Spice & Wolf II (4 page)

Lawrence planned to sell his pepper to the Latparron Trading Company, whose name was every bit as odd as the town in which it was located—Poroson.

If one were to trace the name, it would surely hearken all the way back to the time before Poroson was a town and only pagans inhabited the area.

The strange names were all that remained of the past, though. After all, everyone here was a true believer in the Church, from the tops of their heads to the tips of their toes.

The Latparron Company would soon have its fiftieth master, and each seemed to be more devout than the last.

Thus it was that no sooner had Lawrence called upon the company—which he’d not visited in half a year—than he was regaled with praise for the newly arrived priest, whose sermons he simply had to hear, as would they not save our very souls?

Still worse, the master of the Latparron Company seemed to take Holo in her robes for a nun on pilgrimage and exhorted her to minister to Lawrence as well.

Holo took the opportunity to rail at Lawrence at length, occasionally grinning in a way that only he could see.

After some time, their preaching ended, and Lawrence swore to himself that he wouldn’t spare so much as a single coin for any honeyed peach preserves.

“Well, then, that went a bit long, but shall we talk business now?”

“I await your pleasure,” said Lawrence, clearly tired—but the Latparron master had put on his business face now, so Lawrence couldn’t let his guard down.

It was possible that the master’s lengthy sermon was a tactic to wear his opponents down, making them easy prey.

“So, what goods have you brought me this day?”

“Right here,” said Lawrence, regaining his composure and bringing out the pepper-stuffed sack.

“Oh, pepper!”

Lawrence kept hidden his surprise at the master’s correct guess of the bag’s contents. “You know your goods,” he said.

“It’s the smell!” said the master with a mischievous smile—but Lawrence knew pepper yet to be ground has little scent.

Lawrence stole a sidelong glance at Holo, who looked on amused.

“It seems I’m still a novice,” said Lawrence.

“Just a matter of experience,” said the master. As far as Lawrence could tell from the man’s broad, easy manner, his mistaking Holo for a nun might also have been an act.

“Still, Mr. Lawrence, you always bring the best goods at the most opportune time. By God’s grace, the hay grew well this year, and the pork has gotten fat merely walking the streets. Demand for pepper will be high for a while. Had you gotten here even a week sooner, I’d have been able to take it off your hands for a pittance!”

Lawrence could only offer a pained smile in response to the cheerful man. The Latparron master had taken complete control of the conversation.

He could now use strong-arm negotiating tactics. It would be hard for Lawrence to regain the upper hand.

Traders like these in small companies were why the life of the merchant was a hard one.

“Right, then, let’s take its measure. Have you a scale?”

Unlike the money changers whose reputations depended on the accuracy of their scales, the scales that merchants carried were doctored as a matter of course. With commodities like pepper or gold dust, a small “adjustment” to a scale’s gradations could make a large difference, so both buyer and seller weighed items on their own scales.

However, it wasn’t every day that Lawrence dealt with high-priced goods like pepper, so he had no scales.

“No, I don’t have a scale—I trust in God.”

The master smiled and nodded at Lawrence’s reply. There were two sets of scales on a shelf, and he deliberately brought out the set farther away. Though he was careful not to show it, Lawrence internally sighed in relief.

Be he the most devout, faithful follower of the teachings of the Church, a merchant was still a merchant. Undoubtedly the first set of scales had been doctored. If Lawrence’s pepper was weighed on such scales, there was no telling how much of a loss he might sustain. It could be as bad as a silver piece for every peppercorn.

Lawrence gave God his thanks.

“Even if you believe in a just God, man should be able to discern whether the scripture before him is true or false. A righteous man still trespasses against God if he commits to memory false scripture, after all,” said the master, setting the scales down on a nearby table.

He was probably trying to reassure Lawrence that his scales were accurate.

Although merchants were always trying to outsmart one another, that didn’t mean trust was never necessary.

“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” said Lawrence, at which point the master nodded and took a step back.

On the table was a beautiful set of brass scales, which gleamed a dull gold. It was the sort of set one would expect to see in the offices of a wealthy cambist in a large city and seemed a bit out of place in this shop.

The Latparron Trading Company’s storefront was so plain it was easily mistakable for a simple home, and the only employees were the master and a few men. The interior of the shop was also plainly furnished with two shelves situated against the wall, one holding jars that seemed to contain spices or dried foodstuffs and another holding bundles of documents, paper, and parchment.

While the scales seemed not in keeping with the rest of the shop, the balance of those scales was clear.

The scales balanced in the center with plates of counterweights to the left and right.

They did not seem to have been tampered with.

Relieved, Lawrence looked up and smiled. “Shall we proceed to weigh the pepper, then?”

There was no reason not to.

