It was a gift from Amati, the youth who had courted her in the town of Kumersun.
There was nothing inherently wrong about her wearing it, and the muffler was admittedly very useful in the cold weather, so Lawrence had kept silent. Seeing it now, however, made him shift uncomfortably.
No doubt aware of this, Holo wore the muffler in an especially warm-looking fashion, but she now removed it and pointed the fox’s head at Lawrence. “I’ve eaten mice, me, and been eaten by wolves!” she squeaked, her voice changing in a mockery of what he supposed was a fox.
Lawrence sighed.
He was up against Holo the Wisewolf.
“Hmph,” Holo continued. “There is the hunter, and the hunted. And besides, you humans do far worse things. Do you not even buy and sell your fellow man?”
“This is true. The slave trade is both necessary and very profitable.”
“Just as you can accept that as the custom of your world, we can be calm toward those who are hunted. And besides, what if the position was switched?” Holo narrowed her red-brown eyes.
Lawrence thought back to the exchange he’d had with Holo not long after they’d met – when she’d said that a wolf’s cleverness came from devouring humans.
Even Lawrence felt that if a traveler strayed into wolf territory and failed to escape, the blame lay with the traveler. It was one thing to fear wolves, but actually hating them for this was a mistake, he felt.
This much was obvious to Lawrence.
“Still, I suppose seeing one’s fellows hunted before one’s very eyes is hardly an easy thing,” said Holo.
Lawrence nodded his understanding.
Holo continued. “And you were nice enough to get flustered when I was hunted by another man,” she said coyly, her mood now totally different from the state she had been in a few moments ago.
“Ah, yes, I certainly did,” said Lawrence perfunctorily, returning his gaze to the cart horse ahead of him.
“Whence this uncaring affect?”
“Well…” began Lawrence, his eyes fixed steadily ahead. “It’s embarrassing.”
It is a wholly embarrassing admission, Lawrence thought to himself.
But to the wolf who sat beside him, such morsels were a delicacy, so it could hardly be helped.
Holo laughed hard enough that in the cold air, the white fog of her exhalations blurred her face. “Embarrassing, eh?”
“Entirely.”
Conversation tended to naturally die down in the cold monotony of the long journey. Though knowing each others dispositions as well as they did meant wordless exchanges could set Lawrence’s mind at ease, they were still no substitute for real conversation like this. The two laughed at each other. The cart horse flicked its tail, as if to say, “Enough!” which only triggered another wave of laughter from its passengers.
Holo rewrapped the fox fur muffler around her neck as she giggled while Lawrence turned his gaze back to the panorama of Lenos that now came into focus.
It might have been twice the size of the pagan town of Kumersun. Surrounded by walls constructed perhaps a century earlier, the houses within the walls had long since filled the enclosed area. With no more room to build outward, buildings instead became more concentrated – and taller, always taller.
The scene spread out now before Lawrence made it look for a moment as though the town had finally overflowed its own walls. Dozens of tents flanked the road on both sides as they made their way to Lenos through the misting rain.
“Is this what they call a gate-front town, then?” asked Holo.
“That sort of thing happens around churches, yes, especially when the church has been plopped in the middle of the wilderness somewhere. It would be strange, though, to be constantly setting up shop outside the town walls.”
For a town to prosper, it had to collect taxes, and to collect those taxes, it had to make people pass through its gates.
Of course, there were cramped towns that held their markets outside of the town, but even those were enclosed by temporary fences.
“Hmm. It hardly seems as though these people are engaging in trade.”
Just as Holo said this, they drew closer to the tents and could see that the people beneath them wore traveling clothes and were busy cooking or chatting. And though they all wore traveling garments, the styles were from far and wide. Some seemed to be from even farther north than here while others were from the west or the south. At quick count, there seemed to be around twenty tents, each sheltering perhaps three or four people.
The one commonality was that they all seemed to be merchants who specialized in this or that commodity. Roughly half of them seemed to be hauling large loads with a few wagons even carrying giant barrels.
All the merchants’ faces were tinged with dust and travel fatigue, and the occasional flash of irritation showed in their eyes.
Lawrence wondered if there’d been some kind of a coup in Lenos, but that didn’t make sense given that only some of the people gathered there seemed to be quartered in tents. There were also farmers with donkeys in tow and merchant-like people carrying loads on their backs, all hurrying toward Lenos to get out of the rain or setting out toward any number of other destinations.
As far as Lawrence could tell, the town seemed more or less as it always had.
“Some kind of trouble again, perhaps?” mused Holo, emphasizing the “again” and grinning beneath her hood.
Lawrence glanced at Holo out of the corner of his eye, as if to ask, “And precisely whose fault has that been?” but she simply shot the same look back at him.
“It may be true that since meeting me you’ve had a few scrapes, but one can hardly claim that they were directly my fault.”
“I–”
“I will grant the first one – well, part of that might have been owing to me, but its true cause was your avarice, which was wholly to blame for the next disaster. And our last problem was simple bad luck. Am I wrong?”
Holo was nothing if not precise.
