Spice and Wolf - Volume 3 - Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

No matter how plagued with worry merchants may be, it is said that they always manage to sleep well.

So it was that despite Lawrence’s concern that Holo might depart on her own during the night, Lawrence slept soundly and awoke to birdsong coming in through the window.

He didn’t do anything so flagrant as jumping frantically out of bed, but Lawrence did glance at the bed next to his and sighed in relief when he saw that Holo was still there.

He got out of bed to look outside the window. It was quite cold within the room, but the early-morning air outside was still colder; his breath turned smoke white in it.

Yet the cold air was perfectly clear—a morning made of crystal.

There were already people on the street that the inn faced. Looking down at the town merchants, who rose still earlier than the notoriously early-rising traveling merchants, Lawrence arranged the day’s plans in his mind, finally saying “all right” to himself when they were in order.

Though it would not exactly compensate for the previous night’s blunder, Lawrence wanted to be able to fully enjoy the festival—which started the next day—with Holo, and that meant concluding his business today.

The first order of business would be selling the merchandise he’d gotten in Ruvinheigen, he thought to himself as he turned around to look back at the room.

Still a bit heavyhearted from the previous evening, Lawrence walked over to his companion, who slumbered away as usual, intending to wake her—when he stopped and furrowed his brows.

It wasn’t unusual for Holo to sleep as late as she pleased, but something else was amiss.

Her usual guileless snoring was entirely absent.

Lawrence wondered if the silence was what he thought it was, reaching out to her. She seemed to sense it; the blanket stirred minutely.

He lifted the covers up gently.

What he saw made him sigh.

Holo’s face beneath the covers was more pathetic than any abandoned kitten.

“Hungover again, eh?”

Her ears twitched slightly; perhaps it hurt too much to move her head.

He thought about teasing Holo about it but remembered the previous night and thought better of it. And in any case, she would be in no mood to listen.

“I’ll bring a cup of water and a bucket just in case. You just be good and rest.”

He put extra emphasis on the “be good” part, which her ears twitched at yet again.

Lawrence didn’t think she would behave just because he told her to, but she was unlikely to go wandering off in her current state. Given the impossibility of her packing up and striking off on her own, he let himself relax a bit.

He knew Holo was fully capable of faking a hangover, but her face had been so pale he doubted this one was fake.

Turning the thoughts over in his head, he finished his preparations for going out without saying another word and then came back to her bedside—she was evidently incapable of so much as turning herself over.

“The festival doesn’t get going until tomorrow, so you needn’t rush yourself.”

Relief showed instantly on Holo’s exhausted, alcohol-ravaged face; Lawrence had to laugh.

It seemed that even suffering a hangover was less important to Holo than attending the festival.

“I’ll be back in the afternoon.”

Holo’s ears were still; this statement did not interest her.

Lawrence gave a strained smile, at which point the corners of Holo’s mouth curled ever so slowly into a grin.

She seemed to be doing it on purpose.

Lawrence slumped over and drew the covers back over Holo. She was undoubtedly still grinning away under there.

Still, he was genuinely relieved that she seemed not to hold a grudge from the previous night.

As he left the room, Lawrence took one more look back at Holo. Her tail stuck out from underneath the blanket, and it flicked twice, as if waving good-bye.

Thinking he would buy her something tasty, he closed the door behind him.

Trying to do business before the ring of the bell that opens a market is not generally smiled upon in any town—and this is even truer when one is smack-dab in the middle of the marketplace.

However, depending on the time and circumstances, this rule can be bent.

In Kumersun it was even half-encouraged to mitigate the congestion that came with the opening of the market during the festival.

So despite the early hour, with the sun just beginning to rise above the buildings, the marketplace—which took up half of Kumersun’s southern plaza—was already busy with merchants.

Here and there were stacks of crates and piles of burlap sacks, and pigs, chickens, and all manner of livestock stood tied up or caged in the cramped spaces between goods and the stalls. As Kumersun was the largest exporter of fish in the landlocked region, it was easy to spot fish swimming in huge barrels of freshwater, not unlike the ones Amati had been hauling the previous day.

Just as Holo was unable to hide her excitement when faced with a line of eateries, Lawrence’s pulse could not help but quicken when he saw the vast array of goods in the marketplace.

How much profit could one make transporting this good to that town? This other commodity was so plentiful that there must be a surplus of it in that location—would the price be lower? Such thoughts chased each other through Lawrence’s mind.

When he was just starting out as a merchant, Lawrence had no sense of what was a favorable price for a good, so he wandered about aimlessly without knowing what to do—but now he could discern all kinds of things.

Once a merchant fully grasped this intricate web of commodities, he became like an alchemist, transmuting lead into gold.

Lawrence felt giddy at the power this notion afforded him until he remembered his failure in Ruvinheigen, which he chuckled at, chagrined.

Turning one’s eyes to avarice made it all the more easy to stumble, after all.

He took a breath to calm himself, grasping the reins and heading into the center of the marketplace. The stall he finally arrived at was already well into its business day, like all the others. The shop’s owner was just a year removed from Lawrence and had also started out as a traveling merchant. The fact that he had become a proper wheat merchant—complete with stall, which despite its small size even had a proper roof—was generally attributed to the man’s good fortune. He had even adopted the squarish facial hair style that was common in the region.

Said wheat merchant—Mark Cole—was momentarily surprised upon seeing Lawrence, but he immediately composed himself and raised a hand in greeting, smiling.

The other merchant that Mark dealt with turned to regard Lawrence as well, nodding in greeting. One never knew when he might encounter someone who could become a business partner, so Lawrence flashed his best merchant’s smile and gestured at them to by all means please continue their conversation.

“Le, spandi amirto. Vanderji.”

“Ha-ha. Pireji. Bao!”

Evidently their exchange was just ending; the man spoke to Mark in a language Lawrence didn’t understand and then took his leave. Naturally, Lawrence did not forget to give the man another professional smile as he left.

He committed the man’s face to memory in case they were to meet again in some other town.

These were the tiny interactions that accumulated over time, eventually turning into profit.

The merchant—who was probably from somewhere in the northlands—disappeared into the crowds, and Lawrence finally descended from his wagon.

“I guess I interrupted your business.”

“Hardly! He was just talking my ear off about how grateful he was to the god of Pitra Mountain. You saved me,” said Mark, rolling up a sheet of parchment as he sat atop a wooden chest. He smiled at the tedium of the man’s conversation.

Mark, like Lawrence, was a member of the Rowen Trade Guild. Their acquaintance was the result of showing up every year in the same marketplace to trade, and the two had known each other since the very beginning of their respective careers. They could easily skip the usual formalities.

“If I’d known better, I wouldn’t have bothered learning their language. They’re not bad men, but once they figure out you can understand them, you’ll never hear the end of how great their god is.”

“Might be that a local deity’s still better than a god who never leaves the shrine except when they spy a flash of gold, eh?” Lawrence said.

Mark laughed, tapping his own head with the now rolled-up parchment. “You’re not lying! And they say harvest gods are all beautiful women.”

Holo’s face appeared in Lawrence’s mind. He nodded and grinned but of course did not say what sprang to mind: But they have terrible personalities.

“Anyway, enough of such talk. I’ll be scolded by the missus for sure. Shall we talk of trade? I presume that’s why you’re here.”

Mark’s expression shifted from friendly banter to business. Though there was no need for formalities between the two, their relationship was a calculated one. Lawrence readied himself for the exchange and spoke.

“I’ve brought nails from Ruvinheigen. Thought you might want to buy them up.”

“Nails, eh? I’m a wheat seller. Did you hear somewhere that we now nail our sacks of wheat closed? I think not.”

“Ah, but you’ll soon have many customers laying in supplies for the long winter. You could sell those nails just as you sell the wheat. People need them to brace up their homes against the snow.”

Mark looked skyward for a moment before rolling his gaze back to Lawrence.

“I suppose that is true…Nails, you say. How many?”

“I’ve one hundred twenty nails of three paté in length, two hundred in four paté, and two hundred in five paté, along with a statement of quality from the Ruvinheigen blacksmiths’ guild.”

Mark scratched his cheek with one end of the rolled-up parchment and sighed. This feigned reluctance was a common merchant trait.

“I’ll take the lot for ten and a half lumione.”

“What’s the lumione trading at now? Against trenni silver.”

“Thirty-four even when yesterday’s market closed. So that’d be…three hundred fifty-seven trenni.”

“Too low by far, sir,” said Lawrence.

The amount wasn’t even as much as Lawrence had spent to buy the nails. Mark’s brow furrowed at Lawrence’s quick answer.

“Have you heard about the crash in armor prices?” Mark asked. “With no military expeditions into the north this year, people are unloading armor and swords left and right, which means there’s a glut of raw iron. Even nails are cheaper now—even ten lumione is a generous price.”

It was the response he had expected, so Lawrence calmed himself and replied.

“Aye, but that’s in the south. When there’s so much iron to be melted down, the price of fuel will rise enough to make it impractical. If you can buy enough firewood to melt iron this time of the year in Ploania, I’d sure like to see it. Anybody that tries it is likely to have their head split with a kindling ax.”

Once winter came to regions with a lot of snow, the supply of firewood stagnated. The iron forges, with their bottomless appetite for fuel, were abandoned during the winter. If some blacksmith did decide to forge in the winter, the price of firewood would immediately skyrocket, and he would soon find himself showered in the curses of the shivering townspeople. Thus, even if the raw material for nails was suddenly abundant in the region, the original price of those nails should hold steady.

