The Shattered Vine

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “I have a task for you, boy. You need to get a message to the Rose. Can you do that for me?”

  In normal times they would have used flags to signal back and forth, or sent one of the pigeons that roosted below the mast, but nobody would be looking, even if they could spare a sailor to handle the flags, and a bird would be snapped out of the air by the serpent before it cleared the bowsprit. A scrambler, though, could move fast and low enough to not be seen. Hopefully.

  “Aye mil’ar,” the boy said. He was a dark-skinned creature, with hair the color of the sun at summer’s set, and for a moment Kaïnam wondered if the boy shared any family lines with Jerzy, the only other person he had ever seen with hair that shade.

  “Good lad. Get this message to the Rose, then. ‘The beast is magic. Magic sends it back.’ Can you remember that?”

  The boy looked at him as though he had lost his mind, and Kaïnam laughed despite himself. “Go then,” he said. “Be quick.”

  He was not, in fact, particularly worried about the beast, even as it bumped up against the hull again, sending men staggering. One serpent, no matter how large and fierce, against seven ships? But the beast was tenacious, and while the fleet would win its way through eventually, there would be damage taken in the process; damage they could not afford. The Caulic magic could possibly ease their way. Could. Not assured. But they had to try.

  With a magic that the Exiles could not predict, that even Jerzy could not identify . . . Caul’s magic could be a double-edged blade. He would need to be careful how it pointed.

  Allies for this fight only a voice whispered in his ear, feminine and faintly familiar, and Kaïnam sighed, acknowledging the truth of it. Tomorrow that blade might be pointed at him. Still. For this fight, it would be useful. He went forward to stand with the Captain.

  “We need to lure it closer,” Padrig said, when he saw who it was next to him. “We’re shooting every blasted bolt we have, and losing half of them into the sea. If this keeps up, even if we kill the beast, we’ll be ill-equipped to make a forced landfall—men onshore would slaughter us before we were close enough to draw swords.

  “Do you think they control this beast, or is it sheer bad luck it comes at us now?”

  “I don’t know,” Kaïnam said. “We suspect they have the same master, the beasts and these Exiles, but how much control he holds . . . that we don’t know.”

  WAKE!

  The last time a summons like that had woken Jerzy from sleep, he had been a new-chosen student, and the yards had been infested with glow-root. This time, even asleep Jerzy knew it was the Guardian calling him; he was aware of the nature of the attack before his eyes were open, calling out orders even as he swung out of bed. It was martial, not magical, an expected development, but he would not underestimate the threat for all that.

  Ranulf had let these men slip through. They were a threat only to Jerzy, not The Berengia at large. That told him how to handle this.

  “Gather everyone into the courtyard.” The center of the House was open to the sky, but any bolts or arrows that were sent over the rooftops, he could handle. Trou, shirt, belt looped twice, boots jammed onto his feet, and Jerzy was moving, not toward the courtyard but the front hall.

  They are coming up the road.

  “I know.” This was his land, he could feel them, once their hooves and boots hit his soul. He did not know who they were, but he knew what they wanted.

  An image came to him, a dragon-shaped fireball, followed by a wind driven by great wings.

  “No.” He rejected both suggestions. “If I meet their force with magic, they will consider themselves justified. If I meet them, man to man . . .” What he, whose only physical skill was with a cudgel, could do to impress armed soldiers, Jerzy did not know, but instinct—and Kaïnam’s teaching—told him that it was the right move.

  “Make sure Ao has his bow,” he added. “And then join me outside.” A stone dragon would be enough magic to remind these intruders who they dealt with, but the Guardian’s size, that of a large dog, would keep it from being overt.

  Tactician. The word came with a hint of surprised approval, and Jerzy grinned tightly, echoing Ao’s words of not so long ago. “I learn slow, but I do learn.”

  He exited the House, slowing his body so that by the time he passed under the ever-green arch of leaves that marked the House proper, he looked as though he were merely out for his usual pre-dawn stroll.