Lawrence stroked his beard, which was longer of late, given his reluctance to shave without hot water, but still he did not give in and agree with her. “I suppose I understand what you’re saying…”
“Mm.”
“But I simply cannot agree. It’s true that you weren’t necessarily there to trigger our troubles, but…”
Lawrence couldn’t bring himself to agree with Holo’s assessment.
He wanted to tell her that it was her fault.
As his grumble trailed off, Holo gave him a look as if she couldn’t even believe they were having the conversation. “I can see all too clearly how you don’t want to agree with me, even though I am hardly the root cause of all these troubles.”
Lawrence knitted his brows, wondering what trickery she was up to. She noted this and giggled.
Holo continued. “’Tis because you always use me as the basis for your actions – hence you always feel I’m pulling you this way and that.”
Lawrence’s left eyebrow twitched involuntarily.
She was right.
But admitting it would mean the wolf had gotten the best of him.
In other words–
“Heh. Always stubborn,” said Holo, her voice as grating as the chill mist that fell from the sky.
Her smile was every bit as pure and fickle and cold as though she was about to run away forever.
He had to catch her.
In defiance of all reason, Holo’s smile made him want to shout out loud.
The next moment, her small body would be in his arms.
It felt like the most natural thing in the world.
“Mmph.”
The urge lasted no more than four of the cart horse’s steps.
Lawrence managed to keep his cool as he guided the wagon into the line for the checkpoint into town.
The reason for his restraint was simple.
There was a crowd of people around them.
As they plied their trade routes, traveling
merchants loved to gossip, even about their own ilk. If Lawrence was seen openly flirting with his companion, no doubt the tale would spread.
Holo looked aside, seeming bored.
No doubt she was bored.
Despite the fact that Lawrence had always perceived all women’s smiles to be the same, he could now follow the slightest changes of expression on Holo’s face. In addition to her boredom, there was a flicker of unease.
He saw this and realized something. There were two basic motivations for his actions.
One was Holo.
The other was business.
Holo feared loneliness even more than Lawrence did. No doubt she was sometimes frightened by the prospect of being weighed against business. In the end, only the gods could know which way the balance would tip in the end – or how close it might be.
And the end of their journey was not far away.
Would she venture to cause trouble just when Lawrence had to put on his merchant face, just to test which way he would choose, forcing the issue of whether she was more important than his ledger’s balance?
Not that she was so insignificant as to warrant that kind of worry, Lawrence found himself thinking.
The wagon inched forward in the slow-moving line, and a great puff of white fog issued from beneath Holo’s hood as she looked at him irritably.
“Some stew would be nice,” she said.
No doubt she was talking about dinner. Evidently the time for affirmations had passed.
“Aye, with this cold. Depending on the price, I’d take a stew with a proper thick flour broth.”
“Ho, ho! Sometimes the sweet smell of milk surpasses that of the finest wine.”
Seeing her like this, face half-wrapped in the fox fur muffler as she nodded her delighted agreement, erased the past several days of irritated remarks he’d endured.
Sometimes it was good to order something full of tasty ingredients. “A stew made with the vegetables of the season would be especially good,” said Lawrence.
“Vegetables? Do you not understand the flavor of delicious stewed meat floating in the creamy broth?”
Despite having spent centuries in the wheat fields, Holo’s tastes were more aristocratic than any noble’s.
There before the walls of Lenos, Lawrence made one last counterattack. He regretted having indulged her.
“They say fine foods can be bad for the eye and bad for the tongue.”
“Oh? And how bad for my heart do you think it was to go so many centuries without so much as a taste?” Holo glared up at him sharply.
She was completely unmoved, her red-tinged chestnut eyes glinting like polished jewels.
In front of such shining gems, the only thing to do was fall to your knees.
But Lawrence was a merchant, not some jewel-crazed noblewoman. If the price wasn’t right, there was only one thing to say, even in the face of the most precious gem.
“Perhaps once I’ve consulted my coin purse.”
Holo looked away like a stubborn child.
Even after this exchange, Lawrence knew it was likely that they would wind up having a meat stew. No doubt Holo was confident of this as well.
And yet still they played at arguing.
Lawrence flicked the reins and eased the wagon forward.
As they passed through the checkpoint, Lawrence looked up at the stone wall, which was moss colored from the rain.
He looked down again shortly, though it was not to hide any of his goods from the import tax. No, he wanted only to hide the smile that spread under his beard.
Perhaps it was because of the cold winter rain that there were so few people in the town’s streets.
What few were there were mostly children, the mist of their exhalations trailing behind them as they ran here and there with hands clasped tight to their breasts – no doubt on errands for the town’s shopkeepers and craftsmen. The phantomlike forms with their bundles of rags were surely doing the same job.
The stalls that faced the street were largely unattended as the light mist gathered and dribbled from their eaves. Without any shopkeepers to chase them away, a few beggars gathered under a handful of the stalls. It was the very image of a rainy day.
But the fact that just outside the entrance to the town walls there were tents lined up with merchants cooking dinner beneath them meant something was afoot.
