Spice & Wolf III (34 page)

“—!” Landt gasped and flinched.

But with his fist, Lawrence only tapped the boy lightly on his cheek, smiling. “Yes, I suppose I
should
give you a beating. A sound one, too,” he said with a chuckle—though he wanted to cry.

Landt seemed roughly ten years younger than Lawrence.

Yet with things the way they were, he felt no different than the boy.

Damn,
he cursed himself.

It seemed that before Holo, any man would turn into a runny nosed lad.

Lawrence shook his head.

The stubborn ones who never give in, eh?

It was a laughable phrase, and he sighed at its seductive charm, looking up at the sky.

The words of a boy ten years his junior had wiped from his mind the maelstrom of supposition and doubt.

Landt was right.

He’d gotten this far, and the profit that remained in his hands was only proof of his true loss—he could lose it without regret.

There was no reason not to think everything through one last time before taking action.

Things of value did not always come with hard effort.

Mark had only a short while ago made him realize that.

Lawrence opened the spigot on his considerable memory, pulling out the materials he needed to construct a new approach.

The pillar of his new plan was something he’d forgotten until just a moment ago.

“The ones who just can’t give up—they’re the same ones who just can’t stop themselves from being so optimistic you wouldn’t believe it,” said Lawrence.

Landt’s happy expression was even more appealing than the boy’s normal, overachieving nature usually tended to be.

There was little doubt that Mark treasured the lad as he would his own child.

“A merchant makes plans, predicts the outcome, and always holds the results up to the light of reality. Understand?”

Landt nodded politely at what appeared to be an unconnected statement.

“If selling one item causes something to change
thus,
another item will cause it to change
so.
Such hypotheses are also important, you see.”

Landt nodded again. Lawrence knelt down so he was close to the boy’s face and spoke.

“But if I’m honest, these hypotheses can be anything you might like them to be. If you make too many, you’ll become lost, seeing danger and risk in every deal you do. To avoid that, you need some kind of guidepost—something to believe. It’s the one thing every merchant needs.”

The young Landt looked something like a real merchant as he nodded. “I see,” he said.

“If you can believe in that guidepost, then no matter how absurd the idea it leads you to...

Lawrence looked up, closing his eyes.

“...You can trust it.”

Even so, a voice in Lawrence’s head told him it was impossible.

And yet when he looked at Holo, he was almost convinced.

There was a chance—a small chance—that Holo’s choice of dress said something.

Despite the idea’s outlandishness, if he was to put it to the test, it might well prove to be true.

But this idea required that one condition had to be met.

It was what Lawrence had forgotten earlier—namely, the possibility that Holo had in fact not abandoned him.

Considering this now was just the kind of thing a stubbornly optimistic merchant, who never gave up, would do.

At this stage of the game, it seemed far better to think as much than to continue trying to stop Amati—it was enough to make Lawrence think he was in some kind of fantastic dream.

He had no idea what Landt had heard from Mark that made the boy so willing to help him.

In any case, it was clear that Landt told the truth when he said he liked Holo.

It was impressive that he’d been able to admit that in front of Lawrence. Were their places reversed, Lawrence was not at all sure he would have been able to do the same.

Before a display of such courage, it was the least Lawrence could do to live up to this idea of the fearlessly optimistic merchant.

Lawrence patted Landt on the shoulder, took a deep breath, and spoke. “Once I sell my stones at the stall, start spreading the rumor I asked you to.”

Landt’s face lit up. He nodded his head, once again the consummate apprentice.

“Good lad.”

Lawrence was about to turn around, but he stopped short.

Landt’s eyes were full of questions, but Lawrence was the one who asked, “Do you believe in the gods?”

The boy was unsurprisingly dumbstruck.

Lawrence chuckled and repeated himself. “There’s a good lad,” he said before walking away.

He had 250 silver pieces’ worth of pyrite on hand. Tallying up the purchase line markers on the board showed that there was already four hundred silver pieces’ worth of orders waiting—even if Lawrence sold all the pyrite he had on hand, it would have no real effect.

