As he shook his arm to try to free it from Lawrence’s grasp, it was obvious where Piasky was headed.
No matter the group, loyalty made its members into dogs. It was natural to assume Piasky was running to deliver the crucial information to his betters.
“What good–? I must inform them immediately!”
“Inform them? And then make a plan?”
“That has nothing to do with you!”
“Even though you long ago lost your hand to play?”
“…!”
Piasky’s resistance ceased. The pained look on his face showed he knew Lawrence was right.
“Please calm yourself. Even if you did tell the alliance of this, you would only be needlessly worrying them. If a new tax comes, the abbey will be ruined. And when that happens, they’ll choose between falling to their knees before the king and begging for mercy or dying valiantly. But if someone reveals that the abbey has a pagan item like the wolf bones, what do you suppose the abbey will conclude?”
The abbey could not escape its own land, and the land could not escape secular authority. So what would happen if in order to pay taxes, it asked for help from the Ruvik Alliance, which was openly working against the government?
The king would call it treason and send in the military.
And even if it came to that, the abbey still had a final hope – it was still a part of the Church. But if the truth of the wolf bones was revealed, that last hope would be taken hostage.
If a clergyman were asked which choice was the worst for the king or the pope, like anyone affiliated with the Church, he would answer the latter.
And that would be the moment that would give the alliance a chance to strike.
“Mr. Piasky, the time left to us is dwindling, and we will only have a single opportunity. Before all descends into chaos, we must put this attractively mad idea to the powers that be. And even if we don’t have their agreement, we’ll have their attention, so when chaos does fall, we’ll be easier to notice. After all, a drowning man will reach for whatever’s nearest. I’m optimistic enough to think this will succeed. You see–”
Lawrence moved around the table and stood before Piasky.
“–I’m quite certain the story of the wolf bones is true.”
Piasky’s eyes fixed upon Lawrence. He was not glaring – it was as his gaze had been nailed there.
His breathing was ragged, and his shoulders rose and fell violently.
“Mr. Piasky.”
Piasky closed his eyes. It looked like a gesture of defeat, as if Piasky was telling Lawrence to do whatever he wanted, but as his eyes closed, his mouth opened and he spoke.
“What proof do you have that this tax is real?”
He had taken the bait. But the hook was not yet fully set.
Suppressing his urge to pounce, Lawrence responded slowly. “I’m staying with the shepherds at the moment. When something gets dropped outside, I can be the first one to see it.”
Piasky shut his eyes tightly and took a deep breath through his nose. He was probably trying to cool his head. Those gestures alone were all the proof Lawrence needed to know his words were having the desired effect.
“When did this happen?” Piasky asked.
“Late last night. That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t sleep.”
Piasky gritted his teeth with such force that Lawrence felt sure he could hear the grinding. If the taxation were real, the town would instantly turn into a stick-poked hornet’s nest as soon as the news was delivered. And at that point, no further proposals would be heard.
In other words, there would no longer be anything anyone could do.
Lawrence was sure that Piasky knew that much, so he did not say anything further. A merchant could wait all night for a scale to tip if it would win him profit.
There in the silence peculiar to snowfall, time passed.
Sweat beaded on Lawrence’s brow.
Piasky slowly opened his eyes and spoke. “Fifteen hundred pieces.”
“Huh?”
“Fifteen hundred pieces of lumione gold. How much volume did that come to?”
Lawrence relaxed his tense expression in spite of himself, but not because he thought Piasky’s question was foolish. It was the proof that they had made a contract.
“I won’t let you regret this,” said Lawrence.
Piasky burst out laughing at this, looking upward momentarily as though in prayer, then wiping his sweat-soaked face with both palms. “Fifteen hundred pieces of gold. I’d like to see that much just once in my life.”
Lawrence extended his hand. He could not help saying it. “You will. If all goes well.”
“I’d best hope so!”
The first barrier had been passed.
Chapter Five
Once they had shaken hands, Piasky was quick to take action.
Circumstances allowing, his job was collecting people from disparate villages and towns and bringing them together into a single group, so he would have a better mind than Lawrence for knowing how to motivate a group from within that group.
But he did not do anything as foolish as sprinting off to tell his masters that the story of the wolf bones was true. Piasky’s first statement was that they needed allies.
“It needs to be someone curious but who can be trusted with a secret. Someone quick-witted but with time to spare, the kind of person you’d seek out even if they weren’t the head of a great trading company – and perhaps God is with us, because there are many such people in the town right now.”
If they brought the story of the wolf bones to the alliance leadership without first doing a thorough investigation, they would be dismissed as mad and shown the door.
And such an investigation could not be completed without trusted allies.
“Can I count on you to find them, then?”
“Yes. We’ll take a day or two to go over all the records again. Now that we know there’s something to find, it shouldn’t be hard to find it.” Piasky’s bold smile made him seem all the more trustworthy.
