Opening his palm, he didn’t let himself hesitate, but licked his palm clean, taking back his spittle and the harsh bitter flesh of the grape.
Weathervine. Not the vines of his master. These had not accepted him, had placed no mark upon his skin, and yet. . .Giordan had allowed him to participate in vinification; he had let their juice sit on his tongue, felt the change as vinification forced the magic from potential into truth.
“Let me in,” he asked the vines, not even aware that he was speaking. “Let me know. . .”
His fist clenched, even as his arm spasmed and he fell forward, hitting his head against the vine, knocking it askew. Every handspan of his body felt like a thousand grubs were wriggling against it, digging into the meat, stinging and biting in a way that was sharp but not actually painful.
Holding the sensations with half of his awareness, Jerzy reached for his memories of the sea serpent, the smell and feel of it moving through the water, the stink of the chunks of flesh, the tingle of magic as Malech tested the remains.
Master Malech had not recognized the magic that created the sea serpent. The magewine had not recognized the legacy it came from. And yet Giordan himself spoke of how unique this soil was, how subtle and powerful. . .and how little others knew of how it was crafted.
And something was wrong here in Aleppan. Something that brought the Washers here, curious enough to make Giordan angry. Was it only the Brotherhood questioning Giordan’s actions in taking in the student of another? But Giordan had knocked down those questions before, without hesitation. Something new had occurred. It might not have anything to do with the conversation Jerzy had overheard between the maiar and the Washer in the courtyard. . ..
But it might.
And that connection might lead back to the attacks elsewhere, the things Master Malech worried about. Might. Maybe. No proof, no certainty. But something—some tingle in his blood that whispered for trust—told him it was so.
Only magic spoke like that. If it was Giordan’s magic, if his host was involved, then Jerzy had to know.
He concentrated, letting the feel of the magic settle into his awareness. Soil, weather, vine, Vineart. Four elements of magic, each recognizable in the final issue. Here, in the rawest, purest sense, without vinification redirecting it, Jerzy could find not the slightest echo of the fire-root infestation, or the more overt “stink” of the sea serpent’s flesh. No decay or death, only the clean aroma of rain and wind.
These vines—he would risk enough to say weathervines anywhere—could not have been at the root of the magic they had encountered so far.
The relief he felt was not a surprise—he had not wanted to think that Giordan could be involved. Underneath that, though, there was a niggle of dissatisfaction and disappointment. If there had been a connection, he would have been the one to find it, the one to solve the mystery, the one to hand the solution to Master Malech. He would have been. . .
Jerzy’s imagination failed him at that point, and the rush of the magic began to drain from him, leaving his limbs heavy and aching. He tried to sit up, feeling a wave of dizziness hit him worse even than being shipboard, a disorientation that was not helped by a hard hand closing around his arm and roughly yanking him back onto his feet.
“What have you done!” Brother Darian cried, pulling him away from the vines by force, his voice pitched not for Jerzy’s ears, but those of the others standing on the other side of the fence, unwilling to step over that border into a Vineart’s lands. Jerzy was able to focus enough to see that the Washer was wearing formal robes, and that his eyes had a wide, almost maniacal gleam to them.
Sar Anton, standing just on the other side of the fence, reached over and grabbed Jerzy from the Washer, hauling him forcibly onto the road. “Witness!” he cried, shaking Jerzy until he thought his eyes might be jolted from his head, and the words spoken over his head became a jumble of noise. “Sin Washer bear witness, this boy has used magic not given unto him, has usurped another Vineart’s rights, and broken Commandment!”
THEY MADE A strange parade back to the palazzo, Sar Anton and another man on horseback, Brother Darian and a third man driving a small cart, with Jerzy behind them, his hands and feet bound with rope they pulled from the cart. People stopped and stared at the grim-faced men, but otherwise fell back and gave them room. Jerzy stared out at the passing scenery, the rush of magic having given way to a coldness deep in his bones, and all he could think was how disappointed Malech would be in him.
