Spice & Wolf II Page 11

  Finally, at a loss for words, Lawrence simply walked down the road.

  Holo laughed and followed him.

  “Come now, don’t be angry!”

  When he gave her a look that said “whose fault is that?” she just laughed at him harder.

  “I was happy, though, truly. Are you still angry?”

  Lawrence found his expression softened by the way Holo's swaying, chestnut-brown hair complemented her smile.

  He suddenly very much wanted to share a drink with his reliably silent horse—who was male.

  “Fine, I’m not mad. I’m not mad—okay?”

  Holo let slip a private smile as if enjoying her victory, exhaling before she spoke again.

  “It won’t do to get separated. May I take your hand?”

  To return to their lodgings, they would have to reenter the crowded streets, but even separated from Lawrence, Holo would have no trouble finding her way.

  So it was an obvious pretense.

  She was a canny old wolf, indeed. Lawrence relented. “Yes, we mustn’t get separated,” he agreed.

  Holo smiled, and her hand slipped into his.

  All Lawrence could do was tighten his grip ever so slightly on that hand.

  “So, what about my honeyed peach preserves?”

  The cathedral bells rang out to signal noontime—and the beginning of a new battle.

  The Remelio Company was a wholesaler that operated a shop in the Church city of Ruvinheigen.

  Lawrence, betting that he would be able to turn a profit, had half threatened the Latparron Company into letting him buy up more armor than he had assets to secure. In order to pay them back, he planned to sell to the Remelio Company, which Latparron often dealt with—and there would be no need to return all the way to Poroson to repay his debt. He’d just have them record it in their ledgers and that would be that.

  He entered a street one block removed from a crowded main road and arrived at the Remelio Company.

  It was the rear entrance, where a large area was reserved for loading and unloading goods.

  In a city the size of Ruvinheigen, unloading goods through a shop’s front entrance was considered uncivilized. If you tried it on a street with heavy traffic, you’d be laughed at, at best, and at worst, you would not be able to sell your goods at all. In fact, in many places, merchants weren’t even supposed to take their wagons on streets with heavy traffic.

  This was why, on the side streets running parallel to the main street, horses pulling wagons often outnumbered pedestrians. Lawrence knit his brows.

  The area around the Remelio Company seemed oddly quiet.

  “Is this company managed by monks?” Holo asked.

  “With monks, I’d at least expect to hear prayers. But I don’t hear a thing.”

  Holo, munching on a bread roll, lightly took off her kerchief and started to prick up her ears, but Lawrence had no time for such roundabout methods.

  He got off the driver’s seat, crossed the slope for wagons to pass through, and entered the loading dock.

  Buildings were densely packed, and maintaining a loading dock in Ruvinheigen—a city where people constantly joked that buildings were so close together that “poor people can sleep between them standing up”—was not easy. Yet the Remelio Company’s dock could accommodate at least three wagons with space for easily a hundred sacks of wheat. There was a table for conducting negotiations and an exchange stand in the corner, and the walls were decorated with parchment on which blessings for good commerce had been written.

  It was a magnificent dock.

  But livestock feed was scattered everywhere, along with pieces of horse dung and the remains of this and that cargo. Clearly, no one was tending to its upkeep, and there was not a dockmaster in sight.

  Business comes and goes, so it would not be outlandish to have times when there are simply no customers. But it was still common sense to keep your shop neat and tidy.

  It was as if the company had been destroyed. Lawrence withdrew and got back in the wagon’s seat. Holo appeared to have finished her bread and now rummaged around for her meat pie, which, if Lawrence remembered correctly, was supposed to be his.

  “If you eat that much, the sound of your chewing is going to wreck that hearing you’re so proud of.”

  “Nicely put—but for the sake of my reputation, I should tell you I can hear the sound of someone in the building.”

  Holo then bit down enthusiastically on the meat pie. She was clearly not going to have just a bit.

