Town of Strife I

by Isuna Hasekura

  “I’m listening.”

  “I wonder.”

  “It’s probably worth investigating. It seems the bigwigs of the north side borrowed the money to build the marketplace, and they’re keen to pay it off. And it’s gotten so bad that over at the Jean Company, where we were mistaken for powerful, crafty merchants, they’ve got a mule yawning in front of the eaves ready to go, and they’re not even gathering their chickens’ eggs.”

  Holo chewed a cooked shellfish.

  In her place, Col spoke up. “His profits are being snatched away?”

  “Yes. The Jean Company deals exclusively with copper from the Roam River region, but the profits are being stolen away by the north-side bigwigs. Which means—”

  Holo washed down the shellfish with a slug of wine, then burped. “—Which means ’tis no surprise he went so angrily in for all this talk of absurd profit.”

  “Yes, well, that too. Also—” Lawrence brought a piece of fried, silver-scaled fish whose name he did not know to his mouth.

  The last time he had given a trenni to Holo, she had spent the entire sum on apples.

  She seemed as ignorant of the word restraint as ever.

  “—Reynolds seemed slightly suspicious.”

  “Mm. Well, he is surely hiding something.”

  Col looked up at Lawrence’s and Holo’s faces in surprise. “Huh?”

  “It’s not too hard to guess at what. If he were using the story of the wolf remains to hide something, then—?”

  “Hiding his ears without hiding his tail, eh?” Holo analogized as she flicked both.

  But their opponent was a merchant.

  “There’s a saying—‘A fearsome hawk is one that hides its talons.’ I think what he was hiding was not his ears, but his horns.”

  “Also, when you were parting, he gave you quite the fierce handshake, did he not?”

  So she had been watching that.

  Lawrence nodded, picking a fish scale out of his teeth. “When he told me to give his regards to Eve Bolan, he meant either her money, her business skill, or her connections.”

  “That vixen just spent all her money on those furs. We might not know the state of her coin purse, aye, but surely there are other places from which he would borrow money,” said Holo, directing a teasing smile at Lawrence.

  She was referring to Lawrence’s frantic attempts to borrow money when he himself had been on the verge of ruin.

  “…Which leaves either her talent or her connections. Either way, aren’t the actors and the stage a little too perfectly matched?”

  Holo gave only a thin smile and looked lazily outside.

  Lawrence, for his part, ate steadily from the food on the table while Col, cask held between his hands, looked back and forth between his companions.

  It was not as though they were quarreling.

  Col was a bright lad.

  While he didn’t usually think to doubt people, when that possibility was pointed out to him, he had a good enough head to think it through.

  Essentially, from their individual impressions, Holo and Lawrence had each drawn their own sketches.

  Col heard the fragments and wanted to know what sort of picture they added up to.

  “E-excuse me!” Col raised his hand and stood.

  No matter how strict and harsh the scholar, he surely could not fail to find this dedication charming.

  It was enough to make Lawrence wonder if jealous classmates had been the ones to silence Col.

  “Could…could Reynolds still be looking for the remains even now?”

  Holo did not reply.

  But having taken classes with strict, difficult professors, Col was undeterred. “If what Reynolds is hiding is the fact that he’s still searching for the remains, then he should have politely sent us on our way. So did he welcome us in because of Eve’s letter? If so, that would mean the reason he wanted your handshake when we were leaving was…”

  Col thought.

  He had no knowledge of how much talent as a merchant Eve possessed.

  Which meant he would draw conclusions based on his various impressions.

  How would this scene appear to Col’s eye?

  “The reason is because he wants your help in searching for the wolf remains, isn’t it?”

  This was just another question, and yet the impression it carried was very different.

  Holo took a drink of wine from her cask and looked at Col.

  Then, smiling faintly, she turned to Lawrence. “What of it?”

  Lawrence waved her off as if to say, “Do you even need to ask?”

  Regardless of whether or not it was the truth, it was an easy conclusion to make.

  “Also, if we imagine that, then it’s obvious why Eve so readily drafted a letter for us. Since this is Eve we’re talking about, she would’ve known ahead of time that Reynolds wanted to cooperate with her in finding the remains. But since the story is what it is, she was careful, dodging our questions. Or she might not believe it to be true. Either way, Reynolds wants Eve’s help badly. What’s Eve thinking? She’s as cunning as a wolf, so at first she probably turned him down because of the absurdity of the story, but then we appeared, and she thought, What if? But it would be unwise for her to ask Reynolds directly. So what does she do? Suddenly, some people appear right before her eyes, begging to be used.”

  “Aha,” pronounced Holo in a voice like an old woman’s, chuckling to herself.

  If this interpretation was on point, it showed that Reynolds definitely thought Eve was evincing some interest in the remains.

  That in turn explained the sudden change in Reynolds’s attitude when Col asked if he had found the remains.

  Reynolds had been surprised and dismayed—either angry at what would have been a halfhearted attempt at reconnaissance or imagining that Lawrence and company were taking their orders from Eve and acting as scouts.

  They had been treated to a meal not because they had been sent by Eve, but rather because Reynolds probably thought of them as simple sheep that Eve was carefully leading about.

