The Shattered Vine

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “You all right?”

  “Yes,” Jerzy responded, before realizing she wasn’t asking him. He climbed to his feet, hauling himself up with a hand on the sideboard, and peered at Ao.

  “I’m fine,” the trader said, sounding embarrassed. His hair fell limp in his face, and there was a smudge of dark blood across the bridge of his nose, making it look even more lopsided. But it wasn’t his blood—more of that dark, gooey liquid was splattered over his arms and the blanket, where a bird had fallen on him, and died.

  Jerzy stared at the blood, thinking . . . he wasn’t sure what.

  “The serpents didn’t have blood,” he said. The only blood shipboard had been Ao’s, thick and sticky on his hands and clothing. It wasn’t Ao’s blood this time; Jerzy looked again to make sure. “We cut them open and they were solid flesh.”

  Ao was too busy mopping himself up to hear, and Kaïnam was cleaning his sword over in the grass, but Mahault looked at him, her eyes still battle-bright. “Does that mean something?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know . . . anything.” His legs were still wobbly, but he managed to turn and kneel down next to the bird on the ground by the wagon, looking at it without touching. It was clearly deformed, as though someone had taken its flesh and pinched and pulled cruelly, re-forming it, stretching the beak into a sharp, rending tool, hammering the claws out on a blacksmith’s forge.

  The malaise in the land was subtle. This was not. A weakness, a failure in their enemy’s work? Jerzy didn’t know. He couldn’t think, not there, not right then. He got back up and rummaged in the wagon for something to gather the creature up in, finally dumping the last of their dried meats and using the burlap sack to scoop the bird-beast up, careful not to touch it with his hands any more than was necessary, then retied the top and went to attach it to the nearest horse’s saddle—Mahl’s horse, carrying the lighter weight. The beast, who had managed not to bolt during the fight itself, shied away from the sack, so Jerzy sighed and slung it into the wagon itself, careful to keep it away from the spellwines they still carried.

  “Our watcher is still there,” Kaïnam said, returning to them. His voice was low and casual, as though commenting on how far they had yet to ride, but his narrow face was ashen and his eyes a little too wide for true calm. “The coward saw us being attacked and did nothing.”

  “They don’t care if we live or die,” Mahl said, and her voice had a definite tremble in it. “Only that we don’t ally with someone else. Keren was right. Everything’s changed.”

  The watching Washer-spy was the least of Jerzy’s concerns just then.

  “How did those things find us?” Ao wondered, some of his normal vitality returning. He took a long drink from a waterskin, spitting red-colored phlegm over the side of the wagon onto the dirt, then splashed some more on his face. “Or was it coincidence. ‘Look, people, let’s try and eat them’?” His expression was doubtful, as was Mahault’s. Kaïnam, as usual, was unreadable.

  “It felt me,” Jerzy said. “Out on the ocean, it couldn’t find me, the same way I couldn’t find him. But here . . .” It seemed hopeless; if the other Vineart could do so much, could send magic so fiercely, so secretly, how could any stand against him?

  The sensation he had felt just before the attack was connected to the malaise festering in the village, which in turn connected to the continued unease he felt below his feet, he was sure of it.

  He didn’t speak further of it to the others and they, used to his sudden silences when it came to magic, didn’t push him. While Ao sat guard, his crossbow at the ready, Kaïnam and Mahault dug a shallow pit by the side of the road and dumped the remains of the creatures into it.

  Jerzy knew they should do something more, to ensure the corpses would not be dug up by dogs or other scavengers, but there were no rocks large enough to be useful but not too large to lift, and he did not want to use magic just then, to seal the ground more tightly. He certainly did not want to try the single drop of growspell he had anywhere near the creatures, even dead. Instinct told him that to poke at it again, here unprotected on the road, would not be wise.

  When what little they could do had been done, the four started back down the road, each wrapped in their own thoughts, all intent on putting as much distance between them and the location of the attack as possible, especially as the last remnants of daylight faded entirely and the air turned a shadowed blue.

