Spring Log IV Page 14

  Their letters said that while there were ups and downs, their journey was generally going well. Though he wondered if there might be something they were not telling him, he sort of felt bad about pressing the manager, who was watching Lawrence’s every move and showing him the highest degree of respect.

  There was that, so he just left it at checking in on a few clerical things before asking to stay in the trading house until their departure.

  After being given the best room in the building in an instant, Lawrence put his luggage away and then asked the manager one last question.

  Departing based on what he heard, Lawrence made his way to one of the livelier ports in the Atiph harbor town, his destination being a place with the most exciting reputation even within that port.

  There were various kinds of shops, companies, and even a line of artisan workshops, but on a corner, there was a building with a metal sign in the shape of a herring. At a glance, it looked like a tavern that specialized in seafood, but it was not.

  The moment Lawrence opened the door, the loud voices and heat practically slapped him in the face.

  “Ooooh! Look! The Gabon Company sure claimed a ton!”

  “Anyone, anyone?! Anyone claiming anything?!”

  “What, did the Gabon Company catch something?!”

  “Nah, it’s still before the harvest festival; no way I’ll know what the sea’ll be like next spring. How should I know what the fish in the whimsical southern seas are supposed to be like?!”

  “Tips, anyone for tips?! Who wants some tips straight from the northern sea?!”

  The stiflingly hot air was coming from the excitement of the people packed in there, the strong-looking alcohol in their hands, and the mountains of fried fish. And for some reason, smoked herring hung from the ceiling, making the air even more potent than it needed to be.

  It seemed like a gathering place for gamblers, yet everyone there was dressed in fine clothes.

  But the refinement of an art dealer who would offer a painting to the Church was nowhere to be seen; they were money mad, those who would start scraping off the edges of their silver if they had a free moment.

  “Well, you’re not a face we see around here,” a voice called out to him as he stood still in the doorway. The man had quills stuck behind both of his ears, and he had a thick accounts book in his hand. It was filled with numbers and abbreviations of names. “If you thought this place was a tavern, then go home.”

  The wharves were a gathering place for the rough sort, and everyone was quick to start a fight.

  Despite how overwhelmed Lawrence was, he quickly pulled himself together.

  “The Debau Company lent me participation rights.”

  “Hmm?”

  The bearded man, his alcohol-flushed face shining with grease, grabbed the parchment that Lawrence produced.

  Then, once he scanned it, he forced his coarseness back with a somehow awed smile.

  “A’riiight, starting today, you’re one of our crew. But I can’t guarantee if you’ll be heading to heaven or hell!”

  The man roared with laughter and smacked Lawrence’s shoulders painfully, then took one of the quills from behind his ear.

  “And you came at a good time! This year’s trade only started a few days ago, so there’s no telling where you’ll be headed. It’s the most interesting time of the year! So what’ll it be? The price list’s over there!”

  There was a massive board on the wall that stretched from floor to ceiling, and written on it were countless numbers and rather adorable drawings of fish. Errand boys clung to the ladder that leaned beside the board, busily changing the numbers. This was a sight that could be seen sometimes at auctions in markets, though this was a different kind.

  But even Lawrence, who had pride as an ex-merchant that he had traveled the world and dealt with almost every kind of good, had only ever heard of the merchandise handled here in rumors.

  “Come and claim, come and claim! Smile for spring or cry for spring! It’s all the will of our mother, the sea!”

  That provocative line only made the air in there hotter.

  The place that Lawrence visited was not an exchange for herring but an exchange for herring eggs.

  Herring could be caught in large quantities. Huge, massive bunches of them. They had to be widely available in order for them to be cheap even in the deepest mountain ranges.

  Even though everyone has tasted the fish at least once, there was a part of it that many had actually never tasted.

  And that was their eggs.

  “Last year was a bad catch, the year before last was a good catch, and the year before that was also a good catch, and before that for five years were all fantastic catches. So that means this year will, at worst, be a good catch, and depending, it might even be an unprecedented fantastic catch.”

  “You idiot, good and bad catches for herring mean nothing. It just depends on how many eggs are in the herring’s stomachs in the end, right? The herring are meatier and have fantastic builds this year in that respect. They’ll probably be so filled with eggs by the time winter ends, they’ll be bursting with ’em!”

  “Hey, are you a kid who’s just trading for the first time? This is a trade that exists because there are buyers and sellers. We could talk about herring all day, but we won’t know how much they’ll cost without the crucial buyers. The key is in the sardines, as they say.”

  “You saying you’ve got info on the south?”

  “Heh-heh-heh, and what if I do?”

  “Damn it, he knows something!”

  Conversations like that ceaselessly continued at every table. They spoke about information on herring, rumors about the south, and especially the summer weather and the harvest of something called sardines.

  People did not eat herring eggs; they were instead used as bait for sardine fishing. And since sardines had a much bigger difference in good and bad catches than herring did, the value of the ground bait that were the herring eggs fluctuated violently from one extreme to the other.

