Weight of Stone (21 page)

“I had thought, maybe, there would be a place for me here. That I could …” She let out a small laugh. “The moment I walked through the door last night I knew … this House is complete within itself. I have no reason to be here.”

Jerzy had no response to that. In truth, he could not imagine her here, either. Everything in the House turned to the need of the vines, and she could not feel them, not even as Detta and Lil did, from years of service.

Unlike Kaïnam and Ao, whose thoughts were still a mystery, Jerzy thought that he understood Mahault. It was not profit or power that drove her, but the desire to
do
.

He sat down next to Mahl on the bench and stared up at the cloudless sky. He had missed an entire season, between the city streets and the featureless tides. When he left, the ground was only slowly waking up from its winter rest. Now it was time for the vines to flower; the
slaves were working the yards, making sure that the plants were free of pests or blights, the roots healthy, the leaves unfurling properly. The urge to get his fingers into the soil, to hear the hum of the vines as they grew, was a physical pain.

Master Malech wanted to see him. Once he answered his master’s questions, he would be allowed to return to the vines, where he belonged.

But Mahault needed him, too. She had followed him, hoping to find a place to fill her ambitions, and he had an obligation to her. And he did not like seeing her look so sad.

“Have you talked with Detta? Maybe she—”

“After breakfast, yes. She did.”

Of course. Detta handled all of Master Malech’s interactions with the outside world, including the incoming flow of orders and the flow of spellwines. She would have a solution.

“She has a friend who has a sister,” Mahl said, plucking at the fabric of her gown, a plain gray castoff of Lil’s. “The sister’s a solitaire, just retired, living a ways east of here, near the border. Detta thinks that the sister would be willing to foster me. I’m too old for it, but I’d be able to learn from her, and …”

And perhaps the woman would be willing to sponsor her to the solitaires. Jerzy understood. The recommendation of a former soldier would overcome everything else in Mahl’s past, even her disowning. He felt a guilty relief that nothing more was required of him. But if she had what she wanted, why was Mahault not happier?

“So much has changed, Jer,” she said. “I know that this was what I wanted, but now … I don’t know anymore. What if I’m not supposed to be a solitaire? What if …”

What if I fail
hung unspoken between them.

“If it’s meant to be … it happens,” Jerzy said slowly, thinking his words through before he spoke them, trying to feel for the right thing to say. “We find the place we’re meant to be, the master we’re meant to follow.”

Mahault laughed a little, but not happily. “When magic’s involved, maybe. It doesn’t always work that well for the rest of us.”

He had no answer to that.

“The Washers said they’ll be leaving soon,” he said instead. “You can travel with them, if Detta hears from her friend in time. Or ride with one of the wagons when they take a shipment east.” Going alone was not an option; Mahault was fierce, but not a solitaire yet, and a woman alone without the protection of their sigil-marked leathers and sword? She would be easy prey for anyone. Detta would not allow it.

She made a face, either at having to travel with the Washers, or the speed of leaving, but did not argue with him. There was no point in delaying; it would change nothing. As suddenly as Ao and Mahl had entered his life, they would be gone.

Boy.

The Guardian’s cool voice in his head made him sigh. “I have to go—Master Malech wishes to see me.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, finally ending with, “I will see you at dinner?”

With her nod, he took his leave.

H
IS MASTER WAS
waiting in the study, clad in a dirt-stained trou and vest, his wooden-soled, dirt-covered shoes left by the door for cleaning. Even grubby, Master Vineart Malech was still an imposing sight—tall and thin, as though a strong storm might break him in two. His long hair was even grayer than Jerzy remembered, and the cool, dark blue eyes set in his narrow face seemed even more deeply hooded. But the gray-brown beard, trimmed to a point, and the long, elegant hands that moved as he spoke, the single ring glittering in the spell-light, remained the same; and his face, rather than being the stone-hard features of yesterday, was softer now, more welcoming.

“Your answers have done what my words could not,” Malech said as Jerzy came in through the door, his hand reaching up to touch the tip of the Guardian’s tail where it hung down. It was not there at first,
and Jerzy frowned, then the cool stone flicked down into his palm, as though greeting him.

