Spice & Wolf I (16 page)

“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.”

Lawrence was overwhelmed by exhaustion. To have been had by such a frivolous scheme!

But it was true. He had been the one who’d sworn there was some larger ulterior motive. A traveling merchant so used to using every trick he could would naturally assume so. And so he had.

Zheren had predicted a profit was almost sure to appear.

“Heh. Humans are pretty smart,” said Holo, as though they were talking about somebody else’s problem. Lawrence could only sigh. Fortunately, he hadn’t yet gone out of his way to invest in
trenni
. All he had risked was what he had on hand. There was nothing in the contract he had with Zheren about how many he was obligated to purchase. All he could do now was pray there were no fluctuations in the marketplace. He could then point out Zheren’s lie, and there’d be nothing stopping him from getting his ten silver pieces back. Naturally if the price dropped, he’d be able to regain them legitimately, so losing only a single piece to him felt downright inexpensive.

When a merchant let his guard down, normally he lost everything.

But here, all Zheren had really done was hurt Lawrence’s pride. He slumped a bit before Holo, who snickered at him out of the corner of her mouth.

“Although...” Holo began.

Lawrence looked at her beseechingly, as if to say, there’s more? Holo looked back predatorily.

“Isn’t it quite common for the silver purity to drop slightly?” Suspecting that his redemption might start with this, Lawrence forced himself to straighten his leaden back. “No, normally the purity is controlled with extreme care.”

“Hm. And yet out of nowhere, there’s a deal that hinges on the purity of silver coins. Can that just be chance, I wonder?”

“Uh..

The grinning Holo seemed to be enjoying this state of affairs. No—she was
definitely
enjoying it.

“Now, you being in that village, at that time, with that sheaf of wheat—that was chance. There is nothing so hard as discerning chance from fate. It’s harder than romance for a shut-in.”

“That’s a strange analogy,” was all Lawrence could answer. “You’re lost in the maze of your own thoughts. When that happens, you need a new perspective. When I’m hunting prey, sometimes I’ll climb a tree. The forest looks different from on high. For example”—said Holo the Wisewolf with a crooked grin that bared her left fang—“what if the person who’s planning something isn’t that kid?”

“Oh . .

Lawrence felt like he’d been struck over the head.

“There’s no reason Zheren’s profit had to come from you. For example, perhaps he was hired by somebody else, and those wages motivated him to pull you into the strange deal.”

Though she was fully two heads shorter than him, Holo seemed a giant.