She had probably taken the money.
That thought filtered like pleasantly cool water through his swimming head.
He didn’t know how long he was in there before some random guest of the inn entered and rushed to his side, helping him sit up.
He was a large, round man with clothes fringed in fur from all over. It had to be the old fur trader from the north Arold had mentioned.
“Are—are you all right?”
Lawrence laughed at the clichéd phrase in spite of himself, then managed a “sorry,” and nodded.
“Was it a robber?”
Finding a person collapsed in a storehouse naturally suggested as much.
But Lawrence shook his head in the negative.
“A broken deal, then?”
There were only so many types of misfortune that could befall a merchant.
“Oh, what’s this...,” said the man, and when Lawrence saw what he had picked up, he forgot all about his painful face and laughed.
“What’s wrong?”
Evidently the fat man couldn’t read because he only cocked his head curiously at the paper, and when Lawrence reached for it, he handed it over, puzzlement written all over his face.
Lawrence looked down at the paper once again.
He really wasn’t misunderstanding.
Apparently Eve couldn’t quite bring herself to toss Lawrence entirely aside.
“Obsession maybe?” Lawrence murmured to himself, swallowing blood.
But that didn’t seem quite right.
Immediately after she had struck Lawrence with the haft of her cleaver, he’d caught the merest glimpse of Eve’s face.
It was neither obsessed nor avaricious.
“Hey, are you all right?” The man hastily tried to help Lawrence up when he started to stand, but Lawrence merely nodded and declined.
Eve had left him Arold’s deed to the inn.
As a fellow merchant, he could hardly fail to understand what she meant by this.
Having gotten to his feet, Lawrence began to walk, albeit unsteadily.
He tottered out of the storehouse and into the stable.
“She needs to see, does she?”
Eve had taken all his money.
There was only one place for Lawrence to go.
“She needs to see.”
He laughed again, then spat blood.
Epilogue
There were so many people in the streets that it was impossible to pass near the town square to get to the docks, owing to the fight between those trying to make the council’s decision public and those who opposed that decision.
Angry shouts and bellows were exchanged, and tensions were high.
Not a one of them noticed Lawrence’s terrible state. That was how bad the riot was.
As long as the sun or moon was out, he could navigate a complicated city with nothing but the date and the direction. He ran through the streets, heading for the Delink Company.
Eve had probably gone directly to buy fur.
It didn’t seem like Lawrence was going to make staggering amounts of money, but he felt he didn’t mind.
Leaving behind the letter that proved Arold was surrendering the inn was probably Eve’s last concession, but for Lawrence it was enough.
The letter of guarantee he held was probably worth just shy of the amount he had borrowed from the Delink Company. At the very least, the merchants wanted to curry favor with
Eve, who was nobility, a goal they would be able to accomplish. Whether or not they would be able to quickly collect the money from Lawrence was a secondary concern, and they would probably be willing to wait a bit on however much he came up short.
The problem was Holo.
What sort of face would she make once she found out Lawrence had let the deal that would have given him his dream slip away?
She would be enraged surely.
“Well, well!” It wasn’t just Eringin. Each of the members of the Delink Company considered him, their expressions neutral. Lawrence expected nothing less.
When he asked where Holo was being kept, they led him to a single room within the building.
However, once he put his hand on the door, they stopped him with their eyes.
“Don’t lay a hand on the collateral,” they seemed to say.
Lawrence produced the deed that Eve had given him and handed it over to the Delink Company. They did the profit-loss computation so fast it put a traveling merchant to shame.
Eringin smoothly put the deed into his breast pocket and smiled—genuinely for once—before withdrawing.
Lawrence put his hand to the door and opened it.
“I said no one may enter—!” cried Holo, then cut herself off.
He had hoped she might cry, but evidently he didn’t give Holo enough credit.
Nonetheless, she was clearly shocked, her face a mask of anger.
“Why, you...you...” Her trembling lips seemed to make it difficult to articulate words.
Lawrence nonchalantly closed the door behind him and sat on the chair in the middle of the room.
“You fool!”
Holo flew at him. Surely those words were made to describe exactly what happened this moment.
He had expected it and so managed to avoid being thrown from the chair.
“Don’t—don’t tell me—don’t tell me you called off the deal!”
“I certainly didn’t. It was stolen right out from under me.” Holo’s surprise was like that of a maiden whose favorite dress has been stained, and she grabbed Lawrence by his lapels using all of her strength.
