L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

“It’s just another port.”

Kharl looked at the sections of white stone that comprised the pier. He could sense that deep within the stone there was chaos overlaid and linked with order. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Your second’s right, Tarkyn,” said Ghart from behind the two carpenters. “Some say it’s the oldest port in Candar. That pier there, the Marshal of Southwind had it built some two centuries back, all out of stone dredged from the harbor bottom. Came up without moss, just like it’d been fresh-quarried. See how sharp the lines are. No one knew how long it had been there, either.”

“Another of your stories.” Tarkyn snorted.

“Ask the captain, if you don’t believe me. Or one of the Marshal’s Arms, if you dare.”

Tarkyn just grunted, not looking at the second mate. Kharl repressed a smile.

“I’ll be giving the in-port deck watch schedule, carpenters,” Ghart added. “Tarkyn, you’ll be having the afternoon watches, and Kharl, you’ll be having the evening watches for the first two days. Then you two will switch. We don’t have that much to off-load here, but we’ll be staying a few days to give the crew a break. That’s what the captain promised.”

“Can I go ashore for a bit after we’re secured?” Kharl asked.

“Don’t see why not, so long as you’re back by the fifth glass past noon.”

“Thank you.” Kharl nodded and slipped down to the carpenter shop, where he reclaimed his staff. Then he made his way back to the main deck, carrying the black staff. He had decided to take it, whether or not it falsely marked him as a blackstaffer. He’d seen enough to realize that Candar was a dangerous place, at least as deadly to the unprepared as…He struggled for a comparison…as Brysta had been for him?

Ghart looked at Kharl-and the staff. “Remember. Back by the fifth glass.”

“I’ll be here,” Kharl promised.

Ghart just nodded.

Kharl walked down the gangway and along the white stone surface of the pier toward the harbor buildings and the city beyond. The stone blocks of the pier had clearly come from different structures, but from what he could see, there were no markings, no letters, and no inscriptions on the stone. Who would have gone to the trouble of cutting so much stone without so much as a single letter or carving? And why, if Ghart had been telling the truth, would the stone have been dumped into the bottom of the harbor?

At the foot of the pier stood two women, each wearing an armless blue tunic over a long-sleeved white undertunic. In one hand, each held a long truncheon. Each also wore two scabbards suspended from their leather belts, holding paired shortswords, one on each side, the kind reputed to have been used by the women of Westwind and the Legend.

The taller woman looked at the staff. “You intending to stay here?”

Kharl had to concentrate. The way the woman spoke was different. After a moment, he shook his head. “I’m the carpenter second on the Seastag .”

“Why the staff?”

“I was given it in Nylan and told to discover who I was. So I signed on as crew. After a while, the captain decided my experience as a cooper fitted me to help the carpenter.”

The patroller-or Marshal’s Arm, if that was what she happened to be-nodded. “Most won’t trouble you.” She paused. “You looking for anything?”

“Just some time on land, maybe something to eat. Have to be back before long.”

“Enjoy yourself. Best taverns are beyond Third Circle.”

“Thank you.” Kharl nodded politely and continued past the two and toward a squarish structure set on the other side of the stone-paved avenue fronting all the piers. Behind him, he could sense the two patrollers talking, but not what they said.

He walked past the square white stone building with the lettered sign on one side. The first line, he could read. It said: Port-Mistress. The lines below were in different languages. One, from the swirls of the letters, he thought was the old tongue, and he suspected the third line was in Hamorian. The fourth-that one he couldn’t even have guessed.

There was actually a signpost on the avenue, proclaiming it as First Circle. That probably meant that all the roads around the harbor were circles. Kharl decided to follow First Circle for at least a few blocks, heading more toward what looked to be the center of Southport.

After he walked past the warehouses west of the port-mistress’s building, Kharl passed a large chandlery, then a cooperage. Both were wooden-framed buildings, painted shades of blue. He continued on, walking past a cotton factor’s. Looking down the avenue, he just saw more shops and warehouses, some of white stone, others of plank and timber, but all in some combination of white and blue.

A number of wagons, most drawn by two horses, passed him, some heading in his direction, others passed him in the direction of the pier holding the Seastag . Some of the teamsters were men, but an equal number were women. The next cross street headed to his right, up a gradual slope, and bore the name Hill Road. Kharl turned onto it, immediately passing a small spice shop and another shop that displayed vials of oils; aromatic oils, he surmised from the scents that wafted into the street.

At the next corner, opposite a café of some sort, he stopped and studied the area, taking in a cabinetmaker’s establishment across from the café, and a potter’s beyond that. Most of the shops and dwellings had front porches with long, overhanging eaves, and rain barrels set at the corners to catch runoff from the tiled roofs.

Looking beyond the intersection, Kharl could see, farther uphill, where Hill Road continued and turned to the northeast, rising evenly toward a gap in the forested hillside above the regularly spaced dwellings on the lower hillside. He looked at the hillside higher still, noting that despite the covering of trees there was a pattern, almost as if the entire hillside had once been smoothed, then regular sets of rounded mounds, all of differing sizes, had been placed there, with the trees being added later. There was something…He nodded to himself. Buildings, or dwellings, had once been spaced there, on each side of long and regular streets, and they had covered the entire hillside, and they had fallen into ruins and been covered by time and vegetation. That also suggested that few, if any, people had lived in the area, because the ruined dwellings had not been extensively quarried for building stones.

The cooper walked on uphill for more than a kay before the houses began to thin out, each having more ground, including small orchards with trees in orderly rows and stone-walled meadows. The wall stones were neatly cut and mortared, but even from the side of the road where he walked, Kharl sensed that they were old.

A young woman walked downhill toward the center of Southport, pushing a handcart and accompanied by a girl who barely came to her waist. As the two neared him, Kharl saw, in the railed space on the top of the handcart, several baskets covered with cloths.

Her eyes strayed from Kharl to the staff, and a faint smile crossed her lips as she spoke.

Kharl didn’t understand a syllable of the clipped words, although he thought she was asking him to buy something. At that point, he noted the single shortsword at her belt.

She spoke again, haltingly, in what was not her native tongue. “The buns…the best.”

Kharl was hungry. That he had to admit. “How much?”

She looked puzzled.

Kharl fished two coppers out of his wallet and held up one.

She shook her head.

He held up two.

She nodded and lifted the cloth off the top of a basket set in a rack on the cart. Then she pointed to the raisin buns and held up one finger. Kharl handed over the two coppers and waited to see her reaction. She studied the coins, then nodded.