But no—it
would
have an effect. If his new assumption was correct, it
had
to. He glanced back at Holo for just a moment; she was still standing by Amati.

Just one second would be enough—if Holo would just look in his direction for a moment, that would be enough.

And then—

Lawrence stood in front of the stone seller's stall. The influx of orders had slowed; the shopkeeper, having finally regained a measure of calm, looked at Lawrence with a face that said, “Yes?” He then smiled, an expression that seemed to add, “You’re making out pretty well today.”

Despite no words being exchanged, Lawrence nodded. He was about to make a lot more.

He thrust the bag of pyrite he’d received from Landt toward the stone seller and spoke. “I’m selling.”

The shopkeeper received a cut from each transaction, so he smiled heartily and nodded, but then he looked strangely stunned.

Lawrence closed his eyes and smiled.

He had been right.

“Master, I too shall sell.”

The voice actually made Lawrence nostalgic.

With a loud thud, a bag of pyrite at least twice the size of Lawrence's was slammed down on the counter.

Lawrence glanced sideways, and there was Holo, looking ready to bite his head off.

“You fool,” she said.

Lawrence’s only response to her accusation was a smile and a heartfelt “Sorry.”

The shopkeeper stood there, amazed for a while, and then he quickly ordered his apprentices to remove all the purchase line placards from the price board.

The two bags together came to at least 650 silver pieces’ worth of pyrite.

The amount Holo had was appraised before the day’s bump in price, so it was probably worth even more than that. The mysterious party that had bought pyrite from Diana was, of course, Holo.

Put simply, nearly a thousand silver pieces’ worth of pyrite had been sold all at once.

There was no room for demand to push the price up in the face of that.

Lawrence plucked at one of the white feathers affixed to Holo’s robe. “She’s quite the grown-up beauty, unlike a certain someone I could name,” he said.

Holo jabbed Lawrence’s side with her fist.

But then her hand remained there.

That was enough, Lawrence thought.

Though behind them a crazed mob pushed and shoved, Lawrence would not take his hand from hers.

He did want to show off to Amati, though.

Lawrence smirked at himself for being so childish.

Epilogue

The price crashed in an instant.

There were a few purchases that came in after all the existing purchase orders were filled, but the sale of close to one thousand silver pieces’ worth of pyrite tipped the market in favor of selling, and the price soon dived.

The ones who were least fortunate—who held that old maid card in the end—were those who’d been waiting just a bit longer to sell their stock at the highest-possible price.

Even the sharp-eyed merchants who noticed Lawrence and Holo’s actions and sold as quickly as they could had taken losses.

Amati’s fate went without saying—he had been unable to sell off the margin contract.

Just a moment ago, Amati had been witness to Holo dashing forward with a large bag and had reached out to stop her—and there he stood in the same pose, frozen in shock.

No doubt Holo’s betrayal came as a far worse shock than the margin certificate he held now turning worthless.

On that point, Lawrence had sympathy for him. Holo clearly had no intention of ever staying with him and had, in fact, separated from him in a particularly cruel way.

Evidently Amati had said something to Holo that she simply could not abide.

Lawrence didn’t dare ask Holo what it was for fear of her response, but he still wanted to know, if only so he wouldn’t make the same mistake himself.

“So, this contract is over, then?” Holo asked, not even bothering to look up as she groomed her tail. Lawrence had just returned from finishing the contract with Amati and thanking Mark for his trouble.

There was still an edge to Holo’s voice and not just because the two had only just finished a battle of wills.

Lawrence, of course, knew the reason.

He set his things down, took a chair, and replied. “It’s over, all right. As cleanly as we could ever hope.”

It was not a joke.

He had indeed just finalized the contract with Amati, who looked like his spirit had left his body.

In the end, Amati hadn’t actually lost money. Against the mar gin loss he’d taken because of Lawrence, Amati had made a bit more on intermediary sales of pyrite.