“Was that not your dream?!”
“It was my dream. No. It still is.”
“Then why—why?”
“Why am I so calm, you mean?”
Holo looked on the verge of tears, her lips trembling violently. Lawrence had been certain that regardless of the outcome of the deal, he would be separating from Holo in this town.
Holo felt the same way.
“We merchants worked a few things out, so I was left enough to buy you back from this company.”
At a loss for words...Lawrence wanted to label and frame Holo’s face as it was just then.
“Do—do you not remember why I was so frightened?”
“It’s too embarrassing. I can’t bring myself to speak of it.”
Holo struck him in the face, right where Eve had hit him with the haft of the cleaver, and the pain was enough to make him collapse. Holo then mercilessly hauled him back up.
“And then you came traipsing back, even knowing that, to appear before me, the Wisewolf of Yoitsu? What do you wish for? What do you desire? Tell me! Just tell me, damn you!”
Lawrence remembered when he had seen her like this before. Back then, too, Lawrence had been beaten, had lost all his assets, and faced death.
Holo had pitched in to help bail him out that time.
What about now?
He had been robbed, injured, yet had managed to get away while somehow safeguarding Holo’s life...Would she not see it that way?
If not, the words Holo expected were obvious.
She wanted to part ways from him here in this town, smiling all the way.
“Your...wolf form.”
Holo nodded, baring her fangs. “Leave it to me. You’ll become a full-fledged merchant thanks to meeting me. We can end the story with a smile. It must be so!” she said, producing the pouch that held the wheat grains about her neck.
Lawrence watched her, smiling.
“What’s the m—”
She never got to finish the word.
“Did you think I was going to ask you to use your wolf form to get the money back?”
Lawrence pulled Holo’s body into his embrace. Immediately the sound of something scattering could be heard, no doubt the wheat grains upon the floor.
Perhaps among them were some tears, but he dismissed that as wishful thinking.
“Eve is pursuing a deal tantamount to
suicide. If the Church learns of it, our lives will be in danger, too. We should leave this town before the disturbance is over.”
Holo tried to twist away, but Lawrence stopped her and continued speaking as coolly as he could manage.
“I didn’t see Eve’s true nature. She is obsessed with money. She thinks nothing of throwing her life away for it. But no number of lives will satisfy a deal like that.”
“What deal are you going to go along with, then?” asked Holo. She again attempted to escape from Lawrence’s embrace but eventually surrendered.
“When crossing a dangerous bridge, once is enough.”
Back when Lawrence had visited the village of Pasloe, there had been no particular reason for Holo, hiding in his wagon bed, to travel with him. She could have stolen his clothes and taken the wheat, and she would have been just fine on her own.
If she had truly believed that becoming close to another led only and always to despair, if she genuinely feared that, no matter how much she longed for company, she would never have spoken to him.
A dog that burns itself on the fireplace will always be wary.
Those who approach the fireplace are the ones who think that within it smolder roasted chestnuts and are unable to forget that sweet taste.
Even if he could see what hardships lay ahead or even if at the end there would be nothing at all, Lawrence had to reach out. He had to.
He needed to see.
He needed to see what was at the end of all of this.
When Eve had struck Lawrence, he had laughed from the humiliation of it. He’d laughed like a girl.
Lawrence was a bit too young to turn into an enlightened recluse.
He put his hand around the back of Holo’s head, and she flinched.
Becoming closer than they already were couldn’t possibly be the right decision. Holo’s view of the matter was the right one, he supposed.
The end would surely come, and so staying like this was not the wisest course.
And yet Lawrence embraced Holo. And then—
“I like you.”
He kissed her right cheek ever so lightly.
Holo froze, then looked Lawrence straight in the eyes, so close that their foreheads nearly touched. Her expression shifted slowly to rage.
“What do you even know about me?”
“I don’t know much. I don’t know if the decision your centuries of life has led you to is correct. But I do know one thing.”
He felt as if he might melt into her red-brown pupils.
There was no doubt that he would die before her, and the fact of his aging meant that his values would be quicker to change.
Surely Lawrence would be the one for whom delight would fade first.
And yet, he didn’t let her go.
“Wishing for you to be mine might not make it so. But if I don't wish it, you’ll never be mine.”
Holo looked down, then wrenched herself away violently, finally succeeding in pulling herself free.
