Wellspring of Chaos

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.”

Tarkyn laughed. “I’d believe that, except for one thing.”

Kharl raised his eyebrows in question.

“You’re the kind that never gives up…leastwise about that sort.”

Kharl wondered. Hadn’t he given up in a way about Charee, and about Warrl?

“Trouble coming,” said Tarkyn, looking over Kharl’s shoulder.

Kharl turned and watched as Furwyl crossed the gangway between the ship and the edge of the dry dock and made his way across the main deck.

“You about finished?” asked the first mate.

“Just did,” Tarkyn said.

“Good. Put all your tools back in the carpenter shop below, and the ones you carried over to that shed. Then get your personal gear back aboard. We’re refloating the ship. Captain wants us out of here and ready to sail morning after tomorrow. We’re moving to the Lord’s Pier soon as we get clear.”

“Mind telling us why, ser?” asked Tarkyn.

“Captain didn’t say much, except that we needed to be ready to shove off.”

Kharl wondered how much of Hagen’s urgency had been created by the reports of conflict between Lord Ghrant and his elder brother.