Flesh and Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Sar Anton sniffed in disgust, but did not bar Ao from accompanying them, even as the guards shuffled Giordan and Jerzy out into the hallway and down to the main hall, down to where the maiar and Washer—and judgment—were waiting.

  THE AUDIENCE CHAMBER was not as large as Jerzy had imagined it, sitting in the gallery overhead listening to voices from below. But what it lacked in size it made up for in grandeur. They entered through a door at the side, and walked into a pool of colored light thrown down from the round window overhead. Jerzy was immediately able to sense the firespell illuminating it—it might, in fact, be one of Master Malech’s own spellwines, although he could not tell for certain. Day or night, rain or shine, the entrance would be illuminated—and anyone entering the hall would be seen clearly by anyone already present.

  That fact filtered away, as Jerzy noticed that there were, in fact, very few people already there. The benches that lined the hall were of a deep red wood that glimmered warmly, bare of the courtiers or messengers he would think normally sat there, waiting their turn. The guards did not give him a chance to gawk, moving him up the gray stone floor, onto a narrow carpet patterned in the brown and blue of the Aleppan Council. A small gathering of adults moved aside, and out of the corner of his eye, past Giordan’s frame and the arm of his guard, he saw a tall, white-faced figure.

  Mahault. She wore blue again, and her blond hair was pulled back severely, and then she was lost from view as he was pushed forward to stand in front of the maiar’s chair.

  The maiar looked. . .ordinary. Neither short nor tall, his hair was dark and his beard trimmed to his chin, and the rest of his face set in lines that suggested exhaustion rather than age. He wore a heavy robe of deep brown, and a dark blue mantle over it, both spilling over his shoulders and hiding the chair itself from view. Three men and a woman stood next to him: two of the men were older, unfamiliar. One was Washer Darian. The woman was young, straight and stern, dark skinned and dressed in thick, padded trou over heeled boots, a worn leather surcoat without any design or sigil on it over an equally plain woven shirt.

  A solitaire, one of the female soldiers-for-hire. Jerzy had never seen one before, but no other woman would stand so, dressed so. What was she doing here?

  “Not one, but two Vinearts, brought for judgment,” the maiar said, resting his chin in one hand and staring, not at the prisoners but over their heads, at something at the other end of the hall.

  Jerzy fought the urge to turn, to see what so held the maiar’s attention.

  “This is indeed a serious moment. Serious, yes; a moment I have not, in my life, faced. And yet, here it is.

  “Our civilization rests upon three legs: the wisdom of the Collegium, the skills of the Vinearts, and the authority of the Land’s Lord. By Sin Washer’s actions, no one has power over another, but two in concert may judge a third. You, Vine-student Jerzy, and Vineart Giordan, have been brought forth on the most dire charges of apostasy by Washer Darian. I am here as second, to hear the charges, and the defense.

  “These three”—he gestured to the men—“are members of the Aleppan Council, here at my request for witness. Solitaire Gennet will carry out the verdict, if necessary.”

  Jerzy swallowed, all too aware of what that verdict would be, since it was doubtful anyone would dare speak in their defense.

  “Sar Anton. Your charges?”

  The killer who had casually killed a boy and whispered cold-blooded warnings was gone. In his place appeared a worried, almost distraught nobleman, his rich clothing merely a cover for deep concern about his fellows. “I was traveling with Washer Darian, discussing matters of history, of which we both have interest, when we saw the boy in the vineyards, unaccompanied by Vineart Giordan. He appeared to be weeding, or some such acceptable task, and at first we assumed him to be on an errand from Vineart Giordan. But then he appeared to go into a trance, and Washer Darian recognized the signs of incantation, the attempt to manipulate another Vineart’s holdings, in direct disobedience of the Command.”

  It was such an obvious lie, Jerzy felt a protest rise in his throat, but the ropes around his hands reminded him that his voice would not be heard. Not here, not against these charges. He had not been incanting, not as Sar Anton charged. He had been guilty, yes—only not of what they claimed, and there was no way he could explain what he had been doing, or why it was necessary. Not without admitting to equally dangerous acts, and making public his mission—exactly what he had been ordered not to do. His only hope lay with Vineart Giordan. He could not believe the Vineart had sent that servant to betray him. It made no sense. . .the vines had told him that Giordan had not worked the magic that created the serpent.

