Flesh and Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Giordan sighed, the first time Jerzy had ever heard him utter such a sound. It wasn’t enough to make him look up, however. Looking down was easier. There was less risk of seeing whatever punishment was coming.

  “Our lives seem easy to those outside. They are not. Magic does not come to those who are not. . .tested, and once it comes. . .we pay a price for it, every day of our lives.

  “We never escape the fields, Jerzy. We are always in the fields. We are always slaves. The only difference is that now we know what we are slaves to.”

  There was silence, and then Giordan pushed back his chair and Jerzy heard his soft boot steps pace across the room. Had it been Master Malech, he would have known where he stood, and what sort of response would be forthcoming, be it a slap or a scold. “Go,” the Vineart said, finally. “This test is done. Spend the afternoon somewhere other than here.”

  It was an order, not a suggestion, and Jerzy left without asking any of the questions that were now simmering in his mind.

  The unease he had felt the day before still lingered in the halls of the main building, to the point where courtiers no longer lingered in hallways or courtyards, chatting, and even the servants were keeping out of sight. Jerzy went back to his room and changed his soft boots for harder-soled ones, wrapped his belt around his waist, added his leather purse to it, and followed his teacher’s orders.

  “Going out, young master? Mind you avoid the southern market. Horse market’s today, and there’s always a fight or five the town guards have to break up. Best to avoid it entirely.”

  Jerzy acknowledged the door guard’s advice, even as a small, annoyed voice inside wanted to tell him that he, Jerzy, had faced down worse things than a market brawl. The urge to go directly toward the southern market followed, and was likewise firmly squelched. Instead, he headed into the center of town, following the circular streets that curved away from the palazzo at the northern point of Aleppan, past narrow gray stone houses pressed up against one another like Giordan’s vines, resting their walls on one another for support. Members of the Aleppan Council lived here, he knew now from Ao’s chatter, within the beck and call of the maiar. The only other people on the street were servants, on their way to or from errands for their Houses. A single older man walked an unsaddled gray horse, possibly coming from the market.

  The neighborhood in the next, nearest section out from the palazzo belonged to the Perfumers’ Guild, and the smells from their shops that afternoon were wafting on the breeze, making his nostrils twitch. The maiar might find them appealing, but Jerzy couldn’t quite rid himself of the desire to sneeze; it was too much, too thick, and he walked more quickly, hoping to escape before his head began to ache from the confusion.

  The cobbled stone streets broadened slightly as he moved into the next neighborhood, and the smells were thinner but less pleasant, bringing a note of overcooked meat and clay on random wafts of air. The buildings here were made of the same gray tone, but were wider, and occasionally had narrow alleys between them, leading to glimpses of greenery hidden out of public view. The sight made him think wistfully of the open skies and wide fields of The Berengia. The city was exciting, but it was also confusing, and complicated. Jerzy decided that he would not want to live here, not even for the comfortable surroundings and secure living Vineart Giordan had negotiated with the maiar.

  There were more people in sight here, gathered in groups of three or four, either pausing to look at a storefront or talking amongst themselves. Good pickings, to harvest gossip.

  One group in particular caught his attention, although he couldn’t have said why. Four men, dressed in the half coats and hose he knew now indicated a high level within the maiar’s court, were standing near a small gray stone fountain: a likeness of Sin Washer with the water running from his elbows down into the basin at his feet. Drawn by a tickle of something in the back of his thoughts, Jerzy walked closer, trying to keep his path as seemingly random as possible, thinking casually that the fountain seemed a good place to sit and rest awhile, perhaps while waiting to meet a friend. The men kept talking as he drew near, and he was able to see that two of the men wore a palm-sized device sewn onto the breast of their half coats, an archway picked out in silver thread. Jerzy had seen that mark before. Like the Coopers’ bronze barrel, the silver archway was a mark of guild membership; in this case, the Carters’ Guild. Detta dealt with the cartsmen, making arrangements for Master Malech’s spellwines to go to his buyers, and for supplies to come back in return.