  “There’s someone there?”

  “Mm...mmph...mrgh. Seems dangerous, though. At the very least, it’s nothing pleasant.”

  Hearing this, the five wooden stories of the Remelio Company, given the state of its loading dock, started to seem downright sinister. Nothing was so cursed as a trading company that had gone bankrupt. When that happened, the local church usually found itself very busy conducting funerals for the newly deceased.

  “Well, there’s no point wandering around here. We can’t make money if we can’t sell the goods.”

  “A meat pie’s no good until you eat it,” agreed Holo.

  “I was saving that!”

  Lawrence shot Holo a glare before moving the wagon and got an equally sour look for his trouble.

  But perhaps eating the whole thing would have been a bit too much guilt—Holo split the pie and offered one half to Lawrence.

  It was about a quarter of what he had originally planned to eat, hut as complaining might have cost him what little was left, he •Hatched the piece up.

  Normally meat pies were made with ground beef that was approaching the expiration date set by the butchers guild, but here in Ruvinheigen, the meat pies were as noble as the city itself.

  The meat was entirely tasty, and Lawrence ate his pie in two bites as he drove the wagon up to the deserted loading dock.

  The horse’s hooves clopped against the ground, and it seemed as though their familiar sound reached the ears of the people within. Lawrence drove the wagon up, climbing down from the driver’s seat just as the dockmaster finally emerged.

  “I daresay there are a few hours left before the sabbath—so what is the matter?” said Lawrence.

  “Er, well, that is...did sir come to the city today...?” The middle-aged dockmaster slurred his words initially, but his fat ulties seemed to return to him as he appraised Lawrence.

  Those eyes were like a thief eyeing his mark’s coin purse, and Law-rence’s merchant instinct sensed danger. The dockmaster seemed ragged now that Lawrence got a look at him. This was a place of physical labor, so he would hardly be standing ramrod straight, but even so, Lawrence could tell if someone was filled with vigor.

  This was not good. This was clearly not good.

  “No, I came a few days ago. You know how it goes. Well, you seem busy, so I’ll come by later. I’m in no special hurry”

  Lawrence avoided making eye contact, and without waiting for the dockmaster’s reply, he turned back to the wagon.

  Holo seemed to sense something off as well. She looked to Lawrence questioningly but soon nodded. Despite her appearance as a normal town girl, her wits were extraordinary. She didn’t boast of being a wisewolf for nothing.

  But the dockmaster did not give up so easily.

  “Well, now, do wait just a moment, sir. I can tell sir is a trader of some repute. It would be rude of me to let sir leave empty-handed."

  If Lawrence just refused the man, there was no telling how his reputation might spread around the city.

  But the merchant blood fairly frothed in his veins.

  Run, it said. This is dangerous.

  “Not at all,” replied Lawrence. “I’m a merchant with little besides complaints to sell.”

  It was only a third-rate merchant who was so clumsily self-effacing when selling. Humility was a virtue for men of the cloth, but for traders, it was like sticking one’s head in a noose.

  But Lawrence had judged that escape was the best plan
. Holo’s frozen posture reinforced this decision.

  “Sir shouldn’t sell himself so cheaply! Even a blind beggar could tell sir is a man of stature!”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” said Lawrence, sitting in the wagon seat and grabbing the reins. The dockmaster seemed to be able to tell that it was time to relent. He had been leaning forward so earnestly that he almost stumbled, but now he righted himself.

  It seemed like Lawrence was off the hook, so he spoke briefly to the dockmaster. “Well, then, I’ll take my leave...”

  “Yes...most unfortunate. I await sir’s return,” said the dock-master with an ingratiating smile. Lawrence took that as his cue to exit, so he started to move the wagon.

  The dockmaster, however, took advantage of this small gap in Lawrence’s defense. “I believe I forgot to ask sir’s name,” he said. “Lawrence. From the Rowen Trade Guild.”

