Lawrence had heard that many animals treated their young severely; apparently wolves were among their number.
He couldn’t help but think it.
However, Holo was just as bad when it came to honestly saying what she wanted.
Lawrence still clearly remembered the town they had arrived at after they first met, where Holo had shown such unsightly lust for the apples there. Lately she had entirely ceased putting on such displays, but her persistent prodding of Col now was probably rooted in her memories of her past self.
“Uh…um…” But Col was not only young, he was also a boy. “I’d like to go to the delta.”
Unlike Holo, he looked smartly up at Lawrence when he said so, which was rather splendid.
Lawrence took the skewer out of Holo’s hand and gave it back to Col. He added, “He’s better at this than you,” to Holo and got a kick for his trouble. “You’re not my apprentice, so I plan to fully repay you for the salve you made for us. Your preparedness was audacious.”
Strange words, but the phrase fit Col perfectly.
Maybe it was just his basic honesty or his personality, but left alone, he seemed likely to become more apprentice-like than a real apprentice.
But Lawrence knew the world did not always reward such generosity, and that knowledge made him worry for the boy. If he wanted to take advantage of Col, how easy it would have been.
“…I understand,” Col replied with a confused smile.
He probably saw that Lawrence and Holo were worried, hence his answer.
Such things happened all the time in comical tales.
A master would set his faithful, obedient slave free, saying, “Go now, live your life free—you need no longer serve anyone.” And the slave would then faithfully keep his master’s order, living the rest of his life without ever serving another.
So was the slave who kept his master’s last order until the very end truly free?
Col’s confused smile may well have come from him imagining himself the same as the slave in the tale.
“However, let me just say this. It will not be right away. Merchants are a hasty lot, and if I don’t take care of this business first, I’ll be useless.”
“I understand. But…,” said Col, scratching his head bashfully. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
Lawrence let himself imagine what it would be like if Holo were so honest, but he didn’t look at her.
He could see her well enough in the corner of his field of view with her unamused smile.
“I’ve come to this town three times, but the truth is, I’ve never been to the delta,” said Col.
“Because of the ferryman’s fee?”
Col nodded.
If he couldn’t afford the ferryman’s fee to get to the delta, Lawrence wanted to know just how he had managed to cross the Roam River.
Given Col’s persistence, he might well have bound his clothes about his head and simply swum across.
“So, I’ve never been to the south side, but what about you?” Lawrence asked as the three of them walked, once Col had finished eating his shellfish.
“The south side is…The town is very beautiful there.”
The hesitation in the boy’s statement came as he looked around briefly, then lowered his voice.
It was true, then—even a glance at the riverbanks made the difference between the two halves very clear.
It was probably related to pagans being more numerous on the north side, while the south had more merchants and orthodox church members.
Among merchants, the ones from the southern side were far wealthier, and money tended to gather in places where there was already concentrated wealth.
“But there is more almsgiving on this side,” said Col.
“Is that so? I’d heard that the north side had more people from the north country, but still.”
“I believe so. There are many people here who were born in Roef. But even if that weren’t so, I have the feeling that people on this side are simply kinder.”
Lawrence scratched the tip of his nose and thought about how to reply.
The conflict between north and south was as delicate a subject as the conflict between wolves and humans.
“That’s because the harsher the climate, the kinder the people who live there,” Lawrence answered, at which Col smiled widely.
Though Col was broad-minded enough to travel alone into the south to study Church law, he still took innocent pleasure in hearing northern people favorably compared to southerners.
Lawrence was struck anew by the fact and felt as if he could understand why the biggest center of commerce in the city was situated on the river delta.
It was a buffer zone between the north and the south.
Alternatively, it might serve as neutral territory.
“But—” Col spoke up as Lawrence continued walking and looking out at the delta. “The people in the south always seem very happy,” he said considerately.
Lawrence was a bit surprised, and his expression slowly shifted to a smile. “It’s easier to make wine in warm weather, after all.”
“Oh, I see.”
There was no mistaking that given a few years, Col would turn into a pleasant young man.
Lawrence could think of nothing that would refute the obvious prediction.
Neither, he was sure, could Holo.
As they walked, she smiled happily and held Col’s hand, which may well have been an investment on her part.
The itchy notion was both amusing and a source of jealousy, and just as it occurred to Lawrence, Holo shot him a sidelong glance from beneath her hood.
“If you dally too long, I may just switch over,” her malicious smile said.
Lawrence stroked his beard and sighed.
The sigh came instead of the words he’d very nearly spoken, only to stop short in his throat.
And here I hadn’t planned on giving more bait to a fish I’d already hooked.
He had wanted to give Holo that retort but thought better of it.
Had he indulged in this game, there was a real danger he would actually lose to Col.
Wondering what she could possibly do with such a young lad, Lawrence took a deep breath of the cold air and laughed silently to himself.
CHAPTER TWO
Out of the Roef Mountains flows the Roef River into the Roam River, which in turn empties into the Winfiel Strait.