They pulled him from the cart, loosening the ties at his legs enough so that he could walk, and moved him up the stairs he had arrived at a month before in such different circumstances. The maiar met them at the front entrance, flanked by two guardsmen and an aide, and Jerzy had the sudden feeling that none of this was by chance.
“What are you doing? What is going on? What? What?” Giordan raced up to them, out of breath and clearly agitated. Whatever was happening, he had not been informed ahead of time. The earlier unease and discomfort had been replaced by confusion and anger as the Vineart reached for Jerzy, only to have Sar Anton push him away.
“Enough, Anton!” the maiar barked, and the nobleman glowered, but stepped back obediently.
“I warned you, Vineart,” Darian said, his hand like an iron band around Jerzy’s forearm. “I warned you to stay within the Commands, and not let your pride blind you to the dangers you invoke. Now is no time for your rebellious studies. And here is the result—your ill-advised student, taking powers that were not given unto him, using magics he has not earned!”
Giordan blanched, his normally lively expression going still.
“I did not!” Jerzy protested, stung by the accusation into forgetting his precarious situation, and Darian knocked him across the chin hard enough to make his jaw snap. To someone not used to such blows, it would have been a felling stroke. Jerzy staggered under it, but stayed upright, ignoring the pain stinging his face. A sideways glance at Giordan’s face, catching the slight shake of his head, and he subsided. Master Giordan would take care of this.
“Brother Darian, enough.” The maiar’s voice was stern, almost angry. “The boy has transgressed, I agree with you. But there is no need for unseemly violence. Put the boy somewhere secure, so we can hear your accusation, and judge its merit.”
“You have no authority over this,” Darian retorted, but he allowed a guardsman to take Jerzy from him. The ropes around his legs were untied, but his hands remained bound behind him, and the guardsman’s grip, although looser than Darian’s, was still enough to keep Jerzy still. “The punishment for breaking a Commandment cannot be argued; it is all that has kept our world safe for generations. He is apostasia.”
Jerzy almost fell to his knees, even as he heard a woman’s gasp of shock. The punishment for apostasy, for a Vineart turning from Sin Washer’s Command, was no mere beating, but death.
The maiar was taken aback as well. “That is a serious claim, Washer Darian, a very serious claim.”
“And it is a Washer’s solemn obligation to find such things, and root them out, before irreparable damage is done,” Darian said. “I will insist—”
“Insist?” The maiar’s voice dropped, becoming dangerously soft. “You are not the master here, not of them nor of me, and while you are indeed the guardians of our virtue, you do not have sole authority to pronounce guilt. Unless I missed a pronouncement come down from the heavens?”
“No.” The “my lord-maiar” that was added after a guardsman stepped forward was only grudgingly said, through gritted teeth. Jerzy could not keep track of what else was happening, too dizzy with his own dilemma, wondering what was to happen to him next.
The maiar turned to look at Jerzy, then reached out and unhooked the leather belt, handing it to Giordan, whose hand trembled as he accepted it.
“Take the boy to his room, and keep him there. Vineart, Washer, come with me.”
Jerzy was led off in the other direction, two more guardsmen falling in behind them. Ser
vants pressed to the walls to let them go by, and looked down at the floor, as though a touch of sleeve or glance of eye might implicate them in whatever trouble Jerzy had found.
They came to his room, and one of the guardsmen went inside first, to check around, while the others waited in the hallway. He came out with a pitcher of water in one hand, and a wineskin in the other.
“Just these; the rest of the room’s clear. If he’s hiding magic, it’s smaller than a thimble”
Jerzy was led into his room, his arms untied and the rope tossed onto the table. One of the other guards produced a thick leather cuff with a heavy chain attached to it. The cuff was buckled around Jerzy’s leg, and the chain attached to a post of the bed frame.
“Sit and wait, and this will all be dealt with.” The first guard was a heavyset man with the patient look of a man who had seen and done everything, twice. “Don’t cause trouble and the maiar will sort this out in time for dinner.”
