L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

Just before noon, the door opened, and a short wiry figure with a ginger beard and wearing a brown overtunic stepped into the cooperage. 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 going to be that good. Too dry early in the summer.” Senstad’s eyes never once met Kharl’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. It 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 renderers and rag-pickers. Who are we, dealing with the dregs of offal?”

Kharl realized something else that he should have noticed sooner. The renderer 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 renderer.

Rolling the empty barrels was no problem for the cooper, and before long all five were in the renderer’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 renderer 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 renderer 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 renderer?

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…Mallamet 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.