Wellspring of Chaos (23 page)

The next day Kharl was hard at work on deck duties, replacing weakened posts in the starboard quarter railing of the Seastag, before smoothing, then varnishing it. He had finished the job and been released for the day a glass before supper.

He’d thought about the ruins he’d seen the day before, with the massive stone blocks clearly split in two and left to weather for ages. It did not appear the site had ever been quarried for stones, but perhaps the abundance of timber to the north along the low hills lining the Great North Bay had made using wood more attractive. Certainly, except for the larger dwellings at the top of the bluff, almost all the dwellings and buildings in Lydiar were of wood, and most looked to be decades old, if not older. While he had not felt any of the whiteness he had with the wizard in Brysta, the dead feeling of the soil told him that some great wizardry had to have been involved. Nothing grew around the ruins still. That might have been the reason why no one had tried to quarry them. Perhaps in ages past people had tried and suffered, even died, but that was something about which Kharl could only guess.

Since he still had close to a glass before supper, he slipped The Basis of Order from his pack in his bin and carried it with him up onto the deck. He found a space beside the railing where the late and fading light from the setting sun illuminated the pages and began to read, not really trying to puzzle out each phrase, but just letting the words flow over and through him.

“What are you reading?”

Kharl glanced up to find the third mate—Rhylla—looking down at him. “It’s a book on order and chaos, ser. Someone left it to me, back in Brysta.”

“Not many sailors—or coopers—read,” observed Rhylla.

“I suppose not.”

“Furwyl said you lost everything to the tariff farmer. Why did he do that?” Rhylla’s voice expressed mild concern.

“Because I stopped Lord West’s son from having his way with a neighbor girl.”

“Aye. That would do it.” Rhylla snorted. “What happened to the girl?”

“He had her father murdered. Her mother died years ago.”

“So they killed the father and ran you off?”

Kharl nodded.

“You look like it wasn’t that simple.”

Kharl laughed, half-bitterly. “They hung my consort because she couldn’t prove she didn’t do something. My eldest son left Brysta as a carpenter’s assistant on a ship; my youngest left to live with my consort’s sister. The tax farmer demanded twelve golds…”

“Twelve… golds?”

“Twelve. I got off with a mere thirty lashes, and the deaths of my consort and neighbor.”

“Thirty—and you still can walk?”

“I didn’t for a while.”

“I can see why you wanted to leave Brysta. You think things’ll be better elsewhere?”

“Things? No. I figure that people are the same everywhere. But I won’t have a lord’s son looking to do me in elsewhere.”

Rhylla nodded. “Good folk and bastards everywhere. Trick is to keep to the good ones and avoid the others.”

“Sometimes that’s hard,” Kharl pointed out.

“These days… harder. One reason why I’m staying here as a third.”

“You could be a second on another ship?”

“Been offered twice. Pay’d be better, but the crew share’d be smaller, and I’d end up drinking all the extra coins to forget. Hagen’s a good captain. Too few like him. You know that he owns other ships, but still sails as captain?”

“No.” It didn’t surprise Kharl. Hagen was good, and he couldn’t imagine the captain sitting in a countinghouse or a mansion and being happy. He didn’t know why he thought that, but he did.

“You hid out waitin‘ for him, didn’t you?” Kharl smiled ruefully.

“Smartest thing you coulda done.” Rhylla nodded. “Need to check on the duty sentries.” She stepped away.

Kharl looked down at the page open before him.

… each thing under the sun, be it a man or a machine, a creature or an object created, is unique, no matter how closely it resembles another, and yet all these unique things are created from the sameness of order and chaos, and all that is unique is the manner in which order and chaos are twisted into the unique forms that we are and that surround us…

He thought about the words for a time… for a long time… until the bell rang for supper, and he slipped the book inside his tunic and went below to the long narrow mess.

After eating, he went back on deck to think, and to watch the stars appear in the night sky, brightening as the sky darkened. In time, he returned to the crew quarters.