The door closed behind them, and Jerzy was up off the bed, testing to see how far the chain would allow him to move. He could reach the wardrobe, and the desk, but not the door or the window, and every move he took resulted in the clanking of the metal against the cool stone floor.
The dizziness had faded, as though being chained down literally steadied him. The Washer had not appeared in the vineyard—with witnesses, and a cart!—by chance. Jerzy had, perhaps—no, probably, he admitted to himself—overstepped the boundaries placed on them by strict interpretation of the Commandments, but there was no way that the Washer could have known that, simply by watching.
Unfortunately, Jerzy had no way of proving he was innocent, either, even if anyone were willing to listen. Worse, he was not the only one at risk: Giordan might be held responsible for his actions, and Master Malech as well.
He had to warn Malech.
Wrapping the chain around his hand once, he lifted it enough so that he could move without too obvious a clanking noise, and stepped carefully to the wardrobe. With one hand, he opened the door and shuffled through his folded clothes until his fingers touched something hard.
The mirror.
He retrieved it, and stepped just as carefully to the table. Only then did he let the excess of chain rest at his feet, and used both hands to unwrap the mirror.
Placed flat on the desk, the silvered surface reflected the ceiling, a textured white plaster. The temptation to look into it was easily put down: Jerzy suspected that his face would not fill him with confidence.
Without the water pitcher or his winesack, Jerzy had to work to gather enough spit to make a decent puddle in his palm, and when he did, there was a pink tinge to it that told him that Darian’s blow had done more than bruise the outside of his face.
“Well, Malech did say they once called it blood-magic,” he said, trying for humor. The words sounded flat, spoken out loud, and he didn’t feel amused at all. Still, the words of the decantation came to him letter perfect.
“Respond to my will. Carry my words to the maker-glass. Go.”
As he chanted, Jerzy placed his wet palm down against the glass, and pressed hard.
“Stop him! Guard! He works magic!”
The voice sounded inside the room itself, and Jerzy looked up just in time to be knocked over by a body crashing through the courtyard window.
The boy—hazily, Jerzy recognized him as one of the servants whom he’d passed countless times in the hallway, one of the pages attached to the Aleppan Council—grappled for the mirror, trying to snatch it out of Jerzy’s hold, even as the two slammed onto the floor, elbows and knees swinging for maximum impact. “No, don’t,” Jerzy cried, and their hands both clutched the mirror, battling for possession. The servant was small but tough and wiry, and Jerzy struggled to remember Cai’s lessons for defeating a smaller opponent.
The door slammed open, and Jerzy heard bodies rushing in, the heavy steps and cold snick of drawn metal identifying the guardsmen who had been placed outside. Panicked, Jerzy stopped trying to regain possession of the mirror, and instead brought his hand down hard, dragging his assailant’s arm with him, and smashing the mirror against the stone floor. All he could think was that Malech’s mirror was broken and the spell on it destroyed. Nobody could tell now, for certain or sure, what it had been.
A shred caught in his hand and he winced, the thin cut seeping blood almost immediately.
“He works mage-magic!” The servant was wild-eyed and gesturing madly, his face twisted in frustration. “I will show you! I will prove it!” He dove for one of the larger shreds of mirror, grabbing it as though to wave it as proof—or shove it between Jerzy’s unprotected ribs.
And then Sar Anton was there, standing between Jerzy and the servant. The nobleman’s left arm rose, came down, and then pulled back, the blade sliding from the body with a thick, wet-sounding thwick.
Jerzy stared at the blade, its length now coated in red grue. He had seen men—even children—die before. He had seen them killed in the heat of passion and the cold deliberation of judgment. But he had never seen death come for him, and land instead on another.
His head stung where the dead boy had hit him, and his ribs ached from the fall to the hard floor, and the echo of the boy’s last shout fading in his ears.
Mage-magic.
He could only have meant mage-blood, the quiet-magic. The ability no one other than another Vineart should know about, recognized by an outsider, shouted about to outsiders. Jerzy felt as though one of the boy’s kicks had landed in his chest, depriving him of air. How? How could he have known?
