The Shattered Vine (34 page)

“It’s tied to his name, and the sense of his magic, together,” he said finally. “The way you react when someone calls you across a crowded room; I can make him turn around. Not physically. But the sense of him, marking him.”

Even to Jerzy’s ear it made no sense, but Ao, at least, didn’t seem to mind not getting an explanation for once, focused more on the result. “So if you had enough information, you would be able to . . . find me anywhere?”

Jerzy stopped, his hands stilling as the idea struck him. “I . . . may be.” It would be more difficult without the tang of magic to follow, but if he had something physical of the person, to stand in for the feather and fang, maybe. If he were able to . . .

“We could make a fortune, selling that spellwine. No, listen to me, Jer. Do you have any idea how much merchants would pay to be able to keep track of caravans with their goods in them? Knowing where they were when they arrived at market, or were loaded onto ships? And you
can send this over the ocean . . . name the price, and it will be yours!”

“You are drooling,” Mahault said, annoyed.

“Of course I am. Jer . . .”

Despite his exhaustion and near-quivering anticipation, Jerzy started to laugh. Nothing dampened Ao for long—not that the trader wasn’t entirely serious about his proposal.

Some of the tension in Jerzy’s body drained away, allowing him to speak more coherently.

“I don’t know that I could actually incant it to a simple spellwine,” he said. “But all right, if we survive this, I will consider it.”

The likelihood of them actually surviving was small enough that it seemed a safe promise.

He had, as Kaï said earlier, poked their enemy with a stick. He could either wait . . . or he could poke harder.

Jerzy stared at the items on the table in front of him, and reached for the cup, taking a careful sip of its contents. The healwine burned in his throat, the bitterness too obvious; it had been sitting out too long and gone sour. But the magic was still strong, coursing through his body and banishing the exhaustion for a few hours longer. Long enough to do what needed to be done.

“Now if you must watch, be quiet.”

They both shut their mouths with audible snaps, and settled against the far wall of the study. Jerzy had shoved the battered worktable against the wall under the maps. A series of bottles had been brought out of the cellar, and the surface was covered with tasting spoons and red-stained rags. He wanted nothing more than to throw a cover over the table, tuck himself into bed, and wake up to discover it had all been a horrid dream.

“Wind, first,” he murmured to himself, putting all other thoughts out of mind. “Wind, to carry the spell. Fire, to fuel it. Earth, to ground it. Healspell, to bind flesh to flesh. Aether, to bring magic to magic.”

And quiet-magic, to bind them all together within him.

The unblooded, feral grapes had given him that, he was starting to
understand. Had changed him, opened something inside him, letting him sense the thing he had begun calling the Root, the living magic.

Magic makes the man. Gathering all the legacies together, stirred with the feral strength of the unblooded vines, the cold fierce magic that had been their birthright before Sin Washer made them . . . what? Jerzy did not know, and the not-knowing terrified him. But he thought of Ximen having access to all of that, not restricted to the legacies he could steal from his distant land . . . there would be no stopping the other man, then. That terrified Jerzy more.

He gathered the spellwines, lining them up each in a tasting spoon. The colors glinted at him, shading from the deep, heavy garnet of earth to the pale, almost translucent aether. A normal decantation would not have worked; even a Master Vineart would have difficulty collecting all five spellwines on his tongue, and still be able to control them.

Jerzy was no Master, but he knew these wines: three, he had worked the vines they came from, if not that particular harvest. The other two he had used before, that Vineart’s work, the magic of those yards. The feel of the unblooded grapes in his mind, in his blood, told him that it could be done. That they were all legacies of the First Growth, all still connected by the Root. Not good, not bad, merely powerful. Dangerous, but needful. And that he, too, was part of the Root, connected by the magic within him.

That thought made him dizzy, so he pushed it away, concentrating on what was in front of him.

Taking a deep breath, he lifted his belt-blade, pressed it against the flesh of his wrist, where the slave-mark had once rested, piercing the skin. The tips of his fingers were too rough and hard, but the skin there gave way to vein, drawing forth a clear red drop of blood. He lifted his wrist to his mouth and licked at it, letting the blood touch his tongue, the taste salty-sweet.