  Lawrence gave his name without thinking, then suddenly, he wondered if giving his name to someone he didn’t know, in a situation he didn’t understand, was a mistake—but he could think of no reason why it would matter.

  Most likely, the dockmaster simply hadn’t known what Lawrence had come to this place to do.

  However—

  “Lawrence, you say. Indeed. From the Latparron Company.”

  The dockmaster grinned unpleasantly.

  The jolt that ran through Lawrence’s spine was impossible to describe.

  There was no reason he could think of for the dockmaster to know his name.

  “You were bringing some armor to our company, yes?”

  Lawrence was suddenly nauseated as he sensed he had fallen into some kind of trap. His instinct screamed it at him.

  He looked slowly over to the dockmaster.

  It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be.

  “Actually, last night a messenger on a fast horse came to us. The Latparron Company has had their obligations assigned to our company. So, you see, you have a debt to us, Mr. Lawrence.”

  With those words, everything changed.

  Normally, obligation transfers did not take place over messenger horse. But the abnormality made the transfer all the more believable—for example, if two companies were engaging in fraud.

  If Lawrence hadn’t been sitting in the wagon, he would have collapsed.

  Even sitting, he lurched over from the force of the words.

  Holo, surprised, caught Lawrence as he toppled.

  “What is wrong?” she asked.

  He didn’t want to consider it.

  The dockmaster answered for him.

  “The merchant beside you has failed at business—just like us." His happiness was clearly no more than schadenfreude.

  “What?” asked Holo.

  Lawrence wished desperately for this all to be a dream.

  “The price of armor must have plunged some time ago. The old fox at Latparron shifted his dead stock onto us.”

  The future was dark.

  “We’ve been had...”

  Lawrence’s hoarse voice was all that tied him to reality.

  Chapter 4

  "We both live by such agreements. You understand, right?”

  These were the words every merchant feared.

  And every merchant would lament his fate upon such a collapse.

  “Of course I do. I’m a merchant, after all.” It was all Lawrence could do to say even that much.

  “It’s simple. Of the exactly one hundred lumione worth of armor you bought from the Latparron Company, you will need to remit to us the amount recorded in the obligation deed, to wit—forty-seven and three-quarters lumione. You are aware of what this amounts to, correct?”

  Remelio looked as stricken as Lawrence felt.

  The man’s eyes and cheeks were sunken, his shirt hadn’t been changed in several days, and his eyes glittered strangely. He was not a big man to begin with, but Remelio’s weary, thin features made him look like a wounded bear cub.

  He didn’t just seem wounded—he was wounded, nearly fatally.

  Hans Remelio, the master of the Remelio Company, unconsciously ran his hand through his slightly graying hair as he continued to press

  Lawrence.

  “We’d like you to settle your debt immediately Otherwise..."

  Lawrence thought about how much he would rather be threatened at knifepoint than hear this.

  “...We’ll have to demand that the Rowen Trade Guild assume the debt in your place.”

  It was the threat every merchant who was attached to a trading house feared.

  The guild was a merchant’s second home, but it could turn into an angry debt collector in the blink of an eye.

  In that moment, merchants who go about their work, prepared to half abandon their homes, have nowhere to go for respite.

  “Well, the term of the loan was through the day after tomorrow, so give me two days. I’ll pay back the forty-seven and three quarters lumione by then,” said Lawrence.

  It was not an amount he could hope to collect in two days. Even if he were to call in all the credit from every conceivable source he had, the money wouldn’t amount to half of what he owed.

  A person could live for three months on a single lumione. Even a child knew that forty-seven lumione was a huge amount of money

  As did the bearlike master of the company, Remelio.

  Ruin.

  The word seemed to hang before Lawrence’s eyes.

  “What do you wish to do with the armor you brought, Mr. Lawrence? It will only sell for a pittance if it even sells at all regardless of where you go.”

