"If this is all true, why are you telling me?” asked Lawrence, slightly intimidated by the girls seriousness.
"Well, I wouldn’t tell just anyone.”
Just as Lawrence wore the mask of a merchant, this girl surely wore the mask of the barmaid.
So if the back of the back was the front—which was this?
“For future reference, might I ask why you’re making an exception?”
"Well, if I had to venture to say...,” she replied strangely coy, her face drawing near. “I suppose it would be because you have the scent of another woman about you.”
Unable to retreat because of the wall behind him, Lawrence stared at the girl, his face faltering. “So it’s your pride as a barmaid, then?”
The girl giggled. “There is that, but there’s something about you that just makes a girl with a bit of confidence want to have a go. Do you get that a lot?”
Unfortunately, Lawrence’s experience was limited to being rejected by inn maids.
All he could do was shake his head.
"Well, then there’s only one explanation. You’ve only recently met the girl at your side.”
She was not to be underestimated. Was this what they called female intuition?
"It’s because you seem a very gentle person,” the girl continued, "I'll bet no one gave you a second look when you were wandering about on your own, but once we see that you’re with another girl, we women get curious. If a beast sees a single sheep on its own, it might be too lazy to hunt it, but if a wolf is with that sheep, then we begin to wonder—is that sheep really so tasty? And we covet it for ourselves.”
There weren’t many men who would appreciate being compared to a sheep, but it was sadly true that he did in fact have a wolf by his side.
Was this girl really human?
“That’s why I’d very much like you to bring your companion by the tavern.”
Without interest in money or status, perhaps it was this sort of spice that was perfectly suited to adding a bit of flavor to life.
Surprisingly, that was probably what she had taken in exchange for telling him the truth.
“You’ve already given me that invitation,” he said.
The barmaid gave a smile of frustration. “Oooh, that composure is so frustrating.”
“I’m a sheep, after all. We’re unsympathetic creatures," said Lawrence, putting his hand to the back door. He then turned back| to the girl. “Of course, I’ll tell no one of this conversation.”
“Not even your charming companion?”
Lawrence couldn’t help but laugh.
He wondered if this kind of girl was more his type than some mild maiden.
“So, you’ve told me everything, you say?”
“Without leaving out a bit.”
Lawrence had returned to find Holo just as he’d left her reading books, her tail swaying lazily. It flicked to a sudden stop.
“It seems I need to teach that girl a few things about territory.” Holo looked at Lawrence, her expression mildly pleased. “But it seems you’re coming to understand the truth of certain things.”
“For a draft horse to be free despite its reins, it must anticipate the will of its driver.”
Holo smiled, satisfied. “So,” she said, sitting up. “What think you of all this?”
It seemed safe to believe that Eve had indeed sold statues to the Church, that they had a disagreement, and parted ways.
Also, Eve’s description of the outcome of the council meeting seemed to be accurate.
What worried Lawrence was that in trying to gain control of the town, the Church was trying to establish a cathedral. Cathedrals acted as centers of power for the Church organization and were established based on the recommendations of influential landholders or clergymen, but generally the extant clergymen in such areas resisted the establishment of cathedrals because they represented a new power structure in the region.
Of course, Lawrence had heard that this was all dependent on money and connections.
If a cathedral was established here, the local church’s current bishop would go from a man who was appointed bishop to one who appoints them himself. He would have the right to collect a certain amount from the tithes given to churches all over the region and the right to sanction secular rulers in the region.
Sole religious jurisdiction would be his, and while it was an extreme example, he could accuse all who disagreed with him of heresy, having his rivals burned at the stake. That said, most bishops’ interests lay in being able to levy fines, and no authority would exceed Church jurisdiction.
It was anticipating such a situation that had made the barmaid so fearful of speaking out against the Church.
Lawrence could certainly understand why, having parted with the Church on bad terms, Eve would want to leave town and why she wouldn’t be able to casually talk about restarting their arrangement next year.
What he couldn’t understand was why she would fight with the Church in the first place. For Lawrence’s part, he would have eaten mud to avoid crossing them. It would’ve been worth it.
It might not be a bad idea to make a gamble if it meant being able to understand the situation.
Given the Church’s power in the Council of Fifty, no doubt the council's decision was made by the bishop, and since that decision would have been made in the best interests of the town’s economy, Eve’s plan stood in opposition to the Church.
Lawrence came to wonder if it was possible that his life might actually be at risk.
If a foreign merchant was killed or went missing after making a legitimate transaction, suspicion would immediately fall on the party that stood to profit from that merchants death—the town’s authority figures. Lawrence was a member of the Rowen Trade Guild, so if he made that clear, it was unlikely that a bishop angling to establish a cathedral would take such drastic, violent action.
And the scale of the deal that Eve was organizing, while a vast sum to a lone merchant, was not particularly significant in the context of the entire town’s fur trade. Lawrence doubted he would attract the wrong kind of attention over such a relatively small venture, and it surely wouldn’t become a matter of life or death. Of course, to some individuals, thousands of silver pieces could certainly be worth killing over.
