The Shattered Vine

by Laura Anne Gilman

  When the bellow came for landing parties, Kaïnam removed his hand from the mirror’s frame, and dropped it carelessly onto the cot, a shiver of anticipation running through him. It was not how he had thought to come home, but it was time.

  Whatever Jerzy was doing, back in The Berengia, he would give a fair distraction, here, oh, yes. No more magic. No more caution.

  His sword belt in hand, Kaïnam went to join the Caulic fighters.

  “THAT WAS TOO easy.”

  “Easy?” One of the sailors, his blade held at an awkward angle, as though to keep the blood crusting on its edge as far away from him as possible without dropping it, echoed Kaïnam’s words with disbelief. “We had to slaughter them.”

  “Exactly.” Kaï’s hair had come loose at some point during the battle on the sands, and he walked with a slight limp where one of the Exiles had gotten a blow behind his left knee before dying. “They were strong fighters, lean and well-trained, and yet they met us on the beach, where there was no advantage to them. And then, when things went badly, they did not retreat to the walls, where they could have held us off. Why?”

  The four men with him had no answer, but he had not expected any. A logic problem of the sort his sister used to set before him: X ships in the harbor meant there had probably been Y men, total. His people were sailors and fisherfolk, mainly, not warriors, but Kaï could not see Y men being enough to subdue the entire island, if it roused itself against the intruders.

  Why had it not? His father dead, his brother new to ruling . . . had he been ousted by the intruders? Had they used such violence, that none dared resist? A hundred and ten possibilities flickered through Kaïnam’s mind as they moved cautiously up the white marble steps, so familiar, become so strange. Beyond the gate, his family’s residence lay. The rooms where his father held council, where his sister had taught him patience and observation, where his brothers and he had play-fought in the long hallways, guided and humored by the guards . . .

  Where he had last walked, sneaking out of his own home, against his father’s command, against all honor, to seek the truth of their enemies.

  Kaïnam could feel his heart beating too strongly, his skin tight with anticipation. Would his brother meet him beyond those doors? Armed Exiles, springing a trap? He wished for more sailors at his back, but they were needed to secure the rest of the city and the ships in the harbor, that none could escape.

  The great carved doors were open, as though Atakus were still an island at peace. Kaïnam stepped into the Great Hall, his sword in hand and five fighters at his back.

  “Welcome home, Prince Kaïnam.”

  Whatever he had expected, it had not been that.

  “Master Edon.”

  The Vineart stood, not in the center of the hall, but off to the side. It was not modesty that set him there, Kaïnam knew instinctively; the light coming in through the door angled in such a way to set him in a warm glow, the wall behind him shadowed, as though he were emerging from the darkness, bringing the light with him. It was a masterful trick, but Kaïnam was his father’s son, and he had been taught to observe by his sister, who had been called the Wise Lady. He knew stagecraft when he saw it.

  Suddenly too much became clear.

  “You betrayed us. You sold Atakus to the Exiles.” Bile seared his heart, made his throat clench against the words, but he remained alert, his body primed to react given the cue.

  Edon knew him well and made no move that might invite attack. “I betrayed no one, Prince Kaïnam. Your father and I acted as one, as we always had.”

  “No. My father would never countenance this.”

  “Lord Ximen is a most persuasive man,” Edon said, now stepping forward from his pool of light. The cane he always carried with him was held, not as a walking stick, but as a younger man might hold a fightstaff. Kaïnam noted it, but did not react.

  “His plan for a new world, to wipe away the weakness of the old, would have brought Atakus into its full power, given us the standing we have always been denied, treated merely as a waystop for greater lands. Your father welcomed that chance. Had he not died.” Edon looked sorrowful for a moment. “He was my friend, Kaïnam. I mourn his loss.”

  Kaïnam believed him. That belief changed nothing.

  “He would not have countenanced my sister’s murder.”

