She certainly was a troublesome princess.
“Well, having had such a passionate confrontation, it should make it easier to talk rationally. Easier for us to find some profit.”
“…And?” Holo glared at him.
Embarrassed, Lawrence slackened his shoulders and sighed softly.
It was a sigh of acquiescence.
“If it was for me that you were so angry…thank you.”
Since ancient times, promises were customarily made verbally, speaking them aloud—save, for some reason, in business.
Even now, Lawrence could not escape the awkwardness he felt when plainly speaking his feelings, but if Holo required this of him, then he would have to do it anyway.
Negotiation required finding compromises for both parties.
“Aye, if you say so.” The venom finally drained from her face, and her ears flicked rapidly.
The faint chatter of the market across the street was audible through the window.
The winter sunlight was warm, and as long as one was directly in its rays, it felt almost as if spring had come.
Lawrence could not help smiling at the absurdity of it all, and Holo, too, chuckled.
It was a pleasant, peaceful moment and a precious one.
“Now then, I’ll just tidy up the dishes…”
“Aye,” said Holo in response to Lawrence’s statement, which had been mostly to himself. Her gaze fell to her tail—which along with her ears were the only unexhausted parts of her body—as if she wanted to groom it.
It was a scene that had replayed itself many times on their journey.
However, there was one element that differed from their usual arrangement.
The element in question was Col, who had gone shopping in the marketplace, which Lawrence remembered when there was a knock at the door. After a few moments’ wait, the door opened, and there stood Col, carrying a wooden bowl.
Lawrence searched his memory for exactly what it was that Col had gone out to buy, and in that moment, a strong smell reached his nose—a peculiar smell, like sweet herbs boiled in sulfurous water.
He flinched away at the overwhelming odor, but Col seemed not to mind it one bit.
“I made a salve!” he said, cheerily entering the room.
From his labored breathing, Lawrence could tell the boy had hurried.
Holo had taken a liking to Col and patted his head. Meanwhile, Col seemed to have become quite taken with Holo.
Upon seeing her state this morning, he had bounded out of the room like a hare, off into the morning bustle of the town.
The people of the northlands had exceptional knowledge of medicinal herbs like these.
It was not an overstatement to say they had remedies for everything from cuts to fevers. He had surely made a salve that would be effective for muscle pain.
Lawrence’s thoughts got that far, but then he stopped himself short.
Holo.
Lawrence turned around to see the keen-eared, keen-nosed wisewolf of Yoitsu having literally turned tail and curled up in agony at the smell.
He could not help but sympathize.
But could she turn down the medicinal salve that Col had made out of the kindness of his heart?
Lawrence ignored the desperately pleading glance that Holo gave him from behind her pillow, and the moment he passed Col—
“Ah, this salve will work on your wounds, too, Mr. Lawrence.”
Holo had buried her face in the pillow, but her ears pricked up happily upon hearing this.
The salve had a deep green color and a suspiciously thick consistency.
Lawrence applied some of it to a piece of cloth, then applied it to the swollen section of his right cheek. Instantly, the pungent scent pierced him like a needle, and an intense heat spread throughout his face. It stung his eyes and seemed to almost wrench his nose.
And yet Col had spared some of his meager traveling funds to make the balm, so it could not be allowed to go to waste.
Still, the terrible smell…
When Lawrence rubbed it on Holo’s shoulders and back, she looked at him with truly terrified eyes. Given how sensitive her nose was, she was doubtlessly truly suffering.
And yet some part of Lawrence felt as if he should not have to be the only one forced to endure the stuff, and given that it did seem to be effective, he rubbed it on Holo all the same.
Holo made indescribable noises as he applied it to her, none of which were remotely charming.
As penance, Lawrence would probably have to buy her new clothes later. That or some fine wine.
Once he was finished rubbing it in, she gave him a final, venomous glance, which he supposed was unavoidable.
“Oh, that’s right. The merchant we met yesterday on the way here said she wants to meet with you.”
Once he finished applying the salve to the places on Holo’s body that were particularly afflicted, Lawrence wiped the excess from his hands.
It seemed clear enough that it was strong medicine, so it probably would have some sort of effect.
As he replied to Col, Lawrence regarded Holo from the corner of his eye—she was curled up and groaning on the bed, probably from the salve’s smell. “The merchant we met yesterday? You mean Eve?”
“That’s right.”
“Haste is a virtue, eh? She’ll be gone today or tomorrow, I guess.”
Though she was fallen nobility, Eve was moving up in the merchants’ world with incredible momentum.
In Lenos, the town of lumber and fur, she had ensnared Lawrence as part of an unbelievable fur trade. In addition to the fur she had gained in her enormous gamble, she had gone to the absurd length of sinking a ship in the river so that no one else would be able to move fur the way she had.
With her cunning mind and abundant pluck, she had taken every precaution, but if she dawdled in this town, the dike she had built of dangerous dealings was likely to burst. She would want to hasten far away as soon as possible.
Also, she had to move the fur she had brought from Lenos from here to the next town.