Lawrence explained this all to Holo.
The wisewolf listened seriously for a while, but her posture grew lazier and lazier, and eventually she collapsed back onto the bed.
Lawrence, however, was not angry
He could find no reason to object to her behavior.
"What do you think?” he finally asked. Holo yawned at this, wiping at the corners of her eyes with her tail.
"I find no fault with your explanation itself. It all more or less makes sense.”
Lawrence was about to ask whether that meant he should go ahead with the deal or not but stopped himself short.
He was the merchant; he would be the one to decide.
Holo chuckled. “I’m a wisewolf, not a god. If you start to think me an oracle, I’ll vanish.”
“Before a big deal, I always start to feel like I want to ask someone’s opinion.”
“Hah, even though you’ve already come to a decision? Would you change your mind if I tearfully begged you to?” Holo grinned.
Lawrence knew how he needed to answer. “Even if I did brush it off, you’ll still be there at the inn. I’ll complete the deal, then return. That is all there is to it.”
Holo chuckled throatily, scratching at her neck as though Lawrence’s words were difficult to listen to. “Aye, and once you can say those words without blushing, then you’ll be a proper man." Lawrence had grown used to Holo’s japes.
He shrugged them off. They were no more than a greet by now.
“I must say, though, that you were certainly energetic during your explanation there. Of course”—continued Holo, cutting Lawrence off—“I’m not saying that is a bad thing. Males are at their best when chasing their pre
y.”
Now it was Lawrence’s turn to scratch his nose in awkward embarrassment, but if he didn’t find some retort for Holo, she would surely become angry.
He gave a deliberate sigh, then reminded himself that he was going along with her joke. “But you just want me to pay attention to you once in a while, too, yes?”
“Got it in one,” said Holo, smiling happily. “However, what will become of me should the deal fall through?”
“Well, you’re collateral. So if we can’t return the money, you'll be sold off somewhere.”
“Oh ho.” Holo lay facedown on the bed, her head resting on her folded arms, her tail and legs pointed up and waving lazily in the sir. “So that was what gave you such nightmares?”
“...That, too.”
If their deal failed and they were unable to pay back what they owed, Holo would become the property of the trade firm.
However, she would hardly sit there meekly and allow herself to be sold.
That gave Lawrence some measure of relief, but he was not so optimistic as to think that once she bit through the ropes that bound her and escaped, she would come running back to him.
“Should it come to that, I’ll have to pick someone a bit cleverer as my next partner,” said Holo, her red-amber eyes narrowed maliciously.
“Indeed. It’d be best to cover such a fool in the dirt kicked up as you left him,” Lawrence quickly replied to Holo’s teasing.
The wisewolf did not seem pleased. “Big words from the brat who practically cried when I nearly left before.”
Lawrence made a face as though he had swallowed a walnut, shell and all.
Holo grinned, satisfied, the pat-patting of her tail audible.
It was after she ceased wagging it that her expression shifted and she spoke again. “But I shall cooperate because I trust you.”
Her smile was genuine.
Lawrence scratched his chin, then stroked his beard. “Naturally.”
It was twilight.
The sunset was red, and here and there shone the first lamplights of the evening, as though they were lingering fragments of the vanishing sunshine. As the chill of night settled in, people hurried home, their faces buried in their warm mufflers.
Lawrence gazed out on the town for a moment; then once the sun was fully set and the town streets emptied, he closed the wooden window of their inn room. Holo continued to read her books by the light of a tallow lamp.
The books seemed to have been organized chronologically, and Holo read the most recent chronicles first.
Considering what they had learned in the village of Pasloe. Lawrence felt that she would find what she was looking for faster if she started from the oldest records, but he suspected that she avoided doing so in order to preserve some measure of composure in her heart.
In any case, only two volumes remained, so the probability that she would soon find the accounts she sought was very high. Holo seemed to be very concerned about what would happen after that, and even after darkness fell, she said she wanted to read. Thus Lawrence gave her permission to read by lamplight, provided she was careful to keep soot—and especially flame—away from the pages.
Holo did not wear her normal indoor robes when reading. She was fully dressed to leave at a moment’s notice.
This was not because of the cold, but rather because they would soon be going to negotiate with Eve.
“Well then, shall we go?” Lawrence asked.
The time of the negotiation had not been set precisely, but Lawrence could be reasonably certain, since “at night" was a generally agreed-upon range among merchants. Once he headed downstairs with Holo and waited, it was hard not to feel like a small-time merchant who was overexcited by the notion of profit.
But Eve was late—very late—which was rude.
Perhaps this was her idea of a test.
She hadn’t said to meet at sunset because merchants preferred to write their figures during the day, when no candles were necessary, and because it would take them a bit of time to return to the inn.
So presumably she had wanted to wait until after that wave of merchants had returned to the inn and settled down.
