The Shattered Vine

by Laura Anne Gilman

  He held his breath, not sure what to think or expect. The hound’s nose was wet but its tongue was almost dry as it swiped at his skin and then moved on to Kaïnam.

  “What is it—”

  “Shh,” Mahault said, and Kaï subsided, letting the animal circle around him. The mouth closed around the princeling’s fingers, but although it tugged slightly, did not break the skin. Kaï did not flinch, and the hound let go, releasing him and turning to Mahault.

  Her face, tanned by so many months under the open skies, had gone pale, and her eyes were wide, as though she was frightened by this the way she had not been when facing men with raised blades, but Mahault did not falter. She went to one knee, almost as though she were making a deep bow, and raised both of her hands, palm up and layered left on right at even height with the hound’s black nose, staying in clear sight. The hound looked her directly in the eye and took both hands in its mouth, the same as it had Kaïnam, but this time it did not let go but rather bore down, enough that Jerzy saw Mahault flinch slightly.

  “Mahl . . .” A world of question in that one breath of air; Mahl managed to shake her head just enough to warn Kaïnam from doing anything and not yet dislodge the hound or lose eye contact with it. The stranger solitaire merely stood back and watched, so Jerzy took his own cue from that.

  It happened so fast, nobody, not even the solitaire, could react in time. From a nearly frozen tableau, the hound released Mahault’s hands and lurched forward, knocking her backward onto the flagstone floor, her head making a hard thunk as it hit. Her hands, released, came up, but even as Kaïnam was reaching for his blade to kill the beast, Jerzy had his hand on the hilt, stopping him. The Vineart didn’t remember moving, had not taken his eyes off Mahault long enough to see the princeling move, and yet his gesture had been unerring.

  Mahault was laughing. The hound, rather than tearing her throat out, was laving her face with a great pink tongue.

  “Codi, leave the sister alone,” the solitaire said. Her posture was still alert, loose-limbed and ready to take action, but her voice was softer, less a command than a request.

  The hound gave her face one last washing and backed off, taking a seated position just behind the solitaire’s left knee. Mahault got to her feet in a graceful scramble and stood facing the other woman.

  “I am not a solitaire,” she said.

  The fighter cocked her head, simply looking at Mahl. “Codi is rarely wrong,” she said, and then seemed to dismiss the matter from her thoughts, turning to Justus. “Two more have fallen ill. I can do no more for them than make them comfortable.”

  Jerzy jumped in before their escort could respond. “What is the nature of the illness? Fever? Rash? Justus said that there was no warning, that people simply fell over, and had no strength?”

  “In truth, yes. I would accuse them of malingering, save I have come to know these people, and they are not that sort. Such extreme exhaustion afflicts them that the act of merely moving their limbs brings agony.” The solitaire seemed both worried and exasperated. “Other than bathing and feeding them, we have been able to bring no relief. That was when Justus sent for the healer.”

  “A spell, Jer?” Kaï asked quietly.

  Jerzy didn’t bother to respond, moving forward to where the cots had been gathered. The solitaire and her hound moved aside for him, her gaze flickering down to his waist, where the silver tasting spoon gleamed faintly in the spell-lights set in the walls. The lights had been set to half-burn, likely to spare the eyes of the ill, but Jerzy needed to see what he was looking at. As he passed, he raised one hand, the way he would going down the stairs to his master’s study, and the illumination increased to near-normal levels.

  A muted gasp from someone was overridden by Justus’s quiet rumble as he explained who the newcomer was. He should not have used quiet-magic so casually, so openly; he was careless. The thought came and went, everything else fading from Jerzy’s awareness, even as he sensed Kaï at his left shoulder, Mahault at his right, two paces back and waiting for any orders he might give them.

  The cot nearest him held a man who should have been working out in the fields: ruddy faced, with close-cropped hair that was starting to thin; he had broad shoulders and thick muscles that, even now, looked as though he had only to sit up to do a full day’s work. But the lines deeply indented in his face told a different story, one of exhaustion and pain.

  Exhaustion, more than pain.

