“Do you know who Kieman is connected with?” Eve wasn’t testing Lawrence. It was a simple question.
“No.”
“Does it seem realistically possible to secretly steal the narwhal?”
“Perhaps by bribing the guards on watch.”
“The deed transfer will be written by the landlord’s son, who has no actual authority. It may not carry any actual weight. What does Kieman plan to do about that?”
“The third-generation head has already paid his respects to the nearby landlords, and jurisdiction of the town is shared by the council, the Church, and the landlords. So long as they have grounds to assert their rights, things should work out.”
“I see. And you believe what Kieman says?” From her sitting position, Eve looked down her nose at Lawrence like a noblewoman regarding a piteous commoner. She spoke as though she was sure that Kieman waited to spring a trap on her.
“I do not believe his words, but I am going along with him.”
Eve turned her gaze away from Lawrence. “A perfect answer. But not enough to bridge the distance that separates us.”
Did this mean that she could not accept Kieman’s proposal? Lawrence hardly believed the entirety of the man’s plan, but it didn’t seem like such a bad trade for Eve.
Lawrence put a question to her. “What would be the best choice for you, Miss Eve?”
“I told you, didn’t I? To betray one and all and take all the profit for myself.”
“You couldn’t possibly—” Lawrence blurted out in spite of himself.
Eve smiled, amused. She seemed to want him to continue.
“Why would you be so childishly selfish?”
If Eve proposed the same detail to Kieman that he was bringing her, he was certain to accept on the spot. He would have been delighted.
So why did Eve insist on being so stubbornly persistent? Whatever her reason, it still seemed strange to Lawrence.
Or was it just as simple as that—that she absolutely did not want to share any of her gains? Was it really something so utterly unreasonable as that?
“Childish? That’s right, it’s childish.” Eve laughed and breathed in. When she exhaled, her breath was strong enough to move some of the papers on the surface of her desk. “When a child burns herself in a fireplace, she fears it even when the fire is out.”
“…If that were so, then merchants would have no choice but to sit alone in empty rooms, trembling and afraid.”
Merchants were burned, deceived—then went out to seek profit again. And wasn’t Eve herself the exemplar of that ideal? Wasn’t her being the lynchpin of events that would determine who controlled an important port town like Kerube the proof of that?
Lawrence advanced on Eve, half-angry, and found her wary gaze directed right at him.
“I wasn’t always a merchant.”
“—”
Lawrence flinched at her suddenly meek, pathetic voice.
Eve flashed a quick smile at Lawrence’s reaction, then flopped forward onto the table. Paper went flying.
The deaf, old man hurried to his feet, but Eve, still lying on the table, gave him a faint smile. “Don’t you think it ridiculous? That by exchanging a few slips of paper and a few of the formless words that come from our mouths, we can gain such money as can buy a human life.”
Eve picked up a sheet of paper and dropped it. She then slowly directed her gaze at Lawrence. “Have you ever been betrayed by someone you completely trusted? Whom can you trust then? The only one I trust is myself when I’m betraying another.”
A beast’s fangs could be used to attack, but also to defend one’s self. So was the reason Eve kept her fangs so sharp because she felt she needed to defend herself that much?
“When your own life was on the line, you asked me, didn’t you? What lies at the end of my road of greed? And I answered, didn’t I? What I’m looking forward to…” Eve slowly closed her eyes and then slowly opened them. “…Is that someday I’ll be satisfied, and I’ll be able to reach a world with no worry, and no suffering.”
Lawrence took a step back because he was truly frightened.
Aiming for a world without worry and suffering but trying to reach it via constant betrayal—it was like being shown the source of human sin.
This was no act.
It was not a trap.
Eve slowly sat up, reluctantly leaning back in her chair.
“Fine, then. I accept Kieman’s proposal. You tell him that for me.” She paused for a moment, smiling a snakelike grin. “You tell him.”
Eve was a genius.
How could her words be trusted? What was he supposed to report to Kieman?
His gorge rose at the possibilities and doubts, but he swallowed it and slowly straightened himself. She had told him to pass the message along, and he had no choice but to do so.
“…Understood.”
He bowed politely, then turned to leave.
For a moment, Eve seemed to Lawrence like the red, many-armed monsters of the deep that occasionally devoured ships and haunted the dreams of sailors.
Eve truly didn’t trust anyone. It was hardly surprising then that she was willing to betray anyone for her own gain. But it was also true that without trusting someone, somewhere, trades could not be completed, and thus no profit could be gained.
So who would she trust in the end? And after all was said and done, who would be betrayed?
When Lawrence put his hand to the door, Eve spoke as though to stop him short. “Hey, why not join me?”
She looked at him expressionlessly. She seemed to be at once sincere and deceptive.
“What, to join you even knowing I’d been fooled?”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t want to believe I’ve been fooled,” Lawrence answered.
Eve smiled. “I suppose not.”
