Alpheo's proposal, to integrate merchants into the production of key goods by granting them land, was nothing short of revolutionary in the current state of production .
It was also dangerously sacrilegious to the societal order they all lived by.
In a world where land was the domain of the nobility, where bloodlines determined a man's worth, the idea of granting estates to foreign-born merchants, men who bought with silver rather than inherited by title, was, by all traditional measure, heretical.
He knew this.
Which was precisely why he was so patient, so measured in his response to the skepticism radiating from both Jasmine and Shahab. Their silence was not from a lack of thought, it was the weight of the thought itself that did not allow them to keep quiet. And Alpheo understood that deeply.
They were not fools. Their concern was not over gold or policy,but over shame.
