Spice & Wolf II Read Online Free PDF Page A

someone who wasn’t as devout as the master would have wanted to help her, but Lawrence noticed something strange.
    Underneath Holo’s hood, her wolf ears had not drooped very much.
    “A long journey will tire even the strongest man,” declared the master.
    Holo nodded slightly, then spoke. “I may well be tired from the travel. My vision seemed to tilt suddenly...”
    “That won’t do. Ah, I have it—shall I bring some goat milk? It’s fresh from yesterday’s milking,” he said, offering her a chair and briskly going to fetch the milk without waiting for her response.
    Lawrence was surely the only one who had any premonition that Holo was going to do something else when she did not sit in the offered chair and instead went to set the iron cup on the table.
    “Sir,” she said to the master, whose back was turned. “I believe I am yet a bit dizzy.”
    “Heavens. Shall I call a physician?” asked the master, looking over his shoulder with heartfelt concern.
    Underneath the hood, Holo’s expression was anything but the weak dizziness she feigned.
    “Look here. It’s tilting before my very eyes,” said Holo, taking the cup and spilling a few drops on the surface of the table—whereupon it flowed smoothly to Holo’s right and off the edge of the table, dripping to the floor with a small plip sound.
    “Wha—!” Lawrence walked swiftly to the table and put his hand on the scales.
    It was the same set of scales he’d so carefully gauged the accuracy of earlier. If they were even slightly off, it would mean a large loss for him, and so he’d checked the scales’ accuracy carefully—but they aligned perfectly with the direction in which the water had flowed off the table.
    This led to a single conclusion.
    The weighing was over, and the plates of the scale were empty save for the counterweights on them. Lawrence took the set of scales and rotated it to face precisely the opposite direction.
    The scales tipped this way and that owing to the sudden movement, but when set back on the table, their movement slowed and eventually stopped.
    According to the gradations, the scales balanced perfectly—despite the incline of the table. If they had been accurate, the reading would have been skewed by the slant of the table.
    The scales had clearly been tampered with.
    “So, then, did I drink water, or was it wine?” inquired Holo. She looked back to the master—as did Lawrence.
    The master’s expression froze, and sweat appeared on his forehead.
    “What I drank was wine. Was it not?” Holo’s voice sounded so a mused that even her smile was practically audible.
    The master’s face paled to a nearly deathly pallor. If the fact that he used fraudulent scales to swindle merchants was made public in a god-fearing town like this, all his assets would be forfeit, and he would face instant bankruptcy.
    “There’s a saying that ‘no one drinks less than the master of a full tavern’—this must be what that means,” said Lawrence.
    The stricken master was like a cornered hare, unable to cry out even as a predator’s fangs pierced its skin.
    Lawrence walked back toward the master with an easy smile.
    “The secret to prosperity is being the only sober one, eh?”
    So much sweat beaded up on the master’s forehead that you could trace a picture in it.
    “It seems I’m drunk on the same wine as my companion. I doubt we’ll be able to remember anything we’ve seen or heard in here...though in exchange I may be a bit unreasonable.”
    “Wh-what do you...?” The master’s face shivered in fear.
    Taking easy revenge here would be failing as a merchant, though.
    There wasn’t even a mote of anger at being deceived in Lawrence’s mind.
    All he thought of were cold calculations of how much more profit he could extract from his opponent’s fear.
    This was an unexpected opportunity.
    Lawrence drew near the man, his expression still smiling, his tone still every bit the negotiating merchant.
    “Let’s see...I