Spice & Wolf III

by Hasekura Isuna

  As long as Amati was unable to raise a thousand silver pieces, Holo’s debt to Lawrence would still stand. There was no telling if that would be enough to get her to stay with him, but he could at least try to make that assertion.

  So the problem lay in preventing Amati from fulfilling the contract.

  It was due to the strange mood of the festival that the price of pyrite had risen so high, and to hear Mark tell it, the price was going to rise still higher. Lawrence did not know how much pyrite Amati had on hand or how much profit he had turned. Since the pyrite was selling for many times—even many tens of times—its cost price, depending on how much money Amati had been able to invest, he might already have raised the thousand silver.

  However, there was a factor that worked in Lawrence's favor—pyrite did tend to exist in large quantities.

  Even if it could be sold for ten times the purchase price, one had to have the pyrite in quantity before making truly large amounts of money.

  Of course, Amati wasn’t necessarily relying solely on pyrite In raise the money, but the thought that he might have trouble obtaining sufficient quantity to do so was some consolation to Lawrence.

  Lawrence had to prevent Amati from making this kind of deal. More accurately, he had to force him to take a loss, because if Amati was pressed and didn’t care about the future of his business, he might liquidate all of his assets just to raise the money.

  But if Lawrence found it difficult to stop him from turning a huge profit, forcing him to suffer a loss was nearly impossible.

  A frontal assault was out of the question. The rising demand for pyrite meant there was no need to push any deals through by force; the profit would naturally come.

  If there was no urgency, there was no way to swindle.

  So what to do...?

  He turned the problem over and over in his mind, always run­ning into the same walls. Eventually without thinking, Lawrence said, “Say, Ho—”

  He managed not to say “lo,” but a passing craftsman did look at him strangely.

  Again, he realized how largely Holo’s small figure and invincible smile loomed in his mind.

  It seemed impossible that he’d gotten along on his own for so long before her.

  Holo would certainly be able to come up with some good ideas or at least set him on the right path.

  Somewhere along the line, Lawrence realized, he’d become quite dependent on her.

  What am I to you?

  He simply could not answer the question with any kind of confidence.

  “If I were Holo, what would I do?”

  Lawrence didn’t imagine that he could imitate the endlessly mysterious Holo’s thought process perfectly.

  But he was a merchant.

  When a merchant came upon a new idea, it was his job to make that idea his own and get ahead of his competitors.

  Holo always considered every facet of a situation.

  Given the situation before him, Lawrence knew she would look at the whole problem from every possible angle.

  It seemed easy but wasn’t. Sometimes the most brilliant idea would seem obvious in retrospect.

  Amati was making a profit on the rising demand for pyrite. Lawrence needed to make him suffer a loss.

  What was the simplest, most obvious way for that to happen?

  Lawrence mused.

  Unconstrained by the bonds of common sense, he thought.

  One answer occurred to him.

  “The demand for pyrite needs to fall.”

  Lawrence said it out loud, then laughed foolishly.

  So this is what happened when he tried to imitate Holo?

  If the value of pyrite was to drop, that truly would be cause for celebration.

  But demand was climbing and showed no signs of stopping. ’The price was already past increases of tenfold, twentyfold. It would climb and then—

  “...And then?”

  Lawrence stopped dead in his tracks as the realization hit him.

  “Ten times? Twenty times? And then what...thirty? And after that?”

  He felt as if he could see Holo snickering at him.

  The price would not rise forever. The craze would end as it always did.

  Lawrence almost felt like he might sob again. He clamped his hand over his mouth to stifle it.

  There were two questions he had to answer:

  The first was when the crash would come, and the second was would it be possible to make Amati fall with it?

  Lawrence started walking again, his hand still over his mouth.

  Even if the price of pyrite were to crash, would Amati really be pulled down with it? Lawrence doubted it. It would be underestimating the boy to assume so.

  So the problem would be contriving to make that situation happen. If he could articulate the problem concretely, Lawrence didn’t think his mind was so very far behind Holo’s.

  The ideal situation appeared in his mind, settling heavy and cold into his stomach. He’d experienced this sensation before. It wasn't logic, but the intuition that an important contest was upon him.

  He took a deep breath and thought about a critical point: When would the crash occur?

  It was obvious that the price could not continue to rise forever, but when would it crash—and more to the point, would it crash sometime before the end of the next day, when the contract between Lawrence and Amati was up?

  Even a fortune-teller would find it impossible to predict such a thing, as would anyone short of the gods themselves.

  Lawrence pictured in his mind the farmers in a wheat-producing region, using their own ingenuity to carry out the harvests that had once been the sole purview of the gods.

  Rather than waiting terrified for the gods to make the price drop, why not become those gods?

  A moment after the outrageous arrogance of the idea occurred to him, a great cry arose, and he turned to look.

  Lawrence realized that he’d walked all the way back into town and arrived again at the center of the great intersection.

  The straw puppets still collided with one another amid angry shouts, each collision bringing a shower of twigs and cries. It was like an actual war.

