If Amati had gone this far, it seemed likely he’d bought her something still more costly.
Holo didn’t even have the energy to lift her legs onto the bed, and her strange position remained unchanged as she took the long, slow breaths of the deeply asleep. The ears she was so proud of gave nary a twitch at Lawrence’s question.
Realizing there was nothing else to do, Lawrence lifted her legs up onto the bed, and even then she did not so much as open her eyes.
He wondered if this utter defenselessness was due to trust or simply disdain.
He mulled it over for a while, but ultimately decided that such thoughts would only lead to disappointment, so he banished them from his head. Putting the muffler and shawl on the desk, he began to fold up her robe.
As soon as he did so, something fell out of the robe and hit the floor with a dunk.
He picked the object up; it was a beautiful metallic cube.
“Iron…? No.”
It had sharp, carefully filed edges and a surface that was beautifully smooth even in the dim moonlight. Even if it were just metalwork, the cube would have been a valuable piece, but there was no telling how angry Holo would be if he woke her up just to ask about it.
He set the cube on the desk, deciding to ask about it the next day.
He put the robe over the back of the chair and folded the kerchief; then he rolled up the sash after smoothing out its wrinkles.
For a moment, he wondered why he was attending to these menial tasks – he was no manservant, after all – but one look at the sleeping Holo, snoring away artlessly on the bed there, was enough to dispel his indignation.
She had made no move to do it herself, so Lawrence walked over to the bed and drew the covers over her, chuckling.
He then returned to his desk and his travel plans.
If his circumstances didn’t allow him to stay in the north while he searched for Yoitsu, he would simply have to change his business plan to accommodate some travel in the north. Whether or not he would actually follow those changes, there was no harm in making the plan.
Also, it had been some time since he’d really sat down with pen and paper and listed the towns, trade routes, commodities, and profit margins that made up the life of a traveling merchant.
He was filled with nostalgia when he remembered the times he had once burned the midnight oil to make such plans.
There was one large difference between then and now, though.
Were the plans being made for his own sake – or for someone else’s?
Lawrence worked, pen in hand, listening to Holo’s quiet snores, until the tallow candle burned itself out.
“Food, drink, the scarf, and this die.”
“Anything else?”
“That was all. Well, that and enough sweet talk to fill a lifetime,” said Holo lightly, chewing on the comb she used to groom her tail. Lawrence regarded her wearily.
He’d been relieved when she woke up without a hangover and had immediately interrogated her about the events of the previous night. Looking at the gifts she had received in the light of morning, Lawrence could tell they were of considerable value.
“So you ate and drank the night away, but then there’s this muffler. I can’t believe you’d go and accept such a thing…”
“It’s fine fur, is it not? Though nothing compared with my tail.”
“Did you make him buy this thing?”
“You think me so shameless? Why, he practically pressed it upon me. Rather fashionable of him, though, giving a muffler as a gift.”
Lawrence looked at the fox skin piece, then at Holo. She continued, sounding pleased, “He’s quite mad about me, you know.”
“I’m sorry, did I ask for a joke? You can’t just call it over and done when you receive a gift this valuable. Here I just thought to let someone else show you a good time, but now look at the debt I carry!”
Holo giggled. “So that was your plan all along, was it? I thought as much.”
“I’m taking the consideration for this scarf out of your funds for the festival, just so you know.”
Holo glared at him but turned away, doubly annoyed upon seeing that Lawrence glared right back at her.
“I trust you didn’t show him your ears and tail at least?”
“You needn’t worry. I am not quite that foolish.”
Based on her state the previous night, Lawrence had not thought to worry about such a possibility, but now he wasn’t so sure.
“I suppose you were asked what sort of relationship you have with me.”
“What I would like to know is precisely why you’re asking.”
“If our stories do not match, people will begin to suspect things.”
“Mm. Right you are. Yes, I was quite thoroughly questioned. I am a traveling nun and you saved me from being sold off by evil men is what I told him.”
Aside from the part about Holo being a nun, that was more or less consistent with the truth.
“But once you saved me, I fell deeply into your debt, and as I cannot hope to repay it, I am gradually working it off by praying for your safety as we travel. Oh, alas and alack, woe is me! My voice was desperately sad as I told the tale. What do you think, eh? It has the ring of truth!”
Although it irked Lawrence that he seemed to be the villain of the story, it did seem convincing.
“As soon as I told the tale, he bought me the muffler,” said the fake traveling nun with a frankly devilish smile.
“I suppose that will do. But what of this die? What made him buy you something like this?”
Lawrence had been unable to discern the color of the thing in the dim moonlight, but he could now tell that the cube of metal, so perfect it seemed the work of a master smith, had a distinctly yellow tint, like unpolished gold.
Lawrence had seen this kind of gold-like mineral before.
It was not the work of any human but entirely natural.
“Oh, that? The fortune-teller was using it. They say it’s a die that can divine the future. It has a lovely shape, has it not? I can scarcely fathom how it was made. There’s no doubt it’ll sell for some fine coin.”
