The Shattered Vine (40 page)

“And your sisters swill with pigs,” he informed them, adding something else in Iajan that made at least one rider spur his horse directly for the Washer, and never mind the others in his way.

Ao is on his way.

“Rot,” Jerzy swore. What part of “stay put” did he not understand?

All of it, likely. Jerzy should be thankful that Lil hadn’t insisted . . .

There was a sense of regret, and faint amusement coming from the dragon, and Jerzy swore harder. “Of course.”

Ducking underneath a horse’s head, he reached up and grabbed the mane, his fingers tangling in the course, short-cut hairs. He ran a little, to keep up, then used the momentum and pulled himself up behind the rider, grabbing the knife at his belt and holding it to the other man’s throat.

“Hold!”

His voice carried, startling them. The fighting—really more of a shoving match at this point, as none of the riders seemed inclined to kill Brion, even as he laid them out with the flat of his blade—ground to a halt. The Guardian took its position on Jerzy’s shoulder again, settling slightly, putting more of its weight on the bone, but not enough to damage him. Jerzy managed not to wince.

A noise drew his attention, and he saw Ao, still wobbly on his grafted
legs, coming down the road, Lil a few steps behind him. They both carried naked blades, although Lil clearly had no idea how to use it, holding it the way she would a kitchen knife. He shook his head slightly, and hoped they understood.
Stay there. Don’t interfere.

“Who sent you?”

The soldiers muttered and glared at him, but nobody spoke. Jerzy lifted the blade slightly, feeling the skin’s resistance under the blade, and asked again, “What lord sent you.”

The man under his blade, their leader, answered. “Diogo de Reza.”

Jerzy, trained to recall ten hundred incantations and as many decantations, only took a moment to recall the name from the dispatches. Iajan had formed an alliance with a local Vineart, who had not been seen since, then taken on another who had likewise disappeared. More, it was rumored that Diogo had been part of the consortium that had put a price on Master Malech, payable after his death.

They had not been responsible for Malech’s murder: that would be laid at the feet of their enemy. Jerzy told himself that, even as he reached up with his free hand to stroke the Guardian’s rough stone skin the way a hunter might his hound.

“Go back to your master. Tell him that in The Berengia, Sin Washer’s Commands are still in force. I hold my yards from no man, I take orders from no man, and I do not take well to being threatened.”

The man flinched, and Jerzy knew, through no magic save observation, that there was something wrong in Diogo’s House, something centered in the lord himself.

“I cannot return . . . you are withholding—”

The Guardian hissed, a low, hot sound, and the man’s jaw snapped shut as though it had been knocked by a solid blow. Jerzy had never heard the dragon make a sound before, but it seemed the least of surprises today.

“I would advise that you go,” Brion said, his sword arm relaxed, but ready, the blade tinted red where he had scored an opponent. Unlike Ao
and Lil, he knew how to use his weapon. “It would not be well for Iaja to fall under the Brotherhood’s displeasure, in these difficult times.”

Their leader scowled but barked a command in his native tongue, and the others put up their weapons, nudging their horses into a more orderly position. “Sahr Vineart. Sahr Washer. My temper, my concern for . . . the intensity of my lord’s orders . . . overwhelmed me. This unfortunate incident . . . is entirely my fault.”

Jerzy doubted that. Whatever illness had befallen Diogo, his orders had been specific. They had come, armed and in force, and been too ready with violence. Working the vineyard, a slave learned that if there was an infestation or weakness in one portion of the yard, it was likely repeated elsewhere. So, too, with men: if Iaja were reaching into The Berengia for what it could not find at home, then other landlords would escalate as well.

Just as the people turned on their lords, in fear, the lords would turn on Vinearts. The Washers were turning on themselves. And the Vinearts? Who had the enemy Vineart planned for them to turn on?

A Vineart cannot turn
.

Jerzy ignored the Guardian for a moment, staring at the Iajans, then looked up, to where Lil and Ao still waited.

And then he understood. In making them, Sin Washer had doomed them. His kind would turn inward, self-destruct, unable by their very nature to strike out, unable to even look beyond the boundaries of their walls. There would be no Vinearts when their enemy was done; none save himself, untethered by the Commands. A return to the days of the prince-mages—with none to check his desires.

