From Whence You Came (6 page)

Bradhai looked up, and discovered he was practically nose-to-nose with another face, this one hanging upside down, a felted, brimless cap obscuring the face above that nose.

“Fire,” he repeated.

The newcomer nodded, still upside down. “First thing you learn, no open flame nowhere. Not even in dock. Speshully not when in dock, ‘cause it could spread.”

Bradhai nodded himself, seeing the logic. He used coldfire because it was convenient for him; for those on the sea, housed by wood and cloth, it would be a necessity. No doubt they spent as much or more on firespells as they did on his windspells.

They did not demand their firespell Vineart to save them
he thought bitterly.
They value them more?

 
“Or none were so fool as to fall for their ploy,” he said. “No, unfair. They thought it was my spells as failed. They did not know.”

Didn
't they?

Impossible to know, and pointless to ponder. He looked back up at the boy, who was waiting patiently still upside down, as though hearing someone talking to themselves were perfectly normal. Perhaps, for him, it was.

“I am Bradhai,” he said.

“Po.”

Bradhai reached up to pull the cap away, and was rewarded by a pair of round black eyes set in a rounded face, perhaps eight years old, if that. Bradhai had known slaves with that same look, from the tradelands far to the east. Finding one here, on an Iajan ship, was unexpected – sailors did not take slaves. They did, however, travel widely. Perhaps the boy was a leavestaking from some voyage or another, whose mother did not wish to keep him.

“You're giving me a headache, hanging there,” he said. “Come down.”

The boy shrugged, and he slipped down from the rope he had been hanging from, landing softly on the decking below as though he'd simply stepped down.

“You're part of the crew.”

The boy puffed out his thin chest. “Iyam.”

“And you've seen serpents before?”

“Lots.” Po reconsidered. “A couple.”

“Including the ones we saw three days past?”

“I seen them. And one other.”

Still. That was one more than he had seen. And the boy knew how the ship worked. He could be useful.

“What else scares the beasts away? Noise?”

“Nah. They ain'ts got ears.” Po looked at Bradhai as though he should have known that.

“Ah. Smell? Is there a smell they dislike?”

The boy's own nose wrinkled as he considered the question. “Don't know. They like fish, though. Graver says you gotta be careful of ‘em, when you pull in a big haul. They come looking to take it away from you.”

Bradhai began to pace again, aware that the boy trotted alongside like a goat, looking for a treat.

“Fish – how many fish? Not when you're simply catching enough for a meal?”

“Nah.”

As swiftly as Bradhai could think of something, Po answered, the two of them making a slow circuit around the space until a chime sounded, and the boy startled like a deer. “Watch change,” he said, and bounced once on his heels and then sprang into the air to catch at the nearest rope, pulling himself upward to where, Bradhai supposed, he would report for duty.

It made sense: a young boy would be able to move higher, more easily, and their eyesight would be better than an older sailor - plus, they did not have the strength needed for most jobs on board. But it still made Bradhai's chest clench a little, watching him climb ever-higher.

But thanks to the boy, he had a place to start now.

“I have firespells,” he said to himself. “But no firevine
vina.
And merely throwing flame at them would be pointless. Anything that burned them badly enough to end an attack would also put the ship itself at risk. Which would be why they don't use firespells to begin with, you idiot.”

Another thought came to him, tickling like an insect on his skin. In a different time, another place, he would have brushed it away, or considered it as a curiosity at best, a passing impossible thought.

Here and now, he captured it, even as common sense told him to let it go.

Fire was the logical weapon. He could not shape a firespell incantation – he had no Sense for that vine, no connection to those magics, even if he had access to
vina
of that nature, and decantations could not be unwoven, not without destroying the structure of the
vin
itself.

But he did have his aether
vina
. If he could incant that to carry an existing firespell away from the boat, toward the beast…

Manipulating another
's spells is forbidden. 

“No. Not forbidden. Just… not done.” Tradition was important to a Vineart. Tradition carried down what was done, how and when. It was the centuries of experience, all the knowledge relearned, slowly and painfully, since the Breaking of the Vine. The Commands dictated that Vinearts work only their own yards, not coveting the work of others, but nowhere did it say that they could not
use
the work of others. 

Bradhai did not covet firevines. He had no desire to try them under his own hand; his nature was to grow and send, not to burn or illuminate. It would be no disobedience to the Commands to bind another's decantation into his incantation.

The only questions remaining: was it possible, was he capable, and would it work.

“If you want to go home, it
has
to work,” he said grimly, and turned to the worktable, his thoughts already ranging over the
vin magica
he had brought, thinking which would be best to use, and what structure he should attempt.

o0o

Three days later, Bradhai had nearly set the sails above him on fire twice, singed his eyelashes, and filled the entire belowdecks with a thick, white – but thankfully harmless – smoke. No incantation had worked.

And the serpents had been sighted, closer each time.

“The men say the serpents are following us.”

Po was back, hanging upside-down again, as seemed to be his preferred position, the rope twined around his leg and arm in a way that should have been painful – it hurt Bradhai to look at it, so he kept his gaze down on his worktable.

“Are they?” He had heard the alarms, of course; there was no way to avoid the calls, or the scurry of the crew as they turned out to position, ready in case they were needed, either to flee or to fight. Bradhai had kept working; if they needed him, they would let him know.

Po shrugged, still upside down. “Dunno. Don't even know if it's the same or different. So long as it stays away, could be following could be passin' by, don't matter.”

Bradhai lifted the vial of aether
vina
and let a drop fall out into the silver tasting spoon resting on the table. The spoon's bowl was flat on the bottom, designed exactly for this, but even so it trembled slightly as the
vina
touched it.

