Suppose one’s lover wrote him frequent love letters. If he asked her to write his reply for her, because she seemed to enjoy writing letters so much, he’d earn her wrath, and rightly so.
In other words, Holo had wanted to tell Lawrence that just because she put her wisdom to work solving his problems did not mean that she loved solving problems.
It was obvious if he thought about it.
While it was rather doubtful that Holo would bring her wisdom to bear for Lawrence’s sake alone, at the very least, she would be angry with him if he didn’t think so.
Lawrence fell back on the spot.
He had just been educated by Holo.
That was what made her smile so terrifying.
“Sincerity enough to balance this out…?” Lawrence sat back up and took another drink. “I haven’t got it on hand!”
He exhaled a liquor-reeking breath, then looked at Holo, who was dancing in front of the fire.
As she waved her arms about in the happy dance, she didn’t so much as glance at Lawrence.
He was already afraid of what she would make him buy her.
Holo joined hands with the dancing girl she had been talking to earlier on the riverbank, and the two danced with perfect footwork, as though they had practiced ahead of time. The sounds of flute playing and applause rewarded them.
As if conceding defeat to their display, the flaming pile of rags and wooden debris collapsed in on itself, blowing a shower of sparks into the air, like the sigh of a demon.
Lawrence could see a faint smile on Holo’s feverish, serious face, and her dance had a somehow unsettling quality to it. Part of it was that she was simply that attractive, but she also seemed as though she were trying to forget something.
Since long ago, festivals had been celebrated to mark the end of one year and the beginning of the next and to quiet the anger of gods and spirits. Lawrence wondered if Holo’s appearance was due to that feeling, but then as he was moving to take another drink, his hand froze.
He had realized earlier the reality that most of the things Holo did, she did for him.
Did that possibly apply to things outside of helping him think through puzzles and other such difficulties?
“Surely not–”
Holo danced with endless gaiety, seemingly unable to think about anything else – suddenly she seemed very small.
If Lawrence’s guess was correct, her anger was over a foolish thing indeed.
If he was so much slower than her that he couldn’t keep up, then it could also be said that she was running ahead on her own and meddling with things.
He drank, and the harsh liquor burned his throat.
Lawrence stood but not to join in the dancing circle.
To put it in his own stubborn words, he stood to collect information for Holo.
In Ragusa’s circle, Col had already collapsed and lay face up.
Lawrence walked toward them, giving a light wave, which Ragusa acknowledged with a lift of his cup.
Holo was a fool.
He wanted to prove it.
“Ah-ha-ha-ha! The mountains of Roef?”
“Ho, it’s a lovely place. I bring fine lumber out of it every year! Wood that came down this very river went to a kingdom in the far south, to produce a… urp… grand table for the palace. What say you to that, my young traveling merchant?” said the boatman, heartily pouring wine from his own wineskin into the cask Lawrence held.
The cask wasn’t a barrel, so it was hardly possible to pour into it, and both the boatman holding the wineskin and Lawrence were rather unsteady of hand.
More and more of the wine spilled out of the cask, falling like a waterfall to the ground.
Lawrence was drunk enough that he didn’t care.
“Well, in that case, you should write this on the side of the lumber: ‘Your damn taxes are too high!’” said Lawrence loudly, bringing the cask to his mouth to take a drink when the boatman slapped him carelessly on the back, causing the wine to miss his mouth and go falling to the ground.
“Ah, yes! Right you are, m’boy.”
Somewhere in the back of Lawrence’s mind, he realized half-ruefully, half-proudly that not even Holo had ever gotten this drunk.
“So then, what of Roef?” Lawrence asked.
“Roef? I’ve taken fine lumber from the place…” began the boatman, repeating himself – but then he collapsed on the spot.
“What a lightweight.” said one of his comrades, more disgusted than worried.
Lawrence grinned and looked around at the faces of the other men. “So, will you talk to me now?”
“Ha-ha-ha! I reckon we promised, so there’s nothing to be done about it now. We’ll let Zonal settle this one up.” said a heavy-drinking boatman, smiling as he poked the head of his fallen comrade.
The boatman named Zonal was already passed out.
“Truly, though, to think you’d be this strong from dealing with a girl like that–”
“Aye, aye! Still, we must… we must keep our promises!”
“Aye, ’tis sho…”
“So you wanted to know of Roef?”
The last one to speak was Ragusa, who was evidently able to hold his liquor – his face was barely red.
The rest of them were, like Lawrence, a bit unsteady on their feet.
Lawrence himself was not entirely confident in his ability to remain conscious.
“Ah… yes, either that or a place called Yoitsu…”
“I’ve not heard of this Yoitsu. But Roef’s hardly worth asking about – you just head back up this river. The Roef River joins up with it, and you just follow that all the way in.”
I’m not asking about such trifling details, Lawrence thought to himself, but when he tried to remember what he was asking about, he couldn’t remember.
He was drunk.
But Roef was the first clue he needed to follow.
“Can you not tell me something more… interesting?”
