There was another scream, this one longer, and the sound of voices shouting—then their host, angry and demanding. Another voice answered him, and there was the sound of running steps, heading toward them, not away.
“Come on.” Mahault stood in the doorway. Her hair had come down from the neat knot at the back of her head, her skin was flushed, and she was carrying a blade she hadn’t possessed earlier in her left hand. The edge reflected the candlelight in a way that said it was wet.
“Come on,” she said again, more urgently, when they didn’t respond. “We have to get out of here, now. Whoever came to visit, they’re not interested in conversation.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jerzy said, the image of Master Malech, of the shocked, sorrowing faces of Detta and Lil foremost in his mind. A Vineart protected the House…. If Esoba were as feckless, as badly trained as he seemed … “He’s our host. We owe him—”
“We owe other people more,” Mahl said, and they stared at each other until there was an explosion of some sort, and the walls rattled in response.
“That didn’t sound like blackpowder,” Ao said, cocking his head to evaluate the sound. “Magic?”
“Magic,” Jerzy confirmed, feeling the waves of it carry through the building, the taint hot and sour. The intruder was the source. He grabbed the pitcher of wine from the table, looking for something to carry it in without spilling. Seeing nothing, he took a long deep swig of the liquid, ignoring both his own uncertainty and the reactions of his two companions. It was not done, to treat vina the way one might ale or water, but he could see no other way to carry it.
The liquid splashed down his throat, the sense of the magic within it almost overcoming him, in such a dose. There was a reason spellwines were taken in small sips; more did not increase the power of the spell, but rather overwhelmed the user until the decantation was impossible to perform.
A Vineart was not overwhelmed. A Vineart controlled.
Jerzy took a deep breath, not looking at his companions, and then slipped past Mahault and out into the hallway. The door she had indicated was to the left. The fighting was coming from the right.
He turned right.
“Jer!”
He heard the others calling his name but did not respond. They could go if it suited them. Esoba could not defend the House alone. Jerzy would not abandon these vines to anyone who came in with violence, stinking of that taint.
That, in his mind, would be the true apostasy.
The hallway was disturbingly empty, the sleepy-looking guards gone, although he did not know if they had fallen, or run. A year before, the slave called Fox-fur would have hidden, hoped the violence would pass him by. Now Jerzy pushed through, unhesitating, to find the source.
The only noise now came from the main hallway, where they had first been greeted. The massive door had been battered down, now lying flat on the floor, and half a dozen bodies were sprawled, bleeding or already dead. Most were slaves, dressed only in their colorful wraps, but two bodies belonged to strangers, fighters, wearing worn brown leather trou like the solitaires and leather bands across their bare chests, with some sort of metal plate the size of a spread hand fixed on them, front and back. A sigil of some sort, but—not surprisingly—not one Jerzy recognized. Ao might, or Kaïnam.
A man stood in the middle of the carnage, dressed like the fallen soldiers, only he still held a thick, deadly looking blade in his hand. In front of him knelt a handful of others, including Kaïnam, his proud head bent, but not—if Jerzy could read him at all—subdued. The stranger looked up and saw him, then shouted words in a language Jerzy did not understand. The man—thick-muscled, with skin so dark it seemed almost to absorb the light around him—shook his head and then said again, in passable Ettonian, “You! Put up your weapons!”
Since Jerzy had no weapon in his hands, he held them up, palm front, to indicate he was obeying. A hard push came from behind, between his shoulder blades, as the intruder’s men found him, and he stumbled forward, falling to his knees with the others.
The scent of the taint came to Jerzy’s senses, like spoiled meat, or the aftermath of a charnel fire. This man was coated in it, but Jerzy did not think that he was the source. There was power in him, but no magic.
“You all fought well,” the man said, switching back and forth between the two languages, one a liquid roll of sounds Jerzy could not understand, the other an oddly accented Ettonian. Clearly, Jerzy’s arrival had interrupted him. “You fought well and there is no disgrace in that. But it is over, now.”