  The obvious thing for him to do, then, would not be to engage in a lot of roundabout conversation and try to merely insinuate his true intent, but rather treat them to an easily understood meal.

  So the activities at the trading company could be dismantled.

  Even the most sinewy old goat could be butchered as long as one knew where to stick the knife.

  “So then, what shall we do?” asked Holo in a very matter-of-fact tone.

  But Lawrence got the sense that her amber eyes were tinged redder than usual.

  Her anger had surely returned the instant the notion that, despite deceiving them with its poor appearance, the Jean Company was still pursuing the wolf remains began to gather real weight.

  And there was no doubt that Holo was thinking, This time for certain.

  This time, for certain, she wanted to engage a vexing situation with her own fangs, claws, and brains. She would not let them get away with it.

  This she was surely thinking.

  And so she wanted her companion Lawrence’s answer.

  “It’s obvious…” Lawrence was about to continue when he felt another gaze upon him.

  Though he was keeping his mouth tightly shut, Col’s feelings seemed not terribly different from Holo’s.

  “We’ll investigate. And if there’s nothing there, that’s fine.”

  This was not one man’s merchant journey.

  It was not even the journey of two.

  It felt quite good to see everybody’s views in alignment and thereby decide on a course of action.

  He could see why the nobility competed so as to lead their knight brigades into battle.

  Though doing such things too often would be tiring.

  Holo had once shouldered the responsibility for an entire town, and it had turned bitter.

  In the end, she was never even thanked.

  He realized this was the first time he had been in thi
s position, and that when he had first met the crying, dejected Holo, he had barely managed to improvise any comfort for her at all.

  And yet he quite thoroughly thought of himself as Holo’s guardian, which allowed Holo to easily trip him up.

  Lawrence, who must have seemed barely older than Col to Holo, hid his smile from her.

  He then took a deep breath and straightened his expression, speaking like a military commander. “Right, let me explain each of your roles.”

  Col looked serious, and Holo feigned seriousness, as both of them turned their ears to Lawrence’s plan.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As Lawrence finished paying the tavern bill, Col and Holo amused themselves by trying to step on each other’s feet.

  Col stopped to look up at Lawrence, and Holo mercilessly took the opportunity to slam her foot down on Col’s.

  “I win!” she exclaimed proudly while Col humbly admitted, “I suppose I lost,” making it difficult to tell exactly who was the child.

  Of course, it is said the older one gets, the more one returns to childhood, and perhaps that was not wrong.

  “Now, then,” said Lawrence, and Col and Holo, looking almost like twins thanks to their similar heights, both turned back to him. “You’ve memorized your roles, then?”

  “Yes!”

  “Aye.”

  Col’s answer was the swifter.

  Lawrence had a sudden vision of what he must have looked like as a student in the capital of learning, Aquent.

  By contrast, Holo’s answer was curt and rude, and she yawned loudly.

  “I’m a little nervous,” confessed Col.

  “Don’t worry. If there’s one piece of advice I can give, it’s that the secret to telling a lie is telling yourself that depending on how you think about it, it’s actually the truth. That way you’re not actually lying,” Lawrence advised in response to Col’s uncertain smile.

  “Er…no, I’m all right. I’ll make sure to gather all the stories.”

  The boy seemed like a young knight bracing himself for his first battle. Lawrence patted his shoulder. “I’m sure you will,” he added.

  To Lawrence’s eye, Col would mature to match as much responsibility as he was given.

  He was not a mere slate-toting, chalk-dusted boy from Aquent.

  He possessed the practical skills he had managed to gather after being deceived, expelled, and forced to travel.

  Lawrence said he was sure Col would perform well, and it was no lie.

  “So, we’ll meet again in the evening.”

  “Yes.” Col nodded, his expression entirely different from when he had been trying to step on Holo’s feet, and walked off boldly.

  Though his receding form was small, it bore a certain dignity.

  Lawrence barely had time to wonder what his own back would have looked like at that age when he felt a tug at his sleeve.

  It was Holo, and though she was hardly a working woman trying to lure in a customer, somehow she seemed even more vicious than that.

  “So, shall I be off then, too?”

  “Er, yes.”

  Holo strode off immediately, then looked back at Lawrence, whose feet were a bit slower. “Hmm?” she queried.

  She was so fond of Col, and yet when it came time to put him through hardship, she was happy to do so.

  Or was it that she simply thought that highly of him?

  Lawrence didn’t think poorly of the boy himself, but he found it harder to trust so completely.

  “Will you really be all right on your own?” Lawrence could not prevent himself from asking.

  They were on their way to the landing for the ferry headed to the south side of the town.

  Since their collective had the advantage of containing three people, it would have been the height of stupidity to move in a group, so they had decided to split up to gather information.

  Col would be posing as a traveling beggar and head to the north side to find out what the other beggars had to say about the Jean Company.

  Holo would pretend to be a nun journeying north and head for the south-side church to determine its influence in the upper regions of the Roef and Roam Rivers.

