“We sparred once,” Mahl went on, “but two blades here … we were both too worried about damaging a line or canvas we would desperately need, later.”
She looked him up and down, consideringly. “You could use a workout yourself,” she said. “Ao climbs the ropes ten times a day, but you’re starting to look a little soft.”
“Soft?” He had never been soft a moment of his entire life. “Is that what you think?”
He looked around and saw a spar leaning against a barrel. Picking it up, he tested the heft experimentally, then nodded in satisfaction. As thick around as his wrist, the spar felt like seasoned hardwood, not the sort of thing to snap at the first or even second blow.
“With that?” she asked, her face expressing doubt and a hint of amusement.
“With this,” he agreed, and stepped forward into the square.
The cudgel would not have helped him against the cat’s-paw, or whatever came after Master Malech. But not all the blows had been magical.
MAHAULT PROVED HER point—Jerzy managed to hold off her attacks, but he was breathless, his arms quivering with exhaustion by the time they called it a draw. The exercise seemed to do some good, however, as Jerzy found his mood improved the rest of the day. After that, Jerzy made a point of joining Mahl for sparring practice some afternoons before his first turn at the wheel, and when they gathered for the midday meal under a spare sail slung overhead to keep the sun from baking them into a stupor, he tried to take part in the conversation, rather than merely listening. His thoughts still too often drifted into dark corners, but something usually brought him back into the daylight again.
Other than that, though, he still spent a great deal of time by himself, either leaning against the bowrail of the Heart, watching the waves flow under her hull as he looked for serpents, or counting the spinners as they leaped out of the waves, easily keeping pace with the ship.
Serpents and spinners seemed to avoid each other, he noted almost idly, and when the sleek gray hides of the smaller beasts disappeared from their wake, that was when Jerzy kept a sharper eye on the waters beyond.
The others, seemingly reassured by his renewed sociability, left him be. He wasn’t brooding, or hiding: being alone felt natural to him, comfortable, and let him stay open to the next feel of the taint, drifting on the breeze. That was his responsibility, more than any time at the wheel, or in fighting practice.
Although he never lost it entirely, not even while sleeping, the taint seemed fainter now, as they slipped beyond the boundaries of the Lands Vin, and into the long shadow of the Beyond, the greater bulk of Irfan, largely uncharted and unknown. Yet against all likelihood, Jerzy remained convinced that they were heading to the source.
When he was off watch, and had taken as much of the bright sun and harsh air as his skin could bear, often as not Jerzy found himself drawn down into the hold, where the supplies they had brought from The Berengia were stored. Here he felt, if not at home, then connected. Here he could almost grieve.
It was there, one afternoon, that Ao cornered him.
“You should come upside.”
“I’m comfortable here.” Jerzy looked at Ao when he spoke, but his attention was taken up by the sound and feel of the cask he was sitting on. He needed to be alone—couldn’t Ao see that?
Of course not. “It can’t be healthy, Jer, you just sitting here with these casks and flasks, like they were talking to you.”
Ao would never understand that they were. The soft, barely audible whispers were nothing compared to the murmuring of the vines themselves, but he could hear them, the liquid shifting as the waves moved the ship back and forth, the delicate nuances of each spellwine making itself heard, some of them fading, some increasing in strength as they aged.
Jerzy reluctantly disentangled himself from the whispers and turned to look at Ao. “Isn’t this your off shift? Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Shouldn’t you?”
“This is more restful.” In sleep, he dreamed. Here, he could relax. As much as he could relax, trapped on a wooden tub on strange waters, surrounded by people who didn’t understand him and expected him to have the answer for everything.
The thought brought a return of discomfort and irritability, and Jerzy breathed in deeply, willing the ambient magic within the hold to give him peace.
Ao, of course, didn’t notice. “Jer, it’s not good, you sitting alone. Not that you ever talked all that much, but you’re too quiet, too … distant.”
