The only reason Lawrence was able to remain calm was because, in a certain sense, this deal had nothing to do with him. Otherwise, he would have been sweating waterfalls just like Le Roi was next to him.
“Oh, worry not.” Eringin’s voice was quiet. “It’s our custom to leave unfamiliar business in the hands of those better suited to it.”
One could say whatever one wanted. But nothing could begin without trust.
Slavers traded in people who were brought to them filled with pain and fear, or at the very least anger and hatred.
One could not help but commend such a magnificent ability.
With negotiations completed, Eringin shook the hand of each man and invited them both to dinner.
Le Roi looked as though, were he to endure his anxiety any longer, he would die, and Lawrence had his own doubts about being able to eat with them and keep his food down.
So they made their apologies, and Eringin looked as deeply disappointed as ever. It was hard to know how much of that was an act, but it was possible that he truly was disappointed.
Eringin and a servant boy saw them out, and Lawrence and Le Roi left the shop. It was long since dark outside.
But the night was young, and the port was lit by lamplight—lamps hanging from the bows of ships and lamps hung aloft by those working to sort through the cargo. And, of course, lamps hung in all the establishments selling wine around the port, where the carousing to wash away the day’s frustration was beginning.
“…Surely no marquis or count could be so terrible,” were the first words out of Le Roi’s mouth.
“Well, the town officials call him ‘sir.’”
“If a man like him had a formal title, he’d rule the country. What a horrifying thought.”
Le Roi was sweating as though he really was horrified. Seeing this, Lawrence wondered if he himself had above-average courage, but doubted it was so. According to Holo, it was simple thickheadedness.
“But we’ve made the deal.”
On that count, at least, there was no mistake. Lawrence took the hand Le Roi offered and shook it firmly. The opportunity they had just negotiated was of a life-changing scale.
“I may not be worth much, but I’ll do what I can,” offered Lawrence.
“Ha-ha-ha! What are you saying? If you hadn’t been there with me, I would’ve suffocated! I’ll be borrowing your knowledge, too. I’m paying you three hundred silver pieces, after all!”
Lawrence got the feeling that Le Roi was reminding him he had been paid a sum just to make an introduction, but Lawrence naturally did not find this cause for anger. It was the sort of thing any merchant could expect to do, after all.
“Now then, let’s go somewhere to celebrate! My throat is dry from nerves.”
It was an attractive proposition, but Lawrence was thinking about Holo and the others. “I’m sorry, but…,” he began.
But this was Le Roi, he of easy charm and affability. The man soon understood and pulled back. “Ah, of course. Well, it’s not like we won’t be sleeping and eating together quite a lot soon enough. Perhaps we’ll avoid quarreling if we don’t see each other’s face too much until then,” he said with a guffaw.
Lawrence could only smile a wry smile.
But when they parted with a handshake, it was firmer than their first had been. “Well then, I bid you good night!” boomed Le Roi and walked off.
Lawrence replied with a wave and headed for his own destination. He only got a few steps, though, before he stopped short in surprise.
“You—” Lawrence murmured, for before him had staggeringly appeared a deeply displeased Holo, her face distorted with emotion. The word staggering was no figure of speech, either—Holo had indeed staggered before him, her arms clasped around herself as she shivered.
“Don’t tell me…were you there the whole time?”
“…” Holo did not answer. She tried to nod but was too cold to manage it properly.
Lawrence realized that her expression of displeasure was simply a result of how cold she was. “Ah well, anyway, let’s get into a shop somewhere—and anyway, what were you doing out in this cold?”
He took off his coat and wrapped it around Holo’s shoulders. Her robe was as cold as though water had been poured on it, and Holo was shivering slightly. “I-I thought you might be deceived, and I…”
“You were worried about me? That doesn’t mean you should stand outside…”
Lawrence could not help but find her ability to insult him in such a moment rather impressive. But he set aside the question of whether to laugh or roll his eyes and instead put his hand on her slim shoulders, which were now covered by his coat.
