The Shattered Vine (35 page)

Therefore, he had Detta escort the messenger to his study, and waited below, letting his body recover from the encounter with not-Ximen before going up the stairs to greet his guest. The man stood in front of the great wooden desk, ignoring the chair that had been placed for him, his hands resting loosely at his sides, his simple uniform travel worn but otherwise clean and orderly.

Jerzy sat in his chair, leaned back, and looked up expectantly.

Meme-couriers
were expensive to hire, but utterly trustworthy. They carried the same weight as if their client were actually speaking the words, and were, Master Malech had said, incapable of changing the wording they were tasked to deliver. It was not magic, but training, so deep they could not break it, not for love, money, or fear. For someone in Caul to have sent a message this way, rather than sending a messenger-bird or rider . . . it had to have been important.

“I bring to you greetings, Vineart Jerzy, from the Lord of Áth Cliath, the High King of Greater and Lesser Caul. These are the words the Lord of Áth Cliath would have you hear.”

The High King—or his Spymaster, Mil’ar Atan? The High King could not be trusted. The Spymaster . . . could be trusted only slightly more. Jerzy did not show any reaction, merely tilted his head, indicating that the courier should continue.

“It has come to our attention, lord Vineart, that the island you indicated interest in has come under attack by forces which have neither of our better interests in their heart. In light of this, and with our own interests in mind regarding the reopening of those sea routes, we hereby offer the use of our own fleet to help retake the Principality in question, and to help defend it against further attacks, once it has been reclaimed.

“We are further aware that you guest within your House a member of the royal family of this Principality, and show him high regard. It would be our significant honor to allot him one of our ships, that he might take part in the liberation of his home, and ensure his people that we do, indeed, come with offers of aid, not interference.”

Jerzy felt the urge to ask what the price for this gesture might be, but held his tongue. The courier could only repeat the words given him, not answer questions.

“In exchange for this, Lord Vineart . . .”

Jerzy allowed himself a raised eyebrow. There it was.

“We ask only that you allow us to call upon you in our occasional
need, to discuss matters of mutual concern and commercial exchanges of shared benefit.”

In other words,
he could almost hear Detta mutter into his ear,
he wants first shot and best prices at our spellwines.

Unlikely, considering Caul’s historic stance on magic. And yet, clearly that time had also passed. If they would barter their magic for his . . . likely not. But the opportunity would be there, as Ao would say.

“The details of the offer are as follows. The warship
Fast Lance.
The warship . . .”

Jerzy listened to the man list the ships that would be part of this flotilla, and wondered what Kaïnam’s reaction might be, if he were to agree . . . and what the prince might say if he refused.

H
E FOUND THE
prince in the courtyard, where Mahl had been sitting on the bench reading through dispatches, while Kaïnam, listening, dropped a handful of rounded stones, one by one, into the well. They plunked into the water deep below, the echo rising up the stone-built cistern. Jerzy listened to the echo, and judged the level of water to be within normal springtime range.

They stopped when Jerzy came out, letting him report on the
courien.

Kaïnam heard him out, visibly tense. “He asked you to release me to his fleet?”

“In effect, yes.”

“The arrogant . . .” Kaïnam fumed for a few moments, and then gave an elegant shrug that downplayed what they all knew, that he had been dying inside the past few days since that magic-borne message, needing to be on his way home. “He is arrogant, but correct. Without me onboard, or at the very least my seal of safe-passage, they would be treated as invaders by my folk, even once they cleared out the actual invaders.”

And they offered him what he most desired: a way home.

“This offer comes suspiciously swift, days after they informed us of
the Exiles’ attack and return.” Ao was polishing the side of his boot, worrying at a smear of mud that had dried on the leather, frowning at it as though it were the cause of all his concerns.

“If this is from the High King, we cannot refuse.” Jerzy was not certain if the mage could have responded so quickly, setting such an invitation up to entrap them in turn. More, it did not have the feel of the thoughts he had encountered, the blind, relentless greed he had felt. This was more subtle, nuanced, the difference between a growvine and aether, earth, and air.

