Spice & Wolf III by Hasekura Isuna Read Free Book Online Page A

to his apprentice. “Even a town merchant endures endless troubles and worries, though. Sometimes I wish I could go back to traveling.”
    Lawrence could only smile in vague agreement as he was still toiling day in and day out to achieve what Mark already had. Mark seemed to realize this. “Uh, forget I said that,” he said, smiling apologetically.
    “All we can do is keep our noses to the grindstone. It’s the same for all merchants.”
    “True enough. Good fortune to the both of us, then!”
    Lawrence shook hands with Mark, and after seeing another customer come to call on the wheat merchant, he put the stall behind him.
    He slowly maneuvered his wagon into the crowd and then looked back at Mark’s stand.
    There stood Mark, who seemed to have forgotten about Lawrence entirely and was now embroiled in negotiations with his next customer.
    Lawrence was frankly envious.
    But even Mark the successful town merchant said he sometimes wished to return to traveling.
    Lawrence remembered a story. Long ago, there was a king who planned to alleviate the poverty in his own kingdom by invading the prosperous nation next to his own, but a court poet had said this: “One always sees the wretched parts of one’s own land and the best parts of one’s neighbor’s.”
    Lawrence thought on the story.
    He had been focusing on the troubles involved in finding Holo’s homeland or the setbacks he’d suffered in Ruvinheigen, but the fact was he had been able to travel with a companion of rare quality.
    If Lawrence had never encountered Holo, he would have continued along his usual trade route, enduring the endless loneliness that came with it.
    It had once been so bad that he started to seriously fantasize about what it would be like if his horse became human. As he pondered this,
    Lawrence realized that one of his dreams had already come true.
    There was a good chance that eventually he would be traveling alone again, and when that time came, Lawrence knew he would look back on this time with Holo with no shortage of fondness.
    Lawrence gripped the reins once again.
    Once he finished making the rounds through the trade guilds and merchant firms, he would make sure to buy a truly delicious lunch for Holo.
     
    Kumersun lacked a church, so it was a bell tower atop the highest roof of the tallest noble house in town that grandly rang the noontime bell each day. The bell, of course, was decorated with carvings of the finest sort, and the roof, visible throughout the entire town, was maintained by the finest artisans that could be had.
    It was said that the roof—constructed solely because of the vanity of the nobility it housed—had cost fully three hundred lumione, but the people of the town bore the nobles no ill will, reasoning that it was doing such things that made one nobility.
    Perhaps the reason most wealthy merchants, who hoarded their money in great vaults, were so richly resented was because they lacked that playful sense of extravagance. Even the most famously violent of knights would be beloved if he spent freely enough.
    Lawrence thought on this as he opened the door to his room—and was struck face on by the sharp tang of liquor.
    “So it smelled this bad, did it..
    Lawrence suddenly regretted not rinsing his mouth before venturing out, but the greater part of the smell was surely the fault of the wolf that even now slept before him.
    Holo showed no signs of stirring even when Lawrence entered the room, but her artless snoring suggested that she had mostly recovered from her hangover.
    The stink of liquor was too much for Lawrence, so he opened the window before approaching the bed. The water glass next to it was empty as was—fortunately—the bucket. Her face, sticking out of the bedclothes, looked haler than it had before. Lawrence had bought real wheat bread, which he rarely indulged in, instead of honeyed crackers; this had been the right choice, he felt.
    He was quite sure that the first words out of Holo’s