  Remelio’s thin, derisive smile was not meant to mock Lawrence.

  After all, Remelio himself had been brought to the edge of ruin by the same plunge in armor prices that now threatened Lawrence.

  Ruvinheigen served as a supply depot for knights, mercenaries, and missionaries heading north to suppress the pagans. Thus armor and scriptures were reliable sources of profit.

  Every winter there was a major campaign. The march was timed to coincide with the birthday of Saint Ruvinheigen, and in order to equip the

  mercenaries and knight brigades that amassed from surrounding nations, goods like armor, scriptures, rations, cold-weather clothes, horses, and medicine all flew off the shelves.

  This year the march had been hastily canceled. There was political unrest in the nation that stretched out between the pagan territories and the

  Ruvinheigen-controlled land where the battles normally occurred, and that nation’s disposition toward Ruvinheigen had suddenly soured. If it had been a normal nation that would have been one thing, but this particular nation bordered the pagan lands, and even within its borders, there were here and there pagan villages. One of the closest was Lamtra. Those who had to fight the pagans could cross into the other nation, but if they marched through it like they would any other year, there was no telling when the pagans, who silently watched them, might attack. The archbishop that controlled the grand diocese was in attendance, as were members of the imperial family from the south. They could not let the unthinkable happen.

  Thus, the campaign was canceled.

  As to how stricken the city’s merchants were because of this decision, one had to look no further than the predicament of the Remelio Company, which had operated in Ruvinheigen for many years. Even so, Lawrence should have realized something was awry while he was traveling—if the mercenaries that fought in the battlegrounds of the north were wandering around Ruvinheigen, there had clearly been some kind of change in the battlefield.

  What’s more, given the drop in armor prices and the way Lawrence had learned of it, he had to assume that when he’d gotten the armor in Poroson, the master of the Latparron Company had already known.

  In other words, when he’d thought he was taking advantage of a weakness in order to force favorable terms for himself, he had actually been used.

  Having sold devalued armor to Lawrence at such a price, the Latparron Company master was probably s
till laughing to himself. And because the price of armor had dropped so much, he knew that it would be either impossible for Lawrence to pay him back or would take a significant effort.

  Thus, he had sold the obligation to the long-standing Remelio Company, perhaps judging that it would salvage his position.

  In the middle of all of this, Lawrence had drawn the worst lot.

  It was a failure that made Lawrence want to tear his own limbs off.

  And yet, Lawrence found some strength.

  “I’ll sell it high somewhere. You’ll see. We’ll settle the debt in two days. Will that do?”

  “Yes, we’ll be waiting.”

  You could have put out a fire with the cold sweat that both men were bathed in, but somehow they managed to preserve the decency of a business negotiation.

  They were both people, after all.

  However, they were also both merchants.

  Lawrence stood, and Remelio gave him some parting words.

  “I should say,” he began, “that our company’s stalls are near I hr city gates. If you plan to use them, do let us know.”

  In other words, don’t try to run away.

  “I expect I’ll be busy with negotiations, so although I appreciate your informing me, I doubt I will use them.” If Holo had been there, Lawrence would have had to laugh at the battle of wills, but as both he and Remelio were on edge, he had to be honest.

  Bankruptcy meant death in society. It would be better to be a beggar, shivering from cold and hunger. If creditors caught up with you, they would sell off everything you owned. Even your hair would be cut off and sold for wigs—and if you had good teeth, they would be pulled and used for someone’s dentures. Your very freedom could be sold, and you could be made to toil as a slave in a mine or aboard a ship. And even that wasn’t the worst that could happen. If a nobleman or wealthy person demanded it, you might even pay with your very life—but you would have no grave, and none would mourn your passing.

  That was the inevitable reality of bankruptcy.

  “I’ll take my leave, then,” said Lawrence.

  “We look forward to seeing you in two days. May God’s protection go with you.”

  The weak devour the still weaker; it was the way of the world.