Spice & Wolf II (13 page)

“Yes?”

“I, I was wondering...do people change their employers...often?”

It was a strange question.

“Well, yes, I think it’s normal if one is unsatisfied with one’s terms of employment.”

I see...

When she talked like this, it sounded as if she was somehow dissatisfied.

Yet Norah’s total shock at the suggestion of changing those terms implied that she found the very idea outrageous. If that was the case, one might deduce the identity of her employer.

She had no relatives, so finding someone who would entrust his sheep to her would be difficult. Even the stoutest shepherd could expect to lose two sheep for every ten they herded—and such was an acceptable loss. It would be normal for someone to worry about a seemingly frail girl being able to bring back even half the flock.

Given that, whoever hired Norah had to be someone motivated by charity rather than self-interest.

In other words...

“If you don’t mind my asking, is your employer by any chance the Church?”

Norah’s expression was so stunned that Lawrence was glad he’d seen it. “How did you—”

“Call it a merchant’s secret,” said Lawrence with a laugh. Holo stomped her foot lightly. “Don’t get cocky,” she seemed to be saying.

“Er, well...yes. I receive my flock from a priest of the Church, but...”

“If it’s the Church, you should have no troubles with your work. You’ve found a good employer.”

Her employer was probably a priest connected with the almshouse she’d mentioned earlier. Personal connections were overwhelmingly more useful than either good fortune or strength.

“Yes, I was truly blessed,” answered Norah with a smile.

But to Lawrence, whose very livelihood was based on discerning the truth among flattery and lies, her smile was obviously false.

As Norah turned aside to work with Enek, Lawrence looked at Holo, who had been feigning sleep. Holo returned his gaze, then she sniffed and turned away, shutting her eyes.

If she’d spoken, she would likely have said something like, “I’ve no sympathy at all.”

“They’ve entrusted me with a flock,” said Norah, “and they’ve aided me in many other ways.”

She spoke as if to remind herself of the fact—it was pitiable to see.

The reason for Norah’s downcast expression was clear. The Church was not employing her. It was watching her.

Of course, at first it probably had been out of charity that they’d entrusted her with a flock—which is precisely why she never thought of changing employers.

Shepherds were often thought of as being vaguely heretical. They weathered constant accusations of being “the devil’s hands," so it was far from strange that the ever-suspicious Church would come to doubt a falsely accused woman who took such a job—all the more so when she excelled at it. It was just more evidence ol pagan magic.

Even the most oblivious person would eventually notice such suspicion.

At the same time, the shepherdess’s wages could not be high. She was worked hard for meager pay—there would certainly not be enough to set any aside. Lawrence guessed that was the reason she offered her services as an escort.

But Lawrence’s merchant sense told him not to get any more deeply involved in the issue.

His curiosity was sated. Pursuing it any further would make him responsible for further developments.

“I see,” he said. “I daresay you need not worry about finding a different employer.”

“Do you think so?” asked Norah.

“Yes—with the Church’s insistence on honorable poverty, your pay will always be a bit low, but so long as God doesn’t abandon us, the Church will always exist. You’ll not want for work. As long as you have work, you’ll eat. Isn’t that something to be thankful for?”

Having roused her concerns and suggested changing employers, Lawrence knew that the hard fact was nobody would hire a shepherd who’d caught the eye of the Church. It wouldn’t do for his actions to rob a lone girl of her livelihood.

Lawrence wasn’t lying, in any case, and Norah seemed to accept it. She nodded several times, slowly. “I suppose so,” she agreed.

It was true that having a job—any job—was good, but hope was important, too. Lawrence cleared his throat and spoke as cheerfully as he could manage.

“Anyway, I’ve many acquaintances in Ruvinheigen, so we’ll I ry asking there after any merchants that might need protection from wolves. After all,

God never said anything about having a nice little sideline, eh?”

“Truly? Oh, thank you!”

Norah’s face lit up so brilliantly that Lawrence couldn’t help but be a bit smitten.

At such times, he was unable to muster his usual disdain for Weiz, the womanizing money changer in the port town of Pazzio.

But Norah was not a town girl nor was she an artisan girl or a shop girl. She had a unique freshness to her. Part of it was a serious demeanor likely inherited from nuns at the almshouse, who had a slightly negative way of thinking, as if trying to suppress their feelings.

Norah seemed to have taken that unpleasant tendency and replaced it with something else.

It didn’t take a womanizer to notice it. Lawrence was willing to bet that Enek, who even now wagged his tail at Norah, was a male.

“Settling in a town is the dream of all who live by travel, after all.”

These words were still true.

Norah nodded and raised her staff high.

Her bell rang out and Enek bolted, turning the sheep neatly along the road.

