Flesh and Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “He tore them up late last year, all the roses, every bush,” Mahault said. “I woke one morning, and there were only bare holes in the ground.”

  “And you didn’t ask why?” Ao said.

  Jerzy snorted. Ao would have asked Sin Washer himself why, and expected an answer.

  Mahault did not look at either one of them, stroking the petal like it was the most precious and delicate of glass, and would shatter if breathed upon. “My father. . .no longer welcomes questions, Trader Ao. Best you remember that, if he ever grants you an audience. Aleppan is no longer as it once was.”

  The trader’s face went from one expression to another, like the shifting of clouds across the sky, but Jerzy could not identify what the changes meant. In a determinedly casual change of topic, Ao instead asked Mahault about the type of stone used for the statue, and if it was locally mined or imported. Mahault responded in kind, and the conversation moved on to discussions of quarrying and local artisans, leaving Jerzy feeling as though he had missed something important.

  He truly was not cut out to be a spy.

  Chapter 20

  Although the conversation remained in his mind, Jerzy had no chance to follow up on Mahault’s odd comment about her father, or what it might mean, because, seemingly overnight, the grapes reached first ripening, and Giordan and he spent the next two days in the fields from dawn to dusk, inspecting the fruit, removing subpar bunches to allow others more room to grow. Malech did not preselect, but weathervines were more jealous of their growing space, or so Giordan explained it, too many together “like clouds colliding, and storms arising.” It could not be accomplished alone, of course, and so while Giordan identified the grapes for culling, Jerzy found himself working with the servants the lord-maiar supplied to do the actual pull.

  “No, no, like this!” Jerzy showed a worker the proper way to work around the gnarled and twisted rootstock for the third time, and bit back an impatient swear. The overseer would have laid a slave out flat by now, for such incompetence. How did the Vineart work with such useless hands?

  “Patience, Jerzy,” Giordan said, coming up behind them as Jerzy sent the man back to work. He took off his hat, a particularly misshapen straw form that looked like it had been nibbled at by mice, and wiped his forehead with a scrap of red cloth, then tucked the cloth back into his belt. “They do their best, but they have no feel for the vines, the way we do.”

  Jerzy wiped his own forehead and looked out at the field. It had taken them two days to accomplish what would have been a morning’s chore back home, with trained slaves. “And you think this is a better way to work?”

  “No. I think it is an acceptable compromise for what I get in return: excellent lands, work, and living space someone else maintains. . .I know it’s not traditional, but the vines are worth it.” And that was all Giordan would say on the matter.

  Back at the palazzo, Jerzy sluiced the sweat and grime off his skin in the bathhouse and contemplated going in search of Ao, or heading out into the city again, but exhaustion won out each night, and he ate a light meal in his rooms and fell asleep soon after.

  The third morning brought with it a light, almost misty rain, and Jerzy found his way down to the workroom, planning to continue in his study of the yield patterns of healvines versus Giordan’s weathervines, a project the Vineart had suggested, to determine if the other Vineart’s trellis-and-row method actually showed an improvement in yield. If he could not carry out Master Malech’s orders to gather information, he could at least bring something of value back to the House.

  Giordan had a kettle of tai and steaming-fresh bread waiting, to ward off the unusual chill, and Jerzy headed for it with no small feeling of gratitude.

  “Good morning. Before you begin, I found a journal of my master’s I thought you might find useful.” Giordan indicated a large, leather-bound book resting on the workbench. Jerzy opened the book, and was struck by the delicate ink drawings within. Little text, but page after page of leaves and grapes, birds and insects, all rendered in a careful hand and labeled with names and details.

  “This is. . .amazing.”

  “My master was not a very good Vineart,” Giordan said, returning to the calculations he was making on a vintage chart. “I learned as much as I could from him, and then set out on my own. I suppose that is why I don’t hold much with traditions. But he loved the vines, and noticed details in the natural world most of us would overlook. That journal is only a few years’ worth of notes, and it holds more than most people could see in a lifetime.”

