Holo grinned. She was obviously enjoying his embarrassed face much more than his actual words.
“I think you’re much more charming when you’re forcing yourself.” Her nose crinkled.
“I suppose I can’t beat an honorable wisewolf.”
“Heh.” Holo smiled and faced forward. Her footsteps were light. “You’re the one at fault for this, you know,” she murmured.
“Huh?”
Holo’s red-amber eyes flashed at Lawrence, and she looked at him as though relishing her own mischief. “No matter what happens after this, I’ll be to blame for none of it.”
Lawrence tried to reply, but a chill ran down his spine. “Wait…”
Holo giggled. “’Twas a jest, you fool!” She began to stride delightedly away. After Lawrence stumbled in his hurry to follow her, she continued. “Still, ’tis well for once, in such a long life, not to be thinking on past and future.”
She flashed her fangs in a charming grin.
Chapter Three
Finally visiting his old partner in the stables, Lawrence stood in front of the home.
At first, the horse had stuck his nose irritably into the barrel of fodder. But then, slowly, he had raised his head, regarding Lawrence with large black eyes – only to snort petulantly.
“He’s done splendidly. And eaten enough for that, to be sure,” said the stable master with a proud smile, almost as though he were talking about his own horse.
Horses were not cheap. If Lawrence had to leave his in the care of another, it was good that he was being treated as one of the stable master’s own.
“Quite, and I’m always having to bargain with him over how much I have to feed him to get him to walk a few more steps.”
“I see. So you get plenty of negotiation practice while out on the road, eh?” In the cold season, a sunny afternoon like this one put everyone in high spirits.
After both men laughed at the joke, Lawrence mentioned that he expected to be leaving in the next few days, and thus asked that the stable master not rent his horse out to anyone else. “And there’s no need to let him eat too much.”
“Ah, so you’ll have a better place to bargain from on your last day, eh?”
Whether it was just a joke, or a shield to guard against a surprise jab, or (most likely) both, Lawrence laughed and waved his hand lightly. “I’ll leave him to you for the next few days.”
“It’s always a pleasure to take care of a fine horse.”
In the time Lawrence was talking to the stable master, several other people had come and gone looking to rent a horse or leave theirs for a day. Most of them seemed to be known to the stable master, and the apprentices treated them with familiarity. In most shops, the owner dealt only with the regulars, leaving the first-time customers to his apprentices, but a stable was just the opposite. During a journey, one literally entrusted one’s life to a horse, so the stable master had to treat first-time customers with the utmost seriousness. Once trust was established, they would come back.
And just as goods varied from region to region, so did practices from trade to trade.
“I suppose that’s most of the major preparations, then,” said Lawrence as he ticked them off his fingers. Holo had turned away from the horse as he spoke to face Lawrence. Normally her view of the animal was from the driver’s seat, so perhaps it was novel for her to regard him from the front.
The horse, too, seemed to have an opinion on Holo, and the two had regarded each other for a moment.
The stable master had laughed and said that the two seemed to be having some sort of conversation – and perhaps they had. Once Holo had finally stepped back from the horse, Lawrence asked.
“Talking about the state of the world with him, were you?”
“Mm? Oh, aye. We’ve both been put up as collateral before, so we were simply commiserating.”
When a traveling merchant’s tool broke, it was fixed and reused until it was so worn down there was nothing left. Food was eaten crusty and moldy until it simply could not be kept down.
And in Holo’s case, when she bore even a single grudge, she would complain about it a hundred times. Moreover, most of her grudges were not even real grudges.
Lawrence made an exasperated face, at which Holo happily took his arm. She was in good spirits, as though the trouble with Col had been forgotten.
“So, what next? Foodstuffs, mayhaps?”
“I’ve already taken care of our food. All that’s left is fuel, money changing, and perhaps I ought to have my knife sharpened. Anyway, there’s nothing left of much interest to you.”
Lawrence had expected her to make a theatrically bored face, but she did not seem particularly bothered. He had thought she would be angry about the food, but she let it pass.
Of course, even without laying in extra provisions, the wagon bed was already full of all sorts of tasty treats. If he had been using his own wagon and horse, his old partner would probably take one look at the load and neigh an exhausted neigh – My master’s got a swollen head again!
“Still, I think it might be better to wait on fuel and money changing until the map arrives, and we know exactly where we’re going. What say you?”
“Mm? Mm. I was thinking of wandering about a bit just to kill some time, but…” said Holo, her amber eyes then fixing upon Lawrence with alarming speed, “let’s return to the inn and prepare for another battle!”
Even knowing she was deliberately trying to get a rise out of him, Lawrence was not sure how much of that was a joke. Elsa seemed like she could be counted upon to be reasonable, but if provoked by Holo, her stubbornness might well flare up.
Holo’s expression quickly returned to placidity. Perhaps she regretted having said too much.
Lawrence saw this and decided to leave well enough alone. This, in turn, made him wonder if he was not a little sick himself.
In any case, he thought he might speak to Col before this got out of hand. As the notion occurred to him, Holo stood on tiptoe and grabbed hold of his ear. “Are you thinking of interfering in what I’ve set my mind to, hmm?”