  “And half our shipments never arrived,” one of them was saying, his voice thin with displeasure. Jerzy knelt against the fountain, just out of sight of the men, and looked out across the street, as though he were searching for someone. “No sign of pirates, no report of wreckage, just disappeared from the ocean’s skin like the air itself ate them. And then we are expected to make good on our Agreement, and we have no one to turn to for compensation ourselves! This will bankrupt us within a year, if the maiar does nothing.”

  “Nothing is exactly what he means to do.” A lighter voice, tight and hard. “I was to see him the halfweek before, to plead for a reduction in the taxes he has placed on us. Impossible, to pay such a fee, and no reason for imposing it. The metalwrights are always willing to do our share, but there need must be a reason for it! He cripples us to build his treasury, and forces honest men to find work elsewhere.”

  “The day I meet an honest metalwright, I’ll eat your hat,” a third voice said. “But you have the right of it, otherwise. He brings forward taxes and fines that he claims are needed, yet will give us no satisfaction when we ask for reasons. There are those who whisper he is in the pay of another city, to beggar us so that we would be easy pickings for annexation.”

  “It’s not only the guilds that are suffering. Have you seen the markets lately? Fewer traders, fewer goods, fewer supplies coming into port. And the one trading clan that is in court has been made to cool their heels, rather than being begged to negotiate. It makes no sense; it’s madness.”

  Jerzy’s ears perked up at that. It wasn’t what he had been sent for, but he could all too easily imagine the fate of a vessel, laden with supplies, if confronted with one or more sea serpents, in the open waters. . ..

  “Fewer traders and goods in the market, perhaps.” The fourth man, who had not spoken until then. “But money flows through the city, in goods and coin. And all of it comes from elsewhere, via strangers with easy access to our beloved maiar. . ..”

  “Ahhhhh,” the second speaker cautioned, his voice lowering. “The one thing you don’t want to do right now is speak ill of the maiar, even in jest, even among friends. He has a chancy temper, and even the court familiars are watching their step around him now. Grumble all you want about conditions; he does not seem to care. But against the man himself, stay quiet, and keep such thoughts to yourself.”

  Jerzy was distracted by whatever response was made to that by a familiar figure coming into view.

  “Ah, there you are! Excellent, I was worried I’d be wasting my entire afternoon trying to decide which fountain you had meant. Come on, we’ll be late.” Ao took Jerzy’s arm even as he was speaking, and pulled the Vineart forward, walking away from the statue at a steady but un-hurried pace.

  “What are you. . .I was listening back there!” Jerzy was indignant at being taken away, just when he had finally gotten somewhere.

  “I could tell. And doing a good job of it, too. But you’d been there long enough for one of them to notice you, and then they would have shut up anyway, even if they didn’t decide you needed accosting, or maybe even a quick dunking off the piers, to wash the snoop out of you.”

  “Oh.” Jerzy had thought he was doing well. “How long have you been there? Did you follow me?” It was ridiculous, but how else could the trader have found him, in the entire city?

  “Of course I did. And don’t look so downcast; you’re absolutely getting better, didn’t I just say so? It’s entirely possible, if they were merel
y passing the time of day, that they would not have looked at you with suspicion at all. Did you hear anything useful?”

  “I don’t know,” Jerzy said plaintively, not even bothering to protest being followed. “How can you tell if something’s important, if you don’t know what’s going on or even what you need to know?” The moment he heard those words hit the air, his jaw snapped shut, and he felt like an idiot. Why had he said anything? Malech would be angry with him for letting even that much out.

  Ao clapped an arm around his shoulders and, thankfully, didn’t respond to the question. “You, my friend, are in need of something to drink. And, lucky us, I know just the place to get exactly that.”

  The “place” was down two long streets and around a corner, in a neighborhood that obviously catered to a less affluent customer. The wooden placard over the door showed a badly drawn goblet lying on its side and a crescent moon over it. Jerzy hesitated at the doorway: other than the roadhouse he had stayed in during the trip down to take passage here, he had never been in a public house. But Ao gave him a friendly shove, and he was inside.

