“He’s nowhere in the House,” Ao said, from across the room. He was sitting in one of the few high-backed chairs, holding something wrapped in cloth to his head. There was a dark bruise against the other side of his face, and his right leg was propped out in front of him as though it hurt. “We have his servant, though. Kaïnam caught him before he could fall on his blade.”
“They didn’t take the servant,” Jerzy said, thinking that through. His bones ached when he moved; the healvine had burned from his body—had it been what saved him, when the tainted magic stole the double-dealing merchant away? “Did they not know about him, or was he not important enough?”
“Take? Who took?” Ao leaned forward, then hissed in pain and leaned back again. “Jer, what happened in there? You ran off, then we had to deal with some bullyboys. By the time we found you, Kaïnam just muttered something about mad Vinearts and idiot soldiers, told us to bring you here, and then rounded up what was left of the House-servants to do a search for survivors, or any of the lord’s men who might have been hiding.”
Jerzy’s thoughts were getting clearer, sharper. The mindspell, whatever it had been, had not been cast at them, but those already here, either Esoba, to make him docile, or the guards, to keep them from fighting back. Whoever had cast it, the effects were gone.
“The merchant. He sold out Esoba to the local lord, the one who was harassing him.”
“What?” Mahault’s jaw dropped open, and even Ao looked surprised. Kaïnam knew, but Kaïnam was not there, and obviously had not stopped long enough to explain.
“The vines here …” Jerzy stopped, unable to explain. He wasn’t even sure he understood, himself, how rare and impossible they were. He didn’t think the merchant or lord had known, either; they had been manipulated, led by promises they could understand.
But the source of the taint … oh, it knew. It knew very well what was hidden here. The merchant might have thought to take two Vinearts for the betrayal of one. But this had long been in the planning, long before they had arrived.
“They were all tampered with: merchant, and lord, and Esoba, too. Our bad luck that we were here when it all came to a head.”
Mahault was more suspicious than Ao. “Over a simple vineyard in the middle of nowhere? It doesn’t have any advantages—too far from the harbor, and forgive me, Jerzy, but one small vineyard is hardly such a prize. You don’t believe that it was because of us?”
Jerzy shook his head, trying to think how to explain why this vineyard was so valuable. “Oh. Ow.” The world swam in front of him, and his stomach revolted, dry heaving.
“You got whacked over the head with something even harder than your head,” Mahl said, her hands gentling on him. “You’re making a habit of that. Sit back, if you won’t lie down.”
He obeyed, because it seemed the better choice than falling over. He looked up at Mahl as she settled him on the cushioned settee, suddenly noticing that there was a bandage on her arm, and she was moving as though she was favoring her left side.
“Yeah,” Ao said, watching him watch Mahault. “Everyone’s banged up. But we won.”
“Won?” Jerzy closed his eyes, willing the room to stop spinning quite so much. “Esoba dead, the source still unknown—this is winning?”
“We’re alive,” Kaïnam said from the doorway. “That makes us the winners.” The prince was unmarked, but his shirt was torn and stained with blood, and his blade remained in his left hand, as though he had forgotten that he could put it down. “Are you well, Vineart?”
The formality felt odd, until Jerzy saw movement behind the prince, shadowed bodies waiting in the hallway. Waiting for answers. Waiting for a master.
Then it hit him, truly. Vineart Esoba was dead. The vines were unprotected. The slaves were without guidance. This House had no Detta, no Guardian.
It only had him.
Exhaustion slammed into a sick despair and uncertainty, what he desired fighting what needed to be done. The temptation to reach for the vines threatened to overwhelm him, drown him in the need, but he forced himself to focus on the more immediate problem.
“I am well.”
Kaïnam came fully into the room then, letting the heavy wooden door close behind him and leaving the shadow figures to spread the word, as they would—and interpret it, as they would.
Once the risk of being overheard had been removed, Jerzy spoke directly to the prince. “The merchant was sent by our enemy, to specifically take down Esoba.”