  Jersey turned another page and, enthralled, sat down on the floor, drawing the bench toward him to better look through it.

  “It’s yours.”

  “What?” Surely he had not heard Giordan correctly.

  “The journal. When you go, take it with you.” The Vineart looked at Jerzy, his normally smooth features creased. “I have been. . .thinking, recently. About my Agreement with the maiar. You have seen it yourself. I have no slaves. I will have no student, no one to pass this along to. I made that choice and I do not regret it, but. . .I don’t want that to end up in the maiar’s collection, stored and never looked at save as a curiosity, and whoever takes over my vines when I am gone. . .no. I would rather you have it. A gift, one Vineart to another, in honor of this quietly momentous exchange we have shared.”

  Seeing Giordan was serious, Jerzy merely bowed his head in acceptance, and put the book away, feeling oddly uncomfortable now, as though he were taking the gift under false pretenses.

  The rest of the day passed quietly, the only sounds the scratching of Giordan’s pen and the rustle of pages. It was interesting work, and useful work, but Jerzy felt a twitch between his shoulder blades that only became worse, the longer he worked. Giordan’s words, about leaving his master and going out on his own, had sounded in him like a stone dropping into the well. He had been waiting for an opportunity to fall into his lap; no more. Vines did not harvest themselves; if he wanted information, he had to go find it himself.

  That afternoon, when Giordan left him to run some errand of his own, Jerzy made his way into the main hallways of the palazzo. He did not have enough time to go into the city, but the garden would do almost as well.

  By now he knew some of the courtiers by sight, and they him, and the guards were often willing to stop and chat, if they weren’t on watch. As he walked through the cool white hallways, however, he became aware of an odd feeling to the air, like a storm about to fall—or one that was threatening. The now-familiar faces were stern, warning him off from approaching them, and the courtiers he saw had a furtive, worried look about them. Jerzy’s pace slowed, and he had to fight the urge to go back to his wing and bury himself in the old journal all evening.

  When he saw Washer Darian walking down the hallways toward him, however, he let his caution push him back into a small alcove, keeping his body as still as possible so as not to attract the man’s attention. The last thing he wanted right now was to explain why he was wandering aimlessly, rather than sitting at lessons. When he saw those dark red robes go through the double doors that led into the maiar’s antechamber—the one Ao had complained about wasting so much time in—his curiosity got the better of him, however, and he moved forward, even as a messenger in the maiar’s household colors of blue and brown came out through those doors with a leather packet in his hand and the mark of a newly formed bruise on his face.

  “Be careful, young master,” he said softly, seeing Jerzy. “Now is not the time to be anywhere near here, if you can avoid it.”

  Before Jerzy could ask what the man meant, he was too far down the hall, never pausing in his steady pace or in any way indicating that he had even noticed Jerzy, much less spoken to him.

  “Always listen to servants,” Ao had said. “Always.”

  Before he could decide what to do, there was an outburst of noise, and the door the Washer had recently gone in was thrown open, and three men came out.

  Two of them wore the
brown surcoats of the Aleppan Council. The third was an older man, with night-dark skin and a bald head, in much finer clothing.

  Jerzy quickly leaned against the wall next to an alcove and thought hard about if he wanted to sit there and think for a while, or move on. Thus apparently distracted and harmless, he was able to watch the activity at the end of the hall without calling attention to himself.

  “You cannot do this! This is not right!” The older man was shouting not in Ettonian, but Corguruth, meaning that he was probably a local, and a well-off one, if Jerzy could tell anything from his attire. From the way the guards were handling him, firmly but without violence, and with almost a hint of deference, he had some status in the court as well.

  Or, had once had status, Jerzy amended. Clearly, he was not well-regarded by the maiar right now.

  The man was struggling, although not enough to do damage. “The maiar is not himself! You must allow me—”

  One of the guards, finally tiring of the noise, placed a large hand over his mouth, turning the complaint into a muffled yelp. Jerzy couldn’t hear what he said to his prisoner, but the man stopped struggling immediately and allowed himself to be marched off without further complaint, in the opposite direction the servant had gone.

