The atmosphere in Velport had grown tense ever since the publication of the recent Royal Notice, printed across every major and reputable newspaper.
This notice silenced most printed and spoken attacks against Lord Ashborne. Though it neither defended him outright nor mentioned his name anywhere in its text, and did not directly accuse perfumeries as an industry, it targeted the hazards of unregulated medicines, chemicals, and healthcare products - perfumery among the examples cited. Those with keen awareness immediately connected the notice to Lord Ashborne’s recent scandal, and the theory spread like wildfire.
The notice stirred a storm far beyond the reach of commoners - perhaps within Parliament, where debates raged over the formation of a new department; perhaps among the gentry and nobility, locked in heated arguments over forthcoming regulations on food and drug safety; or perhaps in the drawing rooms of upper- and middle-class ladies, lamenting ruined complexion and the deaths of their young.
Murmurs, discussions, and opinions flew through ballrooms, tea-parties, and clubhouses. Well, places like the domus and the slums, of course, were excluded.
One thing, however, was certain: the perfumery trade had entered its coldest winter, and announcements of bankruptcy were likely imminent. Nearly every perfumery product on the market contained toxic ingredients. The same grim truth applied to the pharmaceutical trade.
Schemes and calculations churned in Jade’s mind the moment she read the news Mr. Davidson had shared from his shop.
“Luckily, we never touched those questionable medicines,” Mr. Davidson said, relief evident in his voice. “Herbs we gather freely from the wild are far safer than those chemical products - my grandmama proved their worth. My neighbour used to call me stingy and ignorant for it. I wonder what he thinks now… He lost three children - none of them lived past the age of three.” He sighed heavily. There was nothing amusing about parents who had buried their children.
Royal Notices rarely appeared in the papers.
Typically, they announced the annual Spring Ball hosted by the Court, where Queen Seraphina received nobles, gentry, elites, and other distinguished members of high society. At other times, they marked royal births or deaths, the Queen’s brief but gracious New Year address, or matters concerning the dukes and the royal household.
This notice was different.
In it, the Queen delivered a lengthy address - on men and women, on children, on the future, and on humanity itself:
“Men and women alive have been victims of centuries-old trust placed in untested chemicals used in healthcare and complexion.”
“Children hold the future of humanity. Women raise our future pillars, and men safeguard our path forward.”
“The consumption of harmful substances has shown a significant impact on infant mortality. To secure our future, we must protect our children, our women, and our men.”
“We hereby announce the formation of a new department, vested with the authority to fine and imprison those who treat this matter lightly.”
“Royal Commissions have been established, and policy debates will soon commence in Parliament. We shall devote our full attention to this issue until no further deaths are caused by the misleading consumption of toxic substances within our kingdom.”
The notice was long-winded, filled with ornate language and complex terminology, but Jade grasped its essence easily. Most importantly, she caught the underlying message: the Queen was furious.
Mr. Davidson seemed to think the same. “Hm, I’ve never seen a department establish this quickly. Last time, it took nearly five years.”
Jade shrugged and smoothly changed the subject. “There are a few skincare recipes printed in the paper. Would you be interested in making and selling some, Mr. Davidson?”
“My wife plans to make a few,” Mr. Davidson replied. “Facial cream and lip balm, most likely. The weather is getting chillier by the day, and we need something to protect our face. But no improvisation. We aren’t clever enough for that.”
He munched on his rent - a pack of biscuits she gave to him whenever she opened her small stall in the corner of his shop. “The maids and laundress certainly won’t have time to make them themselves. I can sell them ready-made. The profit won’t be much, but a well-stocked grocer attracts better customers.”
“A very wise choice, Mr. Davidson,” Jade said with a smile as she thanked another customer who had purchased a packet of biscuits. She then turned back to the shopkeeper. “But I can’t help wondering - will the ladies feel comfortable buying the creams from you? I mean, they’ve just learned that the creams they’ve been using are poisonous. Wouldn’t they suspect yours as well?”
