Wellspring of Chaos by L. E. Modesitt Jr. Read Free Book Online

“My wagon will be here shortly for the five barrels.”
    “They’ll be ready.”
    With a smile, Werwal bowed slightly and left.
    Kharl was smiling as well. The copper he’d given Jekat had been well spent, even if that had not been his intention. He’d have to remember to slip another to the cheerful urchin. Jekat had probably given him more business than his own sons.
    The cooper shook his head, sadly, and headed back toward the staves he’d been fine-drawing.
    Arthal coughed. “Da… he smelled.”
    “That’s not surprising. He’s a renderer.”
    “Shouldn’t let him in…”
    “He bought ten barrels, Arthal. He can’t help the smell. That’s what he does. Someone has to do it.”
    “Stinks…”
    Arthal’s mutter was so low that Kharl decided to ignore it as he went back to work. If he corrected Arthal on every word his son said, these days, he reflected, he’d do little enough coopering and Arthal would get even more angry than he always seemed to be.
    By late afternoon, Werwal’s man Sikal had arrived with a small— and smelly—wagon and collected the barrels, and Arthal had gone with Charee to the market square. Kharl was getting the forge ready to set some hoops when the door to the cooperage opened.
    He did not know the man who stepped into the shop, but the cooper stopped pumping the bellows in the small forge and stepped forward past the planer. He skirted Jenevra, who looked up silently, and moved to the sharp-featured figure in the rich brown tunic.
    “Might I help you, ser?” asked Kharl, trying to determine what sort of merchant the man might be.
    “You might be Kharl, the cooper?” The man’s muddy brown eyes flicked up to the racks of billets, then toward the stairs in the rear, before settling on Kharl.
    “That I am. And you might be?”
    “Let us just say that I have an interest in barrels. Special barrels.” A faint smile appeared on the slender but muscular man’s lips.
    Kharl smelled scent on the man, more than even a wealthy man should use. Lavender, he thought. “Large or small, slack or tight?”
    “I was thinking of large slack barrels, for winter transport of seasonal game, and I understand such barrels could hold ice above the game, that would keep the game cold.”
    “That’s possible, but only for an eightday in harvest. In winter, the ice would keep for a season, or longer.”
    “I would be interested in a… large barrel.” The man gestured toward the hogshead in the window. “Could you make one a third smaller than the largest there?”
    “That is possible.”
    “Good.” The man in brown flashed a smile, then slipped around Kharl and studied the shop, moving toward the tool rack. His eyes took in the tools, implement by implement, then the forge and the open hearth that held the fire pot. His eyes passed over the blackstaffer on the pallet against the wall and returned to Kharl. “You have a well-laid-out cooperage.”
    “Thank you. When would you like the hogshead?”
    “I will have to think about that. When I return, we’ll talk about the details. I needed to know whether it was possible.” He bowed, then turned.
    Kharl watched as the other left. He shook his head. For all his words, the man hadn’t felt like someone who bought barrels. The lavender scent suggested a bravo of some sort, but Kharl hadn’t the faintest idea why a bravo would find a cooperage of interest. It wasn’t as though Kharl had large stocks of coins stashed away.
    “That man,” said Jenevra, “he was evil.”
    “Is that something blackstaffers can tell?” Kharl asked.
    “Not always,” she replied. “I wouldn’t be here if we could. But that one, he carries the white of chaos around him like a cloak.”
    “He’s a white mage?”
    “No. It’s not the same. His is the chaos of murder and destruction.”
    Why would one such as that, if Jenevra were indeed correct, be visiting a cooper? He hadn’t even really looked at the blackstaffer, or at Kharl. “You think