Blood, to tie and bind the shattered pieces together.

Lifting the first spoon, he took only enough of the liquid to wet his tongue, letting it soak into the flesh. Earth, warm and spicy, welcoming
and full. The scent of it rose into his nose, and he breathed it in deeply, trying to bring it into his entire body.

Then healing, cool and rounded, the taste of dark berries and fresh water, the nose of sunlight on dry stone. Fire, bright red and harsh on the tongue, with the nose of summer flowers in full bloom. Healing, tart and sharp, the greenest of the wines, the smell of rain and snow. And then aether. . . . He almost hesitated, his hand shaking as he lifted the spoon. The rasp of a cat’s tongue, the sting of an insect’s bite, the wet sweetness of overripe spring fruit, the dry scratch of riverstone, followed by a smell that seemed to belong only to aether, that he could not place or name, but knew for what it was, triggering an avalanche of memories in his brain.

Once he added his own blood to the mix, it acted as a paddle in the crush, his own body the vat, becoming something greater. The magic stretched and swelled within him, so ripe and potent he pitied those who needed a full mouthful to work it, who never felt the intensity, the depth of each wine, but only focused on the results. They used spellwines, but they never participated, were never caught up in how glorious every nuance, every layer of taste and smell, grew once it was released. . . .

The spellwines were all incanted, all designed for a specific use, but the freshly blooded magic within him slid underneath that, freed the essential magic from its shaping, and delivered it to him. Even other Vinearts, limited by their own walls, tied to the legacies the slavers delivered them into. Master Malech had never felt this, the sense of power thrumming within his veins, his skin the skin of the grape, swelling with every beat of his heart, the room itself seeming to sway around him.

Jerzy opened his mouth slightly and breathed in, letting the cool air slide over his tongue, opening the flavors even more, until the skin of his mouth tingled with it, and he could feel the magic surge in his blood, the quiet-magic answering the call. The room around him, the intent of the spell, it all faded under that, the dizzying feeling of spinning in
place, driven by the magic until he could no longer feel his own body, but instead was part of something greater.

Not Master. Not Vineart. Something else. Something
more
. It was a step too far, he knew that, deep in his mind, but the understanding was so close, so tantalizing, he reached . . . and the Root beneath him stirred, and reached back, sliding its tendrils into his skin. . . .

“Jer?”

Jerzy grabbed at the noise, grabbed and held, building it into a solid floor under his feet, blocking the Root.

“Talk to me,” he whispered, although he tried to shout it. “Say my name.”

“Jer?”

“Jerzy.” Another voice, lighter, like water flowing over rocks. “You are Jerzy. Jerzy of House Malech.”

You are Vineart,
a third noise added, and it was as though he had been flung hard up against a boulder, the spinning halted, his body still tingling from the effects.

You are a stupid Vineart,
the noise added, and the rumble underneath was a familiar echo, the feel of a cuff against the back of his head, and Jerzy almost cried in gratitude.

“Jer?” Ao, worried. And Mahault, just behind him. Without opening his eyes, Jerzy identified them, even as he came back to his body, hands clenched hard against the wooden table, hard enough to dig splinters into his finger.

Vineart
.

“I am . . . all right.” He wasn’t, not even close. “I let the magic . . . catch me up, a little.”

No need to ever let them know how close he had come to being lost, how close he had come to falling into the Root, and . . . Jerzy cut that thought off. It did not happen; it was useless to linger. The spellwines waited. The Lands Vin needed him.

The last decantation he had used had only identified the feel of
Ximen. To find him, and hold him, he needed something specific, but inclusive, to tell the magic what he wanted of it, and give it shape . . .

Names. If magic made the man, names shaped them. “Ximen,” he whispered. “Ximen, Praepositus. Vineart. Find, and bind. Go.”

The magic swirled, and he almost lost his balance again, but steadied himself, this time intensely aware of the breathing of the two behind him, the weight of the Guardian in his chest, and the cool metal of his master’s ring on his finger, binding him to this body.

