The Shattered Vine

by Laura Anne Gilman

  He took a heavy breath, and Mahault added, “If we stop now, then what was it all for?”

  She did not specify “it.” She did not have to. They had all sacrificed to reach this point, this place.

  Jerzy looked at Kaïnam, who merely looked back, waiting. The princeling had his own reasons for being there, for wanting the mage not only stopped, but exposed.

  They had been running so long, trying merely to stay one step ahead of those who chased Jerzy, trying to discover what had caused all this, who was behind the attacks, and then to come home, one question had never the chance to surface, much less be asked.

  “Why me?” he said finally, as much to the Guardian, or the vines, as the three around him. “Why do you trust me to decide what we will do, where we will go?” He was Vineart, he knew magic, but they were all more experienced in these things of power and conflict, even Mahault. He was a slave, who—no matter what he had seen or done—knew the stone boundaries of his yard, the slats of a wine barrel, the cycle of a Harvest, not what happened in the outside world.

  He wasn’t expecting an answer. To his surprise, he got one.

  “Because you transform us,” Ao said, and for once there was no humor in his voice, no spark of mischief hiding in his eyes. “Jer, before I met you, all I ever wanted was to be the same as my father and brothers. Being part of a trader delegation, thinking only of the deal and the advantage, planning of the day I’d lead a caravan myself, it was enough, until I saw you in the hallway in Aleppan. I thought I could teach you something, for a laugh, and instead . . .” he searched for the words to express what he meant, but floundered. “Whatever it is that makes grapes into spellwines, you do that with people. You give us something to make us greater.” His nose and mouth scrunched in dislike, as though his words tasted off, and added, “Or, at least, different.”

  Mahl had obviously thought about this before, as the moment Ao paused, she leaped in. “You’re not afraid of change. We’ve all done the same thing for so long, calling it tradition, or Commands, or whatever reason we had, that even when someone else came in and changed things, we were stuck in our same responses—or worse, we panicked, flailed around and made things worse. Are still making things worse. Something is wrong, and we circled around it, but couldn’t see, and couldn’t do anything. You saw; you did something. And you made your choices out of what was needed, not fear. That’s why.”

  Jerzy listened to the words, but did not recognize himself in them. Fear? Since returning home, since opening that creature and seeing what waited inside, decaying even as he studied it, he had been afraid, and not even the weight of the Guardian’s presence against his mind or the rooted strength of the vineyard could counteract the growing fear that they were too small, too weak, and too unprepared, that the coming storm would blow them over, all of them, and beat them down until there was no chance of recovery, no opportunity to regrow.

  “With your permission, Vineart.” Kaïnam was in formal mode, standing like a soldier in front of him, or a captain, waiting for word of the tide. “If we are to build a defense against our enemy, we will need ears and hands in the world beyond, as well as magic within. I would follow Trader Ao’s lead and make use of the pigeon cote in order to send messages out to those who might answer our call.”

  And there, Kaï hit at the heart of the matter. Vinearts were not meant to interact with the rest of the world. Their lives were contained within the walls of their vineyards, their efforts concentrated within the limits of their legacies. The command of men was forbidden them.

  If Jerzy had changed his companions, they were changing him as well. He looked up to where the dragon crouched on the roof, its stone claws curled around the edge, tail curled around its hindquarters. Slave to student. Student to Vineart. Vineart to . . . what? His earlier uncertainty bloomed again. There was no tradition here, no legacy to guide him. He had no idea what he was supposed to do.

  The dragon’s blunt gray muzzle turned, the blind eyes looking directly at him.

  Vineart crushes what the Harvest brings.

  Jerzy turned back to Kaïnam and nodded once, his face stiff, trying to remember how Master Malech had looked when he came to Agreement on something, aware that on his face such an expression looked more foolish than formidable. “Yes,” he said, not only in response to Kaï’s formal request. “Yes.”

