Weight of Stone (16 page)

It had been nearly a month since Jerzy had disappeared from Aleppan. None of Malech’s contacts had seen or heard of him, no dose of the powerful, expensive Magewine had found trace of him, no messages had come from him. And the Washers who were still camped in the field behind his House had not heard anything of his missing student, either—at least, not that they were sharing with him.

A vague and cautious truce had been issued between them in recent days; the Washers had pulled back their demand for Jerzy to be handed over to them, under Malech’s assurances that the boy would come home without struggle, thereby proving his innocence. The fact that Malech did not know where the boy was, or how he fared, was the only rot in that crop. That, and he was not sure he could trust the Washers to keep their word to leave the boy alone … but what choice did he have?

Malech.

“What is it?”

The boy.

The Vineart placed the flask of
vina magica
he had been testing down on the desk, almost knocking an expensive glass goblet off the surface in the process.

“You have found him?”

The Guardian was linked to every member of the Household, by some extension of the magic that animated it. The range was limited, though—the dragon had been able to reach the boy but briefly, while he was in Corguruth—and since Jerzy disappeared, there had been nothing the dragon could report.

I have found him.

The Guardian was incapable of sounding smug. It was purely Malech’s own imagination that put that tone of self-satisfaction into its mental voice. That made it no less annoying.

“Where is he? No, never mind, is the connection solid? Can you reach him?”

Barely. But I have touched him. He lives.

Malech had not allowed himself to seriously consider the possibility that the boy had been killed, but the Guardian’s confirmation made his eyes close in an instant of relief. A Vineart did not form attachments beyond the vines … but it was good to know the boy yet lived.

The desire to know where the boy was, what he had been up to, what he had learned, all crowded like butterflies in his mind, and he waved them away with an effort. Only one thing mattered right now.

“Tell him to come home.”

“G
UARDIAN
?”

The others stopped what they were doing and looked at him. Jerzy knelt on the sand, not caring that his borrowed clothing might be getting wet, or that people were staring at him. The touch had been so faint, he almost thought he might have imagined it, save that it felt more
real, more solid than any memory of that voice. He could not have explained it to another person, but he knew that the touch was true.

“Vineart, is there a problem?”

Kaïnam’s voice, officious but without the coldness he had first projected. The days at sea had shown a different side to their rescuer, and Jerzy could hear the compassion underneath—arrogant, yes, but also kind. The princeling would have been a good ruler, someday. Might still, if his quest to restore his people’s place in the world was successful.

Jerzy knew he should respond to the question, but he could not form the words. His mouth was heavy, as though it were carved from the same stone as the Guardian’s muzzle.

“Is he having a fit?” That was a voice Jerzy did not recognize, worried and apprehensive.

“No.” Ao that time: familiar and confident. The trader might not have any idea what was happening, but he would take control until Jerzy could explain. That was what he had been in training to do, as part of his trade delegation: to observe, and cover, and gain—or keep—the advantage. “Give him room, step back, leave him be. He’ll come back to us when he is done.”

The bodies shifted away from him, and Jerzy focused again on that touch of stone-cool voice. “Guardian?”

He was flesh and wind, and yet heavy and solid as stone, wrapped in misty clouds and touched by warm sunlight. Not-he and he merged and tumbled, and he could not tell what was true, and what was magic, faint and dizzy with sensations. The connection wavered, was almost lost, and he almost cried out in pain. Then a swift dive, wings folded underneath him, breaking through the mists and into the familiar stone encasement of the Guardian’s voice.

You are to come home.

“But …” The longed-for instructions came, and he rebelled, his mind stuttered over all the reasons why he was where he was, what they were planning to do, the trace he was trying to follow …

Home,
the Guardian repeated. There was an odd echo to its voice,
as though something else was underlying it. Jerzy sucked at his cheeks, trying to pull up enough saliva to touch the bloodstaunch, using it to force a connection with the Guardian—both spellwine and the spell animating the Guardian were Master Malech’s work, and there should be a link he could use….

