Flesh and Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

  His eyes widened, and he looked up at Malech in a combination of satisfaction and alarm. “Master, they were testing you. Who was testing you? Who would dare, to endanger a harvest. . .” Those eyes narrowed again. “More, the vintnery itself would have been damaged. Your reputation. . .”

  The boy’s anger felt true, and it warmed Malech, even as he knew he had to contain it, before Jerzy lost the thread of his logic.

  “My reputation is beyond the reach of anyone who might wish me harm. The worst they could have done was. . .bad. Yes. I am the best crafter of healwines”—no bragging there, simply fact—“and if there was another plague, or war, then the loss would be sorely felt. But there are other vineyards, as you well know. We would survive.” Barely, and not easily, but no need to burden the boy with that knowledge, nor the fact that there were some to whom the deaths of others, absent ready heal-wines, might be reason enough for the action.

  “As to who it might have been. . .the possibilities are open.” He was not young, and had his share of conflicts with others, but the Guardian’s warning echoed, and he hesitated. No, now was not the time to tell the boy everything. Some details he would hold close to himself, until and if the time came to share them. But a few cold truths would be appropriate, at this time and place in Jerzy’s lessoning.

  “Not all people hold our work in high regard, boy. There are those who say the Sin Washer meant to destroy the magic, not share it. That he was sent to destroy the vin magica entirely; that the juice of the grapes was meant merely to refresh, not empower.”

  “They say Sin Washer made a mistake?” Jerzy’s voice held amazement, not horror—slaves were not taught piety in the sleep houses, but survival.

  Malech laughed without humor. “Not in so many words. They frisk around it like lambs determined that there is no butcher, only grass and mother’s milk forever. They say that his intent was subverted, his sacrifice made in vain, and so long as a single Vineart practices, the ideal kingdom of man will never come.” He settled down into discourse mode, letting the recently poured vial of lesson-wine rest on his desk, abandoned for the moment. “They are few, and shouted down at every opportunity by the Brotherhood of Washers, but they have won a toe-hold in a princeling’s Household here, a maiar’s city council there.

  “It was this group that first discovered root-glow, on the shores of a distant land. There, in the stalks of a native grain, it was a frustration, not disaster. But they brought it back, and loosed it among us, and it took years before we discovered the way to combat it, to limit the damage it might do.”

  “And you think that they, that some member of this group, set it on us? But. . .those are healvines!” The outrage in the boy’s voice was mixed with a rougher emotion. Malech was amused—and gratified—to identify it as a possessive sort of anger on behalf of the vines themselves.

  “These people believe that the prince-mages should have been eradicated, not merely split; that only a magic-less world is pleasing to Sin Washer. Even if it means losing the good that spellwines do, yes. Be calm, Jerzy.”

  “Why do we allow such people to continue?” The boy was almost spluttering in his upset.

  Malech leaned back and fixed Jerzy with a stern glare. “Because it is not our place to stop them. Sin Washer’s Command is clear on that matter. Were one such fellow so foolish as to strike at me, I would strike him down, and none might gainsay me. But we are not princelings, with armies or courts. We do not decide the law, and the law in this land gives them freedom to do as they will, so long as it harms no other man nor property.”

  Truth, if not the truth entire. Had these men thought to burn the vintnery itself, the law would have been his ally, finding the villains accountable for his loss. The vines, through Sin Washer’s act, were none of man’s owning. A Vineart might cultivate, and harvest, and make use of. . .but he had no dominion, no rights of ownership. Any man might grow vines and press a vin ordinaire, if he so desired. Few did, either fearing reprimand or through lack of knowledge, but in theory, any might.

  That was theory beyond Jerzy’s understanding at this moment, however.

  “Master?”

  His voice was so tentative, Malech sighed. Still, caution was not unwise for a student. “I haven’t smacked you to the floor yet, boy; you might as well get your questions out now and stop being so mouseish about it.”

