Lawrence could not imagine this was a joke or a lie, or some boring scam.
“Alchemy, then?” Lawrence asked.
His eyes never leaving Lawrence, his opponent shook his thick head, indicating a negative. “A mining technique.”
If this had been a game of cards, this would have been the card that rendered Lawrence’s hand meaningless.
Le Roi continued. “I imagine it would be quite bad if the Debau Company got their hands on it first.”
Lawrence had heard from time to time of revolutionary developments in the fields of shipbuilding and metallurgy. They turned common knowledge upside down and evidently made the impossible possible. If knowledge was a weapon, then they were like magic spells. With such knowledge, a tiny sardine could become a great shark.
Because of this, books containing such techniques and the knowledge of its practitioners were not always used, but instead sometimes hidden away or destroyed, Lawrence had heard. Because, while a crown always stayed on a king’s head, knowledge was like puffs of wool on the wind and could go flying off anywhere.
When it came to mining techniques, which could be used by a select group of individuals to immediately realize vast profits, the tendency of such information to fly was even stronger.
Lawrence found it easy to doubt Le Roi.
But if it were true, and moreover if the information in the forbidden book was truly revolutionary, it could not be allowed into the hands of the Debau Company.
The only people in the northlands who would welcome such a development were the ones who preferred long-tasseled rugs and stone houses to bountiful forests and mountains.
And Holo wanted to nap in the sun of her homelands.
But Lawrence knew he could not act rashly. He reminded himself of that, then spoke. “Let’s hear the details,” he said.
“I look forward to your reply,” said Le Roi before he left the inn, with a bow that made him look like a full wineskin being bent forcibly in half.
The only things left behind were two cups half-full of wine and Lawrence himself.
Now alone, Lawrence noticed the curious gaze of the tavern keeper on him, which he ignored, and looked up at the ceiling.
Having thought over Le Roi’s proposition, he could not imagine it was a trap.
The river that passed through Lenos had two sources. One came from the Debau Company’s base of power, and the other from the northeast region of Ploania. Le Roi claimed that there was a company in a town in that northeast region where the book currently was. It would have been foolish to bother asking, so Lawrence had not bothered inquiring as to the name of the town or the company.
Instead, he had asked how such a book had come to such a place.
Le Roi had simply answered, “There was an old abbey there.”
There was an abbey that, after two centuries of history, was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. But upon hearing of its reputation for piety, a certain lord began construction of a new abbey. Thus, among the rubble of the old abbey was discovered the entrance to a cellar not even the abbot himself had known about, and from it was recovered a mountain of books. Most of them were written in ancient languages, and beginning with the lord’s representative, none of the learned monks could understand them. Finally scholars were called from far and wide and asked for their appraisal, and in the end, most of the books were identified.
But even then a few remained mysteries, most of which were written in languages used by far-off desert kingdoms, and a few others were simply too old. Deciphering them required extreme effort, and the writing of the desert languages was worrisome. If, when translated, it turned out that the books contained something terrible, the abbey’s reputation would sink into the earth.
Regardless of whether he was moved by such talk, the lord sold the volumes to book collectors in order to raise money for the reconstruction. And while the representative could not read them, he still copied the tiles down as best he could to create an index.
Some years later, the lord found himself in financial difficulties after giving a bit too much to the abbey and the Church. And a certain company thereupon made him a loan, taking some of his treasures as collateral. As the company sorted through each one, they came across the book in question. It had no value to the company, but a bookseller would know what it was worth.
And so they had sought the opinion of Le Roi.
The knowledge of the booksellers of the south far outstripped any scholar’s. The scholars had to investigate every single line and word of the huge tome, but the merchants needed only the title and a brief summary. If the scholars knew the contents of a century’s worth of books, the merchants knew the value of a millennium’s.
Seeing the title of books he knew to be forbidden in the index, Le Roi immediately bought the index and began casting as wide a net as he could.
And then one of the volumes was caught.
Having survived because it was written in characters nobody could read, it described terrible techniques. But that was not unusual; such ignorance led to all sorts of mishaps—a cardinal might hang a painting in his chambers, not realizing it was meant as a caricature of the pope.
Le Roi had said that he honestly did not know if the company that currently held the book had realized its true value. From his tone, it was clear that he desperately hoped this was true. And while Le Roi seemed like someone who got easily carried away, he was, in truth, a very practical thinker.
In other words, even if the company did not realize what they had, if Le Roi had figured it out, then it might not be long before someone else did, too.
The information had come to Le Roi via many other people, and any one of those people might let it slip that Le Roi was looking for that book. Any savvy merchant who heard that would conclude that something of interest was happening.
So long as nobody was looking for it, even gold by the roadside would go unnoticed. But once someone was looking for something, it would be found—even if it did not really exist.
Furthermore, Le Roi revealed that he had tried to borrow money from Philon. And Lawrence now knew why that had not worked.