  Jerzy took up the reins of the wagon again without comment, while behind him Ao rearranged the contents that had been disturbed during the fight, drawing the canvas cover back over them and fastening it securely before settling himself in a corner, and, to all intents and purposes, falling asleep. Kaïnam reclaimed the vanguard position, his body alert to any threat either around or above, while the clop of hooves told Jerzy that Mahault was doing the same behind.

  “Be careful,” he heard Kaïnam say. “Things come out in the dark that would avoid daylight.”

  Jerzy stared at the road, but did not see it, his thoughts chasing after each other, chewing on their own tails. The sense of being salivated over had come when he let the full force of his legacies fill him. The attack came soon after. Too soon? The beasts had found them, not by chance but malice. Jerzy had been identified as a threat, identified and . . . hunted?

  Unlike the sea beasts, those birds had not merely followed along a shoreline until they came to a target: they had flown, looking. But not randomly; Jerzy had watched enough birds flying over the yards to know that a bird, no matter how twisted, did not fly randomly, but watched the ground, followed known trails and likely spots for a specific sort of prey. There were other, easier targets, had all these beasts wanted were food, or violence.

  He had spent so much time wondering who and why, the how had seemed without purpose: magic, of course. But once decanted, once used, magic slipped away; as he had warned Ao, magic did not last. Even a master Vineart could not follow the magic back to the one who had used it: Magewine could identify the crafter, but that was all. It was not a pigeon, to return from whence it came.

  Something else, then. Something that used the magic, but was not itself magic? That could reach across oceans, burrow into a distant land, bring illness and identify threats?

  Possible, yes. Likely, no. And yet, if he concentrated, Jerzy could imagine roots tough and gnarled, stretching between everything, connecting Vineart to land-lord, coastline to farmland, cities of power to distant vineyards, and the Collegium in Altenne and all the red-robed Washers on their many roads . . . all connected through Sin Washer’s Command. Even as he imagined that, the vision expanded to include a second set, creeping through the soil, reaching up to tangle and strangle the first set of roots, turning it to rot, spreading its dis-ease up into the stocks. . . .

  All connected.

  Master Malech had never even hinted at such a thing. But neither had he ever hinted that there might yet be unblooded vines left, or sea serpents, or . . .

  There had been things Master Malech had not known. The thought caught in Jerzy’s chest, as though it were a betrayal.

  So. A thing unknown, but possible. It was assuredly no coincidence that the winged beasts had found them. Specifically, found him. His enemy had tracked him, traced him through that connection. Roots that were impossible, that deep and that old, but existed nonetheless, all the way through the earth: deeper than rock, deeper than ocean.

  That was how the . . . Jerzy could no longer bring himself to call his enemy a Vineart, not after the abominations he had created—how the mage reached into distant lands, and struck.

  Jerzy needed to consult Malech’s records. He needed to know if anyone else had ever written of those roots—and if there was a way to cut them, before the disease spread further.

  “Jer?” Kaïnam, his voice flowing back from just ahead. “Do we stop, or go on?”

  It had become too dark for them to safely ride without risking a horse stumbling, or being attacked by something with better night sight. Jerzy l
ooked up at the sky, now covered with clouds, and shook his head, although he suspected they could not see him.

  “Light, come steady, light come low,” he said, turning his closed fist palm side up and summoning quiet-magic into a pale light the same blue-white as moonshine. It slipped from between his fingers, spreading out in a ribbon to light the road just ahead of them.

  “Anything more would attract attention,” he said. “This should be enough.”

  “We split into two shifts,” Kaï said. “Two resting, while one drives and one keeps watch. Switch at moonrise.” He looked at the sky. “Or as close as we can tell, anyway.”

  The night passed that way, the steady clop of hooves and turning of wooden wheels broken by the calls of night birds and the occasional yipping of foxes, while someone stayed alert with Ao’s bow in their hands or, in Jerzy’s case, a small wineskin of firewine at the ready. None of them slept well, and the morning sun found their eyes rimmed with red and crusted with dust, their limbs aching from the aftermath of the fight and the hard jouncing of the road, but all that was forgotten when they made the turn off the main road and up to the vintnery proper.

