Spice and Wolf, Vol. 6

  It was the path of gold every merchant had dreamed of at least once.

  What made this absurd was the number of merchants who followed that path, only to have it end in martial rule.

  Yet the merchants who used force on the way toward martial rule were so many that even an omnipotent god could hardly count them.

  Even if Eve gained some inkling of this, there was no telling if things would go well for her.

  To gain the huge profits that could be had via long-distance trade, the vessel had to arrive safely in port—and that was no mean feat.

  Lawrence could not count on both hands the number of merchants he personally knew who had seen their entire fortunes literally vanish beneath the waves.

  “’Tis like a path of gold leading to a nation of gold,” said Holo, amused. It was not clear to what extent she realized Lawrence’s story was fantastical, but from her tone, it seemed clear she understood it to be a fantasy. “Still, it does not seem that it would be so very frustrating to let the entrance to that path pass you by.”

  Lawrence naturally nodded at her words.

  It wasn’t especially frustrating.

  After all, the path Lawrence wished to tread was not the path of gold.

  But he couldn’t help feeling that if Holo was with him, he could walk it.

  Surely he could arrive at that mountain of jewels, along the path of avarice that swirled with trickery and wiles, undeceived by devils and unharmed by evil gods, pushing forward at every chance.

  It would be an adventure tale worthy of the term and worthy, too, of being passed down through the centuries.

  He and Holo would contest a gold transaction with a powerful merchant as their rival and bargain with the royal family of an ancient nation over purebred sheep. They might cross swords with a pirate armada or be betrayed by a trusted underling.

  Lawrence wondered how much fun such adventures would be with Holo by his side.

  And yet for some reason, he got the feeling that Holo wanted no part of this.

  So he asked.

  “Do you not wish to walk that path?”

  Looking disinterested, Holo did indeed nod. “I will have to pass on your tales. ’Twould be better if such tales were fewer.”

  Lawrence chuckled soundlessly at her obstinacy, earning him a glare from Holo.

  She was surely lying, to claim that she wished for tales to be few. What she wanted to be few were people who would tell those tales. For example, if Lawrence saw someone triumphantly talking about Holo’s sleeping form, he would certainly bear said person ill will.

  “Rather than talk of the path of gold, I would sooner hear of what’s beyond this amber village.”

  Instead of tales of wild adventure, she wanted tales of a journey like the one they’d had so far.

  As to why she wanted to hear something like that, the reason was obvious.

  The sensation he had felt while describing the delta of Kerube—when it was put into words, he understood it immediately.

  But Lawrence only shut his mouth and smiled faintly, and without saying anything else, he answered Holo’s question as it was asked.

  At the amber village, he would sell animal bones and teeth acquired in the north and buy up salt and salted herring before heading inland. He would go on foot, by wagon, even occasionally traveling with a caravan. He would walk plains, cross rivers, hike mountains, and wander forests. There would be injuries and sickness. Lawrence would rejoice at meeting a merchant he had heard was dead and laugh at hearing rumors of his own demise.

  Holo listened to the story happily, asking her questions quietly, as if she enjoyed hearing about the vast stretches of land she had not yet seen, despite her centuries. As if surprised at the frequency of amusing incidents.

  And as if imagining herself along for the journey, as a matter of course, not worthy of any particular mention.

  At length, Lawrence would make his way deep into the mountains and trade salt there for marten fur—but he stopped the tale before that. Telling any further, he felt, would be a breach of the unspoken promise that they shared.

  For Holo’s part, she had leaned idly against him and held his hand in her own.

  The journey that Lawrence described would take two years in reality.

  Perhaps the fatigue from the long journey the two had undertaken had finally reared its head.

  That long journey that would never be realized.

  After exchanging salt for marten fur in the mountain village, if Lawrence was to continue the tale, which village would be next?

  The great wheat fields. The port town. If Lawrence was to continue, the circle of the journey would be closed, and it would continue forever.

  But Holo did not press him further.

  She knew that if she was to speak, to press him on, this strangely dreamlike atmosphere would be destroyed.

  Lawrence wondered if Holo was regretting the trip. Or could she be reflecting on how much fun it had been?

  For Lawrence it was both. He had regrets because it had been such fun.

  Their travel would go no farther south than Kerube. Neither would they head west. What lay beyond that was a vast unknown world. Though it did indeed exist should they choose to set foot there, it was a world they would never enter.

  “In the beginning was the word,” said God.

  And if the world had been created by those words—

  Was Holo, who was known to some as a god, borrowing Lawrence’s words to create a temporary world of her own?

  Lawrence, naturally, did not ask her what she hoped to accomplish by doing so.

  Holo had spent hundreds of years in the wheat fields by herself. She was well used to playing in a made-up world.

  But looking at the dazed Holo, who sat there motionless, Lawrence couldn’t help wondering if she would really be all right on her own after their journey was over.

  According to the book in the village of Tereo, Holo’s homeland had been destroyed.