Mr. Davidson rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “A good reminder, Miss Jade. Hm… It may be best if I keep my hands off perfumery for the time being. I can’t think of a reliable way to prove that what I sell is free of poison.”
“Well, your wife could make the product here,” Jade suggested. She watched Josh assign the children - who doubled as newsboys - to carry small baskets of biscuits across the street, promoting their wares while selling newspapers. “If people can see the cream being made from scratch, their doubts can be answered. Let them witness it. Transparency explains a great deal.”
Mr. Davidson fell into deep thought.
The next day, a small additional station appeared behind the counter. A woman sat there, grinding grains into a fine powder, sifting it carefully, then mixing it with oil and wax.
The transparency did earn Mr. Davidson more customers. At the same time, it turned into an unexpected attraction. People who usually shopped elsewhere began coming from neighbouring districts, simply to watch Mrs. Davidson makes facial cream.
Josh looked at Jade with open admiration. “Sensei, this must have been your strategy - to draw more people into the shop so our biscuits sales would increase!”
“Not exactly…” Jade whispered back, her expression complicated. “You know this nice man didn’t charge us a single coin to set up our stall, right? I only pay him a pack of biscuits a day as rent. A nice guy like him deserves more, so I thought I’d help build his reputation.”
“Reputation?” Josh echoed. Standing beside Jade, he watched Mr. Davidson and his wife bustling behind the counter.
“It’s something you can’t just buy with money,” Jade said quietly. “But it matters a lot if you want to live well in human society. It takes time to build, it needs people to see and confirm it, and it can collapse overnight if you take a wrong step.”
She paused, then continued, “Think about upper-class ladies who host charities and make donations. Ever wonder why they do it? Reputation. A good image improves their prospects in the marriage market. I suggested Mr. Davidson offers transparency so customers would trust him and see him as an honest businessman. Once that happens, people who care about these things will come to him specifically. Consider this my way of paying rent - since I don’t have any coins.”
Josh listened in silence, digesting her words.
“But,” Jade said, narrowing her eyes as she watched the crowd gather around the counter, “this part I didn’t expect. I never imagined people here would be this curious - spending their free time just to watch someone make cream.”
“Well, if I heard someone in the neighbourhood was making cream in public, I’d come see it too!” Josh blurted out as he helped Jade set up the stall, handing out biscuits to the children on school break whom Jade referred to as promoters.
“Well, congratulations,” Jade said with a smirk. “You’ve just learned another business tactic - curiosity. Think about how to use it. We’ll discuss it back at the domus.”
Josh stared at her. “Homework?”
“A lecture,” Jade replied. She might not know how to build a massive enterprise, but basic business and marketing ideas were common knowledge to her - things absorbed during her training at the pastry institute, and others she had picked up online without thinking much of it. She might as well pass them to her pupil. Who knows? Perhaps Josh would become a great entrepreneur someday.
Josh nodded.
He had now moved into the domus, occupying the room next to Jade’s. On top of that, she had taken him to the department for formal registration, secured his papers, and even signed him in as her ward.
The teenage boy had been utterly stunned when he received the freshly stamped certificate, his name written beside his Sensei’s. Only then did the realisation truly sink in: I have a guardian now.
And now that Josh lived with Jade, he began to notice how sharply she paid attention to details most people - and probably even the wealthy - either ignored or were never aware of:
–“Drink only boiled water, or you’ll get sick because of germs… What are germs? Hm… I’ll find a way to get you a microscope. There’s a simple kind, I remember… Gimme a few days to figure it out, ‘kay?”
–“Keep your fingernails short and your hands clean. That’s the basic requirement for anyone working in a kitchen. Oh, use my manicure kit. Bad nails will bother us every second.”