  “Vineart? Is this true? Has this student attempted to influence your vines? Do you have knowledge of this?”

  Giordan went down on both knees, his back straight but his voice pleading. “My lord, I swear to you. I knew nothing of this. I have been prideful, perhaps, and too eager to show off what I knew, but all without malice and no thought at all to break Commandment! Whatever this boy did, he did alone—or at the behest of his master!”

  The hollow feeling in Jerzy’s stomach surprised him, and then he was surprised at the surprise. Whether or not Giordan was guilty of anything else, the Vineart had been the one to bring Jerzy here, to allow him access to his vines, and that would naturally make him the villain in the Collegium’s eyes. That was what Sar Anton had meant—if he let Giordan take the blame, the Collegium might excuse him as the innocent tool of men who should have known better.

  Giordan knew that, too.

  Jerzy understood saving your own skin. The sleep house taught you the truth: you could depend only upon yourself. He could not blame the Vineart, who had grown in the same hard soil. But he could not allow it, either. A cold, grim determination grew inside the hollowness. Master Malech had sent him, trusted him. He would not allow himself to fail, and certainly not to let this Vineart besmirch his master’s reputation.

  “I swear to you,” Giordan was saying, his words coming hot and swift. “I did not allow the boy to do anything beyond watch, to help in the tasks any slave would do. If he learned anything of my grapes it was through sneaking and—”

  “The Vineart is his vineyard; the vineyard makes the Vineart,” Jerzy said. His words were a direct quote from Sin Washer’s Lessoning of the Mages, a quote he had read during his lessons with Detta a dozen times or more. The words had the same cool hard feel to them in his mouth as the Guardian’s thoughts, and he took strength from that. “Within his enclosures, the Vineart is supreme and all-knowing, and none move there save he allow it.”

  Unlike Giordan, he remained upright. He would kneel before his master, but none other. A Vineart stood apart, and showed no weakness.

  “The boy speaks better than the man,” the Washer said, with a touch of what Jerzy would have sworn was relief, confirming his suspicion. This was not about him. He was only the bait to lure the fox out—the hook to catch Giordan.

  But if Giordan was not guilty, why would Sar Anton, much less the Washer, so badly want the Vineart disgraced and dead? What game was being played here?

  “Indeed,” the maiar said thoughtfully, leaning forward on his gilded chair. His cloak of state slipped off one shoulder, and an aide stepped forward to fix it for him, as though he were too feeble to do so himself. Jerzy frowned. Had the aide’s hand touched the maiar’s skin, where neck met shoulder? The gesture was similar to the one he had seen Master Malech use, had used himself, on the mirror, and yet that aide was no Vineart but servant. . .and there was no spell that could influence a man, save he allowed it. . ..

  And there was something. . .familiar in the air. A scent, almost too faint to catch. No, no a scent, a taste. . .

  Without thought, a part of him cut itself away from the trial taking place around him, searching the air for that tingle of magic.

  “Vineart Giordan,” the maiar continued, seemingly not noticing the aide at all, “we have long been in Ag
reement. I would not think you guilty of anything beyond arrogance, but arrogance was what led to the downfall of the prince-mages of old, and woe to me for overlooking that.”

  “Lord Ma—”

  “Silence!”

  Giordan quivered once, and stopped speaking.

  “The lands you till are under my domain, yours only under the terms of our Agreement. Your actions have put me at odds with the Collegium, which is breach of that Agreement. For that, I declare the Agreement void and done. The vines you have tended, the spellwines you have crafted, remain yours. But you will remove them from my lands.”

  Vines uprooted need to be replanted swiftly. Without a ready new home . . . the way Giordan swayed and almost fell, he knew what it meant. Jerzy could not spare a thought for his former teacher, even as the maiar went on to argue with the Washer over the punishment to be meted out to Jerzy himself. That magic, that taint, it was so close; faint but he knew it, and knowing it, he could follow it. . .

