The Shattered Vine (29 page)

He was not a Master Vineart. He had no right to wear the ring, taken from his Master’s hands before he was placed on his pyre. But it had been there, on the desk when he came down to prepare for this meeting, and the Guardian would not have placed it there if it were not the right thing to do.

“I will not accede to your proposal,” he said abruptly, before the Washer had the chance to speak again.

“You cannot—”

“Do not tell me what I can and cannot do, Washer.” Jerzy’s voice was a low growl, startling even himself. “You have asked me to abandon all that I have been taught, all that
your kind
have taught, in order to . . . what?”

“To save the Lands Vin.”

Jerzy could not remember the last time he had slept well. The first night home? Or had it been onboard the
Heart
? The lack of sleep coupled with the draining aftermath of his spell the day before made Jerzy too irritable for diplomatic speech. “It is too late to save what was. It was too late when your Collegium refused to hear what my master and I warned them of. Too late, when Vinearts felt they had no choice but to break Commandment to survive, when landlords turned to take magic with an open hand, and no one slapped them down. Too late, when people died, and the Heirs of Sin Washer were too busy playing games to hear their cries.”

Jerzy’s voice stayed even as he spoke, even as the Washer’s face turned an unpleasant shade of red, as though he were coming down with the plague.

“Your words are . . . not unfair,” the Washer said, letting his own anger fade away. “I think that you are making a mistake, but I will not belabor the point. Nor will I threaten you—it would be both pointless, and foolish. Brother Neth will arrive soon, as you have been warned. Whatever your arguments with him, he has remained aloof from the tremors within the Collegium; we are agreed that he need know nothing about this?”

Odd, that they wished to protect him—or protect themselves from him? Either way, Jerzy did not care. He nodded once in agreement, and the Washer stood as though to leave. “This was a situation not of our choosing, a time not of our wishing. If we meet again, I hope—”

“Sit down,” Jerzy said, his tone mild but unmistakably a command. “I said I would not accede to your proposal. However, I have one of my own.”

The other man sat back down, and listened.

*   *   *

S
OME TIME LATER
, the Washer exited the study, his expression thoughtful, nodding curtly at members of the Household as he passed but not speaking to anyone. Mahault watched him leave from her position in the main hall, then ran for the study.

By the time she made it through the door, Ao and Kaïnam were already there, Jerzy having set them to wait in the courtyard, out of sight but within reach. Once they were all settled, Jerzy stood, and began to pace.

“Well?” Mahl said, leaning forward on her elbows, careful not to disturb any of the papers on the desk. “What did he say?”

“He agreed. There is no way he could refuse,” Kaï said, confident even before Jerzy spoke.

“There’s always a way to say no,” Ao said. “If you’re willing to walk away. If they thought Jerzy’s plan was more risk than profit—”

“He agreed,” Jerzy said, his voice hard.

The tension in the room did not ease; if anything, it heightened. They were listening to the sound of his voice as well as the words, and were not sure they liked what they heard.

“He will inform Neth that I behaved in a suitably mild manner, cowed by my experiences and the death of my master, and then he will return to the Collegium and tell
his
masters that I refused their offer, that I scorned everything the Collegium stood for, and held them responsible for Malech’s death.”

Jerzy did, in fact: had they left magic to Vinearts and not interfered well beyond their own legacy, he would have been by his master’s side when Ximen attacked the House, and the two of them could have fought him off, not been distracted by Washers and their hire-swords. But it was gone and past. If a vineyard died, you uprooted it and planted anew. The Vin Lands would not return to what had been, no matter how events had turned.

“He will also tell them that I have begun gathering my own allies, continuing the work my master started, and that he believes I
have knowledge of the source of our difficulties and am planning a strike.”

The other three nodded; he was thinking like a fighter, like a trader, like a man of power. It also had the advantage of being true.

“He will advise his master—and any others who might be listening—that I be left alone, and that they follow me, when I do strike, thereby taking the glory of saving the Lands Vin for themselves.”