“Yes. They believe I am innocent.” It was a relief, the weight that had been between his shoulders, waiting for an arrow or sword or heavy hand to hit him there, suddenly gone.

His master snorted, a rude sound at odds with his normal dignity, and gestured for him to take the stool that was drawn up in front of the Vineart’s desk. “Innocent? I don’t think they believe any of us are innocent, boy.”

Jerzy sat, frowning at how uncomfortable the familiar seat had become, even as he considered his master’s words.

“You’ve grown again.” Malech had noted his fidgeting. “I have Per making you a taller stool, to better suit those legs of yours. Meanwhile, no, I do not believe the Washers are convinced that the claims against you were false; they simply cannot prove that they were true. To continue with punishment, in this climate, with all that is occurring, no matter the cause … would be dangerous. We are all agreed upon that. So for now, you are left unmolested, free to continue your work.”

“Too late a reversal for Giordan,” Jerzy said. Washer Neth had confirmed his fears: the Vineart had been killed the very day of the trial, and his vines forfeit. The flagon he had carried with him might be the last he ever saw of Giordan’s spellwork. That thought left a leaden pain in his chest.

“He played in politics,” Malech replied, his voice hard. “We are commanded to abjure power that none might claim that very thing, that we have abused our magic to control others, or interfere with the greater play of lords.

“Giordan thought his Agreement with the maiar was harmless, and in another lifetime doubtless it might have been. But we can none of us chose the time we must live in. And in this life, we have a task set before us that none other have faced. Your information, the news from Atakus, from Mur-Magrib, it all ties together, somehow. We must determine the connection.”

He looked at his student, his hooded eyes cool but patient, waiting for a response.

“Mahault is leaving.” It seemed important to say it.

“Yes. Detta informed me she spoke to the girl. Good. We have work to be done, and the sooner all these disturbances are gone, the better.”

His master was correct. And yet, another weight joined the first in Jerzy’s chest. Giordan, Ao, and now Mahault …

The feeling he’d had in the courtyard returned. Even on the ship, when he had been alone for the first time in his life, he had known they would return. They had become … expected. Now his companions had scattered, following their own lives … and despite Ao’s breezy assurances, it was likely that he would never see them again.

Jerzy felt his throat convulse in a tight swallow, and he forced the weight away. He was not alone. He was home, among his own vines, studying with Master Malech. That was all he had wanted. That was enough.

T
HE
G
ROUNDING

Fallowtime

T
HE
A
BANDONED LAND
was well named; it was a harsh place, and men had to fight for dominion every day, every season. Some of those battles were visible, and some … less so. The vine-mage watched as three slaves worked to clean the floor, getting the blood out from the edges of the mosaic before it could dry and crust. His shoulders and knees ached in distant sympathy: he had done the same, once. Years ago, in this same hall, as his own master did what was needed to ensure that the wild vines were tamed, made obedient to man’s needs, to ensure their
survival. The ritual Harvests were done in the public eye, to remind the people of the cost of their safety, and to honor the sacrifice their loved ones made. But more was needed, to achieve their goals. More blood than the people—or Praepositus Ximen—would be able to accept.

It had always been that way, from the moment the first shattered, abandoned sailor had set foot on this soil. Sacrifice, in order to survive. From the very first days, when the settlement was nothing but a cluster of shacks build from driftwood and salvaged timbers, when Washer Patrus had discovered the wild vines growing, untended and unshaped, and searched for those among the survivors who might be able to harness the magic within …

From that very first year, there had always been more demanded than could be borne—and so some of it was always done out of sight, and so out of mind. That was how mortals survived: forcing the strongest to bear the burdens, carry the weight of responsibility.

The Harvest was a matter of ceremony and public occasion, a reminder of those responsibilities, without the force of true sacrifice. What happened within the vineyard was pragmatic, practical, taking every drop of blood, rather than the ceremonial tipping-bowl’s worth collected from the chosen ones. While the Harvested Ones were cleansed and returned to their families with honor, these bodies, unnamed and unmourned, would be tipped into a ditch behind the vineyard. None ever went there save slaves and wild dogs, and they all knew—and would never tell.

