The Shattered Vine (42 page)

“Sin Washer forbade it.” Kaïnam wondered, suddenly, what had become of the Washer who had been trapped on Atakus when the barriers were cast. Had he known what insanity Edon bore within him? Had he survived, hiding, or had he spoken out and been killed?

“Sin Washer was a god, and the gods are silent. They have removed themselves from our daily concerns, and so we no longer concern ourselves with them. Or would you prefer they return, moving us to suit their whims?”

“No.” Kaïnam did not. If this had in truth been his father’s desire . . . if he had stayed, if he had listened to the old man, and not declared his acts mad, would he have been taken into their confidence? Would he
now, in his father’s stead, rule Atakus, as was his right as Named-Heir?

“Where is my brother, Edon?”

“Waiting to see you, my prince. But first, you must decide. Where do you stand?”

“Ximen is dead,” Kaïnam said instead. “Ximen was a tool of the mage you feared, as you were tools, manipulated and destroyed in the use. That mage ordered my sister killed, Edon. He drove you into his trap, and has no intention of giving you anything in return.”

“You know nothing of this,” Edon said, but his aged, once-familiar face showed a moment’s hesitation.

“I have traveled far, Vineart. I have seen magic greater than yours. I have been tangled in this mage’s web myself, and won free. I know what the Exile’s mage wants, and that he has no intention of sharing it with any other.”

Kaïnam knew no such thing; he spoke the words a voice whispered in his ear, soft and feminine, with the tang of sea air and saltwater. But the voice was not calm, was not measured but enraged, and it filled him with such a deep sense of betrayal, of burning hatred, that it was almost as though the hatred alone lifted his arm and drove the blade up, deep into the Vineart’s chest.

The old man looked at him, unsurprised, unworried, his hands reaching up to grasp at the blade, not as though trying to push it away or block the already delivered blow, but letting his gnarled, age-wrinkled fingers rest on the metal. As Kaïnam stared, blood flowed from the wound, dripping along the burnished metal and staining the tips of the old man’s fingers. One hand lifted from the blade and reached out, searching for skin to paint on, in some obscene replication of Sin Washer’s gift of Solace. A gift, or one last spell, a dead man’s curse?

It was too far, the distance of the blade separating them. A heavy exhale, a gust of hot wind, and the old man’s body slumped and slid backward, taking the sword with it, out of Kaïnam’s shock-slacked fingers.

Kaïnam stepped back, letting go of the hilt, the body falling back
onto the floor, out of its pool of light and back into the shadows, a crumpled swirl of robes, the blade still jutting from the flesh.

Done,
a voice whispered in his ear, the touch hot and cool at once, stinging and soothing against skin coated with cold sweat. It was his sister’s voice, the remnant, the last fading trace that had pushed and prodded him since her murder, but he did not recognize it, no longer wrapped in the gauze of humanity. Too long gone, too far removed from the wisdom of her living compassion, in death her soul turned hard and unforgiving.

He had been manipulated, on all sides.

Stomach roiling, head dizzy, training taking over when his mind could not function, he bent forward, curling his own fingers around the hilt and pulling the metal from flesh, ignoring the sound it made coming free, ignoring the fact that he had just killed a man he had known his entire life, had trusted, as much as he had trusted anyone outside his family. A man who had betrayed everything Kaï had been raised to defend.

“Lord Kaïnam?”

One of the sailors behind him, his voice uncertain. Kaï had forgotten they were there.

“Secure this place. And find my brother.” If he yet lived. If Edon had not murdered him as well, in the name of freedom. If the enemy, too, had not used him.

Kaï looked down at the sword in his hands, gleaming with death, and wondered how much it hurt, if that pain would blot out the one already resting in his chest.

S
olitaire.”

“I am not . . .” Mahl sighed, and gave up. She rode with the solitaires, and she was female. They would not understand the difference. “Yes?”

“Lord Ranulf’s orders, and you are to secure the Valle of Bedurn.”

“Of course.” The order was not unexpected. Bedurn had not risen against Ranulf—yet. But they had a mill, and cattle yet left. Soon enough the mill would run out of grain and the cattle would be eaten, and they, too, would feel the jab of hunger turn to anger, and anger to violence.

