It was wrong, this blending. His master had warned him to never try to mix spells; Sin Washer’s Command forbade him to use another Vineart’s vines, but to step back, keep his distance, use only the finished vin magica of another’s work, the same as anyone else. Was this wrong, this thing that made his heart beat faster, his limbs shiver in anticipation, until the gelding stopped underneath him of its own accord, aware that something was happening, that something was not right.
And yet Jerzy felt nothing but that anticipation, a surge of satisfaction; none of the black taint that had buried itself in the dead flesh of the sea serpent, or flowed from the mouth of the aid in Aleppan. It could not be wrong, not the way that had been …
He urged the gelding forward again with his knees, his hands slack on the reins as he tried to follow the feel of the quiet-magic, subtle and fresh within him. He cast his memory to that taint, to confirm that they were nothing alike, in no way the same.
The first blow was an utter surprise, nearly knocking him off the horse. Only instinct made him close his hips and legs to stay upright, dropping a hand to the gelding’s neck to reassure it, even as Jerzy tried to determine what had hit him. He looked around, expecting to see a branch that had somehow fallen from a tree, or a cudgel thrown by a would-be brigand, and he reached back for his own, strapped across the back of the saddle.
Shifting, the quiet-magic shifted within him as well, and the lash of taint slapped across his awareness even as another blow came, this one aimed not at his torso, but the horse beneath him. The horse let out a scream that sounded like a woman in agony, and lost its footing, struggling and then collapsing on his side. Jerzy was able to swing free of the saddle just in time not to be crushed underneath, pulling his foot free of the horse’s bulk at the last second and scrambling to the side of the road as though there would be safety there.
He spit into his palm, dirty from hitting the ground, and saw the red-tinged spittle mix with the dirt to create a smear of mud. In another place, that might have worried him, but not here, not in The Berengia, not so close to his own yards. Here, that dirt would not weaken the spellwine, but strengthen it.
When the next blow came, sweeping low over the dying horse, Jerzy was ready.
“To the defense, rise,” he cried, lifting his spittle-covered hand, palm out as though that alone could stop the blow. Now, looking, ready, Jerzy almost saw the attack, as though the wind had shaped itself to the great paw of a catamount, white claws stretching for his face, ready to rend open his face the way it had the side of the gelding, breaking his neck as easily as it had broken the horse’s.
Instead, the quiet-magic he called stopped the paw midswipe, holding it in place. Jerzy’s arm trembled from the strain, as though he were wrestling with some physical beast, and sweat ran on his skin, dripping down into his eyes, his own body fighting against him, willing him to fail.
“Not here. Not on my soil,” Jerzy said, and his toes curled within his shoes as though to make contact with that dirt, trying to feel the roots of the vines that spread not so far from here.
Hold.
Here, the Guardian could reach him easily, and although the creature did not leave the confines of the House grounds, Jerzy felt its cool weight settle on his shoulder, the stone claws gripping his flesh as it had that very first morning, claiming the slave Fox-fur for the House of Malech.
“Begone!” Jerzy yelled, and thrust his arm forward as though flinging a weapon from his empty hand.
And the wind died, the giant paw was gone, and he was left in the road with only the carcass of the gelding to prove that anything had actually happened.
Jerzy waited, breathless, a moment, and then another, until his heart stopped pounding and the wetness on his hand dried to a sticky mess. The tainted magic did not return, but he did not trust himself to move until a tarn flew overhead, calling softly as though to sound an all clear. He stood then, feeling his knees crackle in protest, and made his way, carefully, to where the gelding lay, having bled out into the road.
He did not want to leave it there, abandoned like an old shoe, but he had no choice. Stripping the saddle and bags from the animal’s back, he patted its thick neck softly, the cool heavy feel of the flesh such a change from the usual warm liveliness that he shuddered. He had seen men die, watched them be eaten by a serpent, beaten to death by the overseer, broken in two by a broken wagon, and yet the sight of this simple beast turned to so much useless weight made his throat swell from the inside, as though he had something caught within.
