The Shattered Vine (41 page)

“Master Malech is dead.”

Malech could not have understood Jerzy’s actions, either. He had been a Master Vineart, but master of only two legacies; he had never touched an unblooded vine, had never felt the great Root stretching underneath his feet. He would not understand the temptation, the desire, that drove their enemy.

“Master Malech is dead and there is no one else. The mage saw to that.” Baiting traps, setting lures, pruning the strongest branches rather than the weakest so that the vine itself was weakened.

Jerzy ignored the shimmer of the Root deep below, carefully calling on the quiet-magic within him, tasting the dark fruit and cool stone on his tongue and in his throat, sour and deep like no legacy he could name, a forbidden blend of wines.

Apostate, he was. Firevine, and Healing, the legacy of flesh, the vines he had been called to. Weathervines, given to him freely by Vineart Giordan. Three of the five, and the unblooded grapes of Irfan filling in the spaces, the reassuring presence of the Guardian somehow touching him with the spells used in its creation: Growvines, the legacy of earth, and Aether, the rarest of them all.

Sin Washer had broken the Vine to keep any one man from such power. But power would find its own way; quiet-magic gathered the legacies, binding them within the Vineart . . . five legacies and quiet-magic, once called blood-magic, bound together under one will. . . .

Jerzy had shied away from what that meant, even as he crept into the thick of it, used it, built his plan around it.

Apostate.

Forbidden.

Mage.

“Ao.”

The trader had been waiting patiently—patiently as he could, anyway—waiting for Jerzy to give him something to do, and looked up expectantly when Jerzy spoke his name.

“I need you to round up the slaves, all the workers, and take them north, to the firevine yard.” Any attacks would be brought against the House itself, not the smaller yards; the Guardian’s protections would extend and hold there.

Ao was already shaking his head. “No. Sending them away, fine. Smart. But I’m not leaving. Not while you’re staying here.”

“I need you to do this.”

“Rot you do.” Ao scowled at him, clearly angry. “Let Detta take them. I’m staying.”

Jerzy didn’t want him here. He wanted them all gone, away. Safe, like Mahl and Kaïnam; tucked away where they could do good, after.

“We stay,” Brion said flatly. “Whatever you plan to do . . . there are those who wish you ill, beyond your—our enemy. You will need someone to guard your back. Vineart for magic, soldiers for war. That is how it has always been.”

Jerzy rubbed at his forehead, where he could feel the pain beginning to build again, a dry, throbbing ache that not even a healspell could ease.

No one could be protected.

“I don’t want you here,” he said, as though they cared at all what he wanted.

“Maybe not,” Brion said. “But you need us. And if I know one thing about you, Vineart, it is that you will do what is needed.”

Yes. He would. Jerzy twisted the silver ring on his finger, then nodded. “Detta. Take the wagons, load them with whatever you will need.” He saw no need to instruct her further; she knew better than any what supplies she would require. “Any who can ride, take horse. The rest can walk. Leave now.”

He looked up to see her gaze on him, a steady, assessing look so very similar to the one she had given him that first morning when Malech had brought him into the House.

A year past. Barely more than a year, a Harvest gone.

Much changes in a season.

The dragon had a point. Everything changes, in a season. But the cycle remained the same. Jerzy clung to that, the hope that this too would turn and return, and not shatter.

Ignoring the other four, who had begun discussing the practical matters of such an exodus, Jerzy got up and walked over to the mirror leaning against the far wall. The silvered surface was tarnished, the reflection wavy and uncertain, but he could sense the magic within it, close but unlike the magic that moved within the Guardian. The Guardian was a magic beyond him, but he had created smaller versions of this mirror, had extrapolated from the original spell, without previous knowledge. If he stretched, if he reached . . . could he create another Guardian?

And once he knew how to create . . . could he destroy, as well?

The quiet-magic shifted within him, and he felt dizzy, overly potent. This was forbidden, against Commands, for a reason. Too much held ready, ripe with power. If he decanted this, unleashed it, could he then bring it back under control?

He placed his hand flat on the surface and let the quiet-magic gather on his tongue, murmuring the decantation that would bring Kaïnam to him.