Just as the Beast and Fish Tail had stored up goods as speculation, Philon had done the same thing. That was why Elsa could not spend the night there. He had bought up so much that not only were his storehouses full, but his living rooms as well, so he had no cash on hand with which to make a loan. And even if he had had such cash, he would have used it to buy more goods.
“Can’t blame me for finding the story a little too perfect,” Lawrence murmured to clear his head.
There was a time when he would not have hesitated to take three hundred pieces of silver simply to make an introduction to the Delink Company. But now he had reasons to stay behind at the table when Le Roi left and to hesitate to agree.
For one, there was no guarantee that Le Roi was not connected to the Debau Company. And even if he was not so connected, once he got his hands on the book, it might well have ill effects on the northlands simply by being sold at all.
Essentially, there were times when a book was better off staying on the shelves of some collector who failed to understand its contents.
But if Le Roi’s prayers were in vain, and the company in question managed to obtain a translation of the book, what would happen if they realized the value of its contents? Such an outcome did not seem unthinkable, but nor was it necessarily bound to happen. If a book was favored for whatever reason, of course there would be curiosity about what it contained. If it had not been translated, then the likelier reason by far was that it had simply been at the end of a long line.
Which meant that, so long as Le Roi could be believed, Lawrence ought to help him as much as he could.
But that was not the only problem he faced.
If Lawrence were to introduce Le Roi to the Delink Company, he would then be vouching for Le Roi’s trustworthiness. That was what an introduction was: the introducing party’s guarantee that this p
erson was trustworthy. If the person he introduced was scheming to swindle the Delink Company, the blame would fall on Lawrence, who had made the introduction. And he did not want to imagine what earning the ire of a company like that would mean.
If he got involved in this, he would need to watch Le Roi very closely to make sure the man did not do anything stupid. He might just take the money and run.
If it came to that, it was sure to take quite a bit of time to remedy.
At this juncture, Lawrence did not know which company in which town held the book. But it was undoubtedly not a small company nor a small town, so he knew to narrow it down to larger towns. In which case, that could take well over ten days by horse-drawn wagon. Given the possibilities, it could take close to twenty days each way, if the destination were the capital of Ploania. It could end up wasting a month or even two months of his time.
By that time, the chill of winter would be beginning to thaw, and it would be the beginning of a new year.
The world would be starting to move again, with the snowmelt turning once more its waterwheels.
Lawrence was a traveling merchant who lived in the cycle of the seasons. He was no nobleman who could idle his time away, ignorant of the year. The trade route his master had passed down to him was artfully constructed to take exactly one year. He could afford this fool’s errand to help Holo find her homeland of Yoitsu because it came during the winter, when the whole world slowed.
He wanted to throw everything away for Holo. But even so, it was a simple fact that he could not. Lawrence was a traveling merchant, and such a decision would not affect only him.
There was a village up in the mountain crags that barely made it through each winter—if Lawrence did not come, they would be forced to eat the moss off the very rocks. It was for such reasons that traveling merchants were needed in the world. For every month Lawrence delayed, they had to wait another month for him to bring them food.
That meant he had determined to part ways with Holo once Yoitsu lay before them.
“…”
Lawrence closed his eyes and thought things over again slowly and deliberately.
His promise to Holo was to take her to Yoitsu. Either that or to part ways with her with a smile.
It was not to protect her homeland from all possibility of danger. Holo herself knew that to be impossible.
Lawrence drained his cup with a sigh and stood.
“Once you hear, you want to do something about it”—such had been Hugues’s position, although he had covered his ears to the Debau Company’s schemes. If there was nothing one could do, ignorance was better for one’s peace of mind.
That was certainly the truth.
Although the sound had not bothered him at all when he had walked up with Holo, now that he was alone, the creaking grated on his ears. No doubt his face was creaking just as much, Lawrence mused to himself self-reproachingly, as he stood before the door to the room.
He took a shallow breath and opened it without much hesitation, ready to greet its occupants.
What kept him frozen there in surprise was the simple fact that he did not really understand the scene that greeted him.
“…What are you doing?”
In response to Lawrence’s question, Elsa and Holo merely glanced at him. Only Col’s eyes had any feeling in them, and that feeling was a deep need for rescue.
“Don’t look sideways,” said Holo, pushing his head with her finger, such that it pointed straight forward. Holo stood directly behind him, busily combing his hair with the comb she normally reserved for her own tail. What made Lawrence wonder if they were about to try cutting his hair was the blanket that had been wrapped snugly around Col’s neck.
At a short remove from the two, closer to the wall, was Elsa, attending to some sewing task. Given that Col’s upper body was now wrapped in a blanket, Elsa must have been mending his shirt. Her hand movements were quick and practiced, and when she occasionally shook the shirt out to make certain of her work, it was no longer in its former tattered state.
The optimistic way of viewing the situation was that Holo and Elsa could no longer stand to look at Col’s pathetic state, and they were attempting to do something about it. But Lawrence detected a certain something else in the scene before him.