It seemed that wolves could be surprisingly persistent.
They returned to the inn, with Lawrence following Holo up the stairs. As they ascended, Lawrence caught a glimpse of her tail from under her cloak. This always happened whenever she was excited or in high spirits. In her giant wolf form she might have been able to hide it, but in this small body it was terribly clear. She hopped up the last step, and Lawrence sighed a tired sigh.
He did not believe anything he had thought or said was mistaken, and yet still he felt uncertain. That might have been Holo’s aim, but in any case, Elsa did give off a stubborn impression, which frightened him.
Or was it that from the outside, his and Holo’s relationship really did seem so tenuous? He had learned from his business that it was dangerous to ever consider one’s own position as one safe from danger.
His arms folded in thought, Lawrence walked down the hallway as he considered these things. Holo skipped on ahead and put her hand to the room’s door.
It was then that the delighted expression on her face suddenly vanished.
“What’s wrong?” Lawrence asked, just as a voice called up from downstairs.
“Mr. Lawrence!”
He looked back and saw that it was Le Roi.
Holo looked to Lawrence with a face as though she had had cold water dumped on her head, but Lawrence held up his hand to stop her complaint. “Please come alone” was written all over Le Roi’s face.
“Go on in without me.”
Holo’s perception was just as good as any experienced merchant’s, so while she was obviously dissatisfied with the situation, she finally nodded her agreement. “Make it quick,” was all she said, as she did an about-face.
There was no question in her eyes, no sense of “Will you be all right on your own?” Perhaps her head was simply filled with thoughts of Elsa and Col, or perhaps she had come to trust him at least a li
ttle bit. Lawrence considered this as he descended the stairs.
Le Roi removed his hat apologetically and bowed.
Lawrence heard the door to his room close – a sound that struck him with loneliness – then addressed Le Roi. “What might be the matter?”
“Yes, well, it’s no great thing…” he said, only to point farther downstairs. Evidently, he wanted to speak in the inn’s tavern.
Lawrence had no reason to refuse, so he followed the man. While Holo had made no sound at all as she had walked the stairs and hallways of the inn, the floor creaked with every one of Le Roi’s steps.
Surely the reason most kings were fat was to increase the imposition of their appearance.
The time being what it was, when they reached the tavern on the first floor, there was hardly anybody there. Two men who had the look of travelers sat at seats near the entrance, sipping their wine disagreeably and discussing something in low voices.
Lawrence and Le Roi sat in the far corner of the tavern, as far away from the men as possible, and ordered two cups of wine.
The tavern master was so friendly as to be unpleasant. Le Roi looked back and forth between him and Lawrence three times, but asked nothing. Instead, he stared at the brimming cup of wine in front of him and, for the moment, remained still.
When Le Roi finally spoke, Lawrence had brought his cup to his lips three times.
“You have connections with the Delink Company, yes?”
Sitting at the table, Le Roi seemed shrunken in on himself, as though he expected to be scolded. His downcast face and pathetic, upturned eyes contrasted with the strangely accusing tone in his question.
If all of this was a calculated performance, he was a formidable man indeed. And Lawrence could only assume it was a performance.
If such a man got his teeth into him, there would be no escape. His pathetic display was perfect.
“Were you following me?” Lawrence asked, setting his cup down after a fourth sip and glancing over at the tavern keeper, who was writing something in a ledger.
After Lawrence had happened to encounter Luz Eringin in front of Arold’s old inn, he had gotten the sense that someone was hiding in a corner of the street, watching. Assuming that had not been his imagination, it must have been Le Roi, who now sat in front of him.
“Yes. Well, Sir Eringin, actually.”
Lawrence nodded but had absolutely no notion of how much he could trust this answer, given that he now knew that Le Roi was after the library that slumbered in the cellar beneath Elsa’s church in Tereo.
Given that Lawrence had saved Tereo once before, it would not be at all surprising if Le Roi were trying to win him over, thinking to use him as a wedge to pry open Elsa’s mouth.
“Might I ask why?”
At Lawrence’s question, Le Roi swallowed. “I want to borrow money.”
Lawrence was taken aback by the straightforward answer and looked evenly at Le Roi.
The man was clearly skilled at pacing a conversation. Lawrence found himself desperately wishing he had brought Holo along.
“I was following him around, hoping for some opportunity to approach him, when I happened to run into what I saw.”
Lawrence set aside what Le Roi was saying and thought about something else. Le Roi wanted to ask him to introduce him to the Delink Company. “They’re a troublesome lot, that company. Borrowing money from them, it’s…”
That was as far as Lawrence got before Le Roi nodded his clear agreement. “I know. I’ve done occasional business in this town myself. I’m well aware of what sort of company they are.”
Le Roi was, after all, someone who dealt with questionable people like Philon. Warning him was like delivering a sermon to a holy man.
And as Lawrence expected, Le Roi continued. “But that’s the sort of company I want to borrow from, if I can.”
“That sort of company?”
