Lawrence had always attributed that to her selfishness, never dreaming that this was the truth.
He peered at Holo’s turned-away face, imagining that if this was no joke, then she would be blushing red.
“So—rather foolish, eh?”
“…Unfortunately, yes.”
Holo looked back at him, eyes resentful as she bumped her head into his shoulder. “Yet who is it that holds the advantage here?”
It hardly needed to be said who was the greater fool. If he’d asked this of her before, Lawrence would have the advantage over Holo.
There would have been no need to fixate on the meadow nor to be so pointlessly stubborn. Indeed, it might have been Holo who turned stubborn. But Holo had discerned the conversational flow more clearly, and so she was the victor.
“I just can’t win with you, can I?”
“I should say not.” Holo shifted under the blanket. Her ears twitched, and Lawrence heard her yawn. “Come now…I told you what sort of conversation I like—so will you not speak?”
She wheedled like a child, despite still holding the reins. Though Lawrence found this rather frustrating, he knew there was no cause for him to resent her. With nothing else to say, he turned the conversation to their dinner menu.
As usual, they were limited to bland bread and jerky, along with some dried fruit. If they foraged in the forest, it was possible they might catch a quail or rabbit, though, and Lawrence had to laugh at the way Holo’s ears perked up at the mention of this.
They continued to share idle conversation, and eventually Lawrence heard the sound of Holo’s sleeping breath. It was as though having toyed so thoroughly with him, the wolf had grown tired from play. When he looked at her, Lawrence wondered if he would ever become clever enough to gain the conversational advantage from Holo.
It wasn’t as warm as the meadow might have been, but nothing was so comfortable as being under the blanket, as long as two people were there together. And all the more so when the other person was Holo, whose body temperature was slightly warmer than his, like a child’s would be.
Yet he could scarcely believe how blameless she looked while sleeping. It was as though he could pinch her nose without her awakening or stick his finger into the downy fur inside her ears. Having suffered at her hands so much, Lawrence toyed with the notion of revenge as he regarded her innocent face.
And then it was as though God had heard his plea.
She seemed about to fall over, so as Lawrence moved to support her, he made his gentle counterattack.
He wrapped an arm around her slender shoulders, as if to say, “I am your guardian, you know.” Then the moment he closed his own eyes—
“You pass.”
Upon hearing Holo’s quiet voice, he froze. This was where the whole conversation had been leading all along.
Holo looked up slightly and smiled a devilish smile, her fangs glinting beneath her lips.
“’Tis best to leave your snare at the base of a waterfall.”
Lawrence couldn’t help but finish the statement. “And the foolish fish will swim right into it.”
Holo nodded and snickered.
Lawrence rolled his eyes upward, taking his arm from around her shoulders and wrapping it gently around her neck out of sheer frustration. Holo’s tail wagged happily.
He was such a fool. Truly a fool.
For a merchant, taking an indulgent detour like this was like tying a noose around his own neck. The victor had been decided the moment he’d taken this rash course of action.
And who was it that held the other end of the rope he’d so happily tied around his neck? The answer was obvious.
Exhausted, Lawrence slumped over, resting his own head on Holo’s, as though to say, “This particular conversation should end here.”
End.
THE BLACK WOLF’S CRADLE
Having finished unloading the hay bales, she could finally take a short rest.
There were still patches of snow here and there, but Fleur found herself perspiring nonetheless, owing to the early spring sun to which she was yet unaccustomed.
“That’s good hay. The livestock will grow well this year,” said the man from the Jones Company as he counted up the bales.
Fleur brushed away the hay that clung to her clothes, and with some effort, she beamed a cheerful smile at the man, who was roughly old enough to be her father. “In truth they’ll grow too much, and come winter you’ll have nothing but meat.”
“Oh? Perhaps I should buy up more than usual, then. Hmm.”
“For how much?”
The merchant scratched his chin with his quill pen, seemingly only remembering the payment at Fleur’s words. He counted up the hay bales again and answered only after a lengthy interval. “Seventeen ligot.”
“I was promised at least twenty,” she replied immediately, at which the man only twirled his quill pen. It was the sort of pause that merchants used when they didn’t take the other party seriously.
As the last trace of the pleasant expression on Fleur’s face drained away, she heard another voice, this one from behind her.
“You’re supposed to push for more—twenty-five, say.”
“Olar!” Fleur looked back and saw an older merchant.
The man with the pen scratched his temple, then chuckled through his nose while cocking his head. “All right. Given your nerve, let’s call it twenty ligot.”
“And of course that’ll include the rental for the wagon.” Though little of Olar’s fine silver hair remained, he still treated it with egg whites every day. The other merchant was not particularly young, but compared with Olar he looked like a child.
“Certainly. The finder’s fee is also included.”
“Thanks be to God.”
The conversation was taking place entirely over Fleur’s head, and she said nothing to interrupt. It was only when Olar finally began unloading the hay from the wagon’s bed that she hit upon something she could do.
