The jealous gazes felt like frostbite. Lawrence itched under them; there was no telling how badly Holo was affected. And it was hardly surprising that Col did not dare look up.
“Here we are.” Piasky stopped in front of a room in the very center of the third floor. The young merchant straightened his collar and then knocked. “Excuse us.”
Entering the room, the scents of honey and milk mingled with spices reached Lawrence’s nose.
It was the smell of men who insisted that food without spices like pepper and saffron was not food for humans at all.
Sitting around the large round table in the middle of the spacious room were four middle-aged men. Each of them had the air of a man who owned his own large shop, and they all looked quite tired of life in this snowbound abbey.
However, that not a single one of them so much as glanced toward Piasky or Lawrence had nothing to do with that.
“I, Lag Piasky, humbly approach.”
“There’s no time. Spare us your pleasantries.” A stocky, well-fed man whose hair curled around his ears gestured for Piasky to stop, then narrowed his eyes and looked at Lawrence. “So you’re from Rowen, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.” The man asked what he wanted answered but gave no reply himself. The other men at the table sat there watching Lawrence, not so much as reaching for their drinks.
“May I speak?” said Piasky, undaunted, at which the man raised his hand as though telling him to go on. “Thank you for sparing us some of your time to hear us out. First, this—” he said, producing a sheaf of parchment from under his arm, whereupon a servant standing against the wall came to receive it.
It was placed like a plate of so much bread on the round table, whereupon each man reached lazily out to take a parchment, their eyes narrowing as they glanced over the characters.
“Copies of their ledger, eh? What of it?” said another man, this one thin and nervous-looking, sounding already bored. His eyes were sunken, and the wrinkles around them looked almost scaly.
The other men had a similar affect, and after giving the parchments a look, they tossed them back on the table.
“There was a payment for empty crates. We also discovered payments for multiple items at higher than market value.”
The four men did not bother meeting each other’s gaze. One of them spoke up to Piasky, evidently acting as the representative of their consensus. “That’s not such a rare occurrence from places unable to escape the yoke of taxation.”
“Yes, of course.”
“So what is the meaning of showing us this now?”
Piasky took a breath, pierced by the man’s gaze. Now it was Lawrence’s job to speak.
“We believe the abbey is trying to hide not its earnings, but its expenditures.”
The four men’s gazes all fixed on the outsider who spoke up—though it was too early to tell whether out of interest or anger.
“Expenditures?”
“Yes,” Lawrence answered, whereupon another man spoke.
“You said you were from Rowen. Do you speak for Lord Goldens?”
That was the name of the man who controlled the Rowen Trade Guild from a seat at his own round table. He was far, far above Lawrence, possibly even a match for the men sitting around this table.
“No, I do not.”
“So, who then?” Perhaps suspicious of another organization trying to stick its nose in, the man’s tone was extremely harsh. Theirs was the banner of the moon and shield. No guildsman would be allowed to defy that banner.
“Allow me to correct myself. I am a stray traveling merchant.”
“And how are we to believe that?”
Of course.
“Pardon me,” said Lawrence, reaching for the dagger at his waist. He pulled it from its sheath and unhesitatingly put its tip to the palm of his left hand. “If you’ll give me parchment, I’ll be happy to sign in blood.”
If a traveling merchant left his guild, he would have nowhere to go.
Three of the four men turned away in immediate disdain.
“You there.” The fourth gestured with a jerk of his chin to the servant standing against the wall, who immediately left the room. Perhaps he had been sent to fetch a bandage.
“Sometimes you must take risks while you’re young enough to do so. I’ll listen to your tale out of respect for your name, not Rowen’s.”
If Lawrence had not smiled, he would have been lying. “My name is Kraft Lawrence.”
When the servant returned with the bandage, Holo snatched Lawrence’s hand away and began wrapping it, and he knew she would not have done so unless she was giving his performance high marks.
“Kraft Lawrence, what have you and our own Lag Piasky concluded? You said the abbey is hiding its own expenditures. As far as paying for empty crates or paying above market value, these things are not so unusual in the context of paying royal taxation. It’s not worth any special attention.”
“True, if they were merely evading taxation.”
“And what else might they be hiding?”
Having finished wrapping his hand, Holo lightly patted it, as if encouraging him. Heartened, he replied further.
“The purchase of an expensive item. Something whose existence had to be kept a secret.”
The four men shared a brief glance. “An item? What sort of item would that be?”
Their interest had been piqued.
Lawrence clenched his left hand now that Holo had wrapped it in bandages. “The bones of a wolf. The remains of a creature known as a god by the pagans that infest the northlands.”
He had said it.
Lawrence took a breath. If he did not press the issue, his words would be dismissed as a joke.
“This is no baseless rumor. Across the strait is the port town of Kerube, where the Jean Company runs a shop. I suspect you may have already heard of this, but not long ago there was a great clamor about a narwhal and into that whirlpool the Jean Company put fifteen hundred lumione.”
