Wellspring of Chaos (33 page)

“How did things get so bad?” Kharl asked.

“Ask the Emperor of Hamor… or Lord Estloch. I’m just a cooper, trying to hang on till things get better. They might, someday. Never know.” Chalart looked down at the wood in the planer.

Kharl took the hint. “Thank you. The best of fortune to you.”

“And to you.”

Once outside, where the wind had shifted and now blew, colder and icier, out of the northeast, Kharl studied the refit area, seemingly almost abandoned, from the empty dry docks to the cold gray harbor waters with an increasing chop—and not a single vessel tied to the one pier adjoining the dry docks. After several moments, Kharl turned back toward the harbor. Should he spend good silvers to get passage to Vizyn to find Taleas and see if the scrivener could help him? If he didn’t go, how would he know if there might be a place for a cooper? Nine hundred kays might make a difference. And it might not.

The walk back south and east was long, but Kharl found the coaster pier by midafternoon. Standing at the foot of the pier, he studied both the Norther and the Southshield, then decided on the Southshield, a smaller version of the Seastag—twin-masted with midships paddle wheels.

He walked down the dock to the ship, and up the gangway to the sailor on watch, who could have been Tarkyn’s younger brother, gray-haired rather than white-haired, but square-faced and grizzled. The sailor watched, but did not speak as Kharl neared.

“I was looking for passage to Vizyn,” Kharl said.

“Let me get the second.” The watchstander rang the bell twice, but said nothing more.

Kharl did not wait long for the second mate, a narrow-faced woman within a few years of his own age, with gray eyes and short hair.

“We’re not hiring,” she told him bluntly.

“I was looking for passage to Vizyn.”

“You a blackstaffer?”

“No. I grew up in Brysta. I’ve been the carpenter second on the Seastag.”

“Don’t take deadheads.”

“I’ll pay passage, if it’s not too much. Captain Hagen said to tell you that he sent me.”

“Why’d he say that?”

“The Seastag’s going into refit. I’ve been his second carpenter, but I’d heard there might be a need for my skills in Vizyn…”

The second laughed. “Four silvers. Three more for return passage if you decide to come back on the same trip.”

“Is Vizyn that bad?”

“It’s cold. Snow everywhere. Everyone knows everyone else. Don’t care for outsiders.”

Kharl thought. He wasn’t going to be a cooper in Valmurl, not when no one would take him on and when he didn’t have the golds to set up his own shop. The same might be true in Vizyn, but would he always look back and wonder if he didn’t go there and see? “When do you leave?”

“In about a glass.”

“What sort of quarters? Food?”

“Four gets you a bunk in a space for two, and meals with the crew. We just run two meals a day at sea. You’re the only passenger this run, so you get more space. If you need more gear, be back here in a glass. You can pay then.”

Kharl smiled wryly. “Got all the gear I’ll need. You the one who gets the silvers?“

“Me or the captain.”

Kharl eased the silvers out of his wallet and tendered them.

“Welcome aboard. Name’s Herana.”

“Kharl,” he replied. ;

“I’ll show you your spaces and then have you meet the captain.” She turned.

Kharl followed, noting that the deck was clean and that what he saw of the vessel looked shipshape. Then, Hagen had recommended the Southshield.

True to Herana’s words, Captain Harluk had cast off from the coaster pier at Valmurl in late afternoon and steamed out of the harbor. Once clear of the harbor, Harluk had shut down the engine and kept the Southshield heading due east until well after sunset. Then, in the dimness after twilight, in seas that were not quite so heavy as those the Seastag had encountered on its way to Valmurl, the captain had brought the coaster onto a northerly heading.

Kharl’s cabin was but big enough for two bunks, one atop the other, although he shared it with no one, and there was space enough under the lower bunk for his pack. He had been forced to angle the staff to get it to fit through the passageway and into the cabin.