“The
courien
says he was hired by a man in plaincloth, bearing coin, not a letter of funds. That, to me, suggests our friend in Caul,” Kaï said. “Either way, yes, I am not sure we have a choice.”

“Can you trust them not to be invaders in truth,” Mahault asked. “Once they’ve landed their fleet in your harbor?”

“Of course not,” Kaïnam said, dropping the last of the stones in his hand. “It’s just as likely I will become a royal hostage. But Caul is a pragmatic country, for all that they’re madmen. If my brother tells them he would sooner see kin die than give up his diadem, they will understand he means it. And without me, they have little chance of succeeding to get to that point: Atakus did not survive unmolested all these centuries by being easy to enter. Even after these Exiles broke through the veil, there are safeguards that likely still stand.” He paused, and looked at Jerzy. “Assuming that we do not believe that they, Caul, are in league with these Exiles?”

Jerzy shook his head, remembering again the feel of the mage’s thoughts in his head, the anger in his veins. “He shares with no one.”

Kaïnam dusted his hands, and leaned against the wall of the well, looking at Jerzy. His hair was tied back with a red kerchief, his clothing a plain shatnez weave that could have been worn by any farmer in The Berengia, and yet still he looked exotic, foreign. Jerzy blinked, as though expecting the sensation to pass, but it remained. Kaï’s face had taken on a different cast, the proud nose and angular shape suddenly at odds with those around him.

Malech had carried such a nose, but it had looked hawkish, not regal. The vines had shaped him into belonging here, just as Jerzy, despite his distant origins, belonged here. Just as Mahault never would. In that instant, Jerzy knew that Ao would never return to his trader-people, whatever else happened.
Magic makes the man.

“Then I see no other option.”

“You’ll leave us?” Mahl asked, her voice tight with anger. “Now, when we finally—when Jerzy finally has a real sense of our enemy, when we can finally go on the offensive?”

For the first time, Kaïnam looked discomfited. “Mahl . . . I must.”

“Must what? Abandon us, walk away from our plans, our . . . we need you here!”

Jerzy felt the push of things unseen, growing below the surface. Mahault had walked away from her home city, her father and family, had seen the place where she was born fall to the mob, her father killed and her mother’s fate uncertain. The price of survival, of doing what she thought was right.

Jerzy wondered if she was more upset at Kaïnam’s having a home to return to than the fact that he was leaving.

“This is part of those plans, Mahl. You know that.” The prince’s voice was calm, too calm, and Mahault’s hands gripped the papers in her lap so tightly they crumpled around her fingers. “Taking Atakus was only a first step: they will launch their ships,
Atakus’s
ships, against us, next. Caul and Iaja have the only fleets able to compete, and Iaja has no interest in aligning with us. Caul does. They need me there to legitimatize their actions, and convince my brother to help protect the sea lanes from further attack.”

Mahault set her chin and looked away.

“Mahl. This is what we’ve been waiting for. No successful offense has only one line of attack. The Exiles forced Atakus into isolation to make them vulnerable, give them a base to launch their own attack from, it has to be. My people can secure the sea for us and hold off that attack, but only if they are free to do so.”

Jerzy watched, sensing that they were speaking a second language underneath that he could not understand, willing to let them work this out themselves.

The anger left Mahault’s voice, but she was still unhappy. “I don’t like it, you leaving us.”

“Neither do I.” The admission seemed to surprise Kaïnam, but he plowed forward. “I am a member of the royal family, Mahl. There are things I must do.”

“I know.” She didn’t look at him, but the lines of her body softened slightly. “Jerzy, is there any way we can keep in contact, faster than pigeons? If the Cauls have managed it, perhaps a spellwine that could . . .”

“Master Malech enspelled his mirror to create a passage through which we could speak, but I do not know how.” Again Jerzy felt the sting of an incomplete training, but it was a familiar pain, now, and overshadowed by the things he knew, wonderful, terrible things, that his master had not. “The Caulic messenger . . . I do not want to have to rely on them, or their magic, not knowing its source.” There was already one mage out there, working horrors. There had been vines on Caul, once, but they died out long ago. The Root—did it stretch to Caul as well, even now? If not vines, what had it seeped into, that magic? It was a question for the scholars of Altenne; Jerzy needed to worry about more immediate concerns. But he would not put his trust in this new magic.