Lawrence held in his hand the wooden plaque he’d received at the checkpoint that was proof of his status as a foreign merchant, and listened vaguely as Holo voiced her displeasure.
“’Tis not as though I would place it at the very pinnacle of creation, but is that not an unreachable state, not some matter of relative merit? What say you?”
“Oh, indeed.”
“If we are to talk of that which falls short of being inherently superior and that which exceeds its humble origins to become great, I should think the latter more worthy of respect. Am I wrong?”
“… Not at all.”
Perhaps it was the fatigue of the long journey. Holo’s anger was not the complete rage it normally seemed to be. She expressed her displeasure as a lower, more constant grumble.
In his mind, Lawrence cursed the loudmouthed checkpoint guard whose careless words had brought this upon him – but then he realized that if his replies to Holo were too perfunctory, she’d turn her anger upon him.
“Yes, well, if the choice is between a nobleman with no fame, no charisma, no assets, naught but his lineage, and a canny commoner who’s amassed wealth and fame, then surely it’s the latter whom I’d respect,” agreed Lawrence.
Normally such obsequiousness would only worsen Holo’s mood, but at the moment it seemed to be good enough.
She gave an exaggerated, almost drunken nod, then sniffed like an angry bull.
At the checkpoint, they’d been subjected to an extremely thorough search, and the guard had discovered Holo’s tail.
Of course, Holo was nonchalant as always and easily passed it off as an underskirt, which the guard seemed to believe, but then he had said this:
“Oh, just a cheap wolf skin.”
Being a guard at a town that was a hub for lumber and fur, he’d known how to tell a wolf pelt from a dog or a fox.
And he was not wrong about the value. Wolf pelts were ranked below dog. No matter how fine the quality, no matter how much it made a fur trader drool, the simple fact was that it would never be worth as much as a good deerskin.
The problem arose when that wolf’s pride was not so cheap as its fur – and on that count, Holo was expensive indeed.
This explained her angry, childish muttering. Lawrence felt so bad for her that he wanted to stroke her head to comfort her.
Had they still been mid journey, he might have simply held the reins and exchanged snippy remarks with her, but now he only looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He scratched his chin with the corner of the foreign merchant plaque, wondering if some food would help her feel better.
In truth, Lawrence was more concerned with the significance of that plaque.
It appeared hastily made without any kind of official seal on it.
He’d been told that if he wanted to buy commodities in the village, no one would sell to him unless he displayed the plaque.
That was the only explanation he had received. He’d been quickly shooed through the checkpoint, through which a string of travelers passed like an eel wriggling through a trap.
It was a situation no merchant could abide.
This was the first time he’d encountered something like this – not just in Lenos, but in any town.
“So then,” said Holo.
“Oh, uh, yes?” A poke at his leg jerked Lawrence out of his reverie, and he met Holo’s sharp gaze.
For a moment he wondered if he’d missed her saying something, but before he could ask, Holo continued.
“Will we make the inn soon?”
No doubt she was cold and hungry and could not tolerate riding in the wagon any l
onger than she had to. “Just ahead around that corner,” Lawrence told her. She gave an irritated sigh at the fact that the inn was not immediately in front of her, sinking deeper into her hood.
He would have to be very careful about the amount of meat in tonight’s stew. Lawrence thought the matter over as he drove the wagon, and soon enough they arrived at their destination.
It was an ordinary four-story building that somehow fell short of striking one as elegant.
The first floor, which faced the street, had a Dutch door. The lower section could be opened and turned sideways, becoming a surface on which to display goods, and the upper section could function as an awning. Both were currently closed fast, doing their best to hold back the cold winter air.
Holo’s expression only darkened. Perhaps she expected to be taken to an inn with a properly maintained facade.
Lawrence avoided explaining to her that even should they spend more money, it did not guarantee a restful inn. He climbed down from the drivers box to avoid her baleful gaze and trotted over to the inn’s front door, giving it a knock.
The inn did not have so much as a sign out front, so it was very unlikely to be full, but there was a real possibility that the owner could have closed up because of the cold weather.
So when Lawrence heard the shuffling of someone behind the door just before it opened a crack, he felt a certain amount of relief.
“You staying or selling goods?” a gruff, white bearded old man brusquely demanded through the barely opened door.
“Staying. Two of us.”
The old man gave only a quick nod, then retreated back into the building.
The door was left open, so apparently there were vacancies.
Lawrence glanced back at the wagon. “Which do you want, a bright room or a warm room?” he asked.
The question was unexpected. A crease appeared on Holo’s brow. “What else is there but a warm room?”
“Right, I’ll take the horse around to the stables. You go on in and talk to the innkeeper – that older gentleman – and tell him that. He’ll show you to a room.”
“Mm.”
Lawrence climbed back into the driver’s box and took the reins, trading places with Holo, who got off. The horse, seeming to realize that he was finally about to get out of the driving winter wind and into a warm stable, shook his head as if to hurry them up. With a flick of the reins, Lawrence set the horse to walking, watching Holo enter the inn out of the corner of his eye.
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