  It would be fortunate if after so much time, the old inhabitants of the place had returned.

  But what if they hadn’t?

  This worried Lawrence.

  When he imagined Holo, listless and alone in the moonlight of the cold, quiet mountains, it didn’t seem possible that she could get by on her own.

  No doubt she would feel like howling from time to time, but none were there who would answer.

  But if he voiced any of these thoughts, Lawrence knew her anger would be like a raging fire, and it was obvious that she would admit none of it. And what she had to recognize above all else was that no matter how hard Lawrence might try, her loneliness would never be eased.

  It would be a lie to say Lawrence did not feel powerless.

  Yet he had considered all this when he had gone to collect Holo at the Delink Company.

  He spoke with forced cheer; it was the least he could do. “So, what say you? Not an especially exciting journey, is it?”

  Holo gave Lawrence a listless look and fixed it upon him for a time.

  When she finally smiled, it may have been because she had spotted something stuck on Lawrence’s face.

  She sat up with exaggerated effort and spoke as though it was a great burden. “…Right you are. Still—”

  “Still?”

  The expression Holo made as she looked doubtfully over her shoulder might well have been a specialty of hers. “As it’s such an ordinary journey, we can travel at a leisurely pace, hand in hand, without an excess of suspense.”

  A malicious smile.

  But it wasn’t Holo whose smile was malicious.

  It was God up in his heaven whose intent was ill.

  Before Lawrence could say anything, the expression on Holo’s face disappeared, as though she had simply been enjoying a mild diversion. She turned over a page and voiced a slight exclamation. As she proudly took the paper in hand and showed it to Lawrence, there wasn’t so much as a hint of the emotion from a moment ago.

  A mere human
like Lawrence could hardly manage such a feat.

  And being a mere human, it took Lawrence a moment to regain his own composure.

  Holo smiled indulgently and waited.

  This was, in truth, an ordinary journey.

  And peaceful, as well; Holo was close enough that he could reach out and touch her any time he wanted.

  “This is indeed from the Jean Company. It’s a memo of their exports from last summer.”

  “Hn.” Holo sniffed. Lawrence couldn’t help but smile at her proud manner, as though she’d discovered a treasure map.

  He just couldn’t match her.

  “And yes, it looks like they exported sixteen chests. So this…no…is it…?”

  As Lawrence compared the paper to other export lists, he was soon submerged in thought.

  A fragile bubble of a dream rose within his mind; he wanted to seal it away in the deepest corner.

  It was too sweet a dream.

  Lawrence was not so naive as to be ignorant of the word corruption.

  “Well, hurry and look for more papers,” said Holo, suddenly irritated, grabbing Lawrence’s ear and hauling him forcibly out of the well of his own thoughts.

  Surprised, Lawrence held his ear, and looked at Holo’s profile as she dropped her gaze to the paper she held. Suddenly he remembered something—that she had volunteered to help him look for the company’s name in the sheaf of papers because she wanted him to pay attention to her.

  But thanks to her rigid expression of rejection, he couldn’t bring himself to say, “Let’s puzzle this out together.”

  It was strange that what was once such a tender mood could become like this so quickly.

  Holo’s mood changed more quickly than the mountain weather.

  Was he just slow? Lawrence wondered, but then he told himself that this was just the caprice of a maiden’s heart.

  Though it was entirely unclear whether she was in fact a maiden, he silently added.

  “Is this all of them?” Holo asked, having finished looking through the papers. In the end, she had found two of note.

  Combined with what Lawrence had found, there were seven sheets in total.

  As long as it wasn’t an especially sloppy company, similar documents would be left in similar locations. Whoever had stolen these papers from the company would have just grabbed whatever they could grab, without looking carefully at the contents.

  Just as Lawrence had guessed, there was an order sheet and a memorandum for the previous year’s summer and another order sheet for the winter of the year before that.

  And each time, they ordered fifty-seven chests from the copper suppliers and sent sixty chests of copper coin to the kingdom of Winfiel.

  Since Winfiel would hardly be importing used, worn-out coins, each chest would have contained newly minted currency.

  Those three extra chests were coming from somewhere—but there were no papers that said where.

  “It doesn’t seem as though there was anything decisive here.”

  “Not really. But even if the Jean Company’s name isn’t on them, there may be some related documents in here.”

  “Oh ho. Well, shall we?”

  “Still, this may be proof that they really are illegally minting currency,” Lawrence murmured to himself, an impatient Holo by his side.

  Minting a large amount would be easily noticed, but if it was just a bit, the company might get away with it.

  Alternatively, they might be experimenting with copper as a prelude to illegally producing gold coins.

  The possibilities mounted in Lawrence’s imagination—he thought of what information he would need to prove each scenario and what information he lacked. It was just as he was wondering if there was a different way to think about it entirely that he realized Holo, still next to him, was obviously bored.