“You fool. Do you actually think you can sell this?” said Lawrence, using the same tone she often rebuked him with. Holo’s ears pricked up at the sudden harshness.
“This is no die. This is a mineral called pyrite. And no man made it.”
His information was obviously unexpected. Holo regarded him dubiously, but Lawrence ignored this, plucking the yellowish crystalline cube off the desk and tossing it at Holo.
“I suppose the wisewolf that guarantees the harvest would know little of rocks. That die-shaped stone was mined just as you see it.”
Holo smiled uncertainly, clearly disbelieving him, as she toyed with the pyrite.
“You should be able to tell that I’m not lying.”
Holo murmured quietly and held the pyrite up between her fingers.
“It’s not good for much, but it’s often sold as a souvenir. And since it looks like gold, sometimes it’s used by swindlers. Was anybody else buying it?”
“Oh, indeed. Many. The fortune-teller had great skill, enough to impress even me. He claimed that with dice like his, anyone could read the fates, so all that were gathered wanted the pyrite dice he was selling. He made up all manner of reasons why they were desirable.”
“You mean the dice?”
“Indeed. Even the ones less perfect in shape than this he claimed would ward away sickness or evil.”
Lawrence felt a certain professional respect for anyone who could invent such a lucrative business. Festivals and fairs often sparked strange fads.
The charged atmosphere made for great business, but pyrite – that was quite an angle, indeed.
“Amati bid down the price on that die, too.”
This genuinely surprised Lawrence. “He bid it down?”
“The crowd had gotten quite enthusiastic. I’d not seen that sort of competition before – it was somethin
g to see, indeed. I expect I could sell the die quite dear now.”
Lawrence thought of Batos, who traveled the Hyoram regions.
Did Batos know of this? If he had pyrite on hand or connections to gain it, there might be excellent business to be had here.
Lawrence had gotten that far in his train of thought when there was a knock at the door.
“Hm?” For a moment, he considered the possibility that Amati had spotted Holo’s ears and tail, but then he decided that the perceptive Holo would have noticed if that were the case.
He looked from the door to Holo and saw that she drew the bedclothes up over herself. Evidently the visitor at the door was not of the dangerous sort they had encountered in Pazzio.
Lawrence walked over to the door and opened it.
On the other side was Mark’s young apprentice.
“I apologize for calling so early in the morning. I have a message from my master.”
It was hardly “early in the morning,” and Lawrence couldn’t imagine what was so pressing that it would inspire Mark to send his apprentice on an errand just when the market would be opening.
He wondered if Mark had perhaps fallen gravely ill, but no – were that the case, the boy would not claim to have a message from his master.
Holo shifted underneath the blankets, popping her head out.
The boy noticed and glanced her way. Seeing a girl on a bed covered from the neck down in blankets was evidently more than he had bargained for. He turned away, red faced.
“So what was the message?”
“Oh, er, yes. He said you needed to know right away, so I ran over immediately. Actually–”
The shocking news had Lawrence running through the streets of Kumersun a moment later.
Chapter Three
The town of Kumersun rose early.
Lawrence crossed the broad north-south avenue and headed west toward the trading company. Here and there on the way, he spotted many people erecting what looked like signposts.
Lawrence glanced at them as he ran with Mark’s apprentice. They seemed to indeed be signposts of some kind, but he could not tell what was written on them. It was a script he had never seen before, and the signs were decorated with flowers, turnips, or bundles of hay.
Undoubtedly they were used in the Laddora festival, which began today, but Lawrence had no time to investigate.
The boy was fleet of foot and showed no signs of tiring, perhaps from being worked so hard day in and day out by Mark. Lawrence had a fair amount of confidence in his own stamina but was hard-pressed to keep up. It was just as he was running short of breath that they arrived at the trading company.
The normally forbidding, tightly closed doors of the company were thrown open. A handful of merchants stood at the entrance, wine cups already in hand despite the early hour.
Their attention had been directed into the building, but upon noticing Lawrence’s arrival, they beckoned him in with gusto.
“Hey! It’s the man himself! Haschmidt the Knight has arrived!”
Hearing the name Haschmidt, Lawrence now knew for a certainty that Mark’s apprentice had been neither jesting nor lying.
There was a romantic tale from the country of Eleas, a passionate nation of seas and vineyards.
The protagonist was Hendt La Haschmidt, a knight of the royal court.
However, Lawrence was far from happy to be called a knight.
Haschmidt the Knight fought bravely for Ilesa, the princess he loved. He challenged Prince Philip the Third to a duel for the right to her hand and died a tragic death.
Lawrence ascended the stone steps, pushing through the jeering merchants into the trading company.
Their gazes pierced him, spear-like, as though he was a criminal about to be crucified.
There at the back of the room, at the counter behind which sat the master of the firm, was his Prince Philip the Third.
“I say again!” cried a reedy, boyish voice that echoed through the lobby.
It was Amati – not wearing the standard oiled-leather coat of the fishmonger, but rather an aristocratic formal robe. He looked every inch the young son of a nobleman.