None save Jerzy.

“Lil.” Jerzy did not raise his voice, but it carried well enough for her to hear, and she stepped forward, cautiously.

“Have Detta select a half cask of bloodstaunch for our visitors. As a gesture of friendship.”

Lil looked stormy, but nodded, turning and walking back up the path.

“Thank you, sahr.” His erstwhile hostage’s words were grudging, but the look in his eyes was guardedly grateful.

A half cask would not do much, but it could, at least, ease suffering. A quiet voice like Kaïnam’s told him that this was not a wise move, long term: the soldiers would remember only that the Vineart had given them what they came for and not the fact that they had not been able to take it by force.

Long term was not his concern, today. Jerzy could not bring himself to turn them away entirely, no matter the cost to his plan.

“You will camp on the road outside my lands,” he said. “And when the half cask is brought out to you, you will leave. If you remain, if even one of you remains . . .” He reached for a memory of Master Malech, cool and stern, and then he smiled.

The Iajans did not wait to be told a second time to leave.

T
HE VINE-MAGE HAD
not meant to kill the Praepositus so soon. Still, the second wave of ships had sailed, his poppet onboard, and it would suffice. The slave he used had been too short, the skin not quite the same color, anyone who knew him well would know it was not Ximen. But those closest had stayed behind—save two of his spawn—and the blood and scrapings he had taken from the corpse were enough to cover a multitude of flaws. All else could be blamed on stress, or sea air—and any who questioned could so easily, shipboard, fall over the side.

The vine-mage took a sip of the spellwine, the deep rich fruit salted with the blood added during the incantation, Ximen’s own blood, to tie the magic more firmly to the flesh. “My breath, his flesh. My thoughts, his voice. Go.”

Shipboard, he felt the poppet stir, pausing mid-conversation. The sound of the water below creaking hulls, the stink of saltwater and unwashed flesh, struck the vine-mage as strongly as if he were there himself.

“What reading?” The poppet’s voice was not quite right, and the
vine-mage frowned. Never mind that none had the wit to question it, the failure irked him.

“Steady as she sails, my lord. The vine-mage’s protections hold.”

The vine-mage severed the connection, feeling the sense of the ship fade. That was all he needed to know. When they connected with the first fleet, the poppet knew to contact him.

It had taken the vine-mage years of trial and error to discover what parts of the body were needful to create a true poppet, rather than merely binding an existing body to his command, but it worked. For a while, anyway. A poppet capable of movement and reaction would only stay animate for a few weeks, at most, and then fall apart, but a few weeks would be enough. They would be well at sea when someone discovered the body, decaying from some unknown illness.

And when word was finally sent back to the Grounding, after the ceremonial grieving, the vine-mage would have a hand in choosing the next Praepositus, one who would be a biddable assistant in what was to come.

Yes. The death might have come too early, but it would all be well, in the end. The only irritant remained that unknown Vineart.

It had challenged him, taken his pieces off the board, against that fool Esoba. It smelled of power, of the spellwines he himself did not possess, that he needed to reach his goal. And yet it had eluded him, using the sea to hide itself. It had escaped him, sliding into his awareness and then out again, while he was occupied with Ximen. It knew too much, had touched too deeply, and escaped unscathed, with the vine-mage not knowing how much he had learned.

That was not acceptable. There could be no one to challenge him, when he finally stepped onto the old world’s soil. Ximen had worried too much about prestige and politics, the military might of small men, but the vine-mage knew all that mattered was control of the magic. Once he could dig his own hands into the vineyards of the old, could feel the magic that filled that land, so far from this shattered fragment,
nothing would be beyond his capabilities. He had made the vines here powerful through the sacrifices, but they were still too hard to work, too stubborn. The old world vines, trained for centuries, would yield power to him as he had only imagined. . . .

Nothing could stand in his way. Nothing could be allowed to stand in his way.

