Side Colors Page 13

  “Yes?” The shopkeeper looked over his shoulder, both hands holding a thin cloak, then followed Lawrence’s pointing finger to its target.

  And there it was.

  A soft brown leather cape.

  “Indeed. Now that my eye’s upon it, you’re quite right.”

  It had been mostly buried beneath the pile, but as the shopkeeper carefully extracted the cape, it was indeed just what Lawrence thought it might be.

  “This was a very fine piece once worn by a certain nobleman.”

  Lawrence ignored the shopkeeper’s immediate explanation—there was no telling whether it was truth or lies—and looked at Holo, who seemed not displeased.

  “The leather’s beautifully tanned, you see, here, and the edges are carefully sewn without a single rip. Notice also this walnut button. You fix it about your shoulders like this—like so—there. If she wears it along with one of the special kerchiefs the nobleman had made for his house staff, she’ll be every bit the charming town lass.”

  Lawrence accepted the exaggerated description along with the cape and kerchief, and after a quick look, he handed them to Holo.

  Holo sniffed briefly. “Rabbit, eh?” she murmured.

  “Does it make you want to eat rabbit?” asked Lawrence, at which Holo smiled voicelessly and looked up.

  “This will do.”

  “You heard the lady. How much, my good man?”

  “Thank you for your business. For the two of them, hmm, perhaps ten trenni? No—make it nine.”

  It was a reasonably good price—surely an investment in having a good relationship with Lawrence.

  But there was certainly room to haggle, Lawrence thought, and made a sour face, which made the shopkeeper continue.

  “Understood. Then as an exception for this lovely young lady, eight pieces.”

  Having gotten it to that point, Lawrence couldn’t help but smile and was ready to buy—but just before he opened his mouth, Holo smoothly interrupted.

  “In that case, out of consideration for my lovely self putting these on and modeling them, how about seven?”

  The shopkeeper froze as though having forgotten to breathe, but at Holo’s head-cocked smile, he returned to his senses and cleared his throat loudly.

  It was not hard to imagine that he had a daughter that looked about Holo’s age.

  “Very well. I shall let them go for seven.”

  “Thank you!” said Holo, squeezing the cape and kerchief to her breast and smiling, which elicited another loud throat clearing from the shopkeeper.

  Next to her, Lawrence could only smile ruefully at that negotiation ability, far better than what he’d been able to cultivate in his seven years of trade.

  As it turned out, when Holo changed clothes, she became a town girl so fetching that ten out of ten people would turn and look at her as they walked past.

  Adroitly putting the kerchief on over her head to hide her ears—right in front of the shopkeeper, to Lawrence’s chagrin—Holo then unbuttoned the robe she wore and let it slide down, wearing it around her waist as a skirt. Then she put the cape over her shoulders and was done.

  To Lawrence, who was fully aware of her nonhuman ears and tail, it seemed she changed clothes so easily it might as well have been magic.

  The shopkeeper’s reputation rose, and Holo was delighted.

  A good while after they’d put the shop behind them, Holo finally spoke up.

  “Were the clothes very expensive?”

  “Not really. They’re very good for seven silver pieces.”

  He spoke honesty, but walking to his left, Holo did not seem particularly proud.

  Rebalancing the bundle of clothes that he carried over his right shoulder, Lawrence smiled and added, “Do you think you could’ve haggled him down further?”

  But Holo did not smile, instead shaking her head slowly before answering in a low voice. “If it had been clothes for you to wear, you would’ve paid a tenth of that, would you not?”

  “Yes,” Lawrence agreed. “But I was sure it was going to be more than that, so don’t trouble yourself over it.”

  Holo nodded slightly, but her expression did not clear.

  “If you’ll go easy on the wine at the tavern later, you can handily make up seven silver pieces’ worth.”

  “I hardly drink that much.” She finally smiled.

  “Still, you drive a hard, hard bargain.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not even the canniest merchant can compare, can they?”

  “Hmph. Males are all of them idiots,” said Holo with her usual wicked smile, continuing once Lawrence sighed heavily. “What will you do with your load there? Are you carrying it straight to the tavern?”

  “This? No, I’m not.”

  At this, Holo made a perplexed face. “If you’re returning to the inn, isn’t it that way?”

  “I’m not leaving it at the inn, either.”

  “Hrm?”

  “I’m going to sell it to a different clothier. We’ll be able to buy up cold-weather gear once we’re a bit farther north.”

  It was a perfectly honest answer, but Holo stood stunned, as though he’d said something truly outrageous. “You’re…selling them?”

  “Yes. There’s no point in carrying them around when we’re not going to use them.”

  “Mm…I suppose that is true…but will you be able to sell them dear?”

  “I wonder. I doubt it will be too bad, but we’ll probably take a small loss.”

  There was something funny about Holo’s increasingly confused face. “You’re going to sell them…even…at a loss?”

  “Don’t get it, eh?”

  “Wait. I’m thinking.”

  Lawrence smiled at the suddenly obstinate Holo and looked up at the autumn sky.

  The sky was always the same pale blue, but at the moment it seemed somehow clearer and wider than usual.