  Thirty. All mounted. Armed. The Guardian swooped overhead, so Jerzy assumed that the others had been hauled out of bed and sent to the courtyard, and promptly put them all out of his thoughts.

  And one ahead, on foot. The dragon’s mental voice was surprised, but not alarmed.

  “Vineart Jerzy.”

  The man who stepped out of the shadows was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in brown riding leathers over a dark red tunic, and was not a stranger.

  “Washer Brion.” Jerzy stopped, looking up at the other man, who was easily an armspan taller, if not so overwhelmingly muscular as Jerzy remembered. He did not think the other man had somehow shrunk, so he must have grown again. “Are the Washers part of this?”

  “No.” He shook his head, and Jerzy saw that his face was stubbled and blue-shadowed, as though he had not seen a bed or washbasin in some time. “I was sent with a message, and a warning. I seem to have arrived in time to give the former, but not the latter.”

  “You knew about this?” Jerzy raised a hand to indicate the horsemen coming toward them at a slow, inexorable walk.

  “Not them, precisely. But that there would be trouble. You have made a number of people both within and outside the Collegium uneasy, it would appear.” He glanced backward, gauging them with the eye of a fighter, not a Washer. “You could quell them with a single spell.”

  “Two spells, perhaps. I am hoping that will not be necessary. Spellwines are not meant to be used as weapons.” Telling a Washer that seemed suitably ironic.

  “Aye, and men of power are not supposed to covet the vineyards or the magic they contain,” Brion said grimly, turning so that he fell into position at Jerzy’s left shoulder. “Nobody listens to us anymore.”

  Jerzy laughed, suddenly feeling oddly light-headed. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the insanity of facing down a troop of solders unarmed, or maybe it was the relief, unexpected, unanticipated, of having that spot at his shoulder not be empty . . .

  He had not realized, until then, how much he missed Kaï and Mahault, not merely as companions, but sparring partners, informing his plans merely by being there.

  The feel of air moving over them made Brion look up into the sky, just in time to see the Guardian descend. A creature of magic, it did not need its wings to actually fly; the arm’s-length span on either side of its body were stretched out for maximum visual impact rather than flight, its neck stretched out, and its body elongated as stone talons wrapped themselves around Jerzy’s right shoulder.

  Friend?

  “You will stand with me?” Jerzy asked Brion, not sure how to answer the dragon’s query.

  “I dislike ambushes, and overwhelming odds,” the other man said calmly, still watching the approaching troops, assessing their armament and appearance.

  “A Vineart’s life is risk,” Jerzy said. “Every year, we watch and wait, never knowing what the Harvest will bring.”

  “And was this your moment of choice?” They might have been having a conversation about a horse, for all the emotion in Brion’s voice.

  “Slaves do not have the luxury of choice,” Jerzy said, matching his tone to the Washer’s. “The Harvest comes when it comes, and we must be ready.” He lifted his head and singled out the lead rider with his gaze.

  “Welcome to House Malech,” he said, projecting his voice over the distance without raising it to a shout. “You are far from home, and dressed for battle. Might I enquire why?”

  That, he noted, seemed to surprise then. They had not expected to be met head-on, and certainly not with civility.


  “You have ceased to supply my lord with bloodstaunch.” The leader was an older man who, with his helmet off, revealed grizzled hair, close-cropped like a professional soldier and a face seamed with wear.

  “I have.” Detta had not informed him of any complaints, but she might have decided there was no point to it, in the face of all else.

  “We need it.” The soldier’s voice was heavy, accenting words differently than Jerzy was used to. Not Berengian, not Aleppan, but similar . . . Iajan?

  “There is none for offer.”

  A few of the horses shifted with a jangle of harness and gear, indicating that their riders had tensed up.

  “You refuse us?” The speaker’s accent grew thicker. Iajan, definitely. The hardest hit of the Lands Vin. The Exiles’ target. Did his master suspect it?

