Lawrence rolled over again and sighed.
He had no intention of turning back now, but he was still nervous. The more he willed himself to sleep, the more his eyes stubbornly remained open.
Smiling wryly to himself, Lawrence got out of bed, compelled by thirst, and he decided to feel a bit of the night breeze.
Owing to the chilly air, the copper water jug was cold, almost like ice. Swirling it gently, he walked through the silent inn.
The inn was built around an enclosed courtyard, and in the courtyard was a well. Farther south, most buildings were constructed along such lines. Naturally it was easy enough to differentiate between the buildings of different trading companies, but the basic layout was the same. This was not because people everywhere had somehow decided on it, but rather because the carpenters and masons that did the construction tended to travel around from work site to work site.
Before his travels had taken him far abroad, Lawrence had assumed that such buildings were common the world over. He could still remember the shock he first felt when he discovered this was not the case. The farther he ranged, the more he realized how narrow his preconceived notions had been. As the years passed, he came to realize how large and complicated the world was and how small he was by comparison. There were infinities above him and infinities below.
Someone else could always do what he could do, and no matter what he might think of, someone else had realized it sooner. There in the pale blue moonlight, Lawrence lowered the well bucket down into the skyward-facing mouth of the well.
Things did not generally go the way one would hope, and usually they were decided by surrounding circumstances.
Lawrence had become involved with Eve while in the process of collecting information about the wolf bones, but the real beginning had been their encounter in Lenos. And the reason they had arrived in Lenos was none other than Holo.
Lawrence was certain he was swimming toward his goal, but he was not in a pond; he was in a swiftly flowing river.
He pulled the bucket up and looked at the moon’s reflection in the water within.
He wondered if it was a consequence of his dislike at being nothing but a minor character in the story he currently faced that made him think back to the delicate time when he had been just starting out as a merchant.
If Lawrence were a historian, he would not be able to categorize himself as the pivotal character in this. No, that would be Kieman – or Eve, perhaps.
He smiled ruefully at the thought, and the moon’s reflection in the bucket distorted even as his face did.
Deciding this was all too silly, he looked up, and there was Holo. Somehow, he had expected her.
“’Tis a lovely night, is it not?”
Her hands were clasped behind her back, and she smiled as sweetly as a town girl on a sunny day.
Lawrence returned the smile and agreed. “It is.”
“As the moon waxes and wanes, so too does my mood,” said Holo, dipping her finger into the bucket, her breath coming out in faint white puffs. “You left the room so suggestively, I couldn’t help but follow.”
“Did I look so desperate to be spoken to?”
In place of a reply, Holo grinned.
“… I suppose I did.” It was surely progress for him to be able to gracefully surrender.
“Still,” said Holo, picking up the pitcher he had left at the edge of the well and playing with it in both hands. “I did want to speak with you a bit.”
“With me?”
“Aye.”
“Are you going to teach me some secret technique for controlling human nature?” Lawrence asked, which made Holo chuckle quietly. She then sat at the edge of the well, still holding the cold pitcher.
“If it were so, I’d have no need to tell you. After all, I’ve been controlling your nature for quite some time, have I not? You should know how to do it yourself by now.”
“I suppose you want me to answer, ‘I guess you’re right.’”
“There’s a fine attitude.”
Holo smiled, revealing her fangs, and the smile then receded like a tide rolling out.
She was a wolf of many faces. Like the waves of the sea when viewed from afar, there was no way of telling whether dangerous rocks lay beneath the surface. When the tide receded and the truth was revealed, there was no telling what extraordinary things could happen. Lawrence teasingly stroked her head, wondering how many times he had nearly been sunk on those rocks.
“I…”
“Hmm?”
“I… I am regretting having pushed you into this.”
Lawrence sat beside Holo.
She clutched the copper pitcher as if it were warming her, though it was probably even colder than the water.
“Well, I’m grateful. It’s thanks to you that I can stand up to Kieman.”
That was no lie. And yet Holo’s ears moved busily as though trying to ascertain the truth of the words. Finally she looked down and nodded.
“That is what I regret.”
“It is? Well… I suppose you should have let it go unsaid, then…”
“That is not what I mean.” Holo shook her head and took a deep breath.
She then looked straight at Lawrence and continued speaking.
“One as clever as you can accomplish nearly anything so long as he has clear knowledge of his surroundings. But everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. I urged you on, despite knowing that what lay ahead was not something you were suited for. I knew it wasn’t something you wished for.”
It was true that Lawrence was heading straight into a conflict among town merchants, all of them very skilled and cunning.
But if he were to open a shop in a town somewhere, that would be the world he faced, so this did not seem like something with which Holo should be concerned.
Before he could say so, though, Holo headed him off.
“In any case, if you’d had the backbone to cross swords with them, you would’ve already been using my abilities to their fullest extent.”
Surely Eve or Kieman would have done so.
They would have used Holo right from the start. From a logical perspective, she was the strongest weapon.
