“Gold,” Cithrin said, waving her hand. “What’s gold? A metal too soft to take an edge. There’s no power there. What makes gold important is the story we tell about it. All of humanity has agreed that this particular object has value, and then because we all said so, it does. The metal hasn’t changed. It doesn’t breathe, it doesn’t bleed. It is what it was before. All we’re doing is telling that same story about some letters we’ve written.”
