Town of Strife II Read online

  Lawrence looked back and saw the crowd outside straining to see past the guards, who still blocked the entrance.

  If they received special treatment like this all the time, it was little wonder that the Church elite were so high and mighty.

  “It must be farther in,” said Holo, her nose twitching.

  No matter how grand its construction, every church shared the same basic plan.

  The sanctuary should lie straight ahead, and any holy or special objects would be beneath or behind the altar.

  Before Lawrence could say anything, Holo forged ahead. Her footsteps made it seem as though she were being beckoned by something. Then, the moment she reached her hand out to the open, intricately carved door to the sanctuary—

  “Who goes there?” a high voice rang out, and even Holo flinched in surprise.

  But it wasn’t like Holo to be caught unawares. She had simply been very, very focused on what lay ahead—the legendary beast whose flesh granted long life and which she had long ago chased herself.

  “Who goes there? Guards!”

  It was a tall, thin man with a high nose wearing a cream-colored robe.

  A glance at his nervous face would have made it clear to anyone that he was a man of the Church, and his high voice sounded like a strangling chicken.

  “My humble apologies. We were referred here by Lud Kieman of the Rowen Trade Guild.” Lawrence made sure to mention Kieman’s name before speaking his own. “There seems to have been some mistake.”

  No organization was as preoccupied with rules and regulations as the Church. But human connections superseded written rules.

  “What? The Rowen…? Ah, excuse me.” The man calmed himself as quickly as he had angered and waved off the guards that approached from the hall.

  The guards from the entrance barely seemed to notice. Perhaps this sort of thing happened often.

  “Ahem. I am the assistant priest of this church, Sean Natole.”

  “I am Kraft Lawrence of the Rowen Trade Guild.”

  “I’m Holo.”

  “I am Tote Col.”

  Holo had introduced herself with her attention still on what lay past the door, while Col was carefully polite.

  A merchant, a girl dressed like a nun, and a boy in tattered clothes—it was a strange combination, but to someone who had lived nearly his entire life within the Church, almost anything from the secular world was strange.

  The priest did not seem particularly mystified.

  “Is that so? Have you come here to pray, then?”

  When it came to speaking their minds, clergymen were second to none.

  Lawrence quietly cleared his throat. “No, we came here in hopes of being allowed to view the narwhal…”

  “Ah…” The assistant priest, who had introduced himself as Natole, looked them over appraisingly, undoubtedly trying to guess how much of a tithe they would leave. “Even having stated your goal,” continued Natole, cutting off Lawrence’s attempt to respond, “we have yet to determine whether the thing, which has been brought to this church, is good or evil. While it is true that God has made everything that is, this particular creature is so strange that the head priest is currently seeking God’s aid in determining its nature. While an introduction from Mr. Kieman of the Rowen Trade Guild is no small thing…”

  The assistant priest seemed to be accustomed to rambling at length, but Holo’s patience was at its end.

  Having no other choice, Lawrence smiled and approached Natole, reaching inside his coat as he did so. “Actually, Mr. Kieman instructed me to give his regards to Father Natole, God’s faithful servant.” He then took Natole’s hand, and in the same motion, he passed the priest a note.

  “…Be assured that the message is received,” said Natole casually, clearing his throat again. “The creature in question is currently being identified in the sanctuary, but I suppose I could allow you to view it.”

  “You have my sincere gratitude,” said Lawrence by way of exaggerated thanks.

  Natole nodded, not at all displeased, then approached the door by which Holo still stood, unbarring and opening it.

  “As my holy walk is yet incomplete, I am prohibited from gazing upon it myself.” Translation: He was too afraid of anything pagan to look at it. Either that, or he hesitated to enter the sanctuary immediately after having taken a bribe.

  Regardless, Lawrence followed Holo into the sanctuary, a wry smile on his face.

  The smile was not because of the disagreeable priest, though. It was aimed at Holo, who had been so eager to get past the door while it was closed but now hesitated when it was open.

  “Go on,” urged Lawrence quietly, pushing her from behind.

  If she had tried to find the narwhal long ago, that meant there must have been someone to whom she wanted to feed its meat.

  Was it the villager she had met in Pasloe during the centuries she spent there? Or was it someone else, someone whom she had met on her travels?

  But she had failed to obtain the meat, and whoever she had wanted to give it to had died.

  Had she been there when they died? Or had they passed away while she was traveling? Lawrence did not know, but he was quite certain she had not said good-bye with a smile.

  But perhaps her friend had.

  And now Holo was faced with it again, hence her expression.

  “…This is…,” murmured Col.

  A stone walkway led straight ahead into a room filled with hundreds and hundreds of long, wooden pews.

  Atop the walkway rested a faded carpet as if leading to the very heavens themselves.

  At the end of the path, set in the high far wall, was a giant stained-glass depiction of God flanked by angels singing His praises.

  And beneath that stood an altar where God’s representative would stand and lead the congregation, and beneath that was a large casket.

  They were still far away but could catch glimpses of the strange form within.

  The large casket seemed to be filled with water, and the living legend within it shifted as if having noticed them, causing the water to slosh.