He leveled his gaze directly at Lawrence as the entire assemblage of merchants held their breath.
Right then and there, Amati held up a dagger and a sheet of parchment and made his declaration.
“I will pay the debt that now weighs upon the slender shoulders of this traveling nun – and when this goddess of loveliness does regain her freedom, I swear by Saint Lambardos, who watches over this Rowen Trade Guild, that Holo the nun will have my undying love!”
A commotion arose in the hall, laughter mixing with cries of admiration to create a strangely feverish atmosphere.
Amati ignored the noise. He lowered his hands and spun the dagger around, gripping it by the blade and holding the hilt out to Lawrence.
“Miss Holo has told me of her misfortune and ill treatment. I thus propose to use my fortune and position as a free man to regain for her the feathers of freedom, and furthermore to wed her.”
Lawrence instantly recalled Mark’s words the previous day.
Men his age will do anything to gain the object of their obsession.
He regarded the hilt thrust at him with a bitter gaze and then looked at the parchment.
Amati was just far enough away that Lawrence could not make the writing out, but it surely reiterated what the boy had just said in more concrete terms. The red seal at the bottom left of the sheet was probably not wax, but blood.
In regions without a public witness, or when one needed a contract with far more weight than a public witness could provide, there was contract law. The party who put their blood seal upon the contract would give the knife they used to the opposite party and swear an oath in God’s name.
If the first party failed to fulfill the contract, they would be bound to kill the opposing party with that knife or else turn it to their own throat.
As soon as Lawrence took the knife offered to him by Amati, the contract would be sealed.
Lawrence did not move. He’d had not the slightest inkling that Amati’s infatuation would come to this.
“Mr. Lawrence.” The words were as piercing as Amati’s gaze.
Neither flimsy excuses nor disregard would sway the boy, Lawrence guessed.
Desperate to buy himself some time, he said, “It is true that Holo is indebted to me and that she prays for me as we travel to repay that debt, but she will not necessarily abandon our journeying once that debt is lifted.”
“True. But I am confident she will for my sake.”
A murmur ran through the crowd, which was impressed at Amati’s audacity.
He didn’t seem drunk, but he was the very image of Philip the Third.
“Also, while she may not be perfectly devout, Holo is a nun, which makes marriage–”
“If you are worried that I do not fully understand the situation, then your concern, sir, is misplaced. I am aware that Holo is unattached to any convent.”
Lawrence snapped his mouth shut to avoid the expletive that came to mind.
There were two types of so-called traveling nuns. The first type were women in a church-sanctioned mendicant order that nonetheless lacked a fixed base of operations. The second type were totally self-styled, unattached to any Church organization.
Such self-proclaimed itinerant nuns made up the greater part of the group, and they referred to themselves as such simply for the convenience it afforded them while traveling. Since they were not officially attached to any Church organization, they were not disallowed from marriage the way true nuns are.
Amati knew Holo was a self-styled nun, so it was too late to arrange any sort of pretense with a convent now.
Amati continued speaking, his voice smooth and confident. “It is in truth not my desire to propose a contract to you thus, Mr. Lawrence. No doubt everyone here thinks me like Philip the Third from the tale of Haschmidt the Knight. However, according to K
umersun law, when a woman is indebted, her creditor is considered to be her guardian. Of course–”
Amati paused, clearing his throat, then continued, “If you will unconditionally assent to my proposal of marriage, there is no need for this contract.”
This sort of rare competition over a woman made for the best drinking stories.
The assembled merchants spoke in low tones as they watched the developing drama.
Most experienced merchants would not take Lawrence and Holo’s relationship at face value. It would have been the height of naivete to think that an indebted nun was really paying off her obligation by praying for her creditor as they traveled. It was much more likely that she didn’t want to be sold off by whoever held her debt or that she was traveling with him simply because she wanted to.
Amati certainly realized this and undoubtedly thought it was the former.
Freeing the poor, beautiful maiden from the bonds of debt was a moral imperative that justified this ridiculous display of gallantry, Amati must have felt.
And even if he didn’t think this, Lawrence still came away looking like the villain.
“Mr. Lawrence, will you accept this contract dagger?”
The merchants looked on, grinning silently.
The traveling merchant was about to lose his fetching companion to the young fishmonger out of sheer inattentiveness.
It made for rare entertainment – and there was no acceptable way for Lawrence to escape.
His only option was to best Amati by being the nobler man.
In any case, he didn’t believe that if Holo’s debt were paid she would stop traveling with him just because Amati told her to.
“I am not so careless to agree to a contract I have not read,” Lawrence said.
Amati nodded, withdrawing the knife and extending the contract to Lawrence.
Lawrence walked toward Amati, watched by everyone in the room, and took the parchment, scanning its contents quickly.
As he expected, what was written there was a more tortuously worded version of the declaration Amati had just made.
What Lawrence was most interested in was the amount that Amati proposed to pay.
What had Holo claimed her debt to be?
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