His tongue collected a small pool of spittle, and swallowed it again. The taste of the bloodstaunch was faint now, four days later, but the quiet-magic within him recognized what was being summoned, and made the leap from his tongue to his throat to the Guardian’s touch; as quickly as that he felt Master Malech’s voice, pushing through the stone conduit of the Guardian. No words, but a sense of relief, and urgency, and yet through it all the confirmation of the order, and a sense of something that Jerzy could not recognize; the feel of solid ground underfoot, of a warm bath, a comfortable bed …

Reassurance. Security. Safety. It was safe to come home. More, it was important that he come home.

“But we …” He tried again to explain what he had intended to do, but the stone’s voice weighed heavily on him, a command, until he gave in.

“All right.”

Then the connection was broken, and he was able to open his eyes to the crowd of people determinedly not looking at him.

“I need to return to The Berengia,” he said. “Immediately.”

Ao, in the middle of negotiating with a young boy to arrange lodging for them, threw up his hands in exaggerated dismay, while Kaïnam merely looked thoughtful. “Your master calls you?”

Jerzy could see no way of denying it, not if he wanted to ensure Kaïnam’s assistance, and the use of his ship. Else he would have to hire passage home on another vessel, and that would cost him time and coin he did not have. “Yes.”

“Ah.” Kaïnam did not look angry or frustrated, but merely turned to Ao, removing a small leather bag from the inside of his tunic. “If we are to set to sea again, bound for The Berengia, we will not need a larger
ship, but we will need more supplies. Water, food—and clothing for all three of you to replace what was lost. If you are as good as you think you are, this should suffice.”

Ao took the bag, weighing it with his hand, his eyes thoughtful. “It will take me several hours,” he said, speaking to all three of them directly, rather than replying only to Kaïnam, a small rebellion against the princeling’s manner. The assumption that they would all go with Jerzy passed unchallenged, as though there was no other option, and Jerzy was still too fuddled to think beyond the need to be home as quickly as possible.

“I will go with you,” Mahault said. “Not that I do not trust you to choose clothing you think suitable …”

Ao looked her up and down with a considering eye. “A sahee, perhaps? Or a—”

“Off with you,” Kaïnam said, flicking his hands at them in dismissal. “Suitable clothing. No sahee. Cover her arms and her legs; The Berengia is a more sober place than this port. Be wise in your choices!”

Once the two of them had started off up the sandy slope toward the brightly colored awnings that heralded the marketplace, Kaïnam turned to Jerzy. The Vineart had regained his feet, and his composure, and was brushing at the sand clinging to his trou’s legs.

“It will be some time before they return, even if your trader is as good as he thinks himself. There is no point to our waiting here, in the direct sunlight, and even less to returning to the ship so quickly. A short walk from here I remember a stall where we could purchase something to eat … and perhaps visit a wine seller’s stall, to see if there is any whisper of news from that quarter.”

Jerzy paused in his brushing and considered the suggestion. Wine sellers were merchants who bought
vin ordinaire
—and the occasional spellwine—from Vinearts, and then resold them at a markup in places where no Vinearts lived, or where they could not trade directly. Jerzy had never seen one of their stalls, and wasn’t sure he enjoyed the thought of paying for his
vinas,
but he saw no way around it. If he was
to be useful at all, he needed at least a basic winespell or three on hand, and not rely on Kaïnam’s sparse supply if he needed anything on the journey home.

Jerzy had had enough of being useless. No more.

So he nodded agreement, and the two of them set out, heading in the opposite direction from Ao and Mahl’s path.

“You fought us to go to Caul, and yet now you agree without hesitation to change course again. No questions, no arguments. Why?”

Kaïnam chuckled. “You will never be a Negotiator.”

Jerzy waited. He might not be subtle, and Ao despaired of teaching him how to get answers without asking questions, but he had the patience of stone when it came to waiting.

“Your master spoke to you,” Kaïnam said finally as they walked across the sand, avoiding the sailors, porters, and occasional child running messages from town to shore. “Through magic. I did not know that there was a spellwine that could do such a thing.”