“I should talk nonstop, like you?”
The trader took the bitter riposte without flinching. “You couldn’t even if you tried. I’m worried, Jer. About you.” He softened his voice, unconsciously or not aping Mahault’s manner. “It’s been almost two months since. It’s not good to—”
“Leave him alone.” Kaïnam, his steps heavy on the ladder that led into the cargo hold.
“But—”
“Ao, leave him be.” Kaïnam rarely used his princeling voice these days, but he did now, making Jerzy turn to look, as well. Ao bristled, drawing up to his full height—still barely to Kaï’s shoulder—and stomped away, taking the stairs with far more energy than was required.
“He was only … He’s right. I shouldn’t spend so much time down here.”
Kaïnam stood a careful distance away, his voice low and thoughtful, the way Jerzy thought a prince might speak. “You miss your home. Sitting here among the spellwines, it’s a way to remember your master. We understand, mostly.”
“Ao doesn’t.”
That won him a rare chuckle from the usually somber Kaï. “He does. He just can’t believe it’s healthy to suffer alone. Or quietly.”
Jerzy let his hand rest on the nearest cask, listening to the healwine inside it hum contentedly to itself. He had helped harvest this, had worked with the mustus and punched down the skins, watching as it gained in potency until it was time to drain it off and set it to rest. It was him in a real sense, and spoke to him more than any of the humans on this ship ever could.
“Kaï? Jerzy?”
Mahault, her voice sounding worried.
“What did Ao do this time?” Kaïnam called back up the hatch.
“It’s not Ao. Come up. There’s something you need to see.”
Her voice was concerned, but not panicked.
Kaïnam raised one of his dark brows and gestured for the Vineart to precede him on the steps. They emerged into a starlit night, the pinpoints of brightness in the sky reflecting against the glistening black waves, making it seem almost as though they were trapped between two skies, one near, the other far. Jerzy had been down there for longer than he thought. No wonder Ao had worried.
Ao had taken over the wheel, despite its being Mahault’s watch, and Mahl was practically hopping up and down in her impatience for them to join her. She held their single, priceless spyglass in her hand, as though she had just been scouring the horizon.
“What is it?” Kaïnam asked, not seeing any immediate cause for alarm.
“There,” and Mahl pointed off the bow of the Heart, her arm shaking a little.
“All the gods and their white-tailed ponies,” Kaïnam said, grabbing the spyglass from her hand and raising it to his own eye. “What is that?”
Mahl shook her head. “I was hoping that one of you would know.”
Kaï lowered the glass, still staring at the horizon, then handed the spyglass to Jerzy and strode to the wheel, Mahault easily keeping pace at his side. “More sail, Ao. Now!”
Ao was already at the rigging by the time the order hit air, pulling at the ropes. The sails jerked, filled with air, and slowly the ship turned starboard, toward the object Mahl had spotted.
Jerzy, left alone, slowly lifted the long spyglass to his eye and looked through it. It took a bit for him to focus, and then another long minute for him to realize what he was looking at.
A ship. It was a ship, but almost impossible to identify, as it seemed to glow with a thick blue light, from stem
to stern, and all the way into her rigging and sails, full-bellied as though under a wicked wind. Jerzy tried to see what flags she was flying, but the blue light obscured any details he might have been able to make out, even the color of the fabric.
Sliding the spyglass shut carefully, his hands shaking, Jerzy went to join the others, handing Kaï back the spyglass.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Ao was saying. “Kaïnam’s right—it can’t be good, no matter what.”
“But there might be people onboard,” Mahl said, although Jerzy could tell that her heart was not in it. She didn’t want to go anywhere near that strange ship, either. “We can’t just abandon them, if they’re in trouble.”
She looked first to Kaïnam, as the only true sailor in their group, then at Jerzy. “Isn’t there a rule about that?”
“There is,” Kaïnam said grimly. “But there is also a rule about not endangering your own ship and crew, as well, and that one is more important than the other.”