“Interesting, eh?” Ragusa rubbed his beard and looked over to his fellow boatmen, but to a man they seemed to be nodding off, succumbing to the alcohol. “Ah, I have it,” he said, twisting his beard, then walking over to his fallen boatman comrade and shaking the man’s shoulder violently.
“Hey you. Wake up! You said you took a strange job recently, didn’t you?”
“Mnngh… uuh… can’t hold any more…”
“Idiot! Hey! You brought it out of Lesko on the Roef headwaters, didn’t you?”
The boatman named Zonal had been deliberately drinking with Lawrence, and he’d apparently been caught in an affair and had his head soundly cracked by his wife in revenge.
Lawrence himself was not unworried about what might happen if he was to fool around with another girl and Holo discovered it.
“Lesko? Ah, yes, ’tis a good town. Time after time, I brought copper out of the mountains there… It flowed out like water. Oh, and the liquor there’s first-rate. How can I put it…? They’ve got dozens of machines there that bring the strongest liquor out of the thinnest wine. Oh, my copper-skinned bride! The blessings of fire and water be upon your shining skin!” called out Zonal before falling motionless again, his eyes closed. It was by no means clear whether he was awake or asleep.
Ragusa gave the man’s shoulder another rough shake, but Zonal was by now a jellyfish tossed upon the waves.
“Worthless!”
“‘Copper-skinned bride,’ he said… Did he mean a still?”
“Mm? Oh, aye! You’re quite knowledgeable. I’ve carried them as cargo a few times. The liquor you’re drinking was probably distilled in a Lesko still.”
Made from skillfully beaten sheets of copper, a still would certainly have an appealing red shine to it. And it was often said that those who shaped the curved copper pieces had the female form in mind when they did so, so Lawrence understood Zonal’s ramblings.
“Mm, this is no good. He won’t awaken ’til morning.”
“You said… something abou
t a strange j-job?” Lawrence was quite drunk himself and was having difficulty speaking properly.
It occurred to him to wonder if Holo was all right, and when he looked around, a sight terrible enough to snap him out of his drunkenness in an instant greeted him at the end of his shaky vision.
“Yes, a strange job… hmm? Ha-ha-ha! She has a catlike quickness about her – it quite suits her, don’t you think?”
Ragusa’s laugh was directed at Holo, whose dancing figure had elicited a great cry of delight from the crowd.
She had shed her heavy robe, and her tail waved silkily about as she spun and danced, hands joined with the dancing girl.
On her head was the skin of what might have been a flying squirrel or some small animal, and at first glance, it looked as though she was flaunting both her ears and tail.
Lawrence was speechless at Holo’s recklessness, but nobody else seemed to be concerned.
When he looked more carefully, he saw that the dancing girl, too, had a fox fur wrapped around her as an improvised tail, as well as a squirrel skin tied about her head.
While Lawrence couldn’t help but marvel at Holo’s nerve, he also couldn’t rule out the possibility that his judgment had been dulled by the liquor.
Even as he worried about what would happen if she was found out, she seemed truly joyful as she danced.
And her long waves of hair and soft, fluffy tail caused something to stir within Lawrence’s chest, like some mysterious sorcery.
“So, yes, about that strange job.”
Lawrence snapped out of his dream at Ragusa’s words.
Somewhere along the line, the question Holo had asked of him in Lenos – “Which is more important, me or profit?” – was becoming less and less difficult to solve.
What did it mean that he tried to excuse that thought away by telling himself that it was just the liquor?
Either way, Lawrence lightly hit his fog-filled head and turned his attention to what Ragusa was saying.
“He’d been carrying money orders for the same company over and over. That’s the other reason I was interested in what you were talking about – I was afraid that old Zonal had gotten himself mixed up in some kind of strange dealings. And that company is the supplier for those copper coins. I don’t have courage enough for such things.”
Because places that imported and exported copper coins had to be close with the area’s political power, there weren’t many.
While a town might prosper thanks to a copper mine, in places where the whole of the town’s fortune depended on that mine, the merchants and rulers of the area would be forced to collude.
Ragusa’s voice was lowered; he wasn’t saying anything good about the very same merchants who gave him work.
He must have seen a good deal of corruption already.
Lawrence’s vision and speech were blurred, but on this topic, his mind was entirely clear.
“But… still, wouldn’t that be… the sort of letter you’d leave to the butcher?”
Butchers were often given letters to deliver, since they made their rounds among local farmers to buy pigs or sheep nearly every day.
Boatmen went up and down the Roam River.
It wasn’t strange that they would be given a coin order to deliver.
“Well, when he delivered a money order to the Jean Company in Kerube that he’d picked up in Lesko, he was apparently given a certificate of refusal.”
“A certificate of refusal?”
Instead of sending a sackful of jingling coins, there would be a piece of paper that said to please pay so-and-so a certain amount of money at a certain place. The paper and the system behind it was known as a money order, but a refusal certificate meant somebody didn’t want to turn the order into coin as requested.
But what was strange was the idea that anyone would send the same money order day after day when it was being rejected.
“Strange, isn’t it? He was given money orders time and again, only to have them rejected every time. Someone is definitely up to something.”
“… There… there may be some kind of circumstance…”
“Circumstance?”
