Whether or not Kieman understood, he closed his eyes and nodded, putting his index finger to his temple as if thinking on something.
As someone responsible for a trade guild branch, he would not find himself involved in such brutal dealings.
Lawrence was feeling something of a mix of envy and a vague sense of superiority when Kieman suddenly looked up.
“Understood. Now, then—”
“Yes?” answered Lawrence innocently, and then—
“Eve Bolan or the trade guild—which is your priority?”
This was the very definition of being thrown from one’s stride.
For a moment, Lawrence no longer understood who was in front of him.
But that was not because of his own surprise. There was a different reason for his sudden confusion.
Kieman’s affect had changed entirely.
Lawrence felt a cold sweat instantly break out on his back.
Up until that moment, he had simply thought that they were making small talk about Eve, but he was suddenly wondering if he had been seriously mistaken.
He thought he would be able to gather some information and call it a day.
That was not the case.
“Well…the guild, of course,” Lawrence managed to answer, and Kieman looked away without as much as nodding.
His brusque manner was just as it had been when Lawrence approached the counter and put the five trenni down.
Lawrence had been played.
And so unbelievably easily, too.
“In that case, I’m expecting you to behave in a manner befitting a member of this guild. Human connections are assets—they are capital. And large business requires large capital,” said Kieman with a brilliant smile.
His tone was pleasant, but it had a forceful finality to it.
Lawrence should not have let his guard down.
He had completely misjudged Eve’s importance, as well.
As a result, he had been cornered by Kieman into promising to put the trade guild first.
It made Lawrence feel incredibly uncomfortable, as if he had just been forced to sign a contract without reading it—and this feeling was no illusion.
“Eve was only just in a difficult place without anywhere to turn, you see,” said Kieman casually, as though he were making small talk.
Lawrence was quite sure that he was not merely being asked to put a good word in with Eve.
He had to expect something humiliating or at least partially so; otherwise there was no telling what they would use him for, thought Lawrence. He was about to open his mouth to speak, when—
“Mr. Kieman! Mr. Kieman!” came a voice from outside the room, accompanied by hurried footsteps.
Next there was an urgent knock at the door, and Kieman’s name was again called out.
Something had happened.
But Kieman only sipped his now-cool soup, entirely unruffled.
“But I’ve taken too much of your time. It seems I have other business to attend to, so if you’ll excuse me.”
He stood and walked toward the door.
A dazed Lawrence watched him leave, having completely lost the opportunity to speak further, when Kieman suddenly stopped and looked back. “Ah, yes—”
His manner was that of an actor required to perform constantly for a very discerning audience.
“—If you speak of this to anyone else…”
Kieman opened the door and listened to the whisper of the frantic-looking guild employee, giving a short nod without changing his expression.
Though they might lack wolf ears or tails, there are people in the world every bit the terrifying equal of the gods and spirits.
Lawrence felt it.
“…You’ll surely regret it,” Kieman finished, regarding Lawrence with a pleasant merchant’s smile.
The guild house was in an uproar, like unto a kicked hornet’s nest.
Merchants were coming through the front door, approaching the first-floor counter, leaving letters, and heading back out.
At that moment, if one wanted to know what was happening in Kerube, there was probably no better place to be than inside a trade house.
But as Lawrence watched Kieman work, he wasn’t thinking about the current crisis at all.
He was still preoccupied with the conversation he had just had.
While Lawrence’s calm face made it seem like he was attempting to discern what was happening in the town just as all the other merchants were, inside he was full of dread.
Kieman was trying to accomplish something using Lawrence’s connection to Eve. Lawrence had thought to use Eve as bait to draw information out of Kieman, but he had wound up getting snared himself.
Meanwhile, he felt as though the mood in the clamorous first floor of the trade house had changed.
Lawrence looked up and saw a familiar face peering in at him through the open front door.
It was Holo, whom he had told to meet with him back at the inn when her work was done.
“May I help you?” asked a hairy merchant who was standing next to the door, probably thinking she was a nun on pilgrimage who had lost track of her companion.
Holo seemed to consider how to answer for a moment but soon noticed Lawrence standing up from his chair.
“Excuse me, she’s an acquaintance of mine.”
There were many merchants who served the food and supply lines of knight companies and mercenaries, and if a group on pilgrimage were sufficiently well funded, it was not unheard of for them to have merchants that served in similar capacities.
Lawrence spoke up without any particular urgency, so the other merchants in the room simply assumed that was what he was.
Their slightly envious gazes were probably because of his being connected to such a profitable-looking customer.
The only exception was Kieman.
Lawrence felt the man’s gaze on his back as he left with Holo.
Though things outside seemed unchanged, looking closer, Lawrence noticed merchants and messengers carrying letters hurriedly to and from the trade house branches, red faced and rushed.
“What happened?” Lawrence asked as they walked slowly through the lively marketplace.
“With the town suddenly in such an uproar, I can hardly leave you on your own.”