“Thank you,” he said, feeling foolish, then hoisted the saddle over his shoulder and started walking for home.
By the time he walked up the cobbled-stone drive to the House, Jerzy felt as though he might as well have dragged the horse’s body home, he felt so weary. Summoning a slave from the garden, he handed over the saddle and bags, and told the boy to tell the stable master what had happened to the gelding. If the carcass was still there, it would go into the stewpot for the slaves that night. To the end, everything served the House.
Everything served….
That thought bore him company as he entered the House through the side door only he and the Vineart used, taking the stone steps down to where his master waited, in the workroom cellar where vina became vin magica.
“Master Malech.”
The Vineart looked up, taking Jerzy’s muddied and torn clothing, his exhaustion, in one evaluating sweep from head to toe. “The Guardian said something happened. A beast attacked?”
Jerzy shook his head. “No beast. Magic. The taint.”
That got his master’s attention. “How? What happened? You are unharmed?”
“I …” Jerzy hesitated. He should tell Malech everything, what he had done, what he had been thinking. But the words caught in his sore throat, and he dropped his gaze, staring instead at the polished stone floor. “I don’t know.” He shifted, swallowed. “I was riding back this morning, and thinking about the slaves that went missing, Vineart Poul’s slaves.”
“Yes?”
The ability to lie had never been bred into him; he might say nothing, he might avoid answering, but he could not lie, certainly not to his master.
“I was thinking of the slaves, wondering what had happened to them, and of the taint, and I called the quiet-magic. I did not mean to, but I did, and I think it found me that way; because I was thinking of it, using magic.”
“Like gazes meeting across a room,” Malech said, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers the way he did when deep in thought. “If our enemy can do this, yes. It would explain … it would explain why some have been targeted merely for mischief, and others for devastation. Sionio …” The Vineart who had disappeared, a year or more before, leaving his vineyards untouched. “He was powerful, and brash, and would have gone after any attacker, be it mortal or magical. The ones who have gone missing, they must have done as you did … but you held it off.”
“I knew it was an attack,” Jerzy said. “They did not.”
“Yes. But you must do nothing more to rouse its attention, Jerzy. Not until we are ready. Do you understand?”
Jerzy had no desire whatsoever to face that taint again. He nodded.
“Good. Now go, put on fresh clothing and eat something before you fall over. And speak to no one of this, do you understand? No one.”
HE HEADED IMMEDIATELY for the kitchen, hunger driving him more than the need to bathe and change. The House was filled with the smell of something roasting in the fireplace. A small child, one of Detta’s newest kitchen children, was sitting by the ledge, conscientiously turning the roast slowly on its spit. Jerzy had offered, once, to craft a spell that would do that for them, but Lil had refused, claiming that no spell could ever tell when meat was properly cooked.
Detta, who was sitting at the table talking to Lil as the cook directed events, scowled when Jerzy walked in, but did not comment on the state of his clothing, merely telling him that he was not eating near-en
ough.
“Detta, he eats everything in sight,” Lil protested, but she was laughing, most of her attention on the action in the kitchen.
Detta scowled, and broke off half the loaf of bread Roan had just placed on the table to cool, pushing it across toward Jerzy with an air of finality while Lil put together a plate for him.
“You’ve grown a handspan high and another handspan in the chest since you left on that foolish quest of his. Do any of your clothes still fit you?”
“You made ’em large,” he said around a mouthful of the warm, crusty bread. Detta glared at him, and he swallowed the rest before speaking again. “They’re fine. I’m not going to get much taller. Not like Master Malech.”
“Hrmph. No, you won’t. But you’re already broader than he, and no mistake. You’re built like one of the Riders, out Seven Unions-way. Which makes sense, your looks and that name.”
