Spice & Wolf V

by Hasekura Isuna

  If he just stayed quiet, pretending not to notice anything, playing the fool while leaving the deal in her hands, there would be no trouble.

  If Eve was going to deceive him, it would not be to steal his share away.

  The flat, hard truth was that she was wise enough to make this deal go smoothly.

  She was no fool. He knew she wasn’t so reckless as to throw in for a deal with no chance of success.

  So he should just stay quiet.

  If the deal succeeded, Lawrence would become a town merchant at the very least.

  If only he could stay quiet.

  “Do you doubt me?” Eve demanded.

  “No.”

  “Then what? Have you lost your nerve?”

  Lawrence looked within himself.

  Was he weak? Timid?

  No.

  There was only one reason he couldn’t stay foolish and silent. He couldn’t get Holo out of his head.

  “If we don’t hurry, the merchants beyond the walls are going to get their money situations sorted. They’ve been making arrange­ments. We don’t know where they might raise it from. Do you just want to bite down on your knuckle and look on as others turn an absurd profit? Are you listen—”

  “Are you not frightened?” Lawrence asked, cutting her off.

  Eve looked stunned. “Me? Hah. Don’t be absurd,” she spat, her lip twisting. “Of course I am.”

  Her voice was low, but it still echoed through the storehouse.

  “It’s thousands of silver pieces we’re talking about here. How could I not be frightened? A human life is a fragile thing in the face of that much money I don’t have the nerve to stay calm in that sort of scenario.”

  “There’s no guarantee I won’t change my mind and attack you,” said Lawrence.

  “Hah. Indeed. The reverse is also true. No, our suspicion of each other may only grow...but in either case”—Eve took a deep breath as if to calm herself—“we can’t continue taking these risks.”

  Eve did indeed understand the danger of this deal.

  No, it was precisely because she understood that she was deceiving Lawrence.

  So what was it that she saw on the other side of this profit for which she was willing to go to such lengths?

  Eve laughed in a dry voice. “I can tell by your face you want to ask me something stupid. You want to know why I’ll go to such lengths to earn money, no?” she said, seeming to wipe the palm of her right hand on her hip.

  That was how natural the motion was.

  “Sorry, but I can't have you back out of the deal now.”

  Suddenly a thick-bladed cleaver was in her hand. It would have been rude to call it a knife.

  “To be honest, I didn’t want to use this. But consider the amount. I’ll be in trouble if you pull out now. You understand, don’t you?”

  Once they have a weapon in their hands, most people become excited as the blood rushes to their heads, but Eve’s voice was calm and dry to the end.

  “So long as the deal goes well, your profit’s guaranteed. So hand it over.”

  “A human life isn’t worth much in the face of sixty gold pieces."

  “That’s right...and you don’t want to find that out in person, do you?”

  Lawrence flashed his merchant’s grin and produced the burlap pouch that Holo had given him, offering it to Eve.

  “God’s blessings be upon those with wit and wisdom,” murmured Eve, and she made as if to take the pouch. But then-

  "..."

  "–?"

  Each of them moved with wordless energy.

  Lawrence retreated, and Eve’s blade swung down.

  An instant later, there was a jingling sound as the bag of gold coins hit the floor.

  The instant passed.

  Eve’s eyes blazed with blue flame, and Lawrence looked back at her evenly, unsurprised.

  A few seconds later, their mutual failures occurred to each of them.

  “We’ve both of us fallen short. Am I wrong?”

  As she didn’t pull back her arm and retreat, Lawrence caught a clear glimpse of the blade.

  Eve was clever to the end.

  The blade had been reversed, striking with the dull side of the single-edged weapon. He could tell that Eve didn’t have any intention of cutting him.

  In contrast, Lawrence’s dodge had been in earnest, and yet the fact that he hadn’t been surprised meant that he was convinced that her blade would fall.

  Had he truly trusted Eve, Lawrence would have believed the opposite, standing still or betraying surprise when forced to dodge.

  He didn’t trust her, and he hadn’t been surprised because he knew she was hiding something.

  “My failure was in being sniffed out by you. That’s what you meant by asking if I was scared, is it not?” asked Eve.

  Eve didn’t as much as glance at the bag of coins on the floor.

  This was proof that she was used to violence.

  If he thought about the fact that his opponent was a woman, he would be dead in an instant.

  “The statue in Rigolos house is one piece of evidence, isn’t it?” asked Lawrence.

  Eve’s lip twisted, and she switched the knife from its reversed position to a proper grip.

  “You pretended to be dealing in stone statues, but what you were really doing was smuggling processed rock salt molded into statues.”

  “Could be...,” she said, and Lawrence could see Eve lowering her stance.

  Whether or not he ran, this was looking like a bad bet.

  “I had reason to suspect you of smuggling salt, but it never occurred to me that it would be carved rock salt, since the Church would surely notice you carrying out smuggling on that scale.”

  But there was still a way around the problem.

  It went without saying that it meant cutting the Church in on the deal.

  Lenos’s parish had been desperate for money.