  The boy practically tumbled his words over one another, anxious to get them out before Malech changed his mind. “Why did you not hunt down those who did this, discover who they were and punish them? Is that not a personal strike, and allowed by the Command?”

  An easier question to answer, that. “No spellwine can tell truth from lie, or good from evil, Jerzy. Magic is a thing of nature, not mankind. Healing or growing, raising the wind or damping a flame, those are things a Vineart may do, by Sin Washer’s Command. This. . .such an attack, if it is such, is a matter of proof and courts. Vinearts tend to their magic and the princelings tend to their laws, and the world no longer rocks in the conflict between the two as it did in the days of the mage-lords. The Washers make sure of that.”

  “But, Master—”

  Malech’s voice cracked harder than his hand would have, and he took the time to make sure the blow landed properly. Caution was one thing. This line of questioning could only end in disaster. “Sin Washer came to us to save us from ourselves. I for one have no desire to require him to make a repeat visit. We are Vinearts. We compose our lives around the crafting, and we leave the governing to those who are born to that.”

  Jerzy was properly subdued, and took up his vial and wine again without further comment, settling at a table across the room to work. The Guardian, however, lifted its head up from its stone paws and looked down with those sightless eyes at Malech; a steady, thoughtful gaze.

  You know that cannot last. Not if the rumors we are hearing are true.

  Recent rumors come to his unwilling ears, of strange plagues and seemingly random attacks. Of vineyards damaged, their fruit withered, or eaten away by some unknown rot. Like the unusual order coming from Atakus, things that happened outside his lands were no concern of his, so long as it left him and his alone.

  And when it begins to concern you?

  Malech looked away from the Guardian, and focused all of his attention on Jerzy’s careful, if halting, movements with the vials. It was a valid question the Guardian asked. He just didn’t know what the answer would be.

  Chapter 8

  Three months passed from the root-glow infestation, and outside the barren brown ground was more often than not frosted with ice, the slaves huddled in the sleep house or working with the livestock. When the ground was bare, Jerzy worked mornings with Cai; they had progressed to riding lessons now, and Jerzy felt confident enough to stay on horseback no matter what the beast might do. The few times that snow covered the ground, he was given over to Detta, learning more of how a vintnery was run. Someday he would need to know these things for himself, Detta said.

  Jerzy couldn’t even begin to imagine that day.

  In the afternoons he worked with Master Malech, more and more often crafting the finished wines, what Master Malech called vina, into balance. He had even corked a clay vessel of his own crafting, and spent several days floating on that sense of accomplishment, until Master Malech slapped him down with an almost impossible assignment, and he ruined an entire quarter cask of healwine trying to manage a bone-set incantation.

  A week after that, by the time he’d woken, washed, and relieved himself, and emptied the pot of soil into the chute, the sun was warm enough to melt the window frost. The sign was clear: Fallowtime was ending. He walked down the stairwell to the dining hall, wondering if this would put an end to his lessons with Cai, and had barely sat down at the table when Detta dumped a question on him like a bucket of icy water.

  “A message came from Beuville this morning. Winter sickness in town, all quarantined, could we send healwine and take payment after their crops are in?”r />
  He checked himself, looking for Malech, as though the Master might have come in unnoticed behind him, then realized that yes, the Housekeeper was asking him.

  “Beuville is. . .where?” he asked, stalling until his brain caught up with his body. It had been a hard, cold morning, and simply forcing himself out from under the coverlet had taken all of his willpower.

  “Half a day’s walk to the west. They hold their charter of Prince Ranulf, but deal directly with us for their needs. Their workers built our press, when Master Malech came into residency.”

  “How serious a sickness?” That should have been his first question: he had not been born when the rose plague swept through the known lands, but he had heard stories that made his skin creep with horror, of bodies covered with petal-like blemishes, blood running from their mouths and anuses until they simply bled out, and not even the strongest blood staunch could stop it. The Berengia had been spared the worst, due to Malech’s spells, but the fear of the plague’s return haunted everyone, even now.