  Jerzy forced his body to relax, the pressure of the Guardian’s talons on his shoulder as comforting as the soil beneath his soles. Underneath him, the Root stirred, searching for him, the magic within him. If Jerzy called on it, he would be able to drive these men from his land . . . but he would never escape, himself. “This is my land. These are my decisions. Do you claim the right to make those decisions for me? Here, in front of a Washer?”

  Brion was not wearing his robes, but the color of his undertunic and the belt around his waist, with the single wooden cup, should have warned them.

  From the way their leader glanced down, and then pulled his head back slightly in surprise, it had not. They had been so focused on Jerzy. . . .

  The Guardian shared with him an image of Kaïnam—the prince’s long black hair was no match for Brion’s grizzled warrior’s crop, but he was a swordsman, tall and broad-shouldered, enough that, if they had been warned Kaïnam was here, they would have expected to see him at Jerzy’s side, not this stranger-Washer. Their error, and now they would be off balance.

  “We need bloodstaunch.”

  Had the man’s voice been an entreaty, a request, Jerzy would have backed down. He had never meant to withhold from those in need, merely protect his own people, and draw the enemy’s attention to him. But the Iajan demanded, arrogant as a lord up on his horse.

  “There are many things in life that we need,” Brion said, and his tone had slipped from his normal rough growl to a smooth, polished tone so much like Washer Neth’s that Jerzy suspected it was taught them in their Collegium. “We are not always granted those things.”

  “I am not looking for Solace,” the Iajan said. “Merely what is due us.”

  “Due?” Jerzy’s plan to remain calm and use words, rather than magic, sparked and died at that. “You claim a thing due you?”

  On his shoulder, the Guardian lifted its wings higher and stretched its long neck skyward, opening its muzzle so that the riders could see the row of serrated stone teeth.

  There was the metal-on-metal snick of a sword being pulled from its sheath—not Brion’s, as the Washer remained still beside him, waiting.

  “Be very careful what you do, here,” Jerzy warned, his voice quiet, but again pitched to carry. “You are not in your lord’s House, but mine.” A Vineart was master nowhere save his yards, but there he was absolute.

  All three sides of the balance, Washer, lord, and Vineart, were locked for a moment, waiting.

  “Your kind have caused this,” the Iajan said with bitterness, practically cutting the words off with his teeth. “You brought this sickness to the lands, magicking up monsters and illness, tearing my home apart, causing brothers to come to blows, and then withholding healspells desperately needed . . . and you, Washer. What have you done to help any of us?”

  It was the same question Master Malech had asked, and Jerzy, again, had put to Neth. What had the Washers done?

  In response, Brion reached over his shoulder and drew his sword partially from its sheath, enough so that the riders could see the hilt clearly, and no mistake. “This Washer will send you crying for home, boy,” Brion rumbled, and then added something in a language that Jerzy did not recognize; Iajan, from the way the riders reacted.

  “So be it,” the Iajan said, and spurred his horse forward without warning, not even bothering to draw his own sword, clearly meaning to trample Jerzy before he could get out of the way.

  Even as Brion stepped forward on a slant, coming between Jerzy and the horse, his sword flashing free of the scabbard and swinging forward, the Guardian took to the air, wings stroking enough wind to set Jerzy’s hair fluttering in the backwash.

  Now.

  “Not yet,” Jerzy said under his breath, even as the horse swung away from Brion’s sword and the other riders armed themselves and came forward. “Not yet . . .”

  Mil’ar Cai’s lessons came back to him, and the sword-blows that came his way drew forward a matching movement, sending him forward and back, always a hair’s breadth from the edge. Not to attack, but to use the attack as a defense. Occasionally a blow landed or a horse knocked into him, but he kept on his feet, always moving, ducking into the blow rather than away, confounding the soldiers who were used to meeting other men with swords and horses, not a single, slender figure who moved like a ghost. Swearing cut through the whistling, clanging sound of blades, Brion yelling at the top of his considerable lungs.

  “And your sisters swill with pigs,” he informed them, adding something else in Iajan that made at least one rider spur his horse directly for the Washer, and never mind the others in his way.

  Ao is on his way.

  “Rot,” Jerzy swore. What part of “stay put” did he not understand?

