“Then, there’s no reason for you to keep taking lessons, is there?”
“You mean that, Da?”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. Of course, that means you’ll be able to help in the shop more.”
“That’s more interesting than Master Fonwyl.” Warrl paused. “Can I go over to Hergan’s now?”
“If you’re careful and back before full dark.”
“Thank you, Da…” Warrl looked at Sanyle. “Thank you for dinner.”
“You’re welcome, Warrl.”
Neither Sanyle nor Kharl spoke until Warrl had closed the door and headed down the stairs and through the cooperage. Kharl heard the front door shut.
“You don’t want him to know that some of what you did saved others?” asked Sanyle.
“That would make him angry at you. It wouldn’t make him less angry at me.” The cooper shrugged. “Not much I can do about that.” He rose and carried his bowl and Warrl’s to the wash table.
After a moment, Sanyle followed his example. “I’ll do the dishes.” She smiled briefly. “You are paying me.”
“Not enough,” Kharl said. “I appreciate the cooking. Not something I’d do well. Not well enough to eat what I fixed.”
He did let Sanyle do the dishes, although he put them away in the single cupboard, another piece of furniture he had made years before. Thinking of that time, his eyes misted for a moment, and he shook his head. What had happened? Did it happen to others?
He could not answer his own questions. So he put the last bowl away.
After Sanyle had left, and he was alone in the main room, he adjusted the wick in the lamp on the table by the one easy chair and picked up the black leather book he had brought up from the shop. He had to lean back into the chair very gingerly.
Slowly, he studied the slender tome, noting the fineness of the binding. There were no words on the cover or on the spine, just smooth black leather. He opened the front cover to the title page and read the words: The Basis of Order. That was all. There was no explanation, and no name for an author. He turned another page. The text began abruptly, under a simple numeral “1.” He began to read.
Order is life; chaos is death. This is fact, not belief. Each living creature consists of ordered parts that must function together…
Order extends down to the smallest fragments of the world. By influencing the smallest ordered segments to create a new and ordered form, an order-master may change where land exists and where it does not, where rain will fall and where it will not…In contrast, control of chaos is simply the ability to sever one ordered segment of the world from another…without the use of order, focused destruction is the highest level of control to which a chaos-master can aspire…
Simple as these words are, learning about what order and chaos truly are is far from simple. One might say that order is like water, that it can change forms, and that it is vital to life, and that without it nothing lives…That is less than the beginning…
Kharl skipped to the next page.
Learning without understanding can but increase the frustration of the impatient, for knowledge is like the hammer of a smith, useless in the hands of the unskilled and able to do nothing but injure the user who has not both knowledge and understanding…All things are not possible, even to the greatest, and even to those with understanding…
Kharl lowered the book, frowning, but not closing it, thinking.
XVI
On sixday, Kharl was feeling stronger, but not strong enough to use the forge to finish the hoops for the slack barrels. Instead, he contented himself with working on the red oak shooks, first with the planer, then spending time with the hollowing knife, including some time working with Warrl, showing him some of the finer points of using the knife.
Just before noon, the door opened, and a short wiry figure with a ginger beard and wearing a brown overtunic stepped into the cooperage. He glanced around, then, catching sight of Kharl, squared his shoulders, and moved toward the planer where Kharl stood. From the other workbench, Warrl watched.
“Master Senstad,” the cooper said politely.
“Cooper.”
Kharl waited, suspecting he knew what was coming, but not wanting to make matters easy for the grower.
“I’d ordered twenty barrels, tight cooperage.”
“You did, for harvest.”
“I can only use five, Kharl. I’m sorry…but the harvest isn’t going to be that good. Too dry early in the summer.” Senstad’s eyes never once met Kharl’s.
Kharl could sense the lie, but he only nodded. “Been a bad year for many folk. Least, that’s what they say.”
“I’ll pick up the five next sixday…pay you then. That be all right?”
“The barrels’ll be ready.”
“Good.” Senstad paused. “I’m sorry. You know how these things are.”
“Yes. I do. It happens.”
The grower nodded and turned. At the door, he turned back. “Next sixday.”
“They’ll be ready,” Kharl promised, and that was one he could keep.
The door closed.
“He’s lying,” Warrl said. “Hergan said the growers are having a good year, best in a long time. Why?”
“He probably owes tariffs or money to Lord West. He rents some of his land from the lord, I think.”
“Why did he say he wanted five barrels, then?” Warrl’s face showed puzzlement.
“If he canceled the order, he’d still owe a quarter-that’d be what he’d pay for five barrels. So…this way, he gets five good barrels, and he doesn’t lose anything, and he can tell…everyone that was all he could do.”
“Da…” Warrl finally looked down without saying more.
“You can go over to Hergan’s for a time, if you’d like.”
“I’d like that. You don’t mind?”
“You can go,” Kharl said. “I’ll be all right.”
Warrl didn’t wait, and within moments Kharl was alone in the cooperage.
He went back to the planer.
In midafternoon there was a solid rap on the loading dock door.
Kharl frowned, but walked back to the door and opened it.
Werwal stood there, in his soiled leathers, his wagon in the alley behind him. “Good afternoon, cooper.”
“Good afternoon, Werwal.”
“Wasn’t sure I’d be seeing you. Not after everything I heard,” offered the renderer. “You feeling all right?”
“I’ve felt better,” Kharl confessed. “Good thing I’d finished your barrels last eightday. Still too sore to use the forge.”
Werwal laughed, a rueful sound. “Most fellows wouldn’t be standing after what you went through.” He paused. “I could hold off on the barrels, if you need them for someone else…”
“They’re ready. If you want them, they’re yours. Can’t say as I’ve been overrun with orders the past few days.”
“You won’t be, I fear. Egen’s…let’s just say that he dislikes losing. Because you’re alive, he feels he’s lost.”
“How do you know so much about him…about what goes on?”
Werwal’s laugh was more open this time. “No one holds their tongue around renderers and rag-pickers. Who are we, dealing with the dregs of offal?”
Kharl realized something else that he should have noticed sooner. The renderer was far better spoken than most crafters, but that was hardly something that he could mention. “Always felt how a man does his craft reckons his value more than what it is.”
“Your barrels show it.” Werwal gestured to the slack barrels by the loading door. “Are those mine?”
“That they are-the first five.”
“I’ll get them. You don’t need to be lifting them right now.”
“I can help…”
“You roll them over, and I’ll lift ’em,” suggested the renderer.
Rolling the empty barrels was no problem for the cooper, and before long all five were in the renderer’s wagon.
Werwal closed the wagon gate and walked back to the loading door where Kharl stood.
“I owe you three silvers and four coppers.” The renderer extended the coins. “Long as you’re here, I’ll be ordering barrels. I don’t need too many, but they need to be good.”