“That it’s come to this . . .” She turned to Keren, who had walked up even as the rider trotted away. “I meant to strike against our enemy, when I came to you, to roust the people against the danger, not . . . not this.”

“Lords command. Solitaires . . .”

“Follow?”

“Carry through.” Keren looked out over the road, the rooftops of Bedurn visible in the distance, the red tile and gray stone peaceful in the morning air, faint wisps of smoke rising from the ovens and forge.

“This is what we have come to,” Keren agreed. “Better us than his troops, who would take as their due whatever fell into their hands.”

That was why Ranulf had them at this duty: a solitaire would enforce, and subdue, but she did not abuse. Jerzy had been right; Ranulf was a good prince. It was merely that the situation was . . .

Bad. Very bad. Mahault felt the tug of worry low in her gut, that she was doing the wrong thing, in the wrong place. The confidence that had driven her here was long gone, and every morning she woke wondering how the battle fared back home.

“I was wrong,” Keren said, still watching the distant rooftops.

“What?”

“I was wrong, and I will not say that often. You should have been a solitaire . . . but this is not the world that happened in.”

“Keren, I—” Mahl tried to find the words to defend herself, to explain, but the older woman shook her head. “There is no shame, Daughter of the Road. We must do what we are called to. Go. Fight where you are needed.”

“H
ERE
. E
AT, BEFORE
you fall over.”

Jerzy looked up at the wooden platter being held out to him, and then lifted his gaze further to Lil’s face.

“Why are you still here?”

Lil met his glare evenly, unfussed, as though she had been taking lessons from Detta. “You really thought I’d run away?”

“It’s not running . . .” He shut his mouth with a snap, feeling teeth click against each other in frustration. No. If he had thought about it at all he would have known that Lil would not leave. That Detta left only because he gave her a direct order; more, that she knew he was counting on her to do as he asked. Lil . . .

A Vineart stood alone. A Vineart showed no weakness. A Vineart made no attachments beyond his yard.

Tradition. Command. He had broken so much else, what were these but more things to fall aside?

“Eat,” Lil said again, pushing the tray at him. “Or I’ll worry.”

“You’ll worry anyway,” he said, but allowed her to place the tray down on the desk, reaching for a slice of bread and dipping it into the shallow bowl of honey. The thick sweetness was the perfect antidote to the heavy weight of spellwines on his tongue, and woke his appetite. Suddenly ravenous, he reached for the pile of sliced cold meats, and Lil stood and watched with satisfaction as the platter was picked clean.

“All right, then,” she said, picking up the debris. “Better.” She hesitated, platter in her hands, and then took two strides to where Jerzy sat and bent forward, placing the faintest of kisses on the top of his head. “You can do it,” she said, her voice softer than he could ever remember hearing it. “You can.”

Jerzy closed his eyes against a prickle of heat, and when he opened them again, she was gone.

A Vineart stood alone. His the duty. His the burden. No one else should bear it.

With a sigh, he leaned back in his chair, focused his gaze on the Guardian, resting patiently over the doorway in its usual niche, and felt his heart, beating too quickly, his skin, too slick with sweat. The food helped, and a series of deep breaths, as Malech had taught him, brought his body and mind alike to a calm stillness.

Within that stillness, Jerzy reached for the quiet-magic again, swirling it the way he would newly crushed mustus, drawing the magic up and then punching it back down again, letting the sense of himself float down into the earth, sliding just above the root he could feel spanning the Lands Vin; not enough to rouse it, not enough to risk himself, but leaving a trail that, should anyone be looking, could be followed back to him.

The world was askew, but within himself, the balance rested: power and control.

He was done waiting.

Five tasting spoons were lined up in front of him on the desk, the remaining clutter of papers, tasting spoons, and pens pushed to the
side, out of reach or risk of spill. Each contained a single legacy: earth, weather, fire, flesh, and aether. He had not tasted them, merely pouring a measure into each and letting the sense of them rise into the air.

Sin Washer had forbidden this, had restricted them to a lifetime of learning one or two legacies, put the combined strength of unincanted
vina,
the overpowering magic of the First Vine, out of their reach. And yet . . . Jerzy recognized each legacy as he touched it, and it in turn knew him.

