Wellspring of Chaos Read Online Free PDF Page B

truth, and some of the tenseness he felt lessened.
    Charee reappeared, carrying warm cloths and a thin brown coverlet. “You two… Don’t you have some fancy barrels to finish, Kharl?”
    The cooper nodded and stepped back. “You can bring those buckets over to the finishing bench, Arthal.”
    “Yes, Da.”
    After leaving the injured girl to Charee’s ministrations, Kharl turned to his workbench. There, he thinned, then stirred the sealant gently before he began to apply it to the black oak fifth-barrels. He could hear Charee murmuring.
    “… don’t care much… blackstaffers… sending women… shouldn’t come to this… Now… just take it easy, dear…”
    “Where…?”
    “You’re safe now. You’re at the cooper’s. Kharl found you in the ser-viceway… You’d been hurt… just rest.” Charee looked across the shop at Kharl. “I’ll be getting her some water.”
    Kharl decided against mentioning ale, not when they were short themselves. “I’m not going anywhere.”
    As Charee headed up the steps once more, Arthal cleared his throat.
    “Ah… Da?”
    “Oh… Arthal. You can get out some more shooks—the red oak ones—and you’ll have to use the ladder because they’re in the upper front section of the racks. I’ll need you to sharpen the knives, the shave, and the blade in the planer. After I put one coat on the fine fifth-barrels, then we’ll work on those shooks while the barrels are drying.”
    Charee reappeared with a chipped mug. She went to the prostrate woman and held the water to her lips. “Just a few sips at first. That’s it…“
    Kharl took out the finish brush and dipped it into the sealant, deftly but slowly coating the interior of the barrel, something he would not have done for a vintner’s barrel, but how and whether a barrel needed sealing depended on what the final use was, and when an alchemist like Yualt wanted a sealed black oak barrel with spigots, Kharl provided the best he could, even if he had no exact idea what Yualt intended to store in it.
    He’d almost finished the first barrel when Charee stepped up to his shoulder, and whispered, “She’s asleep. Got a knot on the back of her head. She’s still seeing two instead of one. Say you should keep ‘em awake, but I couldn’t.”
    “We can only do what we can,” Kharl pointed out.
    “Beasts…” muttered Charee. “She shouldn’t be going around like that, but… no excuse to knock around anyone that way.”
    “After I finish the barrels, I’ll send Arthal off to tell the Watch.”
    “You’ll do no such thing, Kharl. The Watch can do nothing. There
    was a scrap of velvet in her hand. Who wears velvet? You think they’ll find anyone? And then all of Brysta will know you’ve been harboring a blackstaffer. You think that will help business?“
    Kharl knew she was right. “What color velvet?”
    “Doesn’t matter.” After a moment, Charee added, “Dark blue, almost black.”
    “I won’t tell the Watch.”
    “See that you don’t, and I’ll be telling Arthal and Warrl to say nothing. The sooner she’s well and out of here, the happier I’ll be.”
    Kharl already knew that. The fact that Charee didn’t want to say anything was another indication of how worried his consort was.
    After Charee went back upstairs to work on the piecework for Fyona, Kharl motioned to Arthal.
    “Yes, Da?” Arthal stepped away from the stacked shooks. “I got down enough for two barrels, and finished sharpening the planer blade and clamped it back in place.”
    Kharl didn’t point out that Arthal had been done for some time. “You need to run some errands. Smythal, first. We need the iron blanks for four flour barrels.”
    “He’ll want something.”
    Kharl took five coppers from his purse and handed them to Arthal. “Then go out to the mill and see what the timber looks like. Don’t talk to Vetrad, just see if his racks, especially the oak racks, are full or empty. And make sure that the billets in our