Any merchant with a bit of experience would be able to put this much together.

Unsurprisingly, Mark grinned. “Come now, must you be selling nails to a poor wheat merchant? If it’s grain, then sure, I know how to buy it cheap, but nails are far from my specialty.”

“Sixteen lumione, then.”

“Too dear. Thirteen.”

“Fifteen.”

“Fourteen and two-thirds.” Mark’s medium frame stiffened, leaving him loglike.

Lawrence could tell he would get no further in his negotiations.

Pushing it would only damage the business relationship. Lawrence nodded and extended his right hand. “It’s done, then.”

“Well met, guild brother!” said Mark with a smile, shaking Lawrence’s hand.

The price was undoubtedly quite a compromise on Mark’s end, as well.

As a wheat merchant, Mark was not, strictly speaking, even allowed to buy or sell nails. Which merchant could sell what good was decided by the respective guilds, so to stock a new item, a merchant had to either obtain the permission of the other merchants already selling that item or cut them in on the profits.

At a glance, this rule would seem to obstruct free trade, but if it was absent, giant companies with huge amounts of capital would soon swallow the entire marketplace. The rule was designed to prevent that from happening.

“Would you prefer to settle up in coin or credit?” asked Mark.

“Credit, if you please.”

“Thank goodness. There are so many cash deals this time of year it’s hard to keep up.”

While traders had no trouble keeping track of their deals in their ledger books, plenty of people bringing goods into the villages and towns would want coin and only coin.

But currency shortages were serious problems in any town. Even if a merchant had assets to buy a particular good, without the currency to make the payment, there could be no commerce at all. And an illiterate farmer wouldn’t even blow his nose on a promissory note.

In the wilderness, it was the knight with his sword who was strongest, but in the cities, coin equaled power. This was why the Church had grown so wealthy. Collecting tithes week after week, it could not help but become powerful.

“So since I’m taking credit, I’ve got a favor to ask of you,” said Lawrence as Mark approached to unload the sack of nails from the wagon bed. The wheat merchant’s face grew instantly wary.

“It’s nothing terribly important. I’ve got to head north to take care of something, and I wondered if you’d ask after the conditions of the roads and passes up that way. Your customer before me, he was from the north, no?”

Seeing that Lawrence’s question had nothing to do with business, Mark visibly relaxed.

His shift in expression was obviously intentional, Lawrence noted with chagrin. It was probably Mark’s way of getting back at Lawrence a bit for selling the nails so dear.

“Aye, that’s easy enough,” said Mark. “Though it would’ve been easier for you to come in the summertime as you normally do. Must be something pretty big to get you heading up north in midwinter.”

“Well, you know, this and that. I will say it’s nothing to do with business, though.”

“Ha-ha-ha. Even the ever-traveling merchant can’t free himself from life’s little obligations, eh? So where are you headed?”

“A place called Yoitsu. Heard of it?”

Mark leaned on the cart as he raised a single eyebrow. “Can’t say I have. But who knows how many little towns and villages I’ve never heard of. You want me to find someone who knows it, then?”

“Well, in any case, we’re heading for Nyohhira, so you can ask about Yoitsu sort of ‘by the way’; that’ll be fine.”

“Right, then. So if you’re bound for Nyohhira you’ll be crossing the Dolan Plains.”

“You know the way, then? That makes it easier for me.”

The wheat merchant nodded and thumped his chest, as if to say “leave it to me.” Mark would surely be able to collect the information Lawrence needed.

This was exactly why Lawrence had come to Mark in the first place, but if he had interrupted the wheat merchant during this most busy of seasons simply to gather information without bringing some business along as well, it would have weighed on his conscience—and Mark would’ve been none too pleased.

That is why he brought the nails to sell. Lawrence was well aware that Mark knew many of the area blacksmiths. It would be easy for Mark to sell off the nails to any of them for a tidy profit.

Mark would even be able to ask for a portion of the payment for those nails in cash. As a wheat merchant—for whom the last chance to save up money was rapidly approaching—the chance to get a bit of hard coin into his hands would probably make him happier than any meager profit.

And as Lawrence had expected, Mark readily agreed. That took care of the need to gather information on the upcoming travel.

“Oh, yes. There was another thing I wanted to ask you about. Don’t worry, this will be quick,” said Lawrence.

“Do I look that stingy?”

Lawrence met Mark’s chagrined smile. “Does this town have any chroniclers?”

“Chroniclers…? Oh, you mean the people who write those endless diaries of town events?”

Chroniclers were paid a retainer by nobles or Church officials and kept histories of a given area or town.

Lawrence couldn’t help but laugh at hearing Mark dismiss their work as “endless diaries.”

It wasn’t entirely accurate, but nor was it far from the truth, which made it all the funnier.

“I don’t think they’d like you putting it that way, but yes,” Lawrence said.

“Bah, it just bothers me that all they need do to earn coin is sit in a chair all day and write.”

“That’s a little hard to take from someone who got so lucky in a deal he was able to open a shop in a town.”

The story of Mark’s good fortune was a famous one.

Lawrence laughed again, this time at Mark’s momentarily stunned expression.

“So, are there any chroniclers or nay?”

“Ah…yes, I think there are. But I wouldn’t get mixed up with them were I you,” said Mark, taking hold of the bag of nails in Lawrence’s wagon. “Rumor has it one was accused of heresy by a monastery somewhere and had to flee. The town’s filled with people like that who had to run.”

The townspeople of Kumersun were less concerned with the animosity between pagans and the Church than they were with economic prosperity, so the town had naturally become a refuge for a variety of naturalists, philosophers, and other such heretics.

“I just have some things I want to ask after,” said Lawrence. “Chroniclers collect local legends and such, yes? I’ve an interest in such matters.”

“Now, why would you care about that? Do you need conversation starters for when you travel north?”

“Something like that. I know it’s sudden, but do you think you might introduce me to one?”

Mark turned his head slightly and called out toward his stand, with the bag of nails still in one hand.

A boy emerged from behind a mountain of wheat sacks. Evidently Mark had reached a point where he could have an apprentice.

“I do know one. Better if it’s someone from Rowen, right?” said Mark, handing bag after bag of nails to his young apprentice.

Seeing this, Lawrence was filled with a renewed sense of urgency to get to Yoitsu and return to his normal business routine as quickly as he could.

Yet it would be trouble if Holo discerned that fact—and for his part, it was not as though Lawrence wished to be rid of her.

He found it impossible to reconcile his two feelings on the issue.

If he lived as long as Holo did, taking a year or two off from business would hardly be an issue.

But Lawrence’s life was too short for that.

“What’s the matter?”

“Hm? Oh…nothing. Yes, if there’s a chronicler in the trade guild, that would be convenient. Can I ask you to introduce me?”

“I can certainly do that much, yes. I’ll even do it for free.”

Lawrence couldn’t help but smile at the effort Mark put into saying “free.”

“Is sooner better?” asked Mark.

“If possible, yes.”

“I’ll send the boy out, then. There’s a fearless old peddler named Gi Batos there, and if I’m remembering right, he’s close with a pagan hermit who’s done chronicle work. Old Batos takes the week before and after the festival off, so if you go by the guild house around midday, you should find him drinking the day away.”

Even within a single guild, such as Rowen Trade Guild, traveling merchants like Lawrence might not know many others within it—like Amati whose business was unrelated to Lawrence’s own.

Lawrence repeated Gi Batos’s name to himself, carving it into his memory.

“Understood. I’m in your debt.”

“Ha-ha. If that’s all it takes to be in my debt, I’d hate to think what comes next. Enough of that talk—you’ll be in town until the festival ends, yes? Stop by for a drink, won’t you?”

“I suppose I should let you brag of your success at least once. I’ll be by.”

Mark raised his voice in a laugh and then sighed as he handed the last bag of nails to his apprentice. “Even a town merchant endures endless troubles and worries, though. Sometimes I wish I could go back to traveling.”

Lawrence could only smile in vague agreement as he was still toiling day in and day out to achieve what Mark already had. Mark seemed to realize this. “Uh, forget I said that,” he said, smiling apologetically.

“All we can do is keep our noses to the grindstone. It’s the same for all merchants.”

“True enough. Good fortune to the both of us, then!”

Lawrence shook hands with Mark, and after seeing another customer come to call on the wheat merchant, he put the stall behind him.

He slowly maneuvered his wagon into the crowd and then looked back at Mark’s stand.

There stood Mark, who seemed to have forgotten about Lawrence entirely and was now embroiled in negotiations with his next customer. Lawrence was frankly envious.

But even Mark the successful town merchant said he sometimes wished to return to traveling.

Lawrence remembered a story. Long ago, there was a king who planned to alleviate the poverty in his own kingdom by invading the prosperous nation next to his own, but a court poet had said this: “One always sees the wretched parts of one’s own land and the best parts of one’s neighbor’s.”

Lawrence thought on the story.

He had been focusing on the troubles involved in finding Holo’s homeland or the setbacks he’d suffered in Ruvinheigen, but the fact was he had been able to travel with a companion of rare quality.

If Lawrence had never encountered Holo, he would have continued along his usual trade route, enduring the endless loneliness that came with it.

It had once been so bad that he started to seriously fantasize about what it would be like if his horse became human. As he pondered this, Lawrence realized that one of his dreams had already come true.

There was a good chance that eventually he would be traveling alone again, and when that time came, Lawrence knew he would look back on this time with Holo with no shortage of fondness.