  The Church wouldn’t hesitate to dabble in salt smuggling, which surely brought in more money than stone statues.

  Lawrence had not realized this sooner due to the fact that Eve brought her statues in from a port town.

  If the material was being hauled in from a seaside town, from the standpoint of weight and volume, any salt would obviously have been grain salt.

  Hauling bulkier, more labor-intensive rock salt in from the coast flew against any merchant’s common sense.

  And it was that common sense that Eve had manipulated in order to get through the town gates.

  “I’m sure you and the Church had a lovely honeymoon for a while. I’ve heard that it was throwing so much money around that nobody could figure out where it was coming from. But then it all ended, I’m guessing because of the northern campaign. The Church started to solidify its base of power and pulled out of the salt-smuggling racket rather than risk an uprising or two. And just then, this fur trouble came up. And being clever, this is what you proposed to the bishop—”

  Eve raised the tip of her blade high.

  Lawrence backed up another step.

  “If the merchants waiting outside the town were going to buy up all the fur, why not just do it ourselves?”

  Eve had said that she had heard the results of the Council of Fifty’s meeting from her contacts inside the Church.

  Still, her skill had been far out of the ordinary.

  Rather than imagining Eve had come up with all of this on the spot, it made more sense for Lawrence to believe that she had plotted it all along, and only just then took action.

  And it went without saying who stood to profit the most from a rule that restricted fur sales to cash.

  It would be extremely lucrative for the Church, in whose coffers sat a nearly unimaginable amount of money from the tithes it collected.

  The bigger a trading firm became, the more of its business took place on paper, in entries on ledgers, with all of the money going into and out of the firm assiduously recorded, making raising money behind closed doors difficult.


  And with the careful body searches being conducted at the town gates, and in the case of merchants coming to buy fur, the questioning of the origin of their money, a significant number of merchants could be contained.

  But Eve still maintained confidence that she could buy up fur.

  It was true that the foreign merchants had made long preparations, but now that the craftsmen and suppliers had rioted, none of them would risk giving foreigners any money at all.

  And yet Eve was nervous.

  That could mean only one thing.

  She knew where the foreign merchants were going to get their money, and she knew there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  That was the true motive of the Church in deciding to cut ties with the fallen noble merchant who, in addition to smuggling salt, had approached the archbishop of the region by the sea.

  Eve said that the Church had claimed it was more advantageous to deal with a trade company than with an individual merchant.

  And that was exactly so.

  If the Church was going to partner with a trading company in an effort to buy up fur, then the action implied they had gained a powerful patron, thus allowing them to abandon her.

  Eve must have thought that none of the outside merchants could possibly be carrying a large amount of money, but what if the Church carefully moved its tithe money outside the town?

  The revolting craftsmen and merchants would discover that contrary to their belief, the foreign merchants had a large amount of money, probably because some entity within the town had betrayed them.

  There hadn’t been a single lie in the story that Eve had presented Lawrence.

  There had not been a lie...but it wasn’t the truth, either.

  “The statue in Rigolo’s house is certainly rock salt. And you're right that I was the one who brought the furs to the attention of that lousy bishop and right about him cutting me loose and finding another patron, as well. I’ll leave it up to you as to whether to believe me or not,” said Eve with a laugh, tossing the knife to the floor.

  “Trust me,” she seemed to be saying.

  Lawrence didn’t even wonder whether or not there was a need for her to lie this far in.

  He would simply decide whether she was lying or not and act accordingly.

  That was all.

  “And the reason you think I brought the deal to you...that's probably right, too.”

  “I’m a shield to protect you.”

  Eve shrugged. “I’m a salt smuggler who knows all the Church’s worst secrets. Of course, before we parted ways, they guaranteed my life. It was a verbal contract, so you never know. If a good opportunity were to arise, though, I’m sure they’ll use me again. So it must be true. And I did make a profit myself. I didn’t have any intention of starting an uprising, and I’m sure they know that.”

  “But you couldn’t let the deal that you proposed to them get away.”

  “Exactly. Even if it means I’ll be interfering with their expectations, I can’t let this profit go.”

  “So you thought to yourself, ‘They can kill one person, but it’s hard to kill two.’ ”

  What would the Church think of Lawrence, a man who used his own companion as collateral in a deal that went against the interests of the town?

  From the outside, he surely looked like a conspirator who knew all the ins and outs of Eve’s plan.

  One person can be easily silenced, but as soon as there are two, things become difficult—all the more so when the second person is an outsider on whom they have no background information. Without knowing where Lawrence came from, there was no telling what trade firm or guild might come storming into the city if he was killed.

  Lawrence had unknowingly played that role.

  And because he hadn’t known anything about it, his performance had been magnificent.

  He must have either seemed simply reckless or looked like he believed the Church unworthy of fear.

  If he hadn’t known anything, if he had pretended not to know anything, the deal would surely have gone off well.

  “So what’s it going to be?” Eve asked.

  “It’s going to be this,” said Lawrence, and in that instant, he lunged for both the bag of gold and the blade.

  "..."

  "..."

  The two glared wordlessly at each other.

