Spice & Wolf III (10 page)

“Why do you ask?”

Amati’s expression clouded over as he fumbled for words, but he resolutely overcame this in a manner befitting a merchant used to battling the fish markets day in and day out. “Er, yes, actually I was thinking perhaps I could show you and your companion around the town. Our meeting on the road was the will of God, surely, and I don’t doubt I could learn much from talking with a traveling merchant such as yourself.”

Amati sounded quite modest, but Lawrence knew that the boy had his sights set on Holo. If Amati had a tail, Lawrence was sure that it would be swishing back and forth excitedly.

Lawrence had an idea.

“I surely appreciate the invitation, and my companion Holo has been wanting to get a look at the town, but I don’t think...” Amati’s expression changed. “If it’s all right with you, I would be happy to show just Miss Holo around! In truth, I’ve finished my work for the day and am quite free.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly..

Lawrence wasn’t sure whether or not his feigned surprise was convincing, but Amati did not seem able to read Lawrence’s expressions quite
that
well.

Amati, after all, was thinking only of Holo.

“Not at all. If left to my own devices, I fear I’ll simply drink all my profits away. To be blunt, this works out nicely for me. I would be happy to escort her.”

“I see. Well, she is not so well behaved as to stay in the inn simply because I told her to—she may not be there at all.”

“Ha-ha! As it happens, I need to go by the inn and discuss a purchase with them, so I’ll inquire after her while I am there, and if she is there, I’ll invite her out.”

“I’m so sorry to impose,” said Lawrence.

“No, not at all. Please allow me to show you around town as well next time!”

Amati’s skill with pleasantries marked him as a merchant through and through.

He must have been five or six years younger than Lawrence, but despite his callow appearance, he was no doubt a canny trader.

Though Amati’s attention had been quite diverted by Holo, he remained thoroughly poised.

Lawrence was just musing on how he would have to be careful not to let his guard down around the boy when the trading company’s door opened once again.

Amati looked toward the door at the same time as Lawrence. “Looks like I had good timing,” said Amati, and Lawrence soon understood why.

As the saying goes, his party had arrived.

“Well then, Mr. Lawrence—I’ll take my leave.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you, again.”

Whether he had no further business in the trading house or his head was so full of visions of Holo that he forgot why he’d come, Amati left the building.

Though Lawrence left her with some silver, he thought Holo was still probably lounging about in bed at the inn.

Given Amati’s state, he’d be a perfect mark for Holo, who would have no trouble getting him to buy her whatever she wanted.

For a moment, Lawrence almost felt sorry for the poor boy, but he knew Amati would be all too happy to undo the strings on his coin purse for Holo.

Nothing would make Lawrence happier than Holo’s mood being lifted on someone else’s coin.

If only he could be so clever when dealing directly with Holo, he thought.

She did not just pull his leg—she swept it clean out from under him.

As Lawrence wondered if
 
Holo’s wit exceeded his own by as much as her age did, the man who entered the trading house just as Amati left scanned the room and then began to walk toward Lawrence.

Mark’s apprentice had apparently run about the town to inform Batos of Lawrence’s request, which was undoubtedly why Batos now approached him.

Lawrence greeted the man with a glance, flashing his merchant’s smile.

“Kraft Lawrence, I presume? I am Gi Batos.”

The hand that Batos extended in greeting was hard and rough, like a veteran soldier’s.

Listening to Mark tell it, Batos was the sort of man who preferred drinking his profits away to actually making any, but upon meeting the man in person, Lawrence got precisely the opposite feeling.

As he walked down the street, Batos had a stocky stability about him that brought to mind a stout coffin, and his face had a tough, leathery quality (from years of exposure to wind and sand) out of which grew a spiky beard that was almost sea urchin-like. When Lawrence shook Batos’s right hand in greeting, it felt nothing like the hand of an easygoing merchant who passed the days carrying nothing heavier than his cart horse’s reins; it was rough and strong enough, telling that this was a man who did heavy lifting year-round.

Yet despite Batos’s appearance, he was neither stubborn nor ill-mannered; the words he spoke had a priestly serenity to them.

"I daresay merchants who travel across many provinces, like yourself, Mr. Lawrence, are more numerous these days. Traveling to and fro between the same places, selling the same things as I do, gets quite boring.”

“Ah, but the town peddlers and craftsmen would surely be angry if they heard you say so.”

“Ha-ha-ha! Right you are. There are plenty of men who’ve spent fifty years selling naught but leather rope. No doubt I’d get an earful if I claimed to be tired of it,” Batos said with a laugh.

