Economy and Trade

A money changer at a city gate, weighing foreign coin.

Six cities on one coast, none of which can feed, arm, light, and equip itself. Every one holds something the others cannot make and needs something it cannot produce, and that arrangement has held the world together for nine centuries without anyone designing it. There is no court that can compel a city, no authority above the six, and no enforcement behind the Pact but the willingness of its signatories. A system like that should not work, and it does, because every commercial promise in the Known World is a Station promise, and a failure of one is a public failure of the aspect a man's whole standing rests on.

Money and measure

• Money — the Goyl, the Serath, and the Braell; what makes a coin worth anything; the five mints; the trade coin
• Weights and Measures — the reference tables, and the one standard kept in Clearhold
• Wages and Prices — the working year, and what a laborer's day buys

Making

• The Trades — station and work, apprenticeship, what is kept secret, how each city organizes its trades, who does the work, the trades by kind

Moving

• Moving Goods — road against sea, the caravan, the merchant ship, the trading year, what it costs
• Roads and Sea Lanes · The Roads

Finance

• Banking, Credit, and Insurance — banking houses, letters of credit, bills of exchange, lending, voyage lending, shares, insurance, when a claim fails, when a house fails
• What the World Depends On — who needs whom, and what breaks when a link breaks
• Duties and Smuggling — dues, what is smuggled, paper that is not real, and how the Oathbond holds the trade together