Flesh and Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

  He didn’t need a vial of spellwine to deal with the threat: the grub might be huge but it was still a grub. Disgusting, and the size of the thing made it a creature of nightmares, yes, but any Vineart worthy of his vines knew how to deal with such a thing.

  It would be easier with his tools, of course.

  Even as the thought passed through his mind, there was a sound behind him. The grub turned as though it, too, had heard the sound, and a thin shriek rose into the air from its open maw. The slave had returned. Despite its obvious fear, the slave forced himself forward enough to push an object into his master’s waiting hands.

  A firestone, warm and ready. And a small clay pot marked with the sigil for sweetwater.

  The smudge pot would have been useful as well, but these were the two things that he needed most of all.

  Clutching the firestone in his right hand, he felt the crystalline globe react to his own body heat, doubling and trebling the fire trapped inside glass until the colors swirled and danced, impatient to be let out. The clay pot he crushed with his other hand, feeling the thick, oily liquid drip over his fingers and down his palm, tingling slightly.

  To work magic, most needed properly prepared spellwines. But here, in the middle of his own vineyard, all a Vineart needed was already in place. Let princes and lords buy spellwines; a Vineart had a more subtle magic at his command.

  Sionio spit into his left palm and then clasped his hands together, letting the juice from his mouth mix with the sweetwater and coat the firestone. The spit carried the magic within him, tangled with the lingering traces of mustus and fermentation. Mage-blood was not as potent as spellwine, but it was always present and ready.

  “Scour, scour! Root and leaf, be clean! Go!”

  A basic decantation, useful to prevent infestations of bugs and rot. The heated sweetwater mixture turned it into a flaming torch, exploding from his hands at the grub.

  Magic that would have cleansed a midsized field of the most tenacious rot washed over the grub, making it scream like a horse in agony. The full body of the thing pulled out of the soil until it reached a man’s height, almost as thick around and thrice as ugly as the most deformed freak.

  And still it screamed, the ugly, bulbous head reaching through the flames to snap at the Vineart, the source of its agony. Blind, it still came dangerously close, aiming not for the Vineart’s head but his hands, where the flames came from.

  “Scour!” he cried again. “Root and leaf, be clean. Go!”

  The decantation was a basic one, but he was no apprentice to miscast it or underestimate the power needed. It should have been a matter of moments before this was finished. Still, the grub attacked, despite the spell, and Sionio found himself pushed back one step and then another, until his back was up against the row of vines behind him, and he could retreat no farther.

  What was this thing, he wondered, even as he grasped for another burst of magic, suddenly unable to concentrate through his fear. The thought occurred: grubs, even bastard monster grubs, did not appear alone. Was this nightmare beast an aberration? Or were there more, lurking below the fields, waiting to consume his entire crop? If he faltered now, might he lose it all?

  The firestone flared again, driven by his own fear and protective anger. The vineyard was more than the source of his power; it was his livelihood, his life. It was everything he had worked for, from the beginning of his training until now. The idea that something as ugly, as horrible, and as ordinarily defeatable as a grub might put that at risk drove him forward again, his hands flaming bright enough to match the sun overhead. His normally calm features twisted with anger and determination as he reached out with those burning hands, reaching through his disgust and natural aversion to touch the grub.

  The moment he made contact, he wanted to recoil, to let go, to wipe his hands clean of the taint. The skin of the grub was hot and slimy and wrong. This was no garden mutant, no horror of nature. This thing was magic, although how or why Sionio could not fathom. Such magic was not possible, could not be possible. . ..

  Even as Sionio thought those things, he was chanting a new decantation. Not an apprentice’s cantrip, but something far deeper, far stronger, and far more dangerous.

  “Wither and die,” he ordered the grub. “Lack of moisture, lack of rain. Overheat, wither, and die. Go.”