Lawrence had no reply to follow that. If he replied, he’d be taken. Humans were all too easily led astray by the mermaid’s song.
He quickly stepped out of the room and down the stairs. The whole way, he felt as though Eve were watching him go.
Kieman was to be contacted via a messenger.
The designated location was a busy little street filled with stalls, two blocks away from the spring of gold. The best place to hide a tree was in a forest, after all.
He sent the note via messenger not just because it was difficult to meet with Kieman in person, but for another reason as well.
Lawrence was under strict orders to tell Eve only those things he had been specifically told to tell her. This was probably to prevent her from using Lawrence to deliver misinformation to Kieman.
Lawrence had to admit that the precaution protected him as well. It was impossible to tell which parts of his recent exchange with Eve had been accurate.
What was the truth and where were the lies? He felt his own trust in people wavering.
“The boss says, ‘Understood.’” It was a small, hunchbacked man who delivered Lawrence’s message and brought back this reply.
“What should I do?”
“The meeting will be in recess soon. You’ll get your instructions after that.”
“I understand.”
“Right, you’ll pick up your next message from us at the prearranged location.”
No sooner had the messenger said so than he left—probably to pick up other pieces of information from other places.
They were certainly taking every precaution, but Lawrence still didn’t know how effective it would be.
The delta was always full of merchants coming and going, so an unfamiliar face wandering around the town was hardly a strange sight—but everything had its limits.
At this particular moment, a merchant wandering idly around or standing beneath the eaves of a stall, looking to and fro as though waiting for someone, would look extremely suspicious. And suspicion bred more suspicion.
If Holo had been with him he would have been at ease, but having become used to her presence, it wa
s frightening not to have her around. Lawrence grinned in spite of himself and made for the tavern where he had been told to receive his next reply.
“I’m sorry, sir. We’ve no seats left! Will that be all right?”
There were few taverns on the delta, and most of them had been rented out, so things were especially crowded.
As a result, Lawrence was informed of such before he could enter the place.
He could tell just by looking that the place was packed with people. It was obvious that they would run out of wine if they didn’t start diluting it with water, and anticipating that, Lawrence ordered some stronger liquor.
Though he would be reduced to leaning against a wall to drink it, the positioning was just right to give him a good view of the tavern’s interior. He hadn’t participated in the meeting, but it would be no trouble to learn what happened there, and he wouldn’t even have to do anything in particular to do so.
In the time it took him to receive his liquor and take three sips of the stuff—it was just right—he was able to understand the outlines of what had transpired.
The northerners accused the southerners of stealing their ship, but the southerners contended that such had been the wish of the fisherman aboard.
The lines of reasoning were parallel and would of course not lead to any sort of resolution.
According to the loudest merchants in the tavern, odds were that the northerners would withdraw in the night and relinquish their claim on the narwhal in exchange for a share of the profits from its sale. Lawrence agreed with the notion.
Had the southern elders wished to destroy the northerners, they had but to sell the narwhal to one of the landlords and, after grasping military power, threaten all of them into capitulation. Since they hadn’t done that, it meant they still hoped for a peaceful resolution. If they hoped to continue to hold the reins of the northerners, they would have to give them a reasonably generous offer, which would leave the northerners satisfied. The landlords’ resistance came from their desire to protect their own influence, as well as their simple wish to be able to bargain for some of the profits from the expansion of the delta marketplace.
And even that would not be decided at this meeting, but rather in negotiations behind close doors.
But those negotiations would take place unbeknownst to Lawrence, and the only people who had a full grasp of the situation were the lead characters in the farce.
Because he stood between two people—Kieman and Eve—whose power in the town was uncommonly profound, with the narwhal at the center of events, Lawrence had the false sense that he was somehow crucial to all of this. But in truth he was a mere tributary.
When he considered that his only role was to convey information, he could only smile. And Eve had had him under her thumb all along.
Even the power of liquor wasn’t enough to let him calmly consider their last exchange. He felt very keenly how simple it truly was to deal in the exchange of goods for money.
If he’d passed his days in this kind of environment, there was no telling what sort of monster he might have become. When it came to regrets and ambitions, he lived in a different world.
He could only smile at how lucky he was that Holo wasn’t here to see him now.
“Sir,” a voice called out to Lawrence as he was lost in thought, his cup at his lips.
Any merchant who forgot a face or a voice was a failure. Of course, Kieman’s messenger had a rather memorable face.
“You’re quite swift.”
“Certainly. The boss’s work needs quick resolve.” The messenger’s face wrinkled in a proud smile.
The more information one had, the more accurate one could be, but this required reach. That is what traveling merchants dealt in. By contrast, Kieman dealt with goods that took months to transport by ship. At distances like that, there was no way of knowing whether the information one had was reliable, and indeed, it was often impossible to have any information at all. In such situations, one still had to make trading decisions regarding goods of incredible value, and to do so, no small amount of decisiveness was necessary.
To say nothing of the fortitude it took to wait out the months it took said goods to arrive.