  Lawrence set aside his scheming for a moment to appreciate the intensity of the scene, and he saw something that immediately brought him back to his senses.

  He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

  Amati.

  Amati was right there.

  At first he thought it was some cruel joke of the gods, hut then he wondered—even this coincidence might be somehow significant.

  Lawrence stood in the heart of Kumersun at the intersection of the main streets running north to south and east to west.

  Amati s back was toward the inn where Holo presumably still was.

  Amati stopped and slowly looked behind him.

  For a moment, Lawrence was afraid that Amati saw him, but no, Amati didn’t notice him at all.

  Lawrence followed the boy’s gaze.

  Its direction was obvious.

  But what was there? Lawrence had to know.

  And there, at a window on the second floor of the inn, facing the broad avenue, fox skin muffler wrapped about her neck, was Holo.

  A terrible anxiety roiled in Lawrence’s stomach that was bitter with anger and a kind of impatience.

  Holo nuzzled the muffler and then nodded.

  Lawrence saw Amati put his hand over his chest in response, as though swearing an oath before God.

  Whether Holo had invited him in or Amati had forced his way in, Lawrence did not know.

  However, based on what he was seeing, Lawrence thought there was little reason to be optimistic.

  Amati turned his back on the inn and walked away. He leaned forward and seemed hurried, as though he was escaping, which only exacerbated Lawrence’s suspicions.

  In a moment, Amati had disappeared into the crowd, and Lawrence looked back to the inn window.

  He held his breath.

  Holo
was clearly looking directly at him.

  If Lawrence was able to spot Amati in the crowd, there was no reason the sharp-eyed Holo would have difficulty spotting Lawrence.

  Although Holo did not look away immediately, neither did she smile. She simply looked at him steadily.

  They stayed that way for some time. Lawrence was about to finally exhale when Holo suddenly withdrew from the windowsill.

  If she had closed the window, he might have stayed frozen there.

  But she didn’t. The window was left open.

  It seemed to exert a pull on him, drawing him toward the inn.

  Lawrence was of course not so naive as to think that Holo and Amati had simply spoken through the window.

  Holo was no simple town girl, and Amati’s feelings for her were far from coolheaded. There was no reason to think that they hadn’t had a conversation in the room.

  Holo had looked quietly unflustered and unconcerned, probably because she hadn’t been seen doing anything she would need to be concerned about.

  Which meant she was provoking him.

  Lawrence thought back to the conversation they had once had in Ruvinheigen. He believed that if he spoke to her honestly, she would understand.

  He steeled himself and then headed for the inn.

  Immediately upon entering the inn, Lawrence was greeted by a lively feast.

  The tables were piled with all manner of food, and the guests were drinking, talking, and even singing.

  It occurred to Lawrence that he and Holo should have been at one of those tables enjoying themselves, and despite his merchant’s aversion to regret, he felt a pang nonetheless.

  But there was still a chance. If Holo had wanted to utterly reject him, she would’ve closed the window.

  Lawrence held onto that tenuous idea, which gave him confidence, and ascended the stairs next to the counter, leading to the second floor.

  Immediately, someone called out to him.

  “Mr. Lawrence—”

  Not particularly serene to begin with, Lawrence started and turned around; the innkeeper was also surprised, blinking as he looked at Lawrence while leaning over the counter.

  ...I’m sorry, is there something...?”

  “Ah, yes, I was told to give you a letter.”

  The mention of a letter sent a surge of uneasiness through Law­rence's chest. He stifled it with a cough.

  Descending the stairs, he walked over to the counter and took the proffered letter.

  “Who is this from?”

  “Your companion left it just a moment ago.”

  Impressively, Lawrence managed to hide his surprise.

  It went without saying that the innkeeper had knowledge of all the comings and goings of his inn's residents.

  Lawrence had left the inn, and Holo had remained. While Law­rence was out, Amati paid Holo a visit, and Holo now chose to communicate with Lawrence not directly but via letter.

  No innkeeper could observe these events and not suppose something was afoot.

  Yet the innkeeper betrayed no such suspicions as he looked at Lawrence.

  Connections between merchants in a town like this ran deeply.

  If Lawrence was to behave in an unseemly fashion here, the rumors would be all over town almost instantly.

  “Might I borrow a light?” Lawrence said with careful control.

  The innkeeper nodded and brought out a silver candlestick from the back.

  The bright candle was not tallow, and Lawrence felt that his inner turmoil might be laid bare underneath its strong light.

  In his mind, he smiled derisively at himself for entertaining such thoughts, and then he cut open the envelope with the dagger at his waist.

  The innkeeper moved away, as if realizing it would be rude of him to read the contents of the letter, but Lawrence could tell the man still glanced at him from time to time.

  He coughed lightly and removed the letter from its envelope.

  One sheet was parchment; the other was normal paper.

  His heart pounded. Hesitating here meant that he did not completely trust Holo.

  It was well within the realm of possibility that within the letter. Holo would attempt reconciliation.