Jerzy looked sideways at Kaïnam, but the prince’s face showed only casual interest. Was this a trick question? Or merely an intelligent and educated man’s curiosity? A slave learned not to trust anyone, and recent events had made him even more cautious

“There isn’t,” he said. “My master …” Tricky, this. He could not deny it had happened, obviously, but neither could he give away any of his master’s secrets, nor was he willing to start rumors of a spellwine that did not exist. He did not think that Kaïnam would use the information badly, but it was still not information that he should have. Bad enough that Ao and Mahault knew as much as they did …

Then again, Jerzy thought bitterly, he had already been judged apostate, for no crime at all. What was to stop him from being so, in fact? Nothing … save the fact that he did not know Kaïnam. The fact that they had the same thirst did not mean they were drinking from the same flask.

Caution won. “My master has his ways,” was all he said. “I am not yet so wise, and can only respond to his summons.”

And with that, the princeling had to be satisfied. But Jerzy suspected, from the look in Kaïnam’s eye, that it would not be the last time he asked Jerzy about it. When it came to curiosity, Kaïnam could give even Ao a challenge.

It would be a long journey back to The Berengia.

Those worries, even the Guardian’s summons, could not stand up to the wonders of the moment, however. Once away from the sea of boats, the port of Tétouan showed a different face from the crowded, noisy, smell-filled harbor, and Jerzy almost broke his neck trying to take in every flash of color and sound possible. White blocks of stone made for streets that were smoother and easier to walk on than the cobbled stones of The Berengia, and the buildings, made of similar material, cast surprisingly cool shadows, keeping pedestrians sheltered from the blazing sun. The doors were not blocked or barred, but rather open to the breeze, occasionally filled with strands of beads that stirred musically as people walked by. There were no horses being ridden, or even led through the streets, but rather small carts drawn by short-coated goats, their horns covered with a dark resin at the tips, or filed off entirely, leaving only a finger’s-length stub. The dizziness he had felt when the Guardian contacted him was nothing to the swirl of amazement that swept over him now, and only Kaïnam’s presence by his side kept him moving forward through the streets, rather than stopping to gape.

They turned down a narrower street, the bright-colored awnings of the stalls more crowded together, and Jerzy stopped to sniff at the air, trying to differentiate the sweet aromas floating past him. Some were from the oversized red flowers blooming everywhere, and a strand was from a bakery somewhere nearby, the unmistakable smells of fresh bread and warm honey, and the ever-present tang of the great sea surrounding them, but there was something else in there as well that he could not place, and it tickled at his mind the way the Guardian’s voice did until he tucked it away to puzzle at later. The area of the city Kaïnam was leading him through might be less crowded and confusing than the marketplace Ao would be trading in, but it still required that
he keep his wits about him. The portion of The Berengia where he had grown up was countryside, where things happened slowly, in tune with the seasons, and Aleppan had been a civilized, sophisticated city. This, by contrast, was chaos: filled with people intent on greeting each other, hanging out of windows and pausing midstreet, their hands gesturing as they spoke, heedless of who might be trying to pass them unscathed.

Men and women alike wore long robes similar to what Mahl had been wearing, or long tunics over trou like Kaïnam’s, and Jerzy intercepted more than one sideways glance at his own attire, the gawker looking away again quickly when they came to the double-wrapped belt at his hips.

He had been so pleased when he found the length of leather in the wardrobe. He should, as a student, wrap his belt only once … but the second twist came naturally under his hands, and the buckle, a simple hook, had slid into place with a pleasing snick, and so it remained.

Only Vinearts and Washers wore their belts double-looped, by centuries of tradition, and only a Vineart carried a blade too short for fighting and too large for eating. Hence, he assumed, the stares and the second looks and why, when they reached the wine seller’s stall—a deep crimson canopy over a row of wooden stools pulled up to a cloth-draped counter, and casks set behind, well out of the sun—the seller himself, a tiny, dark-skinned man with an easy smile and constantly moving hands, came out to greet them.

“Good sirs! Noble sirs! Sin Washer’s peace upon you! Please, you honor my small stall with your presence; come in, come in, away from the sun and the press of lesser beings….”