Wellspring of Chaos by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

if you need them for someone else…”
    “They’re ready. If you want them, they’re yours. Can’t say as I’ve been overrun with orders the past few days.”
    “You won’t be, I fear. Egen’s… let’s just say that he dislikes losing. Because you’re alive, he feels he’s lost.”
    “How do you know so much about him… about what goes on?”
    Werwal’s laugh was more open this time. “No one holds their tongue around Tenderers and rag-pickers. Who are we, dealing with the dregs of offal?”
    Kharl realized something else that he should have noticed sooner. The Tenderer was far better spoken than most crafters, but that was hardly something that he could mention. “Always felt how a man does his craft reckons his value more than what it is.”
    “Your barrels show it.” Werwal gestured to the slack barrels by the loading door. “Are those mine?”
    “That they are—the first five.”
    “I’ll get them. You don’t need to be lifting them right now.”
    “I can help…”
    “You roll them over, and I’ll lift ‘em,” suggested the Tenderer.
    Rolling the empty barrels was no problem for the cooper, and before long all five were in the Tenderer’s wagon.
    Werwal closed the wagon gate and walked back to the loading door where Kharl stood.
    “I owe you three silvers and four coppers.” The Tenderer extended the coins. “Long as you’re here, I’ll be ordering barrels. I don’t need too many, but they need to be good.”
    “I thank you,” Kharl replied. “You seem free to say what you think when others will not even hint at it.”
    The lanky man grinned. “Who else would do what I do? That gives me the freedom to say a bit more, though there are those to whom I would not speak so freely.”
    “You don’t worry about it?”
    “I don’t worry too much,” Werwal replied. “No one else wishes to do what I do.” The Tenderer smiled. “You’re always welcome… if you don’t mind the odor.”
    “You’re always welcome here,” Kharl responded.
    “For that, cooper, I thank you.” Werwal offered a last smile. “I need to get back.” He turned and lithely vaulted up onto the wagon seat.
    As the wagon rolled down the alley away from the loading dock, Kharl wondered about Werwal’s invitation.
    Would things change that much, so much that the only place he might be welcome was with Brysta’s Tenderer?
     
     
    XVII
     
    By the beginning of the next eightday, Kharl was almost back to feeling normal, except that too much bending still sent shivers of pain through his back. He was only slightly slower than usual, but he’d seen few of his normal customers. Some, like Korlan, he didn’t expect to see for several more eightdays, although he’d begun work on the vintner’s white oak barrels, after finishing the five for Senstad.
    About midmorning on threeday, as Kharl was planing white oak shooks into staves for Korlan’s barrels, Aryl eased through the door of the cooperage.
    Kharl glanced at Warrl, who had been working with the chiv to smooth the rims of a red oak slack barrel. “You can take a break, if you’d like.“
    “Thank you, Da. Might I go outside?”
    “If you don’t go too far.”
    With a nod and a smile, Warrl turned, sliding something thin and white and oblong into his tunic, like a folded sheet of paper, better than the kind Warrl had used for his lessons. Kharl wondered what it was, but didn’t want to ask when Aryl was headed toward him.
    The boy slipped to the side away from Aryl, waiting until Aryl was farther inside the cooperage before easing behind the brown-bearded and stocky man, then out the door.
    “How you doing, Kharl?” asked the square-faced apple grower.
    “Been better… been worse. You ready to order some barrels?” Kharl set the stave he had just finished aside and took his foot off the drive pedal of the planer.
    “Depends… you wouldn’t talk much when I was offering seven coppers apiece.”
    “Still wouldn’t,” Kharl said. “Not