“We’ll be going,” was all Olar said after returning the wagon and confirming the figure the other merchant wrote in his ledger. He then began to walk away.
Olar was sturdier than he looked, and even with a heavy load on his back, he could move quickly and lightly.
Despite the port’s cargo docks being crowded with men, horses, and wagons moving this way and that, Olar moved through them almost magically, never once bumping into anyone else.
Fleur was still unused to hiding the fact that she was a young woman behind a scarf and found it difficult just to travel in a straight line. She only managed to come alongside Olar when he turned down a narrow alley that was barely wide enough to admit the two of them side by side.
From above them came the sound of a crying child, and from below, the squeaking of a rat; a cat meowed from a head-high windowsill—that was the sort of place this was. Until recently, Fleur would never have imagined she would set foot in such a place.
Yet, Fleur reflected, people can adapt to almost anything.
As they passed, she stroked the throat of a cat napping next to a potted plant on a windowsill.
The life of a commoner wasn’t so bad.
“Milady.”
At the sudden sound of Olar’s stern voice, the cat dashed back into the house.
She shot the insensitive source of that voice a harsh glare but was met with eyes that were still harsher.
“Are you not regretful of your actions?”
Fleur tended to laugh in the face of criticism from those older and more experienced than her, but this was not because she was particularly fearless. Rather, she had become used to it, since from a young age her tutors had often scolded her.
“Ah. Sorry. I am a bit,” she said. In truth, she had been perfectly useless during bargaining. “I was hoping you’d appreciate how I held my temper when that merchant tried to break his promise, but it seems that ship has sailed.”
“Milady!” Olar’s mostly bald forehead wrinkled in consternation at t
he little joke. While he was stone-faced during negotiations, he had a surprising abundance of expressions other times, which Fleur always found impressive.
“Come, don’t be angry. And I thought I told you to stop calling me ‘milady.’”
“Then I’d ask you to try and think a bit more like a merchant.” Olar’s gaze remained so even and steady that Fleur found herself looking away.
She was constantly aware of the necessity of thinking like a merchant. After all, she was no longer one of the nobility.
Fleur von Eiterzental Mariel Bolan, eleventh generation scion of the house of Bolan.
These days she almost felt nostalgic for the long name.
“Of course I think like a merchant. I moved so much herring my hands smell of it, and coming back I brought great loads of hay.”
“And that’s quite wonderful. I’m sure no one would suspect that until recently you were terrified to ride a horse.”
It didn’t sound much like a compliment, as Olar was still angry. Fleur knew why, too, but it seemed as though the strict Olar wouldn’t be satisfied until she said the words with her own mouth.
“Twelve ligot to buy the herring. Four ligot for taxes. Provisions including bread, mutton jerky, and pickled pork, cheese, and wine, half a ligot. Two for the horse feed and wagon rental. Add it all up and what does it come to?”
Fleur sighed beneath her scarf at Olar’s question.
Adding everything up, they’d spent eighteen and a half ligot on the load of herring. If she’d been foolish enough to accept the merchant’s offer of seventeen, they’d be in the red.
The nobility lived in a world of giving and receiving, but merchants could not afford to naively count gifts received and given against one another. When giving something to someone else, they always had to receive something of greater utility in return.
Otherwise, they could not survive.
“I had no intention of taking that offer.”
“Is that so?” said Olar, looking straight ahead as he continued to walk without so much as glancing in Fleur’s direction. She was beginning to find his attitude irritating.
“Are you saying I’m such a coward I won’t argue at all?”
At these words, he immediately looked in her direction. “No. But, milady, while you might insist that you were promised twenty, you have nothing to prove that.”
“I know I heard him strike the bargain at that price. Do you doubt me?”
“It is not that I doubt you. But nothing is so terrible to witness as a pointless argument, and normally both sides give a little and strike a bargain somewhere in the middle.”
“So that’s why you said twenty-five ligot?”
Olar nodded a tired nod that said yes, but that it was such basic common knowledge among merchants that he was reluctant to explain it.
And it was true—Olar had been born into the mercantile life and had once kept the ledger for a large trading company.
The reason he called Fleur “milady” was because the onetime house merchant who worked with the former head of the Bolan family was none other than Olar’s master, and so Olar was a frequent visitor to the house. However, around the time when Fleur was turning of marriageable age, the head of the house died of illness, and the house’s already precarious situation turned to ruin, ending its association with the company Olar worked for.
The next time Olar and Fleur met was the day Olar’s master came to make fast the contract that would make Fleur his bride.
It wasn’t so very long ago, but the memories of the event were already starting to fade.
“So, milady—how much did you buy that hay for?”
She’d been lost in thought for only a moment. Reality was constantly moving and always before her very eyes. Her house had been bought up by a wealthy merchant, and now that wealthy merchant had gone utterly bankrupt.
And now he wanted to know how much she’d paid for hay?
“Two ligot.” Fleur had been raised as a noblewoman—able to hide her true feelings in social situations. She named the figure matter-of-factly, which made the still-expressionless Olar raise his hands exaggeratedly and quicken his step.
