Spice & Wolf II (23 page)

“You’ve got a woman in tow even as you make the rounds, depending on the compassion of others to lend you money? Preposterous. How far the Rowen Trade Guild has fallen!”

The words froze Lawrence cold as the master slammed the door in his face.

He could neither move forward nor backward.

It was as though he’d forgotten to breathe.

The closed door was so quiet it seemed painted on stone. It was surely as cold and heavy as stone. The door would not open again; Lawrence’s connections with the merchants of the city had been cut.

They would lend him no money.

He backed away unsteadily from the door, not of his own volition, but rather because his body seemed to move on its own. When he finally noticed his surroundings, he was standing in the middle of the street.

“Don’t just stand in the middle of the road!” the driver of a horse-drawn cart shouted at him, and like a stray dog, Lawrence moved to the edge of the lane.

What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?

The words passed endlessly before his eyes.

“Hey there. Are you all right?”

At the sound of the voice, Lawrence started.

“Your face is quite pale. Let’s head to the inn—”

Holo extended her hand by way of comfort, but Lawrence slapped it away.

“If only you hadn’t—,” he shouted. But by the time he realized his error, he was too late.

Holo looked at him as though she had been stabbed though the heart. Having nowhere to go, her hand hovered there in midair for a moment before she slowly lowered it.

She looked down, her face blank with neither anger or sadness on it.

“I’m...sorry...,” she managed in a strangled voice, but she did not offer her hand again.

Lawrence could do nothing but curse himself.

The sound of the appalling thing he had done pressed in on him.

“...I’m going back to the inn,” announced Holo quietly, walking off without a second look at Lawrence.

Holo could hear conversations within the next building, so she had certainly heard Lawrence’s exchange with the master.

Of course, she would feel responsible and want to get away—she had been worried enough about him to accompany him, after all.

Yet just because her actions had backfired, she hadn’t lightly apologized or acted confused; instead, she had been genuinely concerned for Lawrence. He knew it was the most appropriate response. He knew that, which made his treatment of her all the more reprehensible.

He couldn’t find the words to speak to Holo, whose back was disappearing into the crowds—and he didn’t have the courage, either.

Lawrence cursed himself again.

If the goddess of fortune existed, Lawrence wanted to punch her square in the face.

Lawrence finally returned to the inn only after the stalls that had permission to conduct business past sunset had closed their doors for the day.

He wanted to drown himself in wine, but he had no money and sensed that it would be a kind of betrayal.

Standing drunkenly before Holo—that was something he simply could not do.

It was his visits to the various trade companies that had kept him out so late.

If he abandoned pride and dignity altogether, he reasoned they would give him a bit of money simply to be rid of him.

In the end he’d gotten three
lumione
from four people. Three of them had told him he didn’t need to bother returning it. They knew who was borrowing, after all.

His goal of forty-seven
lumione
was still clearly distant. He had to take this small amount and multiply it significantly in the little time that remained. It was not as if his situation had improved. The relationships he had destroyed in order to raise even this much money were important, even necessary, for doing business.

There were essentially no legitimate opportunities that remained for making more money.

And in any case, there was something that had to be considered before that—something that had to be regained before he could even think of making more money—which is why he had gone thither and yon asking after loans with no care for the consequences.

The memory of how Holo’s hand felt when he unwittingly drove her away came back to him. Pain swirled in his chest, seeming to pierce his very heart.

When Lawrence entered the inn’s lobby, the sleepy innkeeper stood behind his counter, enduring a large yawn. The city required that the innkeeper remain awake until all the guests had returned to the inn. If a guest hadn’t returned by the next day, the town guard had to be notified.

It was a precaution against thieves and criminals entering the city and perpetrating foul deeds.

“Well, you’re back early” came the sarcastic greeting from the innkeeper. Lawrence waved it off and headed to his room.

It was a single room on the third floor. Lawrence didn’t want to consider the possibility that Holo had simply gone off somewhere else.

For the second time that day, he took a deep breath and opened the door.

Whether he opened the door slowly or quickly, the creaking would have been the same, so he did it briskly and entered.

Between the terrible building conditions and the huge number of travelers who passed through Ruvinheigen, a room with a bed was already fairly luxurious. This room, with its crude bed in the center, had a simple table by the window and still cost a pretty penny.

But now Lawrence was grateful it was so small.