“Er… It’s a money order; in other words, they’re transporting money. And money’s value is always changing. If the money’s value changed while the money order was in transit… so they might not want to honor the order, or…”
Ragusa’s eyes were serious.
As long as he had money, a traveling merchant could go where he wished and buy whatever goods he liked, then go and sell them anywhere else – from a certain perspective, such a man was free.
By contrast, the livelihoods of Ragusa and his cohorts were tied to a single river.
If they angered a shipper, even the deepest, widest river might as well have dried up entirely.
Their weak position meant they were taken advantage of, involved in strange schemes only to be sunk outright.
Trading that involved boats was more enjoyable, but a horse and wagon could go wherever its driver pleased.
“So there’s no need to… worry…” Lawrence’s head slumped, and he yawned hugely.
Ragusa regarded Lawrence dubiously, then gave a deep sigh. “Hmph. The world is filled with vexing things.”
“While it may be that ignorance is a sin… it’s impossible to know everything.”
Unable to bear the weight of his own eyelids, Lawrence’s eyes grew narrower and narrower.
All that he could see now was Ragusa’s cross-legged form, and Lawrence wondered if he would soon be at his limit.
“True enough. Hah. I watched the boy’s clumsiness with a smile, but now I see I’m not so different myself. Unlike us, he was deceived by a cheap stack of paper, but in the right place, he’d be wiser than either of us, would he not?” said Ragusa, ruffling the passed-out Col’s hair.
There was real regret in Ragusa’s eyes, as though if Col had truly been unable to pay the boat fare, Ragusa would have used that to keep him on board.
“Church… law, was it?”
“Eh? Oh, yes… so he said.”
“And what a vexing thing to study. If he’d work with me, he wouldn’t have to study that. Plus he’d get three… no, two meals a day.”
Lawrence found himself smiling at Ragusa’s honesty.
With physical labor, you only got three meals a day when you were full-fledged.
“He seems to have a goal,” said Lawrence, and Ragusa threw him a glance.
“Come now… did you try to steal a march on me, tempting him away while you were walking?”
His anger seemed genuine, which was proof of how highly Ragusa thought of Col.
It was hardly strange for a man of Ragusa’s age to be looking for an apprentice to train to inherit his vessel. If Lawrence himself had been a bit older, he would have happily stooped to dirty tricks to ensure Col stayed with him.
“I did no such thing. I did confirm the strength of his will, though.”
“Mmph.” Ragusa folded his arms and grunted through his nose.
“All we can do is… try… try to leave him with a small debt of gratitude, I expect,” said Lawrence through a hiccup, which the unyielding boatman laughed at grandly in the manner of his kind.
“Bwa-ha-ha! I reckon so. What shall I do? If the boy solves the copper coin puzzle, his ticket will be worth something.”
“That’s what he intended.”
“How about it, won’t you toss out a clue?” Ragusa leaned forward, speaking conspiratorially, but Lawrence only slumped over.
“Unfortunately I can’t. And even if I could… he’ll owe me, too, so that will settle everything.”
For his part, Lawrence was compelled by the temptation to keep Col on hand, if he could.
But while he’d genuinely felt that way walking down the road with Col earlier, now he wasn’t quite so sure.
It was yet early for him to be taking an apprentice, and now was not the time.
Just because he had been forced in
to making the preparations didn’t mean he could simply hold out his hands in welcome.
Lawrence smiled ruefully to himself.
“True enough. Three chests of copper is a big difference. The only way to move a load that heavy is over water. And if it goes that way, there’s no way I won’t hear of it. Either that, or what’s written on that paper is just wrong.”
Ragusa’s voice was becoming more and more slurred.
Even his huge body was beginning to succumb to drunkenness.
“That’s true… I suppose. There’s a story of one letter’s mistake turning eel to gold coin and causing a huge uproar.”
“Hmph. Might well be that way. Oh, about that, there was one interesting thing. They were searching for it for years, I heard.”
“Huh…?” Lawrence was at his limit, and it felt as though his body and consciousness were farther and farther apart.
He thought he was looking toward Ragusa, but his vision was black.
He heard words as though from a great distance.
Roef Headwaters. Lesko.
And then he thought he heard something about the bones of a hellhound.
That couldn’t be right.
If he was entertaining such notions, it had to be in a dream, he thought.
Or some kind of fairy tale.
But then, the thought that a fairy tale-like thing had indeed become very familiar rose up and enveloped him within the darkness of deep sleep.
Chapter Five
There was a sweetish burned smell.
Perhaps honey bread was burning.
If so, the baker responsible was making a fool of himself.
But Lawrence soon realized the smell wasn’t of burning food.
He remembered the smell, along with the fire.
It was the smell of an animal.
“… Mmph.”
When he opened his eyes, he saw the starry night sky above him.
A beautiful gibbous moon hung in the sky, and Lawrence felt as if he were lying underwater.
It seemed that some kind soul had put a blanket over him, and although he was fortunately not shivering from cold, his body was strangely heavy.
Wondering if it was the residual effects of the liquor, he tried to sit up – which was when he noticed.
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