Lawrence gripped the reins once again.

Once he finished making the rounds through the trade guilds and merchant firms, he would make sure to buy a truly delicious lunch for Holo.

Kumersun lacked a church, so it was a bell tower atop the highest roof of the tallest noble house in town that grandly rang the noontime bell each day. The bell, of course, was decorated with carvings of the finest sort, and the roof, visible throughout the entire town, was maintained by the finest artisans that could be had.

It was said that the roof—constructed solely because of the vanity of the nobility it housed—had cost fully three hundred lumione, but the people of the town bore the nobles no ill will, reasoning that it was doing such things that made one nobility.

Perhaps the reason most wealthy merchants, who hoarded their money in great vaults, were so richly resented was because they lacked that playful sense of extravagance. Even the most famously violent of knights would be beloved if he spent freely enough.

Lawrence thought on this as he opened the door to his room—and was struck face on by the sharp tang of liquor.

“So it smelled this bad, did it…”

Lawrence suddenly regretted not rinsing his mouth before venturing out, but the greater part of the smell was surely the fault of the wolf that even now slept before him.

Holo showed no signs of stirring even when Lawrence entered the room, but her artless snoring suggested that she had mostly recovered from her hangover.

The stink of liquor was too much for Lawrence, so he opened the window before approaching the bed. The water glass next to it was empty as was—fortunately—the bucket. Her face, sticking out of the bedclothes, looked haler than it had before. Lawrence had bought real wheat bread, which he rarely indulged in, instead of honeyed crackers; this had been the right choice, he felt.

He was quite sure that the first words out of Holo’s mouth upon awaking would be “I’m hungry.”

Lawrence held the bag of bread up to Holo’s nose, which twitched slightly. Unlike the tough, bitter oat and rye bread they often wound up eating, the scent of the soft, tender wheat bread was wholly enticing.

Holo’s sniffing at the bag was enough to make Lawrence doubt whether she was actually asleep. At length, she made a small, artless mmph sound and then buried her face within the covers.

Lawrence looked down at the foot of the bed, where he saw Holo’s tail sticking out of the covers, trembling slightly.

She seemed to be in mid yawn there beneath the bedclothes.

Lawrence waited a spell, and sure enough, Holo’s bleary-eyed face eventually emerged from underneath the covers.

“Mmph…Something smells amazing…”

“Feeling better?”

Holo rubbed her eyes, yawned again, and spoke as if to herself. “I’m hungry.”

Despite his best efforts not to, Lawrence burst out laughing.

Not seeming particularly interested, Holo slowly hauled herself up and yawned a third time. She then sniffed the air and turned her gluttonous gaze to the bag Lawrence held.

“I figured you’d say that. I splurged and got some wheat bread.”

As soon as Lawrence handed over the bag, the proud wisewolf became like a cat presented with a treat.

“Will you not eat some?”

Holo sat there on the bed, clutching the bag and devouring the pure white bread, looking anything but willing to share.

Even as she posed the question to him, her mien was now closer to that of a hunting dog who had no intention of letting its prey escape.

It was probably at the limits of Holo’s generosity to even venture to ask him before she finished the entire bag.

“No, I’m fine. I had a taste earlier.”

Normally she would have regarded him with some suspicion, but Holo—true to her ability to see right through a lie—seemed to accept this as the truth. Visibly relieved, she returned to her assault on the bread.

“Careful, you’ll choke.”

Lawrence remembered when shortly after he and Holo first met, she nearly choked on some potatoes at the small church they had passed the night in. She shot him a glare, which he chuckled at. He pulled a chair out from the desk and sat.

Upon the desk were several wax-sealed envelopes. After making the rounds among the various trading firms, Lawrence had received several letters addressed to him.

Despite their itinerant lifestyle, traveling merchants had many opportunities to send and receive letters as their seasonal stops were very predictable.

Some offered to buy a certain good at a high price if they happened to be passing through a given town that was selling it; others told of a good’s price in their towns and asked how it was doing elsewhere—the correspondence was diverse.

Yet it was strange, Lawrence felt. He generally came through Kumersun in the summertime, so it was out of the ordinary for letters to be reaching him here now on the very threshold of winter. In the worst case, the letters would have wound up languishing in the files of the trading companies for more than half a year. If the letters had not found Lawrence in Kumersun within two weeks, they were to be sent south. It went without saying that such arrangements cost a pretty penny.

It was clear that the letters were urgent.

The senders were all town merchants situated in northern Ploania.

Lawrence carefully removed the wax seals with a knife when he sensed Holo peering intently at him.

“They’re letters.”

“Mm,” came Holo’s short reply as she sat herself on the desk, bread in hand.

Lawrence didn’t mind if she saw the envelope’s contents, so after breaking the seal, he took the letter out right there on the spot.

“Dear Mr. Lawrence…”

The fact that the letter did not begin with “In the name of our Lord” was very much in keeping with a northerner’s style.

Lawrence skimmed the pleasantries and moved his gaze down the page.

Following the messy, hurriedly composed handwriting, he quickly discerned the letter’s import.

It was indeed critical information for a merchant to have.

He read the second letter, confirming that its contents were the same as the first, and then sighed, smiling slightly.

“What do they say?” Holo asked.

“Care to take a guess?”

Perhaps irritated at having her question answered with another question, Holo frowned and rolled her eyes. “They hardly seem like love letters.”

Even a love of a hundred years would find its ardor cooled by such messy handwriting, Lawrence thought.

He handed the letters to Holo and grinned. “You always get important information after you most need it.”

“Hmph.”

“These letters were sent out of sincere concern, so I owe them some gratitude at least. What think you?”

Holo licked her fingers, either out of contentment or because she had simply eaten all there was to eat, and looked at the letters she held in the other hand.

She then shoved them back at Lawrence, a sour expression on her face.

“I cannot read.”

“Oh…you can’t?”

Lawrence took the letters, and Holo narrowed her eyes at him.

“If you’re feigning ignorance, I must say you’re getting better at it.”

“No, no, sorry. I really had no idea.”

Holo regarded him for a moment as if to ascertain the truth of his words, and then she turned away with a sigh.

“First of all,” she said, “there are too many letters to remember and too many baffling combinations. You might say all one needs to do is write as one would speak, but that is clearly a lie.”

It seemed Holo had once tried to learn to read.

“You mean the consonant notation and such?”

“I’ve no idea what you call them, but the rules are too complex by far. If there’s one way in which you humans exceed us wolves, it is your mastery of those inexplicable symbols.”

Lawrence very nearly asked if other wolves were similarly unable to write, but he swallowed the question at the last second, merely nodding his agreement.

“Though it’s not as if it’s a simple matter for us to memorize them, either,” he said. “I had no easy time of it, and every time I made a mistake, my teacher would strike me on the head for it. I thought I’d have a permanent lump.”

Holo regarded him dubiously. If she thought he was merely humoring her, she would undoubtedly become angry.

“Surely you can tell I’m not lying,” said Lawrence.

Holo finally turned her doubtful gaze away. “So what is it that’s written there?”

“Ah, it says that the northern campaigns have been canceled, so be careful of buying up armor,” Lawrence said, tossing the letters aside. He grinned ruefully at Holo’s blank look.

“So if you had but received that letter sooner, you wouldn’t have gotten in trouble?”

“Indeed. Such is hindsight. But the fact that these two merchants would spend coin to deliver this message to me is worth knowing. I can trust these two.”

“Mm. And yet the difference between reading and not reading the letters was the difference between heaven and hell.”

“It’s no joke. You’ve the right of it, no question. A single letter can determine your fate. A merchant without information might as well be heading out onto a battlefield with a blindfold.”

“I don’t know about your eyes, but you surely cover your shame often enough.”

Lawrence was about to put the letters back into the envelopes when he heard this and froze, muttering an oath.

“Hmph. Even teasing you does not dispel my drowsiness.” Holo yawned and hopped off the desk, walking over to the bed. Lawrence watched her bitterly. She turned to him.

“Oh, yes—we can go to the festival now, yes?” she asked as she picked up the robe that had been discarded on the bed, her eyes twinkling so brightly they were nearly audible. Seeing her thus, Lawrence wanted to take her out, but he had other business to attend to first.

“Sorry, not ye—”

Lawrence was cut off midsentence. Holo clutched her robe tightly, seemingly on the verge of tears.

“Even if you’re joking, please—stop that, I beg you,” he said.

“Ah-hah, so you are weak against this sort of thing. I’ll remember that,” said Holo, abandoning the act. Lawrence found he had nothing to refute her with.

Having had yet another weakness exposed, he turned back to the desk, defeated.

“Mm. But—can I not go into the town myself?”

“You’ll go whether or not I give you permission.”

“Hm, I suppose that’s true…”

Lawrence returned the letters to their envelopes and turned to Holo once again; she held onto her robe, looking awkward.

At first he sighed inwardly—was she really playing this game again so soon?—but then he realized that without any money, she would be able to do little else than stare at the stalls, which to Holo was akin to a living death.

In other words, she needed marching money, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask for it.

“I don’t have any small change right now, so…don’t spend it all in once place.”

He stood and produced a silver irehd from the coin purse at his waist, then walked over to Holo, and handed it to her.

The coin bore the image of the seventh ruler of Kumersun.

“It’s not as valuable as a trenni piece, so you shouldn’t get the evil eye if you try to buy some bread with it. They’ll make change without a fuss.”