  At the same time, there came the knocking sound of the creature’s horn upon the wood of the container.

  “It’s really there.”

  None of the three of them could take another step.

  Curiosity killed the cat, but a merchant’s curiosity could kill the gods.

  Nevertheless, it was hard to approach.

  Lawrence felt as if he understood how the legend that eating the creature’s flesh granted long life had gotten its start.

  “Shall we get closer?”

  Lawrence placed his hand on Holo’s shoulder, and she looked up at him in surprise.

  “…”

  She then shook her head wordlessly, turning forward again.

  As she stood there blankly gazing at the narwhal, it seemed as if she was saying good-bye to her past.

  “I-is that a god, too?” inquired Col in a small voice. He had been holding on to Holo’s sleeve the entire time and at some point had grabbed ahold of Lawrence’s coat as well.

  “I wonder. What do you think?” Lawrence asked, handing the question over to Holo, who seemed extremely irritated by it.

  Perhaps she did not want such questions to be posed to her, but who else was there who could answer them?

  “At the very least, it is within the realm of normal animals. Anything beyond that has a special scent. But I do not sense that here.”

  Col and Lawrence sniffed deliberately, and Holo turned to face them, a lonely look in her eyes. Col seemed to understand her meaning and hurried to come up with something to say but failed to find the words.

  Lawrence put his hand on the boy’s head. “Just a bad joke,” he said, looking at Holo, who turned away without a hint of self-reflection about her.

  “Well, if that’s how big it is and this is the extent of the guards they’ve posted…,” mused Holo in a still softer voice as she looked around the room.

&nbs
p; Evidently her proposal to simply take the narwhal and escape—what she’d originally encouraged Lawrence to do—had not been entirely academic.

  “Wasn’t that just a hypothetical plan?”

  Holo smiled maliciously and cocked her head. “If your fear could always be curbed by hypothetical notions, ’twould make things easier for me.”

  “…”

  It was true there was nothing wrong with knowing they could steal the narwhal whenever they wanted.

  “The problem is from whence to enter.”

  “What about breaking through the front door?”

  “It could be difficult if that door were shut tight.”

  Lawrence thought back to those iron-reinforced doors.

  In point of fact, the church housed many valuable items, and during wartime, it would be the first place attacked and the last where townspeople could make their stand.

  The front entrance had surely been constructed to withstand siege weapons.

  Even for Holo, it would be difficult to breach.

  “What about through that?” Col pointed to the stained-glass window positioned above the narwhal. A wall of colored glass.

  It was constructed to let in light, but given Holo’s great size, she would need an entrance about as large.

  “We’d be cursed for trying,” said Lawrence, which made Holo’s throat rumble in amusement.

  “Heh-heh. It might feel rather nice to smash through that and leap in here.”

  Terrifyingly, there was no hint of jest in her voice.

  “That might be the only way in, but that glass is built that way so as to keep the wall from collapsing. If we just destroy it, we could be in real trouble.”

  “Hmm?” Holo and Col, who had been giggling conspiratorially, looked up in unison.

  “When a building gets this large, you can’t just make it entirely out of stone. The weight is too much, and the structure can’t hold itself up; it’ll collapse. So you make part of it out of glass, which is lighter, to avoid that. If you look carefully, you can see the iron rods supporting the joists. If we break those, things could get bad.”

  The fact that all sanctuaries had stained-glass windows out of sheer necessity was rather disappointing—it felt somehow sad that even the Church’s buildings were not exempt from the rules of the world.

  “We shall worry about that when the time comes,” said Holo, sighing impatiently before continuing on. “If you would work a bit harder, I’d not have to bear so much of the danger.”

  It was true.

  Lawrence could only look away in shame. Col smiled slightly and said, “I know you can do it, Mr. Lawrence,” which Holo found amusing.

  “Well, let’s hurry back. Father Natole will get suspicious.”

  “Mm.”

  “All right!”

  The two answered simultaneously, but Lawrence, worried, put the question to them again. “Do you really not want to have a closer look?”

  “I’m fine,” said Col, looking a touch scared.

  A troubled Holo replied, “I care not.”

  Both of them seemed frightened in more ways than one.

  And even Lawrence felt something that made it hard to approach the strange, one-horned beast.

  He could not say that he did not understand why Natole would have begged off entering the sanctuary. The narwhal was a creature spoken of only in myths that proclaimed that its flesh granted long life and that medicine made from its horn cured disease. But here it was, real. And one thing was certain—the legends were well deserved.

  They would have to prepare themselves.

  But now that they knew Holo was capable of breaching the church, she would never let Lawrence turn tail.

  They expressed their thanks to Natole, and once he had closed the doors of the church behind him, Lawrence could not help but speak up.

  “It certainly had an aura befitting the legends. No wonder it’s captured the minds of so many people.”

  Natole closed the door’s bar with a loud clunk and then turned around with his face full of fright. “It’s a terrifying thing, truly.”

  There was no question that the narwhal’s presence put the Church in a bad position.

  The people of the Church claimed God as their ally and were thus feared by many. But there were surely people in the world who did not fear God.