The surface darkened, then swirled, silvery strands like water in a storm, until the entire mirror was the color of an overcast day.

“Kaï?”

The princeling appeared in the mirror, his face turned as though responding to someone else, then whipping back to Jerzy.

“What’s wrong?” Kaï’s skin was flushed, his long dark hair tied back, and a streak of something that might have been blood crusted across his jawline, but he appeared unharmed otherwise, more distracted than dismayed by Jerzy’s summons.

“It’s time.” He had not detailed his plan to Kaï—had not had the details to give him then—but the other man did not need to know what he was about to do, only what was required of him. “I need you to hold their attention there, as best you can.”

Kaïnam showed his teeth in something almost a grin. “Hold their attention? I think that we can arrange that, O Vineart.”

As before, the sound of Kaï’s voice came after his mouth moved; Jerzy wondered what he had missed in the spell to cause the delay and then dismissed the worry. It worked; that was all that mattered.

There was a shout, muffled, and Kaïnam turned his head to the left again and the grin became even more bloodthirsty. “Speaking of which, I’m needed. Fair winds, Vineart.”

“Good Harvest,” Jerzy replied, but the connection had already been broken.

“They’ve encountered the enemy,” Brion said, and Jerzy almost jumped, not having realized that the Washer had come up beside him. “Who does he ride with, and where?”

“Atakus.” Jerzy saw no reason to hide the facts from the other man; Kaïnam was of a family of princes, and as such it was his right to enter into direct battle. “Sailing with a Caulic fleet.”

Brion’s eyebrows went up at that news, but he merely nodded. “A logical alliance. These Exiles were the ones responsible for the destruction of their ships?”

“We believe so.”

“And what you believe, the Caulic king is certain of. You realize that once they have a foothold on Atakus, they will not relinquish it easily.”

“Kaïnam is aware of that.” Jerzy’s tone was dry, disinterested; if the Washer was looking for some sign that Jerzy was taking a further interest in the matters of men of power, he would be sore disappointed.

Jerzy placed his hand back on the mirror, this time invoking Mahault’s mirror.

But the silvery swirl remained in motion, never clearing to display the solitaire. Jerzy pressed his palm more firmly against the surface, as
though he could somehow force the connection, letting the quiet-magic fill his mouth and slide down his throat, to no avail.

For whatever reason, the spell-connection could not form.

“Jer?”

If Mahault had been too busy to respond, the mirror still should show where she was, or more particularly where the mirror was. It was possible that the spell was too weak to work, or that the mirror itself had been damaged, as Jerzy’s had back in Aleppan; they were delicate things, and Mahault had been riding hard.

Or they might be blocked. Had the mage sensed his connection to Kaï, and followed the spell?

“Detta, go now. Everyone needs to be out of here by sundown.”

“Jerzy, that’s . . .” She stopped, and did not argue further. “It will be done.” For a large woman, Detta could move swiftly when she wished, and by the time Jerzy turned to Brion, she was already gone.

“If you insist on staying, be useful,” he said to the Washer, who took no visible offense. “I need your eyes on the vintnery, with the slaves gone.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Anything. Riders, birds, a wind that feels wrong. Anything that changes, anything that feels wrong. Ao, do the same for the House.”

“And if we do see or feel something?” Ao asked.

Jerzy smiled, but unlike Kaïnam’s grin there was no humor in it at all. “Run.”

T
HE SUMMONS FROM
Jerzy had come at a good time; they had just slipped past the spell-barriers and into the harbor, but engagement had not yet begun. There were enemy ships anchored there, their lines generations old even though the construction was new. They were voyagers, not skirmishers; any battle to come would be on land rather than sea, and so Kaïnam had returned to his tiny cabin to change from shipboard wear to leathers and boots more suited to swordplay and fending off arrows. He did not know what weapons the Exiles might choose, but he would be as prepared as possible.

When the bellow came for landing parties, Kaïnam removed his hand from the mirror’s frame, and dropped it carelessly onto the cot, a shiver of anticipation running through him. It was not how he had thought to come home, but it was time.

Whatever Jerzy was doing, back in The Berengia, he would give a fair distraction, here, oh, yes. No more magic. No more caution.

