Spice & Wolf III (8 page)

“True enough. Good fortune to the both of us, then!”

Lawrence shook hands with Mark, and after seeing another customer come to call on the wheat merchant, he put the stall behind him.

He slowly maneuvered his wagon into the crowd and then looked back at Mark’s stand.

There stood Mark, who seemed to have forgotten about Lawrence entirely and was now embroiled in negotiations with his next customer.

Lawrence was frankly envious.

But even Mark the successful town merchant said he sometimes wished to return to traveling.

Lawrence remembered a story. Long ago, there was a king who planned to alleviate the poverty in his own kingdom by invading the prosperous nation next to his own, but a court poet had said this: “One always sees the wretched parts of one’s own land and the best parts of one’s neighbor’s.”

Lawrence thought on the story.

He had been focusing on the troubles involved in finding Holo’s homeland or the setbacks he’d suffered in Ruvinheigen, but the fact was he had been able to travel with a companion of rare quality.

If Lawrence had never encountered Holo, he would have continued along his usual trade route, enduring the endless loneliness that came with it.

It had once been so bad that he started to seriously fantasize about what it would be like if his horse became human. As he pondered this,

Lawrence realized that one of his dreams had already come true.

There was a good chance that eventually he would be traveling alone again, and when that time came, Lawrence knew he would look back on this time with Holo with no shortage of fondness.

Lawrence gripped the reins once again.

Once he finished making the rounds through the trade guilds and merchant firms, he would make sure to buy a truly delicious lunch for Holo.

Kumersun lacked a church, so it was a bell tower atop the highest roof of the tallest noble house in town that grandly rang the noontime bell each day. The bell, of course, was decorated with carvings of the finest sort, and the roof, visible throughout the entire town, was maintained by the finest artisans that could be had.

It was said that the roof—constructed solely because of the vanity of the nobility it housed—had cost fully three hundred lumione, but the people of the town bore the nobles no ill will, reasoning that it was doing such things that made one nobility.

Perhaps the reason most wealthy merchants, who hoarded their money in great vaults, were so richly resented was because they lacked that playful sense of extravagance. Even the most famously violent of knights would be beloved if he spent freely enough.

Lawrence thought on this as he opened the door to his room—and was struck face on by the sharp tang of liquor.

“So it smelled this bad, did it..

Lawrence suddenly regretted not rinsing his mouth before venturing out, but the greater part of the smell was surely the fault of the wolf that even now slept before him.

Holo showed no signs of stirring even when Lawrence entered the room, but her artless snoring suggested that she had mostly recovered from her hangover.

The stink of liquor was too much for Lawrence, so he opened the window before approaching the bed. The water glass next to it was empty as was—fortunately—the bucket. Her face, sticking out of the bedclothes, looked haler than it had before. Lawrence had bought real wheat bread, which he rarely indulged in, instead of honeyed crackers; this had been the right choice, he felt.

He was quite sure that the first words out of Holo’s mouth upon awaking would be “I’m hungry.”

Lawrence held the bag of bread up to Holo’s nose, which twitched slightly Unlike the tough, bitter oat and rye bread they often wound up eating, the scent of the soft, tender wheat bread was wholly enticing.

Holo’s sniffing at the bag was enough to make Lawrence doubt whether she was actually asleep. At length, she made a small, artless
mmph
sound and then buried her face within the covers.

Lawrence looked down at the foot of the bed, where he saw Holo’s tail sticking out of the covers, trembling slightly.

She seemed to be in mid yawn there beneath the bedclothes.

Lawrence waited a spell, and sure enough, Holo's bleary-eyed face eventually emerged from underneath the covers.

“Mmph...Something smells amazing..

“Feeling better?”

Holo rubbed her eyes, yawned again, and spoke as if to herself. “I’m hungry.”

Despite his best efforts not to, Lawrence burst out laughing.

Not seeming particularly interested, Holo slowly hauled herself up and yawned a third time. She then sniffed the air and turned her gluttonous gaze to the bag Lawrence held.

“I figured you’d say that. I splurged and got some wheat bread.”

As soon as Lawrence handed over the bag, the proud wisewolf became like a cat presented with a treat.

“Will you not eat some?”

