“Sin Washer, defend us,” someone cried, and there were several loud thumps as sailors dropped to their knees, raising their hands in cupped supplication.
“What is that?” Neth asked the man who had come to stand beside him. The captain of this ship, a grizzled Iajan sea dog who had been sailing for more years than Neth had drawn breath, took a pull off his pipe, which emitted a noxious stench as the weed burned, and grunted.
“Figurehead,” he said.
“Thank you.” The irony was thick, but unheeded.
Around them, the sailors were still muttering and praying, while the rest of his men gathered around Neth, waiting for direction.
He waited a few beats, to show them that he was in control of the situation, and then called his second over. “Brion.”
“Yes?”
“You are seeing what I am seeing, yes?”
The younger Washer matched his laconic tone, a careful contrast to the simmering panic and awe around them.
“The figurehead appears to be made of flesh,” he said calmly. “More to the point, it is moving.”
“Ah.” That was what he was seeing, yes. “Thank you.”
Ships normally had a woman’s figure carved into the bowsprit; or a fearsome creature designed to frighten other flesh-and-blood creatures away; or a coat of arms, if the ship were under sail from a House of power. The cupped hands and circle of vine was decidedly untraditional, and yet perfectly matching the ship’s name, painted along the side in clear gold lettering.
This is a Vineart’s ship, it announced. Approach with caution.
Never mind that Vinearts did not have ships, did not take to the sea. It was not forbidden, simply because it was not done to be forbidden. It was not tradition; it was not custom. Vinearts were creatures of the soil; they did not travel, they did not sail, they did not do anything that took them from their slave-rotted roots….
But this boy, Jerzy, did.
Neth would have applauded that sort of courage … in anyone else.
The why of the boy’s actions no longer mattered, to the Brotherhood. The fact that he so disrupted what was, leaving chaos and disaster in his wake, was cause enough to bring him in; the fact that he stepped so close to apostasy, even if he did not—yet—overstep entirely, was cause enough. In unsettled times, a man who did unsettling things was a danger. The deaths that occurred within the House of Malech … Some within the Brotherhood whispered that the boy went insane, killed his master and the Washers sent to take him, and fled. Some spoke, more loudly, of the boy not fleeing, but going to rejoin his true master, the source of the unrest itself.
Neth had met the boy, interrogated him. He did not believe him mad, nor evil. But facts remained: the Vineart was dead, two brothers were dead and the others missing, and the boy had fled on this ship.
On this ship with a figurehead made of flesh.
A figurehead in the form of Sin Washer’s hands, cupped in blessing.
Made of flesh.
The thoughts warred with one another in his head, giving him the beginnings of a headache to match his upset stomach.
Magic. Possibly. Probably. To a sailor, a superstitious lout, it could be magic … or a miracle.
And in truth, Neth was uncertain enough of the boy he was chasing that he was not entirely certain, either. The Brotherhood carried out His blessings, it was true. But Sin Washer had touched the Vinearts directly. His blood fueled their magic, directed their lives. If Sin Washer’s gift were to cause such a transformation of wood to flesh …
Magic or miracle, this apparition needed to be treated with caution, and respect.
“Hold the longboat,” he said, and heard another voice carry his order to the sailors waiting with towropes. “If they are aboard, we will know soon enough. If they have gone ashore, they will return, eventually. We will wait here and see what happens.”
Chapter 15
Jerzy knelt in the vineyard, hidden by the clustered vines, with his fingers cupping the fruit and his thoughts whirling with his discovery, until the sun sank behind the hills and the air filled with shadows. Only when a bat swooped overhead, off for its evening hunt, did he realize how long he had been gone. Placing the grapes carefully on the ground, he retraced his steps to the House, so wrapped up in his own thoughts he almost did not care who saw him—in fact, he was not aware if anyone had seen him, or spoken to him, or tried to stop him.
He made it back to the rooms, only to be greeted by a young slave waiting by the door.
