Holo’s mood changed more quickly than the mountain weather.
Was he just slow? Lawrence wondered, but then he told himself that this was just the caprice of a maiden’s heart.
Though it was entirely unclear whether she was in fact a maiden, he silently added.
“Is this all of them?” Holo asked, having finished looking through the papers. In the end, she had found two of note.
Combined with what Lawrence had found, there were seven sheets in total.
As long as it wasn’t an especially sloppy company, similar documents would be left in similar locations. Whoever had stolen these papers from the company would have just grabbed whatever they could grab, without looking carefully at the contents.
Just as Lawrence had guessed, there was an order sheet and a memorandum for the previous year’s summer and another order sheet for the winter of the year before that.
And each time, they ordered fifty-seven chests from the copper suppliers and sent sixty chests of copper coin to the kingdom of Winfiel.
Since Winfiel would hardly be importing used, worn-out coins, each chest would have contained newly minted currency.
Those three extra chests were coming from somewhere – but there were no papers that said where.
“It doesn’t seem as though there was anything decisive here.”
“Not really. But even if the Jean Company’s name isn’t on them, there may be some related documents in here.”
“Oh ho. Well, shall we?”
“Still, this may be proof that they really are illegally minting currency,” Lawrence murmured to himself, an impatient Holo by his side.
Minting a large amount would be easily noticed, but if it was just a bit, the company might get away with it.
Alternatively, they might be experimenting with copper as a prelude to illegally producing gold coins.
The possibilities mounted in Lawrence’s imagination – he thought of what information he would need to prove each scenario and what information he lacked. It was just as he was wondering if there was a different way to think about it entirely that he realized Holo, still next to him, was obviously bored.
“…” Holo cocked her head to crack her neck audibly, an expression of ill humor on her face. “Are you truly not going to chase after that vixen?”
If so, you’ll never hear the end of it, she meant.
“… If you’ve any thoughts, you should share them,” said Lawrence.
Holo raised her eyebrows, then with an exasperated expression rested her elbow on her knee and cupped her chin in her hand. She looked like a gambler frustrated at a dice roll gone badly.
Lawrence’s roll had not been a good one, it seemed.
“Aye, so long as they have something to do with huge profits for you.”
“… And you just said you didn’t want that. And also–”
“Hmm?”
“You don’t mind using your head, do you? It’s a way to kill time,” said Lawrence.
Holo’s eyes widened enough to surprise Lawrence, and she snapped her mouth shut as though she’d been about to say something. She closed her eyes, folded the paper sheaf she held shut, then grasped the edges of her hood and drew it over her face.
“Wh-what is it?” Lawrence asked in spite of himself.
Her ears and tail flicked around noisily. When she brought her hands down from her hood, her eyes blazed with anger.
As those still, unwavering eyes looked at him, Lawrence couldn’t help but verbally retreat. “… Wh-why are you so angry?”
Her normally amber eyes seemed more like red-hot iron. “Angry? Angry, did you say?”
Just when Lawrence realized he had well and truly roused her anger, the vigor drained from her bristling fur as quickly as it had arrived.
It was as though a too-full water skin had popped.
Holo looked at him with ghostlike eyes, now so dispirited that it seemed she had been worn out in but a moment. “You… you would hardly understand why I would say this, anyway.”
Holo gave him a sidelong glance and sighed audibly.
She was like a master who’d lost the energy to be angry with a particularly incompetent apprentice.
And yet Lawrence had a thought.
She’s saying these things because she’s bored and wants me to pay attention to her, he thought.
He said nothing, though – not because he was afraid that saying so would make her still angrier, but rather because Holo had already seen right through him and bared her fangs in warning. “You’d do well to mind your words.”
When Lawrence had entered his apprenticeship under a master, the thing he hated more than all else was being asked questions.
If he answered wrong, he was cuffed, and silence earned him a kick.
Evidently Lawrence’s thinking was wrong.
Which meant the only alternative was silence.
“You truly do not understand?”
Lawrence sifted through his memories.
He straightened despite himself and averted his gaze.
“’Tis all right if you don’t.”
At the unexpected words, Lawrence turned back to her. At that point, Holo added with a serious face, “But I won’t speak to you until you do.”
“Wha–?” Before Lawrence could even begin to ask why she would do something so childish, Holo moved away from him, snatching up the blanket that they shared and wrapping it around herself.
Lawrence was dumbfounded.
He very nearly asked her if she was joking, but stopped himself at the last moment. Holo was as stubborn as a child. If she said she wouldn’t speak to him, then she wouldn’t speak to him.
However, this was still better than being suddenly ignored. She had gone to the trouble of declaring her intent, a high-level tactic.
Engaging her over her childishly inflammatory words would be unseemly, and ignoring her in retaliation would be even more immature. And having been visibly disturbed by her declaration that she would no longer speak to him, he could hardly regain control.
Looking down at the papers in his hand, Lawrence sighed. He had thought that puzzling over this mystery would be amusing enough, but it seemed not to be to Holo’s liking. She’d been happy enough to sift through the papers with him, so what was so upsetting about thinking through the various possibilities?
