Spice & Wolf III (14 page)

Holo glared at him but turned away, doubly annoyed upon seeing that Lawrence glared right back at her.

“I trust you didn’t show him your ears and tail at least?”

“You needn’t worry I am not quite that foolish.”

Based on her state the previous night, Lawrence had not thought to worry about such a possibility, but now he wasn’t so sure.

“I suppose you were asked what sort of relationship you have with me.”

“What I would like to know is precisely why you’re asking.”

“If our stories do not match, people will begin to suspect things.”

“Mm. Right you are. Yes, I was quite thoroughly questioned. I am a traveling nun and you saved me from being sold off by evil men is what I told him.”

Aside from the part about Holo being a nun, that was more or less consistent with the truth.

“But once you saved me, I fell deeply into your debt, and as I cannot hope to repay it, I am gradually working it off by praying for your safety as we travel. Oh, alas and alack, woe is me! My voice was desperately sad as I told the tale. What do you think, eh? It has the ring of truth!”

Although it irked Lawrence that he seemed to be the villain of the story, it did seem convincing.

“As soon as I told the tale, he bought me the muffler,” said the fake traveling nun with a frankly devilish smile.

“I suppose that will do. But what of this die? What made him buy you something like this?”

Lawrence had been unable to discern the color of the thing in the dim moonlight, but he could now tell that the cube of metal, so perfect it seemed the work of a master smith, had a distinctly yellow tint, like unpolished gold.

Lawrence had seen this kind of gold like mineral before.

It was not the work of any human but entirely natural.

“Oh, that? The fortune-teller was using it. They say it’s a die that can divine the future. It has a lovely shape, has it not? I can scarcely fathom how it was made. There’s no doubt it’ll sell for some fine coin.”

“You fool. Do you actually think you can sell this?” said Lawrence, using the same tone she often rebuked him with. Holo’s ears pricked up at the sudden harshness.

“This is no die. This is a mineral called pyrite. And no man made it.”

His information was obviously unexpected. Holo regarded him dubiously, but Lawrence ignored this, plucking the yellowish crystalline cube off the desk and tossing it at Holo.

“I suppose the wisewolf that guarantees the harvest would know little of rocks. That die-shaped stone was mined just as you see it.”

Holo smiled uncertainly, clearly disbelieving him, as she toyed with the pyrite.

“You should be able to tell that I’m not lying.”

Holo murmured quietly and held the pyrite up between her lingers.

“It’s not good for much, but it’s often sold as a souvenir. And since it looks like gold, sometimes it’s used by swindlers. Was anybody else buying it?”

“Oh, indeed. Many. The fortune-teller had great skill, enough to impress even me. He claimed that with dice like his, anyone could road the fates, so all that were gathered wanted the pyrite dice he was selling. He made up all manner of reasons why they were desirable.”

“You mean the dice?”

“Indeed. Even the ones less perfect in shape than this he claimed would ward away sickness or evil.”

Lawrence felt a certain professional respect for anyone who could invent such a lucrative business. Festivals and fairs often sparked strange fads.

The charged atmosphere made for great business, but pyrite—that was quite an angle, indeed.

“Amati bid down the price on that die, too.”

This genuinely surprised Lawrence. “He bid it down?”

“The crowd had gotten quite enthusiastic. I’d not seen that sort of competition before—it was something to see, indeed. I expect

I could sell the die quite dear now.”

Lawrence thought of Batos, who traveled the Hyoram regions. Did Batos know of this? If he had pyrite on hand or connections to gain it, there might be excellent business to be had here.

Lawrence had gotten that far in his train of thought when there was a knock at the door.

“Hm?” For a moment, he considered the possibility that Amati had spotted Holo’s ears and tail, but then he decided that the perceptive Holo would have noticed if that were the case.

He looked from the door to Holo and saw that she drew the bedclothes up over herself. Evidently the visitor at the door was not of the dangerous sort they had encountered in Pazzio.

Lawrence walked over to the door and opened it.

On the other side was Mark’s young apprentice.

“I apologize for calling so early in the morning. I have a message from my master.”

It was hardly “early in the morning,” and Lawrence couldn’t imagine what was so pressing that it would inspire Mark to send his apprentice on an errand just when the market would be opening.