  “That was none of our doing,” Edon said sharply. “None of Ximen’s doing. He did not approach us until that day. We have enemies, even then, even now, who would see us fall. They struck against your sister, seeking to reach your father. Ximen promised your father revenge against them, if he would open our ports to their ships, and only their ships, giving them safe harbor.”

  Kaïnam swallowed, his throat sore and his voice hoarse with agony. “And you, Edon? What were you asked to pay, and what have you received in return?”

  “Freedom.” The old man hit the stone floor with his cane, as though to emphasize his words. “Ximen’s new world will wash away the restrictions of Command, allow magic and power to re-form as once it was. Not for me, my boy—I am too old, too set. But those to come? The Vinearts who will inherit my vines? They will become as they should be, as they were meant to be.”

  “Sin Washer forbade it.” Kaïnam wondered, suddenly, what had become of the Washer who had been trapped on Atakus when the barriers were cast. Had he known what insanity Edon bore within him? Had he survived, hiding, or had he spoken out and been killed?

  “Sin Washer was a god, and the gods are silent. They have removed themselves from our daily concerns, and so we no longer concern ourselves with them. Or would you prefer they return, moving us to suit their whims?”

  “No.” Kaïnam did not. If this had in truth been his father’s desire . . . if he had stayed, if he had listened to the old man, and not declared his acts mad, would he have been taken into their confidence? Would he now, in his father’s stead, rule Atakus, as was his right as Named-Heir?

  “Where is my brother, Edon?”

  “Waiting to see you, my prince. But first, you must decide. Where do you stand?”

  “Ximen is dead,” Kaïnam said instead. “Ximen was a tool of the mage you feared, as you were tools, manipulated and destroyed in the use. That mage ordered my sister killed, Edon. He drove you into his trap, and has no intention of giving you anything in return.”

  “You know nothing of this,” Edon said, but his aged, once-familiar face showed a moment’s hesitation.

  “I have traveled far, Vineart. I have seen magic greater than yours. I have been tangled in this mage’s web myself, and won free. I know what the Exile’s mage wants, and that he has no intention of sharing it with any other.”

  Kaïnam knew no such thing; he spoke the words a voice whispered in his ear, soft and feminine, with the tang of sea air and saltwater. But the voice was not calm, was not measured but enraged, and it filled him with such a deep sense of betrayal, of burning hatred, that it was almost as though the hatred alone lifted his arm and drove the blade up, deep into the Vineart’s chest.

  The old man looked at him, unsurprised, unworried, his hands reaching up to grasp at the blade, not as though trying to push it away or block the already delivered blow, but letting his gnarled, age-wrinkled fingers rest on the metal. As Kaïnam stared, blood flowed from the wound, dripping along the burnished metal and staining the tips of the old man’s fingers. One hand lifted from the blade and reached out, searching for skin to paint on, in some obscene replication of Sin Washer’s gift of Solace. A gift, or one last spell, a dead man’s curse?

  It was too far, the distance of the blade separating them. A heavy exhale, a gust of hot wind, and the old man’s body slumped and slid backward, taking the sword with it, out of Kaïnam’s shock-slacked fingers.

  Kaïnam stepped back, letting go of the hilt, the body falling back onto the floor, out of its pool of light and back into the shadows, a crumpled swirl of robes, the blade still jutting from the flesh.

  Done, a voice whispered in his ear,
the touch hot and cool at once, stinging and soothing against skin coated with cold sweat. It was his sister’s voice, the remnant, the last fading trace that had pushed and prodded him since her murder, but he did not recognize it, no longer wrapped in the gauze of humanity. Too long gone, too far removed from the wisdom of her living compassion, in death her soul turned hard and unforgiving.

  He had been manipulated, on all sides.

  Stomach roiling, head dizzy, training taking over when his mind could not function, he bent forward, curling his own fingers around the hilt and pulling the metal from flesh, ignoring the sound it made coming free, ignoring the fact that he had just killed a man he had known his entire life, had trusted, as much as he had trusted anyone outside his family. A man who had betrayed everything Kaï had been raised to defend.

