"Hours at the market. And we're still getting that concert, I'll run over there while you're in the bank."

"Glad to see you have your priorities in order," she teases. 

She goes off to the bank and makes a rather large withdrawal, then goes looking for Hour-merchants.

There's lots of Hour buyers about. A couple of them will part with a few sub-par geodes at blatantly gouging prices, by local rates. Asking around at the captain's club might have better results.

She goes to the Promise of Days and tells the bar that she's buying five barrels of Hours at - she checks her mental notes on the Bazaar prices and her own funds - a hundred and twenty five sovereigns each. And she'll pay a bonus of fifty sovereigns to any captain who gets her the goods today. 

That's a good price. Where can she be found later? Nobody has Hours here and now and they kind of doubt she'll get them by the end of the day but they'll spread the word, for sure.

She gives Lenora's address and says she's willing to pay partial bonus for partial delivery within the timeframe and then she does some math in her head on the "overpriced" geodes. 

If a geode contains a single hour then that's six hundred and eighty four Chron worth of time - not vital time, just time. Assume a factor of 100 for refining, like she did last time, and that's six point eight four Chron. Each chron is worth three hundred and thirteen OTC. So one small geode is worth... two thousand, one hundred and forty-eight OTC. 

She decides she doesn't mind paying something closer to the real market price, and goes and buys up all the loose geodes she can get her hands on. (Up to four hundred sovereigns of them, anyway.)

She can get about half a barrel in loose Hours for a total of seventy Sovereigns. A couple of them seem to be... Unraveling slowly. One Hour-buyer confides in her that she'd sell a lot more to her at that price it's just not worth it to break their contract with the Windward Company. They have rules and quotas they need to meet to maintain their contracts. Not to mention the Windward Company has, well, knee-breakers and warships if they get too upset.

She nods. She understands the necessities of life with a corporation like the Windward Company. 

She heads back to Lenora's apartment with the half-barrel of hours stuffed in her pack (helped along a little by a discreet cast of Levitate) and looks around for her girlfriend. 

She has acquired a barrel of Hours of her own.

"Hey! You didn't wait for me by the bank so I just went looking for time." She thumps the barrel. "I have a nurse buddy. They keep a stock of time to, well, buy time on critical patients. I told her I could make a lot of money off Hours and get some really useful exotic stuff, then bluffed outrageously to the hospital staff and paid a hundred Sovereigns for this."

"Yeah, I was thinking it was about time we started going more public as well. I bought whatever gravel I could find and got half a barrel for seventy. And I told the Promise Of Days we wanted five barrels of hours for a hundred twenty five sovereigns each, bonus for fast delivery. So we need to make sure somebody's here to accept the order while we're out listening to jazz - I think I can pay for some of a Lily's time for that, and get her to make potion stocks to pay back the hospital in the same time - or just a wand of Cure Serious Wounds, the right Lily could probably knock that out in an hour." 

She takes a breath and grins. "We're really doing it!" 

She takes off her pack and digs through all the geodes for her beacon.

"We really are! If one of you can do it, that sounds convenient. I was thinking the caduceus bracers, or just giving them lots of OTC, I'm not a doctor so I can't tell what they'd actually want- They're a charity hospital you know so they could use the help and it's hard to get bad PR out of donations to a hospital."

She nods. "I wanted to donate some Hours to them earlier, actually. I just... you have to be strategic, I'm sure you know. And now I get an opportunity and it's great." A smile splits her lips.

She plunks her beacon down on the floor and punches in the code. A portal opens. 

"Back so soon?" Says Eva.

"I ran the calculation for how much Hours were worth. No wonder you let me have the chorister-honey."

"I was wondering how long it'd take for you to catch on." 

"We're gonna have to be careful. Eighty Sovereigns to, what was it, estimated eighteen thousand OTC? I had it in my head that Hours were going to be good but I didn't get it. Things are going to get... Mm, disruptive. I think the Establishment profligately uses Hours for lots of stuff right now, for example, but trading Hours to OTC does to price in Sovereigns will play merry hell on their supplies and make the Tacketies a whole lot richer and probably set the second Winchester War fully on fire."

"The Tacketies would probably win, too, with all the military technology of the OTC behind them. We really do have to tread lightly to avoid upsetting the whole balance of power."

"The OTC officially endorses backing the Tacketies against the Stovepipes if it comes to that, but we'd rather the war doesn't go hot."

"Draining the Hours supply from Albion is something the Queen would want answers for. Her Eternal Majesty herself... It feels like it should be possible, if they get enough goodies, maybe even in ways that make everything better - shut down the Workworlds for one... But I'm not the kind of person who... Negotiates with governments to avert a war. I'm really not."

"Neither am I. This is way above my pay grade. We'd need... a Lily, a Clematis, and maybe even a Morning-Glory for this. And then this world would be mostly out of my hands. So I'm planning to just dip my toes in here enough to get you your immortality and some nice shinies for us, and then leave the rest of it up to the professionals. I want to go scouting Eleutheria and so on, not spark off a war for Hours that'll make it a massive pain to learn anything more about your world."

"I'm feeling an attack of heroism, though. I want to try to handle it, to help, even if I'd probably screw it up..."

She shakes her head.

"But if someone else can handle it and we're not going to totally spike the Hours market, I see no problems in opportunism. We can definitely explore the Reach, get some good magic goodies here, then perhaps go scout Eleutheria. If we can get, about seven thousand Sovereigns, we will easily afford a durable and well-kitted locomotive. Bedivere class, probably. It's pretty close to a proper warship, and tough as nails. Are bags of holding lighter than their contents? If so, we could use a cabinet of holding, for example. That's a thing I've heard of even at home, it'd be exotic but not a sign of OTC necessarily."

She nods. "I think we can get that together. Bags of holding are lighter than their contents, and a cabinet of holding could be done. We'll have to be fast - the OTC is going to want to move on this world quickly, given the massive opportunity for profits, but the procedure is it needs my sign-off first and I'm not done looking yet, but Eva could be put under pressure by her bosses to put me under pressure. So we're on a time limit now." 

"...If we get even more ridiculous piles of cheap by OTC standards stuff, like tea or bronzewood or ammo or whatever, there's a Moloch for sale. Twenty thousand Sovereigns. But one of the finest engines ever built, made by Devils to luxurious standards."

"We should rent a warehouse. Fill it with wood and tea and so on, sell it all off. Buy the Moloch-class liner and some top-class crew. We might make a bit of a stir, but we wouldn't crash the markets or anything."

"There's warehouses to be had. Lots of empty buildings, for good or ill. I would like to be safe, though. We wanted to get an advance on all the Hours we're going to fetch so I could have a proper backup, Eva. Doesn't need to be as nice as yours, but uh. I don't want to die."