As he undressed and slipped into his bunk, he hoped he could sleep soundly. He did—except for the time when Reisl staggered back into the forecastle, clearly drunk, and mumbled incoherently before collapsing into his own bunk.

Kharl sighed and went back to sleep.

Kharl had already washed up and trimmed his beard, and was getting ready to head to the mess for what passed for breakfast, when Bemyr’s whistle shrilled through the forecastle, announcing that breakfast was ready. Another whistle would call the in-port morning muster, where additional duties might be assigned.

“Frig…” mumbled Reisl, turning and sitting on the edge of his bunk, legs dangling as he held his head in his hands.

“Too much ale,” called Argan.

Behind them, Wylat just grinned.

Reisl slumped to his feet and began to pull out clothes from his bin, where he had tossed them the night before. He straightened abruptly. “Know I was ale-decked,” he mumbled, “but not enough to lose every copper in my wallet.”

“You had some when you came back aboard?” asked Kharl. Reisl nodded, then turned to Hodal. “You know what happened to my coin?”

Hodal looked up at the taller man. “No. You think I’m that stupid?” Kharl could sense that Hodal was telling the truth. The cooper glanced around the forecastle, taking in the sailors still in their bunks.

Some were asleep, others pretending to be so.

“What about you, Kawelt?” asked Reisl, stepping forward toward the next bunk.

“Like to take anything you have, Reisl. Didn’t.”

Kharl could see/sense just a touch of the strange whiteness that no one else seemed to notice around the third upper bunk—the one holding Asolf. Kharl eased toward it, nodding to Reisl.

Reisl stepped toward Asolf. “Why did you empty my wallet, Asolf?”

The broad-faced sailor cocked his head. “You’re one to be making charges. You couldn’t have seen the sun if it had risen right in front of you.” He eased out of his bunk without looking at Reisl. He already wore trousers, but not deck shoes.

“I just asked if you emptied my wallet.”

“Why would I do that?”

Kharl looked at the younger man. “You don’t want to answer the question, and usually people who don’t want to answer have a reason they don’t want to.”

“Carpenter… it’s not your business.”

“Theft in the fo’c‘s’le is everyone’s business,” snapped Bemyr from the hatchway. “Yes or no?”

“No,” replied Asolf.

“That’s a lie,” Kharl said without thinking.

Asolf drove right toward the cooper. Kharl stepped aside and, as he did, one-handedly flung Asolf to the deck. The deckhand lay there for a moment, then started to gather his feet under him. Kharl wondered if the sailor had a knife or a marlinespike. His own fingers tightened about the carpenter’s hammer in his belt.

“You move, and you’re off the ship in the clothes on your back,”

Bemyr stated coldly.

Asolf froze.

“I think I’ll take a look in Asolf’s bin,” Bemyr said, moving forward.

“Yeah… I took all three coppers in his wallet,” Asolf said tiredly.

“I’m sure you did, and I’m sure you took more than that,” Bemyr said. “You and I are going to talk to the captain. Get up.”

Asolf slowly rose, glaring at Kharl. “Friggin‘ half mage.”

“Didn’t take no mage to figure out you were hiding something,”

Reisl said.

“Even I could figure it out,” added Bemyr. “Let’s go.”

After the two left the forecastle Reisl looked at Kharl. “Thanks.

Always thought he was snitching coppers here and there. Never could get him.“

“You seemed to know who it was,” Kharl said.

“Knew for a while, but he’s mean.” Reisl shook his head. “You took him down so quick.”

“Just luck,” Kharl lied. He’d sensed that Asolf would attack, and he’d been ready. Since he was half a head taller, broader, stronger, and ready, the thieving sailor hadn’t had a chance.

“Take that kind of luck any day.”

“So will I,” replied Kharl with a laugh. As he left and headed for the mess, Kharl wondered why Asolf had called him a half mage. Because the sailor was touched with chaos and had realized Kharl could sense it? Or just to get Kharl distrusted by the other sailors?

Breakfast in port wasn’t bad—there was hot bread and an egg mush with scraps of meat. Kharl took his bowl and sat at one end of the narrow table, scooping up the mush with a crust of the rye bread, listening as others entered the mess.