  Ao exhaled, a relived gust of wind. “Let’s get to it, then, O Princeling.” He turned his chair, intending to leave, but the back wheel jammed hard enough that Ao winced as a shock ran through his stumps. Jerzy and Mahault watched as the trader tried to get the chair moving again, both of them straining to help, but aware that it would not be welcomed. Finally, in disgust, Ao had Kaïnam back the chair up and lift the younger man through the doorway, careful not to jar his upper body. The princeling did so without comment, coming back to reclaim the chair and push it easily through the door.

  “It must hurt,” Mahault said softly. “The pain, every day . . .”

  Jerzy felt guilt push at him, that he had not immediately found the right healspell to complete Ao’s healing. Never mind that they had been home only a day and the beast-bird had taken priority, never mind that the serpent’s teeth had torn away Ao’s legs mid-thigh and he had been bleeding so fiercely all of the quiet-magic within Jerzy had been spent sealing off those wounds before he had no more blood left to spill, that the trader would have died on the spot had Jerzy not been there. If Jerzy had not been there, Ao would not have had to rescue him in the first place.

  “Hurts less than dying,” Jerzy said brusquely, now. It was the answer Master Malech or Detta might have given. It was the answer he believed. He wondered, not for the first time, if it was the answer Ao would have given.

  “It wasn’t an accusation,” Mahl said softly, her hand warm on his shoulder, fingers curling against the cloth of his shirt. “This is war. People get hurt.”

  But Ao was not a fighter, had never trained in anything save the battle of words and wits. If he had changed Ao . . . was it for the better?

  Jerzy looked at Mahl, remembering the last time they had been together in this same place, the day she had said there was no place for her within the walls of the House of Malech, when she had gone to chase after her dream of becoming a solitaire.

  Everyone made sacrifices.

  “Do you regret it? Not going with the solitaire?”

  “With Keren?” Mahault took the question under consideration, not dashing off a response the way Ao might have, but it was only a minute before she shook her head, her smile sad but sweet. “Mahault, daughter of Niccolo, maiar of Aleppan had dreams. Mahl, sword-second to Kaïnam, honored in service to the House of Malech? This is . . . real. This is where I am meant to be.”

  Jerzy met her gaze, his face composed and calm, and something in his throat eased.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he admitted.

  “You’ll figure it out,” she said, letting her hand fall away. “You always do.”

  MAHL’S WORDS, AND the sight of Ao carried like a helpless babe, drove Jerzy not to the vineyards, although he felt the urge to return, but down the stone stairs to his master’s workrooms. His workrooms, now. His cellar.

  His cellar.

  “My cellar.”

  Yours.

  The Guardian had followed him down the steps, its wings moving slowly although it had no actual need, the magic that animated it giving it the ability to fly as well. The dragon went over Jerzy’s shoulder into the workroom a flicker ahead of the Vineart, and settled into the hollowed-out niche over the doorway where it spent most of its days.

  Jerzy reached up, an old habit, and touched the tip of the stone tail that flicked down as he passed through the doorway.

  The room within was dusty; it was clear that no one had come down here since Master Malech died. Here, within the thick stone walls, away from anything and everything that might distract, Jerzy expected to feel the greatest sense of loss. Instead, he found a
hint of comfort. But the true test was yet to come.

  The vines had reached out, their leaves brushing against his skin, their roots murmuring to him of welcome, yes, but also of need. Of things undone or missed, of the longing to slip into their Fallowtime slumber and recover from the stress of the harvest.

  Let others think that the Vines served the Vineart; the truth was more complicated than that. Unblooded grapes like those in Irfan had no need of a Vineart, but these had been trained to the line, crafted over generations to obey incantation, and demanded his obedience, in exchange.

  Magic makes the Vineart.

  Mahault, and Ao and Kaïnam, thought he would know what to do. The vines expected him to be Vineart. Detta expected him to protect the House. He, Jerzy, didn’t think he was strong enough to sit in Master Malech’s chair, much less be him.