  The door to the antechamber swung closed, as though someone had pushed it, and the hallway was silent again.

  Ao’s clan, summoned and then insulted. Mahault upset, saying her father had changed. Servants and guardsmen worried enough to change their behaviors. And now courtiers being removed, forcibly, from the council room, saying that something was wrong with the maiar. . .

  Ao might have had the courage to forage on. Jerzy, all too aware of how tempers could flare and bad things happen, turned on his heel and fled for the safety of the Vineart’s wing, and his own room.

  Tucked into bed, the journal open on his lap, Jerzy fought with his shame and guilt. Something was happening outside, perhaps even the very thing he had been sent to discover, and he had fled. Ao would have talked someone into giving him answers. Mahault would have stayed. He had hopped away like a rabbit, and hid.

  He did not sleep well that night, at all.

  THE NEXT MORNING Jerzy rose, determined that he would not be squeamish again. Time was half gone. If something was happening, Master Malech needed to know about it. And if he could not get near the maiar or the council rooms themselves, he would do the next best thing.

  It was midmorning when the opportunity came about. They were sitting in the courtyard garden, with seven tasting spoons of weather-wine lined up in front of Jerzy. He was supposed to taste each one, a sip only, and tell Giordan what each one was for. The trick was, Giordan crafted only three different spellwines: wind-bringing, rain-controlling, and one that should raise or lower the warmth within a specific range. That meant that at least four of the wines were either duplicates, or something else entirely.

  As Giordan fussed with the placement, Jerzy sat in his chair and tried not to let his anxiousness show through. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure moving slowly through the open walkway at the far end of the courtyard. It was Mahault. Jerzy raised a hand in greeting, but she either did not see him, or chose not to respond. Giordan clearly saw the aborted exchange, but did not make mention of it.

  “You were right,” Jerzy said, as though suddenly coming to a realization. “Master Malech’s independence leaves me woefully ignorant about the larger world. Tell me. . .oh, tell me about the lord-maiar and his family?”

  “Test first. Gossip later.” Giordan’s temper was sharp this morning. Whatever he had gone off to do the day before had, apparently, not gone well.

  “It’s not gossip, it’s interest. Master Malech sent me here to learn other ways. . . .Your relationship with the lord-maiar is another way from how we live back home. I may end up in a situation closer to yours than Master Malech’s, so I should know how to go about in such company, yes?”

  Jerzy was rather pleased with his talk-around. Ao might get him into trouble, but he was as good a teacher in his own way as Cai back home. And while Malech would have whapped him for the flummery, Giordan merely tsked, and pointed again at the wines. “Taste, and I will tell.”

  Jerzy lifted the first tasting spoon. Not as fine as Master Malech’s; these were little more than hammered silver depressions with a curl on the side to lift by, and while deeper red wines glimmered in such spoons, the yellower tones of weatherwines merely sat there unappealingly. Jerzy knew better than to make that observation out loud, however.

  He raised the spoon to his nose, and sniffed, delicately. “Straw, and. . .sunberries? Ripe sunberries.” Without waiting for a yea or nay, he took a sip, holding it in his mouth and letting the flavors fill his senses. He remembered the first time he had ever tasted spellwine, when it had exploded all at once in his mind, no subtlety or distinction. Now he could find the threads of flavor that matched to and indicated the magic contained within. And still, the more he learned, the more he became aware that he did not know. Giordan had spent his entire life learning to harness the magic within a single grape, and Master Malech said he was considered near-Master level. Jerzy was . . . simply Jerzy. Jerzy who brought thunder and hail when he was tasked for a gentle rain.

  “Less thinking. More tasting.” Giordan scowled at him, an expression the Vineart had trouble maintaining. “You are letting your head overcome your senses. So, what is this?”

  “Straw and sunberries are not hallmarks of one of your vines. There is magic here, but less subtle, more forward.” He let his tongue run over his teeth, and followed the taste. “This is a growspell, but not one I am familiar with.”