While the town had only just begun to rise, it was probably too slow for Eve.
“Where did she say I should go?”
“Er, she said she’d visit the inn after a bit.”
“…I see.”
Eve was a rather busy person at the moment, so that she would go out of her way to come here carried heavy implications.
The first thing Lawrence thought was that she would want to avoid being accused of sinking the ship in the Roam River.
“So, did you eat breakfast?”
“Huh? Ah…er, yes.”
While he lacked Holo’s talent for it, as a merchant, Lawrence was reasonably good at spotting lies.
He lightly poked Col’s head, and then without saying anything, he thrust a sack of bread at him.
Most likely he had used his breakfast money to buy the herbs with which he had brewed and made the salve.
With the dangerous goal of using Church authority to protect a pagan village, Col had traveled to the south to study Church law—the boy was more orthodox than the orthodox.
Col hesitated to accept the sack, but Lawrence pretended not to notice, venturing over to Holo, who was still moaning under the blanket.
When he informed her of his plan to go out for a bit, she did not raise her head, replying instead with her ears.
Lawrence had wondered if the odor might be enough to make her faint, but surprisingly, that appeared not to be the case.
Lawrence, too, had begun to find the scent less off-putting. The swollen patch on his right cheek felt somehow hot, and in turn, the bruise began to feel better.
Holo the wolf surely, he supposed, had an even clearer understanding of the medicine’s effect on her body.
From the far side of the bed, he heard the words, “I’ll not forgive you if you lose.” From this, he concluded his guess was not incorrect.
A bit relieved, Lawrence looked over his shoulder, whereu
pon Col—who had been holding the sack abashedly for some time—stood, bread in both hands.
The bag contained both normal rye bread and rye baked with milk, but Col held only the former. Lawrence could not help but grin at the boy’s reserve.
He wished Holo would learn a bit from it.
“So, are you coming?” Lawrence asked, meaning if Col planned to come along to the meeting with Eve.
Col’s eyes darted about for a moment, but then he nodded.
Lawrence intended to ask Eve about the wolf’s leg bone that supposedly came from a spirit or god like Holo, which in turn was the god that the village of Col’s birth worshipped.
It was to discover the truth of the stories surrounding this wolf-god’s bone that Col was traveling with Lawrence and Holo in the first place.
All of which meant that he had every reason to want to come along.
And yet Lawrence had the feeling that if he hadn’t invited the boy along, he would not have come.
Despite his youth, he was of a nervously polite disposition.
His attraction to Holo was surely rooted in his finding her casual arrogance refreshing.
“Well, you’d best finish that bread quickly, then,” said Lawrence as he left the room, and Col hastily jammed the bread into his mouth.
“R-right!”
Lawrence then offered a further statement. “Once you’re finished, of course, don’t forget your ‘I just ate rye bread!’ face!”
Though Col had enjoyed a good, cultured upbringing in the abbey, it seemed his impoverished travels had wreaked havoc on his table manners, and he was a bit wild.
His cheeks packed squirrel-like with bread, he stood there blankly.
He then seemed to understand what Lawrence meant, and swallowing the bread with a grin, he answered, “The Church also teaches that we should hide our mouths when we eat.”
“But that’s to hide when you’re eating something good, is it not?”
Lawrence closed the door and began to walk with Col following one step behind him like a faithful son.
“Thank you for the bread. It was delicious,” said Col—and being a bright lad, he said it with a bit of a smile.
The first floor of the inn was a dining area.
It was generally accepted that only travelers indulged in the extravagance known as “breakfast,” so those sitting at the tables were all dressed for journeying.
Among them was Eve at her table, looking as she always did. At a glance, she appeared every bit a traveler about to start on some journey.
And it was entirely possible that her appearance was accurate. What most concerned Lawrence at that moment was that not only did Eve have her face mostly hidden behind the scarf she wrapped around it, but also that the scarf covered her nose.
“…What a terrible odor.”
The innkeeper behind the counter was giving Lawrence a dirty look, and the other customers were stunned enough that they forgot their anger.
Lawrence remained defiantly unworried, and Col for his part seemed genuinely unconcerned.
While the scents that people preferred differed from region to region, surely this was an extreme example, Lawrence thought to himself as he sat across from Eve.
Whereupon Eve said something truly unexpected.
“Still, I’ve not smelled this in a long time. Doubtless that bruise of yours will be gone by evening.”
The right cheek to which Col’s salve had been applied was the same right cheek that Eve had struck hard with a hatchet handle during her fight with Lawrence.
Her tone was slightly joking. “So he prepared a remedy for you, eh? Educated lad,” she said with mild exaggeration in her voice, looking past Lawrence to Col, who stood behind him. “From Roef, are you?”
Eve quietly fixed Col in her gaze, then closed her eyes briefly.
Lawrence could not guess at what she might have been thinking.
“At any rate, I know the banks of the Roam River backward and forward. And it’s that knowledge that you’ve pursued me here for, yes? And with such unbelievable speed that I can’t imagine how you managed it.”