  The next cot had a slightly younger, more slender man. He had a scar across his chest that looked as though it had come from a blade, but it was well-healed: a former solder for Lord Ranulf, perhaps, returned home after his term of service. Not one who would easily admit to illness, or failure. He did not open his eyes as Jerzy stood by him, as though even that was beyond his capability.

  The next three cots held women, grouped more closely together as though to give comfort to each other. Two were Jerzy’s own age; the third older. Their mother? Unlike the men, they were thin, as though they had lost the will to eat well before they took to their beds, or been ill far longer.

  He moved on, moving more swiftly as he noted the consistent patterns, exhaustion and pain with no visible signs of illness or injury, only the faint scent of healwines lingering about them. Eleven cots in all, evenly split between men and women, no children. Eleven, in a village that could not hold more than a few hundred. The numbers were too high, Master Malech would say. Too high for coincidence, in times such as these.

  Illness did not come out of nowhere; Master Malech taught him that.

  Jerzy could sense the illness lingering within the structure, the way a traveler on the road could feel fog even in darkest night, but he could not discern its source.

  “No animals died, or fell sick,” he said, already knowing the answer.

  “No, none. And there was no filth in the well’s water.”

  When the sea serpents attacked The Berengia last year, those who came into contact with the dead body were struck by an illness that made them dispirited, unable to shake off their sadness. This did not seem the same, and there had been no reports of anything untoward occurring in the days or even weeks beforehand, but Jerzy could not rule out a spell, not after all that he had seen; they knew now that their enemy worked with a very long spoon.

  To deal with the serpent-brought illness, he had brought Lord Ranulf a healwine for melancholia. Here . . . he had no access to his House’s cellars this moment, but something stirred within him, sorting through the legacies within his quiet-magic, waiting for something to rise in answer. Healvine, yes. But that alone . . . not enough. Not here; not with an illness tied to an external cause, not if magic were already involved.

  Jerzy tried to consider the bodies before him the way he would vines in a yard, assessing the vigor of new growth, the swelling fruit. Like the feel of the wine in his blood, the knowledge came to him.

  The illness was a form of magic, yes, but it was settled within the victim. Deep inside, to show no visible signs on the skin, no fever or bruising, no buboes or patching, no loss of hair or skin. In the blood, perhaps, but he would not bleed them to discover it, not when the slightest movement caused pain.

  He had to find another way to ease their suffering, while he tried to disconnect them from the spell’s influence itself.

  “Aetherwine,” he said finally. “Mahl, the wineskin with the pale blue binding, and an aethersigil on the side.” There were five sigils; water, earth, fire, healing, and aether, one for each legacy, for easy identification. Vinearts did not require them; all a Master had to do was pick up a skin or touch the side of a cask, and he would know whence the vine had grown, what sort of magic rested within. For others, though, the labeling was necessary.

  “Aetherwine will clear the air,” he said out loud, having fallen into the habit of speaking his thoughts out loud to his companions, even though they had no training, no skills to correct or guide him. He did not stop to think that there were others in the room as well. “If
the spell lingers around us, it will be pushed aside, long enough for a healspell to work.”

  His fingers curved around the healspell at his waist. The vines that had produced this vintage were half a day’s journey from here. The soil they had grown in was similar enough to the dirt outside that he could practically feel it humming in the soles of his feet, rising up through his body. Was this how Master Malech had felt, every day? Or was it the need that made him so aware, the need, and the time he had been away? The thought chewed at him; had the time away made him stronger? Or had it damaged him somehow?

  The hum intensified, and Jerzy’s hand fell away from the flask, reassured. He would not need this, not here. Not when it already surged through his body so quietly, as much a part of him as his blood and breath.

  He moved through the room a second time, not looking at the bodies still on their cots, but rather following the traces of magic he could feel. None of it bore the taint he had been chasing, not obviously, and none of it had the feel of the unblooded vines of Irfan, that dangerous, untamed fruit, and yet there was something familiar about it all. Something that traced back to a shared root.

  “Did anyone new come to the village, just before this all began? They might not have stayed long, even just an hour.”

