One stray dog scampered away with its tail between its legs.
The back of the building was a space shared by several other buildings, home to several empty barrels of ale and stacks of assorted cargo from the neighboring trading houses—there was no one else around.
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
“What happened to your bathhouse in Nyohhira? Peak season isn’t too far off.”
Eve also wore a long, billowing outfit, one reminiscent of the clothes the desert dwellers wore, though it was not as elaborate as the dancer’s. It was either silk or wool felt—either way, it was a luxury fabric Lawrence was not familiar with. When Eve moved to sit down on one of the barrels, her guard lay a cloth over it.
“I heard tell from the deep forest that there is a wolf here.”
Eve, upon her barrel, glanced away, faint smile still on her face. After thinking for a moment, she smirked, and sighed.
“Did Lord Tonneburg hire you? To save his forest?”
For just a brief moment, Eve’s eyes flickered toward Holo. Eve knew what Holo really was, of course, so she had assumed they had plenty of motivation.
“No, hold on,” she said and folded over, placing her hand to her mouth in thought as she stared at Lawrence. “Don’t tell me you were the merchant that caused all that fuss in Salonia?”
If the lumber issue in Salonia was a part of Karlan’s plan, then it had of course reached Eve’s ears.
“Was that part of your grand plan?” Lawrence asked.
When he first met Eve back when he was but a peddler, she had concocted a grandiose scheme of her own both in Lenos and in Kerube in pursuit of gold. Even though it meant putting herself in danger.
Matthias was right to wonder if the Karlan negotiators were getting swept up in Eve’s plot.
And by what Lawrence saw from the party in the tavern, he felt that was the right way to look at this.
“It certainly seems you think that way.” Eve gave a very fitting look and smile. “I’m starting to get the picture now.”
There were no lights back here, and only a waning moon hung above them, so Eve’s smile, shrouded in the dark, sent Lawrence’s memories back into the past.
But time marched on, and things were different now.
He wanted to show that, but Eve’s troubled tone interrupted his thoughts.
“And why is the little lady being so quiet?”
“She’s—”
—not a part of this.
The moment he began to say that, Holo spoke up instead.
“Once this fool starts, he never listens to what I say.”
“I—what?”
Lawrence whirled around in surprise to see Holo there.
She did not seem angry, sad, pained, or even disappointed—she had only drawn her thin shoulders up in annoyance.
“He thinks you a villain who is hoarding coin in little Col’s name and spending it all on debauchery.”
“Heh,” Eve barked, unable to keep her mirth from showing, even with the fist in front of her mouth.
Lawrence was perplexed, unsure of what any of this meant, when Holo approached him and clapped him on his lower back.
“You assume too much. Though it is a great help when we are headed in the correct direction.”
That was all she needed to say to send Lawrence’s thoughts racing like the rapids through every moment from his conversation with Matthias in the forest until now.
Holo had been hurt and quiet because Eve was betraying Col and Myuri for coin—that was, at least, how the world looked from his eyes.
“’Tis about her debauchery, naturally,” Holo carelessly jerked her chin toward Eve. “’Twas a secret between me and her. I cannot blame you for making false assumptions.”
Eve shrugged. “Just keep a tight rein on it, okay? I don’t want this to come to blows at this age.”
Lawrence, looking between Holo and Eve in their obvious mutual understanding, eventually said in desperation, “I think you’d be getting all the hits in at this point…”
It was Holo who then joined in on the pummeling.
Lawrence was no match for the two women—the two wolves.
“You were pretty angry. That stubborn lord must not have had good things to say about me, huh? Do you know how hard I worked to treat him well?” Eve said, then muttered, “Hoarding?” She gave another bark of laughter.
“That is your job, no? You did not look the slightest bit hungry, even with all that delicious food around you.”
Holo jerked her head back toward the tavern.
“Yeah. Guess it’s because I can eat all that stuff every night. The people here said they wanted to learn how to cook popular dishes from the south, so I’ve been taste-testing them.”
Holo’s tail, swishing beneath her cloak, was like that of a dog waiting to be given scraps at the table. What happened to being a wolf? Lawrence thought, the spiteful remark his way of easing his frustration of being left out of the conversation.
“That goes for the song and dance, too. The dancers wanted to adopt what dances are popular in the south from my dancers, and bard troupes from all over the region have come for the same reason. And that’s why every day is like this.”
From Lawrence’s perspective, it only seemed as though she was holding banquets and generously treating everyone to fancy feasts at the tavern. But now that she mentioned it, all Eve herself had been doing was sipping her drink and speaking with the chefs—that in particular seemed strange. Even to have an entire group of minstrels gathered in one place would surely cause the other establishments to complain; the guilds would not stay silent about that.
Matthias had said that Eve was showing off her wealth in their meeting, but Eve said she had done her best to treat him respectfully. They did not quite see eye to eye, which meant it was not all that strange to hear that Matthias saw her as villainous. He was just like Lawrence, ranting and raving about how Eve had reduced herself to a simple greedy merchant.
But if that had all been a mistake, then there was one thing Lawrence did not understand.
“What are you doing in this town, then?” he asked.
Eve replied, “I should be asking you the same thing.”