“That’s encouraging.”
“I’d like to finish the early preparation before the blizzard ends. We’ll only be able to get others to listen to us if they have time to spare. And we’ll need… something… persuasive enough to bring them over.”
Without Lawrence along, it would be nigh impossible for Piasky to persuasively sell the wolf bones’ story, because if there had been any obvious traces of them in the abbey’s records, they would have been found already.
“I won’t let you down on that count. Leave it to me.”
Piasky nodded. “Incidentally…” he continued.
“Yes?”
“I’d like to talk about how we’ll divide the profit.”
A merchant’s goal was always profit. Whenever the profit shares were not discussed, it was usually because his true goal was something else.
Piasky’s gaze was fixed unflinchingly on Lawrence. Lawrence looked elsewhere as he replied.
“If things go well, I don’t think we’ll make an amount small enough the division will be worth talking about.”
“…” Piasky smiled admiringly, as though apologizing for having doubted Lawrence. “I can’t say I don’t sometimes wish I were in the simple business of buying and selling something.”
The only reason to be constantly suspicious of one’s trading partners is if the business itself was a frustratingly complicated one.
“I’ve often wished I could trade only for myself,” said Lawrence in response to Piasky’s self-deprecating admission.
“Would that be good or bad?”
Lawrence straightened his collar and found himself glancing around for Holo as Piasky opened the door for him.
“At the very least, it wouldn’t be so tiresome.”
Piasky grinned and cocked his head, sighing with sympathy. “Quite. That’s where disasters start.”
Had they been drinking, they would have patted each other on the back –
but merchants are a bit more reserved than that, so they only exchanged a glance.
“We’ll arm ourselves with parchment and ink. And what about you, Mr. Lawrence?”
“My testimony. And some parchment as well.”
Insisting that he had physical proof was a dangerous risk, given that he was without allies in this isolated place. There was a good possibility said proof would be taken from him by force.
But had he been in Piasky’s place, he was quite sure that testimony alone would have left him feeling rather uneasy. Having weighed the two options against each other, Lawrence had spoken, and it seemed to have been the right choice.
Piasky’s face relaxed in relief. “In any case, the whole of my bet will be on you, Mr. Lawrence.”
“I’m well aware of what that means.”
“I’ll go and find some allies, then. What will you do next, Mr. Lawrence?”
“I need to meet with my companions. The situation being what it is, the word of those whose hands are hidden under their robes may be more trustworthy than the word of those whose hands are stained with ink.”
Piasky nodded and opened the door. “I’ll be hoping for the blizzard to continue a while,” he said, “as it seems our time may be quite limited.”
If their negotiations were not completed before either the alliance or the abbey heard of the tax decree, their lives would become much more difficult. Though the weather seemed unlikely to change for the moment, a messenger with a royal notice in his breast pocket might forge undauntedly through it nonetheless.
“Please come directly to my office next time. May I… call on you in your lodgings, Mr. Lawrence?”
“Certainly. I’ll be counting on you.”
They exchanged a handshake and then became strangers.
When Lawrence ventured back out into the snow, he found that the footprints he had left not long before were vanishing, even as he followed them back to the shepherds’ dormitory. He wondered if his actions for others would fade with time, just as his footprints had. Even if he had a body as huge as Holo’s, his footprints would still vanish into the past, given long enough.
Even a homeland was not eternal – not even if it was filled with comrades, not even if it gave the illusion of permanence.
But when one’s footprints disappeared, one simply kept walking. The same was true for homes.
This was another reason for Lawrence to come to Huskins’s aid. It was possible to create a new home. When danger came, friends were there to help. The world was not necessarily a cruel or hopeless place – he would be able to say these things to Holo.
When he returned to the dormitory, he found Huskins and Holo sitting across from each other with the hearth between them, talking quietly. More precisely, it seemed as though Huskins was talking of the past while Holo quietly listened.
“For the moment, it seems our first bait has been taken.”
Huskins nodded deeply and silently, expressing his thanks, though unable to bow.
“I’m going to sleep a bit. Piasky’s capable friends will be poring over the abbey records, so I’m sure they’ll find something amiss soon enough.”
The difficulty would be in what came after convincing the alliance that the wolf bones existed. Once they knew the bones had to be there, the alliance would start mightily pressing their own demands.
Just how hard they pressed would depend on how much they believed.
Lawrence was not at all confident in his ability to keep hold of the reins. He was not as big as a horse or bull.
If he did not sleep soon, his stamina was going to fail him.
Holo had not been able to meet Lawrence’s eyes, perhaps owing to Huskins’s presence, but as he passed by her, their hands lightly touched.
Entering the next room, Lawrence found Col sleeping in the bed. While he had to admit it was nice that the bed would not be as shiveringly cold as it would have been otherwise, something was still missing.
Lawrence grinned wryly as he pulled the blanket over himself.
