Spice & Wolf Omnibus

by Isuna Hasekura

“?”

  The man closed his ledger and tucked it under an arm before continuing. “I do think it could be difficult. Horses are living creatures, after all. It’s not uncommon for a prize horse to turn into a wagon nag while you’re transporting it.”

  “I suppose that’s true…” When she lived in the manor, Fleur remembered hearing that caring for the horses was a difficult job. And having rented horse-drawn wagons, she knew from experience that a capricious horse was trouble.

  If she made the effort of buying a horse and wound up having to sell it cheaply, Bertra wouldn’t be the only one weeping.

  “But consider this.”

  “Hmm?”

  “If you’ve got enough money on hand to be buying horses, there are other lines of business.”

  “Other lines of business?”

  The man smiled and pulled his ledger back out from under his arm, opening it and licking his finger. “No fuss, no risk of illness, no need to worry about feed or care. With an opportunity like this, even an inexperienced merchant won’t fail too badly. A horse may sell dear, but in exchange they’re quite a bit of trouble.”

  Everything the man said was true. And even though she was aware he was an unsavory fellow, she could not help but be taken off guard by his generous explanations of everything. Somehow she found herself completely absorbed in what he was saying.

  “And what is this other business?”

  “Clothing, my dear!”

  “… Clothing?” she repeated.

  The man seemed to find what he was looking for in his ledger and tilted it toward her. “This figure is how much I paid when buying it up. And here’s what I sold it for. The margin isn’t so great as a horse might have, but… as you can see, every single item from top to bottom turned a profit.”

  Assuming this had not been entirely fabricated to convince her, it was indeed as the man said. And he had not had time to manufacture all these figures in the short time they had been talking. Having decided that much, Fleur nodded politely.

  “It’s a reliable trade,” said the man as he closed the ledger.

  What opened next was Fleur’s mouth. “But what sort of clothing would I buy?”

  “That would be your decision to make.”

  Fleur had to admit that was obvious enough, but having left decisions about what to wear entirely up to others throughout her life, she knew very little about clothing. As she was agonizing over whether to first consult with Olar, the man clapped his hands together and spoke.

  “Ah yes, as it happens, one of the people my company does business with has quite the eye for fashion.”

  “Quite the eye?”

  “Yes. We’ve had him sell clothing we’ve bought up in the past, and he’s quite talented at it. The pieces just fly out of our hands left and right. He’s been saying he wants to move from buying to managing and has been looking for someone with capital.”

  Fleur was well aware that her own mind was not especially sharp, yet the meaning of what the merchant was saying proved difficult for her to grasp. Perhaps there was something about it that gave her a strange feeling.

  “So… I would supply the capital, and the profit would be shared?”

  “Even so. And in addition to the profit, you’d gain knowledge of the clothing business. And your partner would handle everything from purchase onward, so you’d maximize your profit.”

  “Well…” It seemed like quite an opportunity. Perhaps the world wasn’t filled with only bad people after all, Fleur thought.

  The man flipped through a few more pages in his ledger, then gave her a name. “The man’s name is Milton Post.”

  It sounded like the name of a nobleman.

  Whenever she had coin in her pocket, Fleur could not help but do some shopping. On her way home, she bought some of the cheese she knew Bertra liked and the wine of a particular village that Olar had praised very highly.

  Their budget was not such that there was room for wasteful expenditures, but Bertra and Olar had not become so unsympathetic as to furrow their brows at gifts bought especially for them. And besides, Fleur had also gotten a lead on a new business opportunity.

  “The clothing business, eh?” murmured Olar several times, his eyes closed as he inhaled the scent of the wine. He seemed to be enjoying it very much, though there was only a small amount, enough to fill a hand-sized cask.

  Fleur had related what the man at the trading company had told her, but she could not tell whether Olar was really listening to her.

  “Yes. So, perhaps we should take the opportunity to… Olar?”