“… the bosun and the captain threw Asolf off… caught him stealing coppers, bosun did…”

“… few morns woke up thinking I shoulda had more in my wallet… now I know…”

“… smart… only took a few…”

“Not smart enough.”

Kharl finished and left the mess.

Immediately after muster, and before reporting to the carpenter shop, Kharl made his way to the bow, on the port side, the side where he could look out northward over the Great North Bay. He leaned on the railing, thinking. He’d been lucky that most of the crew had already suspected Asolf, but he’d come close to giving himself away. He frowned. What exactly was he afraid of? That somehow he was able to sense chaos and when people told lies? Or that people would think he was a mage, when he scarcely knew anything about it?

He’d always had a feel for wood, and often Vetrad had complained when Kharl had refused certain lengths of wood, but the ones he’d refused hadn’t felt right, and he’d seldom ever found himself with bad billets in the cooperage. Idly, thinking about the wood, he looked down at the solid oak hull, angling toward the gray water of the bay.

He frowned. About ten cubits aft of where he stood, just above the waterline, on the port side, he could sense an overtone of white.

“What are you looking at?”

Kharl straightened at Hagen’s question. “Ser, I mean, captain. I think there’s something wrong with the hull, the wood, that is, down there, right at the waterline.”

“Well… you think so, and you go down on a bosun’s chair and look real close.” Hagen gestured.

Furwyl appeared.

“Bosun’s chair,” Hagen said. “Kharl’s worried about the hull down there. Like to have him take a look. Can’t leave until tomorrow anyway.”

“Those are new planks and timbers…”

“Can’t hurt to have him look.”

Kharl almost wished he’d said nothing, but he remained silent until Hodal appeared with the rope-slung chair. The two of them attached the ropes and pulleys, then swung the chair over the railing. There Kharl climbed into the chair and was lowered.

The chair stopped two or three cubits too high.

“A little lower,” Kharl called.

The chair lurched down.

“That’s good.”

Up close, Kharl could feel that the damage was worse than he’d thought, although the hull looked normal. An entire patch of hull going at least three cubits below the waterline was rotten—or something like it. He touched the wood and could feel some give.

“Well?” Furwyl called down.

“You got a whole section of hull here. I could drive a maul through it.”

Furwyl laughed. “That section’s only a year old. Come on up.”

“It’s rotten.”

“Can’t be. It’s new oak.”

Kharl took the hammer from his belt. “Watch.”

“Be glad to.”

The carpenter who’d been a cooper took one swing, and buried the hammer in the wood just above the waterline. Splinters and chunks of rotten wood flew. Kharl pulled away a fist-sized chunk, holding it in his left hand. “Pull me up. You can see for yourself.”

Furwyl’s mouth hung open.

Then the first mate and Hodal pulled up the chair, and Kharl scrambled out, handing the chunk of oak to Furwyl.

Furwyl looked at the wood, taking in the strawlike parallel tubes in the fragment. “Shipworms… frigging shipworms. That Jeran swine… paid for coppered wood…” He looked up. “Captain!”

Hagen reappeared.

“Carpenter’s right. Shipworms. Bet all those timbers we replaced in Biehl are no good.“

Hagen’s jaw tightened.

“I’m sorry, ser,” Kharl said. “I don’t claim to know ships… but I know something about wood…”

“Not your fault, man.” Hagen shook his head. “We hit a bad blow… might lose the ship.”

“Leave the chair there,” Furwyl said.

Kharl stepped aside, sliding down the railing as the two officers talked in low voices.

“… not the best place to refit and retimber…”

“… put that hammer through that like rotten cheese…”

“… any kind of storm… go down by the head… quicker ‘n a lead barrel…“

Kharl looked out across the harbor, not really seeing anything. What had happened to him? He’d known wood, and once he’d touched the hull, he’d known it was weak, but he’d never before been able to see or sense something like that from ten cubits away before.

