Spice & Wolf Read online

  “So they’re increasing the silver content in order to gain advantage over their rival,” said Holo, licking her fingers after finishing the bread.

  Having come that far, Lawrence imagined that Holo might realize she had something to say.

  “I suppose my ears aren’t completely omniscient.” Evidently she did.

  “It’s entirely possible that Zheren wasn’t actually lying,” agreed Lawrence.

  “Mm. I quite agree.”

  She was being so reasonable that Lawrence found himself taken aback. Even though she’d admitted she wasn’t perfectly accurate, he fully expected her to angrily chide him for doubting her senses.

  “What, did you think I was going to be angry?”

  “I surely did.”

  “Well, I might be angry at that!” she said with a mischievous smile.

  “In any case, Zheren might not have been lying.”

  “Hmm. So where are we going now?”

  “Now that we know which coin to look into, were going to look into it.”

  “So, to the mint?”

  Lawrence couldn’t help laughing at her naive question, which earned him a sharp, angry look. “If a merchant like me showed up at the mint, the only greeting I’d get would be the business end of a spear. No, we’re going to see the cambist.”

  “Huh. I guess there are things even I don’t know.”

  Lawrence was understanding Holo’s personality better and better. “Once we’re there, we’ll see how the coin has been performing recently”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When a currency’s value changes drastically, there are always signs.”

  “Like the weather before a storm?”

  Lawrence smiled at the amusing analogy “Something like that. When the purity is going to increase a lot, it increases a little at a time, and when it’s going to drop, it will drop gradually.”

  “Mmm...”

  It didn’t seem like Holo fully understood, so Lawrence launched into a lecture, sounding for all the world like a determined schoolteacher.

  “Currency is based on trust. Relative to the absolute value of the gold or silver in them, coins are obviously more highly valued. Of course, the value is set very carefully, but since what you’re actually doing is arbitrarily assigning a value to something with no inherent worth, you can think of it as a ball of trust. In fact, is long as the changes to a coin’s purity aren’t large, they’re impossible to detect. Even a cambist has difficulty with it. You have to melt the coin down to be sure. But because a currency is based on trust, when it gains popularity its actual value can exceed its face value—or do the opposite. There are many possible reasons for changes in its popularity, and one of the biggest is a change in the gold or silver purity of the coin. That’s why people are so sensitive to changes in a currency—so sensitive that even changes too small to detect with eyeglasses or a scale can still be considered major.”

  He finished his lengthy digression. Holo stared off into the distance, appearing to be deep in thought. Lawrence suspected even the canny Holo wouldn’t understand everything from the first explanation. He prepared himself to answer her questions, but none were forthcoming.

  When he looked more carefully at her face, she seemed not to be trying to piece things together in her head, but rather as if she was confirming something.

  He didn’t want to believe it, but she may well have understood perfectly the first time.

  “Hmph. So when whoever makes the coins wants to change the purity, first they’ll make a minute change to see what the reaction is, then they’ll adjust it up or down, yes?”

  Having an apprentice like this was certainly a mixed blessing. A superior apprentice was the pride of any merchant, but humiliation lurked.

  Lawrence hid the frustration he felt—it had taken him a full month to understand the concept of currency valuation. “Y-yeah, that’s about right,” he answered.

  “The human world certainly is complicated.” Despite the admission, her comprehension was terrifyingly quick.

  As the two conversed, they approached a narrow river. It wasn’t the Slaude that flowed by Pazzio, but rather an artificial canal that diverted water from the Slaude, so that goods coming down the river could be efficiently transported into the city center without having to bring them ashore first.

  To that end, rafts were constantly floating along the river, tended by boatmen whose voices as they shouted at one another were now audible.

  Lawrence was headed for the bridge that spanned the canal. Cambists and goldsmiths had long situated their businesses on bridges. There they would set up their tables and their scales and do business. Naturally, they were closed on rainy days.