  And Lawrence would make for the Rowan Trade Guild branch in the delta marketplace to see how the Jean Company’s business and the wolf remains were connected.

  Both Holo and Col were more capable than he was, so there was probably no need for concern.

  But Holo, with her ears and tail, was the personification of pagan faith.

  Despite her being the sharpest talker and thinker of all of them, Lawrence was still uneasy at the prospect of letting her go alone.

  “Perhaps—perhaps I should go with you—”

  Holo was a few steps ahead of Lawrence as she began walking, cutting through the crowd.

  When she looked back at him, he stopped short of continuing his statement.

  “So ’tis well and good for the boy Col to go off on his own, but you haven’t the conviction to let me go alone?” Her amber eyes were narrowed and flashed red.

  Past her, Lawrence could see the landing for the ferry, livelier than its northbound counterpart.

  “That’s not what I meant, but…”

  “Aye, and what did you mean?”

  Even if he could rationalize this or that aspect of his worry for Holo, at its core the concern was irrational.

  But more importantly, Holo was angry.

  “I’m sorry,” he answered, and Holo promptly poked him in the chest.

  “You fool.”

  “—?”

  Holo glared at him, angrier every moment, then suddenly turned away indignantly.

  Lawrence rubbed the spot on his chest she had inexplicably prodded, and after a moment, Holo sighed and looked back at him. “You truly are a terribly clumsy ruler.”

  “Ruler?”

  “A terribly clumsy one, yes,” she repeated, and Lawrence scratched his head. “Firstly, I haven’t the faintest notion why you wouldn’t let me go alone in this situation.”

  As ever, Lawrence did not understand what she was talking about. “Well, I mean…just, if something were to happen…”

  “Aye, and the same holds true for Col. Listen, you—”

  “A-all right…” Lawrence straightened himself in response to Holo’s sudden awkwardness, as if she were trying to articulate something difficult to express.

  Holo turned her gaze from the riverbank back to Lawrence, and he found her countenance accusatory.

  If his memory served, she was trying to hide her embarrassment over something.

  “You’re the general awaiting my report, are you not? And Col and I are your hands. So if you’ll only put us each to hard use, you’d better hold our reins.”

  Lawrence could see the ferry drift into view, approaching the dock as it crossed the busy river.

  At the same time, he had a vague sense of what Holo meant. “Because success and wanting me to praise you are the same?”

  Holo made a pained expression and looked away. So that had to be it.

  And it was probably true.

  He had but to praise Holo if she were more successful than Col and console her if she failed.

  But if he helped Holo with her duty, Col would be the only one praised or consoled.

  She was right about that, Lawrence knew, but there was still something he did not understand—and that was the reason why Holo, whose embarrassment was no act, would tell him this.

  The ferry had arrived at the pier, but owing to the crowd, they had to wait in line.

  Holo looked like she was making a great effort not to let her ears and tail move about too much beneath her robe. “You wish to have a shop of your own someday, do you not? If so, you’ve much to learn about using others,” she said.

  “Ah—” Lawrence couldn’t help but cover his mouth.

  She was right.

  If he had a shop, he would have to employ other people.

  Sometimes he would need to control othe
rs, and other times he would require their loyalty.

  And though Lawrence was accustomed to doing so one-on-one, when it came to larger groups of people, he had never even thought about it.

  “And yet you dare to take hold of my reins?” Holo put a hand on her hip and cocked her head in mock disbelief.

  Lawrence surrendered, though he kept his eye on the line, which had started to move. “That’s what’s so charming about me, right?” he asked with a taciturn mien, which did not appear to give Holo any great pleasure, and she replied with her head still cocked.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Well, then, I’m counting on you.”

  “I can still see the worry in your face, but I shall take your words for what they’re worth.”

  Lawrence paid the ferryman, explaining the circumstances and giving him enough for the return trip.

  “Some wheat bread would be nice for dinner.”

  “If you succeed, yes,” said Lawrence.

  At this, Holo left him with a smile, and the hem of her robe whirled as she hopped aboard the ferry.

  The town of Kerube was divided north from south by the river, and there was no church on the north side.

  That was evidence that most pagans lived on the north side, while Church adherents were more prevalent on the south side. Historically, this evidently came from the fact that orthodox merchants tended to come up from the south and thus bought land and settled on the south side of the town.

  But as the north and south sides became more distinct, it became tempting to want to look at the town as a microcosm of the world.

  On the north side, building heights and street widths were highly varied, while on the south side they were precisely regulated, the neat rows of buildings lining the streets. Lawrence was sure there were no bored-looking mules yawning in front of loading docks on the south side.

  It was hard to tell from the north side, but from the delta marketplace, he could clearly see the towering spire that the south-side church had collected sufficient tithes to build, its height all too obviously reaching for the heavens, and within it, there in the closest place in the town to God, hung a beautiful golden bell.

  Dressed as a nun, Holo was apparently going to try to collect information by claiming she was returning from the south to her homeland in the north, and asking whether her town was still under pagan control. Lawrence had carefully explained to her what sorts of questions Church people were likely to ask her, but even without that advice, Holo was more than quick tongued enough to get the information they needed.