“Mm…,” replied Holo indistinctly even as she took the coin. Lawrence instantly wondered if what she wanted was more money.

But if he betrayed this suspicion, she would really have him cornered.

Lawrence forced himself to maintain a neutral expression. “What’s wrong?”

“Hm? Oh…”

One had to be careful when she was being so meek.

Lawrence’s head shifted into negotiation mode.

“I was…I was just thinking that it would be a bit of a waste to go alone,” Holo said.

And just like that, his mind spun fruitlessly.

“What business have you remaining? If you’ll take me along, I’ll return the silver piece,” she said.

“Oh, uh, I was—I was just meeting with someone.”

“Well, I’m going to wander about anyway. If you don’t want me near, I’ll keep my distance. Take me along, won’t you?”

She wasn’t being especially fawning or wheedling—she simply wanted to come along, it seemed.

If she’d cocked her head and said something like “Oh, do please take me with you!” he would have suspected her of putting on an act.

But her request was entirely normal.

If it really was an act, Lawrence felt like he wouldn’t mind falling for it.

And in case it wasn’t an act, Holo would surely be hurt by his suspicion.

“I’m really sorry—can you let me go alone today? I’ve got to meet with someone, and then I expect we’ll be going elsewhere, so I can be introduced to someone else. If you came along, you’d have to wait outside nearly the whole time.”

“Mm…”

“I should be able to finish up all my business today, and then starting tomorrow, we can take our time and enjoy the festival. So can you manage on your own for one more day?”

He talked with the same tone he would use on a girl of ten, but Holo—standing there beside the bed—looked roughly that vulnerable.

Lawrence understood how she felt.

It was precisely because he was not overfond of going to the winter festival alone that he came to Kumersun only in the summer.

Once the crowds became so thick that one could not help bumping into people, the loneliness became that much keener.

Going to a party at one of the trading firms and then returning alone to a lonely inn was similarly desolate.

Lawrence dearly wanted to bring Holo along with him, but this particular errand made that impossible.

He was going to be introduced to Gi Batos, thus making contact with the town chronicler that Batos evidently knew. One of the head masters of a trading firm Lawrence had visited also knew of the chronicler. Lawrence had taken the opportunity to find out more while he picked up his letters. As he suspected, the chronicler collected not only information on Ploania, but also wrote down pagan tales from farther north.

If the tales of Yoitsu were to come up, it could go badly if Holo was there to hear them. Since Lawrence knew one such tale—wherein Yoitsu had been destroyed by a bear spirit—he had trouble imagining that he would hear that Yoitsu was now prospering.

Hiding the fact forever would be difficult, but Lawrence thought he should at least try to reveal the truth to her at a suitable time. It was a delicate issue.

A moment of silence passed between him and Holo.

“Mm. Well, I do not wish to get in your way. I can’t have you slapping my hand away again,” she said, seeming even sadder—which was probably an act.

Nonetheless, the fact that Lawrence had slapped Holo back in Ruvinheigen still gnawed at him. The clever wisewolf in front of him knew this and was taking a bit of revenge for his refusal to give in to her request.

“I’ll buy you a souvenir. Just abide one more day.”

“So I’m to be bought off again, am I?” she said accusingly, but her swishing tail showed her anticipation.

“Shall I sweet-talk you instead?”

“Hmph. Your words are far from sweet; they’re practically inedible. I shall pass.”

It was a nasty thing to say, but Holo was smiling; her mood seemed to have improved. Lawrence waved a meek hand to indicate his defeat.

“I suppose I shall just wander about on my own.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lawrence, whereupon Holo spoke again as if she just remembered something.

“Oh, that’s right. If when you return there are two people in the room, would you mind staying out for a while?”

For a moment, Lawrence did not understand what she was getting at, but he finally realized she was suggesting she might pick up a man while she was out.

Given her particular charms, Lawrence thought it could certainly happen.

But Lawrence had no idea what sort of expression he should assume in response to the statement.

Should he be angry? Should he laugh? By the time he concluded that ignoring her was the best course, Holo grinned at him with genuine delight.

“Seeing your adorable face will be quite enough to tide me over for the day,” she said.

Lawrence found he could only sigh at her teasing.

Holo could be an infuriating wolf.

“I’d rather be in your arms than not, still,” she said airily. “Do not worry.”

Lawrence had no words.

She could be an incredibly infuriating wolf.

Lawrence opened the door to the trading company. It was afternoon, and the company indeed much more crowded than it had been earlier.

The building was filled with both town merchants based in Kumersun and traveling traders who operated in the area. The company was open but doing no real business since nearly everyone was there to enjoy the festival; the room overflowed with drinking and merriment.

Batos—the man acting as the intermediary between Lawrence and the chronicler—was evidently not as much of a drunkard as Mark has insinuated and had been out of the building on business when Lawrence came in the morning.

Lawrence asked after him with the chief of the trading company; Batos had still not returned, it seemed. Since he was meeting someone, Lawrence could not very well drink, and he mused on how to pass the time.

There were several other merchants in similar circumstances, but they had been seduced by the festive atmosphere and were absorbed in a card game, so Lawrence couldn’t very well try to engage them in conversation.

There was nothing for it but to strike up some idle chatter with the trading house chief, who drank but likewise could not let himself get drunk. During their conversation, the doors opened and a single figure entered the trading house.

Lawrence and the chief were situated directly across from the entrance, so Lawrence could immediately see who came into the building. It was Amati, looking more like the young son of a nobleman than any merchant.

“Mr. Lawrence,” said Amati after briefly greeting the men drinking by the door.

“Good afternoon. And thank you for your assistance with the inn.”

“Not at all. I should be thanking you for ordering so much fish for dinner.”

“My finicky companion praised it to the heavens. Said that you had an excellent eye for fish.”

Lawrence felt this was a more effective compliment than saying he himself had enjoyed the food. He was correct.

Amati’s face lit up like an excited boy’s.

“Ha-ha, I’m delighted to hear it! If she has any other requests, I’ll be buying some truly excellent fish tomorrow.”

“She seemed to have a special love for the carp.”

“I see…very well, then. I’ll go find more that she’ll enjoy.”

Lawrence chuckled internally; at no point had Amati asked what he thought of the fish, but Amati no doubt had not even noticed this.

“Oh, incidentally, Mr. Lawrence—have you any plans at the moment?”

“I am killing time before I meet with Mr. Batos.”

“I see…”

“Why do you ask?”

Amati’s expression clouded over as he fumbled for words, but he resolutely overcame this in a manner befitting a merchant used to battling the fish markets day in and day out. “Er, yes, actually I was thinking perhaps I could show you and your companion around the town. Our meeting on the road was the will of God, surely, and I don’t doubt I could learn much from talking with a traveling merchant such as yourself.”

Amati sounded quite modest, but Lawrence knew that the boy had his sights set on Holo. If Amati had a tail, Lawrence was sure that it would be swishing back and forth excitedly.

Lawrence had an idea.

“I surely appreciate the invitation, and my companion Holo has been wanting to get a look at the town, but I don’t think…”

Amati’s expression changed. “If it’s all right with you, I would be happy to show just Miss Holo around! In truth, I’ve finished my work for the day and am quite free.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly…”

Lawrence wasn’t sure whether or not his feigned surprise was convincing, but Amati did not seem able to read Lawrence’s expressions quite that well.

Amati, after all, was thinking only of Holo.

“Not at all. If left to my own devices, I fear I’ll simply drink all my profits away. To be blunt, this works out nicely for me. I would be happy to escort her.”

“I see. Well, she is not so well behaved as to stay in the inn simply because I told her to—she may not be there at all.”

“Ha-ha! As it happens, I need to go by the inn and discuss a purchase with them, so I’ll inquire after her while I am there, and if she is there, I’ll invite her out.”

“I’m so sorry to impose,” said Lawrence.

“No, not at all. Please allow me to show you around town as well next time!”

Amati’s skill with pleasantries marked him as a merchant through and through.

He must have been five or six years younger than Lawrence, but despite his callow appearance, he was no doubt a canny trader.

Though Amati’s attention had been quite diverted by Holo, he remained thoroughly poised.

Lawrence was just musing on how he would have to be careful not to let his guard down around the boy when the trading company’s door opened once again.

Amati looked toward the door at the same time as Lawrence. “Looks like I had good timing,” said Amati, and Lawrence soon understood why.

As the saying goes, his party had arrived.

“Well then, Mr. Lawrence—I’ll take my leave.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you, again.”

Whether he had no further business in the trading house or his head was so full of visions of Holo that he forgot why he’d come, Amati left the building.

Though Lawrence left her with some silver, he thought Holo was still probably lounging about in bed at the inn.

Given Amati’s state, he’d be a perfect mark for Holo, who would have no trouble getting him to buy her whatever she wanted.

For a moment, Lawrence almost felt sorry for the poor boy, but he knew Amati would be all too happy to undo the strings on his coin purse for Holo.

Nothing would make Lawrence happier than Holo’s mood being lifted on someone else’s coin.

If only he could be so clever when dealing directly with Holo, he thought.

She did not just pull his leg—she swept it clean out from under him.

As Lawrence wondered if Holo’s wit exceeded his own by as much as her age did, the man who entered the trading house just as Amati left scanned the room and then began to walk toward Lawrence.

Mark’s apprentice had apparently run about the town to inform Batos of Lawrence’s request, which was undoubtedly why Batos now approached him.

Lawrence greeted the man with a glance, flashing his merchant’s smile.

“Kraft Lawrence, I presume? I am Gi Batos.”