He told of how he was a trader of precious metals from the mines of Hyoram and that he’d spent nigh thirty years going back and forth between those rugged mountains and the town of Kumersun.

Any man who could carry those heavy loads through the mountains of Hyoram—where the wind was strong and the trees were few—was a man to be reckoned with.

“Still, I must say you’re a curious fellow, Mr. Lawrence.”

“Oh?”

“I refer to your search for a chronicler to learn the ancient tales of the northlands. Or has it something to do with a business prospect?”

“Oh no, nothing like that. Its just something of a whim, I suppose.”

“Ha-ha-ha! You’ve got good taste for one so young. I’ve only recently become interested in the old tales. Originally I intended to make a business of it, but I’m afraid they’ve quite become my master rather than the other way around!”

Lawrence couldn’t quite imagine what Batos meant by making a business of the old tales, but the man’s talk was intriguing, so he kept his mouth shut and listened.

“It came to me after so many years of going back and forth between the same places. The world I knew was very small, you see. But even there, people had been coming and going for hundreds of years, and I knew nothing about those times at all.”

Lawrence had an inkling of what Batos meant.

The more he traveled around, the more the world seemed to spread out before him infinitely.

If that was the breadth of the world, in a sense, then what Batos felt was the worlds depth.

“I’m old, you see, and I’ve not the vigor to go journeying afar. Neither can I travel back in time. So even if it’s only by stories, I came to want to visit the places I’ve never been able to see in person and to travel back to those ages that God in his capriciousness has prevented me from experiencing. When I was a young man with nothing on my mind but profit, such things would never have occurred to me, but now I often wonder if I’d had the chance to consider them, my life would have turned out quite differently. So I must admit I’m a bit envious of you, Mr. Lawrence. Hah, I must sound quite ancient.” Batos laughed at his own folly, but his words left a deep impression on Lawrence.

It was true that the old tales and legends allowed one to know of things that were impossible to experience directly.

He felt a new weight behind the words Holo had said to him not so very many days after they had first met.

"The worlds we live in, you and I, are very different.”

For the greater part of the time Holo had lived, the people from her own era had been long since dead, the era itself lost to time.

And Holo was not human, but wolf.

Thinking on it, Lawrence saw that Holo’s very existence began to seem special in more ways than one.

What had she seen and heard? Where had she traveled?

He began to want to ask her about her travels—perhaps when he returned to the inn.

"But when the Church looks at the old tales and legends, all they see are superstitions and pagan stories. Where the Church’s eye falls, tales become hard to collect. Hyoram is a mountainous region and had many fascinating stories, but the Church was there, too. Kumersun is quite nice in that regard.”

Ploania was a country where both pagans and the Church existed side by side, but it was precisely because of that coexistence that the Church was much stricter in those towns and regions where it held power.

Pagan towns that resisted Church control had to be constantly prepared for battle. Kumersun was unique in Ploania for its peaceful avoidance of those problems.

Even in Kumersun, it was not the case that there was a complete lack of conflict.

Lawrence and Batos headed to the north district of Kumersun in order to meet with the chronicler.

The town had been built with expansion in mind, so the city walls were constructed of wood that could be easily disassembled and the streets and buildings were spacious.

Yet even within this town, there existed a high stone wall.

The wall encircled the district housing those who had fled to Ploania because of Church persecution.

The very fact that the district was walled off with stone proved that the people of the town considered the presence of the persecuted a burden.

While they were not considered criminals in Kumersun, in Ruvinheigen—for example—they would have been beheaded as a matter of course.

Upon reflection, Lawrence changed his mind.

The wall did not exist simply to isolate these people; it was probably necessary for their protection.

“Is that...sulfur?” Lawrence asked.

“Aha, so you’ve handled medicinal stones as well, have you?”

Hyoram boasted a variety of very productive mines, and while Batos may have been used to the distinctive odors of the region, Lawrence couldn’t help but make a face.

The smell reached his nose as soon as they passed through the door in the stone wall, and he immediately knew what sort of people lived here.

The Church’s greatest enemy—alchemists.

“No, I’ve knowledge of it is all.”

“Knowledge is a merchant’s greatest weapon. You’re good at your job.”

“...It’s kind of you to say so.”

The area within the walls was several steps lower than the outside ground.

The spaces between the buildings in the district were narrow, and although they called to mind alleys Lawrence had seen in other towns, there were some strange differences.

For one, many of the alleys they walked in were scattered with bird feathers.

“One can’t always smell the poison wind. People keep small birds—and if the bird suddenly dies, they know to be careful.”

Lawrence knew of the practice as it was used in mines, but having come to a place where it was actually employed sent a shiver up his spine.