Spice & Wolf III

by Hasekura Isuna

  He took a breath to calm himself, grasping the reins and heading into the center of the marketplace. The stall he finally arrived at was already well into its business day, like all the others. The shop’s owner was just a year removed from Lawrence and had also started out as a traveling merchant. The fact that he had become a proper wheat merchant—complete with stall, which despite its small size even had a proper roof—was generally attributed to the man’s good fortune. He had even adopted the squarish facial hair style that was common in the region.

  Said wheat merchant—Mark Cole—was momentarily surprised upon seeing Lawrence, but he immediately composed himself and raised a hand in greeting, smiling.

  The other merchant that Mark dealt with turned to regard Lawrence as well, nodding in greeting. One never knew when he might encounter someone who could become a business partner, so Lawrence flashed his best merchant’s smile and gestured at them to by all means please continue their conversation.

  “Le, spandi amirto. Vanderji.”

  “Ha-ha. Pireji. Bao!”

  Evidently their exchange was just ending; the man spoke to Mark in a language Lawrence didn’t understand and then took his leave. Naturally, Lawrence did not forget to give the man another professional smile as he left.

  He committed the man’s face to memory in case they were to meet again in some other town.

  These were the tiny interactions that accumulated over time, eventually turning into profit.

  The merchant—who was probably from somewhere in the northlands—disappeared into the crowds, and Lawrence finally descended from his wagon.

  “I guess I interrupted your business.”'

  “Hardly! He was just talking my ear off about how grateful he was to the god of Pitra Mountain. You saved me,” said Mark, rolling up a sheet of parchment as he sat atop a wooden chest. He smiled at the tedium of the man’s conversation.

  Mark, like Lawrence, was a member of the Rowen Trade Guild. Their acquaintance was the result of showing up every year in the same marketplace to trade, and the two had known each other since the very beginning of their respective careers. They could easily skip the usual formalities.

  “If I'd known better, I wouldn’t have bothered learning their language. They’re not bad men, but once they figure out you can understand them, you’ll never hear the end of how great their god is.”

  “Might be that a local deity’s still better than a god who never leaves the shrine except when they spy a flash of gold, eh?” Lawrence said.

  Mark laughed, tapping his own head with the now rolled-up parchment. “You’re not lying! And they say harvest gods are all beautiful women.”

  Holo’s face appeared in Lawrence’s mind. He nodded and grinned but of course did not say what sprang to mind: But they have terrible personalities.

  “Anyway, enough of such talk. I’ll be scolded by the missus for sure. Shall we talk of trade? I presume that’s why you’re here.” Mark’s expression shifted from friendly banter to business. Though there was no need for formalities between the two, their relationship was a calculated one.

  Lawrence readied himself for the exchange and spoke.

  “I’ve brought nails from Ruvinheigen. Thought you might want to buy them up.”

  “Nails, eh? I’m a wheat seller. Did you hear somewhere that we now nail our sacks of wheat closed? I think not.”

  “Ah, but you’ll soon have many customers laying in supplies for the long winter. You could sell those nails just as you sell the wheat. People need them to brace up their homes against the snow.”

  Mark looked skyward for a moment before rolling his gaze back to Lawrence.

  “I suppose that is true...Nails, you say. How many?”

  “I’ve one hundred twenty nails of three pate in length, two hundred in four pate, and two hundred in five pate, along with a statement of quality from the Ruvinheigen blacksmiths’ guild.”

  Mark scratched his cheek with one end of the rolled-up parchment and sighed. This feigned reluctance was a common merchant trait.

  “I’ll take the lot for ten and a half lumione."

  “What’s the lumione trading at now? Against trenni silver.”

  “Thirty-four even when yesterday’s market closed. So that’d be...three hundred fifty-seven trenni.”

  “Too low by far, sir,” said Lawrence.

  The amount wasn’t even as much as Lawrence had spent to buy the nails. Mark’s brow furrowed at Lawrence’s quick answer.