There was another disruption—shouting and the clash of bodies—and Jerzy turned his head just enough to see Esoba dragged out to join them, a guard at each elbow and his hands bound behind his back. The Vineart saw the man standing in front of them, and his face—previously so open and friendly—folded into a fierce scowl.
“You dare?” Esoba was outraged. More, he was offended. “Sin Washer’s Command—”
“Has no bearing in these lands, I have been informed,” the intruder replied calmly, speaking Ettonian, as Esoba had. “These are not his lands, and we are not bound by those rules. I made my offer in good faith and tried to reach Arrangement. You refused. Now, I take what I want.”
Jerzy started to object, that arrogance moving him where the violence had not, but a sharp elbow in his ribs stopped him.
The elbow had been Kaïnam’s. His gaze was focused on the man in front of them, his face grim set and stern, but a faint twitch in the side of his cheek nearest Jerzy indicated that he was not as resigned or as calm as he seemed. His blade had been taken, and there was a ragged cut on the prince’s arm that needed tending, but he waited along with the other defenders, demanding nothing, saying nothing.
“This is an outrage!” Esoba said, but he also did nothing, merely stood there, blustering, rather than raising a spell against this intruder.
He had no quiet-magic, Jerzy realized. Or his master had not taught him about it, how to gather and use it. Esoba was helpless without a spellwine in hand, at the mercy of this man brushed with the taint enough to make Jerzy gag from the stink of it.
In the midst of the carnage, a thought came, cold and calm: Esoba was no Vineart. He did not deserve these vines.
Jerzy could still feel the magic he had taken—from the heal-all; the spellwine they had been drinking; the vines, running in the flesh of his cheeks, limning his throat—and knew that, if he tried, he could raise quiet-magic enough to …
To do what?
Sin Washer’s Command was clear: power or no, Esoba was Vineart here. Kaïnam had the right of it. Stay still, be taken for some of the Vineart’s men. Kaï could pass as an exotic hire-sword, while Jerzy could still play the slave, if needed. Ao could blend anywhere, it was his gift; and Mahl … she could be a solitaire, or could disappear into the women’s quarters….
“If you agree to my terms, your people will be let go, and you will not be harmed. I will, of course, leave my men here. Merely as a precaution. All other terms will remain as per my offered Agreement.” He smiled, as though to show that he was, in fact, a reasonable and generous man, as though the terms had been written by Negotiators, and signed in good faith, not scrawled in the blood of slaves. “Ah, Sahr Benit. As you can see, we have all come to terms.”
Benit came into the room carefully, with the cautious movements of a man not accustomed to being around violence and a look of distaste on his face. Kaïnam let out a low rumble that might have been a curse, but otherwise remained still and quiet, and Jerzy felt the inside of his chest constrict, as though a giant fist were squeezing from the inside.
Layers of betrayal: merchant and lord, turning on Vineart … the taste of the taint grew in the room until Jerzy thought that he might gag.
Then a greater worry intruded: the man had been introduced, he knew who—and what—they were. If he said anything …
“You!” Esoba strained forward, his mouth working furiously, as though unable to say more than that. If looks
could have killed, the merchant leader would be on the floor with the other bodies, the hate was so intense. “You betrayed me?”
“I merely pointed out a few facts to our mutual acquaintance,” Benit said, his manner as cool as it had been while sitting at the table of the man he had betrayed. “Surely you understand that I must look out for my own well-being—and he offered a much better Agreement than you. Still, we all win, here. He gets access to your vines; I make my profit … and you are not dead.”
The merchant swept his gaze across the room, passing over Jerzy and Kaïnam, but just as Jerzy began to think that they might be able to escape unharmed, if the intruder kept to his word to release any who did not resist, the merchant’s attention returned to them, and he frowned.
“Sin Washer, defend us,” Jerzy muttered, even as the merchant, his gaze now firmly locked on Jerzy’s face, reached out a hand as though to gather the land-lord’s attention. If Benit identified Jerzy as a Vineart, there would be no escape for any of them.