If it had been even a little bit bigger, he probably would have hesitated to speak.

Holo was curled up on the bed, illuminated faintly by the moonlight that entered through a crack in the shuttered window.

“Holo.”

The brief utterance diffused in the small, dark room, and Lawrence was beset by the illusion that he had never said anything at all.

On the bed, Holo did not so much as move.

If she had never wanted to see his face again, she would not have come back to the inn. The fact that she was curled up there on the bed soothed him that much at least.

I m sorry.

Those were the only words he had, all he could think of to say, but Holo remained still.

He could not imagine that she was sleeping, so he took one step toward the bed and gulped.

Instantly, he felt a sharp sensation at his feet. He stepped back quickly as a sweaty chill ran up his spine, and the frightening feeling vanished.

He looked back and forth between Holo and his feet.

When someone is truly angry, Lawrence thought, just getting close to them can almost feel like being burned. Disbelieving, he slowly reached his hand out; it was met by an overwhelming aura. Her anger was literally palpable. There was a distinct layer of air that felt strangely hot and cold at the same time.

Lawrence steeled himself and reached his hand out again. It felt as if he were plunging his fist into burning sand laced with blades. His senses told him that his flesh was charring and being cut into pieces.

He remembered his first glimpse of Holo’s true form in the underground passageways.

He willed himself to take a step forward.

And in that moment.

There was a rustling sound, and just as Lawrence thought he saw Holo’s blanket move slightly, his hand was deflected by something hard. He saw her bristling tail had been flicked away, but a pain lingered in his hand, distinctly enough so that he didn't have time to wonder whether it was illusory or not.

Then he realized that Holo had felt the same pain when he struck her hand. Lawrence had been prepared for this reaction whereas his rejection of Holo came utterly without warning. The surprise alone must have hurt her.

Again, he cursed his own mistake.

Lawrence took a leather pouch out from underneath his shirt and tossed it onto the bed.

It was all the money he had spent the day burning bridges to acquire.

He had cashed in all the relationships he’d built up in this city.

“This is all the money I was able to get on my own. Three
lumione
. I still have to raise over forty more, but I’ve no way to do it. I can think of no way to use that as capital to raise what I need.”

It was like he was talking to a cobblestone, so complete was Holo’s lack of reaction. Still, Lawrence cleared his throat slightly and continued.

“All I can think of to do is take the money to a gambling house and hope for luck. But if I give it to the person who really should have it, I feel it may yet increase. So I entrust it to you.”

Drunken singing could be heard from the street outside the window.

“And if everything goes bad, well, adding three
lumione
won’t make a difference anyway.”

Lawrence had sacrificed possibilities for cash half in the hopes that Holo would be able to use her wits to find a way to increase their funds and half because he wanted to leave her some money in the event that the worst happened.

Though it was only a verbal contract, Lawrence had promised to take her to the northlands, and parting on such bad terms would leave a bad taste in his mouth.

He felt that the least he could do for Holo, as a merchant, was to give her some coin.

Still, there was no response.

He backed up a step, then turned, and pulled the door open, going into the hall.

He couldn’t stay in the room when it was like that.

Lawrence descended the dark stairs and went outside, ignoring the rebuking voice of the innkeeper.

Off to his right, he heard the drunken singing that previously had filtered through the room’s window.

The town guard would soon be making the rounds. Having no particular place to go, Lawrence thought of going to see Jakob, who was quite involved with his problems at the moment. Since Lawrence had gone around practically forcing his request on every merchant in the vicinity, Jakob had undoubtedly received a flood of complaints.

But he stopped after taking a step.

The realization that tonight could well be his last opportunity to walk around as a free man seized his heart.

He looked up unconsciously. He started to angle his sights toward the room on the third floor where Holo was. Holo, who surely had some terrible knowledge that could help him now, Holo, who he couldn’t possibly ask a favor of now.

His gaze didn’t even reach the third floor before he stopped and lowered it.

Just as he resigned himself to go to the guild house, something hit him on the head.

Lawrence’s field of vision swam from the sudden shock, and he fell to his knees. The word robbery came to mind, and he reached for the dagger at his waist, but there was no assailant Instead came the distinctive clinking of coins jingling against one another...

He searched around and saw the bag containing the three precious
lumione
he had left on the bed.

“You fool” came the words above his head.