explained to Daenerys from the ship's bridge, watching the small black dot on the horizon. "That's why, even though New Ghis isn't far from Qarth, ships still stop there for a while."
"Are the taxes in the Free Cities expensive?" Daenerys asked.
Blackbeard thought for a moment and replied, "If you're not trading locally, they only charge docking fees for ships. The larger the ship and the more dock space it occupies, the higher the fee.
For three ships like ours, entering the New Ghis docks would cost over ten Golden Radiance coins per day—roughly three gold dragons."
"Wow, that's highway robbery!" Daenerys exclaimed.
"Not too steep. The rates are similar in all major city-states," Blackbeard Grolai shook his head. "You might not realize how profitable sea trade is.
Let's put it this way: even a sea merchant without exceptional business acumen could circle the Summer Sea and the Jade Sea once and amass a fortune they could never spend in a lifetime.
The profit margins start at twentyfold and have no upper limit. Savvy merchants who constantly buy low and sell high across various ports often achieve a hundredfold profit margin per voyage.
Those with connections, like Lord Xaro and Governor Illyrio, can average a gross profit margin of 150-fold."
Not only was Daenerys stunned, but Jorah and Whitebeard also gaped in astonishment.
"Is it really that profitable?" Jorah asked skeptically. "Wouldn't everyone become a sea merchant then?"
If he'd known sea trade was this lucrative back then, the voyage he took with his wife to that party would have been enough to make several round trips across the Jade Sea.
"Heh heh." Blackbeard stomped his foot hard, the wooden planks emitting dull, heavy thuds. "Do you know how much this beauty cost to build?"
"I'm not exactly a novice when it comes to shipbuilding," Jorah scoffed, looking around and estimating. "I built a large sea vessel for 2,000 gold dragons back in the day, and it was only about a third the size of yours. The largest warship in King's Landing reportedly cost 100,000 gold dragons. Yours is large, but it's not a warship. I'd say no more than 30,000 gold dragons."
Blackbeard gave a thumbs-up. "So you're an old hand! Building my *Seduction* cost 28,000 gold dragons."
Jorah smirked in satisfaction.
"But do you know the loss rate for sea vessels?" Blackbeard continued. "For every hundred ships that set sail, if eighty return, the sea merchants will cheer and even donate to temples in thanksgiving. If seventy return, they'll breathe a sigh of relief, knowing they'll still make a substantial profit. If fifty return, they'll sigh and go home to build more ships. If not a single one returns, they'll go home, write their will, and drink a cup of poison to end their days.
What ordinary merchant could withstand the loss of a single sea vessel like mine?"
Silence!
The bridge fell into a stunned silence, everyone shocked by the brutal realities of maritime survival.
"Every year, as many merchants commit suicide as become overnight millionaires. Take Governor Illyrio, for example," Blackbeard continued. "In his youth, he was just a street warrior who lived on the edge, involved in everything from chicken theft to assassination.
Think about it: how could a punk like him climb the ranks to become a trade governor without others stepping aside? And how did those others step aside? Because they failed in business!"
-----------------------
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(End of Chapter)