“You seem to wish for a steady, reliable course of events, and I can see that it suits you. But what I pushed you into is the precise opposite of that. Is it not so?”
It was so.
One needed only to look back on Lawrence’s profits prior to meeting Holo to see. They gradually rose, and to that extent he was satisfied with the steady business he had been doing. Why did he want to have a shop in the first place? It was hardly as if he wanted to hold the world in the palm of his hands. It was nothing so grandiose – he simply wanted to be part of a smaller world, a town, and to have a place in that town.
“Still,” Lawrence said, “Still, it hurts a bit to hear that you don’t consider me suited to such things.”
Holo’s ears flicked beneath her hood. She slowly looked up. “But you aren’t, are you?”
“When you say it so plainly, I can’t seem to be angry at you.” Lawrence gave a pained smile.
But as he looked up, his breath rose into the sky toward the moon, and the pain in that smile seemed to go with it, dissipating like so much smoke.
“But I’m not going to drop out of this story,” he declared.
When Lawrence looked back down, he saw Holo making a face as if she had breathed in some of the bitterness he had exhaled.
“Especially when you make faces like that.”
“Ugh…” She didn’t try to hide her anxiety when he poked her forehead.
To look at her, Holo honestly seemed to regret having pushed him in this direction. While every time they encountered some incident or another she would joke that she would be in trouble if he turned out to be a clumsy merchant, Holo did seem to be genuinely worried about him.
But Lawrence got the feeling that it was not just because he was not well suited to this particular problem.
&
nbsp; “If you’re this regretful, it must mean you’re expecting me to encounter something extraordinary.”
Holo hated it when Lawrence agonized alone and drew his own conclusions, but the truth was she did precisely the same thing. However, the clever Holo seemed to think silence was more effective than raising her voice to point that out.
“It seems as though you’ve plans to write about your travels with me.”
“Huh?” He did remember saying something like that but failed to see any connection.
Holo glared at him a bit angrily, evidently expecting him to understand. But perhaps deciding that Lawrence was at the limits of his intellect, she pouted and continued.
“And if so, wouldn’t that make you the protagonist? I wanted my protagonist to act like one. At least… at least if I’m to be but a side character.”
In the tale of the destruction of her homelands by the Moon-Hunting Bear, Holo was not even a side character – she was out of the story entirely.
As she sat at the edge of the well, Holo’s dangling legs made her seem very childlike indeed. And it was true, the wish to be a main character in the story of the world was a very childish one.
“But that is truly naught but my own selfishness. Should that desire put you in harm’s way or cause you to wander so sadly out into a courtyard at night like this, it pains me,” admitted Holo, putting a hand to her chest and wincing in apparent pain.
Lawrence pinched her right cheek lightly and replied, “I do see what you’re trying to say, but…” As Holo rubbed her tweaked cheek in irritation, he had no choice but to strengthen his tone and continue. “The more you say such things, the more unable I am to back down.”
This was because she had expectations of him.
When Holo had expectations of Lawrence, he had to live up to those expectations.
“Aye, and ’tis why I did not wish to tell you…”
“Because I’d be stubborn?” he shot back, grinning and earning a punch to his ribs.
Holo then regarded him with a look so serious it could hardly be a joke. “Surely you understand how costly ’twould be to ignore my care.”
“…”
He was fully aware, and Holo saying as much amounted to her telling him she had high expectations.
Lawrence paused for an appropriate interval before nodding firmly. Naturally he took this very seriously.
But Holo regarded him dubiously. “Do you truly understand?”
“I believe I do.”
“Truly?”
At her excessive persistence, he finally realized.
If she wished for him to be the protagonist of this story, what did that make her? If she could get everything she wanted by simply wishing and worrying, it was quite a role indeed.
The problem was that all through the ages, men had been weak against such opponents.
“Of course,” Lawrence answered again, holding her warm body close in the moonlight.
Holo’s tail wagged beneath her robe.
The world was a stage where all wished to be main characters, but things did not always proceed as they would like. In such a place, becoming the protagonist was no mean feat as even Lawrence knew.
But that changed when someone had put her trust in you.
Holo squirmed out of his arms and stood, and it seemed as if the weight on her chest had been lifted.
Just seeing that, Lawrence had no regrets.
“Come, fill the pitcher and let us return. ’Tis cold.” It was surely not his imagination that she seemed to be trying to hide some measure of bashfulness.
Lawrence took the pitcher from Holo with his right hand and filled it with the water he had drawn. Holo held his left hand and giggled ticklishly.
Even if Lawrence was being manipulated by her, there was no question that the matter at hand had some connection to the wolf bones – and to Holo’s desire.
The next day in the early afternoon, Lawrence was summoned by Kieman.
As he left the room, it was notable that the most anxious face was Col’s.
The Kerube trading house of the Rowen Trade Guild represented the interests of the guild in this important link between the pagan and Church-controlled regions. Many crafty, experienced merchants were employed there as well as the men who oversaw them.