His worries were disrupted by an angry shout. “You killed him! He was a witness!” The lead guard was outraged, kicking the servant’s body with a booted toe in his frustration.
Sar Anton fixed him with a disdainful glare. “The boy was mad. Do you see any spellwine, any vials or cups? Did you not see the maiar take his tool belt from him?”
“But he cried out—”
“Phah.” Sar Anton’s voice was filled with scorn. “He cried gibberish. A servant? Who knows what a servant might be thinking. Perhaps they fought over a sweetheart, or squabbled over this frippery, and he thought to use the boy’s disgrace to his own ends.” Saying that, Sar Anton’s heel came down on the remaining shard, cracking it into glittering dust.
When Jerzy made an involuntary noise of protest at the destruction, Sar Anton hauled him upright, yanking him farther away from the collapsed pile of bloody meat on the floor. His other hand still held the blade, and Jerzy tried not to flinch away from it. “Say nothing, boy,” Sar Anton hissed at him, his head bent low to Jerzy’s bleeding ear, quiet enough that none of the others could hear him. “Say nothing and you may yet live through this day.”
Chapter 23
There was a flurry of activity in the hallway even as the guards were dragging the body of the servant away, and Giordan appeared, with Ao breathless and sweating in his wake. They shoved their way into the room, where Giordan focused his attention not on Jerzy, but the remaining guardsman who had accompanied Sar Anton.
“What goes on here? Is this our Aleppan justice, or conspiracy?” Giordan asked. “The boy was to be kept safe, not attacked in his own room, under the nose of those who were to be guarding him!”
The guardsman opened his mouth to rebut the charge, then shut his jaw with a snap. The bloody floor and broken window was evidence enough that the accusation was valid.
“You dare make accusations against loyal guardsmen?” Sar Anton shot back, still gripping Jerzy’s shoulder with one hand. Only Jerzy noted that the swordsman’s hand was shaking, most likely from anger, although his voice remained steady. “This is too much coincidence for my liking, Vineart, this attack on him, in your own wing, under your own doubtless magical protections. Where did that servant come from, to be passing by at such a convenient moment, to accuse a shackled boy of some new crime? No, this reeks of something foul—some other hand casting shit to distract from the true source of the smell.” Sar Anton took a brea
th, and stared intently at Giordan.
“This boy is guilty, but even were he the prodigy you claim, he is not versed enough to get into such mischief on his own; more, he cannot be held responsible for such chaos as has come to this city the six months past. I accuse you, Vineart Giordan. I accuse you and his master as well, of being in league against our most noble maiar, of plotting against him, of enspelling his only daughter to spy upon him, and plotting against this House for your own magical gain, against every Command ever given. I accuse you of apostasy.”
Jerzy almost collapsed under this additional, unexpected blow. This was madness! But the men surrounding them nodded grimly, accepting every word, even though a landsman, not even a titled one, could not make such an accusation on his own.
“Guardsman, take this man into custody, and bind him for judgment by my lord-maiar and the Washer Darian.”
The guardsman moved to take Giordan’s arms behind his back, binding them with the same rope that had been around Jerzy’s limbs not an hour before. Unlike Jerzy, Giordan resisted, swearing at the man until he took another length of rope and tied it across the Vineart’s head, fitting the length into his mouth so that he could not close his lips enough to form coherent words.
“There will be no further decanting within these walls, not until judgment has been passed,” Sar Anton said with grim satisfaction. “You, boy. Why are you here?”
“I heard the commotion, and saw Vineart Giordan running,” Ao said, giving his best innocent expression. “You know, Sar Anton, that young Jerzy is an acquaintance of mine. I was worried for him, in light of rumors floating throughout court this afternoon. He is not the best bargain in the bunch, but an honest one—I will attest to that in front of the silent gods themselves, if need be.”
“Trader boy of the Eastern Wind clan, are you? What’s your profit in this?”
“None, Sar Anton. Save if you are correct, then saving the maiar from his enemies may lead my clan to more favorable terms.”
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