“Even in Lenos, there was extremely little information about this town. In other words, it means virtually no one travels from there to here.”
Even if such people remained silent about the price that was the seed of their profit, it was difficult to believe they could all keep silent about their destination. If one told people they had gone somewhere, those they left behind in town took an interest in where they had gone. Unless everyone was in on it, the state of the town was bound to get out. Surely it was more natural to think that the lack of that was due less to everyone being secretive, but rather to a simple lack of migration.
As a matter of fact, Lawrence and Holo had passed very few people on the road to Lesko.
Migrants had surely come out of the western harbor, Kerube, and went farther north, probably arriving by ship at places that could not even be called towns running along the base of the mountains.
As liberal as Lesko was, people were ignorant of it to a curious degree.
“At first, I thought the price slippage was a recent, sudden thing, but when going around the marketplace I had no sense of that whatsoever. In the first place, when asking questions of people who’d come here from various places in the northlands, I felt like they were obtaining trenni silver pieces. A currency you can put faith into is a precious thing after all. And having obtained trenni silver pieces, a strong currency they can have faith in, they apparently return to their homelands. That being the case, the constant outflow of silver coins should give rise to a sudden currency shortage. I’ve seen it with my own eyes in the kingdom of Winfiel. The movements of currency, in other words, the movements of merchants, are very sensitive, like rats fleeing the sinking ship.”
Amid the tumult all around them, the atmosphere at the table altered somewhat.
Glances were being exchanged and Lawrence could hear various sounds. He was not surprised that only Luward kept his eyes squarely on Lawrence the entire time.
“I thought that perhaps the Debau Company was bringing silver coins in itself, but if that were indeed the case, someone would notice. As the Debau Company is maintaining the prices of gold and silver coins by guaranteeing the rate of exchange, the difference in the price of gold and silver coins can’t be explained any other way. So, there’s only one possibility I could think of.”
“Someone’s secretly bringing coins in through the back door?”
Luward was staring squarely at Lawrence.
It might have been a warning shot in one sense. After all, no doubt Luward was sharp enough to anticipate what Lawrence would say next.
Lawrence lightly rubbed his nose, wiped the bread crumbs off his lap, and spoke slowly.
“As an ordinary merchant, I know few details about the world of battle. I don’t know how much information is in circulation around the world and how much is kept secret.”
On the surface, it was a statement with no connection to the conversation until this moment.
What was frightening about the people at the table was how their gestures were completely unchanged from before as they adopted combat stances. As a matter of fact, he felt like a little bird under the glare of a hunting dog, not knowing if it would pounce. He did not think the people making a ruckus all around had noticed.
No doubt he would be completely unable to stand up to this if Holo was not at his side.
Luward watched Lawrence for a while before finally opening his mouth.
“Why do you say that?”
A calm smile remained on his lips as he cut the steak at hand with a knife. It was of rare quality, boiled, fried, and liberally treated with spices. Unlike the black-roasted exterior, the interior of the meat was red and very juicy.
Luward brought it to his mouth, for eating meat dripping with blood was the duty of the strong.
It seemed that when it came to negotiations, Luward had more experience than Lawrence.
“Because for a merchant like me, buying a store is a once-in-a-lifetime affair. I want to be sure of what’s going on in this town and also to predict where it is going.”
Those with no knowledge of the matter would no doubt think they were having two separate conversations.
However, Luward asked nothing in return; nor did anyone else at the table.
As a result of thinking together with Holo before coming to the inn and ruling out one possibility after another, Lawrence had arrived at an exceedingly simple conclusion.
For there to not be a shortage of currency in spite of it being carried out, someone had to be supplying more. Transporting that much coinage was quite an undertaking; otherwise the large number of people heading for the town of Lesko would draw attention from people, like it or not.
That being the case, barring transport by ghosts or money changing conducted by fairies, someone had to be secretly bringing silver coins in.
For anything involving trade, there was always a cause and an effect.
One needed people who would not be asked where they had been and who could move a large quantity of goods without arousing suspicion.
Calmly searching for people who fulfilled those conditions, he found that the answer was largely right before his eyes.
“That is kept secret.”
Luward spoke bluntly after wiping his lip.
Surely the true meaning of those words was that Lawrence’s thinking was correct.
That Holo reached out to her wine-filled tankard for the first time was further proof.
Luward lightly rubbed the edge of his ear.
As he did so, the tension around the table seemed to recede at once.
“That is kept secret. It’s one reason to be moving around with a large amount of cargo, after all.”
Moizi looked at Luward with a fair bit of surprise, but Luward dismissed the gaze of the fatherlike figure with a wave. The hand he waved was directed toward Holo, who was stuffing her cheeks with dove potpie.
“She’s running low on wine, Moizi.”
Moizi hurriedly poured more wine into Holo’s tankard. Of course, she was not low on wine at all.