That was how Kieman possessed the pluck to come up with a plan to trade a narwhal for control of the delta, thereby shifting the balance of power in the town.
And that was why his messenger smiled so proudly.
“So, here.” Lawrence found a piece of paper slipped into his hand, as though it had been there all along.
And if Lawrence himself was nearly fooled, there was no chance that any onlookers would have noticed the message change hands.
“Indeed,” Lawrence murmured, and the messenger disappeared just as he had arrived.
What he had been given wasn’t even in an envelope.
Did they not think he would read it? Or did they not mind?
Either way, Lawrence did not look at the paper. If he had, he might find himself taken in by the information it contained, and thus easier for Eve to trap. Even the sharpest-clawed cat could not find purchase on a smooth stone. The less he knew, the harder it would be for him to be drawn in.
There was a huge difference in the amount of information each of them had, so this was the best way for him to protect himself. He needed to resist acting before things were truly within his grasp and to avoid exposing his true thoughts to anyone.
It was a contradiction in terms, of course—being fully aware that he was trying to act naturally. But only those who could keep their minds open and their emotions fully under control could truly call themselves merchants.
Lawrence reminded himself of that, as though he were a young boy venturing into a dark forest, telling himself that demons didn’t really exist.
Following the same sequence he had performed not long before, Lawrence again delivered the letter to Eve and received her reply. This time she said nothing, only giving Lawrence a look that seemed to invite his pity.
But if he could act normally, Eve could certainly do likewise, so there was no way of knowing how much of her expression was an act. Yet the tired messiness of her hair and the wrinkles here and there on her face were clear enough, and even more papers littered her desk.
When he left the room, the image of Eve dealing with all of those letters alone at her desk somehow stayed on his mind.
Lawrence had Holo.
He had her both as a source of simple support, but also as a trump card—if the situation turned bad, she could wipe the slate clean.
But Eve was alone, and she faced this conflict without anyone she could call an ally. Her situation was unquestionably dangerous, and if it were discovered she was communicating with Kieman, imagining what sort of revenge the northern landlords would exact was deeply worrisome to Lawrence, even though the risk was not his.
He felt his resolve starting to fray.
“What’s the matter?” asked Kieman’s messenger, when he came to deliver the reply
“It’s nothing,” said Lawrence, shaking his head, and the messenger asked him no further.
Lawrence melted into the crowd on his way back to Eve’s place and realized he was running. Something was making him feel hurried.
He was carrying mere slips of paper, and he reminded himself that nothing further was required of him, but still his anxiety rose.
He could make no excuses.
The messages he was carrying could easily decide the fates of human lives.
“Please wait here.” Was it his fourth visit?
When Lawrence arrived to hand over the letter, the guard only confirmed the password and accepted the letter. He did not lead Lawrence inside.
Any torture would lose its efficacy once it was repeated enough, but Lawrence found his worry suddenly worsening.
The guard, of course, explained nothing to Lawrence, and after handing off the letter to Eve in the room, he returned to still silence.
The two guards exchanged no words and did no
t so much as look at each other. Time crawled by, and the sounds of the commotion outside only served to emphasize the silence in the inn.
It seemed as though Eve’s replies were taking longer and longer for her to write, and Lawrence wondered if she found herself having to consider her answers more carefully.
Was she thinking before putting pen to paper? There was no document that would tell her the correct answer and no one around who knew what it was. And yet she had to find a solution to this problem, on which her whole destiny hinged. It was no small feat. Lawrence was reminded of a time when he’d been pursued by thieves in a dark forest and happened upon a fork in the path.
One of the forks would lead deeper into the forest and eventually to a dead end. There was no time to choose and no one to hear his cries of help, so his only choice was to press on ahead.
The quill in Eve’s hand must have felt like it was made of lead.
The door finally opened, and the possibly deaf old man emerged from the room bearing a letter. He looked Lawrence over, then slowly handed it to him.
The letter itself was slightly wrinkled and had drops of sweat here and there on it. Eve’s pains were quite obvious.
Lawrence handed the letter off to Kieman’s messenger, then received the reply.
“The boss is getting impatient,” said the man. “He says the current is growing stronger. And that we must row faster in order to keep up with it.”
Eve was surely not the only person that Kieman was dealing with. The current he was talking about surely involved secret dealings with dozens of merchants, with Kieman holding the rudder.
It was a basic principle of commerce that the faster you could deliver information, the better. Perhaps the reason the most recent letters had been unsealed was that they couldn’t afford to wait for the wax to set.
Lawrence nodded and ran to Eve.
Yet again, the guard at the door passed only the letter on into the room, and Lawrence was unable to see Eve, which meant he couldn’t urge her to hurry.
Although urging her on was no guarantee that she would actually write her response more quickly.
Eve was not stupid; she must have noticed the changes in flow and had to know that regardless of whatever plans she might have, slowness to act would invite only loss.
Town of Strife II Page 10