Weight of Stone (11 page)

He had neither.

The ship rose and fell again, and Jerzy raced forward, grabbing at Ao’s shoulder and shaking him. “Fire!” he screamed in the trader’s ear, and Ao
looked back over his shoulder, the firelight great enough now that Jerzy could see his face, rain slicked and set in grim lines. His lips moved, and although Jerzy couldn’t hear him through the wind, he suspected it was a particularly pungent swearword. Then Ao turned back and got Mahault’s attention, even as Jerzy was moving around, crouching low and reaching for the knife at his belt to cut the rope away from the wheel.

Master Malech had given him a proper knife before he left for Aleppan, a handle of polished horn, the blade the length of his longest finger and sharp enough to make short work of wax or twine—a proper Vineart’s tool. “No Vineart should use another’s knife to open his spellwines,” his master had said, making him swell with unexpected pride. That knife should have hung from his belt, with a tasting spoon and small waterskin, identifying him to any with the wit to look. But his belt had been taken from him in Aleppan, when they brought him up on charges before the maiar, and all his tools as well. He had acquired another knife before they set sail, but the blade was too large, the handle wrong in his hand, and he felt keenly the loss of his master’s gift every time he touched this replacement. Still, this blade did what was required.

Another rise over a swell, and Jerzy felt his stomach heave, but he kept sawing at the rope, even as he could hear and smell the fire spread, swirling with the wind, the thick wet smoke beginning to choke him.

The ship jumped, and a crack sounded underneath, deeper and more ominous than even the crackle of flames.

“She’s breaking up,” Ao said, and this time Jerzy heard him. “We have to get off the ship.”

Off … and go where? The sea below them was wild as the storm, and there were things under the waves, things with teeth and hungry maws. Jerzy’s imagination brought up images of the sea serpent he had seen killed, only three times as large and without armed soldiers or spellwines to help destroy it this time. Or a kraken, less fantastic but no less dangerous, its long arms and sharp beak reaching up to snap off his limbs and tear at his flesh …

“Jump!” Mahault, freed from her post, grabbed at Jerzy’s arm and forced him to the railing. “Jump!”

He didn’t think now was the time to tell them that he couldn’t swim. Odds were they would be eaten or drowned in the waves before he could have made more than a few strokes, anyway.

The fear left him at that, and he stood up against the wind, his hands clenched on the railing. He should not try to call on weatherspells; they were not his to hold, and the challenge to keep one steady within the storm already brewing was beyond his skills, would tear him apart for his arrogance. Yet … If he was going to die, what did it matter? What did any of it matter?

His tongue licked the roof of his mouth and then opened as though to pull in the aroma of grapes. Sea air surrounded him, but the rain brought not salt but the sweet fruit of spellwine.

It was his imagination, fueled by panic, but it was enough.

“Above water, above wave. To safety, bring us, please.”

It wasn’t a proper decantation, but he had no idea what he was calling on, to focus it better. He was flailing, desperate and reaching beyond his grasp, beyond his rightful domain. Yes, he had worked with weathervines, knew the taste and scent of its fruit, the gritty feel of its soil, but it was not enough to fight a storm of this nature, even without another Vineart’s spell behind it, building it to this fury.

He was not strong enough to control what he had raised.

So he merely let the magic within him rise as it would, whatever came to his summons, and asked it to save them.

T
HE STORM HAD
come out of nowhere, giving Kaïnam barely enough time to strike the sails before it hit. He could have retreated to the cabin and stayed dry and warm, but the
Green Wave
was his ship, and he would not leave her alone to face this. So he wrapped himself in a cloak that had been treated for storm use, and went upside to stand by the wheel. The small shelter overhead was enough to keep the worst of the rain from his eyes, but the visibility was terrible anyway; he could barely
see an arm’s length past his nose. The ship swayed and rocked with every wave and gust of wind, but her timber was well seasoned and her construction the best that could be bought, and she slipped through the storm like a dancer following a steady drumbeat. He leaned back into the shelter, worrying briefly about where he actually was, but trusting that the spells built into the
Wave
would keep her from crashing into an unexpected spar of land. One of Master Edon’s students had crafted that spell, and made his fortune off it, and every year gifted a new cask of it to the royal family, in gratitude for his training.