Supper on the Southshield had been distinguished mainly by the hot bread and peppery gravy spread over slices of meat so salty Kharl hadn’t been certain what it was, perhaps mutton that had been dried, before being boiled and covered with gravy. Still, with the bread, and some hard cheese, and dried apples, Kharl had found it far better than most meals he had eaten in the eightdays before signing on the Seastag.

In the late twilight, well after eating, Kharl had made his way on deck and stood slightly forward of the paddle wheel casing, aft enough that the spray from the bow did not mist around him, although there was more spray across the deck than on the Seastag, doubtless because of the Southshield’s narrower beam.

At times, the dark waters shimmered with a luminescence that was not light, but the darkness of order. Although Kharl could not have explained how order-darkness could create light within the very ocean, he felt and knew that somehow that was so.

Now that he was actually on his way to Vizyn, he had more questions of himself.

Why was he spending silvers, so hard gotten, to travel to Vizyn? Just because Tyrbel had written Taleas? How could there be a place for a cooper there when there were none in Valmurl, certainly much larger?

Or was he carrying out the trip because he had already decided that was what he should do? When did a wise man change plans? Why?

“You’re a hardy one.”

Kharl turned to see the second mate less than three cubits away, almost lost in the darkness. She stepped closer, then stopped.

“Thinking,” he explained.

“You could do that in a far warmer place,” she said with a laugh.

“Then… I probably wouldn’t think. I’d just fall asleep,” he admitted.

Herana stepped closer, stopping a good cubit short of Kharl. “That’s a sailor’s answer.”

“That’s what I’ve been for the past seasons.”

“And you’re leaving a good ship with a good captain without knowing where you’re going or what you’ll do?”

Put that way, his actions seemed foolish. “Does seem strange,” he admitted.

“One way of putting it.” After a moment, she asked, “How’d you get that staff? It’s a real Recluce blackstaff.”

“It belonged to someone else. She was murdered. I tried to return it to the Brethren when I got to Nylan, but they said it belonged to me and that I could keep it or they’d destroy it.” Kharl shrugged. “Couldn’t see a good staff being destroyed.”

“That means you’re a mage.”

“No. I’m no mage. I was a cooper, then I became a carpenter.”

“They don’t let just anyone who shows up with one of those keep it,” the second pointed out.

“They did say that I was drawn to order,” Kharl admitted. “But I’m not a mage. Doubt if I ever could be one.” At the uneasiness that settled over him with those woras, he quickly added, “Not like any of them. Maybe I could put a bit more order in my work—things like that.”

“You probably already do. Captain Hagen looks for folk like that.”

“He does?”

“That and more. Some folk say he’s the lord’s left hand, seeing as they’re cousins, seconds, though. Don’t know as I’d buy that, close as folk say they are. Captain Harluk doesn’t, and there’s little that escapes him, either.”

“I thought there was something about him, even when he first came to the cooperage…”

“You had your own cooperage?”

“I did. That was a while ago. Things don’t always turn out the way they should.”

Herana laughed once more. “Life’s like that.” Then she nodded to him. “Take care up here. Farther north we go and the colder it gets, deck could get icy and slippery.”

“I’ll be careful,” Kharl promised, watching as the second slipped away aft, back into the deeper shadows not touched by the lamps from the poop deck.

After a time, he turned and headed back to his cabin. It wasn’t that much warmer than the deck, but the lack of wind and chill spray made it seem so, and the day had been long.

In his winter jacket, hands thrust inside it to keep them warm, Kharl stood midships, just forward of the paddle wheel frame, where he was partly sheltered from the wind blowing from the stern, as the Southshield eased its way up to the single squat pier at Vizyn. His pack and staff were at his feet. The small harbor opened to the northeast, looking out on gray waters that might have been liquid ice from the chill carried by the wind. The hempen fenders that cushioned the hull from the pier crackled as the Southshield came to rest against the dock, and icy fragments sprayed forth in the morning air.

