L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

After a time, Kharl walked back to the planer. He still had more than a few staves to shape for the barrels already ordered. His eyes dropped to the cudgel that he’d taken to keeping close by him. Then he began to pump the foot pedal.

Those who do not understand order or chaos say that the two belong only to those with the gift for one or the other, and that those who have such gifts are few. This is a truth, and it is also a falsehood. Many men and women have gifts. Some are more intelligent than others; some are stronger; some are more patient; some have great courage; some have greater understanding. So to say that one has a gift for order or chaos can be a truth. Yet, to suggest that there is something improper about understanding order or chaos because it requires a gift is a falsehood. Each and every great talent, whatever it may be, requires a gift of greater ability. A man may have a gift for letters, and for distilling truth. A woman may have a gift for numbers, and for trading of goods. A youth may have the gift of song, and another the gift of hands that can shape iron or wood. So it is with order and chaos.

Yet many would claim that the gift to understand order and chaos is different from the gift of understanding other aspects of the world, that anyone can be a crafter or an engineer, but that only a special few can become order-mages or chaos-masters. This is a falsehood, for the great ones in any area of endeavor are few, whether that area be engineering, cabinetry, fishing, or order-magery…

In the beginning, as a child, a boy or girl can have a gift, not for one or the other, but for either, or, if the gift is great enough, for both…So can a man or woman, once grown, if he or she approaches order as might a child. For order is a wonder, and those who can yet wonder as children can have their eyes opened at any age…

— The Basis of Order

After shaping the slope of the barrel chime of yet another red oak slack barrel, Kharl set the adze down and blotted his forehead with the back of his forearm. After almost an eightday of clear and sunny weather, it had rained earlier in the day, and then the sun had come out full force. By midafternoon all of Brysta was enveloped in hot wet air. Even the interior of the cooperage was hot and sticky. Kharl had left both the loading door and the front door open, because there was a slight breeze that seemed to make the cooperage fractionally cooler.

The back section of the shop was filled with barrels-both slack and tight, and Kharl had all of those ordered by Korlan ready, as well as most of those for Wassyt and Aryl. Who would order or purchase more barrels, Kharl didn’t know, but that was a stream he’d ford later. With so few customers, he couldn’t afford not to have barrels at the ready.

He laughed once, a harsh bark, then blotted his forehead again. He didn’t have any choice but to wait and see.

He picked up the adze, turned the next barrel, and began shaping.

He stopped. Had he heard something? He frowned, and lifted the adze once more. Then he lowered it, listening.

“Help! Thieves!..” The yell died out.

As he recognized Tyrbel’s voice, Kharl grabbed the cudgel that he had kept handy and, still holding the adze in the other hand, dashed to the front of the cooperage and out through the door, elbowing it full open, onto Crafters’ Lane and into the full sunlight. In a handful of long steps, he was just outside the scrivener’s door, still blinking as his eyes struggled to adjust to the afternoon glare.

A wiry figure in brown darted from the scriptorium, dodging away from Kharl.

The cooper recognized the man, and, without thinking, threw the adze full force and straight into the man’s shoulder and chest. The man lurched back, one hand grasping, then pulling at the adze wedged in his shoulder. Annoyance and pain flashed across the man’s face.

Kharl stepped forward and brought the cudgel around in a short arc, with all the force he’d developed over the years at the bench and forge. The heavy cudgel head crashed into the smaller man’s temple, and his eyes widened, as if he could not believe he had been struck. He pitched forward, hand still on the haft of the adze. He shuddered once and was still.

Kharl stood there, cudgel still in his hand, looking blankly down, realizing that he had killed the man who had visited the cooperage the afternoon before Jenevra had been killed. While the cooper could not have proved anything, he knew the dead man at his feet had been her killer.

From inside the scriptorium came a long piercing scream that seemed to go on and on.

Kharl turned. Sanyle was screaming. Tyrbel was dead.

A squat laundress coming up the lane staggered as she saw the body on the stones and Kharl and his cudgel, then put up her hand to straighten the basket balanced on her head before crossing the lane away from the dead man and Kharl. The Watchman in blue-the one who had been watching the cooperage-sprinted down Crafters’ Lane.

Gharan appeared and ran across the lane. So did Hamyl.

“Kharl! Get a pack and leave!” Gharan ordered. “You’ve got to run. Now.”

“What?” Kharl couldn’t believe the weaver’s words.

“You think you’ll walk out of the Hall of Justicers’ this time?”

“Lord West’ll have you hanging from the scaffold by tomorrow night,” added Hamyl. “Unless the Watch get you first.”

“We’ll tell everyone what happened,” Gharan promised. “We will, but it’ll be too late if the Watch gets you.”

The words finally broke through to the cooper.

He could not speak, but nodded. Then he hurried back into and through the cooperage, dropping the cudgel as he took the steps upstairs two at a time. Once into the bedchamber, he threw his best trousers, a good tunic, and underclothes into the pack, then another pair of boots and a winter jacket. He took the bag of silvers from the strongbox, hung it around his neck under his undertunic on the leather thongs. He scooped all of the coppers into the pack. As he straightened up, he saw the book on the table and stuffed it inside his still unfastened pack. Then he tied the pack shut.

He’d taken the book because, if the Watch found that, there was no telling what lies they might spread. He hurried down the steps, swinging the pack onto his back. Once on the shop floor, he started for the loading door that was still open to the alley.

He stopped as he saw the staff still leaning against the wall, then dashed to the far side of the shop and grabbed it. No one questioned staffs, and it was something else he didn’t want to leave, although he couldn’t have said why.

“Hurry!” hissed a voice from the loading door. “The Watch is almost out front.”

Kharl whirled.

Jekat gestured through the partly open loading door. “This way, ser! You got to run! Watch’ll get you otherwise.”

Should he follow the urchin?

Who else could he trust-who knew the alleys and the back streets?

Kharl ran, straight through the loading door. Abruptly, he stopped but for an instant to close the loading door behind him, before sprinting to catch up to the urchin who had begun to run, if slowly, toward the northeastern end of the alley.

“Can’t catch me!” Jekat yelled as he ran out of the alley and turned on Fifth Cross.

“I’ll get you!” Kharl yelled back. “You miserable urchin!”

Some of those on the cross street looked scandalized, others amused, and only one man tried to grab the elusive Jekat as Kharl raced after the urchin, trying to counterfeit the rage of a man robbed by a light-fingered boy.

Jekat darted into a serviceway, and Kharl followed, panting heavily. He might work hard in the cooperage, but he had not run so fast nor so far in years. The urchin slowed some and turned westward into the alley, again downhill. Kharl lumbered after him, down another road and up Fourth Cross, finally catching up with the beggar youth near the intersection of the alley off Fourth Cross and Old Mill Road, some five blocks southwest of where the chase had started behind his cooperage.