“Probably,” Tarkyn agreed amiably. “Coin’s never been something that meant the most to you, though.” He studied Kharl, a twinkle in his eyes. “Still…pretty fancy cloth you’re wearing.”
Kharl laughed. “It’s plain compared to what the lords and their servants wear. Feels good though. They gave it to me when they found out I had an audience with Lord Ghrant.”
“Wagered something like that. What are you going to do now? Don’t think you’re going to come back to carpentering now that you’re a landed lord.”
“Not a lord, but I did get some land.” Kharl shook his head. “Still trying to figure out what to do next, whether I ought to try to get back to Brysta.”
“You don’t forget, do you?”
For a moment, Kharl was taken aback by the question. “No…I’d guess not.” But he wasn’t sure what he wasn’t forgetting, not exactly. Or rather, he didn’t want to say that he wasn’t forgetting the injustice he’d experienced and seen in too many forms. Charee hadn’t cared for his feelings that way. Sanyle had understood, but most surprisingly to Kharl, Jeka had. He wondered how she was doing, but he could only hope that Gharan had managed to keep her on in his shop. He still felt guilty about leaving her, but at the time, he hadn’t been sure what else he could have done.
“Don’t like to forgive those folks who do evil, either.”
Kharl couldn’t deny that, either.
“Understand that,” Tarkyn went on. “Don’t let revenge get in the way of doing what needs to be done.”
“Try not to.” Kharl paused, then added, “Thank you. For teaching me when I didn’t know enough. For making sure I did learn.”
“Be a piss-poor carpenter if I didn’t.”
“You’ve always been a good one.”
“What I wanted. Nothing more.” Tarkyn laughed. “Mostly, anyway.”
“Isn’t it that way always?”
They both laughed.
In time, when Kharl made his way back topside, Tarkyn’s words echoed through his thoughts-Don’t let revenge get in the way of doing what needs to be done. Don’t let revenge get in the way…deep inside, was he after revenge-targeted against Egen and Justicer Reynol? Or against all those in power in Brysta?
Could he not just accept his good fortune in Austra, where he had become recognized and been rewarded?
He looked to port, out at the long coastline lying on the horizon. He had wanted to have his own place in Austra.
XCII
The trip northward along the eastern coast of Austra was both uneventful and slow. While there were following winds, as Furwyl had hoped, they were light. Kharl used some of the time, as he could, talking to Furwyl and the mates, and especially to Tarkyn, whom he felt he had come to know later than the others.
On the afternoon of the sixth day after leaving Dykaru, Furwyl fired up the engines to bring the Seastag into Cantyl. Kharl stood at the poop railing, watching as the rounded headland to port grew ever larger. In the black leather bag waiting below, with his garments, was the parchment patent conveying Cantyl to him from Lord Ghrant, a patent that also conveyed the lands to his heirs in perpetuity.
As Hagen had told him, the harbor at Cantyl was small, with the headland he had been watching to the south of the harbor-a fjiordlike bay-and a low line of cliffs to the north. The entrance to the bay was less than a kay in width, with steep cliffs more than a hundred cubits in height to the south and lower cliffs, perhaps twenty cubits above the gray water-to the north. The sails had been furled a half glass earlier, and with but the faintest of breezes, the Seastag’s paddle wheels carried the ship through the mouth of the harbor and into the bay, an irregular shape that might have fit in a square two kays on a side.
“Be hard to get in here in a blow,” Furwyl observed from behind Kharl.
“Looks hard enough in calm waters,” Kharl replied, thinking that the harbor would be comparatively easy to defend with a chain system such as the one employed in Brysta.
“Old salts say it was once a pirate haven, back when Austra was but lands warring with each other…could be just a tale.”
As the Seastag eased closer to Cantyl, Kharl turned back to study the entrance to the harbor for a moment. It easily could have been a pirate refuge. He turned to say that, but Furwyl had retreated to the pilot platform. So the former cooper and carpenter, who was now both mage and landholder, just watched as the ship turned southward toward the pier a kay away.
Before that long, he was studying the five men who stood waiting on the narrow pier, a structure whose timbers had been bleached near-white by salt and sun and time. Two were clearly line-handlers. The other three watched the ship, and Kharl had the feeling that they were waiting for him. In the stone-walled harbor yard off the foot of the pier were two heavy wagons. One held beams, the other planks, both loads waiting to be loaded onto the Seastag.
Furwyl backed down the Seastag expertly, and the ship came to a halt within cubits of the pier.
“Lines out!” came the call from Ghart.
Kharl waited until the Seastag was tied at the pier before turning to Furwyl. “Thank you, both for this voyage-and for all the ones that made this one possible.”
“Our pleasure, Master Kharl.” The captain gestured toward the pier. “It would appear that you are expected-and that we might have a cargo.”
“If you do, it would be the least I could do to repay you and everyone on board. I can’t tell you how much.” Kharl grinned.
Then he headed toward the ladder down to the main deck. Once there, he slipped back into the captain’s cabin and reclaimed his new bag, and his old pack, before hurrying back out to the quarterdeck.
Furwyl, all the mates, and Tarkyn stood there. Behind them were a number of the crew. In the front Kharl spied Reisl, Hodal, and Kawelt.
For a moment, Kharl just looked at them. He swallowed. Finally, he spoke. “Don’t know that I’m that good with words, but…any of you are welcome here, any time. Wouldn’t be here, and have this without you.”
He looked at each of the officers in turn, then at Reisl and Hodal.
Reisl grinned.
Kharl swallowed again, before he spoke. “Thank you. Thank you all.”
Furwyl cleared his throat. “Master Kharl…were it not for you, it’s likely none of us would be standing here. We’d be thanking you for our lives and our health, and, likewise, you’re always welcome here.”
Bemyr lifted his whistle and gave a long ululating signal.
With a smile, Kharl walked down the gangway. Once on the pier, he turned back to the ship and raised his arm in a salute of sorts to the Seastag. He watched for a moment, then turned to those who had been waiting for him.
A short and slight figure, balding with some wisps of reddish hair, stood forward of the two taller men. The top of his head barely reached Kharl’s shoulder, but he bowed first. “Lord Kharl?”
“I’m Kharl…” Kharl eased the patent from the top of the leather bag. “Here’s Lord Ghrant’s patent to me…”
“Speltar, ser…I’m the steward of Cantyl.” He took the patent almost apologetically, reading it carefully before bowing and handing it back.
Kharl slipped the parchment carefully back into his bag.
“This is Dorwan, the forester, and Glyan, the vintner,” Speltar said, nodding first to a burly black-haired man close to Kharl’s age, then to a gray-bearded and angular man with deep brown eyes.
Kharl studied each man in turn. “I’m happy to meet you all. I’ll be needing your advice and skills very much. The only thing I know anything at all about is woods.”
“Aye, ser,” offered Dorwan. “That was what the message from Lord Hagen said.”
“Are the timbers there cargo for the Seastag?”
“That they are,” said Speltar. “When Dorwan heard that the Seastag was putting in here, a real heavy cargo vessel, we got together some timbers we could send to Nussar in Valmurl on consignment. That way, you’d have some more golds. We figured…well…they’d come in useful-like.”