The four men were silent.
Lawrence took another breath and continued.
“They had received backing from the Debau Company in the town of Lesko, up the Roef River, a tributary of the Roam River. Their aim was nothing less than the purchase of those same wolf bones.”
Lawrence’s only worry was that he was speaking too quickly. Save that, he was confident.
He was sure that the higher-ups of the Ruvik Alliance had heard tell of the rumors surrounding the wolf bones, and they were no doubt aware of the Debau Company, who controlled the mines of the north.
Even if they did not immediately believe him, they would have to admit Lawrence was including too much detail for his tale to be simply fabricated. Of that much, he was sure.
“So what say you to this?”
But there was no response forthcoming. The room was suffused with slackness that felt almost tired.
Piasky looked at him. Was there nothing else to say? If they could not convince these men, no further progress was possible.
Lawrence was about to nervously open his mouth, but then he was interrupted—by Holo.
“If you have any thoughts, please tell us.”
All four of them looked at Holo, shocked. But the wisewolf was undaunted.
“God has told us never to pretend disinterest.”
Only a jester or a plain fool would make a joke in a place like this. The four men sitting around the table were not falsely prideful—their confidence was entirely warranted.
But that only held true in the secular world, and there was a merciless fact that applied to the current situation. This was an abbey, and monks here prayed to a being above even creatures like Holo and Huskins—the one true God!
“Miss…no, excuse me, devout sister who lives by her daily prayers—just what do you mean?”
“God is a being whose powers far outstrip those of man. Though my eyes are hidden by the hood I wear and though my head is always bowed, by relying on God’s
power, it is mere child’s play to see through all of this.”
Strangeness had its own power.
Even the overpowering aura that emanated invisibly from the four sitting at the table came not just from Lawrence and Piasky’s respect, but also their own belief in their value.
For one to simply not acknowledge that, she was either a stunted fool or—or someone who lived by a different philosophy entirely.
“Well…thank you for your thoughts, sister.”
When a man of power was faced with a beardless lad who spoke impudently, it was simple enough to put him back in his place with a harsh word or two. But when it was a girl, harsh words could make one look worse.
A mere girl needed to be dealt with using an indulgent smile and a patronizing chuckle before setting her in the corner like a flower in a vase.
Lawrence himself had until recently labored under such misapprehensions, but he could not let himself laugh at these men who were now trapped in the same place with their stiff smiles.
“So, shall I ask again, then?”
Four rigid faces reddened, and as they were all quite pale to begin with, it was all the more noticeable.
They were trapped between their stature, common sense, and their own dignity.
Even a poor blanket would warm when rubbed.
Was Holo planning to rile them up and then wait until they exploded before beating them down and forcing them to listen?
That would work in many situations, and if it worked here, it would have been quite the feat.
But this was no child’s quarrel. Lawrence was about to speak up when—
“No,” said one of the red-faced men through tightly drawn lips. “That’s quite all right.”
He raised his right hand to about shoulder height, whereupon the servant stationed against the wall quickly handed him a white kerchief.
After a quick blow of his nose, his face almost magically regained its former color. “That will be quite all right. I was simply reminded of something from twenty-two years ago.”
Another man sitting around the table raised an eyebrow.
“It reminded me of my wife when she and her dowry joined my house. Logic is not the only path to truth.”
A thick rumble reached Lawrence’s ears, and he realized it was the four men laughing.
“And indeed, common business decisions often surpass mere logic. Gentlemen,” he said as though making a proclamation at a round table meeting. “May I ask the final question?”
“No objections,” said the other three men after reaching a consensus.
The man turned his gaze to Lawrence. “Regarding all of this, Kraft Lawrence, I would ask you one thing.”
“Yes?” His hands were moist with blood and sweat.
“Pray tell, just what is it that you’ve discovered that gives you such confidence in this story?”
Lawrence immediately reached into his breast pocket and produced a single letter. It was the trump card that showed the story of the wolf bones was no mere fairy tale.
There in his hand were the signatures of Kieman and Eve, both names well-known across the Strait of Winfiel. Eve was even a former noblewoman of this land.
He had those signatures and Eve’s word that she had heard of the abbey purchasing the wolf bones. And to wrap all that up, he had a name.
“This letter was given to me by Fleur von Eiterzental Mariel Bolan.”
A long name was the proof of nobility but only to those who could understand what meaning it held.
The eyebrows of two of the men at the table rose, and Lawrence looked to the sheet of parchment that lay there on the table.
Knowing what sort of merchant Eve was was common knowledge for anyone doing business in Winfiel. And here was a traveling merchant to whom she had given her secret full name.
Two of the men at the table shared a look, and then three of them nodded slightly.
The moment Lawrence dared to think he had won—
“Anything else?”
“—?” Lawrence nearly repeated the question back but managed to stop himself with a short cough.