“What do you mean?” he was about to reply, but as someone thoroughly involved in things, he found he could not object.
And there was no denying that they were getting involved.
“So, did you find anything out?” Lawrence asked, feigning composure.
Just as he thought Holo was puffing herself up in pride, she exhaled a deep sigh and shook her head. “I received but the most perfunctory answers. I thought with the abundance of charming fools like you, I’d have no trouble drawing them out, but with this sudden commotion, they simply sent me off. What is happening?”
Ignoring her baiting words, Lawrence replied only to the substantive part of her statement. “They sent you off? Out of the church?”
“Aye. I wondered if some great demon had appeared in the town to threaten the church…”
Lawrence had to laugh at the seriousness with which this statement came. “That would’ve been a calamity, indeed…but I do wonder what it was that involves the Church.”
“Once I was cast out of the church, I thought I would try to track the disturbance, but there was such a crowd that there was naught for it—not to mention the many men with swords and spears.”
“Soldiers?”
“Aye. All I could tell was that they were carrying something precious from the river, and it seemed they went into the church. It was a terrific uproar. Indeed, and that lad who wanted to make me his bride—when was it again?—he was there.”
“Back in Kumersun.” Lawrence made a pained face, not wanting to be reminded of such things. Holo chuckled.
But if something similar to that happened now, Lawrence doubted it would be as much of a crisis.
For one thing, even if it did, he
was closer to Holo now than he had been back then.
He could tell that Holo was bringing it up partially out of a sense of nostalgia.
“But what would happen to raise such a fuss?” wondered Lawrence.
“You may ask, but I have no answer. Even listening carefully to the crowds, I couldn’t make sense of it at all. I decided ’twould be better to return to you for the nonce.”
“Huh,” Lawrence murmured, trying to piece together what he had heard earlier at the trade house. “According to what they were saying when I arrived, it seems a ship from the north side was being towed by a ship from a company on the south side, but I assumed it was just talk of internal politics.”
Holo seemed not to understand and regarded Lawrence the way she did when she thought she was being teased.
“Explain it so I can understand,” her expression said.
“The north and south sides of this town are in conflict, right? But they can’t draw lines in the ocean. When the fish head north, they fish in the north, and when the fish are south, they go south. Whenever there’s fishing in rivers, lakes, or oceans, issues of territory are always a source of strife. That’s what I thought they were talking about. You’d hardly think that a trading company in the south would be so taken by a north-side fishing vessel out on the ocean that they’d buy it up on the spot, would you?”
Holo slowly nodded, as if vaguely understanding this talk of territory.
“But for them to tow a north-side ship in and bring ashore something that required armed escort, and for that to be the work of the Church instead of a trading company, it makes me wonder if they really caught a mermaid or something.”
“A mermaid?” Holo asked, her head tilted curiously.
Surprisingly, she seemed not to know what one was.
“They’re a kind of legendary creature. The sea immediately next to us is known as the Winfiel Strait, but around its northern mouth is a reef where there were constant shipwrecks. And there’s an old legend about them, that women with voices of unearthly beauty sing enchanted songs from that reef, causing sailors to lose their way and wreck their ships upon the rocks. And those sailors who wonder what beautiful women are doing on the wave-pounded reefs soon have their questions answered—the mermaids are human from the waist up, but below that, they have the tails of fish.”
Holo listened to the story, seeming honestly impressed.
It was not as if she were unfamiliar with the sea, but somehow she seemed never to have heard of mermaids.
If Holo had not heard of them, perhaps they really were nothing but a superstition, thought Lawrence.
Holo nodded and spoke. “Human males surely are easy to fool.”
It was true that old stories and legends were full of men being tricked by all sorts of spirits.
But Lawrence had sparred with Holo many times before and had a few choice words to counterattack with.
“Isn’t it better to stay carefree rather than constantly being on guard for deceptions?”
Lawrence was well aware that Holo was disposed to prefer a mild sunbeam to a violent gambling den.
After flicking her ears for a few moments beneath her hood, Holo spoke in a mischievous tone. “Aye, well, we enjoy our wine as well. Still,” she continued, smiling, “have you sworn to the God of the Church not to fall into their trap and not to fall into this one?”
“Huh?”
“I’m asking if you have anything to hide.”
“Gah—” Lawrence could not help himself from muttering, as Holo had once again struck at his inability to hide anything from her.
He had wanted to organize his thoughts more thoroughly before talking to Holo, but he told her everything about his exchange with Kieman.
“You fool.”
Lawrence wanted to protest that Kieman barely seemed human, but he knew that was no excuse.
Holo’s tone as she continued seemed unconcerned. “If it was such an unreasonable demand, why didn’t you simply refuse?”
When she said it like that, it sounded almost possible, which was a terrifying illusion.
But Lawrence soon regained his composure and scratched his head.
Merchants preferred to have contracts on paper, but before committing a promise to writing, they would use a verbal contract.