Fortunately Eringin’s building was filled with fireplaces that were well stocked with wood, so the coat was already nice and warm. Lawrence peered at her and saw that Holo’s profile was beginning to thaw into something less alarming.
“Ah, there’s a stall there. Wait just a bit.”
Holo nodded obediently at Lawrence’s words and huddled next to the trading company’s window, through the wooden shutter of which a bit of lamplight leaked.
Lawrence looked back at her once. She was bitterly downcast. “I swear,” he murmured and quickly ordered some strong wine from the stall. “Here, drink.”
The stall sold wine that was well suited to the cold season in a cold land. Holo took the cup from Lawrence, put it to her lips, and squeezed her eyes closed.
“Your tail,” said Lawrence with a smile, but Holo made no move to hide her puffed-out tail. She exhaled sharply and took another breath, then another sip. The wine was helping with the cold anyway.
“Not too much!” said Lawrence, trying to grab the cup away as Holo immediately went for a third drink. But his hand stopped before it ever reached the cup.
Lawrence’s gaze went from Holo’s chest up to her face.
“Is that…,” he started, and Holo took her third drink as though she was trying to escape.
She exhaled a second puff of breath, and she finally smiled a Holo-like smile as the color returned to her face. “I’m a fool, aren’t I?” she asked, referring to her drinking more wine after already being drunk.
If he had demanded an explanation, he surely would have gotten one. Holo held the cup in both hands but with her arms pressed tightly to her sides. Even if that was partially due to the cold, there was another truer reason.
She was holding something there, the outline of it just visible in what lamplight came through the window shutter.
“They arrived a bit after you went out. But…,” began Holo, handing Lawrence her cup and producing the items from under her arm. There were two sealed letters, one of which was significantly larger than the other. As though a map might have been drawn on it.
“This is what you searched for on my behalf. It didn’t seem right for just me and Col to look at them. To say nothing of that blockhead.” Her tone was sharp, but her face smiled drunkenly. She was probably embarrassed that she could not hide her happiness.
Holo had stood outside, shivering like a fool, just to freeze that foolish grin into her face.
“I thought,” said Holo, looking up, “that it would be fitting to look at it with you.”
It was partially the wine’s effect, but Holo’s face in the firelight looked like roasted honey candy. Lawrence reached out to her with his empty hand. He caressed her left cheek with his thumb, as though putting her face’s soft curve back into place.
Even if she had made the logical decision regarding how to make for Yoitsu, evidently that did not mean all her subsequent decisions would be made using logic. Which was what had led to her amusingly foolish notion to venture out and wait for him in this freezing midwinter weather.
“You are quite the fool, yes.”
Holo flashed her fangs, and her breath puffed whitely past them. Lawrence gave her a full, but light, embrace, then pulled back.
“You haven’t opened them yet?”
“I did hold them up to
the sun many times, trying to see through.”
She did not want to open them but desperately wanted to see the contents. Lawrence imagined her trying to resolve this terrible conflict by holding the letters up to the sun—a tactic more suited to a foolish puppy than a clever wisewolf.
Lawrence patted her head. “Who should open them?”
“Me.”
Of course, Lawrence thought to himself, but then Holo pushed the two letters in her hand at him. “…is what I would want to say, but there are two letters here. If I look at one of them, I fear I may collapse into weeping again.”
Lawrence thought back to when Holo had fooled him into thinking she could not read. He had carelessly left a record of the destruction of Yoitsu where she could find it, and trouble had resulted.
Lawrence accepted the letters almost apologetically and with a pained smile. If Holo had wanted to read them he would have let her, but otherwise he did not want her exposed to them.
Her hand brushed against his and was quite cold. Somehow, he was brought to notice the contrast between her hands and Le Roi’s—how small and delicate and feminine hers were.