  “Have you heard about the crash in armor prices?” Mark asked. “With no military expeditions into the north this year, people are unloading armor and swords left and right, which means there’s a glut of raw iron. Even nails are cheaper now—even ten lumione is a generous price.”

  It was the response he had expected, so Lawrence calmed himself and replied.

  “Aye, but that’s in the south. When there’s so much iron to be melted down, the price of fuel will rise enough to make it impractical. If you can buy enough firewood to melt iron this time of the year in Ploania, I’d sure like to see it. Anybody that tries it is likely to have their head split with a kindling ax.”

  Once winter came to regions with a lot of snow, the supply of firewood stagnated. The iron forges, with their bottomless appetite for fuel, were abandoned during the winter. If some blacksmith did decide to forge in the winter, the price of firewood would immediately skyrocket, and he would soon find himself showered in the curses of the shivering townspeople. Thus, even if the raw material for nails was suddenly abundant in the region, the original price of those nails should hold steady.

  Any merchant with a bit of experience would be able to put this much together.

  Unsurprisingly, Mark grinned. “Come now, must you be selling nails to a poor wheat merchant? If it’s grain, then sure, I know how to buy it cheap, but nails are far from my specialty.”

  “Sixteen lumione, then.”

  “Too dear. Thirteen.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Fourteen and two-thirds.” Mark’s medium frame stiffened, leaving him loglike.

  Lawrence could tell he would get no further in his negotiations.

  Pushing it would only damage the business relationship. Lawrence nodded and extended his right hand. “It’s done, then.”

  “Well met, guild brother!” said Mark with a smile, shaking Lawrence’s hand.

  The price was undoubtedly quite a compromise on Mark’s end, as well.

  As a wheat merchant, Mark was not, strictly speaking, even allowed to buy or sell nails. Which merchant could sell what good was decided by the respective guilds, so to stock a new item, a merchant had to either obtain the permission of the other merchants already selling that item or cut them in on the profits.

  At a glance, this rule would seem to obstruct free trade, but if it was absent, giant companies with huge amounts of capital would soon swallow the entire marketplace. The rule was designed to prevent that from happening.

  “Would you prefer to settle up in coin or credit?” asked Mark. “Credit, if you please.”

  “Thank goodness. There are so many cash deals this time of year it’s hard to keep up.”

  While traders had no trouble keeping track of their deals in their ledger books, plenty of people bringing goods into the villages and towns would want coin and only coin.

  But currency shortages were serious problems in any town. Even if a merchant had assets to buy a particular good, without the currency to make the payment, there could be no commerce at all. And an illiterate farmer wouldn’t even blow his nose on a promissory note.

  In the wilderness, it was the knight with his sword who was strongest, but in the cities, coin equaled power. This was why the Church had grown so wealthy. Collecting tithes week after week, it could not help but become powerful.

  “So since I’m taking credit, I’ve got a favor to ask of you,” said Lawrence as Mark approached to unload the sack of nails from the wagon bed. The wheat merchant’s face grew insta
ntly wary “It’s nothing terribly important. I’ve got to head north to take care of something, and I wondered if you’d ask after the conditions of the roads and passes up that way Your customer before me, he was from the north, no?”

  Seeing that Lawrence’s question had nothing to do with business, Mark visibly relaxed.

  His shift in expression was obviously intentional, Lawrence noted with chagrin. It was probably Mark’s way of getting back at Lawrence a bit for selling the nails so dear.

  “Aye, that’s easy enough,” said Mark. “Though it would’ve been easier for you to come in the summertime as you normally do. Must be something pretty big to get you heading up north in midwinter.”

  “Well, you know, this and that. I will say it’s nothing to do with business, though.”

  “Ha-ha-ha. Even the ever-traveling merchant can’t free himself from life’s little obligations, eh? So where are you headed?”

  “A place called Yoitsu. Heard of it?”