  “Serious, but contained,” she said reassuringly. “It’s merely illness, not plague.” Jerzy nodded, breathing again. Detta had been a girl when the rose plague had hit, and would not underestimate the risk.

  “Do you trust them to pay?” he asked. Detta handled all money matters, and Jerzy knew Malech trusted her implicitly.

  Detta shrugged, her rounded shoulders meeting rounded chin. “It’s still a month and more until first crops will be sown; if they recover in time to man their fields, they should be fine. If not. . .”

  “Send it,” he said. “Unless Master Malech has a reason to say no.”

  “I always have a reason to say no. What disaster are you plunging me into this time?”

  Jerzy flinched, and Detta shot Malech an annoyed look that he ignored, reaching past her to take a sausage link off the platter and, carefully, pop it into his mouth. She sighed and handed him a cloth to wipe the resulting grease stain off his fingers. It was only then that Jerzy noted his master was wearing a grandly embroidered half robe of garnet cloth over—unusually—clean black trousers and a white shirt with a vine pattern embroidered on the collar, a pair of soft leather shoes replacing his usual sturdy and scuffed half boots.

  “Messenger arriving today?” Detta asked, while Jerzy gaped at the unexpected finery.

  “Yes, curse them for bad timing, as I’d thought to—oh well, can’t be helped. Pigeon arrived this morning. I’d half a thought to pitch it into the stew pot.” He waved away the offer of a bowl, but accepted a mug of tai from Lil. “You were talking about offering credit?”

  “Beauville’s come down sick. Nothing serious, but we won’t be getting the Players this year, as they’re caught in it.”

  “Ah. Pity, that. Whatever they need, yes. If all else fails, I’ll take their firstborn sons.” He paused. “No, too many of those already. We can settle on sheep. They raise good sheep there, very tasty. That will be fine. Jerzy, go down to the workroom and continue where we left off yesterday. If you’re making decisions about our livelihood, then you’re comfortable enough with the process to be on your own for a short while without causing epic disaster. Do nothing to prove me wrong in that assumption.” He glared at Jerzy over the rim of the mug, and then walked out of the room, his shoes making no noise against the stone flooring.

  Jerzy looked at Detta, who looked away, holding her hand to her mouth. He wasn’t sure if that meant that she didn’t want to explain what was bothering Malech, or if she was hiding a smile that would mean the Master had been joking, and he wasn’t supposed to know that she knew. Even after all this time, there was still so much about living in the House that confused him. “Messenger?”

  “None of your worry, young Jerzy, if Malech hasn’t seen fit to tell you.”

  That was true enough, so he did the only thing he could do. He finished his meal, and went down to the workroom.

  The Guardian was already in place over the doorway, and on impulse Jerzy reached up to touch the tip of its tail where it dangled just over the lintel. The stone was cool and smooth to his touch, and Jerzy felt somehow disappointed, as though he were expecting something else.

  The wine they had been using in the previous day’s lesson on how to incant vin magica had gone slightly sour overnight, so Jerzy went into the storeroom to bring out another. As always, walking into the storeroom was a pleasant assault on his senses; the resting casks filled with wines emitting an array of smells, from ripe seaberries to the cool hints of winter nutmeats. More, the heady awareness of magica rising from those casks intoxicated his brain and made his mouth water. Normal reactions, Malech had told him. Normal, but dangerous. A Vineart controlled spellwine; he did not allow the spellwine to control him.

  Shutting off as much awareness of the finished wines as he could, Jerzy pulled down a half cask of prepared vina from the storage rack and carried it back out into the clearer, less interesting air of the work-room. A push of the appropriate stone in the wall, and the door slid closed without a sound. By now, Jerzy no longer marveled at that. Like the bathing room, the Guardian, and having a bedchamber to himself, it merely was.

  Creating magic: that still amazed him. Even more so when he was allowed to do it himself, without Malech’s hand guiding his own.

