Wellspring of Chaos (9 page)

On sixday, Kharl was feeling stronger, but not strong enough to use the forge to finish the hoops for the slack barrels. Instead, he contented him self with working on the red oak shooks, first with the planer then spending time with the hollowing knife, including some time workine with Warrl, showing him some of the finer points of using the knife

Just before noon, the door opened, and a short wiry figure with a ginger beard and wearing a brown overtunic stepped into the cooper age. He glanced around, then, catching sight of Kharl, squared his shoulders, and moved toward the planer where Kharl stood From the other workbench, Warrl watched.

“Master Senstad,” the cooper said politely.

“Cooper.”

Kharl waited, suspecting he knew what was coming, but not wanting to make matters easy for the grower.

“I’d ordered twenty barrels, tight cooperage.”

“You did, for harvest.”

“I can only use five, Kharl. I’m sorry… but the harvest isn’t goine to be that good. Too dry early in the summer.” Senstad’s eyes never once met Khan’s.

Kharl could sense the lie, but he only nodded. “Been a bad year for many folk. Least, that’s what they say.”

"I'll pick up the five next sixday… pay you then. That be all right?“

"The barrels’ll be ready.”

“Good.” Senstad paused. “I’m sorry. You know how these things are.”

"Yes, I do. lt happens.“

The grower nodded and turned. At the door, he turned back. “Next sixday.“

“They’ll be ready,” Kharl promised, and that was one he could keep.

The door closed.

“He’s lying,” Warrl said. “Hergan said the growers are having a good year, best in a long time. Why?”

“He probably owes tariffs or money to Lord West. He rents some of his land from the lord, I think.”

“Why did he say he wanted five barrels, then?” Warrl’s face showed puzzlement.

“If he canceled the order, he’d still owe a quarter—that’d be what he’d pay for five barrels. So… this way, he gets five good barrels, and he doesn’t lose anything, and he can tell… everyone that was all he could do.“

“Da…” Warrl finally looked down without saying more.

“You can go over to Hergan’s for a time, if you’d like.”

“I’d like that. You don’t mind?”

“You can go,” Kharl said. “I’ll be all right.”

Warrl didn’t wait, and within moments Kharl was alone in the cooperage.

He went back to the planer.

In midafternoon there was a solid rap on the loading dock door.

Kharl frowned, but walked back to the door and opened it.

Werwal stood there, in his soiled leathers, his wagon in the alley behind him. “Good afternoon, cooper.”

“Good afternoon, Werwal.”

“Wasn’t sure I’d be seeing you. Not after everything I heard,” offered the renderer. “You feeling all right?”

“I’ve felt better,” Kharl confessed. “Good thing I’d finished your barrels last eightday. Still too sore to use the forge.”

Werwal laughed, a rueful sound. “Most fellows wouldn’t be standing after what you went through.” He paused. “I could hold off on the barrels, if you need them for someone else…”

“They’re ready. If you want them, they’re yours. Can’t say as I’ve been overrun with orders the past few days.”

“You won’t be, I fear. Egen’s… let’s just say that he dislikes losing. Because you’re alive, he feels he’s lost.”

“How do you know so much about him… about what goes on?”

Werwal’s laugh was more open this time. “No one holds their tongue around Tenderers and rag-pickers. Who are we, dealing with the dregs of offal?”

Kharl realized something else that he should have noticed sooner. The Tenderer was far better spoken than most crafters, but that was hardly something that he could mention. “Always felt how a man does his craft reckons his value more than what it is.”

“Your barrels show it.” Werwal gestured to the slack barrels by the loading door. “Are those mine?”

“That they are—the first five.”

“I’ll get them. You don’t need to be lifting them right now.”

“I can help…”

“You roll them over, and I’ll lift ‘em,” suggested the Tenderer.

Rolling the empty barrels was no problem for the cooper, and before long all five were in the Tenderer’s wagon.

Werwal closed the wagon gate and walked back to the loading door where Kharl stood.

“I owe you three silvers and four coppers.” The Tenderer extended the coins. “Long as you’re here, I’ll be ordering barrels. I don’t need too many, but they need to be good.”

“I thank you,” Kharl replied. “You seem free to say what you think when others will not even hint at it.”

