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“Is this a hard time for woodcrafting?”

“Not wonderful. Not terrible. I’m no Sardit, but sometimes we come close.”

I managed to nod without dropping my jaw.

“You ever seen his work, young fellow?”

“Yes. I once saw a chest he made—black oak.”

Perlot pursed his lips. “Why do you need a job?”

“I left home young. I didn’t like my apprenticeship. My uncle said I was too unsettled. So I headed for Freetown. Then, what happened there forced me to leave…rather suddenly.”

“It forced more than a few people to leave.” His voice was dry. “Well…I wish you well. Try Destrin, but I’d advise you against using my name. That’s your choice, of course.”

Before I had even reached the door, the crafter was back among the finishes.

Gairloch remained in the stable while I sought out Destrin, heading toward the jewelers’ street and following the sketchy directions provided by Perlot.

The structure itself, faced in dark-red brick and sharing common walls on both sides with more recently-painted houses, bore only a small sign above the shop door: Woodwork.

The house had two doors—one which covered a stairway up to the second-floor quarters, and an open doorway on the street level leading into the woodshop.

The wide shutters on the lone woodshop window were open though a trace askew on their hinges, as if the pins were worn down and had not been replaced in years. The blue paint on the window casement and upon the shutters themselves had faded nearly to gray, where it had not peeled away to reveal a battered and faded red oak beneath. From what I could tell, there was a small attached structure in the back that might have once housed horses. Certainly the other houses in the area had such small stables.

I stepped inside the open doorway and stood at the edge of the workroom.

While the workroom wasn’t a disaster, the little signs of chaos were everywhere—the careless racking of the saws, the sawdust in the chalk drawers, and the cloudiness of the oil used with the grindstone.

“Yes?” A dark-haired man—slightly stooped shoulders, thin-faced, and wearing a clean if worn leather apron over dark trousers—glared at me.

“I’m looking for Destrin.”

“I’m Destrin.” His voice was thin.

“My name is Lerris. I understand you might be interested in having some help.”

“Hmmmmmmmm…”

“I’d be willing to work on a junior journeyman basis.”

“I don’t know…”

Shaking my head, I let my skepticism show through as I looked over the incipient chaos, saying nothing.

Destrin stood by a half-finished tavern bench, backless. The seat was in place, and he had drilled the holes for the pole legs. At a glance, I could tell it was made from three different kinds of wood—scraps or castoffs, probably. Not quite a crude piece, but definitely not up to the quality or the array of the tools, nor to the size of the workroom or the house or the merchant’s neighborhood.

“Well,” he demanded in a thin and testy voice, “can you do this kind of work?”

“Yes.” I didn’t feel like elaborating.

“How can you show me?”

I glanced around. The bins were empty, except for scraps. “I’ll make something, and you can judge for yourself. All it will cost is some scraps and the use of your tools.”

“They’re good tools. How can I be sure you know how to handle them?” His thin voice degenerated into more of a whine. “Acccuuu…ufffff…ufff…” His hand touched the workbench to steady himself, but his eyes stayed on me.

“Watch me. Or work on your bench while I show you.”

“Hhmmmmphmm.”

I took that for agreement and began to rummage around. In the end, I found a piece of red oak with some twisted grains at one end that could be turned to an elaborate breadboard, and some smaller plank-ends of white oak that would make a small box, perhaps for needles.

That turned out to be the easy part. None of the small saws or smaller straight planes had been sharpened in years, and the peg plane was clogged with sawdust and chips in a way that indicated it had been forced. So I cleaned it first, then oiled it and sharpened it. I managed to do the