  A slave in the field, he had walked along the vines uncountable times. If there was a memory before pointed green leaves and woody vines, it was faded at best. Never then, the child he had been, could he have understood how simple the act was, to wring juice from grape, and decant juice into magic. How simple—and how. . .words failed him utterly. How complicated, impossible, and astonishing, as drawing that first breath, or taking that first step, your body knowing what to do and then doing it. You could learn only so much through books and lectures and repetition. To create wine, much less spellwine, it needed to be in your hands, in your blood.

  It ran through his head, like blood pumping in his veins. From mustus to vina, from vina to vin magica, and from vin magica to proper spellwine . . . he could not craft spellwine, not yet, not anything that could be released as such. Not for many years, Master Malech said. Already he was ahead of where most students might be, and with that he needed to be patient.

  Patience again. Any time he displeased Master Malech, it was a cuff to the head and an admonishment to be patient.

  The half cask Jerzy selected was from one of the southern fields, tested and proofed by Malech in the most recent Harvest. It had been in one of the vats Jerzy had punched down, reciting his lessons as his arms worked endlessly and the smell of the mustus rose into his nose and seeped into his skin. Transferred into smaller holding casks for vinification, the vina was ready now for the magic within it to be woken and directed.

  Jerzy’s hand did not tremble as he let the deep red wine flow into the decanting glass, and his voice did not falter as he reached inside himself, finding that deep, resonant voice within him that spoke to the magic of the wine.

  There were three clay pots of spellwine filled and finished on the worktable in front of him, ready for stoppering, and his knees were slightly wobbly with the effort, when he felt the crash. The walls of the workroom were thick stone and kept sound out as well as they kept the cool air within, but the sound traveled through the ground itself, almost a physical shock. The sound that did cut through the rock was a high-pitched keening that had Jerzy heading up the stairs before he’d known he was moving.

  Detta and the new kitchen boy—Geordie had gone on to another placement the month before—met him in the front garden, having come out through the kitchen door at the side of the house.

  “The cart!” the kitchen boy said, pointing down the path out to the main road. Through the archway Jerzy could see a pile of splintered wood that used to be one of their transport wagons. All three of them could hear the low screams and moans as well as the alarmed cries of other slaves running up from the sleep house and the vintnery shed.

  Master, what do I do? Jerzy thought helplessly,
his head spinning from the chaos.

  A dry voice sounded in the air around him, unexpected but so smooth and familiar that he barely started in surprise that his master could hear, and speak, in that fashion.

  “Idiot boy, I can’t be bothered by this now. Make sure none of them are permanently damaged. We can’t afford to buy new slaves right now and we will need all the able bodies we have. And clear the road, so the other wagons can get through!”

  The voice disappeared, and he was left with Detta and the kitchen boy staring at him. Jerzy realized, with a clenching in his gut, that they had not heard Master Malech’s voice and were waiting for him to give orders. Detta’s question that morning hadn’t been a fluke: in Malech’s absence, he was master of the House.

  Jerzy was about to turn and go back to the cellar to grab a flagon of healwine when he realized that there was already one in his hand. His own vin magica, not specified yet, but still healwine. Still usable. But. . .he didn’t know enough, he couldn’t control it without the spell crafted in, and he didn’t know how to do that yet, he had to go back, find something else. . .

  “Jerzy, men are hurt!”

  Detta’s words snapped him out of his hesitation, and Jerzy moved, running down the path, the flagon held firmly in one sweaty hand, the other already pulling the stopper from the top. The wagon—one of the three used to transport barrels from the vintnery to the warehouse where the porters would then take them to their final destination and bring back much-needed supplies—had somehow, impossibly, broken in two.

  The horse, one of the white, heavy-muscled animals, thankfully with the disposition of a boulder, stood quietly among the wreckage, the leather harness resting limply on its broad back. Three slaves lay to the side of the splintered wreck, and two were underneath, trapped against the cobblestones. One, Jerzy quickly determined, had been crushed under the metal brace and was obviously dead. The other was the source of the screaming, and there was a dark puddle of blood forming under him.