That year's Harvest had been exceptional: Bradhai had kept aside a cask of it expressly to see how it would age. Once incanted, a
vin magica
held itself intact, with no deviation. But one that aged, untouched…

It had been a side project, one he'd had little time for, abandoned half-done. Now, it seemed as though Sin Washer had guided his hand.

“Bend and hold,” he whispered to the wine, the words less important than the image he held in his thoughts. “Bend and hold.” The
vina
shimmered, hearing not only his words but his intention, the Sense within him speaking to the magic within it, in some way that his master had never been able to explain, but simply
was.

Placing the vial down carefully, his gaze still on the spoon, he reached with his left hand and picked up the bowl of firewine he had poured earlier. Dipping his finger into the bowl, he let enough moisture coat his skin, and then carefully moved his finger to rest just over the bowl of the spoon, and the waiting
vina
. One drop fell, then another. He waited, and a third drop, smaller than the other two, splashed into the bowl.

Above him, Po held his breath. This has been where things went wrong, before.

The
vina
shivered, but nothing exploded. With luck he had used the right dosage this time.

“Hold, and enfold.” Bradhai said softly, the words barely shaped by his lips. His breath touched the
vina
and
vin
, and he could
see
the former enfolding the latter, containing it within, flame inside air.

They both held their breath, the air around them hushed under the endless sounds of sailors and ship and sea.

Nothing happened.

“Be as one,” Bradhai continued, sealing the incantation. “Hold ready, until called.”

The
vina
shimmered again, the color becoming more intense, the clarity of the soft red liquid intensifying. Bradhai waited for the click in his Sense that would tell him that the incantation had sealed –

When the liquid exploded, knocking him back, skittering across the deck until he fetched up against the ropes the sailors had strung there as a precaution, after the second time that had happened.

“Oh, rot,” he said, closing his eyes. “I thought I had it, that time.”

“You still livin', Vineart?”

“I think so, yes.” He opened his eyes to see that Po had escaped the worst of the blast, and was lowering himself down slowly on his ropes once again. The others knew, by now, not to come investigate anything the Vineart was working on, unless he called for aid.

“I was closer that time,” he said. “I wonder what went wrong?”

Po knew by now that the question was not addressed to him.

“Maybe,” Bradhai said, getting up on one elbow and doing a visual check to make sure he hadn't missed an injury, “I should only use two drops. Even if it's not enough to be effective, then I'd know to alter my-“

“Sta'board first quad, flat!” The call came from one of the eyes, and Bradhai got himself to his feet, ignoring the aches and pains, and only barely noticing that his nose was bleeding.

“Po, what?” But the boy had already started crawling up his ropes at a fast clip, the better to see what the excitement was about.

‘Down' meant there was something in the water. ‘Above' was the sky – when a storm rolled in, or a flock of sea birds flew low enough and large enough to be a problem. Flat…

He turned in the direction indicated, his gaze sweeping the horizon the way his master had taught him, to find the single thing out of place. It took a minute, but he thought he could see, in the distance, the black dot that would indicate another ship.

The ship began to swing about, but slowly. The captain had decided to investigate, then, rather than avoid. That meant he did not think it was pirates, or Caulian raiders.

“Too far from the shoreline for that,” he reassured himself. Raiders looked for choicer targets. They did not roam the open sea hoping to encounter something worth taking. And a pirate might think that the
ladysong
was a choice tidbit, but she was not running a merchant's flag, nor a land-lord's insignia, so most would pass her by, the effort not equal to the lack of cargo.

Someone hungry might take her on for the ship itself, and any potential ransom, but the odds of that, Bradhai assumed, were low enough not to be a worry.

Still. It paid to be cautious. He went to the table and began clearing away the debris of his work, wiping down the spoon – the silver undamaged, if slightly tarnished – and closing up all the various skins and jars, placing them into the empty half-cask shoved beneath the table. He rolled down his sleeves, used a cloth to wipe his face and hands clean of sweat and splatter, and retrieved his jacket from the hook he'd placed it on that morning.

It was one thing to let the sailors see him in a state of disarray – they respected him more for the obvious sweat, not less. But if they were to have company, the role of Vineart, master of magic, must be played.

o0o

“We've lost them.”

Harini did not swear. She did not rail against fate, the silent gods, or even the ship's pace, as she might have a week before. She merely rested her elbows on the table, and thought.

“Lady? Did you hear me?”

She raised her head and looked at the Captain. “Yes, old friend, I heard you. Your navigator can extract a pattern from the way the beasts were traveling?”

“The way those things have been swerving and ditching?” The Captain scowled. “He'll take it as a challenge, no doubt. Aye, he can plot it out.”

“Good. Have him do so, and we will follow. I cannot believe that there would be no cause behind its actions. They are not random – there is no hesitation each time they switch.”

They had spotted the three serpents several days before, and had been following them – at a respectful distance – since. In that time, the beasts had disappeared and reappeared almost continuously, changing direction in each instance, sometimes widely, sometimes not. It had supported her decision to search in a random pattern, but now that she had them to study, Rini did not want to risk losing them. Not until she'd gotten close enough to hear if these beasts sang, too.

“I'll not risk my men, getting closer.” The Captain knew her thoughts; they'd had this argument before. “And before you offer again, I will not drop ye into a longboat and let ye float in. You'd be scarce a mouthful for one of them, and then there's me having to explain to your esteemed father. Better you should let me be et, first. Kinder to kill me.”

“They've seen us, and not attacked,” Harini pointed out, not for the first time. “They do not see us as either a threat, or a meal.”

“They may just not be hungry.”

Harini simply looked at him in disbelief. There had never been a serpent who was not hungry, not for three days straight. 

A knock on the door prevented that argument from continuing.

“Captain? Another ship on the waters ahead, second quad and turning for us.”