“I take you,” the boy said, his Ettonian rough but clear, with a respectful bow that almost brushed his flat nose across the floor.
Jerzy nodded, then went inside and shut the door in the boy’s face. Moving quickly, he went to the basin, pouring water over his hands and splashing his face and neck to try to wipe every trace of the soil from his skin, all the while wanting nothing more than to keep it to himself, to lay claim to the vines from root to leaf.
They were not transplants. They were not wild vines, gone feral without a Vineart to shape them. They were …
They were not his vines. This was not his vineyard. He kept repeating that to himself, trying to make his still-quivering senses understand. But the way the vines had called him, until he could practically feel the tendrils curling around his wrist and ankle, the roots pulling him down into the soil, left him shaken and disturbed. Did Esoba know what he grew, isolated out here? Did he understand?
The effects of the heal-all was wearing off, and Jerzy could feel the lassitude creeping back into his mind, trying to convince him to relax, that nothing was wrong, that he should not worry about anything. If he wasn’t aware, hadn’t been able to sense the magics subtly influencing him, he would have thought that a perfectly reasonable suggestion. Jerzy took another sip of the heal-all, then a longer pull, careless of how much he used, trying to clear his mind.
Unblooded.
The First Growth had been, legend went, pale green even when ripe, their flesh full of magic. When Sin Washer broke the Vine, his blood spread through the roots of the world, changing the vines throughout the Lands Vin. From the Blooding came the legacies, the Second Growth, limited in what it could do. No more concentration of power, no more mages who thought themselves equal to the gods.
Some vines were deeper red than others. Master Malech had said that the less touched, the stronger—and less amenable to incantation—the vina would be. Giordan’s vines, the weathervines, were the most stubborn, the most delicate … but even they were tinted with the red of Sin Washer’s sacrifice. Even they were bound to what they could do, what they could be.
There were no unblooded vines left. The First Growth was gone, its tart, pale green spellwine as much a legend as Sin Washer himself. Therefore, the vines Jerzy had touched could not be unblooded. It was impossible.
But they were the closest thing Jerzy had ever felt. Even now, the magic in them was thrilling his bones like a deep vibration, an almost painful hunger and an ache and a longing all in one.
He had touched the vines, and they had touched him, and his mind was flayed open, his senses raw and ragged, and he could not allow the magic to rule him, could not allow it control.
A Vineart controlled himself.
And so Jerzy scrubbed the trace off his skin, and changed his clothing, and slicked back his hair—too long now for neatness, and too thick for a thong, he left it wet and tucked behind his ears—and rejoined the patient slave, who led him to the main hall, where the others had been keeping Vineart Esoba distracted, as Jerzy had requested.
There was another man with them, solidly built, with skin color closer to Ao’s bronze than ebony, but dressed in the same brightly colored fabric, tied securely at shoulder and hip. A younger, darker-skinned man with a flat-nosed face like the slave boy’s stood behind him, dressed similarly.
“Ah, there you are. I hope that your walk was satisfying.” There was veiled curiosity there, but no suspicion that Jerzy could discern.
“My ap
ologies,” he said to their host, in response to the combined greeting and accusation. “It has been a long journey, and I felt the need to refresh myself, by touching soil more thoroughly than has been possible until now.”
He did not care if the others thought he had rolled in a mud puddle—if Esoba was any kind of Vineart at all, he would understand.
“Yes, your friends tell me you traveled by water. You are a most enterprising young man, indeed; I have never even seen a boat, much less stepped on one.” Esoba cocked his head, watching Jerzy with an unnerving intensity.
“May I introduce you to Merchant Benit, who handles the sale of all my wines for me?”
“Vineart,” the merchant said, inclining his head in a polite, if neutral greeting, not bothering to offer his companion’s name.
Normally a trader clan would handle such dealings. Jerzy looked at Ao curiously, but his companion looked down at his plate and said nothing.