  It was less a spell than a curse, the sort that should never even be whispered in any vineyard, much less his own. Sionio poured everything he had into it, and poured that in turn into the body of the beast grub. The remaining rosewater on his hands slicked onto the grub’s skin like pig oil; mixed with his spit, it had the same effect as setting a torch to dry grain.

  A huge, high shriek nearly shattered the Vineart’s eardrums at such close range, and the grub wavered, quivered under his grasp, and then collapsed, taking down an entire span of the vine-row with its fall.

  Sionio fell back, the monster’s death throes knocking him away, and he landed again on his back. He watched as the grub thrashed and writhed, and, finally, fell still.

  An eerie silence fell over the vineyard. Birds did not sing overhead, slaves did not chatter, and even the wind seemed hushed. Distantly, as though through water, he could hear the faint sounds of something rustling, and recognized it, barely, as the sound of human bodies. His slaves, who had run . . . but not so far away. If he called to them, they would come back.

  No. Not until he was sure the thing was dead. Slaves were not cheap, and good slaves, loyal slaves, were even more difficult to replace.

  He got up and walked with steady grace to the monster’s corpse. The sweetwater was gone, burned off his hands, and he could feel the depletion of the magic within his marrow. Sweetwater was dangerous to the user as well as the target. But this was still his vineyard, his lands, and so long as his feet walked the soil, there was strength here for him to take. Enough to ensure this thing was dead, and the immediate threat, gone.

  The corpse was still and cooling. Dead. Even as he bent to check, the wrinkled gray form began to shimmer and shake. Before he could even jump back, sure it was some sort of trick, it imploded, leaving behind only a choking gray cloud of foul-tasting dust.

  He had not caused that. Magic-born, and magic-sent, and magic-destroyed. Whoever had sent this monster against him wanted no trace left to be discovered. Who could do such a thing? Touching the grub, feeling its life-spark pulsing against his skin, enhanced by the sweetwater, had filled him with such dread, such disgust. . .magic should not cause him to shudder like that. Something lay beneath it, something dank and sour on the tongue.

  He could ask no one. A Vineart would have no cause to attack him; they could not benefit from his vines, nor take over his lands. That was not their way; deviation from Sin Washer’s Command to abjure power was unthinkable, unforgivable. And yet, it was a magical attack, so clearly another Vineart was involved. But who? Who could have created such an abomination of a spell? More to the point, who had bought it, used it against him?

  Shaken, Sionio stood, and with a twitch of his hand summoned the slaves to him. Four came, four of the six who had worked this cluster originally. If the two who fled were not dead already, he would remedy that by nightfall. He rewarded betrayal as well as loyalty.

  “Speak to no one of this,” he warned the remaining four. “Speak of it, and die.” No matter that he had defeated the beast, that his magic had been the greater force. The fact was that someone had attacked him— had sent this thing into his vineyard. Any whisper, any gossip that his grapes were tainted by the attack, and his reputation could be ruined forever.

  The slaves dropped to the ground and, foreheads on the soil, swore their obedience. When he released them, they got to their feet and went back to work, joining the others farther away. They all nervously avoided the blasted cluster as though still expecting something else to emerge without warning.

  Sionio walked to the end of the square and looked out over his lands. The ground around where the grub had fallen was
seared, the vines dead where they had grown. But there was no further sense of wrongness: there had been only the one massive grub, burrowing in from below.

  “Is it me?” he asked the now-still air. “Is someone spelling for me specifically? Or are others under attack as well?” If so, he had no way of knowing; the demands of the vines made Vinearts into solitary creatures, not prone to mingling with their peers, and their training made it difficult to trust others. There was not a soul he could turn to, not a soul he could ask for advice, now that his master was gone. That was the way things were.

  Sionio stared out across the tops of the vines, a wave of green sloping down to a high stone wall. Odds were that this was a onetime event, a freak spell gone awry and out of control, the caster silent out of embarrassment or fear. Still, he needed to be certain.

