Spice and Wolf Season 2 - Episode 4

Well I'll be damned. It didn't turn out exactly as I predicted last episode. But I still stand by my prediction, just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't happen. It just looks like the producers are going to drag this out and kick it around a little. Not that I have anything against that since this arc seems pretty decent on its own. The thing that really surprised me was that Horo signed the marriage paper with Amati. I wonder how they're going to reverse that?

This week trading was pretty mind boggling actually since Lawrence is planning to get back Horo by essentially trying to crash the pyrite market so Amati would be unable to pay off Horo's debt leaving her no choice but to stay with Lawrence. So maybe Lawrence won't reverse the marriage contract and instead forcefully drag Horo along. Pretty smart, but pretty harsh...

It was all pretty complicated but I'm going to try and summarise it to the best of my ability.

• Lawrence makes a deal with Amati to sell 500 Trenni Silvers worth of pyrite to Amarty by evening of the next day on credit.
• Amati agrees to this and Lawrence on credit.
• Because Lawrence sold the pyrite on credit, even if the price of pyrite crashes, the 500 Trenni Silver won't be affected.
• Next, Lawrence plots with his friend (the wheat store owner) to crash the pyrite market by getting his apprentice to the spread word around that "the price of wheat is rising". This will crash the pyrite market since most merchants came here primarily to deal wheat anyway and pyrite was more like a souvenir to them.
• His friend refuses to give Lawrence any aid as this could potentially tarnish his name in the town and he cannot risk it since he is a town merchant unlike Lawrence who is a traveling merchant.
• However, his friend suggests that Lawrence should go talk to the alchemists (who were mentioned early on, a couple of episode ago) who have their own separate pyrite stash which is completely secluded from the market. Therefore by leaking these pyrite into the market, Lawrence can still crash it!