The single dry dock at Lydiar was old, and the steam engine that powered the pump groaned and wheezed as the water gushed in surges over the stone walls of the dock and out into the harbor until the Seastag rested on the wide keel blocks. The crew had already moved the cargo in the forward hold, and much of it was under tarpaulins on the aft section of the main deck.

Kharl—still sweating from that effort—stood on the stone rim of the only dry dock in Lydiar, with Tarkyn beside him, looking down at the exposed hull.

“Hamorian merchants soak their planks in copper solution,” Tarkyn said. “Then they sheathe the hull in thin copper plates. Costs more to begin with, but they claim that it’s cheaper over the life of the vessel. ‘Course their warships are iron-hulled steamers. Don’t worry about worms with those, but cost of coal will kill a trader…”

“Lot of things are like that,” replied Kharl. “Most folks want things cheap as they can get them. Cooperage was like that. Good tight white oak cooperage costs two coppers more a barrel, four if it’s something as big as a hogshead, but a good barrel’ll outlast a poor one by half again as long.” He shrugged. “For some folks… makes no difference, but for most… after five years they’ll spend silvers, sometimes even golds, more for what they thought they’d saved…” He cleared his throat. “Is there any way the captain can get recompense from the Jeran?”

“Not so as I’d know.” Tarkyn laughed. “Revenge, though. That he can get. Just tell every master he meets. In a few years, none’d be dealing with the Jeran. Folks forget that there’s a balance to life. Things come back. Not so as the black ones in Recluce say, always prating on about the Balance, but in life. Do a man good, and most will return good. Do a man ill, and few will forget.”

“Too bad that doesn’t apply to rulers,” mused Kharl.

“It does, cooper. We just don’t see it. The white wizards of Fair-ven… they got too mighty and proud. Where are they now? Whole city’s a ruin. Nothing’ll ever live there again. The Prefect of Gallos—he’s got more problems than a lathe has shavings. Most ‘cause he treats all but a few like serfs.“ Tarkyn gestured back toward Lydiar. ”Lydiar goes through rulers like…“ Tarkyn stopped to grope for a comparison, then looked at Kharl.

“I suppose so. It just hasn’t happened where I’ve seen it.”

“It happens. Trust me.” Tarkyn cleared his throat again. “Friggin‘ frog. Get older, and you spend more time clearing your throat than talkin’. Then, could be, gettin‘ paid back for talkin’ too much when you’re young. Anyway… you see the captain? He does right well. Know why? ‘Cause he treats his crews right. Makes sure his captains on the other ships do, too. Word gets around.”

Kharl recalled the third mate talking about staying as a third rather than becoming a second on another ship. “I had that feeling, even when I was a cooper.”

“‘Course, sometimes a fellow’s got to help matters along. Got to stand up and do the right thing, not wait for others to do it. Captain’s like that. When he found out that fellow been lifting coppers, he booted him off just like that, and he took his crew share, divided it among the hands who lost coins.” Tarkyn laughed. “Some probably said they lost a copper or two more ’n they did, and some probably lost some they didn’t recall, but a lot of skippers, they’d just pocket that share. Not the captain.”

Kharl glanced down into the dry dock, where water still swirled around the lower sections of the keel, although the water level continued to drop, revealing greenish moss on the lower stones of the dry dock walls. “He always dealt with me fairly when he bought cooperage.”

“You gave him the best, I’d wager, because he did.” Kharl had given everyone the best, but he merely answered, “I did.”

“Sooner or later, what you do comes back,” Tarkyn declared. Kharl still had to wonder whether that was truly so. No one had avenged Charee’s death, nor had any good come from it that he could see. While he had managed to help Jeka a little, no one had done anything about Lord West’s corrupt tariff farmers in either Sagana or Brysta. Tyrbel’s death and that of Jenevra had both occurred, and nothing had happened to Egen. Then, Kharl reflected, he had killed Tyrbel’s assassin, who had probably been the one who had killed Jenevra. Still… nothing had happened to redress the balance with Lord West and his sons, and Kharl had seen nothing to make him believe that it would.