Everywhere that Kharl looked, there was white, from the steep hills that encircled the port town to the snow-covered evergreens on those hills. The roofs of the dwellings and buildings in Vizyn were covered with snow, and the streets that Kharl could make out were snow-packed. Had there been any sun, the glare would have been unbearable, but thick and low gray clouds covered the sky, and in places obscured the tops of the taller hills to the west. Smoke from chimneys drifted upward in grayish lines, eventually merging with the low clouds.

“Double up, now!” came the command from aft.

Kharl waited until the ship was secured, and the gangway down to the pier before shouldering his pack and picking up his staff. He moved back around the midships paddle wheel and toward the quarterdeck area where Herana stood.

The second mate looked at Kharl. “We’ll be casting off early morning tomorrow. There’ll be space back to Valmurl if you need it. Don’t carry many passengers in the winter, just timber and some hard coal.”

“Thank you.” Kharl glanced beyond the pier. “You were right. There is snow everywhere.”

She laughed.

Kharl smiled in return and made his way down the gangway. The pier itself was generally clear of snow, but he saw patches of dark ice here and there. He decided to follow the wider street that was mostly clear of snow and lined with shops. The shop nearest the harbor, unsurprisingly, was a chandlery and looked to be open. Kharl stamped his boots on the planks of the porch, swept clear of snow, unlike parts of the street, before stepping inside and carefully closing the door behind him.

The man who was sweeping the floor stopped and looked up, his eyes taking in the long black staff. He appeared to be Kharl’s age, although his beard was streaked with white and bushy. “Could I help you?”

“I’m looking for a scrivener named Taleas…”

The chandler tilted his head slightly, frowning, before he smiled and answered. “His place is about seven, eight blocks toward the center of town. Go up the street till you get to the White Deer. Turn right at the corner. Should be two-three hundred cubits farther, on the left.”

“Thank you.”

“Interest you in some winterbread? Fine travel food.”

Kharl smiled. “After I find Taleas… then we’ll see.” He nodded and turned. Again he was careful to close the door behind him when he left and stepped back outside. His breath was a white plume in the cold air permeated by the mixed odcrs of both burning wood and coal.

Kharl’s ears tingled after several hundred cubits, and he could understand why the few people he saw on the streets wore caps or hats, generally with earflaps. He kept walking up the street, alternating putting one hand and then the other inside his winter jacket, a jacket that was clearly too light for the cold of Vizyn.

Healthy plumes of whitish smoke poured from the chimneys of the White Deer, and Kharl was almost tempted to step inside the inn, if only to warm himself. He could feel the chill creeping into his toes, and his ears and fingers were beginning to get numb. But the chandler had said that Taleas was but a few hundred cubits from the inn. So Kharl turned right and kept walking. He walked a good three or four hundred cubits down the rapidly narrowing street. He saw a cobbler’s shop, a tiny coppersmith’s, and dwellings cramped together with only small side yards heaped high with snow, but saw no sign of a scrivener’s shop.

He turned around and retraced his steps, this time going in the other direction from the White Deer. The street did not narrow, but widened slightly, and the dwellings seemed larger and better kept. The fifth dwelling—more like a small cottage surrounded by snow-draped conifers—had a carving of a pen and an inkpot on the flat surface below the eaves that sheltered the small front porch. The short stone walk had been cleared and swept, and Kharl walked up it and onto the porch. He rapped gently on the door, then waited.

In time, a rotund figure in gray—gray trousers, gray shirt, with a heavy gray sweater over the shirt—cracked the door and peered out without speaking.

“I’m looking for a scrivener called Taleas.”

“Let’s say you’ve found him.” The rotund man looked over Kharl. “You a blackstaffer?”

“No.”

“Too bad. Could use one around here. Seafarer?”

“I have been—second carpenter. I used to be a cooper. A scrivener named Tyrbel said that I should see you if I ever got to Vizyn.”

The rotund man nodded. “How are his sons?”

Kharl frowned. “He has none. He never did. Unless there’s another scrivener somewhere named Tyrbel. I meant the one in Brysta.”

Taleas nodded again. “What do you know of Tyrbel lately?”