  His head jerked up and he stared into the face of the aide who had touched the maiar, into his eyes and down a deep dark hole, an endless falling tunnel of swirling reds and blacks, thick with a familiar-yet-unfamiliar stench. Soil. Stone. Pulp and juice. . .but something more. Something darker, more dire. Heavy and weightless, smooth and slick, and the very touch of it even in this no-space made Jerzy’s flesh crawl, and his heart sorrow.

  The same scent—stench—he had looked for in the vineyard earlier that day. The stench that he had sensed on the shores of that fisher village when the sea beast towered overhead, and then again in the ice-house, while Master Malech tried to identify the remains. . .

  “Blood,” he gasped, falling to his knees at last while the stench overtook him. “Blood and flesh, ash and bone.”

  “What did the boy say?”

  “Nothing. He is overcome, overwhelmed.” Sar Anton, his face close in front of Jerzy, too close; he tried to pull away but the nobleman would not allow it. “Be silent,” he said urgently. “Be silent or you will share the Vineart’s fate. It is not too late for you, but you must remain silent!”

  “Even now he works magic, trying to influence the lord-maiar!” Giordan cried, flailing his long arms at Jerzy, despite the guards’ hold on him. He was literally frothing at the mouth, like a terrified horse. “He and the trader boy! It was not me, I did nothing wrong, it was him!”

  The maiar stood, and Sar Anton swore, pushing Jerzy aside as he turned to deal with the maddened whirlwind that was the Vineart. And then, the whirlwind was literal: an impossible burst of wind knocked over several of the guards, shoving Jerzy onto the ground and rattling his teeth.

  Windspells. He felt them, knew them, knew the touch of Giordan in their casting, that it had been done with the quiet-magic of a lifetime, built up and released all at once. Another gust nearly knocked over the men standing by the maiar, even as guards scrambled to position themselves between their master and the Vineart.

  “Do not kill him!” the maiar shouted. “Take him alive!”

  A hand grabbed Jerzy by the back of his collar and he struggled, resisting, until a vaguely familiar hand covered his, clenching hard enough to get his attention.

  Mahault. With surprising strength, she dragged him toward the door, somehow remaining unchecked by any of the guards running to her father’s aid.

  Ao met them at the door, untying the remains of Jerzy’s bindings even as they hurried down the hallway. None of the servants paid them any attention; the sight of Ao and Jerzy was common enough, and word had not yet spread of Jerzy’s disgrace. Certainly, even if they had, none of them would be brazen enough to stop Mahault, striding ahead of them as though she, not her father, ruled those halls. In her blue gown, her hair falling from the wooden pins holding it back, she seemed as much a creature of the winds as anything Giordan had ever wrought.

  The three did not speak until they were back in the Vineart’s wing, and through the exterior gate to where—to Jerzy’s muted surprise, two horses waited, saddled and hobbled, ready to go.

  “You. . .you planned this?”

  “When you were taken. Ao came to find me,” Mahault said calmly, unhobbling the horses. “We had to assume that they weren’t simply going to let you go, not after such a fuss. We knew you were innocent, but my father. . .he does not trust anyone, these days.” Her voice turned bitter. “Any accusation of wrongdoing or betrayal would find belief in him.”

  “We didn’t expect such a fuss to help us in the rescue, though,” Ao said. “Was that you, or. . .?”

  “Giordan,” Jerzy said. “He panicked. They will kill him now, for sure.”

  “You were both dead the moment you were taken,” Ao said. “And so are we, now, once someone remembers our part in all this. I know it wasn’t the plan,” he said to Mahault, as though expecting debate, “but too many people saw us. You can’t go back.”

  “I know. Jerzy will ride double with me. Battus can carry us both.” Mahault was matter-of-fact, putting her hand on the neck of the nearest horse, a thick-bodied black.

  “You never intended to go back,” Ao realized. “You planned to flee with us, all along?”

  Mahault didn’t look at either of them. “There isn’t anything for me here. There never was, only I kept hoping. . .my father would return to himself. But he won’t.” She looked at Jerzy then, her face still and without hope. “Will he?”

  He didn’t know why she was asking him or even what she was asking him; he didn’t know anything.