  At the sound of his name, Olar finally looked at Fleur. “Apologies. This rich scent is terribly nostalgic. But yes, the clothing business. You would–”

  “The company has a man whom they entrust with the sale of the clothing they buy up, and this man is looking to do the buying himself this time, it seems.”

  “I see…”

  Olar again inhaled the wine’s scent through his hooked nose and then held his breath.

  Fleur could not help but laugh at the way he acted like a former man-about-town and quite forgot to be angry with him. “His name’s Milton Post.”

  The instant she spoke the name, Olar’s eyes snapped open, their sharp gaze lancing out from between his deeply wrinkled eyelids. “Of the Post family?”

  “You know him?”

  “… Mm. Of course I do.”

  Olar breathed in the wine’s scent one last time, then pushed the stopper back in the cask and set it on the table. The house was quiet, as Bertra was out doing her afternoon shopping at the market.

  “The head of the house was a knight renowned as much for his courtly elegance as for his bravery. The tales of his romances are many, but he was also an honorable, family-minded man. It is said that he left no less than thirty descendants behind.”

  Families with many siblings in a single generation were not uncommon, nor was keeping a mistress or two within one’s home. Once children from different mothers were added into the mix, just listing their names was like reciting scripture, or so the jokes went – but in reality there were not very many families like that.

  Fleur could see why the name would be a famous one.

  “Since it would’ve been impossible for all of his children to inherit land, he’s probably one of them. You said he helps the trading company sell clothing?”

  “Mm, yes… huh?” Fleur’s reply was vague and distracted, as her gaze was stolen by a goat that stood by the windowsill, chewing away on the potted plant there; perhaps it had escaped from somewhere or else someone had bought it and forgotten to tie it up. Her attention was briefly captured by the strange sight, but Fleur hastily composed herself and replied again, “Y-yes.”

  “Well, I imagine he mostly sells to the nobility. We ourselves once did something similar – hiring the impoverished second or third sons of noble families. The idea being that when you go to introduce yourself, if you say you’re from the cobblers or the smiths, you’ll be turned away at the door, but if you have a name of quality… and the fashion of the nobility changes quickly. We needed people with both names and know-how to do our selling.”

  “I see…”

  “So you met this Post fellow, did you?”

  The goat finally seemed to have decided the plants’ leaves were inedible and gave an irritated baa before wandering away.

  “Not yet. I thought it would be better not to rush and check with you first.”

  “Is that so? Perhaps milady is finally beginning to open her eyes.”

  “I’ve already made terrible mistakes twice over by trusting my own judgment.”

  Olar smiled, then deliberately cleared his throat. He pointed to what was left of the twenty ligot that remained after Fleur’s shopping.

  “…?” Fleur cocked her head, which elicited a small sigh from Olar.

  “But you still have much to learn, and the road will be hard. The coins they paid milady with…”

  “The coins? Are th
ey the wrong amount?” That can’t possibly be, she was about to say, but was interrupted by Olar’s small head shake.

  “With coins that have this much shaved from their edges, I doubt a money changer would give us their face value for them. We might lose as much as ten percent in the transaction.”

  Fleur hastily looked down at the coins on the table, and it was true – some of them were quite misshapen from how deeply their edges had been ground down.

  “Still, you couldn’t remember every single lesson even if I could give it all to you at once. One step at a time. Of course…”

  “Of course?”

  “If you were an apprentice that I might whip and beat into shape, things might be different.” Olar didn’t often make jokes. He must have been genuinely enjoying the wine she had bought for him.

  “I was slapped once during a banquet. I cried for a week.”

  Olar smiled amusedly, collecting the coins in a box, then closing its lid. “Now then, on to this new opportunity.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “So, as far as this notion of selling clothing goes, what are your thoughts?”

  Fleur was caught off guard by the sudden change in topic. Unable to switch her mind over to the new topic in time, she said the first thing that came to her. “I thought it seemed good.”