The lanky man grinned. “Who else would do what I do? That gives me the freedom to say a bit more, though there are those to whom I would not speak so freely.”

“You don’t worry about it?”

“I don’t worry too much,” Werwal replied. “No one else wishes to do what I do.” The Tenderer smiled. “You’re always welcome… if you don’t mind the odor.”

“You’re always welcome here,” Kharl responded.

“For that, cooper, I thank you.” Werwal offered a last smile. “I need to get back.” He turned and lithely vaulted up onto the wagon seat.

As the wagon rolled down the alley away from the loading dock, Kharl wondered about Werwal’s invitation.

Would things change that much, so much that the only place he might be welcome was with Brysta’s Tenderer?

By the beginning of the next eightday, Kharl was almost back to feeling normal, except that too much bending still sent shivers of pain through his back. He was only slightly slower than usual, but he’d seen few of his normal customers. Some, like Korlan, he didn’t expect to see for several more eightdays, although he’d begun work on the vintner’s white oak barrels, after finishing the five for Senstad.

About midmorning on threeday, as Kharl was planing white oak shooks into staves for Korlan’s barrels, Aryl eased through the door of the cooperage.

Kharl glanced at Warrl, who had been working with the chiv to smooth the rims of a red oak slack barrel. “You can take a break, if you’d like.“

“Thank you, Da. Might I go outside?”

“If you don’t go too far.”

With a nod and a smile, Warrl turned, sliding something thin and white and oblong into his tunic, like a folded sheet of paper, better than the kind Warrl had used for his lessons. Kharl wondered what it was, but didn’t want to ask when Aryl was headed toward him.

The boy slipped to the side away from Aryl, waiting until Aryl was farther inside the cooperage before easing behind the brown-bearded and stocky man, then out the door.

“How you doing, Kharl?” asked the square-faced apple grower.

“Been better… been worse. You ready to order some barrels?” Kharl set the stave he had just finished aside and took his foot off the drive pedal of the planer.

“Depends… you wouldn’t talk much when I was offering seven coppers apiece.”

“Still wouldn’t,” Kharl said. “Not much sense in selling something for less than the iron and oak cost. Told you that the price was ten coppers each.”

“I don’t know, Kharl… A silver a barrel… that’s a lot… Mallame offers slack barrels for eight coppers.”

“You get what you pay for, Aryl,” Kharl replied.

“Doesn’t matter that much for slack barrels when you’re shippin‘ apples, and two coppers a barrel adds up when you need twenty. That’s four silvers.”

“What about the ones you used for the apples you dry and put on Nenalt’s ships?” asked the cooper.

Aryl fingered his beard. “You’d have the right of it there. But I’d be needing just ten of those.”

“What about twenty for nine coppers each?” suggested Kharl.

“Hmmm… eighteen silvers, that’d be.”

“You’d be getting more than two silvers’ worth in the better barrels.” Kharl didn’t like cutting his prices. That led to ruin, but he’d also checked the strongbox, and he needed more coin, or at least the promise of it, in order to claim the seasoned shook billets from Vetrad.

“Well… seeing the way things are… I’ll try twenty at nine each. Be needing them the end of next eightday.”

Kharl waited.

“Five silvers now; four on oneday, and the other nine when I pick up the barrels.”

Kharl thought. Usually, Aryl paid half with the order, but oneday was less than an eightday away, and he did need the orders. “Seeing as it’s you, Aryl, that’d be fine, and your barrels’ll be ready an eightday from sixday.”

“That’d be good.” The grower reached for his belt wallet and laid out four silvers and ten coppers.

“They’ll be ready. Good slack barrels.”

“That’s what I’m payin‘ for.”

“And what you’ll get. What you’ve always gotten.”

Aryl nodded, glancing around the cooperage. “Seems a little light on billets.”

“Got a full rack of seasoned oaks out at Vetrad’s. Wanted ‘em seasoned well. Coming in before end-days.”

“Glad to hear it.” Aryl did not look particularly glad, but merely speculative as he turned and left the cooperage.

After slipping the coins into his belt wallet, Kharl returned to planing the shooks into staves, although he had to stop and rest a bit more often than was his wont.

Before too long, Warrl reappeared, easing his way back to the barrel whose rims he’d been smoothing.

“What was that you took with you?” Kharl asked. “It looked like a good piece of paper.”