“Doubtless, you suggested that he put it in more welcoming terms, for their gentle esteem.”

Jerzy grinned at Kaïnam, for a moment shedding the cold weight he carried. “Of course.”

“And then what?” Mahault leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting on her knuckles, looking as though she were ready to leap for her sword in an instant. He was not the only one who had become something else. The girl who had been caged behind city walls, heeled by an older woman to ensure she did nothing to shame her family, was long gone, and in her place was a warrior. Jerzy saw it clearly, as he turned to answer her; the difference was that she had chosen the road she walked. He felt a lurch of envy within himself, for that choice. Not that it mattered, in the end.

“And then we attack,” Kaïnam said with satisfaction, too caught up in his own emotions to notice anything wrong. “Ximen will turn his attention to Jerzy, leaving gaps in his defense, and we will be ready to strike.”

Jerzy stopped his pacing in front of the map that had been covered by the old tapestry while the Washer was there, studying it as the other three broke into intense discussion about the details of such an attack, what pieces should be moved where. He smiled, not the carefree grin of earlier, but a grimmer, thin-lipped expression. They thought like a fighter, like a trader, like a man of power, and did not notice he had told them the beginning of the plan, but not the end. They thought he had set the Washers on a fool’s chase; they did not realize he had done the same to them.

The distractions were in place, he had dangled the lure. All he waited on was for Ximen to make his move.

T
HE SUN ROSE
earlier each morning, the days warming, the dirt turning to thick black mud when it rained and caked brown dust when it dried, while the reports from the wall increased in seasonal urgency, as breeding season drove more beasts to look for easier, two-legged prey. Ximen had not slept in two days. He had not been home in almost a week. While he might be able to steal a nap at some point during the day, the comfort of his House-hearth seemed impossibly far away, right then. The ships were readied, the men being trained. Two of his sons were among them, sturdy and capable boys who would come with him when they sailed. They seemed thrilled to spend their days learning how to climb rigging and be useful shipboard, never giving a thought to their brothers who would be left behind.

Ximen wished he could say the same.

“Another man was lost off the border last night,” his adjunct said, giving the worst news first, as Ximen preferred.

Ximen rubbed his eyes tiredly, feeling as though that were simply the latest blow struck against him. He hated summer, even in normal years. The night air did not encourage sleep. “Did anyone see the beast?”

One shake of the man’s head was his answer. “No, of course not.” The damned hill-beasts were quick, quicker than a sneeze and twice as hard to stop. Every generation they seemed to grow more fierce, more deadly, as though the very fact of two-legged invaders on what had been their land made them mad. It had not mattered so much before, when there were enough troops to keep them cowed. Now, with half their men taken off, and too few remaining to fill the holes . . .

“Pay the death price to his family, and close ranks,” Ximen said, knowing that it would already be in the works. He had good people on the borders, from the coast to the Wall, and up into the hills itself. Good people who trusted him. Who followed him without hesitation, no matter how dangerous the order, how mad the scheme.

“And this is madness,” he said, once the adjunct had bowed and left the room. “Madness of the most poisoned manner.”

None of the servants or staff still in the room could share his concerns or soothe his guilt at those who would be abandoned, left to the tender mercies of the vine-mage when he set sail. His the responsibility. His the burden.

Months before, he had stood in front of the Third Fortification, who covered the low border, and ordered nearly a third to lay down arms and pick up saws, to cut down trees and haul them to the shoreline. There had been no dissent, no uproar, merely obedience. His people had been trained since birth to accept sacrifice as the cost of survival, and the word of the Praepositus was more than law: if he wished them to learn to build ships, after decades of avoiding the sea, then they would do so. If he wished them to abandon the patrols that they had kept sacred for seven generations, they would.

If he had given way before the vine-mage’s demands and sent twenty of his best to be slaughtered, they would have gone without protest or hesitation.