Jerzy tried to shake off the surge of magic that was trying to claim him, drive him into action. This was not his House. And yet, a vineyard was at risk—if he did nothing, the vines would fall under the control of a man of power. Worse: a man of power who stank of the taint. For the first time in his life, Jerzy understood hatred.
He felt Kaïnam shift next to him, and knew that the other man was readying himself for action, despite his earlier actions willing and ready to follow in Jerzy’s lead. The only problem was, Jerzy had no idea what to do.
You are Vineart.
Distant, stretched almost to breaking by the distance between them, the feel of the Guardian’s words was less weight and more a scrape against his thoughts, the rasp of stone against flesh, a rough caress.
A Vineart crafted spellwines. A Vineart shaped the magic.
A Vineart protected the magic.
The Washers claimed that they protected the people from magic, from the abuse of magic, keeping their eye on Vinearts, through Sin Washer’s Command. But here it was not Vinearts who hungered for more….
All this went through Jerzy’s thoughts faster than he could acknowledge, a whirl of emotions and memories, not all of them his own. Out of that whirlwind, a tendril crept and grew, winding itself around his awareness until he knew what to do.
If he let them, the vines would tell him what to do.
His mouth watered, and Jerzy felt the quiet-magic come alive under his touch, drawing it onto his tongue until his entire mouth tingled from the sensation. Healwine, filling his body, protecting it, intensifying it until Jerzy almost passed out from the sensation of knowing every inch of his body so intimately, inside and out. Master Malech’s healwines, the fruit and soul of vines he had tended for most of his life, the soil that was pressed deep into his skin, the mustus that was deep in his bones, his blood. It came to his call now, and met the unblooded spellwine in his stomach, blending and re-forming a new spell, under Jerzy’s guidance and the Guardian’s knowledge.
Blooded wine would not re-form, once incanted. Quiet-magic could only go so far.
But those two, with the weight of spell-carved stone behind it … It might be enough. It might be something even worse.
The land-lord heard Benit’s urgent whisper, and his gaze swung to Jerzy as well, his expression going from annoyed to incredulous to a dawning realization that did not bode well for Jerzy or his companions. The land-lord’s hand slid to his belt, touching on a shorter, still-sheathed blade, and the last of Jerzy’s hesitations fled.
“Healspell, unheal,” he told it, barely moving his lips, thinking the words more than he was saying them. Quiet-magic did not need decanting; the Vineart was the spell, and even as Jerzy formed the words, the magic flowed from him, almost visible in front of him as it rushed forward, his eyes and mind shaping it into a winged form, sinuous neck outstretched, pointed muzzle aiming directly at the land-lord’s gut, one wing slamming into the merchant standing beside him.
Jerzy could feel the backwash in his own stomach, even as the magic changed its shape, even as the lord doubled over, his hand falling from his belt to grasp at his stomach, his face twisting in pain and anger. Then his head bent forward, he fell to his knees in an uncanny echo of the captives in front of him, and dropped with a heavy thud to the floor, and did not move.
Beside him, the merchant had also doubled over, but the bolt of Jerzy’s anger had gone into the lord, diluting the impact, and he yet lived. His head lifted, and he glared at Esoba, only to realize from the Vineart’s expression that he had not been the one to strike them.
Before the merchant could switch his attention to Jerzy, Kaïnam reacted, lurching forward with a high-pitched yell in a language Jerzy did not know. He grabbed the short blade from the lord’s belt, unsheathing and twisting and shoving it upward into the merchant’s stomach before the man could do more than twist away from the attack.
And then chaos broke loose around them, as the previously subdued captives realized what had happened and got to their feet, and the fighters who had come with the lord rushed to counterattack, seeming not to realize that their master was already dead. Jerzy was quickly lost in the flailing of bodies, apparently striking at random; his training—keep an attacker off guard, run when you can, strike hard when you must—was totally useless in such a melee. And magic—anything he tried could hit friend as well as foe, even if he could think of anything. Firespell—no. A sleep spell? Then he’d have to wait for Kaï to wake up….