  As a slave, Jerzy had never thought that he would leave the confines of the low stone walls. As a student, he had gone only on his master’s orders, checking on the smaller yards, or traveling to Aleppan, to study with another Vineart—and play the spy on their gossip.

  Now, he thought he might feel much as Ao’s people did, ever-leaving, ever-returning. It was a distressing, dizzying thought, compounded by how quiet it all was that morning, with only the occasional invisible but vocal songbird to keep them company.

  The immediate yards ran sloping down to the right-hand side of the road, stretching across the Valle of Ivy. The valley itself was cut into a chessboard, half green with crops, the others brown and fallow, interspersed with the occasional gnarled fruit tree, and dotted with low stone buildings where the House slaves lived and the farming equipment was kept. In the distance, a river cut through the fields—the Ivy. The chessboard and the buildings belonged to the House of Malech, one of four Vinearts established within The Berengia.

  Master Vineart Malech, once-student of Vineart Josia, who first planted these yards. Master of Jerzy. Dead now, months past, of an attack by the same force that had attacked them: an unknown Vineart, in an unknown land, with strength beyond anything Jerzy had been taught possible.

  But he had not been taught enough.

  Jerzy resisted looking to the left until he had no choice, the wagon drawing to a stop at the end of the cobbled road. Ahead, a narrower path led to the stables, the henhouse, and the coldhouse, set into the hill behind the House.

  To his left . . .

  The House itself.

  He turned and looked back the way they had come, then toward the fields again. The slaves were out among the vines, working, while others tended the much smaller gardens. A taller, bulkier form strode among them: the overseer.

  A slave came running down from the stables, its jerkin clean, if ragged, dark blond hair falling into its face. Its feet were bare, and the expression guarded, until Jerzy turned around.

  “Master.”

  Something cold touched Jerzy at the sound of that almost casual greeting, and he fought to keep from shuddering.

  Once his jaw unlocked, the words came easily. “Take the horses, and make sure they are all well-tended. Unload the wagon—carefully!—and bring the casks to the workroom door.” Cut into the side of the house, that door opened into the storerooms and the study where he had taken most of his lessons. His study, now. His storerooms.

  His slaves.

  The slave bowed and sped off to gather help as well as spread the news that a Vineart was back in residence.

  Welcome home.

  Jerzy did not acknowledge the dragon’s voice, not yet.

  The others also dismounted, Kaïnam tying up his reins before lifting Ao out of the wagon. Jerzy watched the procedure, ready to assist if necessary, already running through the spellwines he would need to start the proper healing of that scar tissue. It was still painful to see Ao, once so exuberant and energetic, now reliant on someone else, but it hurt less than to turn around and see . . . what?

  “I had forgotten how lovely it is,” Mahault said.

  At that, Jerzy looked.

  The pathway led under a green arch, twined vines spelled so that no fruit grew from them, only thickly clustered leaves that remained green even during Fallowtime. He knew, walking underneath, that he would feel the welcome of the House, the sense of the Guardian marking him as he came home, although the dragon had known he was en route since before the Heart made port.

  Beyond that, past the flowered shrubs and sloping patch of grass, up a golden stone path was the main building, its façade the same stone as the path. Two stories high, with narrow windows glittering with colored glass on either side of the entrance.

  The great wooden door should have been open, as it always had been in the past.

  It was shut.

  Kaïnam looked at Jerzy, and waited, as a good guest would. Ao, however, had no such hesitation. Swinging carefully on the crudely made crutches tucked under his arms, he hop-stepped toward the archway, calling out, “Ho, the House!”

  As though summoned, the doors flew open and a body ran out, down the path, her hair streaming behind her in an indecorous manner, and before Jerzy could think, Lil had thrown her arms around him, hugging him so tightly he could barely breathe.

  Behind him, Kaïnam chuckled, and Ao grinned as though he were the one being greeted thus. Jerzy could feel his ears turn hot with a blush, but his arms went around the cook almost instinctively and, much to his surprise, he returned the hug.