  Turning a living legend like the narwhal into money meant treating it no differently than the many other goods in which they traded.

  To have sufficient nerve to do such a thing, it was as if they lived in another world.

  Once they were back on the crowded avenue, Lawrence finally felt able to take a deep breath.

  “Still,” Lawrence said, standing proudly and looking at Holo next to him. “I suppose I’ve used you to bargain with myself.”

  Given that she was unable to actually read minds, Holo probably would not see the connection Lawrence’s words were drawing. But the wisewolf appeared to quickly grasp the conflict to which Lawrence was alluding. She grinned despite Col’s wide-eyed surprise at the confession that Lawrence had put Holo in hock.

  “So we’ve naught to fear, do we?” she said, moving her body closer as they passed through the crowds. She slipped her hand into his, and indeed, there was nothing more fear inspiring than that.

  Lawrence smiled, looking at Col with a sigh. “Looks like our wisewolf speaks the truth.”

  Col nodded, looked back and forth between Holo and Lawrence and—amusingly—nodded again.

  It was evening when Kieman again came knocking at their door, and Lawrence and company were in the middle of dinner.

  Just as expected, the meal the inn had provided was a grand one, and Holo was properly joyous while Col occasionally choked on his food.

  But the fact that Kieman called upon them in the evening was proof that he did not consider them mere fools—because the best time to approach a troublesome opponent is either to wake them up or to interrupt their meal.

  “Would you care to join us?” offered Lawrence as he brushed bread crumbs off his hands. Kieman raised both hands with a smile.

  “I’ll pass,” he answered. “If possible, I’d like to speak with you outside, Mr. Lawrence.”

  Lawrence had no intention of refusing such an offer.

  He gave Col and Holo a look, then stood and went with Kieman into the hallway.

  Simply having Col there so Holo was not alone during her meal was a big help, although if Lawrence was to tell her that, she would give him quite a look indeed.

  “So, about the topic at hand,” began Kieman as soon as they had entered another room. Lawrence initially wondered if it was a storage room, but it seemed that it was a space Kieman had reserved for private contemplation. It was candlelit, and there were stacks of rolled-up maps, all of which were lettered in writing Lawrence had never seen before.

  “We wish to ask you, Mr. Lawrence, to act as our messenger.”

  Was he using the first-person plural simply to intimidate, or were there actually multiple parties?

  Lawrence decided to conduct his negotiations standing, like a proper traveling merchant would. “Might I ask the reason for that?”

  “Naturally. To be blunt, originally this duty was not yours.”

  Of course it wasn’t.

  “Initially we’d intended to use Ted Reynolds, master of the Jean Company—you’re familiar with it, yes?—to convey our intentions. The reason was—”

  “—He wanted to escape the manipulations of the north.”

  Kieman nodded and continued. “He contacted us, and using him would allow us to profit in the copper trade. So he was our first choice. Moreover, his connections to the Bolan family are quite strong. He controls the whole import-export trade of it on the Roam River, probably given his ties with the wolf.”

  Lawrence immediately remembered the salt trade.

  If the Jean Company was shipping copper coins to the Winfiel kingdom, it would not be surprising if he was receiving salt statues i
n return. In which case, there was another way to interpret Reynolds’s nervous visit the previous night. He had been worrying about the source of his greatest profit.

  Quite likely he expected Kieman and the others on the south side to call on him, but he had been mistaken. And when he asked why, he would have soon realized that they had found a more convenient individual. He must have been trying to play the conflict between the north and south to his own coin purse’s advantage. If so, it was possible that his shameful, nervous act the previous night had just been part of his plan.

  The sad shape of his receding form was likely proof of how pathetic he found himself for resorting to such ploys.

  “Our goal is this: By using the narwhal, we wish to gain full ownership of the northern district.”

  “But without allowing them to use the resulting profit to then control the entire town.”

  Kieman nodded.

  It seemed he was thinking of something very similar to what Eve had proposed.

  But that did not mean that Eve was particularly incredible or that Kieman’s imagination was lacking.

  In circumstances when one could not absolutely trust one’s partner but still had to sit down at the table and negotiate with them, following such a plan was the most reasonable course of action.

  Given that, Lawrence finally felt he understood why Eve had called on him.

  In this particular situation, someone who did not understand the links between the north and south side would be unsuitable.

  The only way the two parties could negotiate on an equal level was if their mediator was equally likely to betray either side. After that, it was simply a fight to sway that mediator.

  “A man in one of the northern landlord families is infatuated with the head of the Bolan house. We must use this. So long as the head of the Bolan family does not betray us, we can ensure a good outcome both for her and ourselves…but we do not know how this will play out yet.”

  Lawrence was well aware that Eve’s situation was a complicated one. There was no telling what she might employ. She was like an alchemist’s kettle.

  “The messenger might well be our ally or, depending on circumstances, could change his allegiance to the other side. That is the sort of person we need. Otherwise, the wolf of the Roam River will be too cautious to approach us. Of course, we must ensure that we ultimately triumph, so our strategy must be a foolproof one…and sadly, the goods in question are easily spoiled.”