  All of it, likely. Jerzy should be thankful that Lil hadn’t insisted . . .

  There was a sense of regret, and faint amusement coming from the dragon, and Jerzy swore harder. “Of course.”

  Ducking underneath a horse’s head, he reached up and grabbed the mane, his fingers tangling in the course, short-cut hairs. He ran a little, to keep up, then used the momentum and pulled himself up behind the rider, grabbing the knife at his belt and holding it to the other man’s throat.

  “Hold!”

  His voice carried, startling them. The fighting—really more of a shoving match at this point, as none of the riders seemed inclined to kill Brion, even as he laid them out with the flat of his blade—ground to a halt. The Guardian took its position on Jerzy’s shoulder again, settling slightly, putting more of its weight on the bone, but not enough to damage him. Jerzy managed not to wince.

  A noise drew his attention, and he saw Ao, still wobbly on his grafted legs, coming down the road, Lil a few steps behind him. They both carried naked blades, although Lil clearly had no idea how to use it, holding it the way she would a kitchen knife. He shook his head slightly, and hoped they understood. Stay there. Don’t interfere.

  “Who sent you?”

  The soldiers muttered and glared at him, but nobody spoke. Jerzy lifted the blade slightly, feeling the skin’s resistance under the blade, and asked again, “What lord sent you.”

  The man under his blade, their leader, answered. “Diogo de Reza.”

  Jerzy, trained to recall ten hundred incantations and as many decantations, only took a moment to recall the name from the dispatches. Iajan had formed an alliance with a local Vineart, who had not been seen since, then taken on another who had likewise disappeared. More, it was rumored that Diogo had been part of the consortium that had put a price on Master Malech, payable after his death.

  They had not been responsible for Malech’s murder: that would be laid at the feet of their enemy. Jerzy told himself that, even as he reached up with his free hand to stroke the Guardian’s rough stone skin the way a hunter might his hound.

  “Go back to your master. Tell him that in The Berengia, Sin Washer’s Commands are still in force. I hold my yards from no man, I take orders from no man, and I do not take well to being threatened.”

  The man flinched, and Jerzy knew, through no magic save observation, that there was something wrong in Diogo’s House, something centered in the lord hims
elf.

  “I cannot return . . . you are withholding—”

  The Guardian hissed, a low, hot sound, and the man’s jaw snapped shut as though it had been knocked by a solid blow. Jerzy had never heard the dragon make a sound before, but it seemed the least of surprises today.

  “I would advise that you go,” Brion said, his sword arm relaxed, but ready, the blade tinted red where he had scored an opponent. Unlike Ao and Lil, he knew how to use his weapon. “It would not be well for Iaja to fall under the Brotherhood’s displeasure, in these difficult times.”

  Their leader scowled but barked a command in his native tongue, and the others put up their weapons, nudging their horses into a more orderly position. “Sahr Vineart. Sahr Washer. My temper, my concern for . . . the intensity of my lord’s orders . . . overwhelmed me. This unfortunate incident . . . is entirely my fault.”

  Jerzy doubted that. Whatever illness had befallen Diogo, his orders had been specific. They had come, armed and in force, and been too ready with violence. Working the vineyard, a slave learned that if there was an infestation or weakness in one portion of the yard, it was likely repeated elsewhere. So, too, with men: if Iaja were reaching into The Berengia for what it could not find at home, then other landlords would escalate as well.

  Just as the people turned on their lords, in fear, the lords would turn on Vinearts. The Washers were turning on themselves. And the Vinearts? Who had the enemy Vineart planned for them to turn on?

  A Vineart cannot turn.

  Jerzy ignored the Guardian for a moment, staring at the Iajans, then looked up, to where Lil and Ao still waited.

  And then he understood. In making them, Sin Washer had doomed them. His kind would turn inward, self-destruct, unable by their very nature to strike out, unable to even look beyond the boundaries of their walls. There would be no Vinearts when their enemy was done; none save himself, untethered by the Commands. A return to the days of the prince-mages—with none to check his desires.