Spice & Wolf Omnibus

by Isuna Hasekura

  “If you dally too long, I may just switch over,” her malicious smile said.

  Lawrence stroked his beard and sighed.

  The sigh came instead of the words he’d very nearly spoken, only to stop short in his throat.

  And here I hadn’t planned on giving more bait to a fish I’d already hooked.

  He had wanted to give Holo that retort but thought better of it.

  Had he indulged in this game, there was a real danger he would actually lose to Col.

  Wondering what she could possibly do with such a young lad, Lawrence took a deep breath of the cold air and laughed silently to himself.

  Chapter Two

  Out of the Roef Mountains flows the Roef River into the Roam River, which in turn empties into the Winfiel Strait.

  At the highest headwaters of the Roef River is the mining town of Lesko. Where the Roef and Roam Rivers meet is Lenos, and where it meets the sea lies the port town of Kerube.

  And when it came to the copper goods that arrived from upriver at the end of the long journey in Kerube, there were certainly enough trading companies to handle the trade.

  As a result, Lawrence had a certain preconception, along with a fair bit of anticipation.

  So when he arrived at the Jean Company, he couldn’t help but feel a little deflated.

  “Is this the place?” asked Holo, her expression belying her swallowed disappointment.

  She looked like she wanted to point out that she could blow the place over with a breath, probably because she might well have been imagining turning back into a wolf and smashing it to bits.

  A rectangular iron plate, which was stamped “Jean Company,” dangled from the eaves, and the street-facing side of the building was functioning as a loading dock. It was there where what goods were present were loaded.

  As for what the goods were loaded on or tied to, it was no shaggy-haired winter-working horse that would unflinchingly plunge through the deepest snowdrifts, nor was it a big wagon of the sort that could carry all the household goods of a small village.

  There under the eaves stood a scrawny mule upon which were loaded bundles of oat, probably meant as winterfeed. It yawned aimlessly, waiting for departure.

  Col, who surely heard the words trading company and imagined a center of money and power, stood before the shabby shop spoiling for a fight.

  “Who goes there, eh?” a portly man well past middle age inquired. He was sitting at a receiving desk at the back of the loading dock and looked up at Lawrence’s party when he noticed them standing under the edge of the eaves. There seemed to be no one else in the trading house, save for a chicken that was using the floor as a pasture and pecking at the odd fallen leaf. “If you’ve come to buy, I welcome you and gladly. But if you’ve come to sell something, well… you may have wasted the trip.”

  The man did not stand, and the way his sagging cheeks drew up into a self-deprecating smile seemed, above all, tired.

  At this display, Holo shot Lawrence an extremely displeased look.

  The Jean Company was among those trying to buy and sell, for some unfathomable purpose, the bones of a wolf that had likely been one of her friends.

  They were deserving of all her spite, and given the depth of her contempt, they should at least be a big enough company to be worthy of it – so said her glance.

  Col alone seemed to mistake the old man’s tired mien for dignity.

  However, it was not always the case that a company’s size and the quality of the people it employed were proportionate.

  Sometimes reaching into a snake hole summoned a dragon.

  “Is business as bad as that?” Lawrence replied, stepping up onto the loading dock.

  Pieces of straw were scattered about on the dock’s floor, probably a remnant of the large amount of wheat that had passed through it. The scene called to mind the eaves of a farmhouse somewhere. There were goods of various kinds here and there, as one would expect of a trading house, but to a one they seemed dingy and poor.

  “Hunh. I make you as a merchant from the south. Is business good down south, then?”

  In the corner, there was a folded-up set of armor.

  It seemed to have been there for some time, probably as back stock, and Lawrence found in it a bit of comfort as one who had once failed badly in armor dealings.

  “It’s good and bad.”

  “Here it’s terrible. The worst,” admitted the old man, raising his hands in a defeated gesture.

  Holo and Col followed Lawrence onto the loading dock, and they glanced about curiously.