  Malech had been his master. Detta was House-keeper. But Lil had been his very first-ever friend.

  “You’re home, you’re home,” she was babbling now, letting go of him and dancing back a step, her hands automatically going to her hair, smoothing the tangled locks back down. Once she had worn a red kerchief over her pale hair, the same as he had while at sea, but now those blond locks were plaited in a narrow row at her crown, held away from her face and then left to flow across her shoulders, away from the work she would supervise. Her clothing was much the same, if of better wear: still a skirt and smock, soft house-shoes on her feet, and her face still broke into a smile, if not as easily as it once had. A change: there were lines around her eyes and mouth that had not been there before, and a shadow underneath her joy.

  It had been a hard year, for everyone.

  “All are well?” he asked, dreading the answer.

  “All well, as well as can be,” she replied. As though to confirm that, the rounded bulk of the House-keeper came down the path, moving at a more suitable speed for her age and position, but her eyes as kind and welcoming as they had been the first day she had taken him in hand and scrubbed off the last of the sleep house grime from his skin.

  “Jerzy.” Her welcome, quieter than Lil’s, less formal that the slave’s, made it all real.

  He was home.

  Somehow, it still felt wrong.

  DETTA SOON HAD them organized and inside, the ancient tapestries and gleaming woods of the House a balm on Jerzy’s exhausted nerves, the morning meal waiting on the table, fresh breads and cheeses and cold roasted meats sliced thin and spread with spices.

  Detta had taken one look at Ao, balancing on his wooden supports, and sent one of the kitchen children to fetch Per, with orders for him to “bring ’round the chair.”

  “Old Master Josia, when he was older,” she explained. “Not so much with the getting around, but still impatient, he was. Had this made for him, to move easier, and stored it when he was gone. No reason why, save now, I suppose. Never be rid of anything you might need, that’s truth.”

  “I’m sure Kaï will be thankful not to be my beast of burden any longer than needed,” Ao said. “My thanks, O Mistress of the House.” He tried to bow from his seat, and Detta scowle
d at him until he settled down.

  “Once the healing starts . . .” Jerzy said, and then let his voice trail off. He would not give Ao false hope; the best he could promise would be that the scar tissue would not become infected, and the pain would lessen. He could not give Ao back his legs.

  There was an awkward silence, then Ao shrugged and went back to his meal, and the others followed. As they ate, Detta quietly brought Jerzy up-to-date with what had happened while he was gone.

  “Harvest was unexceptional; it was as though they knew he was gone, the vines did.” She was no Vineart, but she was House-keeper for decades, and knew more than most. “A fair amount of fruit was plucked and crushed, but I suspect it was no great loss you were not here to prepare it. I had the slaves cask it, anyway, but . . .” Her rounded shoulders rose and fell. “I’d no idea what to do, other.”

  “The fields were cleared and prepared for Fallowtime?” He felt no taint here, within the walls where the Guardian protected, but other things could and often did go wrong. It had been too early in the morning when they rode in to see if all had been done as it should.

  “As always; the overseer knew what to do, there, and made sure the other fields were kept likewise. We had . . .” She paused. “It was a quiet autumn.”

  Meaning no visitors, Washer or otherwise. No attacks, once Malech was dead and he, Jerzy, was gone. The House had been no threat to what their enemy planned. That would change, now.

  “I’ll need to ride out to see for myself,” he said, his mind leaving the impossible problems to focus on more well-traveled routes. “And let them know I’m back.”

  They know.

  The Guardian, its voice cool and silent in his head. “They” might have been referring to the overseer, or the slaves, but they were not.

  * * *

  WHILE HE was away, Detta had moved all of Jerzy’s belongs—a few trinkets his weapons master, Cai, had given him, the grammar he had learned his letters from, and a handsome glass bottle that Master Malech had gifted him with—to the rooms downstairs. Master Malech’s rooms: a bedchamber, a small garderobe, and the study. Now Jerzy’s. He could not protest: it was only right and proper. But the suddenness of it, to him, made his eyes sting.