  “Is that so?” replied Olar casually, writing a figure in the ledger that was spread open on the table. Given the amount of coin Fleur had returned with, there was sadly a loss recorded in the right-most column.

  “Is it… not?”

  “Not at all. If milady decides it is, then I think it is fine. Just as the company fellow said – horses can be sick, injured, or even die, but clothing can last for years if properly cared for. There was once a time when dealing in clothes meant it would be three years or more before you could record the profit or loss in a ledger like this. It’s a business where it’s hard to sustain heavy losses, so for training purposes I think it’s quite suitable.”

  “So–” Fleur said, and Olar nodded decisively.

  “This will be milady’s third time making a trade as a merchant.”

  When she had lived in the manor, her duties amounted to wearing the clothing presented to her and eating her meals. She had no influence over the prosperity or downfall of the house, no choice in whom to marry – she had but to exist and do as she was told.

  She had still not become accustomed to the life of a merchant. It was difficult for her to see through the lies of other traders, and often she wished she didn’t have to converse at all.

  And yet being able to do work with her own hands was deeply appealing.

  Fleur took a quiet breath, then nodded definitively.

  “But you’ve got to listen to my advice. Is that understood?”

  He’d boosted his spirits and made her happy only to drive the nail down. But if she turned displeased here, it would mean failure for her.

  Fleur took to heart what she had learned. “But of course!” she said.

  “Then God’s blessing be upon you,” said Olar quietly as he closed the ledger. And then, as though having waited for just the right moment, Bertra returned from the marketplace.

  Former nobility. The noble in name only. The true nobility.

  Whatever their nature, those who strode grandly about, ready to give their famous names at any moment, were less uncommon than one might think.

  Most of them clung to the past or used their name to eke out a living. Of course for those like Fleur, whose failing houses were bought up by wealthy merchants, name and all, only to have those merchants fail in turn – their names wound up being only a burden.

  So Fleur hid her face behind a scarf and rarely gave her name. She relied on Olar’s old connections for work, and while she was occasionally recognized, most people spared her some measure of sympathy and kept quiet.

  This time, however, Fleur had received an introduction to Milton thanks to her own hard work, so the fact of her former nobility had presumably remained a secret.

  And yet.

  “Haven’t we met? At a banquet, I think,” said Milton Post, immediately after shaking her hand upon receiving her for their meeting.

  The young man’s blond hair was neatly combed, with clothes that were none too fine. But it was clear that some effort had gone into their arrangement, and had he not walked two steps forward to take her hand, no one would have had any trouble believing him to be from a good family.

  It occurred to Fleur that her hands no longer had the pure white softness of someone who wore only silken gloves. Compared with Bertra, of course, they still obviously belonged to a maiden who only ever picked flowers, so surely her hands alone had not given her away.

  Fleur was flustered and at a loss for words, so Milton continued. “Ah, that’s right. At Lord Milton’s banquet.”

  “Ah–” she blurted, since that was the name of the nobleman who had hosted one of the few banquets she’d attended.

  “We only met the once, though. It seems you don’t remember.”

  Young girls of marriageable age who attended banquets shook hands more often than they reached for bread. Even if the touches were light ones, their hands were red and swollen by the time they returned home in the evening.

  “I suppose it’s no surprise, though. Your attention was always so hoped for.”

  This had all happened when her family still held the manor, before their fortunes had declined too far. Back when she was just the sort of girl whose hand in marriage might be sought.

  “As I recall, your name is–”

  “Fleur Bolan.” She hadn’t given her name in so long, the sound of it was at once nostalgic and tinged with shame. The shame was less from the name itself as it was having spoken it here, in a tavern facing the docks.

  “That’s right. The daughter of the Bolan family – the one who that famously nasty Lady Duan slapped.”