  “Mmm…”

  “Shall I tell you the trick?” he said, returning his gaze from the familiar sky and seeing his new companion grumbling in frustration. “It’s no great thing—and in the end, it’s you who’s the impressive one.”

  “Huh…?” said Holo, raising one eyebrow. Lawrence took that as capitulation and let her in on the trick.

  “This bundle is two silver pieces’ worth of clothing. So let’s say I take it to a different clothier and sell it for half that. That’s a loss of one silver piece.”

  “Aye.”

  “But let’s turn our thinking to something else. Anyone can tell the robe you’re wearing is a high-quality item. We can even say that someone wearing such a robe would never go to that kind of shop. So when they see you with me, they’re going to want to establish a good relationship with me. So what does that shop do?”

  Holo answered immediately. “Sell cheaply.”

  “Right. So what does that imply?”

  Holo the self-proclaimed wisewolf’s gaze unfocused for a moment.

  Lawrence smiled and continued. “When I bought the bundle from that shop, he lowered the price a bit. When I bought the fine clothes for you, he lowered it quite a bit. By showing me generosity, he hopes I’ll come shop there again later. After all, I bought up a bundle of rags for two silver pieces. But there’s a big gap in price between the two items. So what does that lead to?”

  If Holo was really so clever, she’d soon come to the correct answer.

  A few moments later, Lawrence’s prediction proved correct. “So,” she said, “looking at the difference between the loss you take when you sell the bundle and the discount the shopkeeper gave you because you bought it, even if you take a loss on the bundle, you still come out ahead in total—is that it?”

  He patted her on the head with his left hand as if to say, “Well done!”—at which she hit him hard, and he groaned in pain.

  “Hmph. ’Tis a roundabout way of doing things, I’ll say that.”

  “It’s called business sense. But your techniques are far stronger, there’s no doubt.�
� Lawrence grinned self-deprecatingly, which Holo had to smile at.

  “But of course. Your flimsy ideas are no match for my scheming.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Oh ho. You think you can best me?” Holo narrowed her eyes, smiling seductively.

  The smile suited her—women did not play fair.

  Of course, the most unfair part of all was that Holo was perfectly aware of that.

  “Well, if you’ve such confidence, why not try your luck in the tavern later?”

  Holo waved her hand lightly, which made Lawrence’s words stick in his throat.

  He’d forgotten about it until just now—Weiz would also be at the tavern.

  “Make sure you buy me for a high price, aye?” said Holo, which Lawrence could not remain silent about.

  “Oh, I’ll buy you, all right—but I’m paying in apples.”

  Taken by surprise, Holo’s eyes widened a bit, and then with a frustrated smile, she drew nearer to Lawrence. “You’re quite harsh yourself sometimes.”

  “Sweeter when cooked, though.”

  Holo laughed silently, then very gently took Lawrence’s left hand, as though it were fragile. “Too sweet for me to eat.”

  “And what about you?” asked Lawrence, squeezing her hand as much as he could without aggravating his wound.

  “Take a bite and see, if you dare.”

  Lawrence shrugged helplessly and looked up at the expanse of the sky above him, which was a clear, clear blue.

  End.

  WOLF AND AMBER MELANCHOLY

  Strange, she thought—the alcohol certainly was working.

  It was said the wisewolf could drink a lake dry, but to think she’d be like this after a single cup of this wheat-smelling liquid—And no sooner did the thought occur to her than she was halfway through her second, her face flushed.

  And not only was the drink having a surprising effect on her, but also she didn’t seem to be one bit pleased about it. Her nose twitched—was the drink not to her liking? She wasn’t sure.

  Her vision swayed, and she looked hazily over the many dishes on the table, eyelids heavy. Right before her there was an oil-drizzled pork shoulder coated in crushed rock salt, but somehow she had no appetite at all.

  No, wait—how much had she already eaten? she wondered.

  Having gotten to this point, she was starting to realize that she might actually be feeling quite poorly, which if true, meant that she couldn’t very well keep this up.

  Had this been just any meal, that would have been one thing—she could’ve claimed she felt bad, and her companion would have nursed her back to health so thoroughly it would have been embarrassing.

  But at the moment, she and her companion were not the only ones sitting at the small round table.

  Her traveling companion’s foolishness had gotten them into serious trouble, but having negotiated it safely, they were now having a bit of a celebration.

  And she was certainly not going to be responsible for ruining such an opportunity. Celebrations, no matter how meager they might be, were very important.

  However, this was not the only reason she couldn’t afford to collapse here.

  No, the biggest reason could surely be found before her very eyes, sitting right at the table.

  The flaxen-haired, underfed shepherdess.

  Right in front of that, she could hardly afford to look uncouth.

  “Still, I never knew sheep could find rock salt,” her companion said, sounding very interested as he continued a conversation about shepherds.

  While the shepherdess was somewhere in her midteens, her companion was into his twenties. While a wisewolf might not know everything about the human world, she knew enough to tell that as they chatted intimately over the table, they could hardly fail to look like a mated pair.

  “It’s because they love the saltiness for some reason. If you rub salt onto a rock, they’ll lick it for ages.”