  Merchants were like cats—their attention was immediately grabbed by merchandise whose price varied a lot, and they were planning on jumping after them.

  “Man, if I were a fish, I’d swim right down to the southern seas and directly ask the sardines how things are looking!”

  When one merchant yelled that, everyone else there burst out in laughter.

  All the merchants here came from various faraway regions to Atiph to bet on the price of the herring eggs that would be harvested the following spring. Most were wealthy merchants, and from Lawrence’s perspective, they were casually placing dizzying amounts of money on the line.

  Wheat also had violent fluctuations in price, but gambling on its futures was outlawed in every town because it was a necessity in daily life. If handled poorly, one might be seen as a monopolist and possibly sent to the guillotine.

  In that respect, since it was the sardines that ate herring eggs, the sardines would not get angry, no matter how much one bought.

  And since they were not gambling with dice and cards, the Church let the practice slide.

  It was called one of the very few trades that God ordered for the merchants.

  And so there were plenty of merchants gathered here, and it was said that it was thanks to this trade of herring eggs that Atiph could develop far away from other port cities. When wealthy merchants came together, they dropped a considerable amount of money into the town, and when they did that, various trades were brought to life and even more people came to gather.

  Lawrence came to this exchange, which almost had the atmosphere of a festival inside, not only to observe but also to bet.

  “Then I will be buying. I’m a little embarrassed placing a bid at such a low price, though.”

  “Heh, aw, don’t be. Even the men over there with stacks of lumione on their table all started out with a single silver, too. Some of ’em lost everything, down to the clothes on their back, but saved up seed money ha
rvesting the eggs from the herrings’ stomachs like they were clearing their grudges, and then they came back ready to go again. May God protect you!”

  The man took the silver from Lawrence and wrote the number down in his account book; he truly seemed to be enjoying himself.

  “But you really wanna buy?”

  He asked that after he wrote down Lawrence’s purchase order.

  “I hear it was clear all year on the southern seas. When it’s sunny like that, the catch of sardines the following season is usually bad.”

  He egged on Lawrence’s fears like that either to extract a cancel fee from him or to collect information from him.

  Either way, Lawrence was not inexperienced enough to fall for it.

  “God came to me in a vision.”

  The man’s mouth warped into a grin.

  “Well, I take orders all the time. The day of thanks in the spring is the last day of trade. But no one keeps taking orders for that long.”

  From what Lawrence heard at the Debau Company, most of the merchants here had nothing to do with the herring eggs themselves. They only speculated on the fluctuating prices, and most of them apparently closed out on their bets partway through. On the last day of this great commotion, the merchants who actually processed, transported, and sold the herring eggs to the fishermen and companies in the south would come, taking the eggs according to the orders from the south.

  It was an odd trade, but thanks to this exchange here, the herring fishermen could sell the eggs they had not harvested yet and receive the payment up front. Because of that, even if it became clear afterward that there was a terrible catch of sardines in the south and the price of their feed, the herring eggs, plummeted, the fishermen would have already received payment, so they could have some peace of mind. Conversely, if the price of eggs shot up, most of them might find that vexing, but they would all rather choose security.

  And the merchants, who saw things the other way around and loved foolhardy bets, put their fates in the hands of the herring eggs from autumn to spring, until they discovered what the real demand for the eggs was.

  “May God protect your partners on your new ship, too,” the man said, smacking Lawrence on the shoulder, then shuffled off after being called over by another merchant.

  The values on the board continued to change in the meanwhile. There were still no eggs in the herrings’ stomachs, and there were still not even any sardines that would eat those gathered eggs. They were all trading in imaginary herring eggs here.

  The merchants’ world was a strange one, one that almost made Lawrence forget he ran a bathhouse in the mountains of Nyohhira.

  He deeply inhaled the air of the place and found himself smiling in delight.

  But he had not come simply to relive his memories, nor had he come to make bets at random. He had a chance of success.

  Plenty of guests from the south came to the bathhouses in Nyohhira, so even though he was the bathhouse master of an establishment in the remote northern mountains, he was not entirely ignorant of word of the southern seas. He had heard from his southern guests that the catch of sardines depended on the rains that visited the rivers upstream in the summer.

  Lawrence had a heartening ally as well. The one whom he worshipped, praised the tail of, and offered alcohol and delicious food to every day was none other than Holo, one who could control the harvests and bad crops of wheat, one who had even been regarded as a god. He had once asked her about the relationship between sardines and the rain when she dozed during a nap.

  He then learned that the rain washed the nutrients down from the mountain, ultimately dissolving into the river, where they helped the river fish grow fat. The situation was the same for the sea, where the river emptied into, so it would not be wrong to see it as the rains upstream eventually becoming a good catch for fish in the sea.

  And he heard that it had been quite rainy upstream this summer. As a result, the price of wheat rose because of a bad harvest, and he knew that other foodstuffs would follow suit and also go up in price. For that, there was no questioning that once sardine fishing started, sardines would fetch a high price, and the bait used in that fishing would also go up.