  “Ah!” She gave clear voice to her surprise, but fortunately this was not a formal dining hall. Her voice was immediately swallowed by the bustle around them, and all that remained was Milton’s smile.

  “I seem to recall many an apprentice knight seeking your favor after that. Perhaps you didn’t know?” Milton brought some roast beans to his mouth, perhaps to disguise the smile there that just wouldn’t disappear.

  This consideration on his part only served to intensify her embarrassment, and even with the scarf around her head, Fleur wanted to slink off into a corner somewhere and hide.

  “Still, what happened after that… I can’t help but be sympathetic. Though there were some who spoke ill.”

  Fleur could tell he was not talking about her holing up and crying for a week. Underneath her scarf, she composed herself, took a deep breath, and nodded.

  “After all, we can’t decide our own fates. The only ones who can do that are the ones sitting in far more fortunate positions than we have.”

  Fleur looked at Milton’s hand as he poured wine into her cup; the hand was too rough for a nobleman. And yet it wasn’t the rugged hand of a knight who spent his days jousting. They were more like the hands of a mischievous nephew.

  “My entire house–” Fleur began.

  “Hmm?” Milton replied, his cup raised to his lips.

  “My entire house fell from such a position. And yet against all odds, it seems there’s a place for me in this world, though I would never have imagined it would be working as a merchant.”

  Milton nodded, looking out toward the port and squinting from the brightness. “I was the third son of the second mistress, so as you might expect, when I left the house I received nothing but a tiny scrap of land, a bit of coin, and the Post name. I don’t have the horse and armor I’d need to spend my days jousting and make some noble girl my own, nor the wit to make my way reciting ballads. But I expected as much, so this was not any great shock to me.”

  “And then you went into trading?” Even if his house hadn’t fallen, he could easily have been one of the many
who were cast out and not welcome back.

  Milton brought another bite to his mouth, perhaps to hide the pained smile. “Fortunately, the Post name opened many doors for me. And I loved good food, good wine, and idle chatter, so I turned up at many a table around the land. As I wandered around, I would hear talk of where a man like me might be needed, so it’s true – you can find surprising places for yourself.”

  When the man who had bought Fleur to be his wife died, her house falling to ruin and the manor sold off, Fleur had earned the servants’ respect by remaining calm. But that was not because she was a particularly strong girl. Life had simply washed her away, so she gave herself up to the flood.

  She sensed a similarly defeatist strength from Milton, the man in front of her.

  “I hear tell your business is going well.”

  “Ha-ha. It’s a bit embarrassing hearing someone say as much to my face, but I do have a certain amount of confidence.”

  There were many who used their family influence as a shield, claiming the achievements of their underlings as their own. The man before her, Milton, even having left his home to sell goods for a trading company, seemed to be of a very reliable disposition. He could not very well stay away from the common people, especially not when his wings had been clipped this way, sending him tumbling to earth.

  Fleur honestly envied how firmly Milton’s feet were planted on the ground, which is why the words that came out of her mouth next did so mostly unbidden.

  “What’s your secret?”

  Olar had once said that anyone who gave away their methods was unfit to be called a merchant. Fleur remembered this the moment she asked the question, and regretfully wondered if it had been a stupid one.

  Milton actually looked down, a forced-looking smile on his face. But the moment Fleur was about to take the question back, Milton looked back up and spoke. “It’s stubbornness.”

  For a moment she didn’t understand and simply stared into his clear blue eyes.

  “Stubbornness. There are lots of people in the same business as me, but once they’ve sold something to someone they know, they stop there and can’t sell any more. That’s because they are in the same place as the people buying the clothes. The first sale they make is because the buyer feels sympathy for them. But that’s not how I work. I remind them that the Post name will open doors for them, that it’s nothing more than the first foothold in making the most of a business opportunity. Having done so, they may laugh at me, they may scorn me. I praise their taste and recommend my wares’ finer points, and make the sale. And of course, I never move poor clothing. So it sells.”