But nothing would keep even the best-protected ship from being overwhelmed by a storm, if it were bad enough. After his experience with the sea creature, Kaïnam could not help but worry.

Because he was worrying, and watching, he spotted the glimmer of light off to his port side and did not dismiss it entirely as a storm-born hallucination. Fire, raging even through the rain and wind.

“Firespout,” he said immediately, his skin pricking with fear. Firespouts occurred naturally, dangerous eruptions from the ocean floor, but magic caused them as well—and he had last seen them appear without warning outside his own home during just such a storm, destroying the Caulic fleet that was searching for Atakus’s hidden harbor.

Such out-of-place apparitions were the bastard creations of firespells and weatherspells, turning water and wind into deadly upward explosions of briny flame. If they had any use save destruction, he had never heard of it.

“No,” he decided, scouring the rain-thick night for another blast. “No.” It was a steady flicker, too high to be rising from the water. “Something is burning.”

The only thing that could be burning out here, this far from land, was a ship.

“Blast and brine,” he swore, hauling on the wheel to try to turn the
Wave
toward the flame. She hauled about sluggishly, fighting the order to go into the wind. No sane man would go near a fire at sea, not under
these conditions, but if there was a ship, then odds were there was crew as well. He would not leave men out there to die.

The flames were flickering out as he came closer, the
Wave
not moving quickly enough to suit him, when there was another burst of light—not lightning, but colder, and appearing in midair just off his bow. There was a shriek, like a woman’s scream, and then a heavy thud and splash.

There,
his sister’s voice said to him.
There.

With a despairing glance at the still-burning ship, Kaïnam fought to turn the
Wave
around again, circling back to where he had seen the splash. Grabbing a spell-lamp in one hand, he went to the side and looked down into the water.

Three bodies, limp and water slick, clung to a piece of wrack, appearing and disappearing as the waves knocked them about. Instinct and training took over; Kaïnam set the lamp down on the deck and grabbed a towrope, coiled neatly in its proper niche by the railing for just such a purpose. Tossing the weighted end over the side, he called out to the bodies, hoping that one of them, at least, was still alive, and alert enough to hear him.

“Grab the tow!”

There was no response, and the line started to drift away from them, almost out of reach. Kaïnam hauled it up again, desperation making him clumsy, and yelled again. “Towline! Grab it!”

Something reached them, thank Deep Proeden, because one of the figures stirred, lifting his head as though to look for something.

“To your right!”

The figure turned and spotted the brightly colored rope shifting with the waves. As Kaïnam waited, his heart beating too fast with concern, the wrack victim reached out, fingers grasping for the lead. Kaïnam could do nothing more than hold the line steady, and wait, and hope. Hope that the figure could reach it, hope that no wave came up and swamped them, hope that nothing lurked below the surface, summoned by the turmoil and looking for an easy meal …

“Catch it,” he chanted softly, trying by sheer force of will to connect
the gasping hand with the towrope, its brightly dyed fibers visible as it bobbed under each passing wave and then surfaced again, tiny air bladders keeping the entire length afloat. “Catch it catch it catch it …”

Fingers connected with the rope, and Kaïnam swallowed hard, resisting the need to wipe rain from his eyes, watching and waiting until there was a tug on the line that indicated the man below had gotten a firm hold.

And there it came, and Kaïnam was hauling on the rope, hand over hand, hoping that the figure below had the sense to hold on to the wrack as well, to bring all three of them in safely.

A soft thud of the spar hitting against the
Green Wave
’s side indicated that he had. Kaïnam snugged the rope around a wooden bolt set into the deck and looked around for the rope ladder that should have been stowed in the niche next to the towrope. But it was not there, and he swore in anger. He should have checked before he took the
Wave
out and not trusted to others that it was fully prepared.

He turned back to the side, to see if the figure was able to use the towrope to climb to safety, and was greeted by a hand, glowing with the same clear white light he had seen earlier, reaching over the rail. He took a step back, as startled as he could ever remember being, and found the words to an ancient prayer rising to his lips.