“Jerzy?” She appealed to him, her eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion. He had a sudden suspicion that she never truly slept; if she wasn’t on watch, she was practicing, and if she wasn’t practicing, she was poring over maps as though she intended to memorize each and every one.
Jerzy didn’t want to answer her. “There’s nobody there to save.”
That got all their attention.
“What?” she asked, incredulous, doubting that he could be so cold.
“That blue glow,” Jerzy said, holding his hands behind his back to hide how they still shook. “It’s a warning.”
Ao got it, immediately, and his face went ashen. “Plague ship.”
Jerzy nodded. “There’s a residue in the strongest healspells, so that when the illness reaches a certain level, a certain number of people dead, or if everyone has fallen ill, the glow is released to warn others away, to protect those who were not yet ill, who might have otherwise gone to help and died for nothing.”
Ao and Mahl both made the cupping motion of Sin Washer’s blessing, but Kaïnam merely stared at Jerzy, then lifted his gaze to the horizon, where the blue glow could be seen only faintly against the night sky.
“Is there anything you can do?” he asked, speaking as though the dying were there with them.
“Only speed them on their way,” Jerzy said. “My master …”
His master had been the one to save entire villages, when the rose plague hit. But he had trained for it his entire life, driven by a vision.
I think it might have foreseen you.
“I am no healer,” Jerzy said, responding to both the memory and the expressions of the three in front of him. “And we have no plague-wine with us. There is nothing I can do.”
He turned away from them and walked back to the railing. The ship, with its pale blue light, bobbed up and down on the waves, at that distance looking like a child’s toy.
He knew what plague did to its victims. How terrible the suffering was.
When he heard someone come to stand behind him, Jerzy shook his head before they could speak. “I can’t heal them,” he said again.
He looked down at his hands, where they gripped the railing. His nails were clean, even the faint whirls of dirt that were forever embedded in his fingertips had faded under repeated dunkings in the sea and constant work with the ropes and sails. There was not a touch of soil anywhere on his body, and the thought made hum unutterably sad.
“It’s too far, too far away, and it’s been too long.”
“Jerzy.” Kaïnam was using his princeling voice again, and he looked up, startled into obedience. The Atakusian’s eyes were focused, not on Jerzy, but the distant ship. “Can you help them?”
Jerzy understood, then, what was being asked.
A moment of doubt: Could he? Dared he? There was no Command specifically against it; he had ended suffering once before, when there had been no hope. And yet, the scale of it, not one dying slave but an entire ship, still clinging to life …
“Jerzy?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation, once the decision was made. Kaïnam stepped back, and Jerzy looked around, seeing the others waiting a few steps behind. “Mahl, bring us closer. Not too close—we don’t want them to see us, if anyone is still alive, and think we’re coming to rescue them. Desperate men can do desperate things, and desperation could get us all killed. Ao, in the hold, in the smallest of the crates. Inside, there will be flagons, about the size of a pitcher. Find one that is dark red, marked with a brighter red sigil, and bring it to me. Hurry!”
They went off to do his bidding, not rushing but moving swiftly, with a calm certainty. Action was better than standing around, waiting.
Ao returned with the flask, and Jerzy double-checked the seal to be certain, then used his belt knife to cut away the wax seal around the cork, letting the peelings drop onto the deck. Replacing the knife, he found his hand touching something else on his belt.
Master Malech’s tasting spoon. His fingers closed on it, hoping to feel some rush of certainty, the sense that this was the right thing to do, that Master Malech approved.
The handle remained cool, his thoughts and feelings jumbled as before.
Whatever he did, he did on his own.
Aware of the others carefully not crowding him, Jerzy lifted the spoon clear from his belt, and, instead of pouring the spellwine into his mouth the way he had done previously, the way ordinary folk did, he filled the spoon, letting the liquid settle into the hammered silver surface. In the night, it did not glint, but instead shimmered darkly, as though it were one with the waves skimming below them, deep and full of mystery.