Jerzy took a sip of tai, wincing as usual at the taste but relishing the surge of energy he felt returning to his aching body. Guilt swept through him again, at allowing the gelding to be slaughtered that way. If he were in truth Rider-born, they would have cast him out for that; they valued their horses above children, stories said.
“Cai said as much, about me being from the Seven Unions. I even remember a few words of the language.” He missed the Caulic weapons master, who had taught him how to, in Cai’s own words, “move like a man, not a slave.” The weapons master had gone on to other students when Jerzy was away, and the House seemed somehow quieter, and more drab, without his beaded mustache and colorful attire.
He wondered if all Caulians dressed that way, and what stories Ao would come back with, when he returned….
Assuming he returned at all. Why should he? It was a wide world, filled with more things to do than backtrack his steps, and if Ao did indeed find a new source or contact that would convince his clan to take him back—why would he even think twice about one Vineart?
Jerzy was surprised to find that thought hurt. Ao and Mahault, even Kaïnam … he missed them.
A Vineart stood alone and showed no weakness to outsiders. But were they outsiders, truly? He might have asked Master Malech, but it seemed too small, too petty a thought to bother his master with, right now.
“We had two orders come in yesterday,” Detta said, apparently satisfied that he would continue eating. “Both for basic healwines. You’ll check with Malech and make sure we’ll have enough to restock? If not, I’ll be raising the prices on future orders, to make them think twice.”
“Raise the prices anyway,” Jerzy said, without thinking.
“Oh?” Detta tilted her head at him, the short gray curls bounding along the side of her round face as she did so. She wasn’t doubting him; she had been the first to require him to make decisions in Malech’s absence, treating him as his master’s voice in all things, even when Jerzy wasn’t certain he should. He was certain about this. But he wasn’t sure he could explain to her why.
“By how much?” she asked.
Jerzy shrugged, using a chunk of bread to sop up the last of the sausage grease from his platter and cramming it into his mouth so that she couldn’t expect him to answer. He was merely the Vineart; she was the House-keeper. Matters of business were her domain, not his.
He left her to pondering, scratching numbers into a sheet of rescraped parchment with the nub of a pen, then crossing them out and refiguring them. Detta had been running the House since Master Malech was his age—she would do what was best, leaving them to do what they did best. That was how the vintnery worked.
Once he had thought the entire world worked like that—everyone knowing what they were meant to do, the days moving on an orderly basis. Then he had gone to Aleppan, before seeing how different things were there, in the port towns and villages of The Berengia, and Mur-Magrib. The world beyond was chaos and confusion, a constantly shifting landscape of power and entanglements and desires. Vinearts were sheltered, protected … isolated.
Jerzy frowned. It was Sin Washer’s Command, the price of having magic. They traded their work for others to use, but they themselves might not have or hold power beyond the confines of their vineyards. Order, trust, the proper place of all things in the world—all the things the Washers preached, when they spoke of Sin Washer’s solace.
Jerzy had asked if Sin Washer had known about the quiet-magic, the residue of spellwines that built up within a Vineart over the years. Master Malech had not been able to answer him; had never, it seemed, considered the question one worth asking.
It made Jerzy uneasy when he asked a question his master could not answer.
The quiet-magic, more than any Command, was what kept them isolated; the need to keep it a secret. The rest of the Vin Lands—and beyond—believed that magic could be used equally by all, so long as they had the spellwine and the decantation to open it with. The truth—that a Vineart could use magic without a decantation—could draw upon the magic within him, could cause outsiders to distrust Vinearts, wonder what other secrets they hid. Master Malech said only that he would learn more, as his training progressed, and to keep close what he did know.
Jerzy had not spoken to Master Malech of that moment on shipboard, when he used the quiet-magic without volition, nor had he admitted to using it where Mahl and Ao could see. He had wanted to return to things as they had been, not shake up what was known.
Only now did he admit, to himself, that that would not happen. If someone meant to destroy the Vin Lands, break Sin Washer’s Commands, and turn two millennia of order to dust, then Vinearts would be the first wall to breach. But if they fought back, revealed their hidden secret, the power they had not shared … what would happen then?