“I agree,” Kaïnam said, responding only to what Jerzy had said out loud. “Allowing an ally to control correspondence is unwise. There is a windspell that carries messages,” he added, “but it is . . . unreliable.”

“Putting anything to the wind is risky,” Jerzy replied with a shrug. “You can direct weatherspells but you cannot control them, not the way you do fire or earth.” A drop of blood coaxed weathervines into obedience, gentled it for incanting. Blood-magic at the level the Exile Vineart used? Jerzy shuddered to think what he might accomplish, were he able to spread his malice on the winds via weathervines.

They would stop him. They had to stop him.

Mahault turned to Jerzy. “Your master reached you, before . . .”

“Used the Guardian as a conduit. Or the Guardian used him . . . I don’t know how it works. It can find me, but I don’t know if it could find
you.
”

Jerzy paused a moment, and the other two waited, watching him, but there was only silence from the dragon.

“You’re not part of the House,” he said, finally. If Kaï took Ao with him, perhaps the Guardian would use the connection through Ao’s grafted legs, but Jerzy couldn’t bring himself to suggest it. They would be struggling enough without Kaïnam’s steady sense and strong arm; he could not let Ao go as well. “I will try to enspell a mirror for you,” he said finally, “and we will make it part of the Agreement with Caul, that they allow it, to keep us in touch.”

“You trust them to hold to that?”

“As much as you trust them to allow you free run of their warship,” Jerzy said.

And that simply, it was settled.

“The
meme-courier
is waiting for a response,” Jerzy said. “Kaïnam, you will want to phrase it, on behalf of Atakus, and then I will give him my own response.”

Mahault watched Kaïnam stride to the door Jerzy had emerged from, not hesitating a second further. “You think this is wise?”

Jerzy exhaled harshly, looking to the sky rather than meeting her worried gaze. “None of this is wise, Mahl. But it’s what we have to do.” He paused, and then gave her the only comfort he knew. “Seeds scatter. Roots remain.” Longer than any of them had suspected.

She nodded. “And Kaïnam was right, rot him.” She had started using Ao’s favorite swear, although it made Jerzy flinch used this close to the yards. “We need more than one line of attack, ourselves. Jer, I have an idea. . . .”

T
HE COLLEGIUM WAS
the size of a large town, or a small city, from the outer gate to the practice fields and the gardens that stretched down to the river, farmed by students as part of their meditation hours. Zatim’s
mother had been the god of the growing season, his father the lord of the Harvest, and spending time with their hands in the soil was as much a part of a Washer’s training as learning Zatim’s Commands and warnings. Hallways and classrooms, the Library and the training fields, the dormitories and the stables, all were open to any visitor who came seeking knowledge. Even the kitchens were open to any who might wish to walk through, although the cooks’ tempers were often uncertain.

There was one place in the entire Collegium that was not open. One place that most residents knew existed, but had never seen.

The Cellar.

It ran underneath the Collegium itself, stone-walled tunnels and square-carved rooms like a maze, lined with wooden racks that were carefully labeled with a number that corresponded to a large leather-bound journal. The ink in that journal was browned with age in the earlier pages, a more vibrant black in the last, and noted almost five hundred years’ worth of spellwines, bought, tested, annotated, and stored by the Spellkeeper of the day.

In a normal year, only a handful of Washers might access the wide, shallow steps into the antechamber. That afternoon, the sun casting long shadows behind them, four went down together. Brothers Ranklin, Omar, Isaac, and Neth.

There had been no meeting, no calling for opinions. Ranklin had appeared at his rooms, fixed him with that gaze that could still make Neth feel fourteen and uncertain again, and told him what would happen.

He had wanted to voice his dissent, to protest this madness, but it would have been pointless and kept him from being allowed to participate. So long as he was on the scene, Neth still held a faint hope that he might be able to control things, keep events from spiraling out of control.