It was the same thing that had happened at the Beast and Fish Tail. He remembered himself, caught between Holo and the barmaid…
“Mm. Putting your fur in proper order makes you a different lad.”
It was true that the constantly dusty Col looked markedly cleaner. Holo wore a very satisfied expression, her chest thrust out in pride.
But the next person to speak was not Col—it was Elsa.
“It will just be mussed again once he sleeps, so I don’t see how there’s much meaning in it.” They were fitting words from someone who had received the truth of God and taught the path of righteousness to the public.
Elsa seemed to have finished her mending of the piece in her hands. While her face had its usual stoic expression, Lawrence detected a note of satisfaction in the sigh she let slip.
Elsa returned the mended clothing to Col, who tentatively took it and put it on.
“…”
Lawrence heard two silences.
One was that of Col, who stared at his shirt as though he could not believe what he was seeing, and the other was that of Holo, who was deeply unamused.
“No matter how fine the wine, if it’s put in an old, tattered wineskin, it will break and spill. While looking fine isn’t the most important thing, a container needs to be as sturdy as it possibly can be.”
And just as Elsa said, now that he was wearing a well-mended shirt, Col had been transformed from an impoverished, suspicious errant student into a poor-but-trustworthy merchant’s apprentice.
“Of course you can’t simply leave your hair a mess, but that’s easier to put in order than your clothing. And more important even than clothes are your bearing and presence. Your manner of speaking, your etiquette—these all must be good. Of course, compared with strong faith, even that is an unsteady thing. But on that count, I don’t think we need worry.”
Elsa spoke as though she were reciting scripture, but those last words to Col were softer and kinder and came with a gentle smile. Holo flinched away but said nothing more. Col had undoubtedly ended up in this predicament because Holo had earlier insisted that the “manners” Elsa was talking about were not so important.
For someone as inherently carefree as Holo, a bit of fur maintenance was more than enough, and anything more than that was simply affectation. Lawrence himself was a pragmatist and so generally came down more on Holo’s side of things.
But when an untidy impression would harm business, he would gladly tidy himself up. The reason he had left Col alone was, quite honestly, that the boy was not his apprentice and therefore uninvolved in the representation of the business.
Since Elsa’s faith drove her to help as many people as she could, and although she could be a busybody, she was fundamentally helpful. Unfortunately for Holo.
Lawrence had quite forgotten the melancholy he had felt earlier and smiled a long-suffering smile. He decided to speak to Holo, who had left herself no path of retreat.
But just then, Col turned and looked over his shoulder. “I’ve never had my hair combed before,” he said with a bashful tone. “It felt really nice.”
Holo’s eyes went round in surprise, but she smiled, even more pleased than Col seemed. For Col to think of her feelings meant that her battle with Elsa was an indisputable loss.
“Mm, did it, then? Well, speak up whenever you’ve been drilled too hard and need a rest.”
Elsa took the snipe exactly as it was intended, and the anger showed on her face. But from Lawrence’s perspective, Holo’s words were a final empty gesture in the face of defeat. Holo’s chuckling made it clear that this was in fact so.
The wisewolf looked at Col’s mended clothing. “Still,” she added. “You’ll mak
e a good male, aye.”
“So long as he follows my instruction, that prediction will indeed come true,” said Elsa with uncharacteristic childishness, unable to let the opportunity for a counterattack slip by. But no one was as capable of childishness as Holo.
She stuck her tongue out at Elsa.
Elsa was more shocked than surprised by the display. Yet Col giggled—making clear, it seemed, that he was still very near to Holo in emotional maturity.
But Col was a practical and realistic thinker. As such, he knew that it was right for him to listen to Elsa above the other.
Once the thought came to Lawrence, he suddenly glimpsed the loneliness in Holo’s smile. Hers was the face of the wisewolf he had come to know so well, and in her heart she was telling herself the same thing Lawrence was thinking, and it showed.
Even if she took Lawrence’s advice to heart and tried to take a more carefree position, it seemed that even Holo could not behave selfishly to the bitter end.
It took talent to be a tyrant.
So what was so wrong with being a mere traveling merchant and giving his realistic view on things?
He wondered if she had somehow heard his excuse. Holo’s ears pricked up, as though she had suddenly changed her mind on something, and she spun to regard him. “Now, then, let’s hear what new foolishness this fool has brought to us, eh?”
As she spoke, her loneliness completely vanished, and Lawrence could only be impressed with her performance. Or perhaps she was simply relieved that there was someone there who understood her weaknesses. In truth, Lawrence felt quite the same way. From his aura, she seemed to have seen the direction the conversation was going to take.
The red-tinged amber eyes that fixed Lawrence so firmly in their gaze were more beautiful than usual.
“A fool’s errand that could only be the result of God’s mistake,” said Lawrence, exaggerating a bit.