What had happened, between the Breaking of the Vine and the rise of Vinearts? Not only the loss of the First Growth; there had to be more, that subverted the will of Zatim Sin Washer and made this possible.

Jerzy thought he knew. Quiet-magic. The thing that moved slave to Vineart. The thing that had appeared, according to Master Malech, only after the shattering of the vines, the transfer of power from prince to slave. A Vine might be shattered, but roots, denied access one way, grows another.

The quiet-magic would bring all five legacies together within him, mimicking the strength of the First Growth, matching the blood-soaked strength of the Exile. His, to use.

He had woken that morning, knowing it was time. The Exile was over. The mage was looking for him.

Vineart.

The whispered word was both reminder and instruction. He did not taste any of the spellwines; there was no need. A Vineart knew the vines, and the vines knew him. Allowing his body to relax back into the straight-backed chair, he rested his right hand over his left, the silver ring heavy on his finger, a reminder that, while he did this on his own, he was not alone: Malech, and Josia, and Filion, the Vineart who had trained Josia, all the way back to the first of that line, the unknown slave, the Vineart-to-become who, in the aftermath of the Breaking, had discovered that a vine whispered to him and made his blood shimmer with magic.

His, the direct legacy, the birthright denied. What he was about to do was forbidden by the Washers, by two thousand years of tradition.

Jerzy took a deep breath, and rejected tradition.

Spice. Warm spice, the flavors of all Iaja and Aleppan, the islands of the Southern Sea. Dry stone, and warm earth. The cooler herbs of The Berengia and Altenne, fruits both sharp and smooth, mingling in his Sense, filling his nose and mouth with an awareness of their power.

Jerzy felt an instant of panic: it was too much, it would overwhelm him, it would destroy him. He almost broke away, denying the legacies, when the Guardian’s whisper slid into his ears and lay itself across his chest.

Vineart.

Yes.
His own voice, as soft a stone-whisper as the dragon’s, responding and acknowledging the searching tendril of the mage, still distant, still searching, and then going beyond, taunting the other, leaving a trail behind. He let the mingled magics envelop him, allowing his own awareness to become secondary, just as he had the morning when Master Malech plunged him into the vat of mustus to see if it would claim him.

The slave-mark on his hand had turned to a Vineart’s mark, that day. What sort of mark would he wear, when this was done?

Then that question, too, fell away, as any sense of Jerzy fell away, the magic sliding into him, flooding him, filling his skin with magic like the flesh of the grape primed for Harvest.

As he drifted, it was as though part of him spread throughout the entire vineyard, carried by root and stone, soil and stream. He was the solidity of the House, the dry flavor of the earth, the solemn strength of the vines, inhuman and yet not cold, not uncaring . . .

Careless magic. Power. Strength. The core of magic, curled deep within the world, reaching up through endless, countless roots, shattered and broken, but never gone. Waiting for someone, some slave, to look up and see beyond his walls. . . .

Yes. This was the lure no blood-mage would be able to resist. Everything
that lived within him. Everything that breathed with his breath. He was House Malech, and House Malech was him.

And House Malech had become a prize the Exile could not resist.

T
HE
H
OUSE WAS
uncannily silent. Ao had not realized, as he moved through the house, how accustomed he had become to the natural noises of the Household, from the steady hum of the kitchen to the distant shouts and sounds of the slaves working outside, the wagons that occasionally rolled up and down the cobblestone road, and the sound of voices that rose and fell throughout the day, Mahault’s clear tones, Kaïnam’s more formal accent, Detta’s clipped, exasperated voice, and Jerzy, slower than the others to speak but his voice, deeper now than when they had first met, carrying over all others. Odd, that it was only when they were gone that he could identify them.

Like his legs, he had never appreciated them until they were gone.

He rubbed at one leg, almost expecting it to feel like flesh through the cloth of his trou. The wood underneath was smooth-hewn and polished, carved to mimic the exact lines of a natural leg, and it flowed with enough vigor that he could move it, simply by desiring to walk, or bend, or rise . . . but it was not flesh. It was not real.