Kaïnam nodded, clearly having put the pieces together the same way, even with his more limited understanding of what had happened. “The lord did not act alone, nor did the merchant.”
“They were played,” Ao said, leaning forward, then wincing and leaning back upright again. “But who is this man, playing them? More, where is he?”
“What is he?” Mahl asked. The sword she had taken from one of the fighters rested across her lap now, one hand wrapped around the hilt as though itching to use it again, against something she could see, something she could hit.
“I don’t know. He does things that are impossible….” Even as he said it, though, something stirred in Jerzy’s memory. Not the Guardian this time. Something else, closer. He wished he felt better, wished there were a flask of heal-all within reach. He considered sending Ao to find more, but wasn’t sure if more vin magica would be wise, right now, after what he had done. Just the thought of holding a sip in his mouth made him feel nauseated. He ignored his body and focused on the question.
Their enemy had plucked the merchant away. The Guardian had moved him, and Mahault, the same way. But the Guardian was bound to him, and Mahault had merely been caught in that, by touching him….
“I sense only the taint, laid upon others … no, not laid. Rising.”
“Rising?”
“It touched me, coated my skin, but from the lord, the merchant … even the aide in Aleppan, it rose from within them, as though it were part of them.”
“Is that possible?” Ao asked, and for the first time Jerzy could remember, Ao looked frightened.
“I don’t know, and I have no one to ask. One by one, Vinearts of skill or courage are dying. Are murdered.” Their disappearances, undermining the structure. The Guardian’s fear, come true. The thing he was supposed to, somehow, prevent.
“The House here, outside the Lands Vin, beyond the claim of Sin Washer’s Command—or, at least, the reach of the Washers,” Kaïnam said, thinking out loud. “Whoever crafts this taint wanted Esoba under his control, or at least that of his proxies. But why?”
“The vines here … they are rare,” Jerzy admitted. “A Vineart with no scruples, no adherence to the Commands … could do terrible things with them, if he had access.”
“You suspected that Esoba’s master had not taught him well; the training interrupted or unfinished, maybe, and he was given the yards without knowing what he was doing.” Kaïnam was making the logical, political connections. “If so, the poor fool was ripe for the picking.”
Like himself, the thought came creeping into Jerzy’s thoughts, dark and sad and dangerous. Like him. Doubt and failure slid along his skin, and when Kaïnam touched his arm, he jumped slightly, shuddering hard enough that he removed his hand just as quickly. He wanted to apologize, but didn’t know how—or for what.
“But … how is a failure like that possible?” Mahault asked, and then answered herself. “How would anyone know? You don’t keep tabs on each other; you don’t talk. It would be easy for some apprentice to take off one day, trying to leave his failure behind, then land here and find vines where there should have been none….”
“And decide it was fate, and set himself up as Vineart,” Jerzy said. “Magic calls to magic. These vines are …” He hesitated, then said only, “powerful.” He would not—he could not—tell them what those vines were. Of all the things he had said, that was the one secret he could not share. No one could know, not if he wanted to keep them safe.
“Powerful eno
ugh to draw this taint-maker to him, as well as Esoba’s master?” Ao had been quiet, but that drew his attention.
Powerful vines, perhaps the most valuable things in all the lands, Vin or barren. But they had not protected their would-be Vineart, in the end. Jerzy tried to remember the chaos of the fight again, tried to remember when Esoba had fallen, but all he could recall was the look on the merchant’s face, the taint rising like a thick black-green mist over them, the sticky feel, the taste of something stale and unpleasant in his mouth. It disturbed him, made his throat close and his tongue curl away from the taste, but he did not know why.
“We have one source of answers,” Kaï said. His tone was not reluctant, exactly, but cautious.
Mahault nodded. Her eyes had the same caution within them, and Jerzy felt a stir of unease, looking back and forth between them, even as he understood what the prince was suggesting. Kaï might know the ways, but it would be the Vineart who was feared.
“The merchant’s servant?”
“Locked in one of the storerooms. Do you think that you can get answers from him?”
Everything in Jerzy shied away from the idea. “I do.”