  A second wineskin was hooked to his belt, barely large enough to hold one swallow. It never left his person, too valuable to ever let out of his sight. Unlike most spellwines, this one did not fade as it aged, but grew stronger, and all he needed was that one sip.

  Still, he hesitated. This was a spellwine of his own making, and difficult to craft. There would be no replacing it, not for years. But if he did not use it now, there might not be years left him if he were attacked again unawares.

  Decided, he removed the skin and let the liquid within hit his tongue. It was thick and heavy, bitter and sweet like overripe berries left too long in the sun. But that sensation was overwhelmed almost immediately by the sweep of magic distilled into that potent liquid. This was different than any other spellwine: a simple command triggered its magic.

  “Show me my enemy.”

  The spellwine complied and, in that instant of connection—and discovery—his enemy struck once more. Fatally.

  PART I

  Slave

  Chapter 1

  HOUSE OF MALECH: HARVEST

  The boy focused on what he was doing, but not so much that he failed to sense someone pause behind him, too close for comfort. He managed not to flinch as the older slave bent down to whisper. “Nice job you pulled, Fox-fur. Who’d you sweetmouth for it?”

  The boy grunted, not wanting to talk, even to defend himself. Talk got you noticed. Notice was bad. Keep your face down, your hands busy, and your mouth shut, and survive. Those were the unspoken rules everyone knew.

  After a minute the other slave shrugged and moved on with his own assignment. Left alone, the boy looked up into the sky, his eyes squinting as he searched the pale blue distance. He hadn’t sweetmouthed anyone. Luck of the pick, was all. He wasn’t going to question it. He didn’t question anything; he just did as he was told.

  The brightness of the open sky made his eyes water. There was a bird—a tarn, from the banding—flying overhead in search of a careless or greedy rabbit. Every year they cut back the brush to the ancient grove of trees that marked the end of the vineyard, trying to keep the rabbits and foxes from the vines. They had built stone fences and decanted spells to keep humans away, but animals were harder to convince.

  This field, and the rest of it, was part of the Valle of Ivy. The valley was cut into a chessboard of fields, half green with crops, the others brown and fallow, interspersed with the occasional gnarled fruit tree, and dotted with low stone buildings. In the distance a river cut through the fields—the Ivy. The chessboard and the buildings belonged to the House of Malech, one of four Vinearts established within The Berengia, and the only one currently ranked Master. His master. The slave knew nothing of the other Vinearts or The Berengia, or what lay beyond her borders. To imagine anything beyond the vineyard and the sleep house was as impossible as flying with the tarn overhead.

  At the far edge of the fields where the boy was stationed, a pair of trees—not quite so ancient, but still wider around than a man could reach—created a shelter for two low structures built of pale gray stone: the slaves’ sleep house and vineyard’s storehouse, where the plows and tools were kept. Those, and the open form of the vintnery behind him, made of the same stone as the enclosure’s walls, were the boundaries of his world. The other buildings behind the vintnery, across a wide cobbled road, might as well have been on the other side of the Ivy, for all he knew of them.

  The boy looked away from the sky and downward. Every slave in the House of Malech was working today. Summer had been warm and rainy, but those days had given way to cooler, drier mornings, and the grapes had ripened on schedule, green leaves turning a dark red at the edges, the grapes darker red yet, their skin tight over plump, juicy flesh. He could practically feel the ripeness in the air, waiting. He had learned the hard way not to mention that to anyone, the way the ripening grapes made a noise in his head, inside his bones. The one time he had asked another slave about it, he’d got beaten until his skull had bled, and the overseer had kept him out of the yards for the day.

  The tarn had disappeared while he’d looked away. Now not even a cloud marred the expanse of blue, the sun already high overhead and surprisingly strong for the season. A faint breeze came down off the ridge, carrying a salty hint that cooled the sweat on his skin just enough to make it noticeable. The boy shifted, making himself as comfortable as he could, glad at least to be out of the direct sunlight, out of the fields. In the distance, past the vintner’s shed, beyond the dark gray bulk of the sleep house, two score of slaves, stripped down to their loose-woven pants, worked their way up and down the groupings of waist-high vines, carefully stripping the ripe bunches from each plant one handful at a time, bending and rising in tune to some unheard rhythm.