  “Oh, so that’s true? I once heard about a far-off town where they use sheep like that as a form of torture—very strange. I didn’t believe it, honestly.”

  “They use…sheep?”

  The shepherd girl—Norah or some such was her name—had eyes filled with curiosity. The girl’s eyes were so gentle and obedient that just looking at them made her want to eat her up.

  The sheep-like shepherdess reached out toward a large chunk of beef sitting in the middle of the table. For a while now, all the dishes they’d ordered had been either beef, pork, or fish, with no mutton.

  Perhaps this was out of consideration for the shepherdess who was dining with them, but in any case, nobody had asked her.

  And of course, to selfishly insist that she’d wanted to have mutton would have been a mark upon her honor as a wisewolf.

  Anyway, that didn’t matter. It was trivial.

  What mattered was that her companion hadn’t noticed her poor state at all and was busy gallantly carving a thin slice of beef from the roast and carefully laying it on a plate for the shepherdess.

  Irritated, her hand automatically brought her cup to her lips, though the drink had long since lost its flavor. It only served to heat her chest.

  Inside her head, a proud wolf—her other self—rolled its eyes at her.

  But there was nothing for it. As her mood and condition were both deteriorating, there was a loathed shepherd right in front of her, and to top it all off, she was exactly the kind of meek, pathetic little girl her companion seemed so fond of.

  It was the height of male idiocy to prefer such weak girls, but she knew all too well that if she said so out loud, she would be making an utter fool of herself.

  She was backed into a corner.

  Fighting a battle one was unsuited to was exhausting.

  “I’ve forgotten what the name of the town was, but what they’d do was they’d have sheep lick your feet as a kind of torture.”

  “Wha—? Sheep would—”

  Just when she thought the meek little shepherdess would probably politely sandwich the beef slice between some bread, the girl bit right into it.

  But her mouth was small so it was a hesitant little bite, and she couldn’t get all the way through it.

  The girl should’ve opened her mouth wider and really ripped into the meat, she wanted to say, but then she saw her companion’s face slacken pathetically.

  She tucked that away in her memory, along with her anger—that was apparently the way to act when in human form.

  “That’s right. They have the sheep lick your feet, and apparently they put salt on them. Criminals laugh at first, which is bad enough. But eventually the licking starts to become agony…”

  It might have been the liquor, but watching him exaggerate so was delicious.

  Perhaps over the course of his journeys, he’d become used to telling stories like this.

  But he’d never once told one to her.

  The pain of an encroaching headache began to creep into her temples.

  “I suppose I’ve had trouble with the sheep trying to lick my fingers after I’ve eaten jerky. They’re well behaved, but they don’t have any restraint, which is a bit scary.”

  “I imagine your faithful knight is more reasonable on that count.”

  Her wolf ears pricked up, but her companion surely didn’t notice.

  The shepherdess’s “knight”—he meant her irritating sheepdog.

  “You mean Enek? Well…Enek is Enek, and sometimes he tries a little too hard or is rather…unaccommodating…,” said Norah when a bark of protest came up from her feet.

  He’d been receiving crusts of bread and scraps of meat.

  She was well aware that he was looking at her from under the table.

  Despite being a mere dog, he’d gone into full alert in the face of a pure wolf.

  “Which means that to keep both dog and sheep in line, you must be quite skilled indeed.”

  The shepherdess widened her eyes in surprise, then flushed red—undoubtedly not from the liquor. />
  Beneath her robe, the wisewolf’s tail fluffed up.

  Beneath the table, she could hear the dog’s panting as though it were laughing at her.

  Her vision swam, clearly out of anger.

  “By the way, Miss Norah, will you be pursuing your dream now?”

  Her dream.

  She started at the word, and for the first time realized that she was becoming drowsy.

  Perhaps this entire infuriating conversation had been a dream, she thought, but hurriedly dismissed the notion.

  She now felt genuinely unwell.

  There was nothing left to do except try and somehow get to the inn undetected.

  This was enemy territory.

  The methods she would otherwise use were likely to backfire here.

  If she were to mar the hard-won celebration by saying she felt sick, that would be more than enough to ruin the evening. And the only one to blame for that was her.

  But she did have her own territory—their small room in the inn.

  If she admitted she felt sick there, that would be tantamount to a successful hunt.

  She thought of it like being hidden in a thicket while watching a rabbit come into view, totally unaware of her presence.

  Which meant she couldn’t afford to disgrace herself. With effort, she went to take a piece of meat from the table, but even lifting her arm was bothersome, and she was unable to reach the plate.

  “What, drunk already?”

  She didn’t have to look at his face to know his rueful smile.

  Her body might have been afflicted, but her lovely ears still worked perfectly.

  She knew without using her eyes exactly how her traveling companion looked as he ate.

  So as said companion reached out to take the slice of meat for her and looked at her as she failed to thank him, she knew everything about his expression and posture and hated him for it.

  She knew so well that she could easily imagine how she looked to him and how he felt about her.

  But she didn’t care about any of that anymore.

  Now she wanted only one thing.

  “Hey, you don’t look so well—”

  She wanted to lie down.

  “Holo!”

  Her traveling companion’s words were the last thing she heard before her memory cut off.