  But the spellwines . . . He could not pretend to them, could not bluff or dodge or put up a strong face. They would see him as he was.

  There was no mustus this year; the harvested juice had been placed in the tanks but there had been no one to punch it down, no one to follow its progress, to determine the moment when the skins would be separated from the juice, to ensure that the magic was strong enough to warrant keeping, to be refined and crafted into vina. He was afraid to look to his right, where the vatting chamber waited. He would have to look, soon. But not right now.

  Instead, he turned to his left, facing the cellar proper: the Vineart’s treasure of spellwines; wines he had helped craft, spellwines he had helped harvest as a slave, spellwines that recognized him now. They did not welcome him the same way the vines did, with the constant whisper of demands and needs, but in a quieter way, the way the Guardian pressed against him from within, the magic in it recognizing the magic inside him.

  Home, the Guardian said, and finally Jerzy nodded. This, here, was home.

  He turned again, standing in front of Malech’s desk, the battered wooden table where he had sat so many times on his stool and listened or responded to questions, had taken cuffs to the ear when he was particularly stupid, or received the rare but precious praise when he said something that pleased his master.

  “He is gone.”

  The spellwines did not recognize his grief any more than the vines had. The Vineart was not gone.

  “I am apostate,” he said out loud, letting the word settle on his skin. “Everything we have been taught, everything we have learned, to protect ourselves, to protect the Lands Vin. I have betrayed.” To survive, yes. But . . . if in surviving, he destroyed everything, what had he been surviving for?

  The spellwines did not recognize his concerns, either. There was no apostate, there was no hesitation, there was no doubt. They saw the slave and marked him, brought the magic forward, and were in turn brought forward by the magic within him. The magic was not . . . it was not something he used, something he did. It was something he was.

  Magic makes the man. The man makes the magic. There was no difference between Vineart and vine.

  Jerzy shuddered, feeling, for the first time, the danger that surrounded him, not from any outside threat, but himself. What he was.

  A slave. Once chosen, always a slave. A Vineart was driven by the needs of the vineyard. Jerzy had abandoned the yards to follow another need, had left a Harvest to falter and fail. And now he had returned, not to take up the duties and responsibilities tradition demanded of him, but to . . .

  To survive. If—a sense of something vile, an abomination, a blight worse than rot—comes here . . . if it changes the Lands Vin to suit itself, to serve it . . .

  The Guardian’s voice faded.

  “I have a choice.” Even as a slave, he had a choice: to live or die. To follow the instinct that had made Malech choose him that day in the markets, to embrace the spark that had made the slavers buy him from his parents, to lead his companions in an impossible battle against an invisible, unknown foe.

  Choice, but no assurances. Even if he chose what seemed the inevitable, unavoidable option . . . it might not be enough.

  And in the end . . . what will he have become?

  “You make us greater,” Ao had said.

  “You’ll figure it out,” Mahault believed.

  Kaïnam stood at his right shoulder, offered his sword and his strength not in service, but shared command. Shared responsibility.

  You are Vineart . . .

  Jerzy nodded, hearing more than what the Guardian was saying. But the Guardian, made of stone and magic, did not understand. It could not change, could not grow beyond how it was shaped. Jerzy alone was Vineart, and Vinearts stood alone.

  But he wasn’t alone. They were together, all four of them. No, six. Lil and Detta, too. It was an odd feeling, a fearful feeling, but one that gave him hope, all the same.

  And, with that hope, the courage to do the next thing that needed to be done.

  “I HATE LOOKING at them.”

  “Then don’t.”

  Jerzy tried to keep his voice calm, to counter Ao’s obvious apprehension, but even he could hear the curtness in his own tone. “Would it help if you closed your eyes?”

  Ao let his shoulders relax and dropped back onto the padded frame. “Not really, no. I’d just wonder what you were doing.”