Her tail bristled and her ears pricked up with her overwhelming anger.
But she did not change to her wolf form. She remained human, glaring at him.
“Eve chases profit, even though it puts her life in danger. Even though the moment she gets what she wants, it fades. There’s a lesson to be learned there as a merchant. Call it a mirror. I thought I should try to be more like that,” finished Lawrence without any embarrassment, clearing his throat once.
He then stooped to gather up the wheat grains that had been spilled beneath the chair.
Holo stood there stock-still.
She stood there without looking at anything in particular.
When droplets began to hit the floor where Lawrence gathered up the wheat, he looked up.
“You fool...” said Holo, wiping her tears with one hand. They welled up one after another, but she wiped them anyway.
Lawrence offered the now-refilled wheat pouch up toward Holo’s free hand, whereupon she grabbed it.
“You’ll take proper responsibility, won’t you?” Her smile was not deliberate.
“When the times comes, we’ll part ways with smiles and leave it at that. There’s no such thing as a journey that doesn’t end. But—”
Tears continued to fall, but by now it seemed Holo was crying more at her own pathetic visage than anything else.
Even a human girl rarely looked so unsightly.
Lawrence smiled. “But as it is, I don’t think we could part with smiles right now. That’s all.”
Holo nodded at Lawrence’s words as she wiped her tears.
“Anyway, why are you so pessimistic?” he asked.
There had to be a reason.
There was no question that the many years she had weathered contained within them reasons enough for her timidity.
Nonetheless, Holo dried her tears, grasped the wheat pouch, and curled her index finger around Lawrence’s. Despite the many changes of heart and happiness, the many hardships, she had yet enough hope to crawl into his wagon bed that day.
The conclusion that in order to achieve happiness one must wish for nothing was inadmissible.
Even Holo, having lived so many centuries, could not have forgotten the innocence of her youth.
Eventually she looked up at the ceiling, sniffing loudly.
A moment passed.
“You wish to know why I am pessimistic?” she asked, looking back at Lawrence. “Don’t you prefer me tearful and sobbing?”
Lawrence could only laugh at the unexpected attack.
He did not stand but sat there as he took Holo’s hand in his own and kissed it, as a knight kisses a maiden’s hand.
She was Holo the Wisewolf. When she spoke next, it was in a tone that befit the situation, as though she was handing down a pronouncement from on high.
“You’ve rejected my notion, so you had best be prepared to take responsibility for what may come.”
“...I will,” answered Lawrence.
Holo was silent for a moment, then sighed.
“You took my foolishness seriously—seriously enough to lose all your profit. So I—”
She stopped herself, shook her head, then continued.
“I’ll go along with your foolish plan. However!”
“However?”
No sooner had Lawrence spoken than Holo kicked him hard on his shoulder, then looked down on him as a person looks down on an insect.
“I can’t have a worthless merchant for my companion. Don’t tell me you’ll let your deal be stolen, then turn tail and run.”
Given that this was what passed for kindness from Holo, Lawrence had but one thing to say.
He took her hand and got to his feet, then wiped what remained of the tears from her face. “Your kindness is quite frightening as well."
Lawrence could not be sure whether or not she would call him a fool for this.
As to why, surely Holo would not be spoken of in the tales that were passed down through eternity.
There were only a handful of things that would stop her from speaking her mind.
“...So, how will you get the money back?” Holo’s eyes were cool and piercing, as if to say that he had no choice.
And yet Lawrence felt like making a joke.
Those eyes of hers hid her embarrassment, after all.
“Forget the profit. I’d rather have you give me back my initiative.”
“Fool,” declared Holo flatly, slapping his swollen cheek and pulling away. “Do you think I would ever allow such a thing?"
Lawrence wanted to double over in pain, but her tone suggested she was totally unconcerned with that.
She spun around as if to show him the magnificent tail of Holo, the Wisewolf of Yoitsu, then put a hand on her hip and looked at him over her shoulder. “I’d be in trouble if I fell for you.”
Lawrence would never forget her mischievous smile.
Holo giggled, causing her chestnut fall of hair to shake.
It was a foolish conversation.
It really is, he thought.
“I suppose you would be,” he said.
“Mm.”
Lawrence and Holo left the room.
They held hands, and though neither of them had initiated it, their fingers were intertwined.
Spice & Wolf V Page 21