  Mark leaned on the cart as he raised a single eyebrow. “Can t say I have. But who knows how many little towns and villages I’ve never heard of. You want me to find someone who knows it, then?”

  “Well, in any case, we’re heading for Nyohhira, so you can ask about Yoitsu sort of ‘by the way’; that’ll be fine.”

  “Right, then. So if you’re bound for Nyohhira you’ll be crossing the Dolan Plains.”

  “You know the way, then? That makes it easier for me.”

  The wheat merchant nodded and thumped his chest, as if to say “leave it to me.” Mark would surely be able to collect the information Lawrence needed.

  This was exactly why Lawrence had come to Mark in the first place, but if he had interrupted the wheat merchant during this most busy of seasons simply to gather information without bringing some business along as well, it would have weighed on his conscience—and Mark would’ve been none too pleased.

  That is why he brought the nails to sell. Lawrence was well aware that Mark knew many of the area blacksmiths. It would be easy for Mark to sell off the nails to any of them for a tidy profit.

  Mark would even be able to ask for a portion of the payment for those nails in cash. As a wheat merchant—for whom the last chance to save up money was rapidly approaching—the chance to get a bit of hard coin into his hands would probably make him happier than any meager profit.

  And as Lawrence had expected, Mark readily agreed. That took care of the need to gather information on the upcoming travel.

  “Oh, yes. There was another thing I wanted to ask you about. Don’t worry, this will be quick,” said Lawrence.

  “Do I look that stingy?”

  Lawrence met Mark’s chagrined smile. “Does this town have any chroniclers?”

  “Chroniclers...? Oh, you mean the people who write those endless diaries of town events?”

  Chroniclers were paid a retainer by nobles or Church officials and kept histories of a given area or town.

  Lawrence couldn’t help but laugh at hearing Mark dismiss their work as “endless diaries.”

  It wasn’t entirely accurate, but nor was it far from the truth, which made it all the funnier.

  “I don’t think they’d like you putting it that way, but yes,” Lawrence said.

  “Bah, it just bothers me that all they need do to earn coin is sit in a chair all day and write.”

  “That’s a little hard to take from someone who got so lucky in a deal he was able to open a shop in a town.”

  The story of Mark’s good fortune was a famous one.

  Lawrence laughed again, this time at Mark’s momentarily stunned expression.

  “So, are there any chroniclers or nay?”

  “Ah...yes, I think there are. But I wouldn’t get mixed up with them were I you,” said Mark, taking hold of the bag of nails in Lawrence’s wagon.

  “Rumor has it one was accused of heresy by a monastery somewhere and had to flee. The town’s filled with people like that who had to run.”

  The townspeople of Kumersun were less concerned with the animosity between pagans and the Church than they were with economic prosperity, so the town had naturally become a refuge for a variety of naturalists, philosophers, and other such heretics.

  “I just have some things I want to ask after,” said Lawrence. “Chroniclers collect local legends and such, yes? I’ve an interest in such matters.”

  “Now, why would you care about that? Do you need conversation starters for when you travel north?”

  “Something like that. I know it’s sudden, but do you think you might introduce me to one?”

  Mark turned his head slightly and called out toward his stand, with the bag of nails still in one hand.

  A boy emerged from behind a mountain of wheat sacks. Evidently Mark had reached a point where he could have an apprentice.

  “I do know one. Better if it’s someone from Rowen, right?” said Mark, handing bag after bag of nails to his young apprentice.

  Seeing this, Lawrence was filled with a renewed sense of urgency to get to Yoitsu and return to his normal business routine as quickly as he could.

  Yet it would be trouble if Holo discerned that fact—and for his part, it was not as though Lawrence wished to be rid of her.

  He found it impossible to reconcile his two feelings on the issue.

  If he lived as long as Holo did, taking a year or two off from business would hardly be an issue.

  But Lawrence’s life was too short for that.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Hm? Oh...nothing. Yes, if there’s a chronicler in the trade guild that would be convenient. Can I ask you to introduce me?”

