The Shattered Vine

by Laura Anne Gilman

  While the other three went about their work of gathering information from beyond the vintnery walls, the Household staff pretending that there were no concerns other than preparing meals and caring for stock and tools, Jerzy pulled down every text and manuscript in Malech’s library, poring over the pages until his eyes crossed and his head ached.

  What he had done with Kaï, that touch, that had been purely quiet-magic. He could repeat it, if he were ever in close combat again, as he had been with the merchant back in Irfan. Had he known that trick then, the man would not have escaped. If the man had not escaped, they would have more detailed information than what his assistant had knowledge of, and Jerzy would know where to direct the attack the others were urging him to make.

  The regret was useless, and put aside.

  But why had the spell worked against the slaves, and not when it was directed against Kaï, during practice?

  “Guardian. Is there anything you know, anything to explain why the firespell works some times, but not all?”

  A sense of cool, blank stone came back to him. If the Guardian knew anything, it was not sharing it. That meant it did not approve, or felt Jerzy was doing something wrong . . . but he was no longer the slave or student to be scolded, but master, and as such the Guardian was tasked to follow and protect, not instruct. Jerzy reminded himself of that, but the sense that he was somehow wrong stayed with him.

  Vinearts stood apart. And yet . . . there was the text about Bradhai, who had defeated the sea serpents generations ago. He had not stood apart, but had gone in search of battle . . . against beasts, true, not men, but was there a difference? Jerzy searched through the papers until he found what he was looking for, not even noticing when several priceless sheets were pushed off the table and onto the stone floor.

  “And the Vineart stood in the prow, a vat of the strongest weatherwine to be found, and called upon the storms, and called upon the seas, and called upon the flame . . .”

  Three legacies. The Master Vineart had braided three legacies into one, on the seas, no less, surrounded by water, to strike a blow to destroy an entire pack of sea serpents.

  Bradhai. No one bothered with “Master Vineart” before his name, because there was no need. There was only one Bradhai. None before, none since, had managed anything close.

  Of course, the text Jerzy had in front of him was not a history, exactly. It was the retelling of a man who had been told what happened. Master Malech would snort and say it was merely a legend, as useful as a story of the silent gods.

  But it was all Jerzy had to work with.

  He stared at the text, his finger tracing the brown lettering, the gilt-picked design at the edge of the page, the slight stain at the corner, and felt an uneasy twitch on his skin, as though a spider walked along his flesh, only deeper. There were other stories in these pages as well, references to the horrors committed by the vine-mages when they ruled the Lands Vin. Stories of mages who ordered a town destroyed to expand a yard, or sent men to their death in a battle that meant nothing save ego and bragging rights for a season . . . and more, of women taken from their homes to breed children for the prince-mages, and children who disappeared, and worse. Rumors, legends, stories to scare those who came after into obedience to Sin Washer’s Command.

  Jerzy let a sigh escape him. Vinearts did not take part in the world. And yet, if he was to keep Ximen from destroying the Lands Vin, what choice did Jerzy have but to take part, to do as Bradhai had, and turn his magic to counter it?

  The Guardian worried, but said nothing.

  The question weighed on Jerzy’s mind through the evening meal, making short answer to conversation until the others left him alone. It kept him company on his evening walk through the vineyard as he felt the ground sleeping under his feet and the cooling breeze on his skin. It even pushed aside the usual dreams that night, leaving him awake well before dawn, staring at the shadowed plaster of the ceiling, exhausted and shattered, his eyes so grainy he could barely open them, his muscles slack and aching.

  He could feel the answer moving, deep, out of reach but coming closer. He could not rush it, any more than he could rush the fruit ripening, but the need to do something screamed at him.

  When the first sounds of dawn began, Jerzy got up, washed his face, drew on warm clothing, and walked quietly to the front path, where Mahault was already waiting, her face turned up to the starlit sky, watching a dark-feathered bird as it rustled its feathers sleepily, perched on a bare tree limb. They had fallen into the habit of walking together before the morning meal, both of them in need of some time where no conversation was required, comfortable with their own thoughts and each other’s company, the way neither Ao nor Kaïnam ever could.