Through the gap in the scarf with which she hid her face, her eyes narrowed.
It was the virtue of all merchants that even if they had been prepared to kill each other yesterday, if their interests were aligned today, they’d happily shake hands. Without a contractual relationship, there would be no lingering emotional resentment.
Even given everything that had happened in Lenos, they were now like old acquaintances.
“My shock last night was the deepest I’ve had in many years. I wondered if there’d been some mistake with the contract.”
Though he always found himself confused by Holo’s roundabout way of speaking, this sort of exchange was one Lawrence understood all too well.
The buzzing in his chest was an emotion not unlike love.
This game merchants played, each trying to sound the other out and learn the other’s true motives—it was a delight, it tickled.
“It’s true, I seek only your knowledge—no contract of trade binds us.” Given the circumstances, Lawrence wanted to make it entirely clear that he was not after Eve’s furs.
Eve nodded faintly, then stood from her seat. “Let’s move elsewhere. We’re only earning the ire of the innkeeper and our fellow patrons here,” she said impishly.
But it was not necessarily a joke, so Lawrence stood and, with Col in tow, followed Eve.
“So, what of your companion?” she asked.
They emerged from the inn onto a narrow street—it was more of a broad alleyway, truth be told.
The town of Kerube was divided into northern and southern halves by the river, and the inn at which Lawrence was staying was on the northern part.
Clean buildings were few and far between on the north side, and while the riverside market was a lively one, even a short distance away alleys and slumping construction were common. The overwhelming impression was one of desperation.
Building height was far from uniform, either because the local government had generous policies on matters of scenic aesthetics, or because it simply lacked the political power to do anything about this.
Lawrence mused on the matter as Eve headed without hesitation to the opposite side of the market.
“My companion is quite tired from our journey. She’s in bed with this salve on her body.”
“That’s…” Eve trailed off, then looked back to Col, and behind her scarf Lawrence could tell she was smiling. “…Well, you’ll know soon enough.”
Even if it had not been about Holo, Lawrence could tell she had restrained herself from offering sarcastic condolences.
Col wore a proud, if oblivious, smile.
“Still, that may be fortunate for me. And fortunate for you, as well, I should say.”
“For both sides, then.” Lawrence slumped and gave a tired smile.
Holo’s anger was the reason he had not asked Eve what she knew the previous night.
“Still, someone who will become angry on your behalf is a precious asset. You’d best value her.”
“She thinks of me as her asset, and she was probably angry at her property being damaged.”
Eve’s shoulders shook beneath her cloak.
She then veered toward the edge of the street, to avoid a woman approaching them with a basketful of winter vegetables.
They were undoubtedly bound for sale at the market, and compared to their summer counterparts, they were a deep green and looked cold. No doubt they were best used in soup rather than eaten raw or pickled.
“If you are indeed your companion’s property, she would’ve sought compensation. But she instead sought revenge.” Lawrence thought he saw a flash of loneliness in Eve’s pale blue eyes.
Eve’s house had fallen into poverty, and she’d been sold, name and all, to a wealthy merchant looking to purchase a noble title for himself.
Money. Or revenge.
Lawrence felt as though just th
inking about it caused Eve pain.
He regretted the poor choice of words his banter showed.
“Heh. Once you’ve inspired your opponent’s guilt and sympathy, it makes dealing with them that much easier,” said Eve.
At her words, Lawrence returned to his senses with a start.
Techniques of seduction and false tears always trumped more honest ways of doing business.
Despite his wariness, he’d been taken in.
But Lawrence smiled and scratched his head abashedly, naturally with good reason. “And why would you venture to admit that?” he asked, enjoying posing the riddle as he looked at Col, who was concentrating hard as he tried to follow the conversation. “By revealing your own trap to me like that, you’re trying to get me to let my guard down.”
“Indeed. Thus my fangs will sink in all the deeper.”
There was no doubt that if she removed her scarf, she’d be smiling and showing her fangs at that very moment.
He thought he understood now what Holo meant when she called Eve a “vixen.”
As a merchant, Eve was very like a wolf, but Holo did not want to acknowledge her as a peer.
“Ah, we’ve arrived.”
“Where’s this?”
As soon as they stopped, Col walked right into Lawrence. The boy had undoubtedly been concentrating on the conversation between Lawrence and Eve, trying to understand even some small piece of it.
Lawrence remembered doing the same thing with his own master, and it made him a bit nostalgic.
“My foothold in this town. If I told you it’s like a trading company without a sign, you’d be able to imagine what I meant, no?”
In contrast to the surrounding buildings, the walls were blackened and the roof seemed likely to slide right down into the alley, although the stone foundation seemed sturdy enough.
Col seemed worried by Eve’s theatrical statement and gulped nervously.
But of course she was joking. A closer look at the black walls revealed a discolored patch where something had been removed.
In other words, a ruined or bankrupt trading company.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d tease us a little less,” said Lawrence to Eve’s back as she put her hand to the door, at which point he heard Col let slip a small “huh?”