For Lawrence’s part, he imagined that turning the various pointless things over in their minds would be the more fun part. At the very least, Lawrence would learn a thing or two, thanks to Holo’s first-rate mind.
Or perhaps she’d simply learned that ill-conceived thinking led to getting involved in dangerous business.
Lawrence didn’t understand Holo’s mind.
He placed the Jean Company paperwork atop the other papers as a prelude to tidying up.
Holo didn’t so much as glance at him. Even for a merchant, skilled as a matter of course in understanding the moods of others, Holo was no ordinary challenge. Terrible punishment awaited any misstep.
As Lawrence was thinking it over, Holo suddenly looked up.
Though she had moved away from him, the boat’s deck was not large. Lawrence soon noticed and followed her gaze.
She was looking downriver.
Just as he wondered if she was concerned about a boat that was heading downriver ahead of them, he heard a plop-plop sound, as though something was spilling.
He realized it was actually a horse’s galloping footfalls just as that same horse came into view, flying like an arrow along the road that ran alongside the river, and bound upriver.
“What’s this?” Lawrence murmured, and when there was no reply from Holo, he looked over in her direction, only to remember that she wasn’t speaking to him.
It was like a conditioned response.
He had planned to pass it off as merely talking to himself, but there was just no way to hide it.
No doubt he’d be mocked for this later.
Thinking about it was depressing, b
ut when he thought about having been unable to solve the problem, it was a bit frightening.
Holo emerged from the blanket, without paying Lawrence the slightest heed, and lightly stepped up onto the dock the boat had moored at.
The horse’s gallop slowed as it approached the dock, and just before the animal stopped, its rider dismounted. The man wore a mantle wrapped around his shoulders, and from his clothes, a single look made it obvious he was a boatman. He seemed to know Ragusa, as Ragusa and Col walked up the dock onto land to greet the man. Without exchanging any pleasantries, Ragusa and the newcomer were soon asking questions and engaging in conversation.
Col had no way to include himself, so perhaps trying to keep out of the way, he carefully moved away from the two men and stood on the dock.
If it had been Lawrence, he would absolutely have tried to eavesdrop on the conversation – so Col’s restraint was laudable.
Whether or not she had made the same estimation, Holo went over to Col and whispered something into his ear.
Lawrence couldn’t hear what they were saying, of course, but Col looked up at Holo, surprised, then over to Lawrence himself, as though the topic somehow involved him.
In these circumstances, it could hardly be anything friendly.
Holo whispered in Col’s ear again, and he nodded seriously.
She never once looked back in Lawrence’s direction.
Though he wasn’t worried about Holo disappearing forever the way he had worried in the past, that just gave him a worse feeling about all of this – because Holo knew all of the cards in his hand.
“Right – ahoy! Master!” Evidently the boatmen had finished their talking with characteristic speed, and Ragusa now turned and called out to Lawrence with a wave of his hand.
There was nothing else for Lawrence to do but climb up on the dock.
Holo was standing next to Col, their hands joined.
The two looked more like siblings than anything else, so the sight did not disturb Lawrence the way seeing her with Amati had.
“What is it?”
“Ah, my apologies. It looks like we’re going to be walking a bit.”
“Walking?” Lawrence asked as the other man, his business concluded, remounted his horse and spurred it farther upriver.
“A big ship’s run aground, it seems. Now the whole river’s jammed. Everybody was so greedy about getting their furs through, they didn’t notice until it was too late, and it just started piling up. Apparently there’s a sunken ship on the river’s floor now, and they can’t find the sunken ship’s boatman anywhere, so there may have been some kind of disturbance.”
“That’s…”
In times of war or when a mercenary troupe was starving, they would attack merchant vessels in this way.
Given the endless and gently sloping plains of this region, the river was shallow and gentle enough that it could be rendered impassable with a single strike.
So a single boat would feign distress and sink, bringing the boats behind it to a standstill, whereupon those boats would be attacked. Naturally doing such things during peacetime would earn one untold amounts of enmity from the landholders who collected taxes from the region.
However, Lawrence could think of one person who was reckless enough to do it.
There was nothing left to do but take off hat and cloak and wave them about.
It was enough to make Lawrence genuinely want to cheer Eve on.
“So, what’ll it be?” asked Ragusa.
He was clearly asking whether they could continue to Kerube or not. They had not come half the way to their destination – but that said, it would not be a short walk back to Lenos, either.
If they had a horse it would be different, but more of the boatmen were willing to carry cargo than passengers.
“Fortunately, there’s no word of mercenaries in the area, so things should be restored soon. But the other boats loaded with cargo are at a standstill. Aside from the ones who are desperate enough to jump into the water and swim ashore, they’re not going anywhere. If I can unload some of the goods from this boat, I’ll have some excess carrying space, which I want to use to carry people and cargo from the grounded boats to the shore. So – I’m sorry, but I’ll need you to walk.”
After having taken them on board, it was stunningly disgraceful for a boatman to ask his passengers to go ashore and walk. It hardly mattered whether the circumstances were his fault or not.
