Spice & Wolf Read online

  “What troubles you? Aren’t you going to drink?” said Holo, munching away on some fried beans.

  She didn’t seem to be particularly dizzy with success, though, so Lawrence decided to broach the subject directly.

  “Have you ever worked as a merchant?”

  Holo, still munching the snack and holding her refilled glass, smiled ruefully. “Oh, I’m sorry, have I injured your pride?” Naturally, she had.

  “I don’t know how many deals you’ve done in your life, but I watched countless transactions when I was in the village. Long ago, I once saw a man use that technique—I didn’t invent it myself. When was that, anyway...?”

  Lawrence didn’t speak, but his eyes held the question: Is that true? Holo looked slightly troubled as she nodded, and Lawrence sighed even as he felt somewhat relieved.

  “I really hadn’t noticed, though. Last night when I slept in the furs, I didn’t smell any fruit.”

  “Oh, that. That was from the apples we bought.”

  Lawrence was speechless. When had she pulled that trick?

  And suddenly, he felt a chill of worry.

  It was fraud!

  “It’s his own fault for being tricked,” said Holo. “He’ll be impressed once he figures it out.”

  “…You may have a point.”

  “There’s no point in being angry when you’ve been tricked. A real merchant knows to be impressed.”

  “That’s quite a sermon. You sound like a wizened old trader.”

  “Heh. And you’re just a babe in arms, yourself.”

  Lawrence had to laugh. He shrugged as he drank his wine. It had a keen taste to it.

  “All this aside, did you do as you were supposed to?” Holo was talking about the Zheren matter.

  “I asked around the Milone Company to see if anybody knew about nations that would be issuing new silver currency, but they didn’t seem to be hiding anything. As long the information isn’t something that needs to be monopolized, they’ll normally share it. Makes for good business relations.”

  “Hm.”

  “But chances for this kind of deal aren’t common. That’s why were involved.”

  It wasn’t vanity. It was reality. In currency speculation, prices either rose, fell, or held steady. Even if the details became complex, all one had to do was turn it over in one’s head until one hit upon the solution.

  Once the proposed deal was reduced to the party that would gain and the one that would lose, there were few decisions to make.

  However...

  “Still, whatever the trick, as long as we can avoid getting fleeced and come out ahead, we’ll be fine.”

  Lawrence drank some wine and popped some beans into his mouth—Holo was paying, so he decided he might as well take advantage of it.

  “I don’t see the owner anywhere. I wonder if he’s out,” he said. “Zheren did say we could contact him through the bar. He must be on good terms with the establishment.”

  “Well, traveling merchants usually base their operations out of either a tavern or a trading house. In fact, I’ve got to get to a trading house later on. And the owner really isn’t around, is he?” said Lawrence, scanning the tavern yet again. It was a fairly spacious establishment, with fifteen round tables; only two other people—craftsmen from the look of them—were in the tavern.

  He couldn’t very well just go talk to them, so he asked the girl when she brought them another round of wine along with some roasted herring and smoked mutton.

  “The owner?” said the girl as she set the wine and food on the table. Her arms were very slender; Lawrence wondered where she got the strength to handle the heavy food. “He’s gone to buy ingredients at the marketplace,” she continued. “Do you have some business with him?”

  “Could you possibly tell him we’re trying to get in touch with a man named Zheren?”

  If they didn’t know Zheren here, that was fine, too. Many merchants used taverns as convenient points of contact, so a misunderstanding was entirely possible.

  But it turned out to be unnecessary concern on Lawrence’s part.

  The girl’s eyes brightened immediately at the mention of Zheren. “Oh, Mr. Zheren? I know of him.”

  “Do you?”

  “He normally comes soon after sundown. Feel free to stay here until then.”

  She was a shrewd girl indeed, but she had a point. It was an hour or two until dusk, which would be just enough time to enjoy a nice leisurely drink.

  “We’ll take you up on that, then,” said Lawrence.

  “Do enjoy yourselves!” said the girl with a bow, then turned to attend to the tavern’s other two patrons.

  Lawrence drank from his cup of wine. Its tart scent wafted across his nose, fading to sweetness on his tongue. Some liquors, like rum, traded on their intensity, but Lawrence preferred the sweetness of wine or mead. Sometimes he’d have cider just for a change.

  Beer was good, too, but its flavor depended on the skill of the craftsman and the tastes of the person drinking it. Unlike wine, whose quality depended entirely on price, a beer’s deliciousness was unrelated to its cost, so merchants tended to avoid it. There was no way to know if the particular brew would suit your taste unless you were from the region or town—so when he wanted to appear local, Lawrence would order beer.

  Lawrence thought on this when he noticed that Holo, sitting opposite him, had stopped eating. She appeared to be deep in thought. Lawrence spoke up to get her attention, but she was slow in answering.

  “...That girl, she’s lying,” she finally said, once the girl had disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Lying how?”

  “Zheren doesn’t necessarily come in here every day.”

  “Hm.” Lawrence nodded, looking into his wine cup.

  “Well, I hope we’ll see Zheren soon, as she says.”

