Spice & Wolf II Read Free

from the apple incident. Lawrence clicked his tongue in irritation, his face grim.
    “You should’ve just asked nicely in the first place, then. It would’ve been so much more charming.”
    “So if I ask charmingly enough, you will buy some for me, then?” asked Holo without a trace of charm.
    Lawrence eased the horse forward as the line moved, answering flatly, “Of course not. You could stand to learn something from those cows and sheep—try chewing your cud, hm?”
    He grinned to himself, proud of his wit—but Holo’s face went blank with anger, and without a word, there on the driver’s seat of the wagon, she stomped on his foot.
    The road was nothing more than hard-packed dirt, the simple houses made of rough-hewn stone and thatched with grass.
    The people of Poroson bought nothing but the barest necessities from the merchant stalls, so there were surprisingly few such stalls.
    A goodly number of people moved about the town, among them merchants with carts or backs fully loaded, but the atmosphere seemed to suck up the normal town chatter like cotton, so it was oddly quiet.
    It was hard to believe this quiet, simple, proud town was a nexus of foreign trade that earned dizzying amounts of money every day.
    After all, missionaries whose street-corner sermons went largely ignored in other cities could count on gratefully attentive crowds here—so how was profit so effectively made?
    To Lawrence, the town was nothing less than a mystery.
    “’Tis a tedious place,” came Holo’s assessment of the uniquely religious town.
    “You’re only saying that because there’s nothing to eat.”
    “You speak as though I think of nothing else.”
    “Shall we take in a sermon, then?”
    Just ahead of them, a missionary preached to a crowd, one hand on a book of scripture.
    The listeners were not only townspeople—there were several merchants whose prayers were normally for naught but their own profit.
    Holo regarded them distastefully and sniffed.
    “He’s about five hundred years too young to be preaching to me.”
    “I daresay you could stand to hear a sermon on frugality.”
    Toying idly with the silken sash at her waist, Holo put her hand to her mouth and yawned at Lawrence’s suggestion. “I’m a wolf yet. Sermons are complicated and difficult for us to understand,” she said shamelessly, rubbing her eyes.
    “Well, as far as the teachings of the god of frugality go, they’re more persuasive here than anywhere else, I’d reckon.”
    “Hm?”
    “Nearly all the money made here flows to the seat of the Church northwest of here, Ruvinheigen—now there’s a place I’ve no desire to hear a sermon.”
    The Church capital of Ruvinheigen was so prosperous some said its walls had turned to gold. The upper echelons of the Church Council that controlled the region had turned to commerce to support their subjugation of the heathens, and the priests and bishops of Ruvinheigen put the merchants to shame.
    Lawrence wondered if that was precisely why opportunities for profit there were so absurdly plentiful.
    Just then, Holo tilted her head quizzically. “Did you say Ruvinheigen?”
    “What, do you know it?” Lawrence gave Holo a sidelong glance as he steered the wagon to the right once the street forked.
    “Mm, I remember the name, but not as a city—it was a person’s name.”
    “Ah, you’re not wrong. It’s a city now, but it was the name of a saint who led a group of crusaders against the pagans. It’s an old name—you don’t hear it much anymore.”
    “Hmph. Maybe ’tis him I’m remembering.”
    “Surely not.”
    Lawrence laughed it off but soon realized—Holo had set out on her travels hundreds of years ago.
    “He was a man with flaming red hair and a great bushy beard.. He’d hardly gotten a glance at my lovely ears and tail before he set his knights after me with spear and sword. I’d had enough, so I took my other form and kicked his knights around before sinking my teeth into that