Jerzy shook his head and turned the page of the journal, inking the next letter with careful deliberation, letting the worry fade to the back of his mind. You could not harvest before the fruit was ready. Focus on the task at hand.
The slaves.
“I know.” He kept writing, trying to let himself think only of what he wanted to say, careful not to blot the page. Trust the Guardian to remind him of yet another problem to be dealt with. Not that he had forgotten it. Like Neth, the uncertainty of what that man’s arrival might bring, the unease nibbled at him.
A slave that would leave the yard without direct order, who would spy on his master . . . unusual. Two? Impossible. Even in these uncertain times, even with the changes occurring . . . it should have driven them to stay low, out of sight, not risk everything.
They were drawn to you.
The Guardian said no more, and Jerzy shook his head, not understanding.
They sensed the magic.
Understanding came, not from the Guardian’s words, but his own memory. They sensed it the way he had sensed it, as a slave, in the grapes he tended and harvested. The way he had known, somehow, that not-so-distant day, that the mustus from the first crush he had worked was not acceptable.
They had the Sense. They were potential Vinearts, being shaped and formed by the vines they tended.
Or they are being pushed by something else. One slave with potential was rare enough, Malech had told him. Two at once, and willing to lurk and spy? It was out of the natural order. Jerzy had not sensed a taint around them, had not felt it anywhere other than in the birds that had attacked them, but that did not mean it did not exist. Jerzy could not bring himself to believe that the stone walls of the vineyards, and the stone wings of the Guardian, could protect them forever, or even for very long.
The world beyond pressed closer, the unrest in the world touching even here; his nightmares attested to that.
As though he summoned it, the sensation of roots growing and stretching upward underneath his feet returned, stronger and closer than before; a sense that all he need do was reach down and touch it, and . . .
And what? Jerzy hesitated, desire and fear holding him evenly. The Guardian pressed a sense of caution at him, a need to be careful. This was unknown, and therefore dangerous.
Jerzy twitched, for the first time feeling the Guardian’s weight not as comfort, but imposition, frustration. The nightmare frightened him, but at the same time it was seductive, the fear almost a thrill, the hint of something to come, if he would only take it in hand, take it into himself. Power. The kind of power that he needed, to match his enemy.
Driven by impulse, the need to prove that he was not afraid, that he was no longer a slave to stay low and hide from notice, that he knew what he was doing, Jerzy let himself reach out, following the seductive whisper that stroked along his skin, reached into his chest and pulled him in.
Power. Cold, fierce, and unrelenting, it rushed into his veins, scraped his skin, and made his mouth pucker as though he’d just taken a gulp of vin magica when he expected ordinaire, had inhaled fire instead of air. Roots, thick and twisting, deeper in the earth than any roots could grow, wrapped around salty rock and twisted through heavy flame, surging with a magic Jerzy had felt only once before, when he touched the feral vines of Irfan.
No. His body shuddered as though under assault. Not the unblooded vines, but similar. Deeper, wider, more vast; like being immersed in a vat of mustus that never ended, that constantly moved, bringing skins from the top and sending raw juice to the top, sucking in air and turning itself continually into something new, something fierce and cold and strong and too much for Jerzy to bear.
He dropped the connection, willing himself away, shooting through the dirt and back into the air, gasping for breath even as he shuddered, certain that there were tangles of root around his ankles, trying to pull him back in. It felt as though an entire day must have passed but the study was the same; the ink still wet on the page in front of him.
Jerzy waited for the dragon to say something, but it did not seem to notice anything unusual, still in its customary place over the doorframe, looking as though it had been carved out of the wall itself. Whatever he had just experienced, it had been his alone, so deep within his quiet-magic that even the Guardian could not follow.
Jerzy felt as though he should be staggering, woozy from too much ale, sick from the motion of the sea, although the ground was firm under his feet. Unblooded. Magic itself, unblooded. The word suddenly took on a new meaning, the taste of it flooding his mouth and nose. Envined magic, even the unblooded vines of Irfan, were softer, melded to those who worked it. Tamed and controlled, as Vinearts were tamed and controlled, each broken to the yoke of the other.