The hand that Batos extended in greeting was hard and rough, like a veteran soldier’s.

Listening to Mark tell it, Batos was the sort of man who preferred drinking his profits away to actually making any, but upon meeting the man in person, Lawrence got precisely the opposite feeling.

As he walked down the street, Batos had a stocky stability about him that brought to mind a stout coffin, and his face had a tough, leathery quality (from years of exposure to wind and sand) out of which grew a spiky beard that was almost sea urchin–like. When Lawrence shook Batos’s right hand in greeting, it felt nothing like the hand of an easygoing merchant who passed the days carrying nothing heavier than his cart horse’s reins; it was rough and strong enough, telling that this was a man who did heavy lifting year-round.

Yet despite Batos’s appearance, he was neither stubborn nor ill-mannered; the words he spoke had a priestly serenity to them.

“I daresay merchants who travel across many provinces, like yourself, Mr. Lawrence, are more numerous these days. Traveling to and fro between the same places, selling the same things as I do, gets quite boring.”

“Ah, but the town peddlers and craftsmen would surely be angry if they heard you say so.”

“Ha-ha-ha! Right you are. There are plenty of men who’ve spent fifty years selling naught but leather rope. No doubt I’d get an earful if I claimed to be tired of it,” Batos said with a laugh.

He told of how he was a trader of precious metals from the mines of Hyoram and that he’d spent nigh thirty years going back and forth between those rugged mountains and the town of Kumersun.

Any man who could carry those heavy loads through the mountains of Hyoram—where the wind was strong and the trees were few—was a man to be reckoned with.

“Still, I must say you’re a curious fellow, Mr. Lawrence.”

“Oh?”

“I refer to your search for a chronicler to learn the ancient tales of the northlands. Or has it something to do with a business prospect?”

“Oh no, nothing like that. It’s just something of a whim, I suppose.”

“Ha-ha-ha! You’ve got good taste for one so young. I’ve only recently become interested in the old tales. Originally I intended to make a business of it, but I’m afraid they’ve quite become my master rather than the other way around!”

Lawrence couldn’t quite imagine what Batos meant by making a business of the old tales, but the man’s talk was intriguing, so he kept his mouth shut and listened.

“It came to me after so many years of going back and forth between the same places. The world I knew was very small, you see. But even there, people had been coming and going for hundreds of years, and I knew nothing about those times at all.”

Lawrence had an inkling of what Batos meant.

The more he traveled around, the more the world seemed to spread out before him infinitely.

If that was the breadth of the world, in a sense, then what Batos felt was the world’s depth.

“I’m old, you see, and I’ve not the vigor to go journeying afar. Neither can I travel back in time. So even if it’s only by stories, I came to want to visit the places I’ve never been able to see in person and to travel back to those ages that God in his capriciousness has prevented me from experiencing. When I was a young man with nothing on my mind but profit, such things would never have occurred to me, but now I often wonder if I’d had the chance to consider them, my life would have turned out quite differently. So I must admit I’m a bit envious of you, Mr. Lawrence. Hah, I must sound quite ancient.” Batos laughed at his own folly, but his words left a deep impression on Lawrence.

It was true that the old tales and legends allowed one to know of things that were impossible to experience directly.

He felt a new weight behind the words Holo had said to him not so very many days after they had first met.

“The worlds we live in, you and I, are very different.”

For the greater part of the time Holo had lived, the people from her own era had been long since dead, the era itself lost to time.

And Holo was not human, but wolf.

Thinking on it, Lawrence saw that Holo’s very existence began to seem special in more ways than one.

What had she seen and heard? Where had she traveled?

He began to want to ask her about her travels—perhaps when he returned to the inn.

“But when the Church looks at the old tales and legends, all they see are superstitions and pagan stories. Where the Church’s eye falls, tales become hard to collect. Hyoram is a mountainous region and had many fascinating stories, but the Church was there, too. Kumersun is quite nice in that regard.”

Ploania was a country where both pagans and the Church existed side by side, but it was precisely because of that coexistence that the Church was much stricter in those towns and regions where it held power.

Pagan towns that resisted Church control had to be constantly prepared for battle. Kumersun was unique in Ploania for its peaceful avoidance of those problems.

Even in Kumersun, it was not the case that there was a complete lack of conflict.

Lawrence and Batos headed to the north district of Kumersun in order to meet with the chronicler.

The town had been built with expansion in mind, so the city walls were constructed of wood that could be easily disassembled and the streets and buildings were spacious.

Yet even within this town, there existed a high stone wall.

The wall encircled the district housing those who had fled to Ploania because of Church persecution.

The very fact that the district was walled off with stone proved that the people of the town considered the presence of the persecuted a burden. While they were not considered criminals in Kumersun, in Ruvinheigen—for example—they would have been beheaded as a matter of course.

Upon reflection, Lawrence changed his mind.

The wall did not exist simply to isolate these people; it was probably necessary for their protection.

“Is that…sulfur?” Lawrence asked.

“Aha, so you’ve handled medicinal stones as well, have you?”

Hyoram boasted a variety of very productive mines, and while Batos may have been used to the distinctive odors of the region, Lawrence couldn’t help but make a face.

The smell reached his nose as soon as they passed through the door in the stone wall, and he immediately knew what sort of people lived here.

The Church’s greatest enemy—alchemists.

“No, I’ve knowledge of it is all.”

“Knowledge is a merchant’s greatest weapon. You’re good at your job.”

“…It’s kind of you to say so.”

The area within the walls was several steps lower than the outside ground.

The spaces between the buildings in the district were narrow, and although they called to mind alleys Lawrence had seen in other towns, there were some strange differences.

For one, many of the alleys they walked in were scattered with bird feathers.

“One can’t always smell the poison wind. People keep small birds—and if the bird suddenly dies, they know to be careful.”

Lawrence knew of the practice as it was used in mines, but having come to a place where it was actually employed sent a shiver up his spine.

The phrase poison wind was certainly descriptive, but for Lawrence’s part, he felt the Church’s phrase—the hand of death—to be more apt. Apparently it came from the fact that no sooner did one notice a strangely cold wind than one was paralyzed, unable to move.

Lawrence wondered if the cats that he saw here and there as they walked down the street were kept for the same purpose as the birds or if they instead gathered to prey on those birds.

In either case, it was eerie.

“Mr. Batos—”

It had been some time since Lawrence had found walking in silence to be so difficult.

The street was dim and strange, the silence punctuated by the meowing of cats and the flutter of birds; mysterious metallic sounds rang out occasionally, and the smell of sulfur was constant. Lawrence couldn’t help raising his voice.

“How many alchemists are in this district, would you say?”

“Hmm…counting apprentices perhaps twenty, give or take. But in any case, accidents are common, so it is hard to know for sure.”

In other words, there were a lot of fatalities.

Regretting having asked the question, Lawrence shifted to more mercantile concerns.

“Do you find that trading with alchemists makes good business? I would think it would bring significant danger.”

“Mm…,” said Batos slowly, stepping around a barrel that had held some green substance that Lawrence didn’t want to look at too long. “There’s a lot of profit to be had in trading with alchemists that have nobility backing them up. They buy a lot of iron, lead, quicksilver, and tin—to say nothing of copper, silver, and gold.”

They were all quite normal commodities; Lawrence was surprised.

He had been expecting something much weirder—five-legged frogs, perhaps.

“Ha-ha-ha, are you surprised? Even here in the north, there are people who think alchemists are basically sorcerers. In truth, they’re not so very different from metalsmiths. They heat metals or melt them down with acids. Of course…”

They turned right at a narrow intersection.

“…In reality, there are some who research sorcery.” Batos looked behind them and then twisted his lip in a feral grin.

Lawrence faltered and stopped walking for a moment, at which Batos immediately smiled, apologetic.

“But I’ve only heard rumors of them, and I don’t believe any of the alchemists in this district have met any such people. And incidentally, everyone living in this area is basically a good person.”

This was the first time Lawrence had heard alchemists—who practiced their arts without any fear of God—described as “good people.”

Whenever the subject came up, alchemists were spoken of in fearful, incurious tones, as though they had committed some unspeakable corruption.

“They’re my bread and butter, after all, so I can’t very well accuse them of being bad people now, can I?”

A slightly relieved Lawrence smiled at Batos’s very merchant-like statement.

Shortly thereafter, Batos stopped before the door of one of the buildings.

The street received no sunlight and was riddled with holes and dark puddles of water.

The stone wall facing the alley had a wooden window that was cracked open, and the entire two-story building seemed to lean to one side.

It could have been a building from any slum in the world, but there was one important difference.

The area was completely silent; no peals of childish laughter sounded.

“Come now, you needn’t be so nervous. They really are fine people here.”

No matter how many times Batos tried to reassure him, Lawrence could only give an uncertain smile in return.

It was impossible for him not to be nervous—this was, after all, a place where people lived who had been branded criminals of the most serious sort by an authority that brooked no opposition.

“Excuse us—is anybody home?” Batos called out casually, knocking upon the door without any such fear.

The ancient door seemed like it had gone years without being opened.

Lawrence could hear a cat’s quiet meow from somewhere.

A monk accused of heresy, chased out of a monastery—what kind of person would that be?

A shriveled old frog of a man appeared briefly in Lawrence’s mind, clad in a tattered robe.

This was no world for a traveling merchant.

The door slowly opened.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Batos!”

The moment was so anticlimactic that Lawrence very nearly collapsed.

