“What were you doing?” asked Argan. “We came by and you were looking at some funny leaf. Didn’t even hear us.”
“Coulda fired a cannon at you. Don’t think you’d have moved,” added Reisl.
“Guess I was tired, or hungry,” Kharl replied. “We’ve been working on a second weapons locker. Got the frame tied to the poop frames, and we’ll have most of it done tomorrow. If the rain ever lets up. Got waterproofs over it now, but we’ll still need sunlight to do it right.”
“Another weapons locker?” Reisl looked at Argan. “Can’t say I like that. Captain hear something about more pirates?”
“Maybe it has to do with the lord out west, the one that’s rebelled against Lord Ghrant,” suggested Argan.
“Say the Hamorians might back him,” mumbled Reisl, looking at Kharl. “What do you know about that?”
“Some folks say he’s got a white wizard and more personal guards than most hill lords,” Kharl admitted. “He’s the brother of Lord Ghrant.”
“Brother against brother, and lords, too. That’d be nasty. Be glad when we’re outa dry dock,” Reisl said.
Kharl just nodded. The kalfin was actually fairly good, firm under a crispy crust, and the potatoes were less lumpy than usual.
“Think we’ll get back afloat by next eightday…”
“…Hemmen or Brysta next port…captain hasn’t said…”
Kharl didn’t say too much during supper, but tried to be pleasant and not withdraw into himself.
When Reisl finished, he looked up at Kharl. “Too wet to go to the inn. You want to join the game?”
Kharl smiled. “Thanks, but I had a long day.”
“Just asking.”
“Better that I don’t.” And it was, for more than a few reasons, since Kharl suspected he would have been tempted to try to use his order-senses on the dice.
Instead, after returning his empty platter, he walked outside into the cold rain and stood under the eaves of the bunkhouse next to the wall. He studied the small puddle at his feet, just looking at it for a moment, then taking it in with his senses, trying first to see what the patterns of order and chaos might be, and then following them. He touched the water, ever so lightly, with what he thought of as his order-sense. It seemed to grow still, the way the steam had. Then, he could sense almost what were little hooks on each of the fragments. Somehow, he looked, and thought, and twisted the hooks so that they all locked together.
He almost staggered, because he could feel that he’d exerted some great effort. He looked down at the small puddle, and watched as water droplets falling from the edge of the eaves splattered on the smooth unmoving surface of the water. Had he turned the puddle to clear ice?
Slowly, he bent down and extended his fingers. The changed water was more like cool glass, perhaps slightly warmer than the water had been, but definitely not frozen. He straightened and then stamped his left boot heel on the glassy puddle. The puddle was as hard as stone or steel.
Kharl took out his belt knife and bent down, drawing the tip across the hard water. Even with the unchanged water falling from the eaves and coating the order-hard water, he could see that the knife made no impression, not even the faintest scratch. After a moment, he replaced the knife and looked at the hard water.
Finally, he concentrated and untwisted the hooks of order and chaos. The water shimmered and a faint steamy fog rose from the puddle as the colder water from the eaves struck what had been order-hardened water.
Kharl was suddenly exhausted, as though he had worked at a forge or a lathe all day, then run five or even ten kays. He’d wanted to try some of the other things Lyras had suggested, but he was tired, far too tired. Without looking back, he slowly trudged back inside the bunkhouse, past Reisl and the deckhands gaming. He nodded to Reisl, and got a smile in return.
As he continued down the hallway, past the rooms for the mates toward the bunkroom, he could hear the voices behind him.
“…something about him…scary…”
“…good man,” Reisl answered. “You’d keep to yourself, too, if you’d lost everything he did…consort, children, cooperage…”
“…’sides,” said another voice, “he’s the one found the friggin’ shipworms…could be we’d all be in the deep locker…”
The voices faded out as Kharl slowly undressed and climbed into the bunk. The blackness of sleep was more than welcome.
LXXVI
On oneday morning, Kharl and Tarkyn were attaching the last set of hinges on the door to the second weapons locker. The sky overhead was almost clear, with a faint haze to the west, but a chill and light wind blew out of the north with a dampness that cut through Kharl’s winter jacket.
Tarkyn stepped back and nodded. “An eightday or so, and no one’d know that it hadn’t been there from the time the ship went down the ways.”
“Better that way.” Kharl checked the racks inside and closed the door. The hasp fit over the lock staple perfectly. He slipped the fitted dowel in place to keep the door shut. Once they were back afloat, Ghart would replace the dowel with an actual lock, but at the moment, no lock was needed, since there were no weapons inside the locker.
“Captain ever say why he wanted another locker?” Kharl had asked before, but Tarkyn had always deflected the question.
“Don’t give up, do you?”
“You think I ought to?” countered Kharl. “Would you?”
Tarkyn chuckled, then glanced around the deck, empty except for the two carpenters at that moment. “Didn’t say. Not exactly. Said something about ports not being as safe as they used to be, even Austran ports.”
“He thinks someone might try to take over the ship?”
“With what he said, the thought had crossed my mind.” Tarkyn frowned. “Then, could be he didn’t want to give the real reason. Could be he didn’t have one, except a feeling.”
“Could be,” Kharl agreed.
“You going back to see Lyras any time soon?”
“I hadn’t planned on it.” Kharl offered a laugh. “I haven’t figured out half of what he told me last time.” Nor had he had a chance to try several of the ideas Lyras had suggested. He hadn’t found the passage in The Basis of Order about staffs, and he hadn’t been successful, so far, in trying to become invisible. But that could have been because he was still tired. Or maybe he was missing something.
“Mages are like that.” Tarkyn paused. “You’re getting like that.”
“Must be getting older, like you,” Kharl countered.
“Reisl said he saw you looking at a leaf in the mess the other day. Just looked at it, and it got real stiff. Then, after a bit, just fell apart into white powder. Scared him stiff. He likes you, but still scared him.” Tarkyn waited.
Kharl almost swallowed. He hadn’t realized that Reisl had been watching that closely. After a long moment, he finally said, “I didn’t mean to scare anyone. It was something Lyras suggested. Told me to study little things. I did it wrong. The leaf was almost dead anyway, but…I didn’t help it. It’s hard work. I had to go to bed early that night. I was that tired.”
“For doing that to a leaf?”
“Well…I was outside studying the rain,” Kharl added. “That was hard, too. No one ever told me that even learning little things about magery took so much strength.” He was pleased that he’d managed to tell almost all the truth without revealing too much, and not much more than Tarkyn already knew.
The older carpenter nodded. “Heard that from others. Said that one of the mages that destroyed Fairven-or might have-had been a big brawny smith…came back a skinny old man. Others never came back at all.”
“I could see that. Just the little things, just studying things, and I felt so tired, like I’d worked a forge all day. I guess that’s why I keep telling people I can do a few things, but that I’m not a mage and might not ever be one.”