His sword belt in hand, Kaïnam went to join the Caulic fighters.

“T
HAT WAS TOO
easy.”

“Easy?” One of the sailors, his blade held at an awkward angle, as though to keep the blood crusting on its edge as far away from him as possible without dropping it, echoed Kaïnam’s words with disbelief. “We had to slaughter them.”

“Exactly.” Kaï’s hair had come loose at some point during the battle on the sands, and he walked with a slight limp where one of the Exiles had gotten a blow behind his left knee before dying. “They were strong fighters, lean and well-trained, and yet they met us on the beach, where there was no advantage to them. And then, when things went badly, they did not retreat to the walls, where they could have held us off. Why?”

The four men with him had no answer, but he had not expected any. A logic problem of the sort his sister used to set before him: X ships in the harbor meant there had probably been Y men, total. His people were sailors and fisherfolk, mainly, not warriors, but Kaï could not see Y men being enough to subdue the entire island, if it roused itself against the intruders.

Why had it not? His father dead, his brother new to ruling . . . had he been ousted by the intruders? Had they used such violence, that none dared resist? A hundred and ten possibilities flickered through Kaïnam’s mind as they moved cautiously up the white marble steps, so familiar, become so strange. Beyond the gate, his family’s residence lay. The rooms where his father held council, where his sister had taught him patience and observation, where his brothers and he had play-fought in the long hallways, guided and humored by the guards . . .

Where he had last walked, sneaking out of his own home, against his father’s command, against all honor, to seek the truth of their enemies.

Kaïnam could feel his heart beating too strongly, his skin tight with anticipation. Would his brother meet him beyond those doors? Armed Exiles, springing a trap? He wished for more sailors at his back, but they were needed to secure the rest of the city and the ships in the harbor, that none could escape.

The great carved doors were open, as though Atakus were still an island at peace. Kaïnam stepped into the Great Hall, his sword in hand and five fighters at his back.

“Welcome home, Prince Kaïnam.”

Whatever he had expected, it had not been that.

“Master Edon.”

The Vineart stood, not in the center of the hall, but off to the side. It was not modesty that set him there, Kaïnam knew instinctively; the light coming in through the door angled in such a way to set him in a warm glow, the wall behind him shadowed, as though he were emerging from the darkness, bringing the light with him. It was a masterful trick, but Kaïnam was his father’s son, and he had been taught to observe by his sister, who had been called the Wise Lady. He knew stagecraft when he saw it.

Suddenly too much became clear.

“You betrayed us. You sold Atakus to the Exiles.” Bile seared his heart, made his throat clench against the words, but he remained alert, his body primed to react given the cue.

Edon knew him well and made no move that might invite attack. “I betrayed no one, Prince Kaïnam. Your father and I acted as one, as we always had.”

“No. My father would never countenance this.”

“Lord Ximen is a most persuasive man,” Edon said, now stepping forward from his pool of light. The cane he always carried with him was held, not as a walking stick, but as a younger man might hold a fightstaff. Kaïnam noted it, but did not react.

“His plan for a new world, to wipe away the weakness of the old, would have brought Atakus into its full power, given us the standing we have always been denied, treated merely as a waystop for greater lands. Your father welcomed that chance. Had he not died.” Edon looked sorrowful for a moment. “He was my friend, Kaïnam. I mourn his loss.”

Kaïnam believed him. That belief changed nothing.

“He would not have countenanced my sister’s murder.”

“That was none of our doing,” Edon said sharply. “None of Ximen’s doing. He did not approach us until that day. We have enemies, even then, even now, who would see us fall. They struck against your sister, seeking to reach your father. Ximen promised your father revenge against them, if he would open our ports to their ships, and only their ships, giving them safe harbor.”

Kaïnam swallowed, his throat sore and his voice hoarse with agony. “And you, Edon? What were you asked to pay, and what have you received in return?”

“Freedom.” The old man hit the stone floor with his cane, as though to emphasize his words. “Ximen’s new world will wash away the restrictions of Command, allow magic and power to re-form as once it was. Not for me, my boy—I am too old, too set. But those to come? The Vinearts who will inherit my vines? They will become as they should be, as they were meant to be.”