If he listened carefully, Lawrence could tell which occupants had returned to which rooms.
Weighing that against the number of rooms in the inn, he expected Eve to arrive soon.
"You merchants are a troublesome lot indeed,” said Holo, closing the book with a thud and sitting up on the bed, stretching.
Even a normal girl would have been able to tell that Lawrence was fidgeting over when would be the best time.
"If I must put on an act even in my own inn room, when am I to relax?” asked Lawrence, half joking.
Holo got off the bed, seeming to think something over as she adjusted her ears and tail beneath her cloak. “For some time after we met...no, even recently, you’ve seemed to always put on a bit of an act around me.”
"It’s the first time I’ve ever traveled with a girl. Took time to get used to.”
It was also the first time he had let himself go this much around anyone else.
He’d never felt so comfortable around anyone before.
"And yet when we’d just met, your nostrils would puff just from walking about with me,” said Holo
“Aye, and would your tail puff up if you saw me with another Woman?” Lawrence shot back.
Holo looked up and regarded him as if to say, “You’ve got a lot of nerve.” She then said, “But just like that, a male will gradually reveal his true colors, and eventually turn into someone you never would have expected.”
“Isn’t that true for more or less anyone as you become close to them?”
“Fool. Don’t you humans have a saying, ‘Feed not the fish you catch?”’
“That doesn’t apply here. I didn’t catch the fish, it snuck into my wagon bed on its own, didn’t it? Forget about giving it food. I should be charging it for transport.”
But no sooner had he said it, than Lawrence flinched away.
Holo’s keen gaze was illuminated by the faintly flickering light of the lamp. She was not joking.
Had he treated her poorly? Or had his agitated state been even more irritating than he’d guessed? Perhaps she hadn’t liked his comeback.
“Hmph...What I meant was, don’t forget your original intention.”
Lawrence didn’t know what had triggered this, but he nodded meekly.
Holo could be strangely childish at times, so perhaps she was annoyed at the fact that not only had Lawrence failed to be flustered but had actually counterattacked.
Perhaps realizing her own fault, she backed off.
Lawrence gave her a thin, tired smile and sighed.
“There’s something irritating about that,” said Holo
“It’s your imagination...No, perhaps you’re right.” Lawrence cleared his throat, then looked back at Holo. “Can you see into my mind?” He asked the question he had put to her seriously when they first met.
Holo grinned, then came in close. “Fool.”
“Ouch!”
She had kicked his shin.
Holo’s smile remained undisturbed as she smoothly walked past Lawrence and put her hand to the door.
“Are you coming?”
Lawrence swallowed the remark that came to mind—that Holo would never have treated him like this when they had first met— and followed her out the door.
She had told him not to forget his original intention, but that was truly impossible.
The words carried heavy significance. Time could never be turned back, and everybody knew there was no such thing as a person who never changed.
Lawrence knew that, so there was no doubt that Holo knew it as well.
“Of course, it’s also true that I can easily take your hand only because we’ve been traveling for so long together. But” —Holo’s face was suddenly sad— “do not poets speak of wishing to stay always as they were upon first meeting a lover?”
It was for only the barest moment that Lawrence thought she was being her usual teasing self.
He found himself surprised at Holo’s words, at how obviously she wished to turn back time as she became more conscious of the journeys approaching end.
Holo seemed to be always looking far to the future, but that was not actually true.
And yet, Lawrence was touched that it wasn’t to the happy times centuries earlier when she first arrived at her village that she wanted to return, nor was it to the time before then, before she began her journey at all.
She had taken hold of him with her left hand. Though it embarrassed him, he curled his fingers around hers as he spoke. “You might be well returning to that time, but for my part, I’d collapse from overwork.”
Holo drew closer to him as they descended the stairs. “Worry not, for I would be there at your deathbed,” she said with a malicious smile, which Lawrence could only answer with a tired smile of his own.
It was on the way to the first floor that Lawrence realized her words were not entirely a joke.
If Holo was to say that the search for her homeland could be postponed, Lawrence would certainly die before she did. If Holo's journey didn’t end, their journey as a pair surely would.
Lawrence suddenly felt like he understood her reasons for not answering when, back in Tereo, he’d asked what her plans were after they reached her homeland.
Such thoughts occupied his mind when they reached the first floor, and Holo let go of his hand. Lawrence was not bold enough to feel comfortable entering a room while holding a girl’s hand even if that girl was Holo. At the same time, though, he did not want to be the one that let go. Her accommodation for his feelings warmed his heart.
It was as though she was answering the question of what would happen when they reached her homeland.
The feeling helped him muster more than his usual amount of gravitas when he greeted Eve and Arold, who were already there. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Well then, shall we begin?” asked Eve in her hoarse voice.
“So, what did you learn from your poking about?” Eve asked.
There was no need to introduce Holo.
What was visible of her face beneath the cloak and her posture and movements on the chair spoke volumes.