Holo sat there on the bed, clutching the bag and devouring the pure white bread, looking anything but willing to share.

Even as she posed the question to him, her mien was now closer to that of a hunting dog who had no intention of letting its prey escape.

It was probably at the limits of Holo’s generosity to even venture to ask him before she finished the entire bag.

“No, I’m fine. I had a taste earlier.”

Normally she would have regarded him with some suspicion, but Holo—true to her ability to see right through a lie—seemed to accept this as the truth. Visibly relieved, she returned to her assault on the bread.

“Careful, you’ll choke.”

Lawrence remembered when shortly after he and Holo first met, she nearly choked on some potatoes at the small church they had passed the night in. She shot him a glare, which he chuckled at. He pulled a chair out from the desk and sat.

Upon the desk were several wax-sealed envelopes. After making the rounds among the various trading firms, Lawrence had received several letters addressed to him.

Despite their itinerant lifestyle, traveling merchants had many opportunities to send and receive letters as their seasonal stops were very predictable.

Some offered to buy a certain good at a high price if they happened to be passing through a given town that was selling it; others told of a goods price in their towns and asked how it was doing elsewhere—the correspondence was diverse.

Yet it was strange, Lawrence felt. He generally came through Kumersun in the summertime, so it was out of the ordinary for letters to be reaching him here now on the very threshold of winter. In the worst case, the letters would have wound up languishing in the files of the trading companies for more than half a year. If the letters had not found Lawrence in Kumersun within two weeks, they were to be sent south. It went without saying that such arrangements cost a pretty penny.

It was clear that the letters were urgent.

The senders were all town merchants situated in northern Ploania.

Lawrence carefully removed the wax seals with a knife when he sensed Holo peering intently at him.

“They’re letters.”

“Mm,” came Holo’s short reply as she sat herself on the desk, bread in hand.

Lawrence didn’t mind if she saw the envelope’s contents, so after breaking the seal, he took the letter out right there on the spot.

“Dear Mr. Lawrence…”

The fact that the letter did not begin with “In the name of our Lord” was very much in keeping with a northerner’s style.

Lawrence skimmed the pleasantries and moved his gaze down the page.

Following the messy, hurriedly composed handwriting, he quickly discerned the letter’s import.

It was indeed critical information for a merchant to have.

He read the second letter, confirming that its contents were the same as the first, and then sighed, smiling slightly.

“What do they say?” Holo asked.

“Care to take a guess?”

Perhaps irritated at having her question answered with another question, Holo frowned and rolled her eyes. “They hardly seem like love letters.”

Even a love of a hundred years would find its ardor cooled by such messy handwriting, Lawrence thought.

He handed the letters to Holo and grinned. “You always get important information
after
you most need it.”

“Hmph.”

“These letters were sent out of sincere concern, so I owe them some gratitude at least. What think you?”

Holo licked her fingers, either out of contentment or because she had simply eaten all there was to eat, and looked at the letters she held in the other hand.

She then shoved them back at Lawrence, a sour expression on her face.

“I cannot read.”

“Oh...you can’t?”

Lawrence took the letters, and Holo narrowed her eyes at him.

“If you’re feigning ignorance, I must say you’re getting better at it.”

“No, no, sorry. I really had no idea.”

Holo regarded him for a moment as if to ascertain the truth of his words, and then she turned away with a sigh.

“First of all,” she said, “there are too many letters to remember and too many baffling combinations. You might say all one needs to do is write as one would speak, but that is clearly a lie.”

It seemed Holo had once tried to learn to read.

“You mean the consonant notation and such?”

“I’ve no idea what you call them, but the rules are too complex by far. If there’s one way in which you humans exceed us wolves, it is your mastery of those inexplicable symbols.”

Lawrence very nearly asked if other wolves were similarly unable to write, but he swallowed the question at the last second, merely nodding his agreement.

“Though it’s not as if it’s a simple matter for us to memorize them, either,” he said. “I had no easy time of it, and every time I made a mistake, my teacher would strike me on the head for it. I thought I’d have a permanent lump.”

Holo regarded him dubiously. If she thought he was merely humoring her, she would undoubtedly become angry.

“Surely you can tell I’m not lying,” said Lawrence.