“Merchant Benit,” Jerzy replied, taking the cue to ignore the man standing behind Benit, and slid into the seat offered, to the right of the Vineart, next to Ao. Kaïnam sat on the other side, with the merchants, while Mahault was a little farther down the table, as though there were an invisible wall between the males and her. Jerzy looked at her, uncertain, and her chin dipped slightly, her attention never leaving Esoba. A female servant sat behind her, on a stool—a meek demure mouse of a woman, nothing at all like the scowling guard her father had set on her, in Aleppan.
Jerzy tasted the air, carefully, trying to determine if the scent of the taint hung over the two merchants. It did, but no more than what he had felt elsewhere, and with the hum of the vines still in his skin, Jerzy was not quite sure he trusted his judgment in anything just then.
“We are an … interesting group,” he said only, carefully, in response to Esoba’s comment, not sure what else his companions might have said previously. When he had asked them to cover for his absence, he had not warned them off any topics—but they were smart, and they knew what not to say. He hoped.
“Sadly, as interesting as you are indeed, I must excuse myself,” the merchant said, rising with another, deeper bow of his head to Esoba, as his companion moved with him, a voiceless, nameless shadow. “My apologies, Vineart. But there are things that cannot wait for my attention.”
“Of course,” their host said carelessly, waving off the man’s apologies. “You shall rejoin us when you are done.”
“Of course.”
There was a moment of silence as the two men left, during which a slave came forward to place a platter in front of Jerzy, and fill it with some sort of meat that smelled better than anything Lil had ever prepared—although some of that might have been due to living on ship rations for so long.
Ao, as ever, leaped to fill the gap. “When Jer’s master asked us to find new places where he might try transplanting his vines, we never expected to find a Vineart here,” he said smoothly. “Outside the Vin Lands … and doing so well. Your work is quite extraordinary.” He lifted the glass he was holding, as though offering it to Jerzy. “This spellwine, it aids in the digestion,” he explained. “A glass before meals, and no matter how inedible the food, no rushed trips to the privy, after!”
“A healwine?” Jerzy asked, picking up his own glass and sniffing at it carefully, looking for the telltale nose that would identify the legacy. He was not surprised when he could not recognize it at all. A spell like that could come from healvines or aethervines, according to Master Malech’s lessons.
“Ah, not exactly healwine,” Esoba hedged, looking both shy and sly, tilting his head and looking at Jerzy. “My vines are rather unique—that is why I have so few; they require most careful handling.”
Jerzy would not doubt that for a moment. The power he had felt in those vines could outproduce Master Malech’s main yard, even in a poor year. If the Vineart were able to craft them properly … It seemed impossible to Jerzy that Esoba could do that. But they might also all still be enspelled into thinking him a jovial fool.
Jerzy did not know, and the not-knowing was the problem. Was Esoba their enemy, or another victim? He needed information, before they went any further.
“How old are your vines?” It was a fair question, one that would raise no eyebrows even among the most conservative of Vinearts. The age of a House was one of its strengths; even Vineart Giordan, who had been a complete rebel in that regard, had taken his master’s vines with him when he planted his new yards—for all the good it had not done him.
And yet, for all the innocence of the question, Esoba hesitated. “I have worked them for nearly two decades,” he said finally. “I do not know how old the vines themselves are.”
The others could not know how odd that answer was, and Jerzy hid his reaction under the guise of taking a sip of the spellwine. His Senses open, looking for any hint that this vina was more than Esoba claimed, he let it linger briefly on his tongue, and then allowed it to slip down his throat. As expected, it tasted much as the previous vina had—smooth and ripe, but with more of a structure than that altered pour. Beyond that, there was no sense of magic to it at all. A true vin ordinaire.
Jerzy was at a loss. He was not a scholar, he did not know the ancient legacies, did not understand the intricacies of the Blooding. He knew only that something was off here, that magic was being used on them, and he could not rely on the others—if he, with his own spellwine in his veins, could not be certain what was real, then how could they?