  “I can certainly do that much, yes. I’ll even do it for free.”

  Lawrence couldn’t help but smile at the effort Mark put into saying “free.”

  “Is sooner better?” asked Mark.

  “If possible, yes.”

  “I’ll send the boy out, then. There’s a fearless old peddler named

  Gi Batos there, and if I’m remembering right, he’s close with a pagan hermit who’s done chronicle work. Old Batos takes the week before and after the festival off, so if you go by the guild house around midday, you should find him drinking the day away.”

  Even within a single guild, such as Rowen Trade Guild, traveling merchants like Lawrence might not know many others within it—like Amati whose business was unrelated to Lawrence’s own.

  Lawrence repeated Gi Batoss name to himself, carving it into his memory.

  “Understood. I’m in your debt.”

  “Ha-ha. If that’s all it takes to be in my debt, I’d hate to think what comes next. Enough of that talk—you’ll be in town until the festival ends, yes? Stop by for a drink, won’t you?”

  “I suppose I should let you brag of your success at least once. I’ll be by.”

  Mark raised his voice in a laugh and then sighed as he handed the last bag of nails to his apprentice. “Even a town merchant endures endless troubles and worries, though. Sometimes I wish I could go back to traveling.”

  Lawrence could only smile in vague agreement as he was still toiling day in and day out to achieve what Mark already had. Mark seemed to realize this. “Uh, forget I said that,” he said, smiling apologetically.

  “All we can do is keep our noses to the grindstone. It’s the same for all merchants.”

  “True enough. Good fortune to the both of us, then!”

  Lawrence shook hands with Mark, and after seeing another customer come to call on the wheat merchant, he put the stall behind him.

  He slowly maneuvered his wagon into the crowd and then looked back at Mark’s stand.

  There stood Mark, who seemed to have forgotten about Lawrence entirely and was now embroiled in negotiations with his next customer.

  Lawrence was frankly envious.

  But even Mark the successful town merchant said he sometimes wished to return to traveling.

  Lawrence remembered a story. Long ago, there was a king
who planned to alleviate the poverty in his own kingdom by invading the prosperous nation next to his own, but a court poet had said this: “One always sees the wretched parts of one’s own land and the best parts of one’s neighbor’s.”

  Lawrence thought on the story.

  He had been focusing on the troubles involved in finding Holo’s homeland or the setbacks he’d suffered in Ruvinheigen, but the fact was he had been able to travel with a companion of rare quality.

  If Lawrence had never encountered Holo, he would have continued along his usual trade route, enduring the endless loneliness that came with it.

  It had once been so bad that he started to seriously fantasize about what it would be like if his horse became human. As he pondered this,

  Lawrence realized that one of his dreams had already come true.

  There was a good chance that eventually he would be traveling alone again, and when that time came, Lawrence knew he would look back on this time with Holo with no shortage of fondness.

  Lawrence gripped the reins once again.

  Once he finished making the rounds through the trade guilds and merchant firms, he would make sure to buy a truly delicious lunch for Holo.

  Kumersun lacked a church, so it was a bell tower atop the highest roof of the tallest noble house in town that grandly rang the noontime bell each day. The bell, of course, was decorated with carvings of the finest sort, and the roof, visible throughout the entire town, was maintained by the finest artisans that could be had.

  It was said that the roof—constructed solely because of the vanity of the nobility it housed—had cost fully three hundred lumione, but the people of the town bore the nobles no ill will, reasoning that it was doing such things that made one nobility.

  Perhaps the reason most wealthy merchants, who hoarded their money in great vaults, were so richly resented was because they lacked that playful sense of extravagance. Even the most famously violent of knights would be beloved if he spent freely enough.

  Lawrence thought on this as he opened the door to his room—and was struck face on by the sharp tang of liquor.

  “So it smelled this bad, did it..

  Lawrence suddenly regretted not rinsing his mouth before venturing out, but the greater part of the smell was surely the fault of the wolf that even now slept before him.