He wondered if Mark had perhaps fallen gravely ill, but no—were that the case, the boy would not claim to have a message from his master.

Holo shifted underneath the blankets, popping her head out.

The boy noticed and glanced her way. Seeing a girl on a bed covered from the neck down in blankets was evidently more than he had bargained for. He turned away, red faced.

“So what was the message?”

“Oh, er, yes. He said you needed to know right away, so I ran over immediately. Actually—”

The shocking news had Lawrence running through the streets of Kumersun a moment later.

Chapter 3

The town of Kumersun rose early.

Lawrence crossed the broad north-south avenue and headed west toward the trading company. Here and there on the way, he .potted many people erecting what looked like signposts.

Lawrence glanced at them as he ran with Marks apprentice. They seemed to indeed be signposts of some kind, but he could not tell what was written on them. It was a script he had never seen before, and the signs were decorated with flowers, turnips, or bundles of hay.

Undoubtedly they were used in the Laddora festival, which began today, but Lawrence had no time to investigate.

The boy was fleet of foot and showed no signs of tiring, perhaps from being worked so hard day in and day out by Mark. Lawrence had a fair amount of confidence in his own stamina but was hard-pressed to keep up. It was just as he was running short of breath that they arrived at the trading company.

The normally forbidding, tightly closed doors of the company were thrown open. A handful of merchants stood at the entrance, wine cups already in hand despite the early hour.

Their attention had been directed into the building, but upon noticing Lawrence’s arrival, they beckoned him in with gusto.

“Hey! It's the man himself! Haschmidt the Knight has arrived!”

Hearing the name Haschmidt, Lawrence now knew for a certainty that Mark’s apprentice had been neither jesting nor lying.

There was a romantic tale from the country of Eleas, a passionate nation of seas and vineyards.

The protagonist was Hendt La Haschmidt, a knight of the royal court.

However, Lawrence was far from happy to be called a knight.

Haschmidt the Knight fought bravely for Ilesa, the princess he loved. He challenged Prince Philip the Third to a duel for the right to her hand and died a tragic death.

Lawrence ascended the stone steps, pushing through the jeering merchants into the trading company.

Their gazes pierced him, spearlike, as though he was a criminal about to be crucified.

There at the back of the room, at the counter behind which sat the master of the firm, was his Prince Philip the Third.

“I say again!” cried a reedy, boyish voice that echoed through the lobby.

It was Amati—not wearing the standard oiled-leather coat of the fishmonger, but rather an aristocratic formal robe. He looked every inch the young son of a nobleman.

He leveled his gaze directly at Lawrence as the entire assemblage of merchants held their breath.

Right then and there, Amati held up a dagger and a sheet of parchment and made his declaration.

“I will pay the debt that now weighs upon the slender shoulders of this traveling nun—and when this goddess of loveliness does regain her freedom, I swear by Saint Lambardos, who watches over this Rowen Trade Guild, that Holo the nun will have my undying love!"

A commotion arose in the hall, laughter mixing with cries of admiration to create a strangely feverish atmosphere.

Amati ignored the noise. He lowered his hands and spun the dagger around, gripping it by the blade and holding the hilt out to Lawrence.

“Miss Holo has told me of her misfortune and ill treatment. I thus propose to use my fortune and position as a free man to regain for her the feathers of freedom, and furthermore to wed her.”

Lawrence instantly recalled Mark’s words the previous day.

Men his age will do anything to gain the object of their obsession.

He regarded the hilt thrust at him with a bitter gaze and then looked at the parchment.

Amati was just far enough away that Lawrence could not make the writing out, but it surely reiterated what the boy had just said in more concrete terms. The red seal at the bottom left of the sheet was probably not wax, but blood.

In regions without a public witness, or when one needed a contract with far more weight than a public witness could provide, there was contract law. The party who put their blood seal upon the contract would give the knife they used to the opposite party and swear an oath in God’s name.

If the first party failed to fulfill the contract, they would be hound to kill the opposing party with that knife or else turn it to their own throat.

As soon as Lawrence took the knife offered to him by Amati, the contract would be sealed.

Lawrence did not move. He’d had not the slightest inkling that Amati’s infatuation would come to this.

“Mr. Lawrence.” The words were as piercing as Amati’s gaze.