  Justus consulted the others, briefly, quietly. “Only the solitaire. No, she came after the first illness.”

  “What about the Washer?” someone else asked.

  “The what?” Both Jerzy and Kaïnam turned on the speaker, as though pulled by the same string.

  “A Washer came through on his rounds, just before Harvest.” Justus sounded surprised that they would question such a thing. “As he has done for every season I can remember. Surely he visits the vintnery as well?”

  Each season a Washer came though to bless the crops, to praise the Harvest, to bargain with Detta for their usual shipment of barrels. As a slave, Jerzy had attended the ceremonies but thought more for the Harvest party than the prayers, had taken the Solace of Sin Washer’s Heir but not looked closely at the man who offered it.

  “The same man as previous years?” Mahault had a look on her face that meant she was thinking very hard about something, but wasn’t ready to say what it was, yet.

  “No . . . he was new, younger.” Justus looked pained, his hands pressing against his rib cage as though the thought brought him pain. “But surely he could not have brought this here!”

  Jerzy bit the inside of his cheek, feeling the quiet-magic flood onto his tongue, waiting to be used. Anyone might have brought illness, intentionally or otherwise. A Washer bringing harm was counter to everything Jerzy had ever been taught, but the world had changed. The greeting party at the dock had made it clear that the rules had changed, and no one—not even an Heir of Sin Washer—was beyond suspicion. Jerzy could not overlook the possibility that one of them might be involved, for reasons of their own.

  “Illness comes in many forms,” Kaï said, stepping in to cover Jerzy’s uncertainty. His voice was princeling-smooth and soothing, redirecting attention away from the Vineart. “If he himself did not feel this exhaustion, he may never have known anything was wrong.”

  Or he might have been protected from it. This village was within House Malech’s reach. If this was an attempt to force Jerzy’s hand somehow . . . Washers, unlike lords and Vinearts, had no limits placed on how they might use either magic or power. Sin Washer had trusted his heirs . . . perhaps too much.

  Justus did not care where the illness came from, or what power swirled outside his village. “Can you help them?”

  The same words Kaï had used, when they watched the plague ship rising and falling on the waves.

  “I think so,” Jerzy said this time.

  Mahl brought him the spellwine, and Justus slid a small wooden table over for him to use. Jerzy placed the wineskin in the center of the table, unhooked his tasting spoon, and placed it next to the skin, asking for a bowl of water to rinse his hands in before beginning.

  Despite common belief, vinespells did not require ceremony to decant; his master had been disdainful of such flourishes, saying they distracted from the decantation, but Vineart Giordan had embraced them, claiming that people felt more reassured when they had something to watch. Justus and the others, even Kaï and Mahault, needed reassurances now, even if the ill would not see it.

  His hands washed and dried on a rough, clean scrap of cloth, Jerzy uncorked the wineskin and poured a scant mouthful of spellwine into the shallow lip of the spoon.

  The quiet-magic for healing already rested on his tongue, the soft red fruit of healwine filling his senses, the softness of it soothing the bitten flesh, making him feel stronger, calmer, even before the decantation was made. He didn’t remember that happening before, but then again, every time he had drawn on it before he had been stressed, facing danger or uncertainty. Here . . . he was home, and although there was clearly trouble, he could sense no immediate danger, no flavor of the enemy’s taint following him to these sloping, stony lands.

  The aetherwine was stronger, right out of the skin; his nostrils twitched as the scent of it rose into the otherwise stale air of the sickroom and he breathed in deeply.

  As a slave, he had been forbidden to breathe of the mustus, the crushed, raw juice of the grapes. Tamed and shaped, the spellwine could still intoxicate.

  Behind him, he could sense the others, but if they spoke or moved, he could not say; all of his attention was focused on the dark red liquid resting in the spoon’s depression, moving slightly as though stirred by a breath from within. No matter how often he saw aetherwine, it still awed him in a way no other legacy could, not even the cold, unblooded grapes they had discovered in Irfan. Aethervines, tradition said, had taken the brunt of Sin Washer’s touch, had absorbed his anger and his sorrow, and turned it into something . . .

