The Shattered Vine

T
HE
S
HATTERED
V
INE

Also by Laura Anne Gilman from Gallery Books

Flesh and Fire

Weight of Stone

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Laura Anne Gilman

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition October 2011

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Designed by Renata Di Biase

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gilman, Laura Anne.

The shattered vine / Laura Anne Gilman.—1st Gallery Books hardcover ed.

p. cm. — (The vineart war ; bk. 3)

1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Vineyards—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3557.I4545S53 2011

813'.54—dc23

2011024966

ISBN 978-1-4391-0148-3
ISBN 978-1-4391-2690-5 (ebook)

For Geoff, who will read this,
and my twinling, who probably won’t.
You guys have been my sanity
and my lifeline while I wrote this,
and I love ya.

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Part 2

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Part 3

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Over the course of these three books, so many people have stepped forward with information and advice, help and support, that at this point thanking them all individually would require another chapter, and my editor informs me the book is Quite Long Enough, thank you.

Thank you. All of you. For your answers, for your patience, and for sharing your enthusiasm not only for the final product but the
process
of winemaking. You are all magicians.

However, the trilogy cannot come to a close without again acknowledging The Jens—my agent, Jennifer Jackson, and my editor, Jennifer Heddle. Through trial and triumph, panics and partying . . . you guys rock.

T
ruth, history, legend
. . . they are all the same. The Washers, our self-appointed guardians, tell us a story, a lovely story, about gods and sacrifice, of the role that Vinearts play and what they may and may not do, to keep the world safe and whole.

I am neither Vineart nor Washer, but solitaire. I view the world down the line of my blade, not softened by legends of some demigod long dead and gone. Nor am I tied to the promises of a place or liege, to watch my fortunes rise and fall by how well my master weaves his strands of power. Solitaires give up House and hearth, have no allegiances save to ourselves and whatever oaths of employment we take. That allows us to see the world as it is, entire, and to hear much that would otherwise remain unspoken, or mis-said.

For history is written by the survivors, and each side has their version to tell. When you have no stake in choosing sides, if you pry away the gilding and the pretty words and look down the edge of your blade, what remains is this: that in the years before modern reckoning, a plague attacked the vineyards of the prince-mages, twisting and changing the fruit—and the magic within. Call it Sin Washer’s blood, or the wrath
of the gods, or merely a ferocious blight as comes by chance, it spread too quickly to be halted, too fiercely to be treated. What had been, was no more.

The prince-mages, who depended on magic to hold power, took their fear out on the people, and their cruelty became legend. Eventually the people rebelled, tearing down the vineyards and destroying the Houses of power. . . .

And the entire world suffered, because order was out of order. The Emperor died, the empire crumbled, and the lands were left to their own devices. I can only imagine the suffering that must have followed; the history books do not speak of it, and the Washers would pretend it never happened.

Slowly, over decades, the people and the princes came to an understanding. The magic passed into the hands of those chosen not from the ranks of power, but the children of the common populace, while physical might remained in the hands of the princes, and peace settled . . . or as much peace as man, ever restless, can know.

And thus the world moved on. Generations were born and died, towns grew into cities, armies marched, kings and princes rose and fell, some lands prospered while others faded . . . while on their plots of land the Vinearts tended to their vines and worked their magic, isolated from the strife and innocent of those cycles of power. The world remained steady, the gods no longer putting their hands into the affairs of mortals. We began to believe that this was as it always would remain.

We cannot choose the age we live in. The world of my youth was a simpler one—or perhaps I merely believed it to be so. But simplicity is not the natural state of affairs for man, and the whispers of past glory—real or otherwise—are forever in our ears.

I have been on the road nearly half my life, taking the blade the year I turned sixteen. I had thought I would end my service an old woman, with only small stories to tell.