He had surely noticed Holo had been shifting her gaze across the table the whole time, monitoring them for any change in posture and the like. Even if he had inherited nothing from Myuri but the name, he did foster a certain wolflike cunning and sharpness.
No doubt that made Holo happy, Lawrence thought.
She immediately drank half the tankard at once, seemingly to display her thanks and appreciation for the gesture.
“Furthermore, we’re a large family. Lodging at an inn requires a lot of food. Just sending people out to buy it every day is quite something.”
As Luward spoke what seemed like gossip, he distributed soup rich in vegetables and thickened with bread to his men.
Lawrence immediately understood that Luward was giving him an opportunity to speak.
“It must be even harder procuring supplies like shoes and clothing.”
His reply was answered with, “But if we all go to a store, they think we’re a bunch of bandits.”
A moment later, the flow of money connected inside of Lawrence.
The final thing he wished to know was why the Debau Company had constructed this flow of money.
“If you like, Mr. Lawrence,” Luward said briefly, “I’ll bring some wine up after the meal.”
Meaning, they had reached the limit of what could be discussed here.
Lawrence nodded, replying, “I’d like that very much.”
When Lawrence asked to be excused from the dinner table, Luward had readily assented.
His polishing up a plan with Holo was fine; fleeing a turbulent atmosphere was also fine.
Lawrence did not know if Luward was thinking along those lines, but at any rate he was not coercing Lawrence to stay with him at all.
That being the case, facing a group differing from beasts only out of a lack of fangs and claws was terribly exhausting.
Perhaps also because of all the walking during the day, he bid go
od night to Holo and collapsed onto the bed.
“Heh-heh. It seems you have been hard at work.”
Holo sat beside Lawrence, lazily kicking off her shoes.
Being seated right beside him, Holo’s tail came right against Lawrence’s face.
Her tail, slightly more disheveled than usual, had a familiar, dusty scent to it.
“So in the end, they are the ones bringing silver coins in?”
“So it seems. The rumors of war might have unwittingly been spread by the mercenaries themselves, too.”
“Mm?”
Holo turned toward Lawrence at the same time he was brushing her tail, which was tickling his nose, away with his hand.
Holo brushed her tail against Lawrence’s face with an amused look. When Lawrence displayed no reaction whatsoever, the self-styled wisewolf ceased her teasing.
“Through the market price and other things, the Debau Company lets it be known to mercenaries that they can make huge profits purely by bringing in a large quantity of silver coins. Since there are no bandits with the nerve to attack hardened mercenaries, they can make an easy profit in confidence. However, since it’s idiotic for the mercenaries to talk about how they’re making money when heading to Lesko, they spread rumors of Lesko invading the northlands instead.”
Holo nodded with an “Indeed” as she lay down on her side, resting her chin on her hands above Lawrence’s hip.
“But for what purpose?”
“Yes. That’s the part I don’t understand well. If they just want to bring silver coins in, they’re better off doing it themselves. Maybe having these rumors spread is itself the objective.”
Based on the premise that merchants never do anything that is meaningless, it followed that if they were doing something, they definitely had a reason for it and also a specific outcome they were aiming for.
“Let’s say the Debau Company is plotting something for the northlands. So, to gather deeply suspicious, excellent knights and mercenaries together, they must first lure them in with easy profits. After that, the masses spread rumors all around about the first group to come, and armed with information that they really are moving north, others assemble on their own. In other words, the Debau Company can lure numerous knights and mercenaries even without paying them.”
The more knights and mercenaries assembled in one place, the more people believed something was going to happen.
When one tells people they have sold something at the marketplace, it becomes a fact known to all.
One cannot sell something no one has ever heard of, but if there are three or four who have heard, that was a different story. That was why when merchants paid money to hire three or four people as decoys, they were able to assemble a large crowd of curious people to sell to.
“But just gathering knights and mercenaries together doesn’t make them useful in a war…”
“You use what you assemble. The reasoning is sound.”
So Holo said, but Lawrence could not accept it. And this certainly was not a special thought limited to Lawrence alone.
“It has to be quite an ordeal to maintain the liveliness of a town of this level. Besides, based on Luward’s suggestions, there’s a reason the Debau Company is lavishly paying knights and mercenaries on its own.”
“Indeed?”
“This town’s great liveliness is a somewhat forced performance.”
Though at his words, Holo twitched her nose and went, “Such a performance is meaningless,” Lawrence gave a strained smile and continued.
“Apparently the Debau Company is supplying money throughout the town through paying compensation for their inn lodging costs, shouldering the burden of paying for their tools, daily necessities, and so forth. At the very least, that’s what Luward seems to think. That being the case, the Debau Company is clearly using its own money to make the town go well. I don’t think the Debau Company, having gone this far for a town it built itself, would wreck it all with just one war.”
The losses and gains did not add up. The Debau Company stationed mercenaries in the town and even used compensating their living expenses to boost local trade. In doing so, people came from all over the northlands to sell their wares. When they came, they surely bought a variety of high-quality, hand-crafted products, enriching the craftsmen.