  Magnificent. Stubborn, like weathervines. Deep and rounded, like healvines. Powerful, like firevines. And yet, as delicate as a morning’s drop of dew, so easily ruined in the wrong or careless hands. And so very, very rare. . . .

  He let the spellwine breathe a moment, then lifted the spoon to his mouth and let the liquid slide between his lips, joining the healwine magic already gathered there.

  And something else, slipping into the warmth of the healvines and the sparkle of the aether, a building pressure of clean, tart power. Weatherspell. Giordan’s vines, rising inside him without being called, as though it was his proper legacy.

  This was forbidden. This was dangerous.

  This was why Jerzy was apostate, not any reason the Washers could name.

  He had taken more than his due share, his allotted-by-Sin-Washer legacy. Any man might use any spellvine incanted. Any Vineart might—secretly, unknown to outsiders—use quiet-magic to expand and increase a decantation. But quiet-magic grew from exposure to the vines, from being accepted by that legacy. To blend them; to absorb the work of more than one master; to twine the legacies into something more powerful than they were alone . . .

  These were the mark of a prince-mage. These were the things Sin Washer commanded to end.

  Jerzy let those thoughts go, focused on what needed to be done. “Into the air, rise and clear,” and even as he spoke the words, forming them carefully around the liquid resting on his tongue, he was aware that he was asking, not commanding. The words were right, but the tone . . .

  “Into the air, rise and clear,” he repeated, infusing more command into the words this time. Magic, unformed or mis-formed, would do as it would, not as you would have it do.

  The two legacies stirred, and he could feel the magic rise, sweeping outward from him, through him, into the air, waiting. His body shivered in response, but he focused on the next step, careful not to lose control. The command was everything.

  “Clear the afflicted, set them free.” As he said it, he visualized what he wanted each part of the magic to do: the aetherwine to wipe them clean, and the healwine to follow after and repair the damage done. And weather
vine, to freshen the air around this town, flush the soil clean of its blight.

  “Go.”

  The magic shimmered and then burst, a hundred drops off in twice as many directions. Jerzy felt his knees wobble and his head swim.

  “Jer?”

  “I think it worked,” he said, before his body gave way entirely, and he collapsed.

  Kaïnam caught the Vineart as he fell to the floor. He could not say what had warned him; some change in the way the other man stood, or the way his hand turned on the silver spoon he was holding, clenching the stem tightly, like a convulsion. Whatever the clues, his body reacted before his mind could put them together, keeping the Vineart from injuring himself as his body crumpled.

  “Jer!” Even as Mahault cried out in concern, there was a motion from the bed, and the patient, an older woman with skin weathered from wind as much as age, opened her eyes and squinted suspiciously up at them.

  KAÏNAM WAS WORRIED. He did not show it; to show his concern would be to cast doubt on Jerzy’s decision, and Kaïnam was too much a son of Atakus to ever publicly disagree or doubt his captain, on the sea or off. And yet he cast sideways looks at the Vineart when he didn’t think anyone else was watching, and he worried. Jerzy had recovered quickly from his collapse; had waved off their questions with a breezy explanation that made no sense if you knew anything of how vine-magic worked. The villagers and solitaire, overwhelmed by the nearly immediate recovery of the previously pain-racked patients, did not stop to question it: perhaps, despite their proximity to Vinearts, they truly did not know anything of them.

  Kaïnam knew. He thought, perhaps, that Jerzy did not know how much he knew; the others took what Jerzy revealed so matter-of-factly, with no interest beyond the fact of what Jerzy did, that it was less evident the interest Kaï himself took in the how.

  Not the magic itself: Kaïnam knew that he had no skills in that area. But the things that made other people powerful, that was something he studied. His sister had schooled him well: if you knew what drove another person, if you knew what gave them strength, you knew their weaknesses, too. Claiming exhaustion from spreading the magic among so many individuals—even had Kaïnam never seen a spellwine decanted before, he had traveled with this crew for months now. He had seen the Vineart do things that were not spoken of, subtle and overt, and drawn his own conclusions.