  When Holo suddenly lifted up some of the accumulated straw on the floor, two chicken eggs rolled out.

  “Ah, so there were eggs in there, eh? The hens lay them all over, and I never find them all. I’ll have to gather them later… and yes, there’s been a huge drop in the chicken population this year. It’s damned quiet. Used to be this time of year the roosters and hens were lively as anything.”

  “Because of the cancellation of the northern campaign?”

  “Right. With no people, there’s no money, and when people don’t move, their bellies don’t empty. The price of farmed goods is dropping, along with things like barrels and buckets, and the armor that used to fly off the shelf goes nowhere, and to top it off, the price of wine just goes up and up.”

  “Huh?” muttered Holo, sounding perplexed.

  Behind the desk, the pudgy old man shrugged clumsily. “When there’s nothing to be done, what’s left to do but drink?”

  Holo seemed entirely satisfied with the explanation.

  “So, what news of profit does this merchant bring with two lumps in tow?”

  “Lumps?” grumbled Holo, irritated. She probably would not be able to pass as a nun the way she usually did. Thinking that he would need to talk it over thoroughly with her later, Lawrence set the jab aside with grim resolution.

  “I’d like to speak to the master of the Jean Company.”

  “Well, that’d be me.”

  Lawrence had guessed as much and nodded, unsurprised, stepping forward and placing the letter he had gotten from Eve on the desk.

  “Oh, my apologies. So you’re acquainted with the Bolan Company, eh?”

  “The Bolan Company?” Lawrence had been unaware that Eve had set up her own company and was a bit taken aback.

  He had never met anyone for whom the term lone wolf fit as well as it did her.

  However, when he said so, the master of the Jean Company did not as much as make a strange face.

  Instead, he looked as though he thought Lawrence was making an offhand joke. “She may do business all alone without so much as hanging up a sign, but anyone who casts as wide a net as she does is a serious trading company, don’t you think?” posed the master, looking for agreement as he opened Eve’s letter.

  Lawrence had no way of guessing just how influential Eve was, but there was not a single good reason to let this man know how recently he had come to know her.

  Lawrence nodded and smiled vaguely, at which the man drew his own conclusions and smiled back.

  “Mm, Kraft Lawrence, is it? Ho-ho. Never thought a man would come in here with a letter from that wolf of a woman. How’d you get her over the fire, I’d like to know.”

  A moment ago the man seemed like the feckless master of a drab little company, but with his left eyebrow raised as he stared piercingly up at Lawrence, he seemed much more formidable.

  However, he surely was not trying to intimidate Lawrence or inflate his own impression. He was simply very interested, and this was probably no more than the face he showed to any other tough merchant.

  Lawrence revised his opinion of his opponent and relaxed, letting the enjoyment of meeting another interesting merchant show on his face.

  “That’s a secret.”

  “Bwa-ha-ha! I’ll bet it is! So… if I might ask, what brings you to…” His eyes ran over the letter as he talked.

  Lawrence did not fail to notice the master’s cheek t
witch immediately thereafter.

  Given that it dealt with the story of the bone of a wolf that had been revered as a god, a normal merchant would have given a hearty laugh and poured some wine.

  But the Jean Company master’s shoulders only shook with a chuckle of remembrance as he rerolled the letter and tied it closed. “I see. It’s been some time since anyone’s been interested in this story. And if you went to the trouble of getting Eve Bolan to send you, well… I guess you’re in earnest.”

  “Embarrassing though it is, yes,” answered Lawrence with a smile. The man returned the smile, which seemed to be made of two different expressions mixed together.

  The first was surprise that there was a merchant who would hear this story and take it so seriously. The other was befuddlement at being begged for details, after all this time, when long ago he had tried to get others to listen, but none would.

  But the smile soon disappeared from the man’s face.

  “Still, you must be quite a man to go to the trouble of getting a letter from that wolf just to come hear a silly tale like this.”

