Weight of Stone

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Young Jerzy.” Detta held up a hand to stop him, when he would have followed them into the Master’s wing of the House. “I presume the gentles will be staying, at least the one night. Shall I place them in your chamber?”

  The House was not set up for overnight guests; the few who had been there before had been Master Malech’s guests, and were settled in the Master’s rooms, and Mahault, who had slept in Detta’s chamber. The Washers had set up camp outside, the battle lines drawn even then. These visitors … no matter that Malech had summoned them, Detta was saying that he, Jerzy, was their host.

  His room was large enough to add two mattresses without trouble, although Jerzy suspected he would end up giving his bed to Kaï. “That would be best,” he agreed. The only other option would be to move them into one of the kitchen children’s rooms on the other side of the House, or set them to sleeping out of doors. The Washers had come with their own encampment; he had seen no such equipment on the horses that had been led away earlier.

  “And Ao does not drink vin ordinaire,” he added. “If we have a cask of ale, somewhere?” He remembered seeing Roan drinking a tankard of it not too long before, but had never thought to inquire. His one encounter with the brown, surprisingly filling liquid had not ended well.

  “As you say,” Detta agreed, and she left him, heading under the main staircase to the hallway that led to the kitchen, no doubt to issue Lil her changed orders for dinner.

  Jerzy stared after her, his thoughts still in an uproar, then headed in the other direction, toward Master Malech’s study.

  “THE CAULIC NATION is in uproar. Their king is demanding more and more ships be built, taxing the abilities of their shipwrights and depleting their forests at a terrible rate.”

  Kaïnam was standing before Malech’s desk, tall and elegant even in his gaudy Caulic attire, his hands behind his back, his voice clear as a soldier giving his report. Three glasses of a fine vin ordinaire and a polished wooden mug of something that met with Ao’s satisfied approval were half consumed, the others listening intently to the princeling’s report. Even Ao, who had been there while they gathered the intelligence, seemed fascinated.

  “He seems convinced that there is a plot in the wind, steered by Vinearts, to invade Caul, depose him, and take his daughter as the prize for whoever would hold the throne next.”

  Malech’s eyes narrowed at the suggestion that Vinearts might do such a thing, but merely asked, “How old is the girl?”

  “Twelve. Young still, but fair game if such a plot were in truth in play.”

  “You were not able to have an audience with this king?”

  Ao shook his head. “I have not the standing, Trade-wise, and Kaïnam … we thought it best not to identify him, at that point. Not with so much suspicion running wild.”

  Jerzy frowned, remembering the look in the maiar of Aleppan’s eyes, the feel of the tainted aide who had whispered poisoned thoughts into his ears. If they had been able to see the man, would they have been able to tell if he was so influenced? Would anyone in the court be able to recognize a spell, if it had been cast?

  One of Master Malech’s lessons: there were no vineyards at all in Caul; although the First Growth had thrived there once, none of its broken variants had survived, and no Vineart had ever succeeded in replanting—none tried, now. Caul now took pride in allowing no vine-magic on their lands, relying only on their mighty navy to keep the island safe. They claimed that no spells were allowed within those protected walls, and had executed those who thought to break the ban without compunction.

  If there was no magic being used … “Could the Caulic king be faking his madness, using it as some sort of plot of his own?”

  Malech raised an eyebrow at the suggestion, while Kaïnam looked at Ao, who shook his head.

  “Interesting—you’re getting sneaky, Jer—but I think not,” Ao said. “Our informant believes that his king is truly frightened—or mad, and not the madness of a fox. The fear seeps through all levels, until trade is affected. The gossip in the taverns and port offices is that people are hoarding, not buying or selling, and the only guilds doing well are shipwrights and fight masters.”

  “That was my conclusion as well,” Kaï said, turning back to Malech. “Merely mentioning the fleet that came to Atakus made the people I approached—men with knowledge of the sea, and ships—pull into their shells and refuse to speak further. They are afraid—and hiding something.”