“It’s been a while. You seem well!”

“I could say the same of you! Spending all your time in the mountains of Hyoram. God must favor you indeed.”

It was a tall, blue-eyed woman who had opened the thin wooden door. She seemed a few years older than Lawrence, but the fashionable robe draped comfortably around her body gave her a nonetheless fascinating aura.

Her speech was lively and pleasant—she was indisputably beautiful.

But in that instant, Lawrence thought of that which all alchemists sought—the power of immortality.

Witch.

The word appeared in his mind just as the woman looked at him.

“You’re quite a handsome man, but you think me a witch—I can see it in your eyes.”

The woman had seen right through him; Batos spoke quickly to smooth things over.

“In that case, perhaps that’s how I should introduce you?”

“Don’t be absurd—this place is already quite tedious enough. And in any case, is any witch as pretty as I am?”

“I hear many women are exposed as witches because of their beauty.”

“You never change, Mr. Batos. No doubt you’ve hideaways all over Hyoram.”

Lawrence had no idea what was going on, so he abandoned his attempts to grasp the situation and concentrated instead on calming himself.

He took one and a half deep breaths.

Then he straightened himself and became Lawrence the traveling merchant.

“So, m’dear. It’s not me that has business with you today, but Lawrence here.”

Batos seemed to have noticed Lawrence regain his composure; at his well-timed statement, Lawrence took a step forward, put on his best merchant’s smile, and greeted the woman.

“Please excuse my rudeness. I am Kraft Lawrence, a traveling merchant. I’ve come to call upon one Dian Rubens. Might he be in the house?”

Lawrence rarely spoke so formally.

The woman stood with her hand on the door, silent for a moment, before smiling, amused. “What, did Batos not tell you?”

“Oh—” Batos lightly smacked his head with his hand as if to punish his own carelessness, and then he looked to Lawrence apologetically. “Mr. Lawrence, this is Miss Dian Rubens.”

“Dian Rubens at your service. It’s quite a masculine name, is it not? Please call me Diana,” said the woman, her manner suddenly very elegant as she smiled. It was enough to make Lawrence feel that she must have been attached to a very well-to-do monastery indeed.

“Well, enough of that. Please, come in. I don’t bite,” said Diana with a mischievous smile as she gestured into the house.

The inside of Diana’s home was not so very different from the outside—it called to mind the captain’s quarters in a battered vessel that had been through a bad storm.

Wooden chests reinforced with iron bands were everywhere, piled in every corner of the room, their drawers left sloppily open, and there were sturdy, expensive-looking chairs mostly buried under clothes or books.

Also within the room were countless quill pens, as if some great bird had done its grooming in the room.

The only places in the room that seemed even marginally free from the chaos were the bookshelves and the large desk where Diana plied her trade.

“So, what might your business be?” asked Diana, pulling a chair out from under her desk, on which by some miracle of planning sunlight fell. She neither put hot water on nor gestured for her guests to sit down.

Tea or not just as Lawrence was wondering if she wouldn’t do something about a place to sit, Batos took the liberty of removing items from one of the chairs turned into storage and gestured for Lawrence to sit.

Even the most arrogant nobleman would invite his guests to sit.

Lawrence felt no special malice behind Diana’s eccentricity; it seemed part of her strange charm.

“First, I should apologize for my sudden intrusion,” Lawrence said.

Diana smiled and nodded at the standard pleasantry.

Lawrence cleared his throat and continued, “Actually, Miss Rubens, I was—”

“Diana, please,” she corrected him immediately, her expression serious.

Lawrence concealed his perturbation. “Excuse me,” he said, and Diana’s face resumed its soft smile.

“Yes, as I was saying, I have heard that you are quite knowledgeable about the old tales of the northlands. I was hoping you would share some of that knowledge with me.”

“The north?”

“Yes.”

Diana’s countenance became thoughtful, and she looked at Batos. “And here I thought he’d want to talk business.”

“You jest. Had he spoken of business you’d have had him out on his ear.”

Diana laughed at Batos’s words, but Lawrence got the sense that it was probably true.

“But you don’t even know if I know the tale you seek.”

“That might mean the tale I heard was made up from whole cloth,” said Lawrence.

“Well then, it appears you will have to tell me this tale, and I shall do the listening.”

Lawrence had to look away from Diana’s kind smile as he cleared his throat again.

He was grateful Holo was not there.

“In that case, the story I wish to hear of concerns a village called Yoitsu.”

“Ah, the one said to have been destroyed by the Moon-Hunting Bear.”

Diana seemed to have immediately opened the drawers of her memory.

Given how quickly the subject of the town’s destruction had come up, Lawrence again felt that leaving Holo behind was the right choice. It looked as though Yoitsu really had been destroyed. His head hurt when he thought of how he would have to break this news to Holo.

As Lawrence thought this over, Diana stood slowly and approached the room’s strangely well-ordered bookshelves, taking down a single volume from a neat row of large tomes.

“I seem to recall…Ah, here it is. The Moon-Hunting Bear, also known as Irawa Weir Muheddhunde, and Yoitsu, the village it destroyed. There are many stories of this bear. All quite old, though,” said Diana smoothly as she scanned the pages. She had a callus on her index finger from writing, and it was swollen, making it seem quite possible that she had written all of these books.

How many pagan tales and superstitions were contained in those pages?

Something suddenly occurred to Lawrence. Batos had said he was thinking of making a business out of the old tales—no doubt he meant selling Diana’s books to the Church.

With the stories in the books, the Church leaders would be able to instantly ascertain which heretical beliefs had penetrated which lands; they would do nearly anything for such information.

“It’s not the bear I’m interested in, but the town.”

“The town?”

“Yes. I’ve occasion to be searching it out. Is there anything in your tales that might reveal its location?”

Anyone would have been puzzled by Lawrence’s question, which had nothing to do with the source for a commodity but rather the setting for an old legend.

Diana made an expression of surprise and then set the book on the table and began to think.

“Location, eh? Location, indeed…”

“Have you any ideas?” Lawrence asked again, at which Diana put one hand to her head as though suffering a headache and gestured for Lawrence to wait with the other.

As long as she was silent, it was easy to imagine this striking woman as the head of some solemn convent, but seeing her like this revealed an amusingly comical side to her personality.

Diana’s eyes were screwed shut as she groaned with the effort of searching her memory, but then she suddenly looked up, happy as a maiden who had just succeeded in threading a needle.

“I have it! At the headwaters of the Roam River, which flows north of Ploania, there’s a story like this in a town called Lenos,” she said, suddenly and surprisingly as affable as she had been when speaking to Batos.

She seemed to forget herself when talking about old tales.

Diana cleared her throat, closed her eyes, and began to recite from an ancient legend.

“Long ago, a lone wolf called Holoh appeared in the village. Its great height was such that one had to look up to keep it in view. The villagers were certain that it was the punishment from the gods, but Holoh told of her journey from the deep forests of the east, explaining that she was bound for the southlands. She loved wine, and at times would take the form of a maiden and dance with the village girls. Her form was both fetching and youthful, though she kept her wolf tail. After frolicking with them for a time, she blessed their harvest and continued south. Since that time, bountiful harvests have continued, and we of the village remember her as Holoh of the Wheat Tail.”

Lawrence was doubly surprised—both at Diana’s smooth recitation and at the mention of Holo’s name.

The name’s pronunciation was slightly different, but it was unmistakably a story about Holo. Her blessing of the village’s harvest supported that as did her maiden’s form and retaining her lupine tail.

Yet this surprise paled in comparison to the content of Diana’s tale.

The town of Lenos still existed at the headwaters of the Roam River. Using that as a reference point and knowing that there was a forest to the east Lawrence could draw a line southwest from Nyohhira and east from Lenos, which would put Yoitsu right at the intersection.

“Was that any use?”

“Yes, as it limits the area to the forest east of Lenos. It’s a great help!”

“I’m so glad.”

“I’ll surely repay you as soon—”

Lawrence was cut off by a gesture from Diana. “As you can see, even if the Church pursues me for it, I love the old pagan tales—the ones that haven’t been twisted out for consideration of Church beliefs. As you are indeed a traveling merchant, Mr. Lawrence, surely you have even one story you could share with me. If you’ll do that, I’ll require no further payment.”

Those who composed histories for the Church did so to preserve the Church’s authority. Historians retained by the nobility composed works praising their employers—this was simply the way of the world.

The Church’s tale of Saint Ruvinheigen, namesake of the great Church city bearing the same name, was quite different from Holo’s story of the man. The tale was deliberately rewritten to protect and extend Church authority.

Diana loved the old tales enough that she was willing to live in the slums of Kumersun, a town devoted to religious and economic freedom.

Lawrence wondered what terrible knowledge she must possess to have been chased from her cloister on charges of heresy, but now he saw that she simply loved the old tales enough to die for them.

“Understood,” he said and began to tell his tale.

It was the tale of a place known for its bountiful wheat harvests.

And the tale of the wolf that ruled over them.

Eventually, once they had all gotten into some wine, they wound up talking of old tales and legends from all sorts of lands.

The sun was low in the sky when Lawrence finally remembered himself, and politely refusing Diana’s invitation to stay, he left the house with Batos.

As he and Batos walked along the narrow street, neither could help laughing as they talked of the many stories they had shared.

It had been some time since Lawrence had enjoyed the tales of dragons and golden cities—he was well past the age when such stories were taken with anything but a large grain of salt.