It would have been a mighty feat indeed to outwit them all, and from this point on, Lawrence would take his orders from Kieman and try instead to outwit the northern landlords.
As long as Eve did not betray him, all would be well. Such had been the conclusion of his discussion with Kieman the previous night, Kieman no doubt already having done the necessary background work.
What was being asked of Lawrence was not so difficult a thing. He merely had to maintain the trust of the lone wolf Eve and ensure that things proceeded smoothly.
That was all.
“Do you truly not mind leaving your companion behind?”
“No, it is fine.”
The trading house had been busy all morning, so Lawrence had only a few moments to speak with Kieman before setting out. As the master of the branch, Kieman wore fine clothes with a crisply starched collar.
Given that negotiations between the northern landlords and southern merchants were happening on the delta, leaving Holo and Col behind would make it seem as if they had been taken hostage, which might have been why Kieman went to the trouble of asking whether they would go along with Lawrence.
“So then, you have only to explain to Madam Bolan what I told you earlier. My own preparations have become rather complicated, so any independent action on your part could easily create small holes, which will quickly become large problems,” said Kieman, looking firmly into Lawrence’s eyes.
Lawrence nodded calmly in return. Even if he had been told the complete plan, he was sure he would not have understood it. Even Holo and Col could run circles around him, politically.
Just as Kieman could hardly spend two weeks on rough mountain roads while subsisting on nothing but rye bread and rainwater, Lawrence could not maneuver the way Kieman could.
The more he did as he was told, the safer he would be.
The only decision he would make independently was the very last one, at the moment when events had progressed to such that he could judge for himself whether to cooperate or defect.
Kieman seemed to want to say more, but a knock upon the room’s door interrupted him. The merchant delegation had assembled and was ready to depart.
It was time.
“Well, then. I shall be counting on you.”
Having fully received Kieman’s orders, Lawrence left the room just as others entered. The trading house’s dining hall had a tense atmosphere, as if a battle were approaching.
Of course, the troops on this side felt the strange nervousness of imminent victory. They needed no goddess of victory – they had the narwhal.
It was as if they were only discussing whose victory would be greatest.
Early on, it seemed that the guild seizing the northern vessel that had originally caught the narwhal would be the ultimate victor. Even members of the Rowen Trade Guild were whispering that it would be difficult to gain the initiative in the negotiations.
Of course, that was no reason to give up, and the group of scruffy merchants in the corner, who pantomimed rowing or fell fast asleep on the tables, had already gotten an early taste of conflict as part of the southern camp.
Knights and mercenaries were a practical sort and tended not to dwell over shares of riches not yet won. By contrast, merchants loved to count chickens before they hatched, and there was no doubt the previous night had seen many arguments over shares of profits. They were probably ongoing.
Several carriages waited in front of the guild house for Chief Jeeta and Kieman, and a steady stream of raggedly dressed beggars – spies for their merchant masters – constantly filtered between them.
Lawrence remembered the term Eve had used back in Lenos, the town of lumber and fur.
; A trade war.
The fact that the atmosphere made Lawrence’s heart beat faster was not because he was on the verge of an important negotiation.
It was because he had been born a man, and to a man, this atmosphere was inherently appealing.
“Fellows!”
At this sudden raised voice, all chatter fell silent.
All eyes were now on Chief Jeeta, a thin, balding old man.
Kieman had denounced him as a mere opportunist, but the same could have been said of anyone who tried to avoid calamity. And while Kieman dressed like a nobleman, Jeeta wore loose robes, which lent him the unmistakable gravity of old age.
He surveyed the assemblage with eyes that seemed able to gaze a century into the future.
“In the name of our patron, Saint Lambardos, may our guild be triumphant!”
“To triumph!”
Cheered on by the merchants, Jeeta and his escorts left the guild house. Kieman never once glanced at Lawrence, exchanging words with others before boarding the carriage that was departing the guild house.
At this sight, Lawrence felt his hand spontaneously rise to his chest – how strange it was that with such a spectacle before him, he was a crucial part of a plan that would reverse the situation entirely.
If Holo had been next to him, she surely would have mocked this sudden swell of a traveling merchant’s courage. She would have laughed even – he was certainly laughing at himself.
River crossings were no longer banned, so following the guild chief’s procession came merchants, some of whom were merely watching the proceedings and others who, like Lawrence, had tasks to perform.
Lawrence mingled toward the rear of the group and made for the Roam River.
Amid all the people emerging from the guild houses and trading companies lined along it, the avenue took on a peculiar atmosphere. Business was being conducted as usual, and it was hardly the case that everyone in town was a merchant.
Yet the flow of merchants heading north called to mind the northern campaigns. The church bell rang, its strangely urgent sound echoing.
The ferrymen were treating their passengers with a strange deference, totally unlike their usual rudeness. The riverbanks were lined with onlookers alongside soldiers armed with pikes and axes to ensure that nothing happened.
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