They began to talk about food for traveling, becoming excited at the prospect.

Stretching across the wide plain, the road ahead was clear and easy.

Shepherds’ nights come early. They decide where to camp well before the sun sets and are already curled up and sleeping by the time its red disc is low in the sky and the peasants are heading home from the fields. They then rise once the sun is down and the roads free of traffic, and they pass the night with their dogs, watching over the flock.

When dawn begins to break, shepherds sleep on alternate shifts with their dogs. There is little time for sleep in the life of a shepherd—one reason why the profession is such a hard one. The life of a merchant, who can count on a good night’s sleep, is easy by comparison.

“Hard work, this,” Lawrence muttered to no one in particular us he lay in the wagon bed, holding a piece of dried meat in his mouth. It wasn’t yet cold enough to bother with a fire.

He glanced frequently at Norah’s form, curled up like a stone by the roadside. He’d offered her the wagon bed, but she had begged off, saying this was how she always slept, before laying down in the meager padding afforded by the grass.

When he looked away from her, his eyes landed on Holo, who was at his right. Finally free from the prying eyes of humans, she had her tail out and had begun grooming it.

She never tires of that, thought Lawrence to himself as he looked at the busily grooming Holo, her profile the very image of seriousness. Suddenly she spoke, quietly.

“Daily care of one’s tail is important.”

For a moment Lawrence didn’t understand, but then he remembered what he’d just said a moment age to himself; she was merely responding. He chuckled soundlessly, and Holo glanced at him, a question in her eyes.

“Oh, you meant the child,” she said.

“Her name’s Norah Arendt,” explained Lawrence, amused at Holo’s derisive use of
child
to refer to the girl.

Holo looked past Lawrence at Norah, then back. Just as Lawrence opened his mouth, she snatched the jerky from it. Lawrence was stunned into silence for a moment. When he came to his senses and tried to take the meat back, he received such an evil eye from Holo that he withdrew his hand.

It wasn’t necessarily because of his teasing, but she was clearly in a foul temper.

She had gone out of her way to sit next to Lawrence as she groomed her tail, so presumably the object of her anger wasn’t him.

The source of her bad mood was obvious, really.

“Look, I
did
ask you,” said Lawrence.

It sounded like an excuse. Holo sniffed in irritation.

“Can’t even groom my tail in peace.”

“Why don’t you do it in the wagon bed?”

“Hmph. If I do it there..

“If you do it there, what?” Lawrence pressed the suddenly silent Holo, who sneered at him, the jerky still held between her teeth. Evidently she didn’t want to discuss the matter.

Lawrence wanted to know what she was going to say, but if he pushed any further, she would become genuinely angry.

He looked away from Holo, whose wounded-horse mood made her entirely too difficult to deal with, and put a leather flask filled with water to his lips.

Lawrence had just managed to stop thinking of her, and as the sun set, he considered starting a fire when Holo snapped at him. “You certainly seemed to enjoy your little chat with her,” she said.

“Hm? With Norah?”

Holo still had the stolen jerky in her mouth as she looked down at her tail—but her proud tail was obviously not what was on her mind.

“She wanted to talk. I didn’t have any reason to refuse, did I?”

Apparently the indulgence of a wisewolf was not so broad as to forgive pleasant conversation with a hated shepherd.

Holo had pretended to sleep the entire time. Norah had glanced at Holo and seemed inclined to engage the girl—who after all appeared to be roughly her age—in conversation bill had stopped at asking her name. If Holo had wanted to speak to Norah, there had been opportunities aplenty.

“Also, I haven’t spoken to a normal girl in some time,” said Lawrence jokingly as he looked back to Holo—and faltered at what he saw.

Holo’s expression had completely changed.

But it was nothing like the tears of jealousy he’d hoped to see.

She looked at him with nothing less than pity

“You couldn’t even tell that she hated speaking with you?”

“Huh...?” said Lawrence, casting a look back in Norah’s direction, but stopped himself after a moment. As a merchant, he couldn’t keep falling for the same trick twice.

Pretending he hadn’t looked back at all, he calmed himself and remembered the words of a minstrel he’d once heard.

“Well, if she fell in love with me at first sight, she’d miss the fun of falling for me over weeks and months, eh?” he said.

Lawrence hadn’t been convinced by this statement when he’d first heard it, but saying it now lent it a kind of conviction. Perhaps it really was more fun to fall in love gradually, rather than all at once.

But apparently, it was too much for Holo.

Her mouth dropped open in shock, and the piece of jerky fell

lo the floor.

“I’ve some wit myself, eh?” said Lawrence.

He’d said it to get a laugh out of Holo, but he was also half-serious.