Even after Lawrence had begun his merchant apprenticeship, he still longed to take up sword and shield and battle his way across the lands as a valiant knight-errant. As he traveled with his master across the countryside, the tales of fire-breathing dragons, birds so large their wings blotted out the sky, and sorcerers powerful enough to move mountains at will still set his heart secretly racing.

Of course, eventually he had dismissed such tales as pure fantasy.

It was meeting Holo that allowed Lawrence to enjoy them again.

Many of those old tales and legends were not fantasy at all, and even a humble traveling merchant might have adventures as great as any knight-errant.

That realization alone was enough to cause a warmth he had not felt in many years to spread throughout his heart.

In the midst of his giddiness, however, he remembered the events that happened during the attempt at smuggling gold into Ruvinheigen. He smiled at his folly.

He hadn’t seen its form, but there was no doubt that a wolf not unlike Holo in those eerie woods near Ruvinheigen were the source of so much rumor. Lawrence, though, had been no strapping protagonist of a thrilling adventure. He was merely a helpless minor character caught up in the tale.

A merchant’s life suited him much better, he felt.

Lawrence mused on this as they came to the broad street that led back to the inn. He took his leave from Batos there.

When Lawrence thanked Batos for acting as a go-between, Batos’s reply was quick. “People tend to gossip if I go to Diana’s place alone, so you were a fine excuse.”

The lot back at the trading company were very fond of such talk.

“Ask me along anytime,” Batos said. It was no mere pleasantry. He seemed to genuinely mean it. Lawrence, too, had enjoyed himself, so he nodded in the affirmative.

The sun was beginning to sink below the rooftops on the broad avenue, which was crowded with craftsmen returning home from a long day, traders winding up their negotiations, and farmers on their way home, having sold the produce and livestock they brought from their villages.

Lawrence headed south down the street into the central part of the town, where drunkards and children were added to the mix of the crowd.

Normally the number of town girls in the street tended to drop after sunset, but today they were plentiful, adding to the atmosphere of anticipation for the next day’s festival. Here and there, circles of people gathered around fortune-tellers and the like, who did their business brazenly amid the crowds.

Lawrence cut his way through the throng and passed right by the inn along the street, heading straight for the market in the center of Kumersun.

Thanks to Diana, he had a general grasp of Yoitsu’s location, and thus would not be heading for Nyohhira, but rather the town of Lenos.

Lenos was closer, and the road leading to it was better maintained. He also expected that once he was in Lenos he would be able to get more detailed information about the legends of Holo.

Thus it was that Lawrence found himself visiting Mark again. As Mark was gathering travel information for him, he needed to know about this change in destination.

“Hey there, lover boy.”

As Lawrence approached Mark’s shop, he saw Mark with a bottle of wine in one hand, looking merry indeed; the young apprentice he’d sent out to contact Batos earlier was now red faced and prone in the back of the shop.

It was Mark’s wife, Adele, that attended to the closing of the shop, covering the piles of goods with a canopy against the evening dew.

As soon as she noticed Lawrence, Adele gave a slight nod and pointed to her husband with a chagrined smile.

“What’s wrong?” said Mark. “Bah—here, have a drink.”

“So about that information I asked you about this morning…Whoa, that’s too much.”

Mark didn’t seem to hear Lawrence’s protest at all as he poured wine from a ceramic wine bottle into a wooden cup.

His expression suggested that he would have nothing to say until Lawrence picked up the cup, which was now nearly overflowing with wine.

“Fine, fine.” Exasperated, Lawrence took the cup and put it to his lips; it was good wine. He suddenly wanted some jerky to go with it.

“So, what was that? Have you changed your travel plans?”

“Indeed. There’s a town, Lenos, at the headwaters of the Roam River. That’s where I’m going.”

“Well, that’s quite a change indeed. And here I’d already collected quite a bit about the way to Nyohhira.” If he had not been able to think clearly despite the wine, Mark would never have been a merchant.

“Apologies. Circumstances have changed a bit.”

“Oh ho,” said Mark with a smile as he gulped down wine as if it were water. He then regarded Lawrence with a look of amusement. “So it’s true that things have gone bad with that companion of yours?”

There was a pause.

“What did you say?” Lawrence finally asked.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha. Word’s gotten around, lover boy. Everyone knows you’re holed up in a nice inn with a gorgeous nun. You’ve surely got no fear of God.”

Kumersun was a large enough town, but it wasn’t so large as Ruvinheigen—word spread quickly from one merchant to another until nearly all of them would have heard the news. The bonds between traders here were strong. If someone had seen Holo with Lawrence, word would get around.

If Mark knew about Holo, then everyone at the trading company would also know. He was glad he hadn’t returned with Batos.

What he did not understand was why Mark said things had gone sour between Lawrence and Holo.

“We don’t have the sort of relationship that makes for a good story over wine, but I don’t see why you’d say things have gone bad with her.”

“Heh-heh. The lover boy knows how to play dumb, that’s for sure. But I can see the worry on your face.”

“Well, there’s no mistaking that she’s a beauty. If things were to go poorly with us, it would be a shame.”

Lawrence was surprised at his own ability to stay cool during the exchange—no doubt it came about because he was used to constant teasing from Holo.

Although truth be told, he felt he would have preferred for his business acumen to have gotten sharper rather than his patience.

Mark burped. “Why, just a moment ago, I heard that your companion was seen in the company of a young lad from our trade guild. Evidently they were getting on quite well.”

“Ah, you mean Mr. Amati.” Lawrence didn’t feel comfortable calling the boy simply “Amati,” and yet “Mr.” suddenly seemed unnecessarily subservient as well.

“Oh, so you’ve given up already, then.”

“You seem to be sadly mistaken. I simply had business today and was unable to accompany her, and Mr. Amati found himself with free time and wished to show us around town. These two events happened to coincide; that is all.”

“Hmm…”

“You don’t believe me?”

Lawrence had fully expected Mark to appear disappointed, so he found himself confused at Mark’s look of genuine concern.

“I used to be a traveling merchant like you, so I’ll give you some advice. Amati is more formidable than he seems.”

“…What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, if you’re careless, he’ll snatch that pretty little companion of yours right out from under you. Men his age will do anything to gain the object of their obsession. And do you know how much fish Amati moves? It’s a lot. And what’s more, he was born in a pretty nice region of the south, but once he figured out that as the youngest child he’d never be allowed to make anything of himself, he ran away from home and came here to open his business. That was just three years ago. Quite a story, eh?”

It was hard to imagine the slight Amati doing all that, but Lawrence had seen for himself the boy’s three cartloads of fresh fish.

What’s more, Amati had been able to easily arrange a room at an inn facing a main avenue—albeit one to which he sold his fish. During a time when the town was overflowing with travelers coming and going, this was no mean feat.

A seed of fear began to take root in Lawrence’s heart, but at the same time, he could not believe that Holo would transfer her affections so easily.

“No need to worry. My companion is not so fickle.”

“Ha-ha-ha. You’ve a lot of faith. If I heard my Adele was out with Amati, I’d give up right on the spot.”

“What’s this of me and Amati?” said Adele, a truly frightful smile on her face. She had been behind Mark for some time as she cleaned up the shop in place of her husband.

Adele and Mark had fallen in love four years earlier when, as a traveling merchant, Mark had visited Kumersun. Their love story was quite famous in the town, and it was enough to make even a third-rate minstrel throw up his hands in disgust. She now possessed all the dignity of a wheat merchant’s wife.

When Lawrence first met her, Adele had been quite frail, but now she was even more robust than her husband.

Two years previous she’d given birth to their first child—perhaps it was the strength of motherhood that she now had.

“Uh, what I was saying was that if I ever saw you out with Amati, why, you’re so dear to me that the flames of my jealousy would burn my very flesh!”

“Burn away, dear. I’ll just light a fire with the cinders you leave behind to make some tasty bread for Mr. Amati.”

Adele was so caustic that all Mark could do in response was take another drink.

Perhaps women everywhere really are stronger.

“So then, Mr. Lawrence,” said Adele. “Drinking in the company of this sot must make the wine taste poorly. We’ll be closing up shop here, so why don’t you come by the house and help yourself to some dinner? The baby may be a bit noisy, though.”

Lawrence couldn’t even begin to imagine how much mischief Mark’s child would be capable of.

He was not especially good with children, but that wasn’t why he declined the offer.

“I’ve still more business to attend to, unfortunately.”

It was a lie, of course, but Adele nodded her regret without any trace of suspicion.

Mark, on the other hand, smiled as though having seen right through Lawrence. “Oh, indeed, you’ve unfinished business aplenty. And good luck to you.”

Yes, Mark had seen the truth of it. Lawrence managed a weak smile.

“Ah, yes, so I’ll keep your new destination in mind. I’ll be keeping the shop open all during the festival, so I should be able to ask all about the route to Lenos.”

“I appreciate it.”

Lawrence finished off his remaining wine, thanked the couple again, and took his leave.

He noticed himself walking more quickly through the lively, bustling night and laughed at his own folly.

He’d actually claimed to have unfinished business—ridiculous!

But articulating the real reason made Lawrence hate himself, so admitting it to anyone else was out of the question.

Amati and Holo walking happily together—the image flashed briefly through his mind.

Despite his frustration, he noticed himself quickening his step more and more.

The boisterous clamor outside grew louder as the evening deepened. Lawrence was well into working out his upcoming travel plans with ink and pen borrowed from the inn when Holo finally returned.