Kharl shook his head. “He was killed by an assassin before I left Brysta. That was one reason why I left. We’d been friends and neighbors, and I feared that I would be next.”

“What happened to the assassin?”

Kharl glanced around, then, seeing no one close to the scrivener’s door, replied, “I killed him with a cudgel.”

Taleas laughed ruefully, once. “What’s your name?”

“Kharl.”

“You look like the fellow he wrote about.” The door opened wider. “Come on in. I don’t know as I can help you much, but I can at least offer you some hot cider, a bite to eat, and let you thaw out before a hot stove.”

“Thank you.” Kharl followed the scrivener into the cottage, and then into a room off the front sitting room, where a wide and plain desk was set against a stone interior wall that suggested the room had been added later. On the other outside wall was a square iron stove from which radiated heat. On the top of the stove was a kettle. Kharl leaned the staff into the nearest corner.

“Sit down. Sit down,” Taleas said.

Kharl gratefully shed his pack, placing it on the frayed hooked rug covering the worn plank floor, then took the plain wooden chair, leaving the one with the cushion for the scrivener.

Taleas took a woolen pad and used it to lift the kettle, then poured the steaming cider into a mug set on the corner of the desk before easing the kettle back onto the side of the stove. “Go ahead. I’ve already had two mugs this morning.” He reseated himself in his own chair.

“Thank you,” Kharl said again, leaning forward and stretching to take the mug from the desk. He took a small sip of the hot liquid, grateful for the warmth, both from the drink and from the heat of the mug on his chilled hands.

“What was this business with Tyrbel? He wrote that you might be coming this way, and that you might need a position as a cooper. He said you’d done him a favor he couldn’t repay.”

Kharl almost winced. He doubted he’d done Tyrbel any favors at all, although he’d meant well. “Ah… he’d sent his youngest, Sanyle, to deliver something, and she was on her way back, just after twilight. Two men decided that they wanted her favors… she called for help, but I was the only one who heard.” Kharl shrugged. “I stopped them, and she got home safely.”

Taleas raised his bushy eyebrows. “You a swordsman, too?”

“No. They had blades. I ”;iad my cudgel. That was the problem.“ Kharl decided that the scrivener would get the entire story one way or the other and went on with a rush of words. ”I didn’t know one of them was Lord West’s youngest son, not until later. Then he attacked and beat up a black-staffer…“ Kharl made the story as quick as he could, including the assassin, and a shortened version of his own hiding out until he had gotten aboard the Seastag. ”So that’s how it all happened and how I got here.“

Taleas rocked forward and back in his chair. “Tyrbel said you were the sort who’d do what he thought was right, without much regard for the results.”

“It’s been my undoing at times.”

“Doing right thoughtlessly can also be the wellspring of chaos/‘ Taleas said ironically. ”You got that staff from the blackstaffer?“

“I tried to return it in Nylan, but the Brethren said it was mine. It’s helped at times, but…” Kharl smiled ruefully. “I can’t say I know much about it.”

Taleas chuckled. “You’ll learn.”

Kharl realized he wasn’t totally sure he wanted to learn how to use it.

“You’ll learn, or you’ll end up like poor Tyrbel.” Taleas tilted his head. “The only cooper who might even think about needing help is Almard, and that would only be for a few years, until his eldest is of apprentice age. He would not pay well.”

“For now, I need little except for food, some clothes, and a roof over my head.”

“That is all you’d get from Almard. The others can offer nothing.” Taleas smiled sadly.

“Is it just the winter?” asked Kharl.

“Life has always been harder here than in Valmurl. The winter is longer, the summer shorter, but the fishers brought in good catches, and they salted them and sold them. With the winter ice, they could keep the fish almost fresh. Vizyn’s fish was prized everywhere, and that was why we once had so many coopers. Then the fish disappeared from the Winter Banks. The only sources of coins left are the timber, and some of the hard coal, but there’s getting to be less and less of that.” Taleas shrugged. “Were I younger… but I have some coins laid by, and Elmaria gets some rents from the land she got from her father. Vizyn has been our families’ home for so long we cannot count the years. Where else would we go?” He offered another sad smile. “Besides, in these days, one place is much like another.”