“Deep Proeden, protect and defend us from the creatures of Your depths. From the deep-swimming children and the night-glowing wraiths …”

But the glow faded as the rest of the body crawled over the edge, its arm extended behind it, as though pulling something up by sheer force. Kaïnam, his paralysis broken, rushed forward, one hand gripping the first body by the scruff of its sodden shirt, even as he reached down to wrap his other hand around the arm of the second body clinging to the rope, hauling it over the side, and then a third figure, wet as fish and heavy as stone, until all four of them were sprawled on the deck of the
Wave
like so many oversized spearfish.

“Next time, Jer,” one of the figures said weakly, “just let me drown.”

*   *   *

T
HE THREE FIGURES
turned out to be two youths, one lean and pale, the other stockier, with the dusky-skinned, round-faced look of the trader clans from the Greater Plains, and—to Kaïnam’s surprise—a woman, tall and regal even when soaking wet. She had a gash on her head, and the red-haired boy, the one who had hauled them up the towrope, was so exhausted he could barely rise from the deck, but the third, the one who had spoken, seemed unharmed. The storm, as though realizing the damage had been done, was starting to fade. The wind no longer buffeted the
Wave
quite so much, and the rain, while still pelting down, no longer stung when it hit unprotected skin

After ensuring that the
Wave
was in no danger of capsizing, Kaïnam enlisted the dark-haired figure to help get the others belowdeck, where he could better judge the extent of their injuries.

“My name is Kaïnam,” he said, lowering the woman down onto the single bunk as carefully as he could. Her long blond hair tangled around his wrist like a living thing, and he peeled it off carefully, not wanting to tug at it and give her any more pain.

“Mahault,” she said, reaching up to touch at her forehead, where the blood was still seeping from the scalp wound. “That’s Ao, and Jerzy. Thank you.”

Jerzy, the redhead, collapsed onto a chair and was shaking as though chilled to the bone.

“There’s
vina
in the cabinet,” Kaïnam told Ao. “And a goblet on the table. Pour him some to warm him up, quickly.”

“Vina?”
The redhead looked up quickly, his dark eyes surprisingly alert. No shock, then. Good. “Do you have spellwine onboard?”

“Yes,” Kaïnam said, and a thrill of unexpected anticipation that he could not explain shivered down his arms. “Not much, but some wind-call, and a bottle of bloodstaunch.” He had thought to use it on the woman, Mahault, if the gash was deep enough.

“Bloodstaunch.” The redhead—Jerzy, he was—sighed, but it was a sigh of … not relief. Pleasure? “May I?”

Kaïnam looked at the other youth. “The shelf above the
vina.
In the—”

“It’s probably in a gray flask,” Jerzy directed Ao. “With the darker seal on the side.”

“Yes.” This youth knew the Vineart’s seal. Not that bloodstaunch was unusual, and if he were a sailor he likely would have been injured before, but …

Jerzy took the flask from Ao’s hand, his arm shaking with the effort. But rather than opening the flask immediately, he instead let his fingers run over the surface of the flask, lingering on the seal in a way that suggested a fond memory associated with it. Then he uncorked the flask one-handed and lifted it to his nose, breathing in the aroma rather than drinking it directly.

The combination of actions explained everything to Kaïnam, and the shiver deepened, until he expected the Wise Lady to whisper in his ear again.

“You’re a Vineart.”

The youth—man, Kaïnam supposed, although he looked dreadfully young, waterlogged as he was—nodded, then brought the flask to his lips and drank. He did not sip, did not take the required mouthful onto his tongue and mumble the words of the decantation—he drank it, three long swallows, the precious liquid sliding down his throat as though it were
vin ordinaire.

Kaïnam would have protested but something held him silent.

The reaction was almost immediate: the youth’s skin flushed with a healthier color, and his shaking ceased. He sat up a little taller, and his frame seemed stronger, more filled with vigor.

“My thanks,” he said, stoppering the flask, again one-handed, and with the ease of long practice. “I will see to it that you receive full measure and more, in repayment.”