L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

“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 words, 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.