“Yes. The sort that doesn’t care about politics, that’s unmoved by faith. That pursues only profit. I can borrow only from such a place. Of course…” For the first time, Le Roi smiled an unpleasant smile and took a drink of wine.
There was no question this man had gone over his performance many times before, because it was as polished as a brass mirror.
“… if there’s somewhere else that will lend me a thousand silver pieces with no questions asked, that’s a different story.”
Le Roi’s eyes seemed very small, perhaps because his face was so large. At times the impression he gave off was like a small defenseless animal, but now he looked like some sort of insect as it hunted its prey.
A thousand silver pieces was surely just a figure of speech. Given Le Roi’s tone, Lawrence very much doubted whatever he had in mind would not be settled with a mere thousand pieces.
“It’s true I’m passingly acquainted with the Delink Company, but I don’t think they trust me so much that I could get them on board with anything suspicious…”
“I’ll pay you three hundred trenni,” said Le Roi, then closed his mouth tightly shut after the brief words.
Lawrence tried to respond, but finally no words came out from between his opened lips. He had the feeling that Le Roi would have a response ready for any of the objections that came readily to mind. He would have to – three hundred silver pieces was a lot of money.
Lawrence thought for a moment, then spoke. “I’m through risking my life for money.” Just imagining what might ensue if he introduced somebody unreliable to the Delink Company and it happened to turn out badly made Lawrence depressed.
It was not a matter of how much money he was being offered.
He gave Le Roi his final-sounding answer, at which the crafty merchant immediately tried a different tactic. “I heard from Philon that you’re heading north.”
“–!” Lawrence looked up at the ceiling and knew that the battle was already over.
He brought his gaze slowly back down, and Le Roi wore the expression of a man who had placed a foolish bet and won anyway. “There’s something the chain makers say. A chain can’t be stronger than its weakest link.”
That was why Le Roi had been waiting for Lawrence at this inn.
While Lawrence had been out with Holo, he had called on Elsa and Col and wheedled all the information out of them. Even if they had been on their guard about what they said, they would have had no secrets from a man like Le Roi.
And in all likelihood, they had not been particularly guarded around him to begin with.
As though to prove it, Le Roi began to speak in a relaxed tone. “I’m quite sure that nice people with strong feelings about the northlands will be willing to lend more than a little aid in what I’m trying to do.”
Such roundabout words were rarely used in business. They made him sound more like a rebel leader trying to rouse his men to defeat some great enemy.
Le Roi pulled his big hands out from beneath the table and folded them together on top of it. They looked like a big ball of dough ready for baking.
Lawrence realized he was already in the oven. He would have to be careful, otherwise he would wind up with his face red and swollen and full of regret.
“So what is it… you plan to buy with this money?”
This was surely the question Le Roi most wanted Lawrence to ask. It indicated that he was ready to engage in negotiations.
Le Roi smiled, the creases on his thick face deeply shadowed. “A forbidden book.” The short words gave Lawrence a chill. “A forbidden book containing knowledge of banned arts. That’s what I aim to buy.”
The bookseller in front of him had dealings with Philon, a general store owner who supplied mercenaries. Moreover, he had had a relationship with a towering man like Father Franz and was very shrewdly trying to obtain his library. He was greedy, but honest in his greed.
Lawrence could not imagine this was a joke or a lie, or some boring scam.
“Alchemy, then?” Lawrence asked.
His eyes never leaving Lawrence, his opponent shook
his thick head, indicating a negative. “A mining technique.”
If this had been a game of cards, this would have been the card that rendered Lawrence’s hand meaningless.
Le Roi continued. “I imagine it would be quite bad if the Debau Company got their hands on it first.”
Lawrence had heard from time to time of revolutionary developments in the fields of shipbuilding and metallurgy. They turned common knowledge upside down and evidently made the impossible possible. If knowledge was a weapon, then they were like magic spells. With such knowledge, a tiny sardine could become a great shark.
Because of this, books containing such techniques and the knowledge of its practitioners were not always used, but instead sometimes hidden away or destroyed, Lawrence had heard. Because, while a crown always stayed on a king’s head, knowledge was like puffs of wool on the wind and could go flying off anywhere.
When it came to mining techniques, which could be used by a select group of individuals to immediately realize vast profits, the tendency of such information to fly was even stronger.
Lawrence found it easy to doubt Le Roi.
But if it were true, and moreover if the information in the forbidden book was truly revolutionary, it could not be allowed into the hands of the Debau Company.
The only people in the northlands who would welcome such a development were the ones who preferred long-tasseled rugs and stone houses to bountiful forests and mountains.
And Holo wanted to nap in the sun of her homelands.
But Lawrence knew he could not act rashly. He reminded himself of that, then spoke. “Let’s hear the details,” he said.
“I look forward to your reply,” said Le Roi before he left the inn, with a bow that made him look like a full wineskin being bent forcibly in half.
The only things left behind were two cups half-full of wine and Lawrence himself.
Now alone, Lawrence noticed the curious gaze of the tavern keeper on him, which he ignored, and looked up at the ceiling.
Having thought over Le Roi’s proposition, he could not imagine it was a trap.
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