  She turned to acknowledge him, and they started walking without a word, heading down the cobbled road, away from the yard and toward the main road. Never past the marker, never off safe grounds, but as far as Jerzy could go, without risk of exposing himself.

  The point of decision was coming. Jerzy could feel it in his skin. No matter if he was ready or not, he would have to act. The months they had sailed, their enemy would not have been idle, and while it was winter in The Berengia, they had experienced firsthand how the seasons were reversed there, which meant the enemy would be coming into the Harvest.

  If Jerzy were to launch an attack, it would be then, once there were no more worries about weather—

  “There was no damage to the yield.”

  “What?” Mahault stopped to look at him, her expression curious.

  “Detta said the harvest went smoothly. There was no damage. There should have been damage.”

  “Jer, you aren’t making any sense.”

  “There haven’t been any major storms in . . . years,” Jerzy went on, now speaking to himself, pacing back along the edge of the road, his gaze scanning the top of the sleeping vines, occasionally lifting up to the shadow-dark ridge beyond. A slave, carrying something from the sleep house across the road to the stables, was caught off guard by Jerzy’s sudden change in direction and scurried out of his way, but the Vineart barely noticed. “Not since the hailstorm that destroyed the secondary field in the north. And nobody else has reported anything, not beyond the normal. In all that has been odd, that has been utterly . . . quiet.”

  “And that is a bad thing?” Mahault was trying to follow his thoughts, and failing. “Aren’t storms bad?”

  “Very bad,” he said, halting in his pacing long enough to answer her. She did not seem to take offense when he started walking again, merely waited for him to come back.

  “Grapes are fragile,” he said on his return, speaking intently, as though he could make her understand by force of will alone. “Too much rain, not enough rain, too much sun, too little sun, a fungus or insects or a hundred other things can destroy the yield, make the grapes unusable, or drain the roots so much that all we get is vin ordinaire.”

  “And . . . ?” Mahault shook her head, still not following. “You’re worried because you’ve not had any disasters?” Of all the things they had on their platter, that obviously seemed foolish to her.

  “Think about it, Mahl,” he said, his voice tight with impatience. “If you wanted to undermine Vinearts, spread fear through the lands, cause the lords to snap the restrictions placed on them so that they were in clear violation of Sin Washer’s Commands . . . sending a drought, or a terrible storm, would cripple that Vineart for the season, force him to rely on older stock, if he had it, or do without, if he did not.”

  “Weaken and distract the Vineart so that he would be caught off guard by a later strike.” Mahault began to see where Jerzy was thinking, now. “But there hasn’t been any of that.”

  “No. Nothing that caused anyone significant worry, weather-wise. This is a man who sends out sea serpents, who drove root-blight into vineyards and swarms to attack travelers. Who had seabirds dive out of the sky, hours from the coastline. Think like Kaïnam for a moment. Our enemy is dangerous, but he is not subtle,
nor does he favor any one tool. So why is he not using this particular tool?”

  Mahault had no hesitation about her own intelligence, or how much she had learned since leaving Aleppan, but she had also learned when to wait, and listen. The air was still and cold, and she pulled the sleeves of her heavy hide jacket down over her hands. Normally by now they would be walking quickly enough that the cold would be an incentive, not an annoyance.

  She started walking again, thinking it through out loud. “No rain or winds . . . when we were at sea we encountered one storm, but only the one.”

  Jerzy, caught off guard, had to stretch his legs to catch up. She was referring to the storm that had wrecked their first ship and driven them to where Kaïnam met them.

  “I had assumed that was his work,” Jerzy said, “our enemy, but I never was certain. There was no way to prove it, one way or the other. A spellwine carries trace, quiet-magic carries a trace, but the effects of the magic itself . . . it fades as soon as the magic itself does. More, windspells travel so far, and if Kaï himself had been using one; all it would take would be a few to match . . . and the smell of the taint could have been from the serpents.” He was speaking to himself again, his mind turning over what he knew too quickly to explain to Mahault, even if she could understand.