This was not a feral vine. This was wild.
“Dragon.”
Yes?
“When the First Vine was broken . . . what happened to it?”
There was a long silence, and a sense of puzzlement.
“I mean . . .” Jerzy struggled to explain what he was asking. “The stories, the way the Washers tell it, they all say that Sin Washer’s blood ran through it, breaking it into the legacies.”
Yes.
“But what happened to it?” Not all the unblooded vines had been changed; he knew that now, although he had not shared that fact with anyone, not even the Guardian. Did it know, anyway? How much did it simply take from his memories?
It changed. Became lesser.
And that, for the Guardian, was as far as the answer went. What had been was no more. But Jerzy, with the awareness of what lay deep underground, in the core of the world, was not so certain. Something remained there, fierce and cold, too powerful for any mortal to touch, much less use. But its existence might explain how Ximen reached so far, yet remained safe-rooted within his own yard.
The Vine: not broken but shattered. Not the First Growth, but what remained, ungentled by Sin Washer’s blood. Deep-seated roots, sunk into the bones of the world. Power, waiting below the surface.
Had his master known of it? Was this something he, Jerzy, would have learned, or would they have averted their eyes, letting what was beyond Command stay untouched, unused? Or had it been hidden for ages, the secret of apostates and fools?
And if a Vineart were to match that cold power, and blood?
Giordan’s single drop of blood, to tame an entire cask of mustus. Ximen’s creatures, filled with blood. Magic in their blood, the connection between magic and creature. Whispers in the ear, whispers in the blood, turning men from their traditional roles, cracking the foundations of the world.
His own blood felt cold, sluggish in the aftermath, the power he had touched leaving him raw and small.
Something bothers you.
Jerzy paused and glared up at the Guardian. Had he known it, he was a perfect echo of Master Malech, caught mid-thought by the Guardian’s prodding.
“Something? Everything.” The sickness turned from cold to heat as Jerzy let his anger rise. “Call me Vineart if it suits you, let others treat me as I am, but in truth I’m scarce more than a student myself, and no idea if we’ll survive another week, much less a year. We play at magic, we play at power, but the truth is as far beyond us as the valley is to a worm, the ocean to a single fish. And the others, they think I can . . . I can do something. Anything. And I can’t. Not without destroying everything I’m supposed to save.”
The fury ran down from him as suddenly as it came, leaving him panting like a tired dog. Lashing out against the Guardian served no purpose.
“And now these slaves . . . anything that is out of season, now, is suspect, Guardian. Even slaves.”
There was a sense of something moving in the air around him, slow and heavy. If they are a threat . . .
Jerzy felt hollowed out and dry. Too much piled onto him, too much to bear. But the Guardian was right. If the Washers themselves had been influenced, then nothing could be secure. A slave who was drawn to magic, who had even the
merest glimmer of the sense, was a potential Vineart. Rare, searched for. Worth all the rest of the slaves together. Two, in one season? It might be to balance out those who had been lost . . . or they might be tainted. A slave who had the Sense could so easily be pulled in by Ximen’s whispers, taken whole, without the ability to resist.
Jerzy had no way of knowing. And he could not take the risk.
You are Vineart.
He had not seen them, not clearly, but it was enough; the Guardian was able to find them: huddled against the near wall of the sleep house, knees bent, their heads bent together. They had a piece of machinery in front of them and files in their hands: they were sharpening the tiller, so that it would be ready come spring, when it was time to break up the soil and weed the rows again.
Ordinary work, the sort of thing he might find any slave doing during the slower hours of winter. There was no scent of the taint around them, no feel of wrongness or danger.
Too much at risk, if he was wrong. He could allow no weakness within his walls. This was not attack, but defense. But how . . . ?
The memory of the servant in Irfan came to Jerzy. How simple a thing it had been to let the vines that wrapped around his chest, holding him in the chair, tighten. The sound of his rib cage as it cracked, the gasping of breath as a vine around his neck turned into a noose, the way his dark-skinned face had become tinged with blue, and his jaw had hung open, white froth on his lips . . .