  “For children,” Giordan said. “For babies born too soon, or ill, to bring them back to health. The vines grow on the rocky hills of Carcel, where the sea winds blast them with spray, and the sun is fierce but quick. I trade a cask of my wines for one of theirs every year, and pray it is not needed. And now the next.”

  The second wine was darker, unappealingly the color of bloody urine, and smelled like well-worn leather, a deep, musky nose. When Jerzy tasted it, the magic almost knocked him off the chair, swooping through his body like a storm.

  “Windspell. Yours. Stronger than the one I tasted before.” There was a sense of motion to it, of racing from one place to another. . . .“A sea wind, to fill a sail and send a boat flying.”

  “Well done. Yes. Sailors come on the sly and buy much of each vintage. Even some from the Caulic islands,” Giordan said with a smirk. “They may scorn us in public, but their coin fills coffers within all Aleppan while they are here, making a satisfying association for all concerned. They are arrogant, for a people with no magic of their own, but they pay well for ours, and their ships undeniably are among the finest on the water.”

  Jerzy bit back a smile. Cai would be heartbroken to hear that not all his fellow Caulians were willing to go without the assistance of magic.

  Jerzy lifted the third spoon. The wine glimmering in the spoon was a clear golden color, like morning sunlight, and smelled of warmed stone. He inhaled, and placed the spoon back down, untouched. “Vin ordinaire. Should I try to identify where it is from, or was the test merely to see if I recognized it for what it was?”

  The words came out of his mouth as though Ao had spoken them, brash and confident, and somewhere part of him cringed, anticipating the blow he had just earned.

  “If you could not recognize ordinaire you would still be breaking your backside under the vines,” Giordan said sharply. “Finish the exercise.”

  The words stung as hard as a slap, and Jerzy meekly picked up the spoon again. “The mouth is. . .stone. Warm stone, carrying over from the nose. I. . .” He took another tiny sip, and let the liquid roll around in his mouth, able to focus purely on the taste without the distraction of magic in his mouth, then opened his mouth slightly and drew air in over the wine, trying to open it up. It was lovely, smooth and cooling, delicate and yet thick at the same time. “I. . .it was grown in a
porous soil, and a gentle sun but. . .I can’t identify it. I am sorry, Magister.”

  “Confidence is a good thing. Pride is a failing. We craft what the vines give us, but we must also give the vines an understanding of what we want. We are no more, no less than our work.” Giordan let his words linger in the air for a moment, and then reached for a small clay shipping flask. “This is the wine you were drinking.”

  The wax seal on the side was that of the Valle of Ivy. His own vineyards.

  “Bonewine.” Once he knew, it was obvious.

  “A year came, not so long ago, that the vines did not give up their magic. A bad year, that. Some Vinearts panicked, dug up their vine and replaced them with another, or hoarded their stores as though the world might fall down in flames. Your master calmly set about making a vin ordinaire that was, in a word, magnificent. Not magic, but magical. A spellwine lasts a year, perhaps two, once it is made. An ordinaire might last two or three years, if stored properly. That wine, Jerzy, is almost ten years old.”

  He replaced the flask carefully, handling it the way another man might his weapon, or his lover. “My master was. . .a good man, a wise man, and a mediocre Vineart. Your master? Is a magician. Never forget that.”

  The thought, rather than reassuring Jerzy, made him more anxious. “Giordan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you ever. . .do you ever actually feel like you know what you are doing? Or is it all. . .someday, someone’s going to find you out, and. . .”

  “And?” The Vineart looked at him, his open face showing nothing but an honest curiosity. Jerzy could have asked anything at that moment, anything at all, and Giordan would have answered it, in apology for his unusual burst of temper. Jerzy lowered the spoon, and stared into the remaining wine as though it might speak for him.

  “And send you back into the fields?” Giordan finished the question for him.

  “Yes.” He didn’t question how the older man knew; it might have been a question that every student asked, or it might have been a lucky guess, or it might not even have been the question he would have asked, but needed the answer to, nonetheless.