He cleared his throat several times before gesturing toward the table with his empty hand to pardon himself, all of which were unconscious habits drilled into him over years of negotiations.
Lawrence’s mind was like a blank white sheet of paper.
“Anything else?” the most important-seeming man at the table had asked.
Was this not enough?
Lawrence had played his trump card—and in the best possible moment, under the best possible circumstances. If this was not enough, then there was nothing else he could do.
Keen gazes regarded him from the round table.
“The Wolf and the Keen Eye—it’s true that the names of two such famous merchants carry some weight. But if we are to be basing our decisions on the weights of names, there are others to whom we should lend our ear. Even here.”
Negotiations were the merchants’ battleground.
Just as a moment’s inattention by a soldier on the battlefield could invite death; likewise, if a merchant was distracted during a negotiation, the contract could be lost.
Lawrence’s eyes had been looking elsewhere the moment the men replied, and thus was he slain by those who sat at the round table. His confidence in himself was gone, and the words of another had made him seem a fool.
Sighs were audible from the round table. Lawrence could see Piasky opening his mouth to speak. It felt as though the horizon was shifting crazily and time was slowing down.
If the names of Kieman and Eve could not win them trust, there was nothing to be done.
They had failed.
Then, just when Lawrence was mentally murmuring the words to himself—
“Lawrence.”
It was a familiar voice, saying a very unfamiliar thing.
He looked, and it was Holo next to him.
Holo fixed Lawrence firmly in her gaze, her eyes exasperated. He could hear the sound of various items being cleared from the table and the sound of the door to the room opening, then closing.
But Lawrence kept looking back into Holo’s eyes—into those exasperated, red-tinged amber eyes.
Whenever those eyes looked at Lawrence, they always had the answer. Lawrence simply had not realized it yet, but the simple, almost complete answer was always right there.
This fight was not over. He had only to believe that.
Seize the initiative! Think back on the conversation!
Lawrence wracked his brains. There was no time—but merchants are notoriously bad at giving up.
“Wait, also…!” he shouted as loud as his voice would go.
All present flinched and looked at him. They looked as surprised as they would have been if a dead man had come back to life—which was not so very far from the truth. A traveling merchant whose gaze wavers in the middle of a negotiation was a rotting corpse.
After Lawrence’s outburst, no further words would come, so the assembled eyes and ears were treated to silence.
But his nervously throbbing left hand was the proof that he was still alive. And the hand that grasped his own reminded him that he wasn’t alone.
“I’ve seen a wolf.”
It was but a moment, but silence felt as though it lasted for eternity.
“A wolf?”
“A giant wolf.”
Lawrence was not entirely sure why he chose those words. He was only sure that they were the right ones, which was why he had been able to say them.
They had been the answer right from the beginning. What had the men around the table said when they had first decided to hear him out? They had said they would respect his name.
No wonder even Holo had become exasperated with him producing a parchment with others’ names on it. They hadn’t wanted him to produce proof; instead, they wanted to hear the reason why he personally had such conviction.
“That wolf is why I’m traveling. That giant wolf.”
He wondered if they would think he had lost his mind out of nervousness. Or if they would think he was trying to grab attention with an absurd claim.
Under normal circumstances, his uncertainty would have shown on his face. But since he was not lying, there was no need for uncertainty.
“…Were you born in the north?” one of the men asked.
“These two were.” Lawrence indicated Holo and Col, and the four men narrowed their eyes as though looking at something far away. As though Holo and Col were actually in the far-off northlands.
Piasky seemed to be agonizing over when to speak up. Lawrence himself felt as though he were treading on thin ice without looking at his feet, so no wonder it was too terrifying for anyone else to watch.
The four men closed their eyes and were silent.
Lawrence stood there, standing tall. There was no logic to what he was doing.
“I see,” said one shortly, breaking the silence. “I see. I suppose this, too, is fate.”
“God’s blessings be upon us!”
Lawrence was sure he was not the only one who found this reply ominous.
Four men sat at the round table, men whose clothes were suffused with the scent of pepper and saffron, their tones refined and fluid.
“The truth will always be revealed. No matter how extraordinary it may be.”
“…Wha—?”
“We’ve been waiting. Or perhaps that’s not quite it—perhaps it’s better to say we’ve been unable to make up our minds.”
“What do you…?” Lawrence and Piasky both murmured, then looked at each other.
They might have drooped a bit with age, but the ears of the men around the table were still in good order.
“We had word that the Brondel Abbey had purchased the bones of a wolf. But the decision to act carried consequences too heavy for the four of us to bear. We couldn’t commit to the decision. You see…” The man stared at Lawrence, but while his gaze was stern, it was also somehow gentle. “…We’re old, and we’d unearthed the information with rusty tools and could not trust it. But if someone younger were to reach the same conclusion without relying on logic alone, then we could believe it.”
“S-so…”
Spice and Wolf, Vol. 10 Page 19