At the highest headwaters of the Roef River is the mining town of Lesko. Where the Roef and Roam Rivers meet is Lenos, and where it meets the sea lies the port town of Kerube.
And when it came to the copper goods that arrived from upriver at the end of the long journey in Kerube, there were certainly enough trading companies to handle the trade.
As a result, Lawrence had a certain preconception, along with a fair bit of anticipation.
So when he arrived at the Jean Company, he couldn’t help but feel a little deflated.
“Is this the place?” asked Holo, her expression belying her swallowed disappointment.
She looked like she wanted to point out that she could blow the place over with a breath, probably because she might well have been imagining turning back into a wolf and smashing it to bits.
A rectangular iron plate, which was stamped “Jean Company,” dangled from the eaves, and the street-facing side of the building was functioning as a loading dock. It was there where what goods were present were loaded.
As for what the goods were loaded on or tied to, it was no shaggy-haired winter-working horse that would unflinchingly plunge through the deepest snowdrifts, nor was it a big wagon of the sort that could carry all the household goods of a small village.
There under the eaves stood a scrawny mule upon which were loaded bundles of oat, probably meant as winterfeed. It yawned aimlessly, waiting for departure.
Col, who surely heard the words trading company and imagined a center of money and power, stood before the shabby shop spoiling for a fight.
“Who goes there, eh?” a portly man well past middle age inquired. He was sitting at a receiving desk at the back of the loading dock and looked up at Lawrence’s party when he noticed them standing under the edge of the eaves. There seemed to be no one else in the trading house, save for a chicken that was using the floor as a pasture and pecking at the odd fallen leaf. “If you’ve come to buy, I welcome you and gladly. But if you’ve come to sell something, well…you may have wasted the trip.”
The man did not stand, and the way his sagging cheeks drew up into a self-deprecating smile seemed, above all, tired.
At this display, Holo shot Lawrence an extremely displeased look.
The Jean Company was among those trying to buy and sell, for some unfathomable purpose, the bones of a wolf that had likely been one of her friends.
They were deserving of all her spite, and given the depth of her contempt, they should at least be a big enough company to be worthy of it—so said her glance.
Col alone seemed to mistake the old man’s tired mien for dignity.
However, it was not always the case that a company’s size and the quality of the people it employed were proportionate.
Sometimes reaching into a snake hole summoned a dragon.
“Is business as bad as that?” Lawrence replied, stepping up onto the loading dock.
Pieces of straw were scattered about on the dock’s floor, probably a remnant of the large amount of wheat that had passed through it. The scene called to mind the eaves of a farmhouse somewhere. There were goods of various kinds here and there, as one would expect of a trading house, but to a one they seemed dingy and poor.
“Hunh. I make you as a merchant from the south. Is business good down south, then?”
In the corner, there was a folded-up set of armor.
It seemed to have been there for some time, probably as back stock, and Lawrence found in it a bit of comfort as one who had once failed badly in armor dealings.
“It’s good and bad.”
“Here it’s terrible. The worst,” admitted the old man, raising his hands in a defeated gesture.
Holo and Col followed Lawrence onto the loading dock, and they glanced about curiously.
When Holo suddenly lifted up some of the accumulated straw on the floor, two chicken eggs rolled out.
“Ah, so there were eggs in there, eh? The hens lay them all over, and I never find them all. I’ll have to gather them later…and yes, there’s been a huge drop in the chicken population this year. It’s damned quiet. Used to be this time of year the roosters and hens were lively as anything.”
“Because of the cancellation of the northern campaign?”
“Right. With no people, there’s no money, and when people don’t move, their bellies don’t empty. The price of farmed goods is dropping, along with things like barrels and buckets, and the armor that used to fly off the shelf goes nowhere, and to top it off, the price of wine just goes up and up.”
“Huh?” muttered Holo, sounding perplexed.
Behind the desk, the pudgy old man shrugged clumsily. “When there’s nothing to be done, what’s left to do but drink?”
Holo seemed entirely satisfied with the explanation.
“So, what news of profit does this merchant bring with two lumps in tow?”
“Lumps?” grumbled Holo, irritated. She probably would not be able to pass as a nun the way she usually did. Thinking that he would need to talk it over thoroughly with her later, Lawrence set the jab aside with grim resolution.
“I’d like to speak to the master of the Jean Company.”
“Well, that’d be me.”
Lawrence had guessed as much and nodded, unsurprised, stepping forward and placing the letter he had gotten from Eve on the desk.
“Oh, my apologies. So you’re acquainted with the Bolan Company, eh?”
“The Bolan Company?” Lawrence had been unaware that Eve had set up her own company and was a bit taken aback.
He had never met anyone for whom the term lone wolf fit as well as it did her.
However, when he said so, the master of the Jean Company did not as much as make a strange face.
Instead, he looked as though he thought Lawrence was making an offhand joke. “She may do business all alone without so much as hanging up a sign, but anyone who casts as wide a net as she does is a serious trading company, don’t you think?” posed the master, looking for agreement as he opened Eve’s letter.