Jerzy had not touched him. He had not needed to. The unblooded grapes had surged at his lightest thought, had done what was needed. He had blamed the vines, let it take responsibility.
“These are healvines,” he said, barely a whisper. Vines he had tended, weeded, harvested, and protected.
What heals may also kill.
The Guardian’s mental voice was as it had always been: cool, uninflected, unjudging. It had acted once without directive, when it brought Jerzy back when the House was attacked and Malech killed. If Jerzy did not act . . . would it?
He closed his eyes, but the realization remained, burning like spellfire, cold and bright. “I am Vineart,” he said quietly. The Guardian might do many things, but not this. It was a tool, created to protect, not destroy. If what Jerzy had touched was indeed the remnants of the old magic, if Sin Washer had softened that cold, fierce magic with his blood, warmed it to malleability . . . he had also made Vinearts fierce enough to match it. To do what must be done.
Vinearts stood alone. Vinearts served. Vinearts stood between the cold power and human flesh. That realization did not shake Jerzy this time so much as ground him. This was his purpose, to shape the magic, make it useful . . . keep it safe.
His sense of the dragon remained, cool and firm, but his thoughts were his own. Jerzy felt his mouth water, quiet-magic rising, a mingled sense of healwine, firevines and weathervines, and the distant bitter-tart flavor of the unblooded grapes, lingering at the back of his tongue. Firewine, to dry and sere flesh. Healwine, reversed to deny vigor. Earthwine, solid and steady, the pulse of the earth, to make things grow . . . or fail. And the faintest remnant of aetherwine, the memory of it still in his awareness, to draw the very spark of breath and cast it away. Only weather stood apart, present but not needed.
He knew all the elements, how each moved and flowed, the ripened swirls of power. All the legacies, the taste of the unblooded grapes, tangled in what already existed, forming something new, fierce, terrifying.
There was no decantation for this, no learned words to direct the magic, only an innate understanding of the magic within him. The magic that was him. The two figures blurred and faded, the files dropping from their hands even as their eyes widened and their chests heaved.
“Die,” Jerzy said, his voice soft as an evening breeze, gentle as the newest curling leaf, as unyielding as the sun at summer’s peak.
In that instant he felt the House move around him, the beat of the dragon’s wings, the heat of the kitchen’s hearth, the shifting of the horses in their stalls, whisking tails and flickering ears as a slave moved down the aisle to groom them, the sound of Mahault’s voice as she spoke to someone within the House, and the clatter of Ao’s wheels, the feel of a map unrolling under Kaïnam’s capable hands . . . Detta, her feet a steady rhythm against the worn flagstone steps, the slap of the House keys at her waist. A heady sense of disorientation took him, his thoughts dizzy, his body trembling.
And then he was back in his study, ink staining his fingertips where he had clenched the pen, a blot on the page he had just completed.
He felt . . . cold. Dry. Hollow inside, like rotted wood and empty flask.
The overseer, or another slave, would find the bodies. They would be disposed of, and nothing would ever be said. Slaves died. Had anyone known what he had done, had he gone into the field himself and cut their throats, nothing would ever be said. He was Master. His was the hand of life or death.
The dragon rested, cool and heavy, within his chest.
Jerzy licked his lips once, tasting the sweat on them, and carefully tore out the blotted page, resetting the pen and beginning the report again.
The act of writing anything now seemed like folly. The likelihood was high that their enemy would win; that he, and the others, would die in some fashion in the very near future; that the Lands Vin would crumble and fall. If he, Jerzy could not find some way to strike back, that likelihood was near-certainty. And yet . . . Vineart Giordan’s master had left behind only books of drawings, the lifetime of study. Giordan had treasured those books, and given them to Jerzy. Jerzy had left them behind, when he fled Aleppan, and he regretted more than seemed reasonable, losing that connection to those who had gone before.