A beat passed, then another, and Jerzy had a flash of doubts; had he misformed the decantation? Was the blend of spellwines too much? Had he used too little? Did he not—

Pain.

Jerzy staggered, his nails leaving marks in the table as he stumbled backward, his body arching forward as though taking a blow to the chest hard enough to fell a horse. Falling, endless falling into a void, the room no longer swaying but spinning around him, the rise of vomit in his throat, and the echo of sound around him, coming from all directions at once: present, possible, past . . .

The past, recent enough, the echoes still fresh in memory. The smell of warm dirt and horse sweat around him, the sound of metal clinking, the acrid taste of fear and anger, it surrounded Jerzy, swarming over him as the spell returned with what he had sent it to find, linking him to the one named Ximen.

And he felt that-which-was-Ximen die.

A sudden wash of relief—the enemy was dead—and shock—had he caused that? had he killed him?—ebbed with the realization that there was something else in that loop of magic, not held in the same manner but within it nonetheless. Something with the bloated stink of taint.

Something that yet lived.

Vineart.
The awareness snarled the word at him, a streak of magic hurtling down the loop, blood-dark and rancid. Jerzy panicked, struggling to break the loop before that ill-intent found him, shedding
the magic the way his master had once taught him, the second lesson ever, here in this very room.

If you can’t control it, release it,
he heard Malech say, his voice disgusted as he looked down at a younger, smaller Jerzy sprawled on the floor after a healspell made him throw up.
Never let it control you.

have you now, you troublesome upstart.

The feel of the words was foul, the stench a physical thing, the hatred the other Vineart felt for Jerzy like a blow again to the chest, and Jerzy fell backward even as he felt hands catching him, supporting him, his eyes rolling back in his head, catching only a faint glimpse of the stone ceiling overhead.

“Guardian!” Not his voice—Mahault, calling, and the Guardian was there, wings stretched out, its long body forming a barrier, even as its long neck snaked forward and it spat fire along the loop, leaving it singed in its wake. Jerzy could just barely sense the flame reach its destination, singeing the other hard enough that he dropped away, howling in pain.

There was silence, save for the harsh sound of Jerzy’s breathing, then Ao spoke.

“That didn’t seem to work well.”

There was another silence, and then Mahault let out a gasp that sounded suspiciously like laughter, and the two of them started to giggle helplessly, letting go of the stress now that they knew Jerzy was not dead.

The Vineart lay back on the floor, the Guardian having returned to its normal perch over the doorway, looking down at the three humans with a total lack of expression on its stone face, radiating a faint, almost imperceptible curiosity. It knew that the House had been threatened and that the threat had been sent away, but it lacked the details.

Jerzy closed his eyes against that curiosity, trying to sort the pieces himself. They had been misdirected, or their informant had: Ximen had been connected to the mage, but had not been the mage himself. Misdirected, to protect himself against discovery, should anyone question his tools, as Jerzy had. For some reason, the mage had killed
this Ximen . . . but Jerzy had felt the magic that did it, felt the echo of the blow, the control that directed it, and he could use that again, name or no name.

The fact that the mage would now be able to find him as well . . . a grim smile moved Jerzy’s lips. “Come and get me.”

“Jer?”

“It’s all right,” he said, still not moving. He wondered what he would tell the others, still hovering impatiently, when there was the sound of someone outside the door and Kaïnam came in, a strange expression on his face.

Jerzy felt an odd sense of recognition flood him: the moment was just like the first day of Harvest, everything happening at once. And, like Harvest, you either acted, or failed.

You know the moment.

The Guardian sounded almost smug. Jerzy got to his feet quickly, ignoring the various aches and pulls of his body. “What?”

Kaïnam started to speak, then shook his head, discarding what he was going to say and starting again. “A
meme-courier
has arrived. From Caul.”

“V
INEART
J
ERZY.”

Jerzy had never received a
courien
before; the one time a messenger had arrived for Master Malech, he had not been allowed to greet the
courien
or hear his message. Neither he, nor the others, had any idea how to address the other man, nor what level of courtesy should be extended. Unnerved from the encounter with not-Ximen, Jerzy decided to err on the side of being too arrogant rather than weak.