  The girl’s lie meant that she was already in touch with Zheren. If not, things would be complicated now for both Lawrence and the mysterious young merchant.

  “As do I,” said Holo.

  The reason for the lie was unclear, though. It could be that she was able to call Zheren anytime she wanted and simply wanted to keep Lawrence and Holo at the table and ordering wine for a little while longer. Merchants and traders told lies large and small all the time. Worrying over every single one would soon drive one to distraction.

  So Lawrence wasn’t particularly worried, and he imagined Holo was the same.

  And other than Holo’s delight at the honeycomb-shaped honeyed stew, the sun set without incident, and soon customers began filtering into the tavern.

  Among them was Zheren.

  “I rejoice at our reunion!” said Zheren, raising his wine cup. It knocked against Lawrence’s with a pleasant klok. “How fared your furs?”

  “They fetched a good price—as you can tell from the wine.”

  “I envy you! I daresay you had an angle?”

  Lawrence didn’t reply immediately, instead taking a drink of wine. “That’s a secret.”

  Holo was busily devouring the beans, possibly to hide her smirk.

  “Well, in any case, I’m glad you were able to sell them for a good price. For my part, more capital means more profit.”

  “Just because I have more capital doesn’t mean I’ll be increasing my investment.”

  “Say it’s not so! I’ve prayed for your good fortune in anticipation of just that!”

  “Then you’ve been praying at the wrong place. You should’ve just prayed for me to up my investment.”

  Zheren gazed upward, his face a mask of exaggerated tragedy. “So, to business, then,” said Lawrence.

  “Ah, right.” Zheren composed himself and looked at Lawrence, but looked briefly to Holo as well, as though he knew she, too, was a figure not to be underestimated.

  “In exchange for selling me the information of which silver currency is due to become purer, you want a portion of the profit I’ll make. Does that sum it up?”

  “Indeed.”
<
br />   “Is this story of a purer coin true?”

  Zheren faltered slightly at the directness of the question. “Well, I’m predicting it based on information I got from a small mining town. I think it’s trustworthy, but...there are no guarantees in business.”

  “True enough.”

  Lawrence nodded, satisfied at seeing Zheren cringe. He brought some stew to his lips and continued.

  “If you’d told me it was a sure thing, I’d have had to walk away. Nothing is more suspicious than a guarantee.”

  Zheren sighed in relief.

  “So, what would you want for a percentage?”

  “Ten trenni for the information, plus ten percent of your profit.”

  “That’s a very conservative demand given the potential gain.”

  “It is. If you should take a loss, I won’t be able to compensate you. If I had to, all my assets would be forfeit. So I’ll take ten percent of whatever you make, but if you take a loss, I’ll refund you the information fee, and no more.”

  Lawrence mulled the issue over, his mind long since fuzzy from liquor.

  Zheren’s proposal boiled down to roughly two possibilities.

  The first was that he, Lawrence, would sustain a loss, and Zheren would use that for his own gain.

  The second was that Zheren’s proposal was basically sound.

  However, thanks to Holo, he knew that Zheren’s claim that the currency in question would rise in value owing to an increased silver content was a lie. If so, Zheren planned to profit from Lawrence’s loss, but Lawrence didn’t yet know how.

  Given this, Lawrence began to wonder if Holo’s estimation of Zheren was mistaken after all. It didn’t make sense that Zheren’s goal was the paltry information fee.

  But it wouldn’t matter how much time he spent thinking about it. Only when he got the information from Zheren would he be able to get a fresh perspective.

  If it became obvious that he would sustain a loss, he could just get his information fee back. With a little bit of speculation he could dodge any problems, and now his interest in whatever Zheren was planning was greater than ever.

  “That sounds good enough to me.”

  “Oh, er, thank you very much!”

  “Just to confirm, you want ten trenni to provide me with the information, and ten percent of my earnings. However, if I lose money, you’ll return the fee to me, and you won’t be liable for further losses.”

  “Yes.”

  “And we’ll sign a contract to this effect before a public witness.”

  “Yes. As for the settlement day, can we make it three days before the spring market? I expect the currency to change within the year.”

  The spring market was still half a year out. It was enough time for the currency to settle into its new value, be it up or down. If

  it actually rose, there would be an accompanying increase of confidence in the currency, and people would be happy to do business using it. Its market value would rise rapidly. Those who sold it impatiently would lose out.

  “That will do. It should be sufficient time.”

  “In that case, I look forward to seeing you at the public witness’s office early tomorrow morning.”

  There was no reason to refuse. Lawrence nodded, and raised his cup. “To profit for both of us!”

  At the sight of both men raising their cups, the listless Holo scrambled to get her cup in her hand.

  “To profit!”

  There was a pleasant klok as the cups knocked against each other.

  The public witness, just as the name implies, is a public service for providing witnesses for contracts. However, just because a contract was signed before a public witness, the town guard would not necessarily catch someone who breached it. Even the monarchy, in charge of the public good as it was, would not do that.

  Instead, the offending party’s identity would be spread around by the public witness. This was fatal to a merchant. For larger deals, this was even truer—a merchant with a bad reputation wouldn’t even be able to deal with traders from foreign countries, at least not in that particular city.