Allowing the air to touch a spellwine gave it a chance to open of its own volition. A spellwine allowed to open before decantation was more powerful….
More powerful to a Vineart, specifically, when touched with quiet-magic.
A risk, if quiet-magic truly laid him open to being found, yet it would be required to counteract the healspell already in place. He had to trust Sin Washer and hope that the deep waters would continue to hide him.
He blew once, lightly, over the surface of the spellwine, and inhaled the aroma, then slid it onto his tongue, letting the deep, spicy liquid coat the surface, pulling in more sea air after, to intensify the effect.
Firewines especially needed to breathe, to pull air into them, for full power. Unlike a healwine, you did not decant the spell immediately on its touching the tongue, but let it rise from you, slowly. The more intense a fire needed, the more air was needed.
“Has a Vineart ever burned himself?”
“I have never seen it,” his master replied. “But there are stories …”
Not letting himself worry about such a fate, Jerzy swallowed the mouthful of spellwine and raised his eyes to where the plague ship sailed, casting its warning light over the dark waters. There was no need to utter words: the magic knew what he wanted it to do.
A puff of red, barely; the spell touched, and a spark ran along the mast, almost hidden by the blue of the plague warning, and within the space of a breath, the entire ship was engulfed.
The four of them stood on the Vine Heart’s deck and watched in silence, bearing witness, until the night was still and dark once again.
XIMEN HAD THOUGHT that he knew the worst of what the vine-mage might and could do. Each time he let himself believe that, however, the older man came forward to prove him wrong.
Worse, the misbegotten creature was proud of it.
The air outside was chilled, but the room inside was far colder. Ximen stopped in the middle of his pacing, and resisted—barely—the urge to throw something, preferably something with a very sharp edge, at the vine-mage. “You did what?”
The mage almost smiled, as though knowing Ximen’s internal struggle. Perhaps he did, rot him for his magic. “They were a threat. I dealt with it.”
The two of them were alone in the study, the remains of a sparse meal on the table. It had been a formality more t
han hunger, the breaking of bread to establish that they had no intention of poisoning each other.
Not that it would be poison that took either one of them.
“You took Washers.” Ximen was having trouble believing that part of the report. “Washers!” He was no slave to the gods, neither old nor new, but this was arrogance that could only bring disaster.
The vine-mage did smile then, a closed-lip twist, dry as the winter. “They were a threat, my prince.”
“How do you know this, vine-mage?” Ximen’s voice was coiled like a snake, warning before it struck. “You tell me who our enemies are, but how do you know? This I ask you, before all is lost in your foolish, misthought action.”
The mage did not lose his smile, or his arrogant confidence in the rightness of his actions. “Washers are but mortal men, my Praepositus. They have no god-given skills, no magics within them, to find the one who stalks them.”
Ximen threw himself down into one of the tall-backed chairs pulled up to the table and stared at the vine-mage, his face as hard and expressionless as he could make it, silently demanding a true answer.
The vine-mage sighed, his irritation barely masked in the sound of a disappointed father. “My sources came to me with warnings, of events happening that I had … not planned for.” Oh, how it hurt him to admit that, Ximen noted, not without malicious satisfaction.
“Happenings?”
“There were whispers in the aether. A Vineart asking questions, making circles in the water, stirring doubt and worry. Others listened to him, were raising more whispers, casting suspicion not upon my pawns, but elsewhere—possibly even looking beyond the Lands Vin. I—we—needed for him not only to be silenced, but discredited.”
The vine-mage smoothed the front of his robe with steady fingers.
“The Washers you speak of, they had visited that man, questioned him. The terrible deaths that occurred on their second visit … questions will be raised, whispers turned into shouts, blame will be placed square on the Vineart, drawing eyes there and leaving us to finish our work in peace. None will ever suspect, until it is too late.”
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