The scent of the taint, suddenly even thicker in the air, jerked Jerzy out of his confusion. He looked up, his gaze going directly to the source, in the room with him.
The merchant, staggering upright, his hands clutching at his gut, trying to staunch the bleeding, his mouth moving in words Jerzy didn’t need to hear to understand.
He was calling for help.
Not letting himself think, aware that it needed to be now or it would be too late, Jerzy launched himself at the merchant. Even as he moved, his mind was forming what he needed, calling up the last ready reserves of quiet-magic, forming it into another … not a spear. A rope, this time. Firespell, to encircle and contain.
“Hold and bind,” he said, even as the magic rose up and left him.
He had used too much, exhausted from the first strike. The flickering dragon-shape was weak, fragile, and would not hold; he realized that even as he flung himself into action. His hands found a grip on the merchant’s arm, the tricks Cai had taught him rising instinctively the way the weapons master had promised they would. An elbow, here. A leg, there. A knee and shoulder, like that, and Vineart and merchant fell, entangled, to the ground, both grunting in pain.
The taint touched Jerzy then, settling on his skin and making him shudder. He resisted the urge to pull away, holding on tighter to the merchant’s soft flesh, as though the man might somehow wiggle away if he only held his clothing.
“Who sent you?” he demanded, his face in the man’s sweat-flushed face. The blood was seeping from the man’s gut, dripping over Jerzy’s hands and arms, but it was less disturbing than the layer of ooze the taint laid on everything, this close. “Who. Sent. You?”
Jerzy could feel the taint on this man, and he would not let him escape, not without an answer. Master Malech was dead. His yards were in danger. He tasted a bitterness in his mouth that was neither wine nor bile, the tang of blood, and licked his lips, feeling another shudder run through him, but this one was not as unpleasant. His hand raised, reaching for the man’s face, intending to …
To do what? a voice whispered again. What will you do?
The question stilled him—not long, but enough for the merchant to start mouthing those words again. A decantation: Jerzy recognized the pattern if not the language, but there was no spellwine, and this man had no quiet-magic….
The taint rose again, enough to make Jerzy gag. No quiet-magic, but a feel of it, borne in that stench, and it came from the man in his hold. Jerzy slammed his hand hard enough t
o feel the merchant’s nose break under it, demanding again in a cold, sharp voice he didn’t recognize as his own: “Who. Sent. You?”
There was a quiver in the air, as though it were shaken like a cloth, and then something putrid slammed down hard over Jerzy, shattering against his skin in a thousand places, and the world disappeared.
Chapter 16
Jer?”
Vineart.
The combination of the two voices, one in his ear, the other deep in his mind, was enough to wake Jerzy into full awareness.
“Am I late? What?” He tried to swing himself out of bed, and discovered that he was not in his bed in his chamber in his master’s House, or even the hammock cot on the Vine’s Heart, and that his head felt like someone had broken a wall over it. A hand gripped his arm hard enough to bruise, keeping him from swaying or falling over, and slowly he remembered.
“He’s gone.”
“He didn’t feel anything.” Mahl was the source of the voice, kind and worried, and Jerzy craned his neck—carefully, slowly, not wanting to throw up—to look at her in confusion. There was sunlight coming in from the window on the far wall: pale light. It was morning.
He shifted his attention away from the passage of time and back to Mahault’s confusing words. “What?”
“Esoba. He didn’t … oh.” She looked down, away from his gaze, as though suddenly realizing that he had no idea what she was talking about. Her hair was back in a tight braid, and her face looked drawn and strained. “I’m sorry, Jer. I thought you … they killed him. Esoba. We got there too late, and he just …”
“The merchant,” Jerzy said, not caring about the other Vineart’s fate at that moment. “He’s gone.” The last thing he could recall, the taint enveloping them, the man’s soft flesh becoming even softer under his grip, struggling to hold on and knowing that he could not.
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