  “…” Holo cocked her head to crack her neck audibly, an expression of ill humor on her face. “Are you truly not going to chase after that vixen?”

  If so, you’ll never hear the end of it, she meant.

  “…If you’ve any thoughts, you should share them,” said Lawrence.

  Holo raised her eyebrows, then with an exasperated expression rested her elbow on her knee and cupped her chin in her hand. She looked like a gambler frustrated at a dice roll gone badly.

  Lawrence’s roll had not been a good one, it seemed.

  “Aye, so long as they have something to do with huge profits for you.”

  “…And you just said you didn’t want that. And also—”

  “Hmm?”

  “You don’t mind using your head, do you? It’s a way to kill time,” said Lawrence.

  Holo’s eyes widened enough to surprise Lawrence, and she snapped her mouth shut as though she’d been about to say something. She closed her eyes, folded the paper sheaf she held shut, then grasped the edges of her hood and drew it over her face.

  “Wh-what is it?” Lawrence asked in spite of himself.

  Her ears and tail flicked around noisily. When she brought her hands down from her hood, her eyes blazed with anger.

  As those still, unwavering eyes looked at him, Lawrence couldn’t help but verbally retreat. “…Wh-why are you so angry?”

  Her normally amber eyes seemed more like red-hot iron. “Angry? Angry, did you say?”

  Just when Lawrence realized he had well and truly roused her anger, the vigor drained from her bristling fur as quickly as it had arrived.

  It was as though a too-full water skin had popped.

  Holo looked at him with ghostlike eyes, now so dispirited that it seemed she had been worn out in but a moment. “You…you would hardly understand why I would say this, anyway.”

  Holo gave him a sidelong glance and sighed audibly.

  She was like a master who’d lost the energy to be angry with a particularly incompetent apprentice.

  And yet Lawrence had a thought.

  She’s saying these things because she’s bored and wants me to pay attention to her, he thought.

  He said nothing, though—not because he was afraid that saying so would make her still angrier, but rather because Holo had already seen right through him and bared her fangs in warning. “You’d do well to mind your words.”

  When Lawrence had entered his apprenticeship under a master, the thing he hated more than all else was being asked questions.

  If he answered wrong, he was cuffed, and silence earned him a kick.

  Evidently Lawrence’s thinking was wrong.

  Which meant the only alternative was silence.

  “You truly do not understand?”

  Lawrence sifted through his memories.

  He straightened despite himself and averted his gaze.

  “’Tis all right if you don’t.”

  At the unexpected words, Lawrence turned back to her. At that point, Holo added with a serious face, “But I won’t speak to you until you do.”

  “Wha—?” Before Lawrence could even begin to ask why she would do something so childish, Holo moved away from him, snatching up the blanket that they shared and wrapping it around herself.

  Lawrence was dumbfounded.

  He very nearly asked her if she was joking, but stopped himself at the last moment. Holo was as stubborn as a child. If she said she wouldn’t speak to him, then she wouldn’t speak to him.

  However, this was still better than being suddenly ignored. She had gone to the trouble of declaring her intent, a high-level tactic.

  Engaging her over her childishly inflammatory words would be unseemly, and ignoring her in retaliation would be even more immature. And having been visibly disturbed by her declaration that she would no longer speak to him, he could hardly regain control.

  Looking down at the papers in his hand, Lawrence sighed. He had thought that puzzling over this mystery would be amusing enough, but it seemed not to be to Holo’s liking. She’d been happy enough to sift through the papers with him, so what was so upsetting about thinking through the various pos
sibilities?

  For Lawrence’s part, he imagined that turning the various pointless things over in their minds would be the more fun part. At the very least, Lawrence would learn a thing or two, thanks to Holo’s first-rate mind.

  Or perhaps she’d simply learned that ill-conceived thinking led to getting involved in dangerous business.

  Lawrence didn’t understand Holo’s mind.

  He placed the Jean Company paperwork atop the other papers as a prelude to tidying up.

  Holo didn’t so much as glance at him. Even for a merchant, skilled as a matter of course in understanding the moods of others, Holo was no ordinary challenge. Terrible punishment awaited any misstep.

  As Lawrence was thinking it over, Holo suddenly looked up.

  Though she had moved away from him, the boat’s deck was not large. Lawrence soon noticed and followed her gaze.

  She was looking downriver.

  Just as he wondered if she was concerned about a boat that was heading downriver ahead of them, he heard a plop-plop sound, as though something was spilling.

  He realized it was actually a horse’s galloping footfalls just as that same horse came into view, flying like an arrow along the road that ran alongside the river, and bound upriver.

  “What’s this?” Lawrence murmured, and when there was no reply from Holo, he looked over in her direction, only to remember that she wasn’t speaking to him.

  It was like a conditioned response.

  He had planned to pass it off as merely talking to himself, but there was just no way to hide it.

  No doubt he’d be mocked for this later.

  Thinking about it was depressing, but when he thought about having been unable to solve the problem, it was a bit frightening.