  “Two ales,” Ao told the woman leaning behind the bar, and put a coin down on the surface, keeping his fingers on it just enough to ensure it stayed there until their drinks arrived. Jerzy let his gaze flit around, not sure what to expect. In truth, it looked a great deal like the dining hall back home, although the ceiling was lower: a long wooden table with an assortment of benches pulled up to it, a fireplace down at the far end that, although unlit, looked like it had seen long years of hard use, and a plank floor that was worn down with the countless shuffle of countless shoes.

  Ao handed him a mug of some dark brown liquid and pointed to the far end of the table. “Over there.”

  The liquid turned out to be thick and strongly bitter, as unlike a vin ordinaire as could be and yet satisfying for all that. Jerzy took another long pull and decided that he approved.

  “The first time I tried to listen in on a conversation I shouldn’t have been near,” Ao said thoughtfully, clearly reliving the memory, “I almost got my ears cut off. They were Eopan riders, fierce as the wind and smelly as twice-dead fish, and I thought to learn something to aid my elder in our negotiations.”

  “And they caught you.”

  “By my aforementioned ear. Held me up by it and trotted me back through camp until he came to our tent, then bartered my release for a double-fold of cloth and a new saddle for his oldest daughter. And the worst thing? I spoke maybe ten words of Eopan, so anything I heard would have been gibberish, anyway!”

  They finished their first ale, and Ao waved at the bartender for another round. By three mugs, he was in full storytelling mode, to an appreciative audience not only of Jerzy, but two other merchants and a kitchen boy who had snuck out from behind the bar to listen.

  “And then we had to make amends with the Dyers’ Guild, but they got over it. Eventually. But it took another month before they would resume discussions with us.”

  The others hooted with laughter, while Jerzy stared at his friend in disbelief, amused despite himself. “How, in Sin Washer’s name, do you make a living, the amount of trouble you’re constantly in?”

  “Ah, that’s not trouble,” Ao said with an airy wave, “that’s trading. Give and take, bicker and barter; it’s all a game, Jerzy. It’s how you determine a man’s limits, and learn what he respects, by pushing and pulling a little here and a little there. At the end of the day we all know that the goods are the important thing; they trust us to carry them safely back and forth, and we trust them to give us quality, and a fair price so we make our own profit on the transaction. It’s all deadly serious but that doesn’t mean it has to be dull.”

  He lifted his mug—his fourth now, to Jerzy’s two and a half, and used it to point at his friend, leaning forward to exclude the others from his conversation. “Like you. You’re deadly serious like the Red Plague”—Ao spat on the floor to ward off bad fortune—“and yet there’s a tension in you, an air of secrecy and urgency that I can’t resist, no more than a dog cannot not chase a hare.”

  “I. . .” Jerzy looked at his fingertips. Normally they would be stained red working with the Berengian grapes, but weathergrapes were paler, and the juice left no mark. He could smell it, though. His vinery’s mark ached lightly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  The merchants, sensing the stories were over, went back to their own conversation, and the serving boy slipped back into the kitchen, unnoticed.

  “Cut loss, Jer. Just because I never met a Vineart before you doesn’t mean I don’t know about them. First off is that they don’t share students. You’re more guildish than any guild, secretive and standoffish and never ever ever getting involved. But here you are, studying with another Vineart, and sniffing around trying—oh so badly—to hear what’s going on beyond your reach, like your next deal depended on it.”

  Ao looked up at him, his round face woeful. “And yet you won’t share what you’re trying to learn. Don’t you trust me?”

  “As far as I could throw this barrel,” Jerzy said, thumping the side of a nearby cask with his heel.

  His friend gaped at him. “Now that’s the way to do it!” he said in delight. “Jer, I’ll make a trader of you yet!”

  “I’d sooner drown in my own wines,” Jerzy grumbled.

  Ao just laughed and ordered another round.

