L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

“Double up, now!” came the command from aft.

Kharl waited until the ship was secured, and the gangway down to the pier before shouldering his pack and picking up his staff. He moved back around the midships paddle wheel and toward the quarterdeck area where Herana stood.

The second mate looked at Kharl. “We’ll be casting off early morning tomorrow. There’ll be space back to Valmurl if you need it. Don’t carry many passengers in the winter, just timber and some hard coal.”

“Thank you.” Kharl glanced beyond the pier. “You were right. There is snow everywhere.”

She laughed.

Kharl smiled in return and made his way down the gangway. The pier itself was generally clear of snow, but he saw patches of dark ice here and there. He decided to follow the wider street that was mostly clear of snow and lined with shops. The shop nearest the harbor, unsurprisingly, was a chandlery and looked to be open. Kharl stamped his boots on the planks of the porch, swept clear of snow, unlike parts of the street, before stepping inside and carefully closing the door behind him.

The man who was sweeping the floor stopped and looked up, his eyes taking in the long black staff. He appeared to be Kharl’s age, although his beard was streaked with white and bushy. “Could I help you?”

“I’m looking for a scrivener named Taleas…”

The chandler tilted his head slightly, frowning, before he smiled and answered. “His place is about seven, eight blocks toward the center of town. Go up the street till you get to the White Deer. Turn right at the corner. Should be two-three hundred cubits farther, on the left.”

“Thank you.”

“Interest you in some winterbread? Fine travel food.”

Kharl smiled. “After I find Taleas…then we’ll see.” He nodded and turned. Again he was careful to close the door behind him when he left and stepped back outside. His breath was a white plume in the cold air permeated by the mixed odors of both burning wood and coal.

Kharl’s ears tingled after several hundred cubits, and he could understand why the few people he saw on the streets wore caps or hats, generally with earflaps. He kept walking up the street, alternating putting one hand and then the other inside his winter jacket, a jacket that was clearly too light for the cold of Vizyn.

Healthy plumes of whitish smoke poured from the chimneys of the White Deer, and Kharl was almost tempted to step inside the inn, if only to warm himself. He could feel the chill creeping into his toes, and his ears and fingers were beginning to get numb. But the chandler had said that Taleas was but a few hundred cubits from the inn. So Kharl turned right and kept walking. He walked a good three or four hundred cubits down the rapidly narrowing street. He saw a cobbler’s shop, a tiny coppersmith’s, and dwellings cramped together with only small side yards heaped high with snow, but saw no sign of a scrivener’s shop.

He turned around and retraced his steps, this time going in the other direction from the White Deer. The street did not narrow, but widened slightly, and the dwellings seemed larger and better kept. The fifth dwelling-more like a small cottage surrounded by snow-draped conifers-had a carving of a pen and an inkpot on the flat surface below the eaves that sheltered the small front porch. The short stone walk had been cleared and swept, and Kharl walked up it and onto the porch. He rapped gently on the door, then waited.

In time, a rotund figure in gray-gray trousers, gray shirt, with a heavy gray sweater over the shirt-cracked the door and peered out without speaking.

“I’m looking for a scrivener called Taleas.”

“Let’s say you’ve found him.” The rotund man looked over Kharl. “You a blackstaffer?”

“No.”

“Too bad. Could use one around here. Seafarer?”

“I have been-second carpenter. I used to be a cooper. A scrivener named Tyrbel said that I should see you if I ever got to Vizyn.”

The rotund man nodded. “How are his sons?”

Kharl frowned. “He has none. He never did. Unless there’s another scrivener somewhere named Tyrbel. I meant the one in Brysta.”

Taleas nodded again. “What do you know of Tyrbel lately?”

Kharl shook his head. “He was killed by an assassin before I left Brysta. That was one reason why I left. We’d been friends and neighbors, and I feared that I would be next.”

“What happened to the assassin?”

Kharl glanced around, then, seeing no one close to the scrivener’s door, replied, “I killed him with a cudgel.”

Taleas laughed ruefully, once. “What’s your name?”

“Kharl.”

“You look like the fellow he wrote about.” The door opened wider. “Come on in. I don’t know as I can help you much, but I can at least offer you some hot cider, a bite to eat, and let you thaw out before a hot stove.”

“Thank you.” Kharl followed the scrivener into the cottage, and then into a room off the front sitting room, where a wide and plain desk was set against a stone interior wall that suggested the room had been added later. On the other outside wall was a square iron stove from which radiated heat. On the top of the stove was a kettle. Kharl leaned the staff into the nearest corner.

“Sit down. Sit down,” Taleas said.

Kharl gratefully shed his pack, placing it on the frayed hooked rug covering the worn plank floor, then took the plain wooden chair, leaving the one with the cushion for the scrivener.

Taleas took a woolen pad and used it to lift the kettle, then poured the steaming cider into a mug set on the corner of the desk before easing the kettle back onto the side of the stove. “Go ahead. I’ve already had two mugs this morning.” He reseated himself in his own chair.

“Thank you,” Kharl said again, leaning forward and stretching to take the mug from the desk. He took a small sip of the hot liquid, grateful for the warmth, both from the drink and from the heat of the mug on his chilled hands.

“What was this business with Tyrbel? He wrote that you might be coming this way, and that you might need a position as a cooper. He said you’d done him a favor he couldn’t repay.”

Kharl almost winced. He doubted he’d done Tyrbel any favors at all, although he’d meant well. “Ah…he’d sent his youngest, Sanyle, to deliver something, and she was on her way back, just after twilight. Two men decided that they wanted her favors…she called for help, but I was the only one who heard.” Kharl shrugged. “I stopped them, and she got home safely.”

Taleas raised his bushy eyebrows. “You a swordsman, too?”

“No. They had blades. I had my cudgel. That was the problem.” Kharl decided that the scrivener would get the entire story one way or the other and went on with a rush of words. “I didn’t know one of them was Lord West’s youngest son, not until later. Then he attacked and beat up a blackstaffer…” Kharl made the story as quick as he could, including the assassin, and a shortened version of his own hiding out until he had gotten aboard the Seastag . “So that’s how it all happened and how I got here.”

Taleas rocked forward and back in his chair. “Tyrbel said you were the sort who’d do what he thought was right, without much regard for the results.”

“It’s been my undoing at times.”

“Doing right thoughtlessly can also be the wellspring of chaos,” Taleas said ironically. “You got that staff from the blackstaffer?”

“I tried to return it in Nylan, but the Brethren said it was mine. It’s helped at times, but…” Kharl smiled ruefully. “I can’t say I know much about it.”

Taleas chuckled. “You’ll learn.”

Kharl realized he wasn’t totally sure he wanted to learn how to use it.