If you were trying to develop a town, this was a supreme way to go about it.
But what reason did they have to do all of this?
The first time they had heard of the Debau Company was in the middle of chasing down stories of bones of an ancient wolf being like Holo. This being part of a plan to plunge the northlands into war and chaos, they were indignant and found it unforgivable.
Even if that had not been the truth of the matter, first impressions were not so easily wiped away. Perhaps their being unable to think of what the Debau Company was planning was because the facts before their eyes differed from the impression inside their heads.
In truth, they were still twisting around inside Lawrence’s head.
That strain was what brought a little smile out of Holo.
“Did you notice something?”
When Lawrence sat up, forgetting that Holo was resting her head in her hands atop his hip, her head fell from its perch. Holo swatted his rump with a miffed look.
“Not really. I merely think that thinking of war in terms of profit and loss is absurd.”
As she spoke, strength leaked back out of Lawrence’s body.
“Well… that’s true. Rulers start wars for all sorts of banal reasons, like grudges over disputes that have lasted for years and so forth, but… merchants never fight to defend anything except their own profits.”
“Defend?”
Lawrence replied to Holo’s one-word question as he looked at the wall.
“Right. Most of the tragedies of the world come about from trying to defend something. The foremost among these is territory.”
Lawrence shifted his gaze from the wall to Holo over his shoulder.
“I’m sure you’ve experienced it? Something someone won’t yield to another, even land that will never budge an inch, with people trampling on it like the approach of the largest storm. That’s why tragedies take place.”
What made people regard merchants as cowards to be scorned was the belief that when the going got tough, they would grab their wallets and make a run for it. And as a matter of fact, traveling merchants did exactly that.
The more things one had to defend, the less mobile they were, and the easier it was for them to get wrapped up in tragedy during a crisis.
His encountering Holo was a good example.
Perhaps she somehow sensed what Lawrence was thinking. Holo ground her elbows into his hip and made a sigh.
“Well, then, is the Whatever Company in this town truly making a move on the northlands and indeed Yoitsu for trifling profits?”
Though she understood in her head to some degree, actually getting the words out of her mouth seemed exceedingly difficult for her.
Lawrence paused for a little while before making a small nod.
“There’s no hatred, resentment, or religious fervor in this town. I’m a merchant as well, but since laying eyes on this town, everything’s been about trade. If the Debau Company is plotting a war, surely it has no other reason for which to fight.”
Resentment bred resentment. Hatred bred hatred. The response to the imposition of a new religion was fanaticism.
But what if this was a simple matter of profit and calculations based on that?
The humans of Pasloe had opposed Holo for the village’s profit and to sever ties with “the old era.”
That had been reason enough to fight with unyielding rage.
That was why the possibility that the Debau Company truly was fighting for nothing more than its own profit gave Holo such a feeling of disappointment and exhaustion.
“… It feels like a stupid thing to be timid, fearful, and to sharpen one’s fangs over…”
/> “You probably felt the same way when we entered the town.”
Holo nodded a bit after a pause.
“Well, that’s all fine. No war, no one unhappy, me being able to get my own store…”
Lawrence said it like he was talking in his sleep, and in truth, it was very close to that.
As Holo had said something very similar about the Debau Company herself, Lawrence’s saying something similar brought out a smile.
She stopped resting her head on her hands and perched her chin atop Lawrence’s left shoulder.
“And you would be close to me afterwards?”
There was but a short distance between Lesko and Yoitsu.
Close enough for Holo to run off there whenever she felt homesick.
“Of course.”
At Lawrence’s straight reply, Holo made a happy face and rubbed against his shoulder.
It was quiet, and they’d both had a bit of wine.
If Lawrence was judging according to common sense, he felt he would trust the momentum and play this by the book.
But he had failed in Lenos by doing so. He could not break the mood after working so hard to establish it.
Lawrence moved his body lightly, using his arm to pull Holo’s body up his; rubbed her head; and got up.
“I’d love to sleep like this, but there are still things I’d like to ask Mr. Luward and the others.”
He spoke with clarity, as if brushing off the alcohol and fatigue within him with a different vigor.
But as Holo remained lying on the bed, looking up at Lawrence, dumbfounded, he stopped, a forced smile on his face.
“What is it?”
When Lawrence asked, Holo gently and deliberately brushed Lawrence’s hand off the top of her head and seemed tired as she got up.
“Nothing really.”
He did not think it was really nothing, but having said that, it did not feel like a time or place to inquire further.
Perhaps he had been wrong once again?
Lawrence thought as much, but the now-risen Holo, as if to calm Lawrence down, turned her right palm toward him.
“No, ’tis fine.”
Holo made her brief statement, turned her head away, and gave a long sigh.
Rather than being angry, she seemed exasperated from the bottom of her heart.
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