Ragusa was a boatman who lived within that value system, and his face was clouded.
“I am a merchant, so if you’ll lower your fee, I’ll walk as much as I need to.”
It wasn’t quite a friendship between men of different occupations, but Ragusa smiled ruefully and shook hands with Lawrence nonetheless.
The problem was Holo, but before Lawrence could turn to her, Ragusa continued speaking. “Still, I can’t very well force a maiden to walk in this cold without any preparation. I hear there are some rather devout fellows stuck on that river. If a girl you could mistake for a goddess were riding along with me, I’m sure it’d pick up their spirits.”
Lawrence was a bit relieved.
His stomach hurt at the mere thought of walking along with a silent, uncooperative Holo, and even if she’d been happy, trudging around in this cold would surely have brought out her displeasure.
“So,” said Ragusa, “in that case, first I’ll need to unload the cargo.”
“I’ll help.”
“Hey now, that makes it sound like I was trying to get you to help me.” Ragusa smiled.
Lawrence could only be impressed – he could hardly refuse to help now.
“I said ‘unload,’ but it’s really just the wheat and beans. The chests can stay where they are.”
“Shall we get started, then?” said Lawrence, glancing back at the cargo on the boat.
“Aye, lets!” called out Ragusa. “By the by, I couldn’t help overhearing your fun little chat earlier.”
“Wha–?” His exchange with Holo had been embarrassing enough that Lawrence was suddenly very flustered.
“Ah, don’t worry! I didn’t hear anything you’d be worried about,” said Ragusa with a sheepish grin. “It was just about the eni.”
“The eni?”
“Aye. It just so happens that’s what I’m carrying right now.”
Lawrence had wondered if those chests contained coins, but this was a coincidence indeed.
Either that, or Ragusa was teasing, having a bit of fun at Lawrence’s expense – but as Lawrence thought it over, that seemed unlikely.
If the chests had contained gold or silver coin, they would’ve been attended by guards, and a merchant like Lawrence would never have been allowed to ride in the same boat.
And Ragusa’s boat was loaded with fully ten chests. If fifty-seven chests were headed downriver in total, that meant roughly four other vessels of this size would be needed.
And because their cargo would have been decided ahead of time, it would be difficult for them to load up on furs for a quick profit. So they would have been tied up at port as usual, which would have made it all the more likely that Lawrence’s eye would fall upon one of them.
This all stood to reason – and if it was so, then Ragusa might have some new information.
Lawrence looked at Ragusa with his merchant’s eye, and it seemed that Ragusa was waiting for this.
Ragusa suggested with a wink that they first unload the cargo, signaling to Col and Holo (who had been listening to the conversation) to help, then placed his hand on Lawrence’s shoulder and brought his face conspiratorially near. “I’ve a bit of interest in the matter myself. For two years now, that same copper coin has been moved on a fixed day, in a fixed amount – fifty-seven chests, downriver, to the Jean Company, but I’d never given much thought to how many chests it was in total. It was fifty-seven chests, divided up into a certain amount, then carried downriver.”
Holo was bringing Col a bit of food, water, and wine and givin
g him her other robe to wear – the expensive one she’d had made with Lawrence’s money.
Surprised, Col tried to refuse, but in the end, he was forced to put it on.
Col admittedly looked a bit shabby.
He seemed to have some trouble walking in the robe; perhaps it was his first time wearing a long-hemmed article.
“Those fifty-seven chests become sixty when they leave the Jean Company, which means either somebody is secretly carrying more, or the Jean Company is scheming at something.”
Returning to the boat, Ragusa stepped lightly aboard and hefted a sack of wheat, which Lawrence took and left on the dock.
Col saw this and quickly hauled out the bean sacks, which he could carry.
The boy’s willingness to work hard impressed Lawrence, but he wondered if Col was just trying to eavesdrop on the conversation between him and Ragusa.
“I appreciate the Jean Company always giving me this cargo, and I trust my fellow boatmen doing the same job. But it’s these times. Surely God would forgive us being forced to take on a bad partner, would he not?”
Lawrence wasn’t Col, but he could certainly still be fooled.
“Of course, it’s too soon to take that paper and go to the Jean Company, but one of those chests is a fair transport fee. If this turns out to be the Jean Company’s weak point, we’d be in a bind.”
It was the problem that faced all who accepted a job.
Lawrence took the last sack of wheat from Ragusa, piled it up on the dock, then answered, “I’ve no intention of trying to expose the truth of the situation. I’m quite satisfied if I can safely build this house of cards.”
“Then I’m sure I can let the ravings of a traveling merchant slide – even if do have a certain partner,” said Ragusa with a smile.
For Ragusa and his comrades, who would work on the river their entire lives, the happiness of their clients was an issue of desperate importance. And yet being forced to work with a strange partner could get them literally sunk. They would want to know the truth at least, but the world of those who traveled the river was a small one, and they could not afford to whisper to one another. But a traveling merchant from beyond that world – that was different.
Lawrence wondered if he was overthinking things, but this was at least close to the truth.
Spice & Wolf Omnibus Page 113