–“Handwriting represents how you appear when you can’t meet people face to face. So, neat writing tells others you’re a proper person.” She coughed lightly. “Yeah, I know mine isn’t exactly good. That’s why I want yours to be. Practice every night. Copy the Lumen Codex or the serial stories from the newspaper. Use beetroot ink and the biscuit-wrapping paper. When we’ve collected enough, I’ll teach you how to make recycled papers… Well, it’s not mandatory. I just hope you’ll do it.”
–“Be careful with your hands. Our work highly depends on flexible fingers, so you need to know how much strength to use. Like this.”
–“Eat well. Sleep well. You’ve seen how exhausting cake-making can be, right? Eat as much as you need - don’t save it for later. You need to build muscle.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Hm, I should get you more protein and fat. And probably sugar…”
Josh didn’t fully understand most of what Jade was saying. Her accent also slipped more openly when she spoke to him like this. When he asked about it, she replied with mild frustration.
–“Well, some terms just slip out sometimes, and I don’t know how to explain them properly. Ask me later when nobody’s around, ‘coz it takes a long time for me to explain the concept behind them.” She signed. “As for my tone, I’m tryin’ to blend in. I know I’m not very successful, but at least I’m making the effort to speak like you guys do, so people understand what I’m trying to say… See? You already look confused when I talk like this. Others would have an even harder time.”
Josh still didn’t fully understand - but he was certain of one thing: Sensei didn’t put on a cover when she spoke to him.
That realisation deepened his understanding of what it meant to be her apprentice. Their relationship was closer than any he had ever known - very different from what he had heard from a fellow worker back at the textile factory, who had also become a baker’s apprentice.
It was almost as if Sensei treated him like a son.
Though she was clearly too young to have a son his age, he couldn’t help feeling that way.
“Thank you, have a nice day!” Jade smiled as she handed another customer a packet of her fancy biscuits, wrapped in a patchwork pouch made from scrap fabric. At the same time, she made a mental note to find a way to produce more piping tips - without stainless steel, she still hadn’t figured out what materials would work.
She turned to her pupil and the other students. “That’s the last pack for today. We can close the stall.”
Taking out the iron oven project’s account book - a palm sized notebook - she recorded the day’s earnings before calling the students over to collect their pay.
“Jamie, this is yours. And Sonia, yours as well.”
A penny and a biscuit. That was what she paid them for helping at the stall.
Of course, she would have liked to pay them more, but that would only attract unnecessary attention: street children selling other goods, roughs whose eyes constantly drifted towards others’ pouches and pockets, and shopkeepers who also hired children for daily work.
If she paid more, her students might become targets - bullied, robbed, or outright stolen from. Morality was not something one could afford easily among the poor; hunger and desperation bred sins that people carried not by choice, but by necessity.
“Thank you, Miss Jade!” her students said cheerfully before heading home in small groups, just as she had repeatedly reminded them to do.
Meanwhile, Josh finished packing up and hoisted the large basket - what Jade called the “luggage basket” - onto his back.
“Sensei,” he asked, “are we heading back now?”
“Not yet,” Jade replied after bidding Mr. and Mrs. Davidson goodbye. “We need to do some shopping. Take me to a butcher. Sister Miriam mentioned something called ‘dripping’ - said poorer families often buy it for cooking or use it as a spread for their bread. I want to see it myself, and also check the prices of the meat.”
Josh paused briefly, mapping out a suitable route in his head, then nodded and led the way. “Sensei, meat is quite expensive. We usually buy offal instead, and only get meat when we’ve saved enough pennies.”
“Offal?” Jade frowned. “What’s offal?”
Josh blinked. “Um, intestines. Livers. Hearts.”
“Oh. That’s offal.” Jade nodded, enlightenment dawning as she added a new word to her everyday vocabulary. “I always thought they were just called inners*. Anyway - offal, huh…”
She fell silent, deep in thought as she followed behind her pupil.
Before long, Jade found herself standing before the butchers of this world for the very first time.