  “Lord Kaïnam?”

  One of the sailors behind him, his voice uncertain. Kaï had forgotten they were there.

  “Secure this place. And find my brother.” If he yet lived. If Edon had not murdered him as well, in the name of freedom. If the enemy, too, had not used him.

  Kaï looked down at the sword in his hands, gleaming with death, and wondered how much it hurt, if that pain would blot out the one already resting in his chest.

  Chapter 19

  Solitaire.”

  “I am not . . .” Mahl sighed, and gave up. She rode with the solitaires, and she was female. They would not understand the difference. “Yes?”

  “Lord Ranulf’s orders, and you are to secure the Valle of Bedurn.”

  “Of course.” The order was not unexpected. Bedurn had not risen against Ranulf—yet. But they had a mill, and cattle yet left. Soon enough the mill would run out of grain and the cattle would be eaten, and they, too, would feel the jab of hunger turn to anger, and anger to violence.

  “That it’s come to this . . .” She turned to Keren, who had walked up even as the rider trotted away. “I meant to strike against our enemy, when I came to you, to roust the people against the danger, not . . . not this.”

  “Lords command. Solitaires . . .”

  “Follow?”

  “Carry through.” Keren looked out over the road, the rooftops of Bedurn visible in the distance, the red tile and gray stone peaceful in the morning air, faint wisps of smoke rising from the ovens and forge.

  “This is what we have come to,” Keren agreed. “Better us than his troops, who would take as their due whatever fell into their hands.”

  That was why Ranulf had them at this duty: a solitaire would enforce, and subdue, but she did not abuse. Jerzy had been right; Ranulf was a good prince. It was merely that the situation was . . .

  Bad. Very bad. Mahault felt the tug of worry low in her gut, that she was doing the wrong thing, in the wrong place. The confidence that had driven her here was long gone, and every morning she woke wondering how the battle fared back home.

  “I was wrong,” Keren said, still watching the distant rooftops.

  “What?”

  “I was wrong, and I will not say that often. You should have been a solitaire . . . but this is not the world that happened in.”

  “Keren, I—” Mahl tried to find the words to defend herself, to explain, but the older woman shook her head. “There is no shame, Daughter of the Road. We must do what we are called to. Go. Fight where you are needed.”

  “HERE. EAT, BEFORE you fall over.”

  Jerzy looked up at the wooden platter being held out to him, and then lifted his gaze further to Lil’s face.

  “Why are you still here?”

  Lil met his glare evenly, unfussed, as though she had been taking lessons from Detta. “You really thought I’d run away?”

  “It’s not running . . .” He shut his mouth with a snap, feeling teeth click against each other in frustration. No. If he had thought about it at all he would have known that Lil would not leave. That Detta left only because he gave her a direct order; more, that she knew he was counting on her to do as he asked. Lil . . .

  A Vineart stood alone. A Vineart showed no weakness. A Vineart made no attachments beyond his yard.

  Tradition. Command. He had broken so much else, what were these but more things to fall aside?

  “Eat,” Lil said again, pushing the tray at him. “Or I’ll worry.”

  “You’ll worry anyway,” he said, but allowed her to place the tray down on the desk, reaching for a slice of bread and dipping it into the shallow bowl of honey. The thick sweetness was the perfect antidote to the heavy weight of spellwines on his tongue, and woke his appetite. Suddenly ravenous, he reached for the pile of sliced cold meats, and Lil stood and watched with satisfaction as the platter was picked clean.

  “All right, then,” she said, picking up the debris. “Better.” She hesitated, platter in her hands, and then took two strides to where Jerzy sat and bent forward, placing the faintest of kisses on the top of his head. “You can do it,” she said, her voice softer than he could ever remember hearing it. “You can.”

  Jerzy closed his eyes against a prickle of heat, and when he opened them again, she was gone.

  A Vineart stood alone. His the duty. His the burden. No one else should bear it.