“Let’s see, we’ll need paper and ink. Wait just a moment, please,” said the master, walking to the corner of the room and retrieving an ink pot and paper from the shelf. Lawrence was idly looking on when a tug at his sleeve pulled him out of his reverie. There was no one else there—it was Holo.

“What is it?”

“I’m thirsty.”

“You’ll have to wait,” said Lawrence shortly—but he immediately reconsidered.

She was Holo the Wisewolf after all. She wouldn’t make a complaint like that out of the blue. There had to be some kind of reason behind it.

Having changed his mind, Lawrence was about to ask her to explain herself when the master spoke again.

“Even the saints themselves needed water to live. Would you like water or perhaps wine?”

“Water, if you please,” said Holo with a smile. Evidently she had only been thirsty after all.

“Just a moment, then.” The master left the contract paper, ink, and quill on the table and walked out of the room, going to fetch the water himself.

In this regard he seemed to be no merchant, but the model of a devout adherent of the Church.

Yet even as Lawrence was impressed at the master’s faith, he gave Holo a sidelong glare.

“I know this may seem like nothing to you, but to us merchants this is a battleground. You could have had as much water as you wanted later.”

"But I am
thirsty
,” said Holo, looking away stubbornly—she hated being scolded. Despite her frightening intelligence, she could be strangely childish at times. There was no point in saying anything more.

Lawrence sighed, and to chase away his frustration with Holo, he set his mind on estimating how much pepper he had.

At length the master returned, carrying a wooden tray with an Iron pitcher and cup. Lawrence’s shame at having made a business associate and an elder perform such a menial task was very real, but the master’s smiling face seemed to have dispensed with business for the moment.

“Well, then, shall we proceed with the weigh?”

"Indeed.”

They began to weigh the pepper as Holo looked on, leaning against a wall a short distance away, iron cup clasped between her hands.

The weigh was a simple enough task, with a set weight being prepared on one side of the scales and the other being loaded with pepper until it balanced.

It was simple, but if one grew tired of seeing the counterweight sink and was tempted to call it good enough and proceed to the next load, a merchant could unwittingly sustain a significant loss.

So both the master and Lawrence carefully balanced each load until each was satisfied before proceeding to the next.

For all its simplicity, the weighing was sensitive work, and it took forty-five loads to finish. Pepper varied depending on its origin, but a load of Lawrence’s product balanced roughly with a single counterweight should have been worth about one gold lumione piece. Based on his most current knowledge of exchange rates, one lumione equaled thirty-four and two-thirds trenni, the silver coin commonly used in the port town of Pazzio. Forty-five loads at that rate would come to 1,560
trenni
.

Lawrence had bought the pepper for a thousand
trenni
, so that meant a profit of 560 pieces. The spice trade was indeed delicious. Of course, gold and jewels—the raw materials for luxury goods—could fetch two or three times their initial purchase price, so this was a meager gain in comparison, but for a traveling merchant who spent his days crossing the plains, it was profit enough. Some merchants would haul the lowest quality oats on their very backs, destroying themselves as they crossed mountains, only to turn a 10 percent profit when they sold in the town.

Indeed, compared with that, clearing more than five hundred silver pieces by moving a single light bag of pepper was almost too savory to believe.

Lawrence grinned as he packed the pepper back into its leather sack.

"Right, that’s forty-five measures’ worth, then. Where does this pepper come from?”

"It was imported from Ramapata, in the kingdom of Leedon. Here’s the certificate of import from the Milone Company.”

"From Ramapata, then? It’s come quite a ways, then—I can scarcely imagine the place,” mused the master, narrowing his eyes and smiling as he took the certificate parchment Lawrence offered him.

Town merchants often spent their entire lives in the villages of their birth. There were some who would go on pilgrimages after their retirement, but there was no time for such things when they were actively working.

However, even Lawrence the traveling merchant knew little of the kingdom of Leedon, save that it was famous for its spices. To get there from Pazzio, one had to take the river all the way to the coast and then board a long-distance sailing ship south across two separate seas, a journey of roughly two months.

The language was different, of course, and apparently it was hot like summertime year-round in Leedon, and the population was permanently tanned near black from the time they were horn.

It seemed unbelievable, but there was spice, gold, silver, and iron that supposedly came from the place, and the Milone Company vouched for the origin of the pepper, which the certificate claimed was Ramapata.

Was it a real country?

“The certificate seems authentic,” said the master.

The kinds of bills of exchange, trusted promissory notes and contracts that passed through town merchants were huge. Supposedly they could even recognize bills signed by small companies in faraway lands to say nothing of huge organizations that had their main branches in a foreign country.

Recognizing the seal of a company as large as Milone would be but the work of a moment. Signatures were important, but the soul of a contract was the seal.