Turning away from the poppet, he walked over to the worktable, and picked up a flask of spellwine, pouring a small dose of the dark red liquid into the shallow, flat-bottomed cup next to it. Earthwine, the only legacy that had grafted properly in this land, taking to the wild vines like a babe to a foster teat. Strong and rich, smelling of dirt and spice, the scent of the hot summer winds, nourished and tamed by blood, it reached for its native lands, binding the old and new together.

On the shelf above the table, there were four small domes of glass, each one protecting a bit of hair, or flesh, or peeling of nail. The one to the far left had scrapings of skin, taken from under the fingernails of the Irfan merchant. He had not been a total disappointment, after all.

“One bird down, two birds down, and the hunter shall have a feast,” he said, almost singing it, as his narrow fingers scooped up the dried bits of flesh and placed them in another dish. Hand that had touched hand, skin that had brushed skin, and the feel of the bright-burning Vineart in his mind. “Little magic bird, soon you will be in my net, I will pluck your feathers and crunch your flesh.”

All he had to do was wait, and be ready. When the Vineart fluttered its wings again . . . he would have it.

T
hey’re doing what?”

Brion leaned back in his chair, looking far more like the soldier he had once been than a Washer. “You disturb them” he said to Jerzy, ignoring Ao’s indignation for the moment. “You disturb anyone with common sense,” he added, sipping at his
vina,
causing the other two people in the room to laugh, quietly.

“This break within the Collegium is none of my doing.”

“No, of course not. Men are men, no matter they wear robes or trou. There are days I think we should hand it all over to the women; solitaires are wondrously practical creatures, and House-keepers such as your Detta would no doubt run the world far better than we.”

Detta, seated in one of the chairs, let out an amused snort and looked pleased.

“But that is neither here nor there,” Brion went on. “Brother Neth felt that you should be warned that the Collegium plans to use you thus. But I think that you had already anticipated that?”

Jerzy had chosen not to sit behind the desk in his study for this meeting; Brion had met Master Malech, and Jerzy did not think that he would impress the Washer, trying to mimic that pose. Instead, he
had Roan arrange chairs so that all four of them—Brion, Jerzy, Ao, and Detta—were able to see each other equally.

Detta had been surprised when Jerzy asked her to remain, after she reported the delivery of the half cask, but had taken her chair and listened intently as the others, while Brion reported on why he had been sent.

“I had not planned that far,” Jerzy admitted, looking down into the depths of his own
vina.
He had been focused on the moment, on building everything to the point where the other Vineart would have no other options, making Jerzy the clear and obvious point to strike. After that . . . With luck, Ao and Kaïnam’s people, and the solitaires, would be able to hold the peace while the Lands Vin recovered.

“It works, though. It all works,” he said, thinking out loud, trying to see events the way Kaïnam would. “If he does in fact have whisperers among the Washers, he will know that they are in disarray. Iaja tears itself apart, The Berengia begins to crumble. His ships, his men hold Atakus. And he knows I am watching, now. Closing in.”

Brion started to ask a question, but Ao shook his head sharply, and the Washer subsided.

“He has set himself in motion,” Jerzy went on. “Magic has a weight to it: once a spell is decanted, it cannot be stopped, just as wine spilt cannot go back into the flask. He must follow through, or risk losing control.”

“And then you will destroy him?”

“No,” Jerzy said, finally speaking out loud the plan he had carried for weeks. “Then I invite him to destroy me.”

“You’re mad.” Brion had his back against the wall, his shoulders firm, one hand resting on his belt, and he looked more like a fighter, like a solitaire or a soldier, than any Washer. “You—we—have an enemy who can reach across oceans, who can manipulate men and beasts, send magic that you cannot trace . . . and you would invite him into your own home?”

Brion did not understand. He could not. Jerzy looked to Detta,
who had remained silent while the Washer ranted. Her round face was closed and still, her usual vigor dimmed by shock and dismay.

“You would bring this . . . taint, here? Into the vineyard?” She shook her head, her short, graying curls swinging with the movement. “Oh, Jerzy . . .” She would not say no, she knew it was not her place to say what would or could be done here; Jerzy was Vineart. But she clearly was not comfortable with his decision. “Master Malech—”