Leaving the slaves to their cleaning, he left the hall and went out into the sunlit day. The air was dry and dusty, and he breathed it in with relief; inside the hall the smell of blood became overpowering, and the single door at either end was not enough to let the breeze flow through and clean it out, save during the winter storms.

He had no fondness for blood, no pleasure at the letting of it, despite what Ximen and his ilk thought. But neither did he flinch from it; it was the path to power, and he had been born and bred to follow no other way.

A wild dog pup nosed at his heel, and he shoved it away, striding away from the low, long wooden hall, and toward the yard. Unlike the descriptions he had read of vineyards in the old world, his vines were no tidy, tended things. Each cluster was a thick tangle of vines, strong and well fed, and the fruit they gave reflected that in a fierce burst of power that made him shiver simply thinking of it.

The Harvest was nearly done; the last of the dark red fruit was being stripped even as he watched. Storms could come up quickly off the coast, or down from the mountains; the slaves did not sleep until the last grape was taken and the mustus was in its wooden tanks.

The vine-mage watched the wind move the leaves softly, their colors already starting to shade from deep green to paler reds and browns. Sheer luck that this unknown land, so far beyond the Vin borders, grew vines at all, much less usable ones. When Washer Patrus had chosen potential vine-mages from the survivors of the wreckage and set them to working the soil, hoping against all sanity for a viable harvest, the newly made slaves had added a splash of their own blood to the soil in a superstitious ritual to appease the gods of this land. Over the generations, the tradition had continued—only for reasons far from what those ignorant, fearful wretches could have foreseen. As Sin Washer’s blood changed the First Growth, so did vine-mage blood somehow change Patrus’s wild vine, shifting it into domestication.

As a slave he had seen two slaves killed in a fight. It being planting time, their bodies had merely been plowed into the soil. He alone had noted that the vines there grew stronger that season, their fruit holding more potential than before.

Thinking to test his observation, he had first let his own blood drip directly into the winter-sleeping roots of a selected cluster, then killed a fellow slave and drained him for another. The change in the fruit the next season from the latter cluster had been startling, and consistent.

Nothing, after that moment, would stand in his way, holding the secret close to him, keeping him company during the long hard days
and nights until it was time to strike, until he had the power to do what needed be done.

Now, twenty years later, he could sense the power in the grapes even before they were ripe. They had always been strong, the wild spellvines his cursed forefathers had found when they came to these shores, but now they were massive, almost beyond control. The incanting was like breaking wild dogs to leash—difficult and dangerous, but once it was done, you had a tool well honed and worth using.

But there were only five vineyards planted and maintained: in all that time, only five.

The old world might be able to fritter away their magic on petty spells and casual drinking. Here, where the Praepositus dared not send his men to hunt beyond the foothills, much less beyond them to the inland regions from where not a single exploration party had ever returned, in a land where even men who did not believe in gods huddled by their fire and hid when ice storms or blazes of lightning hurled down from wrath-filled skies, possession of spellwines was equal to survival.

Common folk might starve or be used as tools by those above them, but a vine-slave was protected for what he might become, and the vine-mage … the vine-mage was the only god his people needed.

Only magic kept them safe. And only he controlled access to the magic.

Ximen might look to the past, to reclaiming his position, his family name, and abandoning this rot-blasted coastline. He had larger plans.

Turning away from the yard, he continued with a steady stride across the courtyard, away from the main building. His workroom was a low stone structure set into the hillside: to outsiders it might look more like an animal shelter, with its double door, barred from the outside, and its single window set up high for ventilation rather than view. But inside, the floor was smooth-planed planks, and the walls were plastered and lined with shelves that were filled with pots and flagons made of dark green clay. Here the true secrets of power hid. He ignored the waiting
spellwines and
vina
, going to the far wall, set against the earth of the hill. There, a manikin was chained to the plaster, its face roughly carved out of that same green clay, its body dressed in a length of brightly colored cloth. A scrap of dark skin was fixed to the left cheek, and a hank of hair was worked into the scalp. There was a leather collar around its neck, and two more, smaller, around its wrists. From each band, a length of copper tubing ran, connected to three different flasks of the same metal, green-dappled with age and use.