  “It’s not as though we want a seat on the council. We want to know what can be done, not how we might seem.”

  “You’ve come to my company, Kraft Lawrence, and that was the right answer. I ought to introduce myself properly. I’m the master of the Jean Company, Ted Reynolds.”

  That was the name written on the Jean Company account ledgers that had so worried Lawrence and company on the way down the Roam River.

  From the name, Lawrence had imagined a younger man, but in reality, he was easily twice the age Lawrence had envisioned.

  “Jean was my father’s wife, you see. He was a devoted husband.”

  “My goodness.”

  “Though the name made his trade partners shiver in fear, so maybe he was more henpecked than devoted,” said the man, holding up a single finger and closing one eye, pretending nobility and smiling.

  While the joke felt out of place, it did give the man a strange charm.

  Lawrence realized he could not let his guard down.

  “But you’ve come to ask me something even stranger.”

  “Indeed. People do many strange things in this world,” said Lawrence.

  “That’s the truth. Hunh – ah.” Reynolds lifted himself reluctantly out of his chair. “Wait just a moment,” he said before disappearing behind the desk farther into the building.

  The chickens remained, pecking at the fuzzy edges of Col’s sandals.

  Col frantically tried to shoo them off, but the chickens were merciless.

  Amused, Holo watched the exchange between Col and the chickens for a while but eventually bared her teeth at the chickens.

  The flightless birds immediately chose flight over fight.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting – oh, my.” In no more time than it took the shed feathers of the scattered chickens to fall to the floor, Reynolds returned carrying a wooden box.

  It did not take a sharp-eyed merchant to guess what had happened.

  “My apologies. My chickens just can’t resist anything fuzzy.”

  “It’s the cold season, after all. We’ll have to hide our fingers,” Lawrence answered, at which Reynolds laughed heartily.

  “Wah-hah-hah! I don’t even want to imagine it! If they start pecking at my hangnails, I’ll throw them all into the pot, along with the chicks hatching tomorrow!”

  Col smiled even as he casually rubbed his fingers, and Lawrence openly directed his gaze to the box Reynolds had set on the desk.

  “What’s that?”

  “Ah, this, you see–” said Reynolds, opening the box’s lid without hesitation. Lawrence couldn’t help bracing himself.

  The box was packed tight with animal bones.

  “This is the crystallized effort of all the people who so helpfully cooperated with the rumor that we were searching for the incredibly valuable remains of a lonely mountain village’s god.”

  The roundabout, grandiose statement perfectly conveyed a sense of exhaustion with the subject, but just how serious the man was, Lawrence did not know.

  Of course, if he was lying, Holo would tell him later.

  “Are they real?”

  “If only. Take a look around this trading house – can’t you tell? I didn’t buy these bones up out of greed, but now my shop’s on the verge of collapse.”

  That he was nearly ruined was clearly a lie. At the very least, the shop was acting as a relay for goods coming down the Roam River, so it had to be making more profit than it appeared to be.

  Still, Lawrence doubted the appearance of neglect was itself a lie.

  The man’s eyes shone with childlike inquisitiveness. “Why would you care about this folly now?”

  “Eve asked me the same question. These two were born in the north, you see.”

  “Mm…” intoned Reynolds, his eyes opening slightly wider. He had the face of a man who had been terribly mistaken. “I see, so… ah… I was a bit rash. Please don’t think poorly of me. I didn’t mean my bitterness over this foolish tale as an insult to your deity,” said Reynolds, rubbing his nose and spreading his palms as though confessing his sins to God in a church.

  The fact that he had understood so much upon realizing that the two were born in the north proved how close the region was to the Roef Mountains.

  And Lawrence could tell Reynolds respected the people from the north.

  “In that case, I’m quite willing to cooperate with you. The truth is, this tale is an absurd one indeed.” Reynolds was able to change the conversation’s mood in a flash.