The windows were closed and snow clogged their cracks, so it was hard to tell what time it was. When Lawrence awoke, he guessed it was past midday. A strange feeling of unease overrode his drowsiness.
It was too quiet.
He sat up immediately and rose from the bed to open a window. Snow caked to the shutter and walls fell with an audible thump, and leaving the window open let a cold wind in.
It was so frigid it hurt his face; the world outside was white.
The wind, though, had largely calmed, and while snow was still falling, it hardly qualified as a blizzard.
The special silence of a snowy landscape had returned profoundly enough that Lawrence thought he could hear his ears ringing.
Perhaps it was the quiet itself that had woken him; silence often roused him more effectively than noise did – because silence always accompanied inauspicious developments.
“… Just you, eh?” When Lawrence went into the room with the hearth, he found Holo there, tending the fire alone.
“I was trying to decide whether to wake you or not.”
“Did you feel bad for me, seeing how tired I’d been?”
As Huskins was gone, Lawrence sat next to Holo.
Holo’s reply was curt as she prodded the embers with an iron poker. “Your face was so foolish I quite lost the desire to rouse you.”
“Did something happen?” Something must have, given that the exhausted Huskins was out – to say nothing of Col’s absence. And the blizzard that had temporarily stopped time had itself ceased.
Holo put the poker down and leaned against Lawrence. “When the snow began to let up, some men from the abbey came. The messenger that was supposed to arrive today or tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet, and they wanted to know if the shepherds know anything of it.”
“What did Mr. Huskins tell them?”
“The dead man he found had definitely been the messenger they sought, he said, and he’d feign ignorance for the time being. The messenger was far enough away that no ordinary shepherd is likely to find him, he said. Young Col went along with him.”
Given that, a different messenger bearing the same message would, at the earliest, arrive the next day or the day after that.
“What shall we do?”
“Right now all we can do is wait. Once Piasky finds something that we can use as proof, we’ll try to get an audience with the alliance authorities.”
“Mm…”
At Holo’s listless response, Lawrence glanced from her profile to her tail, at which point she grabbed his ear.
“Could you just once make a decision without checking on my tail, hmm?”
“O-one always needs proof before taking major action!”
“Fool.” Holo released his ear with deliberate force and then looked away sullenly.
She had pulled on his ear with some strength, and it still stung – but it let Lawrence know just how irritated she actually was. A maiden’s heart was a subtle thing – or perhaps a beast’s heart. She probably felt that when her ears and tail were checked to divine her true feelings, whatever answer she gave with her mouth would be ignored.
“Of course, you’ll have a role to play as well,” said Lawrence, at which Holo looked up, her ears pricking to attention.
She was so easy to read he wanted to pat her on the head.
Or at least that was what he thought until Holo’s reply reached him.
“Do you want me to chew those ears right off your head?”
Lawrence was quite fond of his own ears, so he hastened to shake his head. “The alliance is a large organization. The members that are here in this town now are only a part of it. I imagine the real leaders are somewhere nice and warm, far from all this snow. But the reality remains the same – to spur a large group to action, you need persuasion equal to the scale. Sometimes something beyond mere facts and proof is needed.”
Holo looked up at him, exceedingly dubious. She was probably being so intentionally s
ulky because she knew how much he liked it.
“I get very nervous when I have to stand up before a group, but you’re a natural actress,” he said, addressing her dubiousness.
Holo sniffed as though her fun had been ruined, but her tail swished happily nonetheless, betraying her good spirits.
“For knowledge we have Col. I’ll take care of putting it into practice.”
“And what of me?” Holo asked, but Lawrence had difficulty finding the words.
“Atmosphere.”
Holo burst out laughing as though she could not help it and giggled there for a while and then sighed as she clung to Lawrence’s arm.
“’Tis true, I’m always the one who creates the atmosphere. And you’re the one who always ruins it,” she said, her mouth very close to his ear.
“…” Lawrence of course had many things he wanted to say, but he cleared this throat and continued, “Atmosphere and mood are very important since displaying concrete proof is impossible. It’s very important to make them think this bet is one worth taking. All joking aside…” He faced Holo before finishing. “It will determine success or failure.”
He was met by the red-amber pupils of her big, round eyes.
Despite having witnessed so much of the world, she still had the wide, innocent eyes of a young girl.
They blinked once. And in a moment, her mood completely changed.
“You may rely on me. The old man told me something, you see.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that upon our success, he’ll give me the fattest sheep of the year.”
It was just the sort of promise Lawrence would expect from a wise, old sheep spirit that disguised himself as a human, ate mutton, and worked hard both in the shadows and in the open to create a second home.
Holo must have been speechless when the clever offer was put to her. And she must have realized that she had to help him.
“He told me much of his troubles – in creating a new home and in protecting it.”
Her profile showed a mix of quiet anger and seriousness. Holo had a strong sense of honor and could be surprisingly humble.
“Was it useful?”
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