* * *
BEFORE JERZY COULD let himself rethink this, or question his judgment, they were out in the vineyard, with a sturdy wooden chair set in the middle of the yard, in between clumps of golden-brown vines. Just him and Kaïnam, and the servant, seated in the chair with Kaï’s hand hard on his shoulder, to keep him there.
Ao and Mahault were back at the House; Jerzy had refused to explain himself, but told them to stay there and deal with the servants and slaves.
Much to his surprise, they had obeyed.
Kaïnam had brought the merchant’s servant out, the man’s legs tied with a loose loop of rope that hobbled him to a shuffling walk, his wrists bound behind his back. He looked worn, scuffed, but no less defiant, as though he did not know that his master had abandoned him, had fled and left him behind.
The aches and confusion Jerzy had been feeling since the tainted blast faded the moment they crossed the gate into the yard proper. He wasn’t sharp, but he could focus. The vineyard was murmuring to him, the ropey twisted vines sliding into post-Harvest dormancy but still aware of him, now that they had been touched. There were no slaves to distract, no Vineart to control them, and so they reached for him the way they reached for water, or sun. Sin Washer had only enforced what happened naturally, when he bound them by Command to serve their vines.
Jerzy looked at the still-nameless servant, their gazes meeting, and something in the man’s face changed as he realized what stood before him: not a soldier; not a feckless, untrained vine-tender, already befuddled by spells … but a Vineart, in full control of his magic.
Something inside Jerzy relished that sudden uncertainty in the man’s expression, the first flickering of fear. He barely had to think what he wanted, this close to the vines, and they rose to do his bidding, creeping an inch at a time to wrap themselves around the servant’s ankles above the ropes, locking him into the chair. His eyes went wide as he felt the first slither across his bare legs, and when they reached up around his waist, he tried to bolt. Kaïnam had to be just as startled, but the prince’s hand kept their prisoner seated until there were enough vines binding him to the chair that he could not move even if released.
“One more,” Jerzy said, and this time he made a show of lifting his hand, directing the single vine that slid along the back of the chair, then snaked down around the servant’s neck, wrapping tightly once, then twice. The fear shivered through the man, and Jerzy hesitated; then the memory of Master Malech, his dark blue eyes cold and distant, came back to him, firming Jerzy’s resolve for what he must do.
A Vineart never showed weakness. To defend his House, to protect these vines around them; to do what must be done, he must do what needed to be done.
Jerzy leaned forward, crouching down, resting his palms flat against his thighs. This close, he could smell the dirt, the early-morning sun barely warming it, mixed with the stench of the man’s sweat, stale after a night spent locked in a small, windowless room.
“Who approached your master?” he asked quietly, looking the man directly in the face. “Who sent him to the land-lord, to broker this betrayal?”
The man might be sweating, but he was not frightened. Not enough, anyway. “I do not know.”
“I think you do.”
The vine around the man’s throat tightened, and his eyes widened, his mouth working as though to summon spit—not to cast a spell, but merely to moisten his mouth. Now, perhaps, he was frightened enough.
“Tell me, and you may live. Hold back anything, and I will know—and the vines will break your body down and plow you into the field.”
Jerzy believed every word he spoke, and the vines shifted against the man’s skin, as though reflecting the anger within the Vineart.
“A Negotiator,” the servant said, finally breaking. “A month ago. My master had just established Agreement with Vineart Esoba, but the Negotiator said that a local lord wanted the vines, wanted Esoba to work for him, but the Vineart had refused. The Negotiator said that he could tell my master how to make it all work … without breaking Sin Washer’s Command.”
Because Sin Washer’s word did not hold outside the Lands Vin. True or false mattered less than the claim being believed.
That explained why the merchant had no taint in him; he was merely a tool. “Tell me who the Negotiator represented,” Jerzy said, his voice turning soft, a coaxing croon that made the servant shudder even more. “Tell me, and live.”
KAÏ FOUND HIM in the vineyard; not within the yard, but standing beside it, watching it, as the sun cast long shadows across the mountains behind them.