  “Oh ho, it’s quite crowded,” remarked Holo as they reached the largest bridge in Pazzio. With the sluice gates closed, flooding was impossible, so a bridge far larger than could ever be constructed over an ordinary river connected both sides of the canal, with cambists and goldsmiths packed elbow-to-elbow along its sides. All were highly successful, and the cambists in particular were kept busy changing money from lands near and far.

  Next to them, the goldsmiths busied themselves with their jewelry and alchemy. There were no crucibles for melting metal, but small jobs and orders for larger ones were common. As one would expect from a place where the bulk of the city’s taxes were levied, the place fairly smelled of money.

  “There are so many; how does one choose?”

  “Any merchant worth his salt has a favorite cambist in each town. Follow me.”

  They walked up the congested bridge, Holo scurrying to keep up with Lawrence.

  The bridges were crowded with passersby even in the best of times, and even though it was now illegal everywhere, the apprentices of the cambists and goldsmiths would jump from the bridge on errands for their masters, turning the milieu carni-valesque. The liveliness inevitably resulted in fraud—and it was always the customers who risked being cheated.

  “Ah, there he is.” Lawrence himself had been swindled many times in the past, and only once he’d made friends with certain money changers had it stopped.

  His favored cambist in Pazzio looked a bit younger than him. “Ho, Weiz. It’s been a while,” said Lawrence to the fair-haired cambist, who was just finishing business with another customer.

  Weiz looked up at the mention of his name and smiled broadly upon recognizing Lawrence. “Well, if it isn’t Lawrence! It has indeed been a while! When did you get into town?”

  The association between the two professionals had been long. It was like a friendship, formed not out of kindness but necessity.

  “Just yesterday,” replied Lawrence. “Took a detour from Yorenz to do some business.”

  “You never change, old friend. You look well!”

  “I’m all right. How about yourself?”

  “Hemorrhoids, my friend. Finally caught the curse of our trade! It’s not pleasant.”

  Weiz spoke with a smile, but it was the unpleasant proof of the true cambist. Sitting all day in one place so as not to miss a customer, nearly all of them suffered from hemorrhoids eventually.

  “So, what brings you here today? Coming by at this hour means you must have need of my services, eh?”

  “Yeah, actually, I have a favor to ask...uh, are you all right?” asked Lawrence. As if coming out of a dream, Weiz looked back to Lawrence from somewhere else. His eyes soon drifted away to elsewhere, though.

  He was looking at the figure next to Lawrence.

  “Who’s the girl?”

  “Picked her up in Pasloe on my way here.”

  “Huh. Picked her up, you say?”

  “Well, more or less. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “Mm? Mm...might not be quite the word for it, but more or less, I’ll allow,” said Holo with some reluctance, pausing her curious glancing here and there to answer Lawrence.

  “So, what’s your name, miss?”

  “Mine? ’Tis Holo.”

  “Holo, eh
? Good name.”

  Weiz grinned shamelessly; Holo returned it with a not-altogether-displeased smile that Lawrence did not particularly appreciate.

  “Well, if you have nowhere in particular to go, why not work here?

  I just happen to find myself in want of a maid. Someday you might follow in my footsteps, or perhaps even become my bride—”

  “Weiz, I’ve come for a favor,” said Lawrence, cutting him off. Weiz looked suitably offended.

  “What? Have you already had your way with her?” Weiz had always had an indelicate manner of speaking.

  Far from having “had his way with her,” Lawrence found himself being toyed with by Holo, so he answered with an emphatic negative.

  “Well, then, you should let me have a go,” snapped Weiz, looking to Holo and smiling sweetly. Holo fidgeted nervously, occasionally pausing to say things like “Oh, my,” an affectation Lawrence failed to find amusing.

  Naturally, he concealed his irritation. “We’ll discuss that later. Business first.”

  “Hmph. Fine, then. What do you want?”

  Holo snickered.

  “Have you any recently minted trenni coins? If you can, I’d like the three most recently issued coins.”

  “What, do you know something about the purity changing?”