  Jerzy picked up a goblet and ran his finger along its lip, still frowning. What they were describing was similar to what he had overhead beginning in the streets of Aleppan as well. Fear: beginning at the head of state and slithering its way down through the trader clans and local merchants. Jerzy might not know battles or politics, but he knew rot when he saw it.

  Kaï moved his jaw as though he were chewing on something. “It was odd, actually. The man we spoke with is accustomed to being privy to his king’s mind … he would not have spoken to us at all if he were not deeply concerned at being shut out. The king’s military advisors have all but pushed him away, and made decisions he cannot fathom. I could find no one who would speak of why the ships had been out there, save that the king had sent them, prepared to do battle with whatever they found.”

  “It would make sense for them to wish to discover what had become of Atakus—but not to approach us the way they did, under the cover of a storm, and warships with them. That has the feel of a long prod from another hand, and it may be that something—or someone—has indeed driven the king mad.”

  “Like Aleppan,” Jerzy said, and Ao, the only other who had been there, nodded, his round face as somber as Jerzy had ever seen it.

  “You think he, too, has a whisperer in his ear? But why?” Malech seemed perplexed. “I could see them as the aggressor, for it has always been their wish to find some way to rise in power over the Vin Lands, but what use would there be to destabilizing Caul? How would that serve someone who sought to cause us harm?”

  “To gain control of their navy,” Ao suggested. “That is all I can think of—that is their sole source of wealth: their sailors and captains, and the groves of hardwood trees they use to make their ships.”

  “Sailors, and fighters,” Kaï said. “Their navy could be a valiant addition to another force, if someone were to bring them to heel.”

  “Unlikely,” Ao said, shaking his head. “As much as the factions brangle over internal matters, they would have no reason to follow an outsider, and it is a matter of pride to them that they cannot be bought.”

  “Not all purchases are paid for in coin,” Malech said quietly. “But every man has a price.”

  “Someone set them against my country,” Kaïnam insisted, his voice tight. “Someone warned them, even as my father was goaded into his ill-fated decision. That sort of manipulation does not occur quickly, or without long-term planning—and a goal in mind. Caul is involved, somehow.”

  Jerzy listened to the discussion going back and forth, and frowned. Ao was well traveled, Master Malech wise, and Kaï knew the ways of politics. Anything he might see or say would surely be without use. And yet …

  He heard them discussing the situation in Caul, but he wasn’t truly listening. Instead, he followed the niggling thought in his mind, like reaching for a root deep in the graveled soil.

  What they were describing was familiar, if he stripped away the men and the ships, the causes or intents. Rot. Spreading from the leaf to root. The discoloration on a leaf was a warning signal: when the rot reached the root, it was too late. Caul and Atakus, the sea serpents’ attacks, the rumors and fear sown in Aleppan and elsewhere, they were all discolored leaves. But why would someone intentionally give a warning sign, before …

  “The best way to fight an enemy is to never fight him.” It was something Cai used to say, usually after Jerzy had just landed facedown in the dirt, tripping over the weight of his own cudgel rather than any blow Cai had landed.

  “What?”

  Je
rzy tried to recover, not having intended to speak his thoughts out loud. “It’s a Caulic saying. Or one that Cai—my weapons master,” he explained to the other two, “used to say.”

  “A Vineart had a weapons master?” Kaï looked slightly scandalized.

  “It seemed a good idea at the time,” the Master Vineart said without apology. Cai had told Jerzy it was to teach him to move like a Vineart, not a slave; to learn to defend himself when he left his master’s lands. In light of Malech’s revelations about the Guardian and the foreseer wine, Jerzy suddenly heard those words with a different, darker meaning.

  “What are you thinking, Jerzy?” Ao asked.

  “I don’t know.” He was no strategist, no man of power, to be thinking this way. He tended vines, not alliances. And yet … “Someone wishes to injure the Lands Vin. Only it seems to me that every strike we have seen is made not to be a killing blow, but …” His thoughts tangled together, and he couldn’t seem to reach what he wanted to say. “But to cause another strike to fall. As though our enemy is not attacking, but leading us somewhere …” His thoughts were fractured but coming together as he worried at the memories.

  “Cai had me do an exercise, over and over again, where he would attack with the staff, and I had to duck.”

