Galahad was used to it by now. Though his heart burned just as fiercely, having served this lord for so long and recalling the oath from which his strength came, the corners of his mouth curled up slightly.
"Enough of that. Galahad, what has Castel been up to lately?"
"They minted a batch of coins..."
"Coins? Are they planning to build a factory and start minting currency?" This caught the prince somewhat by surprise. In this era, money was still metal currency, and minting coins was often a losing business. There was truly no need for it.
"Mm, no. Those coins seem to have some special purpose and aren't meant for circulation. The symbols on them are very strange—I even think they resemble some kind of coat of arms..."
As he spoke, Galahad took a coin from his pocket. "They gave us some too. This is one of them."
The prince looked down. The coin was larger than ordinary currency and covered in all manner of letters and symbols.
It was exquisitely made. Galahad was right—it did resemble a coat of arms, or rather, the Church's holy emblem.
(Like this, except the letters on it were not English, but Imperial language.)
The Imperial language was written with letters. Different letters formed words, and words formed sentences, creating speech.
This coin listed every letter in the Imperial language, on both its front and back.
On one side, each letter was followed by a pattern made up of varying numbers of dots and dashes. On the other side—
—was an elegant tree diagram, with different branches pointing toward different letters. After examining it briefly, the prince raised it and pointed at the coin. "It marks the letters, as well as dots and dashes. Every letter is different... This should be some kind