  Weiz knew his business—he’d immediately realized what Lawrence was up to.

  “Something like that,” said Lawrence.

  “Well, watch yourself, friend. ’Tisn’t so easy to get ahead of the crowd,” said Weiz—which meant that even the cambists hadn’t heard of any imminent changes.

  “So, do you have any or don’t you?”

  “I do indeed. There’s a new coin came out just last month, at Advent. Then the one before that...here it is.”

  Weiz produced four coins from slots in the wooden box behind him and gave them to Lawrence. The year of issue was carved in the wood.

  There was no visible difference between any of the coins.

  “We handle money all day and haven’t noticed anything. They’re cast in the same mold, using the same ingredients. The lineup of artisans at the mint hasn’t changed in years. There’ve been no coups, and there’s no reason to change the coin,” said Weiz.

  The weight and color of the coins had already been scrutinized, but Lawrence still held them up to the sun and looked at them carefully. It seemed there really hadn’t been any change.

  “It’s no use, friend. If you could tell just by looking, we’d have noticed long ago,” said Weiz, his chin in his cupped hands. “Give it up,” he seemed to be saying.

  “Hm. What now, I wonder,” said Lawrence with a sigh, returning the coins to Weiz’s outstretched palm. They made a pleasant clinking sound as they fell.

  “Don’t want to melt them down, eh?” said Weiz.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t do that,” Lawrence retorted.

  Melting down currency was a crime in any country. Weiz laughed at the preposterous notion.

  However, Lawrence was now at a loss. He’d been sure that if there had been any change in the coin, Weiz would’ve had some Idea of it.

  What to do?

  It was then that Holo spoke up.

  “Let me see them,” she said, at which point Weiz looked up and gave her his best smile.

  "Oh, certainly, certainly,” he said, handing the coins over—though when she reached out to take them, he took her hands, not letting go for some time.

  “Oh, sir, you’re such a cad!” said Holo with a smile, to shattering effect. Weiz reddened and scratched his head.

  “Can you tell something?” Lawrence asked, ignoring Weiz. He doubted even Holo would be able to discern the purity of a coin.

  “Well now, let’s see,” she said.

  Just when he wondered what she would do, Holo brought the hand that contained the money to her ear and shook it, jingling the coins.

  “Ha-ha, now that’s impossible,” said Weiz with a grin.

  It was said that master money changers with decades of experience could tell a coin’s purity just by listening to its sound, but that was mostly legend. It was like saying a merchant’s goods would always appreciate.

  But Lawrence wondered. Holo had a wolf’s ears, after all.

  “Hmm,” said Holo once she was finished. She chose two coins and returned the rest to the money changing table.

  She jingled those two coins together, then repeated the process with different combinations of coins, a total of six times to check all possible combinations. Then she spoke.

  “I cannot tell,” she said.

  Perhaps possessed by the memory of how bashful Holo had been when he’d grabbed her hands, Weiz put on an expression of sympathy so exaggerated it was hard not to wonder if he’d ever return to normal. “Oh, too bad! Too bad, indeed!” he said.

  “Well, we’ve wasted enough of your time,” said Lawrence. “We’ll have a drink sometime.”

  “Indeed! That’s a promise—a promise, you hear me!”

  Overpowered by Weiz’s vehemence, Lawrence promised, then the pair put the cambist’s stall behind them.

  Nonetheless, Weiz waived enthusiastically at them as they left. Holo looked back several times and waved shyly in return.

  Once the crowds closed around them and Weiz could no longer be seen, Holo looked ahead again. She burst into laughter.

  “He’s an interesting sort!”

  “For a matchless philanderer, I suppose so.” It wasn’t a lie, but Lawrence felt he had to take Weiz down a notch anyway. “So, what about the silver purity? Has it risen or fallen?” he asked, smiling down at Holo. Her grin disappeared and she seemed surprised.

  “You’ve gotten quite good at ferreting the truth out, haven’t you?”