Lawrence had no way of guessing just how influential Eve was, but there was not a single good reason to let this man know how recently he had come to know her.
Lawrence nodded and smiled vaguely, at which the man drew his own conclusions and smiled back.
“Mm, Kraft Lawrence, is it? Ho-ho. Never thought a man would come in here with a letter from that wolf of a woman. How’d you get her over the fire, I’d like to know.”
A moment ago the man seemed like the feckless master of a drab little company, but with his left eyebrow raised as he stared piercingly up at Lawrence, he seemed much more formidable.
However, he surely was not trying to intimidate Lawrence or inflate his own impression. He was simply very interested, and this was probably no more than the face he showed to any other tough merchant.
Lawrence revised his opinion of his opponent and relaxed, letting the enjoyment of meeting another interesting merchant show on his face.
“That’s a secret.”
“Bwa-ha-ha! I’ll bet it is! So…if I might ask, what brings you to…” His eyes ran over the letter as he talked.
Lawrence did not fail to notice the master’s cheek twitch immediately thereafter.
Given that it dealt with the story of the bone of a wolf that had been revered as a god, a normal merchant would have given a hearty laugh and poured some wine.
But the Jean Company master’s shoulders only shook with a chuckle of remembrance as he rerolled the letter and tied it closed. “I see. It’s been some time since anyone’s been interested in this story. And if you went to the trouble of getting Eve Bolan to send you, well…I guess you’re in earnest.”
“Embarrassing though it is, yes,” answered Lawrence with a smile. The man returned the smile, which seemed to be made of two different expressions mixed together.
The first was surprise that there was a merchant who would hear this story and take it so seriously. The other was befuddlement at being begged for details, after all this time, when long ago he had tried to get others to listen, but none would.
But the smile soon disappeared from the man’s face.
“Still, you must be quite a man to go to the trouble of getting a letter from that wolf just to come hear a silly tale like this.”
“It’s not as though we want a seat on the council. We want to know what can be done, not how we might seem.”
“You’ve come to my company, Kraft Lawrence, and that was the right answer. I ought to introduce myself properly. I’m the master of the Jean Company, Ted Reynolds.”
That was the name written on the Jean Company account ledgers that had so worried Lawrence and company on the way down the Roam River.
From the name, Lawrence had imagined a younger man, but in reality, he was easily twice the age Lawrence had envisioned.
“Jean was my father’s wife, you see. He was a devoted husband.”
“My goodness.”
“Though the name made his trade partners shiver in fear, so maybe he was more henpecked than devoted,” said the man, holding up a single finger and closing one eye, pretending nobility and smiling.
While the joke felt out of place, it did give the man a strange charm.
Lawrence realized he could not let his guard down.
“But you’ve come to ask me something even stranger.”
“Indeed. People do many strange things in this world,” said Lawrence.
“That’s the truth. Hunh—ah.” Reynolds lifted himself reluctantly out of his chair. “Wait just a moment,” he said befo
re disappearing behind the desk farther into the building.
The chickens remained, pecking at the fuzzy edges of Col’s sandals.
Col frantically tried to shoo them off, but the chickens were merciless.
Amused, Holo watched the exchange between Col and the chickens for a while but eventually bared her teeth at the chickens.
The flightless birds immediately chose flight over fight.
“Sorry to keep you waiting—oh, my.” In no more time than it took the shed feathers of the scattered chickens to fall to the floor, Reynolds returned carrying a wooden box.
It did not take a sharp-eyed merchant to guess what had happened.
“My apologies. My chickens just can’t resist anything fuzzy.”
“It’s the cold season, after all. We’ll have to hide our fingers,” Lawrence answered, at which Reynolds laughed heartily.
“Wah-hah-hah! I don’t even want to imagine it! If they start pecking at my hangnails, I’ll throw them all into the pot, along with the chicks hatching tomorrow!”
Col smiled even as he casually rubbed his fingers, and Lawrence openly directed his gaze to the box Reynolds had set on the desk.
“What’s that?”
“Ah, this, you see—” said Reynolds, opening the box’s lid without hesitation. Lawrence couldn’t help bracing himself.
The box was packed tight with animal bones.
“This is the crystallized effort of all the people who so helpfully cooperated with the rumor that we were searching for the incredibly valuable remains of a lonely mountain village’s god.”
The roundabout, grandiose statement perfectly conveyed a sense of exhaustion with the subject, but just how serious the man was, Lawrence did not know.
Of course, if he was lying, Holo would tell him later.
“Are they real?”
“If only. Take a look around this trading house—can’t you tell? I didn’t buy these bones up out of greed, but now my shop’s on the verge of collapse.”
That he was nearly ruined was clearly a lie. At the very least, the shop was acting as a relay for goods coming down the Roam River, so it had to be making more profit than it appeared to be.
Town of Strife I Page 5