  With a sigh, he leaned back in his chair, focused his gaze on the Guardian, resting patiently over the doorway in its usual niche, and felt his heart, beating too quickly, his skin, too slick with sweat. The food helped, and a series of deep breaths, as Malech had taught him, brought his body and mind alike to a calm stillness.

  Within that stillness, Jerzy reached for the quiet-magic again, swirling it the way he would newly crushed mustus, drawing the magic up and then punching it back down again, letting the sense of himself float down into the earth, sliding just above the root he could feel spanning the Lands Vin; not enough to rouse it, not enough to risk himself, but leaving a trail that, should anyone be looking, could be followed back to him.

  The world was askew, but within himself, the balance rested: power and control.

  He was done waiting.

  Five tasting spoons were lined up in front of him on the desk, the remaining clutter of papers, tasting spoons, and pens pushed to the side, out of reach or risk of spill. Each contained a single legacy: earth, weather, fire, flesh, and aether. He had not tasted them, merely pouring a measure into each and letting the sense of them rise into the air.

  Sin Washer had forbidden this, had restricted them to a lifetime of learning one or two legacies, put the combined strength of unincanted vina, the overpowering magic of the First Vine, out of their reach. And yet . . . Jerzy recognized each legacy as he touched it, and it in turn knew him.

  What had happened, between the Breaking of the Vine and the rise of Vinearts? Not only the loss of the First Growth; there had to be more, that subverted the will of Zatim Sin Washer and made this possible.

  Jerzy thought he knew. Quiet-magic. The thing that moved slave to Vineart. The thing that had appeared, according to Master Malech, only after the shattering of the vines, the transfer of power from prince to slave. A Vine might be shattered, but roots, denied access one way, grows another.

  The quiet-magic would bring all five legacies together within him, mimicking the strength of the First Growth, matching the blood-soaked strength of the Exile. His, to use.

  He had woken that morning, knowing it was time. The Exile was over. The mage was looking for him.

  Vineart.

  The whispered word was both reminder and instruction. He did not taste any of the spellwines; there was no need. A Vineart knew the vines, and the vines knew him. Allowing his body to relax back into the straight-backed chair, he rested his right hand over his left, the silver ring heavy on his finger, a reminder that, while he did this on his own, he was not alone: Malech, and Josia, and Filion, the Vineart who had trained Josia, all the way back to the first of that line, the unknown slave, the Vineart-to-become who, in the aftermath of the Breaking, had discovered that a vine whispered to him and made his blood shimmer with magic.

&nbs
p; His, the direct legacy, the birthright denied. What he was about to do was forbidden by the Washers, by two thousand years of tradition.

  Jerzy took a deep breath, and rejected tradition.

  Spice. Warm spice, the flavors of all Iaja and Aleppan, the islands of the Southern Sea. Dry stone, and warm earth. The cooler herbs of The Berengia and Altenne, fruits both sharp and smooth, mingling in his Sense, filling his nose and mouth with an awareness of their power.

  Jerzy felt an instant of panic: it was too much, it would overwhelm him, it would destroy him. He almost broke away, denying the legacies, when the Guardian’s whisper slid into his ears and lay itself across his chest.

  Vineart.

  Yes. His own voice, as soft a stone-whisper as the dragon’s, responding and acknowledging the searching tendril of the mage, still distant, still searching, and then going beyond, taunting the other, leaving a trail behind. He let the mingled magics envelop him, allowing his own awareness to become secondary, just as he had the morning when Master Malech plunged him into the vat of mustus to see if it would claim him.

  The slave-mark on his hand had turned to a Vineart’s mark, that day. What sort of mark would he wear, when this was done?

  Then that question, too, fell away, as any sense of Jerzy fell away, the magic sliding into him, flooding him, filling his skin with magic like the flesh of the grape primed for Harvest.

  As he drifted, it was as though part of him spread throughout the entire vineyard, carried by root and stone, soil and stream. He was the solidity of the House, the dry flavor of the earth, the solemn strength of the vines, inhuman and yet not cold, not uncaring . . .