“But the negotiations went well, did they?”
Lawrence returned the cup to Holo and was about to unseal the letters when Holo suddenly brought the other subject up.
“Weren’t you listening?” Holo’s ears could have heard the conversation inside the shop, Lawrence assumed.
But Holo shook her head. “I could not hear,” she said, then sighed and gave him an upturned gaze. “But I know the outcome.”
It was as though she were posing a riddle.
If she knew the result already, why would she go to the trouble of asking him how things had gone? Lawrence’s hand stopped before unsealing the letters and looked down into Holo’s eyes, which shone golden in the flickering light.
There was a moment of silence.
Holo cracked first, but certainly not out of forgiveness for Lawrence’s obtuseness.
“That meat bun of a man’s face was so pleased, so the negotiations must have been a success. But your face was not so happy. What might have caused that, I wonder?”
“Ugh,” Lawrence groaned, which was as good as any confession.
Holo folded her arms and sighed. Her wine-soaked breath only emphasized her anger. “You hoped that the negotiations would fail and that you’d be able to go to Yoitsu with me.”
She had seen right through him.
He said nothing and only averted his face.
“And if you’d lost your chance for profit and brought disaster to Yoitsu, when then? No, that is not even the problem. What bothers me can be expressed quite completely thus: You’re even more of a maiden than I!”
“…Can’t you at least call me ‘sentimental’?”
“Hmph!” Holo snorted, and Lawrence watched her drink her wine, bitter thoughts filling his mind. “There are good sentiments and bad sentiments, you know.”
It was in these times most of all that Holo’s wisewolf side came out. Lawrence sighed and unsealed the letters. The first one he opened was the larger, the one likely to have a map drawn upon it.
Holo sipped her wine in an attempt to disguise her keen interest, but her eyes were carefully watching Lawrence’s hands.
Lawrence pulled a thick sheet of parchment out of the envelope. He traded it to Holo for her cup. He sipped it as he watched Holo’s nervous face. It was a strong, dry wine.
“Come, now,” said Holo before opening the parchment.
“Hm?”
Her eyes were on the about-to-be-opened map. Or else she thought something incredible was hiding between its folded pages.
“What’s wrong?” Lawrence asked again.
Holo’s eyes reflected the yellow lamplight as they turned to Lawrence. “Even if you cannot go with me…can we not at least read this together?”
Lawrence chuckled through his nose in spite of himself. He nodded and moved from facing Holo to standing alongside her. This blocked the light that spilled from the window, so Lawrence gently nudged Holo over.
All the while, Holo held the map in her hands, her posture unchanging.
“All right,” said Lawrence.
After looking up at him uncertainly, Holo held her breath and opened the map.
“Oh ho.” The admiring voice was Lawrence’s.
Even in the uncertainly flickering lamplight, the map was obviously a magnificent thing.
As was customary on maps, the four corners had been decorated with drawings of gods or spirits, and in the far south sea was a drawing of a water basin said to never run dry, along with a vast octopus trying to drink it all.
The towns and villages were connected by lines indicating major roads. Some of the remote villages’ names were unknown to Lawrence, while some others would have been unknown to anyone who was not a traveling merchant. Among the mountains, too, spirits were drawn here and there, which made the locations evocative of much more ancient times. Perhaps Fran was drawing on legends and stories she herself had collected.
Lawrence lowered his head to Holo’s level and peered at the map more closely.
The road leading up from the south passed through Pasloe and Ruvinheigen, past Kumersun and on to Lenos. On the map, of course, it continued on, through several towns with which Lawrence was unfamiliar, before leading into a vast forest.
As he followed the road to its end, his eyes immediately fixed upon a drawing of a wolf.
Evidently Hugues had taken up the pen in Fran’s stead there, so it was his idea of a joke—or perhaps he was just being considerate.
Tolkien.
It was written in a large, flowing hand across the whole of the region.