The vine-mage had not forgiven him for refusing. There had been no words said, no dark looks sent, but Ximen knew, the way a guard knew when a dark-beast lurked in the branches beyond the wall, watching and waiting for the opportunity to strike.

A determination grew in him. He could not afford to take the vine-mage out yet, not while they still needed him. Not until the ships were set on their way, safely across the seas. His men had training, but the ocean was vast and the mage their only source of protection.

Not yet, but soon. When they were safely in possession of their ancestral rights, he would rid his people of this monster. Once they were free of this place, and back in a civilized land.

Until then, his hand was stayed. The season’s Harvest was due. He would watch the names being drawn, would stand at a distance and observe the Sacrifices made. He would allow no one to see how the act disgusted him, having seen the travesty the mage turned it into with his
year-round, seemingly endless hunger for victims. There was no nobility, no generosity in the sacrifice anymore; they were simply tools, used and discarded. But his people needed to believe, more now than ever before, that they were a part of something greater. A man who believed in his own destiny was a man who would fight for it. A man in control of his life would accomplish things that were otherwise impossible. And if that control was illusion, fate a fickle wind under another’s command?

He would keep that knowledge to himself.

Ximen cast his gaze down on the desk, where the plans for the fleet—the first fleet the Grounding had ever built—were unfurled. Meticulous planning and precision work had them ahead of schedule, all five ships and their crew. The crafters and builders had thrown themselves into the challenge, and he was unutterably proud of them.

Once summer ended and the Harvest was in, the first stage would be undersail and away. They were too few to storm by force—the ground needed to be prepared first. The early ships would sail, while more ships were built, to take those who remained once it was safe.

Those who survived.

“You had best be right, you flea-bitten bastard,” he told the vine-mage, distant in his own yard, as though the man could hear him. If the Lands Vin were not in disarray, their small force would never reach their goal, much less reclaim their family lands, lost so many decades before.

It was still bitter on his tongue, that secret history. Once, the founders of the Grounding had listened to the betrayer, had heard his honeyed words and believed that they were on a mission to increase the glory and might of Iaja, their families joined together in marriage and exploration, to seal the ruling of the land under one banner. They had believed it right until the sighting of land, when the very spells that held their ship together came undone, wracking them on this unhappy shore.

Nearly a third died that first, firelit night. More died after, from starvation and wild animals, before the local peoples came to the shore and saved them, taught them how to survive.

Survive, but never thrive. Not in this land, which did not cherish their blood. His lovely Bohaide’s words, so many months ago, came back to him: “And then you will be gone?”

He looked down at the plan for the ship, and then looked at the map of his land, ringed by inhospitable mountains and depthless ocean, a narrow strip of land that had taken so much, and given . . . nothing but suffering and sorrow.

He was Praepositus, and as such he must do things that an ordinary man need not. He would bear the weight of that on his conscience, and call it the fair weight, if it brought his people out of this damned exile. He would bear the weight for all decisions he made, to the very fingertips of the silent gods.

Seven generations they had been forgotten, and seven generations was eight too long. He shook his head, reaching for a sheaf of orders that needed to be signed, when noise in the hallway below took his attention.

“Ximen. Ximen!”

Of course. The afternoon had been going too smoothly; Ximen had almost anticipated someone shouting his name, in exactly that tone. “What is wrong? Did the entire shipment of wheat become infested with mice? Has everybody in the Grounding come down with river sores? Or, no, wait, I know, the sky has finally fallen?”

“Ximen!” Erneo came in through the doorway, his thin chest heaving from dashing up the stairs, his eyes panicked. His travel-aide was not a man given to panic; Ximen had seen him face down an enraged bull-hog with nothing more than a spear and a scrap of cloth, a calm smile on his face. “The mage, he has taken . . . he has taken children.”

The noise and bustle in the room ceased, although Ximen was not sure if everyone had indeed stopped, or he simply could not hear them any longer. Inside him, something already cold turned into ice. “Did he,” Ximen said quietly, even as he stood, touching his aide reassuringly on the shoulder. “Did he indeed.”