“Ah… I owed Hergan some sheets from when I didn’t have any. I begged the paper from Sanyle. You always said I should repay what I owed.“

“That you should.” Kharl was convinced Warrl wasn’t telling the whole truth, and he wasn’t so sure begging from Sanyle to pay back Hergan was the best, either. But he didn’t want to press it, not when his younger son had been so good about helping and doing his chores, and not so soon after his mother’s death.

Before Kharl could say more, Warrl looked at his father, and asked, “Did Aryl order any, Da?”

“We’ll be doing twenty for him.” Kharl didn’t mention that he’d be making ten percent less than normal on the barrels, and he hoped that the cut in price wouldn’t prove too costly, when others found out. But he hadn’t been getting that many orders, even before the killing.

“You worried, Da?”

“That I am. Orders are slower than I’d like. Mayhap it’s the times. Gharan says that he’s not doing so well, either, and even Hamyl’s been fretting.”

“Ma… she wasn’t getting so much, either… Fyona said she wouldn’t have had…” Warrl looked down.

“Could be that times are getting harder for everyone,” Kharl said quickly. But he had to wonder as he turned back to the planer.

That evening, after Sanyle had left and Warrl had climbed into his bed in the corner of the main room, Kharl sat at the table, with a pen in hand, looking at the paper before him. Only two words were on the paper— “Dear Merayni.”

What could he write? That Charee had been hanged for a murder she didn’t commit? That he’d been unable to do anything about it? That because he’d prevented Egen from raping Sanyle and taken pity on a beaten blackstaffer, the lord’s son had tried to destroy Kharl, and failing that, had taken his vengeance out on Charee? Merayni would blame Kharl no matter what had happened.

Finally, he folded the paper and tucked it away. He stood and glanced to the corner, but Warrl seemed to be sleeping. With a faint smile, Kharl took the lamp and The Basis of Order into his bedchamber. There he stretched out on his stomach—on the left side of the bed, where he had always slept.

He turned his head, and for a moment, with the faintest scent of rose, he thought he could almost feel Charee. And then the sense of her presence was gone. He still had trouble, especially at night, when he lay in the bed alone, accepting that she was gone. And for what? No matter what the justicer had said, Charee had not killed anyone.

He blinked several times, then blotted his eyes.

Finally, he opened the book and forced himself to look at the words on the page. He had to think of something else. He had to. For a moment, he could not make out the print. He blotted his eyes once more, then concentrated on the book.

All physical items—unlike fire or pure chaos—must have some structure, or they would not exist…

Because all wrought iron has a grain created from the forging of its crystals, the strength of the iron lies in the alignment and length of the grain. Using order to reinforce that grain is the basis of black iron… Its strength lies in the ordering of unbruised or unstrained grains along the length of the metal…

The cooper nodded. Those words made sense. Even with his limited work in forging the hoops from iron blanks, he could see where what the book said would make sense—except for one thing. How could a mage actually infuse iron with order? What he had read so far gave no hint of how such might be done. Yet he had seen the bands on Jenevra’s staff and the warship from Recluce in the harbor. Even from a pier away, there was no doubt that it had been constructed of black iron, and that it was a deadly vessel.

Yet he had never seen more than one warship of Recluce at a time, and those most seldom. Why did Lord West fear the demon isle? Or did he? Had he used the isle as an excuse? Kharl frowned. Lord West had used the law—or his youngest son had—to increase his power over Kharl and those in Brysta and the western quadrant of Nordla. He had no need to mention Recluce.

Kharl’s eyes dropped to the book once more. What was it about Recluce? Would the book tell him more? He flipped back several pages, more toward the beginning of the first part, and reread a section that had bothered him.

The purpose of order is to support that life which can order chaos; and without chaos to be ordered, there can be no purpose to life. .

The function of chaos is to destroy order. Without order, no structure can exist—no man nor woman, no plant, not even an earth upon which to walk…

He frowned. Was Egen the kind of man who was like chaos, destroying order even as he talked of maintaining it? What did maintain order in Brysta? Justicers? The armsmen under Lord West?

Those questions and thoughts were more than Kharl wanted to contemplate, and he closed the book, setting it aside as he prepared for bed. He still had more barrels to finish in the days ahead, and he needed the sleep. He just hoped he could.