You would be powerful … and hunted. Feared … and abused. The structure would break, and chaos would rule.
The dragon was never that eloquent, and for the first time, Jerzy thought he felt emotion with the Guardian’s words, Sadness. And … fear?
The thought that the dragon might have emotions startled Jerzy enough that he almost walked into a doorway, rather than going through it. “What do you know, Guardian?”
There was a silence, an absence of the weight of the Guardian’s voice that made Jerzy feel suddenly dizzy, and then the dragon returned.
Ask Malech.
THE NEXT MORNING, Jerzy woke to orders, sent via the Guardian, to check on another vineyard’s progress. This was a two-day trip, with an overnight at a wayhouse where Jerzy slept in an alcove over the sheep, and came away feeling as though he were wearing wool himself, his skin was so itchy. Jerzy managed to keep himself focused on what he was doing, not allowing a hint of either quiet-magic or what might be happening beyond the low stone walls of the vineyard to distract him. To anyone looking on, he was the perfect ideal of the student-Vineart, his master’s well-trained factor, concerned only with matters that properly concerned him.
The vines here were healthy, the clusters of grapes progressing properly, but the overseer was ailing, as much from age as any ailment. Jerzy did as much as he could, and promised to arrange for a replacement to be chosen before Harvest came around.
On the third day, finally back home, a late rain came in, tiny hailstones pounding from the sky. Jerzy had heard the first sound as he was finishing breakfast, and headed for the yard at a run, ignoring the stinging feel of the icy pellets on his skin. Every slave—and the entire Household—was needed to cover the vines as best they could, setting up tarps on wooden stakes and placing smudge pots underneath to keep the plants warm.
The storm lasted, off and on, for most of the day, and everyone was too busy to think of anything beyond protecting the grapes. On the fourth day, in the aftermath, Malech and Jerzy walked the rows, determining how much damage had been done.
It wasn’t until much later that night, when everyone else had collapsed, exhausted, into their beds, that Jerzy had time to wonder again at the Guardian’s words, to go beyond the immediate concerns of the day. He lay in his own bed, staring at
the smooth stone ceiling overhead.
Ask Malech.
Ask him what? What the Guardian knew? What his master knew? What did his master know that he had not shared, and why had he not told Jerzy? A sense of anxiety unfolded in him, his certainty in Malech shaken again by the realization that he did not, entirely, trust his master.
A question he had not allowed himself to consider before rose to the surface, as though the Guardian’s words had lifted it. Why had Malech called Jerzy back when he was ready to start the search? To calm the Washers? That had been done; they were calm, as calm as they were like to be, and yet the taint still spread, a more subtle damage than sea serpents or flamespouts, but, like root rot or leaf powder, more dangerous the longer it went unchecked.
Why did Master Malech not do something?
What could Master Malech do?
Unable to sleep, Jerzy threw off his blanket and pulled on the pair of trou he had shed a few hours before. Barefoot, bare-chested, he went down the narrow stairs to the main level of the House and out into the courtyard.
The moon was a bare splinter overhead, but the stars splashed across the sky bright enough to light his way. The stones here were cool beneath his feet, while the air was moist with night dew. A dove hooted somewhere on the rooftop, and the scent of the flowers in the front yard drifted on the slow breeze. Jerzy breathed in deeply, and felt a softness creep into his limbs. On a night like this, there could be nothing bad, nothing violent, happening anywhere.
A flash of memory: the sight of the sea creature, rising up out of the waters, a hapless villager caught in its maw. The sound of the wine seller’s voice as he told of the Vineart dead, the slaves gone without a trace. The look in Kai’s eyes as he recounted the fate of his sister and the attacks on his homeland.
The tainted magic, creeping through the corners of the Aleppan court, touching the edges of the Tétouan marketplace, wafting over the sea from somewhere unknown: able to cross any boundary, creep unseen into any House.
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