  “I’m the only one who knows about those ears of yours, after all. I know I saw them twitch.”

  Holo chuckled. “Can’t let my guard down.”

  “But what surprised me is that you didn’t say anything about it there. Your lie was unexpected.”

  “Whether or not he would’ve believed me, aside, we don’t know what the other people nearby would’ve done. The fewer people that know a secret, the better, no? I suppose you can consider it compensation.”

  “Compensation?” Lawrence parroted back. He wondered what he’d done that merited compensating.

  “You were a bit jealous back then, no? This is in exchange for that.”

  Lawrence’s expression stiffened at Holo’s teasing glance.

  How had she known? Or was she just a little too good at luring him into tipping his hand?

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. All men burn with foolish jealousy.”

  It was painfully true.

  “But women are fools to take delight in it. This world is full of fools no matter where you look,” said Holo, drawing slightly nearer to Lawrence.

  It seemed that Holo had experience with romance as well as matters mercantile.

  She chuckled. “Though to me, you’re both just lowly humans.”

  “Yet here you are, in human form. Best not bare your fangs now, in front of your beloved wolves.”

  “Ha, a flick of my lovely tail charms human and wolf alike!” Holo put a hand on her hip and swayed insouciantly. Somehow Lawrence got the feeling that she wasn’t lying.

  “Joking aside,” she said, to Lawrence’s relief, “it was just a bit, but the new coins have a slightly duller sound.”

  “Duller?”

  Holo nodded. A duller sound meant that the silver purity had dropped. A small change was hard to discern, but if the purity dropped enough for the silver coins to become visibly darker, any plebian could tell the difference in sound. If what Holo said was true, it could be a sign that the trenni was going to become less pure.

  “Hmm...but if that’s true, it’s reasonable to assume that Zheren was lying all along,” said Lawrence.

  “I wonder. The boy will have to return your ten trenni, depending on how this plays out.”

  “I’d
gotten that far. If he’d just wanted to swindle some money by selling bad information, he’d have done it at the church without going to all the trouble of meeting at a bar.”

  “ ’Tis a puzzlement.”

  Holo laughed, but in his mind Lawrence was frantically trying to figure out the situation.

  But the more he thought about it, the stranger it got. What was Zheren planning? He was unquestionably planning something. If Lawrence could figure out the motive, he knew he might be able to profit as well. That’s why he’d taken this risk in the first place, but the fact that he still hadn’t the faintest idea of Zheren’s true motivation bothered him.

  How did anyone make money from a drop in silver price and coin purity in the first place? All he could think of was long-term investment. If gold or silver fell from a high price to a low, you could sell at the high price, then buy up exactly what you sold after it fell. You’d end up with exactly as much gold as you started with, plus the difference in price. Speculation on gold and silver was always fluctuating. If you waited for it to return to its original price, you could realize a profit in the end.

  However, he didn’t have time for that kind of long-term planning. For one thing, half a year simply wasn’t enough time.

  “Well, Zheren brought me the deal, so he must have something to gain. He must.”

  “Assuming he’s not some kind of fool,” added Holo.

  “He did mention not being responsible for losses. Which means…”

  “Heh-heh,” Holo began to laugh.

  “What?”

  “Heh. Ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha! You’ve been taken, my friend!”

  Lawrence turned to Holo, startled. “Taken?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “For...what? The ten trenni?’

  “Hee-hee-hee. Forcing money out of someone isn’t the only kind of swindle.”

  Lawrence had heard of and seen many scams in his seven years of experience, but he had trouble understanding what Holo was talking about.

  “What a scam! A plan where his opponent may or may not gain, but he is guaranteed to never lose!”

  Lawrence’s head swirled, white-hot. He nearly forgot to breathe. Soon the blood rose to his face.

  “That boy will never lose. In his worst case, his profit is zero. If silver drops, all he does is return your money to you. If it rises, he gets part of whatever you make. It’s a business that requires no capital. Even if no profit appears, he’ll be fine.”