Much like another? In what way? Kharl drained the last of the warm and welcome spiced cider. “Are you saying there is little difference between Candar or Recluce or Hamor or Austra?”

“Those that have the wealth and power decide. Here, we have a little wealth. Elsewhere, it would be less than nothing. Have you not seen that?”

Kharl thought for a moment before responding. “I think that wealth and power have always decided matters.” He paused before adding, “I would worry more about how they decide. Not whether they decide.”

Taleas laughed abruptly. “Well said! Well said! Perhaps you should have been a scrivener, or even a justicer.”

“I’m a carpenter who’s been a cooper, and hopes to be one again. Nothing more.“

“I fear, friend Kharl, that is your problem. Tyrbel wrote as much, and in but a few words, I can attest to what he wrote. For a cooper or a carpenter, you think too much. And you think too deeply, and you are inclined to act on what you believe. If you do not act, those actions you do not take will eat you from within. If you do act, those in power will eat you from without.”

“You make my plight seem hopeless,” Kharl observed.

“Difficult, certainly,” Taleas agreed.

“Just how would you suggest that I escape this… situation?” asked Kharl, in spite of the fact that he was certain he would not like the reply.

“You must obtain wealth or power, or obtain the protection of one who has them.”

“Ah… just obtain wealth and power, or a friend who has both…” Kharl shook his head. “I fear I will have trouble even finding a cooper to take me on.”

“You may indeed,” Taleas said agreeably. “Perhaps I have said too much. That is a failing of those of us who have grown old.”

“You are doubtless right about the cure to my situation, but the cure seems as hopeless as the situation,” Kharl replied. “I thank you for your hospitality, but I should be finding Almard.”

Taleas rose from his chair. “That should not be difficult. He is well outside the town. Just follow this road until you come to the mill. His house and shop are on the other side of the road from the mill. I would judge it is two kays.”

Kharl stood and reclaimed his pack and staff. “I wish I had brought better news.“

“You brought news in good faith, and you stood by Tyrbel as best you could. That is rare in any times, but rarer still in these.” Taleas paused. “Just a moment.” He scurried from the room, moving more quickly than Kharl had thought he might for a man of his age and bulk, returning almost immediately, extending a pair of worn but still well-stitched and fleece-lined leather gloves. “These were once a friend’s, and they were left to me.” He held up a small and wiry hand. “As you can see, they are far too large for me, but they will do you good, and do me none.”

“I could not take your—”

Taleas pointed to his belt and the heavy gloves stuffed there. “I have good gloves.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your kindness.” Kharl decided that to refuse the gloves would be but a gesture, and a foolish one. “I do. I would that I could repay you in some fashion.”

“Oh… you will. You already have in a way. Now… pull up the collar of your jacket to shield your ears,” Taleas added as he escorted Kharl back to the front door.

Kharl did so.

“Give Almard my best, not that he’ll care, but it won’t hurt.” Taleas opened the door.

“Thank you.” Kharl stepped outside and bowed to the scrivener.

“Do what you can, young fellow. All I ask.” Taleas smiled and closed the door.

As Kharl headed out the road that led from Vizyn, he pondered the scrivener’s words about one place being much like another. Was that because people were alike? Somehow, those words went with what the druids had said to him, although he would have to think over why that might be so. He also had not considered himself a young fellow, but compared to Taleas, he was.

By the time he had covered the two kays on the snow-packed and chill road and reached the mill, clearly shut down for the winter, he was especially grateful to Taleas for the gloves. Without them, his hands would have been blocks of ice.

Almard had a cottage much like that of Taleas, with a barnlike shop attached to the left side of the cottage by an enclosed walkway. The walkway was half-buried in snow piled there—presumably from clearing the space in front of the shop’s loading dock, although Kharl only saw a single set of wagon tracks in the packed snow.