  “A woman with sense, praise the silent gods. Get on, let’s go,” Ao said, reaching for the reins of the other horse, a lighter-built brown. “No telling how long the chaos will last, and then they’ll realize Jer is gone, and come looking, if they’re not already. Whatever was going on, those two needed him for it, so we need to not be here.”

  Mahault put her foot in the stirrup and hiked her gown up enough to swing into the saddle unencumbered, and Jerzy looked away from the flash of bare leg. “Come on,” she said impatiently, holding out a hand. “Ao’s right, we need be gone, now.”

  Still bewildered, feeling as though he had fallen into some kind of dream where all his intentions turned into disasters, Jerzy took her hand, and scrambled into the saddle behind her.

  Chapter 24

  Jerzy had no idea where they were going, letting Mahault guide? their horse, Ao riding close behind. They did not gallop, but instead picked their way in a steady, unremarkable trot and walk pattern that covered almost as much ground, and attracted far less attention. They left the main road quickly, turning onto a narrower dirt track. Heavy ruts in the center of the track indicated that it was regularly used by wagons, but they saw no other traffic as they wound downward out of the Aleppan hills.

  Mahault was surprisingly easy to hold on to; although the saddle was not built for two, Jerzy found that if he pushed back onto the leather rise, and kept one arm hooked around her rib cage and the other balanced on his leg, the horse’s motion kept them upright and steady, even at a fast trot.

  He didn’t want to think what might happen if they were forced to run.

  Ao suddenly trotted on up ahead, disappearing from sight. Jerzy had a moment of worry before the brown horse came back into view.

  “There’s a creek around the turn,” Ao said. “We should follow it down, wash our scent off the track, then find a place to pack down for the night, and hope whoever’s after us decides we’ve gone another way.”

  The spot Ao finally decided on was up from the banks of the creek, sheltered from view by trees but clear enough that there was no worry about building a fire. Mahault hobbled the horses and removed their saddles, while Ao quickly gathered fallen branches for a fire. Jerzy stood stupidly, watching them set up camp with casual competence, suddenly painfully aware that the familiar, comforting weight of his belt was missing, and along with it all of his tools.

  “I don’t suppose you could just magic us up some food and fire?”

  The request made Jerzy flinch, and
Ao took a step back, his rounded face showing dismay at having, somehow, put his foot wrong.

  “He doesn’t have spellwine with him,” Mahault said. She sat on a fallen log and spread her skirts out, frowning at the soaking-wet hems. They were all muddy, tired, damp, and on the edge of spoiling for a fight, without actually wanting to argue. “He’s useless.”

  “Hey!” Ao started to defend him, but Jerzy held up a hand, stopping him mid-protest.

  “No, she’s right. I am. I’d be in chains, or dead, if you hadn’t dragged me out of there. I gave them the excuse they were looking for, and wasn’t smart enough to take Sar Anton’s warning, and failed every step since my master sent me—” He stopped, aware they were both staring at him.

  “What warning from Sar Anton?” Ao asked, even as Mahault wanted to know. “What excuse did you give them?”

  Jerzy swallowed hard, and sat down on a rock opposite Mahault’s log. Letting Ao in on his mission had been bad enough, and look how he had tangled that even with help. Telling Mahault. . .

  She had helped him. For her own reasons, he was sure, but she had helped him, maybe even saved his life. For good or ill, whatever yield this harvest brought would be hers as well.

  He answered Ao first. “Sar Anton told me to stay silent and let Vineart Giordan take the blame. And. . .I think he killed the servant who attacked me, as part of a setup to make Giordan look guilty. I just don’t know why, or who actually sent the servant, or how any of it ties in with. . .what I was sent to find.”

  He bent down and dug his fingers into the dirt, feeling the cool texture against his skin. It wasn’t vineyard soil, but he could almost feel the energy pulsing below, the endless root-path of Sin Washer’s blood still holding the world together. He thought of the vines of Aleppan, and wondered what would happen to them now.

  “What excuse? What happened to start all of this, anyway?” Mahault asked. A cool breeze touched her skin, making her shiver in her damp clothing.

  They had saved him. He needed to take care of them now.