  Puffs of air appeared and then disappeared in front of their mouths as they breathed. The sun had risen enough now to cover the valley in a clear purple haze, and the air was still chill; Mahault was shivering, even under the jacket, but Jerzy had forgotten all about the cold.

  “He has no weathervines.”

  Jerzy’s tone was so triumphant, Mahault forgot about petty things like chilblains, waiting for him to explain.

  “A WEAKNESS.” KAïNAM’S voice was low and fierce, like a cat that had just pounced on a particularly clever mouse.

  “Not a weakness,” Jerzy corrected him, tearing off a chunk of bread and then waving it at Kaï as he gestured for emphasis. “Vinearts rarely are called by more than two legacies, and most are limited by skill and soil to a single one. And you must never forget that any Vineart can do more with a spellwine than merely decant it.”

  Quiet-magic: the greatest secret, kept nearly two thousand years, and he, Jerzy, had told not one but three outsiders. That was the very least of his worries now.

  “More, I would not dare call this Ximen weak, given that he has learned how to reach across distances to work his spells, something that should have been impossible. But this—if I am right, he lacks at least one legacy, and that is the first real information we’ve learned. He lacks them, and he needs them. Either weathervines or—or the feral vines, like those in Irfan.”

  Jerzy could see that he had lost them, and tried to explain.

  “Weathervines are the least touched legacy. When the Vine was broken, the roots were shattered, each one drenched in Sin Washer’s blood, changed by that touch. Weathervines were . . . somehow, they were less touched.”

  “That’s why they’re paler,” Mahault said, with the tone of someone putting two unexpected bits together. “Giordan grew weathervines,” Mahault said now, the first she had spoken since they had gone back inside, meeting the others in the dining hall. “My father offered him the lands around our city because they were best for those vines, and he used them to protect us from the storms that came over the mountains, to divert them. . . .”

  Her breath caught as she finally understood. “That is why—you think that Sar Anton was one of this Ximen’s tools, and targeted Giordan not because you were there, not because he associated with Master Malech, but because of his vines. And the same for poor Esoba?”

  Ao poured himself another cup of ale and sipped, listening intently, ignoring the platters of food that had been set out for them.

  “Yes. But it wasn’t Sar Anton,” Jerzy said. “The Washer, Darian.” Darian had been the one to accuse Jerzy of interfering with another Vineart’s yard, who had forced events in Aleppan to their eventual conclusion. “It had to have been him, else Sar Anton would not have saved me from the servant who tried to kill me, to keep me from reaching my master and telling him what was happening.”

  The Washer, the servant, the aide who had the maiar’s ear and twisted his mind to believe Darian’s accusation, to see conspiracy in every glance, even his own daughter’s . . . all thin roots, offshoots of a thicker one, pushing them one way or another. In the aftermath of the accusations, it had been a tangle, all confusion and fear. A step back, and he could see the patterns, just as Kaïnam had first seen the pattern in the attacks, a net, drawing more tightly around them, driving them to . . . what?

  Roots, underneath, spreading . . . why did that image stay with him? The reassurance of the stone-walled hall kept Jerzy from feeling quite the same apprehension that grew every time he looked at the map, the lines and pins drawing ever tighter around the Vin Lands, but the unease that had become his constant companion would not be dispelled by the comforting, familiar smells of roasted meats or bread.

  “So he does not grow weathervines. Neither do you, Jer, but you’ve used them.” Ao wasn’t seeing the pattern. “What does it matter, if they have less bloodstain? Why can’t he just . . . ?” Ao waved his hand in the air, unable to vocalize what he thought Ximen might do.