  Anyway, when he put all that information together, he saw victory.

  Not only that, but unlike so-called gambling, no matter how far off the estimates he was, he would still at least get some herring eggs in this bet. Like the exchange of arms long ago, it was impossible that he would lose anything over his standing, and as long as herring eggs never started going for free, he would not lose everything.

  It was a perfect calculation.

  “I can still do things as a merchant. And it’ll go toward her painting—two birds with one stone.”

  Lawrence sang his own praises, but he of course chose to gamble very carefully. He did not bet all his assets like he would have done a long time ago, and he modestly spent only a few silver trenni.

  If he added this bet to the meager pile of methods he might use to make money in the future, then they could probably commission a small painting.

  Holo would surely be happy.

  “It might all be for her, but I still have to keep a trade like this secret. Who knows what she’ll say.”

  Holo often seemed easygoing, but she was surprisingly dependable.

  Lawrence left the exchange and sniffed his own clothes. There was no way Holo would not notice the smell of alcohol and fried food on him, and she would certainly ask where he went.

  On the way back to the Debau Company, he stood in the smoke of stands grilling beef as long as he could, and he bought skewered garlic and a hodgepodge of fish for her as a souvenir.

  On the first day of their stay, the Debau Company gave them a hardy welcome, and they stayed up rather late.

  But the boat wouldn’t be full and ready to leave for at least the next ten days, so there was naturally no need to feel hurried. They had been camping outside until then, so it was the perfect chance for them to rest their tired bodies.

  The following day, Lawrence awoke with the rising sun as was his habit, but of course, instead of getting straight up, he went back to sleep. He was so comfortable, he understood very well why Holo always grumbled when it came to waking up. He lent himself to the comfort of falling back to sleep as he thought about that and finally woke up for good when the sun was already high in the sky.

  He knew he needed to get up soon, and he searched for fur within the blanket as he always did. They had borrowed some hot water from the company yesterday to have a thorough cleaning, so Holo’s tail was as fluffy as it had ever been.

  Cuddling a warm Holo, tail and all, was the best thing for an idle morning nap…but as his hand fished around, he finally opened his eyes.

  “…Holo?”

  Holo, who typically would sleep forever if he let her, was not there. He looked to the back of the chair by the bed and saw that only Lawrence’s coat hung off it—Holo’s robe was gone.

  He had thought she would be sleeping in until noon that day, considering how much they drank last night, so he wondered where she went.

  “…Maybe she’ll be back soon…”

  Lawrence murmured to himself and yawned. Without Holo around, he found himself bored in his first moments of consciousness. He rolled over and closed his eyes.

  But once he knew that Holo was gone, it seemed like the inside of the blanket went cold, and the room was too quiet. Once he finally sneezed, Lawrence curled up in a sulk.

  It was almost like he could not fall asleep on his own out of loneliness.

  Regrettably, even though he squeezed his eyes shut, determined to fall back to sleep for a third time, drowsiness never came. The silence rang in his ears, and he felt uneasy.

  “…”

  No need to be stubborn; I guess I’ll go look for her.

  As he thought that to himself, just as he was about to get up, the door opened.

  “What, you are still asleep?”

  That was the first
thing Holo said when he turned to face the door and their eyes met.

  Lawrence only ever slept in during the very few times that there was nothing happening at the bathhouse, and he was usually the one to wake Holo. Even on this trip, he got up first when they were camping and busied himself with preparing breakfast and starting the fire.

  He had been disappointed at finding himself alone in bed, but Holo did not seem to mind a bit. She reached out to the cask placed by the window, poured the remaining wine from last night into a cup, and immediately drank it down in a single gulp.

  “Burp.”

  He was exasperated at how much energy she had despite getting up early in the morning. Holo wiped her mouth with her sleeve, then energetically whirled around.

  “Come now—you mustn’t sleep all day. We must get ready to go!”

  Still under the blanket, Lawrence furrowed his brow quizzically.

  “Go…? Go where?”

  “To town, of course! I have collected word of noteworthy places,” Holo said, and Lawrence finally noticed the crumpled piece of paper in her hand. “You agreed last night, too.”

  “Last night…? Wh…?”

  Lawrence slowly got up and tried to remember with his vague memory.

  After they had filled themselves with seafood, they drank the sweet mead they still had plenty of as Holo and her freshly washed tail sat on his lap. They were relaxed knowing they could fall straight asleep, unlike when it came to camping outside, so they ended up drinking a lot. The mead was eventually not enough, and he remembered popping open spirits.

  After that, he did not remember anything.

  Luckily, he was not hungover, but Holo stood by the bed, arms folded and glowering down at him like she was angry with her habitually drunk husband.

  Lawrence shrugged and Holo sighed, pulled the coat off the chair back, and tossed it to him.

  He slowly removed the garment from his head, and Holo said, “We have time until the ship leaves, no?”