  Jerzy barely heard Ao’s last comment, already focusing on what came next. There was no place within the House set up for this sort of thing; Master Malech had crafted spellwines but rarely used them here. The last time Jerzy had to do any healing within the Household, it had been an accident on the road outside, when a cart had broken and injured several slaves.

  He had been younger then, with less understanding of the wines, and himself. He could do better now.

  But then, the injuries had been raw, amenable to being worked. Ao’s stumps, cauterized by Jerzy’s own magic mid-thigh, had since scabbed over, the flesh forming a barrier he was going to have to undo in order to work.

  He needed Ao to feel whole, complete. Hopefully this would work.

  “This might hurt,” he said, even as he reached for the tasting spoon.

  “Might?”

  Ao’s low scream of agony was answer to both of them, as the healspell invaded the scabbing, softening it, and opening the wounds to the cool morning air.

  “I’m sorry,” Jerzy whispered, trying not to let the knowledge of his friend’s pain interfere with his concentration, waiting while the hard white tissue resolved back to pink and red. Normally the patient would be the one working with the spellwine, his own awareness directing the healing, but this was different, and the material . . . Jerzy thought it better he perform the decantation, and Ao had agreed.

  A second spellwine was poured into the silver cup of the spoon, and the spoon was lifted to Jerzy’s mouth.

  Opening the hard-dried scab had been the simple part.

  “Ready?”

  Beside him, Detta nodded. He could have asked any of the others to help; there was little of the Vineart’s art that they had not seen, by now, but he would not ask them to inflict pain on Ao, even indirectly. The trader needed to be awake and alert: there would be no avoiding the unpleasantness for anyone involved. Jerzy had suggested that the others spend the day elsewhere, perhaps go with Lil to bargain with local farmers. But they had refused, quietly, and were even now waiting somewhere else in the House.

  He hoped they could not hear Ao’s cries, as much for Ao’s comfort as their own.

  The decantation for what he needed was in one of Master Malech’s books, but there had been no notes written in the margin, and so he did not know if his master had in fact ever used this spell or merely noted it for some future use that never came.

  Decantations were for show, Jerzy reminded himself, his own hands sweating slightly despite the cool temperatures. The incantation was the important thing; if the spellwine was properly crafted, a Vineart could do anything. . . .

  The taste of the spellwine was rounded and cool, bringing the faint flavor of spring fruits and sweet smoke. “
Wood and flesh, find.”

  He nodded, and Detta lifted the wooden limb, carved by the groundkeeper Per the night before, out of vinestock that had been old when Malech was born. There was magic in its grain that would echo that of the spellwine.

  If this worked, Ao would be forever bound to the vintnery. He had not told Ao that.

  Detta placed one limb against the sore and bloody flesh, pressing firmly, wincing as she did so when Ao cried out again in agony. The taste of the spellwine in Jerzy’s mouth changed, turning sharper, with the faintest hint of spice against the back of his throat.

  Jerzy placed his own hands over the line where the two bits met, feeling the wet hot trickle of blood against his skin. “Wood and flesh, bind.”

  His quiet-magic surged, trying to join the spell, and he forced it back. There was too much mixed there, too many legacies lurking, to trust it with something this delicate. He swallowed the sip of spellwine, and felt it burn down his throat.

  “Go.”

  Ao’s next scream echoed within the room, and Jerzy flinched, even as he pressed more firmly, willing the magic to seal the connection, the living wood to take root within bone.

  “WELL?” MAHAULT HAD been lurking, pouncing the moment Jerzy emerged from the workroom. Detta remained behind to watch over Ao, who had mercifully passed out during the second spellcasting.

  Jerzy was exhausted, covered with sweat, and his mouth tasted as though he’d been drinking spoiled mustus, not one of their most expensive, finely crafted healwines. He wanted to bathe, and to sleep, and not be interrogated.

  “He’s asleep.”