  A cold sweat broke out on Lawrence’s forehead.

  The moment he reached out for the blade, a small knife had appeared in Eve’s hand, and she plunged it down at him.

  And this time she was not striking with the flat of the blade.

  That much Lawrence could predict, but getting out of the way would be a gamble.

  “Do you crave money so much?” he asked.

  By some miracle, he was able to twist Eve’s left hand away by the wrist.

  While she was far from powerless, she was still a woman. The knife fell from her hand.

  “D-don’t you...?”

  “I do—no...” Lawrence paused before continuing. “I did.”

  “That’s a funny—”

  “Joke,” perhaps she would have said, but Lawrence twisted her arm around and shoved her against a stack of wooden crates, grabbing her collar with his free hand and yanking it back, cutting off her voice.

  “If you kill me and hide my corpse, it probably won’t be found until long after the deal’s done. The Church would never guess that our partnership had fractured. I have to say, I’m impressed. Or were you simply planning to take the gold and run?”

  Eve stood on tiptoes, her face contorted.

  The oily sweat on her brow was proof that this was no act.

  “No, you wouldn’t do that. The reason you tried to kill me is the bag you were looking for when I first entered the storeroom. You’re just dying to use it.”

  That instant, Eve paled.

  She realized that if he continued to choke her, her life could genuinely be in danger, and this showed on her face.

  Money was more important to her than her life.

  Lawrence laughed.

  “So, it’s the money you made smuggling salt? What you managed to pile up over time must be at least equal to what I brought—maybe more. And you were going to buy fur with all that, with me none the wiser.”

  Eve did not answer.

  The tortured expression on her face seemed to come more from her fear that the money in her breast pocket would be taken than the fact that her plan had been revealed.

  “The reason you couldn’t do the fur deal yourself is because you have too much money on hand. If you tried that alone, the Church would think nothing of killing you. So you brought me in. It’s easy to kill one person, but killing two—that’s hard. And you’ll continue to pull together money to invest until the Church gets serious about eliminating us. It’s one thing not to care about a stranger’s life, but you don’t even care about your own. All you care about is profit!”

  If it hadn’t been for that fact, Lawrence probably would have stayed quiet.

  He probably would have pretended to be ignorant of the salt smuggling and simply focused on the deal.

  But he couldn’t watch someone take such massive risks and simply let that go.

  No matter how great the profit, there had to be a limit to the amount of risk one allowed.

  What Eve was doing was tantamount to suicide.

  Having come this far, he wanted—needed—to ask her why. “What is it...?”

  “...?”

  “What is it at the end of all of this that makes taking such absurd risks worthwhile?”

  Even as Lawrence hoisted her off the ground, even as her face turned dark red, even then, Eve smiled.

  “I’m a merchant, too. Making money brings me happiness. But I don’t know what lies at the end of it all. First you make one silver piece, then two. Then after two, three. But have you never stopped to consider what awaits at the end of this drive to quench that constant thirst?”

  Of course, Lawrence hadn�
��t considered this, either.

  He didn’t have the luxury.

  That was because since meeting Holo, he suddenly felt freer. His constant quest for profit had somehow diminished.

  Its place had been supplanted by conversations with Holo.

  Eve was probably his exact opposite.

  She put profit above her own life.

  “Wh-what...what do...,” she began, her voice hoarser than usual.

  Lawrence slackened his grip somewhat, and Eve wheezed as though asthmatic, coughing. Her smile never wavered as she continued.

  “What do I...think is waiting?”

  Her blue eyes stared straight into his. “Are you so childish as to think something is waiting?” she sneered.

  He didn’t tighten his grip again. She had hit her mark perfectly.

  “Every time I looked at the rich bastard that bought me, 1 wondered to myself—what could he possibly be doing with so much money? No matter how much you make, there’s no end to it, but the next day comes, and you can’t keep yourself from earning more. How awful to be rich, I thought.”

  Eve coughed, took a deep breath, and continued. “And I must look like a pathetic creature to you. After all, I chose the same path he did.”

  The next moment, Lawrence felt like he saw Eve’s hand move.

  And then without really understanding what had happened, by the time he realized he’d been punched, he collapsed to the floor.

  “I watched his vain efforts, even watched him die, and yet still I chose this path. Do you know why?”

  It wasn’t the small knife that was now perched beneath Lawrence’s throat.

  It was the large cleaver clutched in her hand, waiting vigilantly for a chance to do its job.

  “That’s why,” said Eve, striking Lawrence’s face a terrible blow with the blade’s handle. His vision exploded in red light, then half his face blossomed into hot pain.

  He realized his body felt much lighter, but he couldn’t get up.

  Neither could he close his mouth, and with what felt more like unbearable disorienting pressure all over his body, he couldn’t even raise his voice. Yet somehow, using his elbow, Lawrence managed to roll over and get into a crawling position. He couldn’t move any more than that, and he looked at the drops of blood that pattered to the floor through his tear-blurred eyes.

  His ears could still sort out the sounds around him, so he knew that Eve had left the storehouse.