  “Standard enough,” Kaïnam said, nodding his understanding. “I learned similar parrying moves myself.”

  “But the purpose was not to evade the blows,” Jerzy explained, standing and pacing as he spoke. “I was to duck under the blows, under and in, so that when we finished the pattern I was inside Cai’s strike zone, and he was backed up against a wall or cliff. The goal was not to attack, but to create a situation where my opponent could not win.”

  “You think that we are being pushed to a cliff. All of us.” Malech didn’t sound disbelieving, but his voice did not sound convinced, either. His master thought like a Vineart, of root and stem, crush and magic, a direct line of cause and effect. This … this was not direct. “Again, boy: To what purpose? You can’t—”

  “Yes. It makes sense,” Kaïnam said, nodding, overriding Malech’s question in a way only a princeling would dare. He picked up Jerzy’s vague thought and played it out, before Malech could respond to the insult. “To make us chase our tails, accusing each other, while the true enemy is … where?

  “Where is a map?”

  Malech pushed one of the scrolls forward, and Kaïnam unrolled it carefully, using the goblets and tankard to hold the edges down. “Here, my home. And there, Aleppan. And here, northwest of Tétouan, where the slaves went missing. Where else have attacks on Vinearts or vineyards been reported?”

  “Vineart Sionio, in Iaja,” Malech said, placing a drop of vin ordinaire on the map so that it stained the spot. “Also, Armanica, along the Great River.” Another drop. “Perhaps others, we don’t know. Some, like the Vineart outside Tétouan, may have disappeared and no one thought to report it. Who would they report it to? We are not a guild, not a merchants’ consortium, to be counted off and remarked upon.”

  “Ducking under blows,” Kaïnam said softly. “And then pushing … men of power misled and their power abused here, and here.” Kaï touched places on the map, and Malech placed drops there as well. “Push, and duck. Duck, and push.

  “A giant net, Master Malech. Do you see?”

  Malech stared at the map, Ao and Jerzy trying to see what it was that had captured Kaïnam’s fascination.

  “Think of it. Vinearts—your fields attacked, your honor smeared. The lords—their people attacked, confidence in their advisors undermined. The common folk—unnerved by what they see as madness in their leaders, afraid that Vinearts might not be trustworthy … Push, and duck, and push. The net closes, and chaos falls.”

  Chaos echoed in Jerzy’s mind, the feel of the Guardian’s voice heavy in his memory. The Guardian had said that, too.

  “And here,” Jerzy said, leaning over to mark a point, “where the serpents were sighted.”

  Kaïnam jerked back, as though surprised. “Serpents?”

  Jerzy had told Ao and Mahault of his earlier encounters, but the matter had never come up with Kaïnam.

  “Sea beasts,” Malech said. “Two, perhaps three, no more that have been reported. Creatures born of magic, to strike fear … yes. Another push.”

  “To what purpose?” Ao asked, looking at each of them in turn, his round face bewildered, trying to put together the pieces in an order that made sense. “What profit could come out of destroying the natural balance of things?”

  Kaïnam rocked back on his heels, crossing his arms over his chest. “There are three sides to every balance,” he said with the air of a man about to finalize an Agreement. “Three points in Sin Washer’s Commands.” One finger. “Vinearts.” A second finger. “Men of power.”

  “And Washers,” Malech finished, the words coming out on a quiet exhale, even as Kaïnam held up a third finger. “The one side that has not been attacked.”

  “That’s not possible.” Ao’s objection was instinctive, the result of a lifetime of hearing Washer preachings, of being told that they were the balance-keepers, the easers of pain, the bringers of solace, in Sin Washer’s name. “They could not be doing this.”

  Jerzy looked to his master, but said nothing.

  “Everything is possible,” Kaï said, his mouth set in a grim line. “Especially if the lure of power becomes too much to resist. Who else moves so freely throughout every land, has access to every House and council, is trusted without question?”

  “They accuse Vinearts, to deflect suspicion from themselves?” Malech was not asking a question, but testing the idea out loud, his head tilted in a way that made Jerzy think he was listening to a response from the Guardian.