  Chapter 21

  You had a good time last night, hrmmm?” Giordan said, looking at Jerzy from across the worktable. A pot of something that smelled delicious waited on the table, but no food, for which Jerzy was thankful. He wasn’t sure he could handle the smell of anything even slightly greasy.

  “I guess.” He lifted the lid of the pot and sniffed cautiously. Not tai, nor—thank the silent gods—ale.

  “You guess? You do not remember too much?”

  “Not much, no,” Jerzy admitted. He did, actually; every painful, off-tune, staggering moment of it, right to the moment he threw up in the courtyard and staggered into his room, to fall facedown onto his bed with barely enough awareness left to take his shoes off before he collapsed. Master Malech had warned him against drunkenness, but he had only considered wine, had not known of the thick, bitter brew that made his head feel like stone. “Ao bought me ale.”

  “Quite a lot of ale, one presumes. Ah, to be young and stupid once again.” Giordan chuckled, then clapped Jerzy on the shoulder. “Drink your potion and feel well again. Enough time, and the quiet-magics will make sure you are never so again.”

  “It will keep me from getting drunk?” That was the best news Jerzy had heard in weeks.

  “No. It will take away your taste for ale. Drink; I need your thoughts clear today. Today, yes. We have only a week or so left, and the most important is yet to come. Today I teach you how to refine!”

  Jerzy looked at Giordan blankly. In all the steps he had gone through with Master Malech, from Harvest through to incantation, he had never heard of refining. Fining, yes. . .but refining?

  “Weathervines only,” Giordan said, enjoying his student’s confusion. “A thing no others know.”

  Considering he had shown a complete and utter lack of ability to handle them, there was no reason for him to learn that process, and yet the thought of learning something new, something that even Master Malech did not know, proved impossible to resist. Despite his aching head and sour stomach, Jerzy poured a cup of the odd-smelling brew and drank it willingly, only gagging a little at the hot, grassy taste. “What is this,” he asked when he could breathe again.

  “Potion,” was all Giordan would say. “Very strong potion. Now that you can think, follow me, and pay attention.”

  Jerzy obediently got up and followed the Vineart through a heavy wooden door that closed silently behind them. They were now standing in a small room bare of any furnishings but a low slab made of the same whitish-gray stone as the statue the day before. The surface was smooth, save for two narrow ridges that ran parallel down the lengt
h, a fingertip deep; Jerzy assumed they were to keep the half cask on top of the slab from rolling off.

  Giordan changed, somehow, when they entered that room. He was still the same. . .but there was a stillness in him, a seriousness, that once again reminded Jerzy that this was a Vineart, one who would likely someday earn Master status for his skills.

  “This I tell you: from teacher to student it is shared, and no others.”

  Part of Jerzy didn’t want to hear more: he was not Giordan’s student, he had been bought by the House of Malech, those were his vines, not these. . .but he could feel the touch of the weathervines brush against his senses, and the desire to know more overwhelmed the warnings in his head.

  “Weathervines are old, very old, and were very far away from Sin Washer when he changed the vines. That is why they are so green, even when ripe, not completely red. They do not grow well here, take longer to incant. This you know. Now you learn that they are not to be commanded. They do not like being told what to do.” Giordan patted the quarter cask on the table in front of him the way he might a dog who had done good work. “And now that you know why we must refine them, you will learn how we refine them, so they accept incantation.” He looked at Jerzy, and for a moment there was an uncanny resemblance between Malech and Giordan, although neither man looked anything like the other. “The telling characteristic of weathervines, what is it?”

  “Delicacy,” Jerzy responded instantly, sure of his answer.

  “No, no. Delicate, yes. Delicate as you know, but what else do you know of them? You who have walked in their soil, handled their leaves, tasted their fruit, in all its stages: what is the telling characteristic? Not what your teachings tell you—what does the vine tell you?”

  The answer came, this time, not from his head but that awareness Malech had first identified, the Vineart’s Sense. “Stubborn. Weathervines are stubborn.”