“Won’t you ever leave well enough alone, Kharl? Leave the roisterers alone. Or if you must, call them to the attention of Lord West’s Watch. That’s what he draws his tariffs for. You’ve got a consort and sons that need you…”
“My hard-won coins, leastwise.” Kharl shut the door to the stairs and the shop below and walked toward the washroom on the right side of the landing.
“Let’s not be starting that again.”
Kharl forced a smile. “I won’t, dearest. I need to wash up.” The pitcher on the wash table was full, and the basin empty and clean, with a worn but clean gray towel and a narrow bar of fat soap laid out on the left side. He closed the washroom door and began to wash, enjoying the faint rose scent that came from the petals in the soap. It took time to get the sawdust off his face and hands and arms, and out of his dark beard, short-cropped as it was.
When Kharl stepped into the main room, it was still warm from the day, but the harbor breeze blowing through the open windows offered a welcoming coolness, even if it did bear the scents of salt and fish and caused the two wall lamps to flicker.
The cooper walked toward the round table where Arthal and Warrl waited, their eyes following him, but not exactly looking at him.
“Did you finish your lessons?” Kharl’s eyes fixed on Warrl, his younger son, by three years.
“Yes, ser. I did.” After a moment, the younger boy asked, “How much longer will I have to go to Master Fonwyl?”
“Until he says you can read and write well enough to pass the craftmaster’s tests.” Kharl seated himself.
“I don’t see why,” interrupted Arthal. “It’s not as though we’ll ever have the golds to post the bond for mastercrafter.”
“Maybe so, and maybe not,” replied Kharl. “But if you get the chance, I don’t want you looking back and complaining that I didn’t prepare you. Reading and writing aren’t something you can pick up easy-like when you’re older.”
“But what use is it if you’re not a mastercrafter or a merchant or a lord? You scarce have a chance to read a broadsheet-”
“But I can, and once or twice it’s saved me good coins. Enough.” Kharl managed not to snap. “Let’s enjoy supper.”
As if she had been waiting for them to stop, Charee lifted the heavy cast-iron stewpot off the stove and carried it to the table. There, she set it on the well-browned trivet in the center of the oval oak table that had been one of the first pieces of actual furniture that Kharl had made after he had taken over the cooperage.
His consort set the large basket of afternoon-baked bread on the table and seated herself at the opposite end of the oval table from Kharl. Kharl began to ladle the stew into the chipped brown crockery bowls that had come from Charee’s mother.
“Smells good,” offered Kharl.
“It does,” added Warrl.
“More summer squash and potatoes than meat,” murmured Arthal.
“It’s tasty, and it’s hot, and you didn’t have to spend the day cooking it,” Kharl pointed out. “If you’d rather not eat, you can leave the table right now.”
“No, Da…I’m sorry, Ma.” Arthal’s voice was barely apologetic.
Kharl didn’t feel like calling his older son on his borderline rudeness, not after a long day finishing the last of the barrels for Korlan, especially when he knew that Arthal would just make some other comment.
“What was going on outside, Da?” asked Warrl.
“Just some young fellows who’d had too much at the Tankard. Had more ale than sense, and didn’t know it.”
“Will the Watch catch them?”
“They settled down,” Kharl said, after taking a mouthful of the stew, still warm and peppery, despite Charee’s comments about it getting cold. “Good stew.” He broke off a chunk of the crusty bread, then dipped it into the stew before chewing off the dipped end. “Good bread.”
“They’d better settle down,” offered Arthal. “Lord West likes Brysta peaceful.”
“The justicers worry more about thieves and killers,” Kharl said, taking a swallow of the warm ale, really only about half a mug for each of them, but that had been all that was left in the quarter barrel in the cellar, and he couldn’t afford any more-not until Korlan paid him for the wine barrels.
“Cossal said they hung three brigands in the Justicers’ Hall on twoday,” added Warrl. “He was there.”
“They hung three men. That’s true. They might even have been guilty.” Kharl had his doubts that everyone hanged was as guilty as charged.
“Does it matter, if one brigand is strung up for something he didn’t do?” asked Charee. “Anyone they catch has done more than enough anyway. Weren’t for Lord West, we’d have thieves overrunning Brysta, like in his sire’s time.”
“That was a different time,” Kharl said. “Fairven had fallen. The more powerful steam engines had exploded. Many trading ventures had failed. People were starving, and white wizards were everywhere.”
“Better the whites than those blackstaffers from Recluce,” Charee sniffed. “Them and their fine clothes, and their noses in the air. Think they know everything. Father Jorum says that we’re all equal in the eyes of the Sovereign.”
Kharl wasn’t about to get into debating the opinions of the priest of the one-god believers. “I can’t see as they harm anyone, but it’s better that they stay in Recluce.” He took another chunk of bread and wiped out his empty bowl with it. “Good dinner, dearest.”
“How would we know? The lords won’t touch ’em, not unless they’re caught doing something right awful. Merayni, she listened to one of ’em, last winter’s end it was, and he was telling terrible tales. Terrible tales.”
“What kind of tales?” asked Kharl, in spite of himself. He had his doubts about Charee’s older sister Merayni, although Merayni was certainly good-hearted, and she and her consort were more than successful with the pearapple and peach orchard that Dowsyl had inherited from his father. He paused. “Didn’t know blackstaffers got so far south as Peachill or Eolya.”
“They get everywhere, Merayni was saying, and the tales he told! Terrible, she said. About how a body can’t even walk across some hills in Candar without turnin’ black and shriveling up and dyin’ right there on the spot.”
“That may be,” Kharl replied. “That’s Candar, and not Nordla. Lord West is lucky to have one or two wizards that he can count on. Rather have him with wizards than some of the other Lords of the Quadrant.”
“This young blackstaffer, he said that the lord’s wizards weren’t proper mages. ‘A course, Father Jorum says all wizardry is evil.”
“I wouldn’t know if they’re proper wizards.” Kharl tilted his mug to get the last drop of ale. “I’m a cooper, not a wizard or a lord. That’s their business. Mine’s barrels. Solid barrels.”
“Terrible stuff, magery.” Charee sniffed again. “As bad as thieves and brigands, if you ask me.”
“I’m sure there are good mages and bad ones. There are good lords and bad ones, good coopers and bad ones.”
“No such thing as a good mage, if you ask me. Lord West can have them all. Be better if he hung ’em.”
“That’s what lords are for. Deal with raiders, and invaders, and brigands, and mages. Rather be a cooper.”
Warrl yawned. So did Arthal.
“You two can take the bowls to the wash table,” Charee said.
“Wish we had a sister, like Aubret does,” mumbled Warrl. “Do all the dishes.”
“You don’t have a sister,” Charee said. “Two of you are enough.”
“…always say that…” murmured Arthal.
“Did you say something?” asked Kharl.
“No, ser.”
“I didn’t think so.” Kharl pushed back his chair and walked to the window, letting the cool evening air flow around him. He hoped that Korlan would pick up the barrels in the morning.
II
Right after his early breakfast, Kharl took the broom and stepped outside the front of the cooperage to sweep the stones of the narrow sidewalk. Warrl was supposed to have done it, but the boy was already laying out the white oak shooks that Kharl would be jointing for the hogshead ordered by Captain Hagen for the Seastag. It was less trouble for Kharl to sweep than to rail at Warrl, and at least the boy was already working, unlike his older brother. Since the cooper didn’t want to be caught out front if Korlan drove his wagon up to the loading door in the rear, Kharl swept quickly.