“How much of this spellwine do you produce,” Ao was asking, leaning forward with his elbows planted firmly on the table, his dark eyes opened wide in an attempt to look honest and trustworthy and, perhaps, a little innocent. “Because no matter how good your merchant friend might be, there are courts I have contacts in where this would go for a plentiful coin.”
Kaïnam laughed, breaking into the conversation with an easy chuckle enough unlike him that Mahault raised her head to stare, curiously. ‘’Forgive Ao, Vineart Esoba. His instincts are sound, but like all the trader folk, he cannot resist the urge to bargain—even in social settings.”
“I am not offended,” Esoba assured them. “Sadly, I produce only so much each year, and I already have an Agreement with Benit. A local lord has been pressing me for Agreement, but I … I do not like his words. Benit suits me.”
“So you have no contact with the Vin Lands at all?” Jerzy asked, although he already knew the answer.
“The old world does not know we exist.” He seemed almost proud of that fact. “My master left there, cultivating this yard and building the House. He took his slaves from the local population—I have never known anything else.”
So it was possible Esoba had no idea what he tended, how amazing, how impossibly rare. Or he was playing a deeper game than any of them suspected.
Master Malech had suspected a Vineart. They had not conceived of a Vineart who did not know his own strengths. Or unblooded vines. These were vines that could—in capable hands—potentially create the spells that their enemy had used: to animate dead flesh, strike a blow from an impossible distance, hear words whispered on a far-away wind, and send a blow of magic to eliminate a threat.
But was this man—this seemingly simple, comfortable host—the master behind the plot? Or was someone else using him, manipulating him as others had been? And if so, where was the whispering voice, the spell-bearing aide?
Step carefully, Jerzy could almost hear Ao telling him, teaching him how to get information, back in Aleppan. Go one way when you are looking in another.
“Where did your master come from, do you know?” Jerzy asked, and then turned to the others. “The slavers collect us from everywhere, and we are dispersed like seeds on the wind, the magic claiming us when we come to the proper vineyard, when we find the correct master.” They knew this; he hoped they would realize he was trying to set a trap.
Their host frowned. “He never—”
There was a loud crash, coming from the front of the House, and rais
ed voices, shouting. Kaïnam was on his feet in an instant, the chair sliding back behind him as he rose, while Mahault followed an instant later, more clumsy, knocking her chair over.
“Stay here,” Kaï ordered the others, his hand going to where his blade should have rested at his belt. He swore under his breath, then shook the lack off. “Mahl, with me, to the left.”
Mahault moved into second position by his side, as though they had trained for that when sparring on the deck of the Heart, and disappeared out the door of the dining hall.
“What?” Esoba began to say, and was interrupted by a sharp, shrill scream, and the sound of something large and heavy breaking open.
“The front door,” Ao said, tensing, but not rising from his seat. “Someone’s coming in. With a bit of violence.”
“Impossible!” Their host stood now, his frame practically shaking with indignation. “I will put a stop to this immediately!”
Jerzy let him go: it was his House; he should be front and center of any defense that was mounted. That was Esoba’s responsibility. But the image of Malech’s body, still and bloody, made him stop Ao when the trader would have followed out of foolish—and possibly deadly—curiosity. “Wait until the others return,” Jerzy said, when Ao protested. Mahault and Kaïnam were fighters. He and Ao could defend themselves, if need be, but their skills were in other directions.
With that thought, he picked up the goblet in front of his plate and drained it. Vin ordinaire or not, if this came from unblooded grapes … he did not know what it might do, what it might add to the magic pooling within him. That thought, rather than frightening him, made him more eager to discover the result.
The vina filled his mouth and his senses, intensifying the now-fading effect of the heal-all, and tickled the awareness of quiet-magic into wakefulness. He did not know what he could do that might be useful in this case, but he would be as prepared as possible.
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