And its meaning was weighty indeed.
“Dozens, hundreds of merchants are members of the Rowen Trade Guild, including some who earn thousands of lumione in a year. It is nothing less than an entity that could squash me without a second thought. No matter what favor they might ask of me, I cannot refuse it. Absurd, you might think—but that is part of why promises are always kept.”
Even in the Church city of Ruvinheigen, when Lawrence was facing utter ruin and the possibility of life on a slave ship—even then he did not consider betraying the guild.
Trading companies were thus powerful allies and fearsome enemies, knights who wielded the pen and the coin.
“Hmph. Well, I suppose ’tis true that a youngster can hardly disobey a veteran.”
“You see?”
“Aye. But still, those in such position often have too much to lose and cannot risk bold moves. You wish to use your acquaintance with that vixen to accomplish something, but with others involved, perhaps they fear the trouble it might cause and thus threaten you.”
If the problem was that one tended to be controlled by various influences and implications, then someone not in that position would have been able to make a more objective judgment.
“And for those trying to hold the group together, keeping a weather eye on your underlings so they don’t make foolish mistakes is common sense. I doubt you’ve anything to worry about.”
Holo actually had held entire mountains and villages together, and so her words had a certain persuasiveness to them.
She was not some food- and wine-obsessed town lass who cried at any mention of her homeland.
“Anyway, whatever you decide, all I need do is act according to my own priorities,” said Holo, waving her hand dismissively and speeding up her walk.
Anger at her selfishness or callousness was the wrong answer.
And yet laughing it off as a joke was also the wrong answer.
Lawrence called out to her receding form. “Even if I were at the top of that list, I assume you wouldn’t admit it, would you?”
Holo stopped and looked back. “Aye. I cannot have you getting seduced.”
She flashed her fangs in a grin, and for a moment, a shock ran through him as he worried that she might be revealed.
But when he felt that chill down his spine, it was usually not because of his surroundings turning colder—rather it was his own temperature rising.
Lawrence gave a long-suffering sigh, drawing alongside Holo, who had slowed her walk.
He took her hand and spoke. “Are we finished here? Let’s meet back up with Col.”
Holo’s face as she looked at him was unsurprisingly angry.
“That’s my line, you dunce!”
Fortunately, the return crossing from the delta to the north side cost only a single fare.
When something happened in the town, the disturbance would spread rapidly.
And if that something was across the river, the urge to rubberneck inevitably spread like wildfire.
Nearly everyone wanted to get from the north side to the delta and from the delta to the south side, so ferries going the opposite direction were completely empty.
It would have been ridiculous not to haggle the ferryman’s fare down, and with the leftover coin, Lawrence bought Holo more roasted shellfish.
Lawrence barely had time to say, “You mustn’t tell Col,” before Holo had polished them off and was looking very satisfied indeed.
If they were going to pursue what was happening in the town, it might have seemed like the best course of action would be either to remain on the delta or cross to the south side, but listening to what Holo said made Lawrence think otherwise.
&nbs
p; As a precaution, he had not told Kieman where they were staying.
One never knew.
If Col was taken hostage, there was no telling what sort of unreasonable demands they might make—to say nothing of Holo.
Upon returning to the inn, they were greeted by an exhausted Col, who was sprawled facedown on the table.
“Ah, welcome back…” His face twitched strangely.
For a moment, Lawrence wondered what had happened, but then he saw the cheap pickled herring and battered, blackened copper coins on the table and could more or less guess.
He must have been very popular when posing as a beggar boy to listen to town gossip.
“…I’m tired.”
“That much is obvious, but did you hear anything to match the effort?”
Holo drew close to the tired Col and with both hands rubbed the dirt from the corners of his eyes.
When Lawrence had been just starting out as a merchant, he too had slept with a face tired from too many forced smiles, the muscles twitching and moving of their own accord.
Of course, back then he had been forced to massage his own face.
“Er…yes. It was just as you said, Mr. Lawrence. The Jean Company should be profiting, but I heard they don’t eat proper food, and they hardly ever give to charity.”
“Which means that they might even be taking those chicken eggs to market and selling them.”
As she rubbed Col’s face, Holo got a faraway look in her eye. “Then mayhap that feast was meant to court us.”
“Quite likely. So Reynolds may well be serious about the wolf remains.”
Or it was his last wish.
According to Kieman, Eve would only secretly negotiate with someone who could make the greatest profit in that particular moment.
As long as that was her method, no one would want to approach her without a very clear plan.
Contacting her with the claim that you would do anything as long as it expanded your business was a dangerous bet because there was no way of knowing whom she was involved with and to what end.
Which meant it was possible that Reynolds did indeed want Eve’s cooperation with the wolf remains.
It fit that Reynolds knew where the remains were but had no way of negotiating with the owner and wanted to ask Eve to act as a middleman.
Town of Strife I Page 12