  He had done that, for three Harvests before this one, once he was old enough to be trusted. Your hands cramped after a while, and every finger cracked and bled, but not a single fruit was damaged if you could help it; each straw basket on their backs, once filled, was worth more than the slave carrying it. That was the first thing learned the very first day a slave was brought into the vineyard. You learned, and you survived, and, if your master was kind, you might even make it out of the yards, out of the sun and the rain, and away from walking stooped all your waking hours until you slept that way, too.

  His master was not kind, but neither was he particularly cruel, and the boy had made it out of the yard. Barely.

  Barely was enough. He could sit, and his back did not hurt, and his skin was not blistered by the sun. The Washer who traveled their road would say it was because he let the world move him rather than trying to move it. He didn’t see how he could do otherwise. But there was much the Washers preached that he didn’t understand.

  A harvest-hire guard stood on the top of a slight rise at the edge of the field, watching the activity. A stiffened lash in his left hand tapped an irregular rhythm against his thigh as his gaze skimmed over the area being harvested. He was there more for tradition than need. It was death to steal a clutch of grapes. Death to taste one. Death to waste one. Nobles could afford spellwine, and free men might drink of vin ordinaire: slaves could not even dream of either.

  The boy shifted, feeling warning prickles in his bare feet that told him he had been still too long. He looked away from the guard, letting his gaze rest on nothing in particular, waiting. That was best, to simply wait, and not draw attention.

  When a basket was filled to near overflowing with fruit, the slave carrying it would place it to one side of the trellis-lane. A younger slave, not yet trusted with the picking, would come down to fetch it, leaving an empty basket in its place to be filled in turn. That slave would bring the full basket down, away from the vineyard itself to the crusher, a great wooden monster construct twice as high as a grown man and four times the length.

  That was where the boy waited. His responsibility was to monitor the fill level of the wooden crusher, making sure that the right amount of fruit was added, no more and no less.

  The other slave had been right; it was a good job. It was also an important job, a sign that the overseer was not displeased with him, and he felt the responsibility keenly. But the truth was that it was bori
ng, and his legs kept falling asleep.

  An old slave, his wizened limbs useless for anything else, watched from the other side, sitting in a raised wooden chair to make sure that every fruit was placed into the great wooden monster and that no slave sneaked even one fruit into his mouth. He was also there to ensure that no fingers or clothes were trapped in the process. Every year at least one slave was maimed or killed that way, the weights and beams catching the unwary or the careless. The boy had worked six Harvests since the Master bought him and seen the results: slaves missing fingers and, in one case, an entire arm, crushed to uselessness and cut off before it could turn black and stink.

  Two baskets were emptied into the maw of the monster, then a third. The old slave nodded at the boy, licking his cracked, dry lips in a way that reminded the boy of the lizards that sunned themselves on the low stone walls between the vineyards. The boy looked away again, focusing all of his attention on the crusher, as though that would make the old man go away. Harvest stories weren’t the only ones told in the sleep house. The younger slaves knew to stay away from that one’s hands in the darkness, or when they used the shit pits at night.

  The slavers had men like that, too. He had been younger then, too young, and not as careful. But the slavers were past, done with him now that he belonged to another.

  The other slaves might fumble under blankets or up against shadowed walls, willingly or not. Here the boy learned how to say no without saying anything at all, to evade reaching hands without giving offense, and even as those his own age began to look around with an interested eye, he felt no desire at all, not even to use his own hand, as the others did. Fortunately, hard work and a sudden growth over the winter had finally turned his rounded limbs into harder muscle, so a slave grabbed at him at his own risk now, and the overseer had shown no interest in flesh, save that it did the work assigned to it.