  He opened the letter—which was folded in half—slowly, and a bit of sand fell from the surface of the paper.

  It had probably been used in order to persuade the ink to dry more quickly, which meant the letter had only just been written

  Would it be a letter that repaired their relationship or destroyed it?

  The words on the paper leapt out at Lawrence’s eyes.

  Cash on hand, two hundred silver pieces. Pyrite on hand, three hundred silver pieces’ worth. Salable assets—

  He looked up, taken aback at the list of assets that began without so much as a preamble.

  Cash? Pyrite?

  He had expected a letter that would echo in his mind with her voice, but what he held here was a sheet of paper with a list of figures and nothing more.

  Lawrence looked back to the paper and, gritting his teeth, continued reading.

  ...on hand, three hundred silver pieces’ worth. Salable assets roughly two hundred silver pieces’ worth.

  This was obviously a list of Amati’s assets.

  Lawrence felt his shoulders slacken, as if they were stale bread loaves sprinkled with water.

  Holo had allowed Amati into the room so she could get this information from him.

  She had to have done so for Lawrence.

  It was her roundabout way of reconciling.

  Lawrence smiled widely. He didn’t even bother trying to hide it.

  At the end of the note was written “These contents transcribed by another.”

  There were many people who could read but not write. Holo had gotten this information, slipped from the room under the pretense of visiting the restroom perhaps, and gotten a merchant or someone to write out the list for her. Lawrence remembered Amati’s handwriting from the contract. This was not his writing.

  Lawrence carefully folded up the note, which was now suddenly beyond value to him, and tucked it near his breast, and then he pulled the parchment free.

  Perhaps she’d used her wiles to fool Amati into signing some sort of ridiculous contract.

  Lawrence flashed to the memory of Amati’s self-satisfied face after his meeting with Holo.

  Holo still wants to travel with me, Lawrence thought to himself.

  Flooded with a sense of incredible relief, he unfolded the parch­ment without hesitation.

  In the name of God...

  It was unmistakably Amati’s bold, gallant handwriting.

  Lawrence quashed the rush of emotion that came and kept reading.

  He read the first line, the second line, the third line—

  And then—

  By these terms shall the two be bound in marriage.

  As he got to the end of the document, it felt like the world was spinning around him.

  “...Wha...?”

  He heard himself murmur in a voice that sounded very faraway indeed.

  He closed his eyes, but the contents of the parchment, the words that he’d just read, remained there in his vision.

  It was a marriage certificate.

  There on the parchment, sworn in the name of God, were written the names of a young fishmonger named Fermi Amati and Holo.

  The line for the signature of Holo’s guardian was blank.

  But once it had been signed and sealed by her guardian and delivered to a church, Amati and Holo would be husband and wife

  Holo's name had been written in an uncertain hand.

  Hers were the letters of someone who could read but who could only write by imitation.

  An image flashed through Lawrence’s mind—Holo watching Amati write the contract and then clumsily signing her own name

  Lawrence pulled the first sheet of paper out of his breast pocket—that desperately valuable paper—and reread it.

  It had to be a list of
Amati’s property. The amounts were entirely plausible.

  She must have composed the list not to help Lawrence, but rather to show him just how dire the situation was.

  Why would she do that? It was silly even to ask.

  Taken along with the marriage certificate, Lawrence thought the answer was obvious.

  Amati was on the verge of fulfilling his contract with Lawrence, whom Holo was planning to leave.

  Their meeting, Holo’s and Lawrence’s, had been pure chance.

  Despite Amati being young, rash, and honest to a fault, Holo had perhaps found the overachieving, self-important boy to be a more suitable partner.

  There was no reason not to think so.

  Even if Lawrence was to dash up the stairs and beg her not to marry, clutching the marriage certificate in his hand, Holo would simply turn him out. She excelled at that.

  He had no choice but to steel himself.

  Holo had revealed Amati’s assets to Lawrence; she had to be telling him that if he could successfully defeat the young fishmon­ger, she would hear him out. On the other hand, if Lawrence failed—that would be the end of it.

  There was a way to defeat Amati. There was hope.

  Lawrence quickly put the note and contract away, and then he turned to the innkeeper.

  “Fetch me all the coin I’ve left with you, if you please.”

  Traveling with Holo was worth all the gold he’d ever have.

  Lawrence knew it was possible to legally bankrupt Amati.

  The problem lay in getting Amati to accept a deal that held such a possibility.

  Lawrence suspected Amati was unfamiliar with the sort of deal he would propose. This wasn’t because he looked down on the boy; it was simply because Amati’s business did not involve trans­actions like the one that Lawrence had in mind.

  Nobody wants to get involved in deals they don’t fully under­hand, after all.

  Lawrence had the additional disadvantage of being Amati’s enemy.

  Given all that, he expected the odds of Amati accepting his deal at one in nine on the outside. Lawrence didn’t care if he had to provoke the boy—he had to get Amati to take the bait.

  Unfortunately, no matter how normal the deal appeared on the surface, Amati was bound to notice how antagonistic it really was.