L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

“But not quite so many as you would like?” suggested Kharl.

“It’s always better to sell more than less. What kind of cooperage would interest you, ser?”

“I’m afraid my interest is a shared crafting. I’ve been a ship’s carpenter, and my father was a cooper. I wanted to see your shop.” All of that was true, if not telling the entire story.

Elont smiled politely, disappointed. “It’s the best in Valmurl.”

“So I had heard, and I’m glad to see it.”

“You’d be better off, ser, to remain as a ship’s carpenter these days, than to open a cooperage here.”

“I had no thought of opening a cooperage,” Kharl demurred. “Certainly not now, but one must think of the future as well.”

“You’re certain we couldn’t sell your vessel some cooperage?”

“The captain is well aware of your work, and he would be the one to order it,” Kharl replied politely. “I appreciate your kindness.” He inclined his head.

“Thank you, ser.”

Kharl eased out the door, grateful at least for the momentary warmth in the shop. Outside, he looked around, trying to gain his bearings. According to Hagen, Kundark was on the south side of the city, by the Guard Barracks. Kharl readjusted his pack and turned southward, his breath still steaming in the chill air.

Ahead, he glimpsed two children in rags, the first ones he had seen so shabbily dressed. One-a girl-went to her knees before a man in a solid gray cloak of warmth and style. Kharl could not hear the words, but her pleading position was all too clear.

The man glanced around, twice, stiffened, then shook his head, walking away.

A shrill whistle sounded. The boy vanished into an alley or serviceway, and the girl scrambled to her feet, but too late and too slowly to avoid the patroller who grasped her roughly by the shoulder. As Kharl moved closer, he strained to hear the patroller’s words.

“…begging, you were…”

“…wasn’t beggin’…wasn’t…”

“…off to the indenturer’s…Begging’s against the Lord’s Law. You know that.”

“…no…not that…”

“…pretty little thing like you…fetch a good price in Hamor…won’t be cold there, either…”

Kharl winced at the thought of the beggar girl ending up like the girl on the dock, but he did not try to interfere, much as he would have liked to, and he only watched as the patroller dragged the child down a side street. His guts churned, much as he imagined Charee both telling him he’d done what was wise and asking him why he hadn’t done so earlier.

He kept walking, but it was a while before he felt any calmer. A good half glass later, he stood across the street from the stone walls surrounding the Guard Barracks. He had completed a circuit of the streets facing onto the Barracks, but had not seen anything resembling a cooperage to the Barracks. Two uniformed figures stood as sentries outside the gate. One was scarcely more than a boy, and the other looked to be at least as old as Kharl.

The younger sentry looked at Kharl.

Kharl looked back and, after a moment, the youthful guard dropped his eyes. Kharl turned and started down the narrow lanelike street that angled northwest from the corner of the barracks. Fifty cubits or so down the lane, in front of a seamstress’s shop, a white-haired woman in a patched coat swept dust and old snow away from the doorway of the shop.

“I’m looking for-” Kharl began.

“Speak up. You looking for something, fellow?”

“A cooper named Kundark. I’d heard his cooperage was here.”

“It was. Over there.” The woman pointed to the burned-out shell of a building a hundred cubits farther along the narrow lane.

From what Kharl could see, the cooperage had been about half the size of Dezant’s shop, and the blaze had not been all that recent. “What happened?”

The woman shrugged. “No one knows. No one’s seen Kundark. Consort and son died in the fire. Terrible blaze it was.”

“How did it start?”

“No one knows.” The woman looked away from Kharl and resumed sweeping, muttering to herself, “Stupid question…outland blackstaffer.”

After a long look at her, and a longer one at the burned ruins, Kharl turned and retraced his steps back northward in the general direction of where he had understood the refit yard to be.

Valmurl stretched much farther to the north than Kharl had thought, and it was close to noon before Kharl reached the workshops on the ancient street opposite the refit yard and the three dry docks-all empty. The three largest structures facing the harbor and yards were shuttered and locked, large barnlike buildings whose exterior planks and timbers had weathered into faded gray. Grimy powdered snow lay drifted into the corners where the plank walls met the frozen ground or the worn and cracked cobblestones of the street.

Kharl’s face and hands were numb from the chill, even though he had periodically thrust his hands up under his jacket.

Between the two shuttered and larger structures on the northern end of the block was a smaller building, one with unshuttered windows and a half barrel displayed on a bracket to the right of the front loading doors. Kharl made his way to the cooperage and, with a shrug, opened the door and stepped inside.

A single gray-haired man straightened from where he stood over a machine that looked to Kharl as though it were a combination planer and router of some sort.

Kharl stepped forward. “You’re Chalart?”

“That’s me.” The cooper’s eyes raked across Kharl. “You another cooper looking for a place?” Before Kharl could reply, the wiry man went on. “Not enough orders for me and my boy, and certainly not enough for another mouth.”

“How did you know?” asked Kharl.

Chalart snorted. “You got that look and a pack on your back. Buyers don’t wear packs. Seen more…” He shook his head. “Wager you’re a good cooper, too.”

“One of the best,” Kharl said.

“Then…why are you here?”

“I’m from Nordla. The lord’s son didn’t care that I stopped his pleasures with my neighbor’s daughter.”

“Think things be different here?”

“I’d hope no one would want to kill me,” Kharl replied ruefully.

“You might get that.” Chalart studied Kharl. “What have you been doing?”

“Ship’s carpenter.”

“Keep doing it. I know a half score of coopers that’d jump for your position.”

“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.