Lawrence had hurried back to the inn only to find that Holo was still out, and although he’d had to swallow his disappointment, the time did give him a chance to calm himself, for which he was grateful.

Amati had taken his leave from her in front of the inn, Holo said, so she had come up to the room alone. Judging from the fox kit–skin muffler around her neck, Amati had been taken for quite a ride. There was no doubt in Lawrence’s mind that she’d gotten him to buy her more than that.

His relief and happiness at seeing Holo’s safe return was nothing compared to the headache that came with trying to figure out what would be an appropriate way to thank Amati.

“Ugh…it’s too tight. Come…help me with this, won’t you?”

However much she had eaten and drunk, Holo seemed incapable of taking off her own clothes.

Lawrence sighed and got out of his chair, walked over beside the bed, and undid the sash Holo struggled so valiantly against. He also removed the robe that was cinched up against her skirts.

“If you’re going to lie down, take off your muffler and shawl. They’ll wrinkle otherwise.” Holo grunted vaguely in reply.

Lawrence managed to stop her from falling over onto the bed right then and there, and he helped her take off the muffler and rabbit skin shawl, as well as the triangular kerchief that she wore on her head.

Holo nodded off as she let Lawrence have his way with her clothing. She had probably parted ways with Amati in front of the inn because she was unable to keep herself together any longer.

Once Lawrence managed to get her out of the muffler, shawl, and kerchief, she immediately flopped down onto the bed.

Though he couldn’t help smiling when he looked at the carefree wolf, Lawrence sighed when he glanced at the fox kit–skin muffler. He couldn’t imagine buying such an item for resale, let alone as a gift.

“Hey, you—what else did you get him to buy you, eh?”

If Amati had gone this far, it seemed likely he’d bought her something still more costly.

Holo didn’t even have the energy to lift her legs onto the bed, and her strange position remained unchanged as she took the long, slow breaths of the deeply asleep. The ears she was so proud of gave nary a twitch at Lawrence’s question.

Realizing there was nothing else to do, Lawrence lifted her legs up onto the bed, and even then she did not so much as open her eyes.

He wondered if this utter defenselessness was due to trust or simply disdain.

He mulled it over for a while, but ultimately decided that such thoughts would only lead to disappointment, so he banished them from his head. Putting the muffler and shawl on the desk, he began to fold up her robe.

As soon as he did so, something fell out of the robe and hit the floor with a clunk.

He picked the object up; it was a beautiful metallic cube.

“Iron…? No.”

It had sharp, carefully filed edges and a surface that was beautifully smooth even in the dim moonlight. Even if it were just metalwork, the cube would have been a valuable piece, but there was no telling how angry Holo would be if he woke her up just to ask about it.

He set the cube on the desk, deciding to ask about it the next day.

He put the robe over the back of the chair and folded the kerchief; then he rolled up the sash after smoothing out its wrinkles.

For a moment, he wondered why he was attending to these menial tasks—he was no manservant, after all—but one look at the sleeping Holo, snoring away artlessly on the bed there, was enough to dispel his indignation.

She had made no move to do it herself, so Lawrence walked over to the bed and drew the covers over her, chuckling.

He then returned to his desk and his travel plans.

If his circumstances didn’t allow him to stay in the north while he searched for Yoitsu, he would simply have to change his business plan to accommodate some travel in the north. Whether or not he would actually follow those changes, there was no harm in making the plan.

Also, it had been some time since he’d really sat down with pen and paper and listed the towns, trade routes, commodities, and profit margins that made up the life of a traveling merchant.

He was filled with nostalgia when he remembered the times he had once burned the midnight oil to make such plans.

There was one large difference between then and now, though.

Were the plans being made for his own sake—or for someone else’s?

Lawrence worked, pen in hand, listening to Holo’s quiet snores, until the tallow candle burned itself out.

“Food, drink, the scarf, and this die.”

“Anything else?”

“That was all. Well, that and enough sweet talk to fill a lifetime,” said Holo lightly, chewing on the comb she used to groom her tail. Lawrence regarded her wearily.

He’d been relieved when she woke up without a hangover and had immediately interrogated her about the events of the previous night. Looking at the gifts she had received in the light of morning, Lawrence could tell they were of considerable value.

“So you ate and drank the night away, but then there’s this muffler. I can’t believe you’d go and accept such a thing…”

“It’s fine fur, is it not? Though nothing compared with my tail.”

“Did you make him buy this thing?”

“You think me so shameless? Why, he practically pressed it upon me. Rather fashionable of him, though, giving a muffler as a gift.”

Lawrence looked at the fox skin piece, then at Holo. She continued, sounding pleased, “He’s quite mad about me, you know.”

“I’m sorry, did I ask for a joke? You can’t just call it over and done when you receive a gift this valuable. Here I just thought to let someone else show you a good time, but now look at the debt I carry!”

Holo giggled. “So that was your plan all along, was it? I thought as much.”

“I’m taking the consideration for this scarf out of your funds for the festival, just so you know.”

Holo glared at him but turned away, doubly annoyed upon seeing that Lawrence glared right back at her.

“I trust you didn’t show him your ears and tail at least?”

“You needn’t worry. I am not quite that foolish.”

Based on her state the previous night, Lawrence had not thought to worry about such a possibility, but now he wasn’t so sure.

“I suppose you were asked what sort of relationship you have with me.”

“What I would like to know is precisely why you’re asking.”

“If our stories do not match, people will begin to suspect things.”

“Mm. Right you are. Yes, I was quite thoroughly questioned. I am a traveling nun and you saved me from being sold off by evil men is what I told him.”

Aside from the part about Holo being a nun, that was more or less consistent with the truth.

“But once you saved me, I fell deeply into your debt, and as I cannot hope to repay it, I am gradually working it off by praying for your safety as we travel. Oh, alas and alack, woe is me! My voice was desperately sad as I told the tale. What do you think, eh? It has the ring of truth!”

Although it irked Lawrence that he seemed to be the villain of the story, it did seem convincing.

“As soon as I told the tale, he bought me the muffler,” said the fake traveling nun with a frankly devilish smile.

“I suppose that will do. But what of this die? What made him buy you something like this?”

Lawrence had been unable to discern the color of the thing in the dim moonlight, but he could now tell that the cube of metal, so perfect it seemed the work of a master smith, had a distinctly yellow tint, like unpolished gold.

Lawrence had seen this kind of goldlike mineral before.

It was not the work of any human but entirely natural.

“Oh, that? The fortune-teller was using it. They say it’s a die that can divine the future. It has a lovely shape, has it not? I can scarcely fathom how it was made. There’s no doubt it’ll sell for some fine coin.”

“You fool. Do you actually think you can sell this?” said Lawrence, using the same tone she often rebuked him with. Holo’s ears pricked up at the sudden harshness.

“This is no die. This is a mineral called pyrite. And no man made it.”

His information was obviously unexpected. Holo regarded him dubiously, but Lawrence ignored this, plucking the yellowish crystalline cube off the desk and tossing it at Holo.

“I suppose the wisewolf that guarantees the harvest would know little of rocks. That die-shaped stone was mined just as you see it.”

Holo smiled uncertainly, clearly disbelieving him, as she toyed with the pyrite.

“You should be able to tell that I’m not lying.”

Holo murmured quietly and held the pyrite up between her fingers.

“It’s not good for much, but it’s often sold as a souvenir. And since it looks like gold, sometimes it’s used by swindlers. Was anybody else buying it?”

“Oh, indeed. Many. The fortune-teller had great skill, enough to impress even me. He claimed that with dice like his, anyone could read the fates, so all that were gathered wanted the pyrite dice he was selling. He made up all manner of reasons why they were desirable.”

“You mean the dice?”

“Indeed. Even the ones less perfect in shape than this he claimed would ward away sickness or evil.”

Lawrence felt a certain professional respect for anyone who could invent such a lucrative business. Festivals and fairs often sparked strange fads.

The charged atmosphere made for great business, but pyrite—that was quite an angle, indeed.

“Amati bid down the price on that die, too.”

This genuinely surprised Lawrence. “He bid it down?”

“The crowd had gotten quite enthusiastic. I’d not seen that sort of competition before—it was something to see, indeed. I expect I could sell the die quite dear now.”

Lawrence thought of Batos, who traveled the Hyoram regions.

Did Batos know of this? If he had pyrite on hand or connections to gain it, there might be excellent business to be had here.

Lawrence had gotten that far in his train of thought when there was a knock at the door.

“Hm?” For a moment, he considered the possibility that Amati had spotted Holo’s ears and tail, but then he decided that the perceptive Holo would have noticed if that were the case.

He looked from the door to Holo and saw that she drew the bedclothes up over herself. Evidently the visitor at the door was not of the dangerous sort they had encountered in Pazzio.

Lawrence walked over to the door and opened it.

On the other side was Mark’s young apprentice.

“I apologize for calling so early in the morning. I have a message from my master.”

It was hardly “early in the morning,” and Lawrence couldn’t imagine what was so pressing that it would inspire Mark to send his apprentice on an errand just when the market would be opening.

He wondered if Mark had perhaps fallen gravely ill, but no—were that the case, the boy would not claim to have a message from his master.

Holo shifted underneath the blankets, popping her head out.

The boy noticed and glanced her way. Seeing a girl on a bed covered from the neck down in blankets was evidently more than he had bargained for. He turned away, red faced.

“So what was the message?”

“Oh, er, yes. He said you needed to know right away, so I ran over immediately. Actually—”

The shocking news had Lawrence running through the streets of Kumersun a moment later.