  “But to what purpose?” Ao was still struggling to understand the logic. “They cannot rule, it is against … the people would …”

  “The people would welcome them, if they were seen as taking down a corrupt lord,” Kaïnam said with assurance.

  “And magic? Washers, to work the vineyards?” Malech had followed Kaïnam’s thought all the way to the end and was now shaking his head. “No. It takes more than knowledge of growing things to be a Vineart. It is impossible that they take over the vineyards for themselves.”

  “What if they had an ally?” Ao asked, his voice tentative, as though expecting to be slapped down for the suggestion.

  “That … that would explain much, yes. A Vineart, unsatisfied with the Commands, with the way things have been. Hungry for more …” Jerzy saw his master’s eyes close, his face creasing with age and sorrow. “It should be unthinkable, but the facts tell us otherwise. A Vineart, thus dissatisfied, could be bought with the promise of more land, more power …”

  Master Malech stopped himself, slapping his hand down flat on the desk to make a sharp, hard noise. “All conjecture. It brings us back to where we were before: the need to find the source of the magic, to pull it by the roots, and stop its growth. Then and only then we can worry about the hands directing it.”

  “That was where we were heading when we received your summons,” Kai said. “To continue my original plan.”

  “Your plan?” Ao snorted, his shock seemingly broken, and a continuing argument revived. “You keep saying that like it’s truth. That was Jer’s plan. He was the one who could scent the magic. Without him we were just going to point our sails half-winded and hope for the best.” He grinned at Jerzy, for that moment all care and confusion gone. “We were coming back for you. With what we’d learned, we figured you’d want a share in the journey. Even if it was on water.”

  “Yes, you must take Jerzy with you,” Malech said. “I had meant only to share with you our findings and set you to a goal, but this changes everything.”

  Kaïnam seemed surprised but pleased, while Ao’s round face split with a relieved grin, his usual impassive trader’s expression abandoned for the moment.

  “Master?” Jerzy felt a twist in his chest, both excited to be set on
the trail again, and wounded that his master was, to all appearances, rejecting him. “I know I failed, but …”

  “Jerzy. Listen to me.” Malech came around the desk and stood in front of Jerzy, closing them off to the others by dint of turning his back to the outsiders. They took the hint, and busied themselves over the map, discussing ports and the need for supplies. Malech’s hand closed on Jerzy’s shoulder, those long, strong fingers pressing into the skin, down to the bone, to make sure his student paid attention. “We can protect ourselves from this enemy—for now. But you have already been marked, and if what we suspect is true, if the Washers themselves are involved … you must disappear, boy. They must not find you. Do you understand me?”

  Jerzy didn’t. All he could understand was that he was being sent away from the vineyards. Not only his own, but any others’, too. No hands in the soil; instead, sent away on a ship, to spend more time heaving his guts over the side into the deep briny waters, at risk for sea beasts and firespouts, Washers looking to burn him, and some unknown foe who might kill him out of hand … or worse.

  So why did he feel this excitement growing in him, as though he had been granted a terrible, unexpected gift?

  His earlier thoughts came back to him, not as restlessness but comprehension. He was the one who could recognize the taint. He would be Master Malech’s hoe, to clear the soil, untangle the roots, and find the rot. Then Master Malech would be able to destroy it.

  The thought—that it was not all dependent upon him, that Master Malech must have a plan—should have made it easier to breathe, but it didn’t.

  “The three of us, alone?”

  “Four of us, don’t you mean?” a voice asked, somewhere between amused and annoyed.

  They all turned to see Mahault standing in the doorway of the study, her blond hair bound up in a coil behind her head, her dark brown riding dress splattered with mud and dust, and a grim look on her normally calm face. “Or did you think that you were going without me?”

  “I DID NOT summon you,” Malech said, staring at the unexpected arrival. Off to the side, Ao made a face, preparing for the blast of annoyance Mahault could unleash when she felt slighted, but she merely stepped forward into the study, as gracious as her lady-mother back in Aleppan, even clearly road worn and tired. “No, you did not. And yet here I am.”