  The consequences weren’t particularly effective for people who were going to retire from trading, but as long as they planned to continue as a merchant, the incentive was enough.

  It was before such a public witness that Lawrence signed the contract, paid Zheren the ten trenni, and received the information without incident.

  Lawrence and Holo then parted ways with Zheren and headed into the town marketplace. The empty wagon would only cause problems in the crowded town center, so they left it at the inn and went in on foot.

  “This is the silver the boy mentioned, yes?” Holo held a silver trenni. It was the most widely used currency in the region because among the hundreds of different kinds of currency in the world, it was one of the most trusted, and also simply because this town and the region around it were within the nation of Trenni.

  Nations that did not have their own currency were doomed to either collapse or become client nations of larger powers.

  “It’s a well-trusted coin in this region,” said Lawrence.

  “Trusted?” Holo looked up at Lawrence as she played with the coin on which the profile of the eleventh ruler of Trenni was engraved.

  “There are hundreds of currencies in the world, and the amount of gold or silver in each varies constantly Trust is an important part of currency.”

  “Huh. I only knew of a few different kinds of money. It used to be that business was done in animal skins.”

  Lawrence wondered exactly how many hundreds of years ago she was talking about.

  “So, how about it? Have you worked something out now that you know which coin he was talking about?”

  “Well, there are several possibilities.”

  “For example?” asked Holo as they walked past the stalls in the marketplace. She stopped suddenly, and a big man who had the look of a worker about him bumped into her. He was just about to shout at her when Holo looked up from underneath her cloak and apologized. The man reddened and managed to say, “W-well, be more careful.”

  Lawrence silently resolved not to be swayed by this particular tactic of Holo’s.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Mm. I want to eat one of those.”

  Holo was pointing at a bread stall. It was just before midday, so fresh-baked bread was lined up in neat rows. In front of a stall, a maid was buying more bread than she could possibly eat, probably for the midday meal of some craftsman and his apprentice.

  “You want some bread?”

  “Mm. That one, there, with the honey on it.”

  Holo indicated some long, thin loaves that were being showily displayed from the eaves of the stall. The honey-drizzled bread was popular in most places. Lawrence seemed to remember that the tradition was started in a certain city where a baker had hung the loaves from the eaves of his shop as he drizzled them with honey as a way to attract customers. The tactic had been so successful that fights broke out among the people who wanted to buy the bread, and the baker’s union had made it official policy that all honey bread would be henceforth hung from the eaves.

  The bread did look delicious, but Lawrence couldn’t help grinning at Holo’s sweet tooth showing itself yet again.

  “You have money,” he told her. “Go ahead and buy some if you want.”

  “I don’t imagine bread and apples are far apart in price. Will you carry the mountain of bread I’ll bring back with me? Or shall I ruin the baker’s day by asking him for so much change?”

  Lawrence finally understood. All Holo had were silver trenni coins—each of which was worth far more than it took to buy a loaf of bread. She’d bought more apples than she was able to carry with a similar coin.

  “All right, all right. I’ll give you a smaller coin. Here, hold out your hands. One of these black coins should get you one loaf.”

  Lawrence took the silver coin from Holo’s hands and replaced it with several brown a
nd black copper ones, pointing at the coin he wanted her to use.

  Holo scrutinized the currency carefully. “You’d best not be cheating me,” she said suspiciously.

  He thought about kicking her, but Holo soon turned on her heel and headed for the bakers stall.

  “Always with the quick tongue,” retorted Lawrence, but in truth he couldn’t claim he wasn’t enjoying himself.

  When he saw Holo walking back, her face the very picture of contentment as she sank her teeth into the bread, he couldn’t help laughing.

  “Don’t bump into anybody else,” Lawrence said. “I don’t want to have to deal with a fight.”

  “Don’t treat me like a pup, then.”

  “It’s hard to see you as anything else when your mouth is covered in sticky honey.”

  “...”

  For a moment Lawrence thought she was sulking in anger, but a wolf was not so easily provoked.

  “Am I charming, then?” She looked up at Lawrence with her head cocked slightly, whereupon he slapped her on the head. “You certainly can’t take a joke,” she grumbled.

  “I’m a very serious person,” said Lawrence.

  Her faintly flustered demeanor went unnoticed.

  “So, what was it you were thinking about?”

  “Oh, right, right.” It was better to bring up the previous topic of conversation than stay in this uncomfortable territory. “So, back to the trenni coin. Zheren may well be telling the truth.”

  “Oh?”

  “There are reasons to raise the silver content. So...here, take this coin, a silver firin. It’s from a nation three rivers south of here. It’s got a respectable silver content and is quite popular in the marketplace. You could say it’s the trenni’s rival.”

  “Huh. Seems one thing never changes: a nation’s power is in its money.” The always-quick Holo munched away on her bread.

  “Exactly. Nations do not always fight through strength of arms. If your country’s currency is overwhelmed by a foreign coin, you’ve been just as thoroughly conquered. All the foreign king needs to do is cut off your supply of money, and your marketplace will die. Without money, you can neither buy nor sell. They control your economy.”