  The moment he spoke, the neglected surroundings of the dingy trade house faded away, and it felt as though they were in the grand hall of the town council.

  “Up in the mountains of Roef, there remain many legends the Church cannot overlook. Some of them are nearly impossible to believe, but others are difficult to doubt. I don’t know what region you’re from, but it was said that the remains of a wolf-god lay in a certain village, and I lived in a place that seemed likely.”

  “Was it the village of Rupi?” Col interrupted.

  His face was so serious that it was hard to imagine he had been on the verge of tears a moment ago because of chickens pecking at his sandals.

  “Yes. If you know that name and you’re chasing this tale, you’re either very lucky to still be alive, or you’ve seen the unfairness of the world with your own eyes.”

  Col had told them how Rupi had been taken by missionaries with swords and many people had been killed.

  At Reynold’s words, Col nodded, his fists clenched.

  “And you there next to him, miss… Merchants can’t take riches to the grave, but they can take their memories, so I don’t want to ask why you say you hail from the north but are dressed as a nun of the Church,” said Reynolds, letting a cynical smile twitch across one half of his face.

  Holo, too, smiled slightly – she understood that the wish to experience only pure, beautiful things until heading to the grave was itself a folly to be laughed at.

  “So, then, about the god of Rupi. I suppose it was the year before last, around the end of summer. Back then the missionaries and mercenaries were gallivanting all over the northern mountains and plains. Stories of this or that befalling this or that village were not uncommon. Among them, though, was a tale seized on by a trading company I was close with. Or perhaps I should say, they couldn’t help but seize on it.”

  “The Debau Company, yes?”

  If Lawrence let the man think they had come to him knowing nothing, he might well lie either to make a better tale or just to deceive them.

  So to prevent that, Lawrence showed that they were not entirely ignorant.

  Reynolds noticed the move and smiled. “Heh. This merchant bearing a letter from the wolf woman of the house of Bolan tells no lies. I respect her, and if she has put her trust in you, then I respect you, Kraft Lawrence, as well.” His smile was a serious one, and he seemed to be angry.
r />   But Lawrence did not feel he had misspoken.

  This was practically a ritual, a way to determine the rules of play between two merchants.

  “I apologize for interrupting your tale.”

  “Not at all. If I am the only one talking, I’ll never notice how long-winded I’m being. Since you’re not entirely ignorant of the situation, I should give you the important details.”

  Reynolds coughed and straightened himself in his chair.

  His gaze drifted to the wall as he looked back into his memory.

  “There was a certain faction of the Church that for various reasons the Debau Company could not easily defy, and this faction brought them an offer. ‘Among the pagan stories we’ve gone into the mountains to investigate,’ they said, ‘there are some that are unlike the more absurd tales. They have shape and truth. And if that’s so, then you merchants who deal in everything on this earth, you should be able to go and find the shape and truth of this.’”

  That he’d ventured to say it that way might well have been meant to imply that he was no friend of the Church himself.

  “Just as we find alchemy mysterious and thus assume that alchemists can work miracles, it seems the men of the Church find our trading mysterious and wanting in virtue – and thus mistakenly think we can accomplish anything. But often in business there are requests we can’t refuse. And those always flow from high to low.”

  “You’re right about that,” said Lawrence, at which Reynolds nodded, satisfied.

  From the emperor to the palace merchant, from the palace merchant to the trade company he controlled, from the company to the branch, and from the branch manager to the commoner merchants at the bottom.

  It was not rare for even goods respectfully presented to the emperor to have their origins with merchants who scraped and fought for every last copper coin.

  Orders came from the top down, and goods flowed from the bottom up, and never the opposite.

  “And our company is situated here at the bottom of the Roam River, which is ruled over by the great river spirit Roam. We must meet whatever comes down the river, whatever happens. Truly–”

  Reynolds’s sagging cheeks jiggled as though they’d sagged all along just waiting for this day, this moment.