In the drawing, the wolf seemed to howl out the name, and near its foot, small but very distinct, there it was.
Yoitsu.
The name of Holo’s homeland.
“There it is,” said Lawrence, and Holo nodded.
It was a small nod, barely a hiccup, but she agreed. “Oh, ’tis a real place after all.”
Lawrence thought that was quite a joke for her to make, and when he looked at her face, she was smiling. He had imagined she might cry happy tears or be deeply touched, but Holo’s smile was a tired one.
They had finally found it. After all that.
Lawrence was a little frustrated that his expectation had been wrong. “I never actually thought that we’d find it.”
After all, he had only heard the name once before, as a detail in a story someone else had been telling. And based on that memory alone, he had promised to take Holo there, mostly because he had been so shaken by meeting the being named Holo. If he stopped to think about it logically, it would have been crazy to think it were discoverable at all.
But ever since embarking on this mad cloud-chasing quest, he had realized that even in this world, there were many eccentrics whose fascination led them to chase such tales.
And not all of those tales were made-up or exaggerated; he had come to understand that some of them were real. That alone lent some amount of meaning to the fact that he had managed to bring Holo this far.
Holo, similarly, seemed to be considering various things and did not become angry.
Lawrence rubbed her head affectionately with his right hand. Normally she would find this irritating, but this time she let him, giggling.
“Ask and ye shall receive.” Holo quoted a famous scripture. “If a god once worshipped by humans says it, it’s certainly captured a sort of truth.”
“If it’s given you that sort of optimism, then our work has succeeded.”
Holo turned her head beneath Lawrence’s hand and looked up at him. All the coincidences and fated moments had piled up to bring them to this instant.
Holo grinned and flashed her teeth. “Hey,” she said, folding the map and letting slip something like a sigh. “Thank you.”
Her chin lifted, nearing Lawrence’s cheek.
A soft sensation pressed against his cheek
, but the tender feeling of parting did not come.
Before his face, Lawrence’s gaze followed Holo. Smiling, she ducked her head down and looked as though she was resisting the urge to shout something.
Lawrence smiled faintly, looking up with as much exhaustion as Holo had shown.
“I’ve been stabbed, beaten, and nearly bankrupted.”
“Mm?”
“And after all that, this is my reward?” Lawrence said, closing one eye and putting his index finger to his cheek.
Holo kept her finger between the folded sides of the map and looked up at Lawrence. “Are you dissatisfied, then?”
This sort of moment suited Holo the Wisewolf of Yoitsu much more than tears did.
“Certainly not.”
“Mm. ’Tis well, then.”
Lawrence’s shoulders sagged, and Holo took his arm. She then took the envelope from Lawrence’s hand and, keeping his arm under hers, adroitly slipped the map back inside the envelope. “’Twould be awful to lose it. You should hold it.”
“Unfortunately, both my hands are full.” His left held the other letter between its ring and little finger, with the thumb and index finger holding the wine cup. His right arm, meanwhile, was being held by Holo.
Holo took the cup from him and replaced it with the map. “I’ll take charge of this,” she said.
“Fine, fine.”
Holo then immediately put the cup to her lips, but the wine was still strong. No matter how much she might love the draught, wanting to drink such harsh liquor so quickly spoke of some discontent in her breast.
Her grip on his arm tightened, and her tail puffed up. Lawrence resisted laughing at her pride.
Thinking about her struggle with Elsa over Col, it occurred to him that this was simply Holo’s personality, and there would be no changing it now.
“So, did you all eat dinner?” Lawrence asked. If they did not get off the topic of the map, she would soon be accusing him of sentimentality again.
He ventured to change the subject to something of practical concern, but Holo did not seem pleased. “Your instinct for mood is truly…ah, well, I suppose nothing can be done about it.”
Lawrence swallowed back the desire to tell her to reflect on what she had said just moments earlier. In times like these, at least, she truly was selfish.