“Mahault has everything well in hand; she may not wish a Household, but she knows how to run one.” Kaïnam’s admiration was real. “Ao is busy sorting through the House stores, replacing what we’ll need. We should have everything cleaned up in a few hours, have a night’s sleep, and be ready to go in the morning. I figured you would want to go through Esoba’s cellar, before we leave?”
Jerzy nodded. “There should be a cellar book; it will tell me what his racking system is, so I can find anything that might be useful.” He was not certain taking those wines would be a wise idea; he had no knowledge of the methods Esoba and his master had used to incant them, no idea what magic might be stored within. But he could not bear to leave them behind, either.
Thinking about that, the details of choosing and packing, the forward movement, was easier than contemplating what he had done.
Kaïnam squinted a little as a cloud passed and the sun shifted lower. “Jerzy … let it be. You did what needed to be done. What none of us could have done. There is no shame in being skillful. And now we have the name of our enemy.”
The servant, his face now flushed with fear, stuttering with the desire to tell whatever they wanted to know. “Ximen. Praepositus Ximen. The Negotiator looked like a man of our land, but he had a strange accent; he said he was a man of Iaja, an explorer, who had discovered a land of great wealth and magic, and we would have a share in all things, if we only did his bidding. I know no more, I swear.”
Jerzy did not know if the man spoke the truth, but Kaïnam had believed him.
A Negotiator could be hired by anyone. Even a Vineart, who could not leave his vines, but wished to cause mischief.
A Vineart who could work his magic through others, using Agreement to push his will through their mouths, his actions through their hands. Who could reach anywhere, be everywhere, and never show his face.
Jerzy felt a rumble within him; his quiet-magic no longer quiet, waiting, wanting to be summoned. It made him uncomfortable, as though he had eaten rotted fruit. He had done things he did not know he could do, learned things he should never have known. It was too much: he desperately craved a slave’s life, the certainty of the seasons, the surety of the overseer’s lash, the secure acceptance of what was and
was not. All gone, the moment Master Malech had taken him from the yard and, with that first sip of spellwine, shown him what he could reach for.
For a moment, for the first time in his life, he hated his master. Hated him for what he had done, and hated him for dying.
“These vines.”
Jerzy didn’t say anything, listening to the rage inside him.
“These vines,” Kaïnam said again. “People were killed for them. You said they were powerful.”
Jerzy waited. He knew what would come. Kaïnam had his own reasons for being with them, reasons more urgent than Ao’s or Mahault’s personal desires, and it would not serve to forget that.
“How powerful? Jerzy, if the magic they hold is so strong, if whoever started all this, who could do all this already, wanted them so badly, shouldn’t we—”
The unease and sickness in his gut rose into Jerzy’s throat, the rotting smell almost enough to make his eyes water. “Do what? Destroy them? Burn vines and salt the land, destroy knowledge, things of beauty and wonder, for fear?” He had thought it, had lifted a hand to the flask of firewine in his pack, not moments earlier, and considered it. “Or would you have me stay here and work the yard myself, steal another’s vineyard? Would you have me become what they claim—would you have me become what he is? Would that bring your sister back, Kaï?”
Thaïs, the Wise Lady: murdered, Kaï believed, to drive his lord-father into acts that would set their island Principality against the other Vin Lands, turning them into scapegoats for whatever actions their unknown enemy made.
Kaïnam, unlike Ao, did not rise to the bait. “You want to. Stay here, I mean. Learn these vines. Ao and Mahault, they don’t see it, but I do. Ao sees people to be manipulated to his best advantage or possible profit, and Mahl …” His expression turned rueful. “Mahl sees people as either obstacles or allies. She’s single-minded that way. But I was trained to observe the currents of power, to learn what people want, what they won’t speak of—what secrets they hold. You’re holding a secret from us.”
Jerzy didn’t look at him, didn’t move, but answered in a steady voice. “It’s all right. These vines survived before anyone came to tend them. They’ll be all right here for a while longer.”
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