  “He has no access. I was invited to work Giordan’s yard, and they . . . they . . .” Those vines had taken a liking to him, allowing him full access, but he could not say that out loud. There was no way to explain to anyone who had not felt the touch of the vines what that meant. “That, and I have weatherwines available to me, the same as any within the Vin Lands with coin to trade. Wherever he is, we know he’s beyond the Lands Vin . . . he has no access to the work of other Vinearts, save what he can steal. And he has not been able to steal weathervines. Giordan was killed”—and it still hurt, to think of the energetic, occasionally foolhardy man, dead—“but the vines were uprooted, his cellar immediately destroyed.”

  That was the punishment for apostasy, the same fate that had faced Jerzy and the House of Malech, until the Washers relented. Had Ximen thought to put a puppet of his own choosing into that vineyard instead? Or had he planned to have Darian take the spellwines already racked and somehow send them to his master? He ignored the Commands—did he even know of them? How far removed was their enemy from the Lands Vin and its centuries of tradition?

  Too many questions, and no answers. Not yet.

  But the mage had known of weathervines. Had he known that they, like he, used blood in their crafting, to bring those stubborn vines into obedience? Or had the mage been blindly reaching, searching, as he had in Irfan, for grapes with the least touch of Sin Washer upon them?

  Sin Washer had protected the Lands Vin, to keep those vines from the mage’s grasp, until now. But they could not count on that protection lasting.

  “If he’s seafaring, the lack of weathervines would be a true hardship,” Kaïnam said. “It would explain why our ships were attacked by fire, instead.”

  Master Malech had not used weatherspells, finding them too risky because of the way they spread, the magic caught up on the very winds they controlled. They had weatherwines in the cellar, but only a few. Jerzy had worked Giordan’s vines, had touched them, and they had touched him. They lingered within him, changing the quiet-magic of fire and healing he had been sold to, giving him access to not two, but three legacies in his blood.

  Three. Like Bradhai.

  Purest coincidence, that Giordan had been the one Master Malech sent him to. It had to have been coincidence, there was no other explanation . . . unless Sin Washer wished it so. Unless all this, everything that had happened, his being sent away, his encountering Kaïnam in the midst of the seas, had all been driven by the gods, to keep Ximen from his plans.

  A shudder passed through him. The silent gods did not interfere in the acts of man. But that had not always been true, and there was no reason to believe anything would be so forever simply because it was so now.

  The tho
ught was both disturbing and exhilarating.

  “So we know that he couldn’t send storms, before. Does it matter, now?” Mahault, practical as a knife.

  “Not everything that is important is useful, true,” Kaïnam said, picking up a piece of fruit and running his thumbnail along the skin. “This feels important, though. Even if it’s not a weakness, as such. Jer does have access to weatherwines, so we have magic that our enemy does not. The question becomes, does he have access to magics that we are missing?”

  The vina they had drunk in Irfan had abused their thoughts, their emotions. Those had been of Esoba’s making, though, his fecklessness and ignorance blending with the power of his feral grapes. Their enemy had manipulated Esoba, but he not been allowed access to those grapes; they had stopped him, unknowing.

  The memory of those vines, the subtle power in the vina, made Jerzy shudder again: this time not entirely in distaste.

  Guardian? Jerzy reached out to the stone dragon, but received no answer. The dragon did not know, or could not tell; there was still much about the Guardian that Jerzy did not understand and suspected even his master had not known. Like the masthead on the Vine’s Heart, a spell that had worked in ways not intended or expected. Perhaps even the prince-mages had not controlled their magic entirely.

  “So what does all this mean?” Ao suddenly seemed to remember there was food available and slid a cut of meat onto his own platter, but did not eat, just yet.

  “We can’t know,” Kaïnam said, “and so worrying about it does us three no good. Jer, if you discover anything—”

  “I will tell you, of course.” Master Malech would not have accepted orders from a man of power, but the world had changed, and only a fool—or a dead man—did not adapt.

  Jerzy was a Vineart, but he had learned not to be a fool. An alliance of equals was different from being forced into an Agreement.

  “The question that we need answered is, can we use this against him?” Kaï moved back to his own area of knowledge. “In battle, I mean.”