Evidently she’d made him angry now.
The merchant had paid both to have the herring transported to an inland village and for the hay they’d brought back as return cargo. And if the herring plus expenses came to eighteen and a half ligot, with two ligot for hay added on top of that, then even payment of twenty ligot would leave them with a loss.
Fleur was certainly aware of that. She caught up with the angrily quick-striding Olar and drew alongside him. “The villagers were in dire straits. Their sickles were chipped and dull and had to be repaired. They swore they couldn’t survive unless they got two ligot.”
“Is that so?” came the flat reply.
While Olar was a commoner, Fleur was still nobility—fallen nobility, but still. And when she became frustrated, her lineage made itself known.
“Do you suppose I’m lying?”
Olar stopped for a moment but then began walking again without looking at Fleur. He strode even more quickly than before. It was obvious who was at fault. Fleur was no longer a noblewoman who’d hired Olar—she was his student, learning how to be a merchant so that she might survive.
Running through the narrow alley, she again caught up with Olar. “I’m sorry, Olar. But you called me ‘milady.’ You know how that irritates me.”
At this, Olar truly did stop walking. Fleur was unable to halt quickly enough and stumbled a few more steps ahead before looking back. When she did, she saw a rueful grin on Olar’s face.
“A proper merchant needs a proper excuse.”
Fleur slumped, then relieved Olar of some of the load he carried.
When they finally exited the alley, they were in view of their home, nestled in a row of houses that all looked very much the same.
“So, milady, after all that work you still took a loss?” Bertra the maid was an honest woman and always said just what she was thinking.
“It wasn’t a loss.”
“Then what was it?” She was shorter than Fleur and a year younger. The difference in their social status was like night and day.
Yet when it came to her ability at managing the affairs of the house, Fleur could do nothing but defer to her.
Without money they wouldn’t be able to afford tomorrow’s bread. When she’d been among the nobility, she could fall back on her family name, but now that was of no great comfort. Fleur made as though she were putting her scarf and mantle away and attempted to flee.
“Milady, I may be an uneducated woman, but I know well enough to understand what Mr. Oura said.”
“Stop calling me ‘milady.’”
“I will not stop. Milady!”
Fleur extracted herself from Bertra’s obstruction and escaped into the next room. From the other side of the door, she could hear Bertra’s exasperated sigh, but Fleur passed through the room and into the hallway, bypassing the washroom and climbing to the second floor.
Through a window situated halfway up the staircase, she could see the garden that Bertra tended. It supplied them with all the vegetables, spices, and medicinal herbs they could use, with enough left over that they could be taken to the marketplace and exchanged for meat.
And what did Fleur bring to the household?
Not much, she knew, so when Bertra, the mistress of the household, scolded her, she had nothing to say in her own defense.
Even a child could do simple arithmetic. But she just couldn’t beat the price down past two ligot. She knew she had to—she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t harm the livelihood of the same people who lived on land that had once belonged to her family.
“Milady.” There was a knock on the door. It was Olar’s voice.
In the old days, the door might have been flimsy, but it would’ve taken her twenty paces to walk to it from her desk. These days, all it took was three long strides.
“Bertra?
??s in tears. She said you wouldn’t listen to her.”
“…”
Olar was totally merciless. He had a knack for understanding a person’s reluctance or delight better than they did themselves. Olar said this was a crucial skill in business, but the ability seemed very useful in education as well. When it came to making Fleur understand just how great a sin it was to willfully sustain a loss, there was no better way than using Bertra.
Fleur nodded in defeat, then nodded again more forcefully and took a deep breath. “I know. I know.”
“And?”
“I’ll apologize to Bertra. And I promise I’ll listen to what she says.”
“…”
“And I promise I’ll eat all my dinner.”
Olar smiled. “Please just rest a while,” he said, then closed the door and left her to her thoughts.
Fleur sighed a tired sigh, then smiled to herself as she sat in her shabby little chair.
Her family’s great house had been taken and all their various special privileges sold off. Their servants had been scattered to the winds. She’d found herself living in lodging meant for craftsmen or low-ranking town officials, and her poverty was such that she could barely afford to raise a pig, let alone feed fine horses.
She was the very image of an impoverished noblewoman, and yet Fleur did not think of her daily life as being a particular burden. It was true that dealing with merchants did not come easily for someone with her noble sensibilities and was frequently difficult. Sometimes it was vexing, but it was hardly impossible.
After all, Olar had said he would spend his remaining years tending to her education, as well as her ledger, and her closest servant, Bertra, had stayed on to continue to take care of her, which allowed Fleur to continue to live as comfortably as she did. Between the two of them, they reminded Fleur that the entire world was not her enemy and that her family name was not the only thing others might value in her.
That was enough for one to keep on living.
But Fleur was well aware that it would take money to sustain such a life, which meant that she could not go on taking losses like this.
“I’m a merchant, after all,” she said aloud to remind herself, then went downstairs to apologize to Bertra.