Jerzy had possibly just killed the slave who would have followed him.
Seh veh. The seasons do not end.
Jerzy didn’t know what the Guardian meant, but somehow it eased the dry, hollow feeling inside him, filling him with a sense of inevitability. Malech had foreseen the need for the Guardian—had he known why, what role it would play?
It did not matter. He trained the vines, crushed the grapes, crafted the wine, incanted the spells and let them loose into the Lands. What he had done was done.
Jerzy picked up the pen once more, dipped it into the inkwell, and completed the page, a methodical recounting of every detail, the way he had been trained. For whoever might come, after.
Finished, Jerzy left the last page open to let the ink dry, and stood up, stretching his arms overhead again until he could feel his spine crack, his shoulders pressing down the way Cai had taught him, to prevent his body from becoming too stiff after sitting so long. As he did so, his thoughts slid into place as well, and an idea occurred to him.
Jerzy moved around the desk to look at the map that hung on the far wall in place of the ancient tapestry that had been there. The tapestry had shown the known Lands Vin, as they had been centuries ago. Where once the lands had been torn apart by prince-mages waging war against each other, there had been two thousand years of relative peace and prosperity, the ambitions of the landlords kept in check by the Vinearts’ control over available magic.
This map, more recently drawn, was the result of Ao and Kaï’s combined work, the trader’s careful hand marking the results of their recent journey. Jerzy now had the location of every vineyard and every lord or prince who had reported disturbances, or been somehow marked by the taint. Points of attack. For Ximen—and for them.
Jerzy studied the map, noting how each point connected to the other, tracing the invisible lines between with his finger. Kaïnam’s original theory, that the attacks were a net, drawing the Lands Vin into some kind of confrontation, seemed born out. They had been maneuvered, all of them: Washer, Vineart, and land-lord. Driven by fear, panic, the way a wolf might harry a flock of sheep, but instead of picking off the weakest, the strongest were taken. The strongest . . . or the most useful.
His plan would work. If he could make himself such a target, something too strong to be resisted,
to useful to ignore, Ximen would come, ignoring all else.
The Guardian protected House Malech too well. For his plan to work, Jerzy needed to flaunt himself. To do that, Jerzy needed not to avoid Ximen, but find him.
“Foreseer wine would be useful about now,” he said to the Guardian. “I don’t suppose Master Malech left any hidden in the racks?”
No.
No, of course not. It was among the rarest of the rare aethervines, and a wonder that Malech and his master Josia had enough to see the need for the Guardian. He would have to do this some other way. Turning back to the pile of journals he had pushed to the side of the desk, Jerzy flipped through the pages until he found the passage he had been looking for. Not a decantation, but the offhand mention of Master Vineart Bradhai, who had rid the world of true sea serpents by tracking them to their undersea lair.
Jerzy didn’t have foreseer wine, and the last time he had attempted scrying he had been sent not toward the source but the strongest taint, but that did not mean he was giving up.
Master Malech had not been able to identify the legacy used to craft the serpents, and Jerzy had not been able to find the source of the magic, distracted by the taint itself. Up until now, Jerzy had tried to trace the path of the taint, tracking it back to the source. But if what they had learned was true, and this Ximen worked through others, channeling his magic across the Western Sea, then it was doubtful a straightforward scrying spell would lead them directly to the source. Ximen had covered his tracks too well for that.
The traditional means did not seem to work against their enemy.
To find him, Jerzy would have to step away from tradition. Willingly, knowingly break Commandment. No way to hide behind ignorance or half measures. There was one step yet he had not taken.
He swallowed, raised his hand to the back of his neck, threading his fingers through his hair. The urge to talk to the others, to seek their opinions, came and passed. He walked over to the rack of bottles against the wall and selected one, a golden-brown glass with a wax stopper in the mouth. Aetherwine. He could sense it, even stoppered, untasted. It did not linger within him the way his own legacies did, nor the weathervines he had taken from Vineart Giordan, but an awareness, like voices in conversation, heard from another room.
The Shattered Vine Page 21