Weight of Stone (28 page)

An apostate Vineart could not—would not—be allowed to live.

The next morning
, there was still a tension in the House that had nothing to do with the toxic fumes yet lingering in the lower workrooms. When questioned, the boy had admitted attempting to combine spellwines of two different Houses—not merely decanting them together, but attempting to reincant them!

Malech was not sure if he was more horrified by the idiocy or the arrogance of the attempt. While he calmed his temper, he set Jerzy to the task of airing out the space. If he had his way, the boy would have been doing it by hand, with one of the wooden fans Lil used in the kitchen, but that was not feasible. Instead, he had given the boy one of the weakest aetherwines they had, and told him to keep at it until the rooms were habitable again. Aetherwines were rare and expensive, and the thought of using it … still there was nothing to be done for it.

At best, the effort it would take to cleanse the air of all the poison would exhaust the boy to the point where he would not be able to even think of another such folly for at least a day.

By then, Malech hoped that he would have come up with a plan to deal with the inevitable repercussions of this disaster.

He is young.

“And stupid.” All his hopes for the boy seemed rotted, now. Even if they were to survive their enemy’s plans and Jerzy avoided the most dire of punishments from the Washers, which seemed unlikely now, he would never be allowed to come into his full power. Would never follow Malech in crafting the spellwines of this House. The Collegium would never allow it, not with that stain on his reputation.

He is frustrated. As you would be, hedged in such a manner.

It was unlike the Guardian to take a side, so much so that Malech stopped what he was doing to consider not what the dragon was saying, but what it wasn’t saying.

“You think that I am at fault? For not constantly reminding him that the Washers would still be observing us, waiting for a sign that one of us was not …” He could not think of the word he wanted, and so settled for “obedient?”

Ser veh.

It took Malech a moment to identify the phrase. Ettonian, an older dialect, formal. “What was, continues.” In this context, it suggested an air of inevitability, of fate set in motion.

“I don’t believe in fate,” Malech said irritably. “We make our own choices, and the various gods can keep up as best they will.”

The Guardian had no response to that, but stared down at the Vineart. Fate—forecasting—had brought it into being. How could it not believe in it, as much as it could believe in anything?

“I hold no faith in fate,” Malech said again, stubborn in the face of his own past, and then an idea glimmered in his mind. “But coincidence … that’s a fruit I can work with.”

There was a symmetry to it that appealed. He had called the boy off his search in order to show his innocence, and to protect them all from the Washers’ ire. Now, to protect them again, he would send the boy back. What was the saying his master had used? “Once the cup was lifted, the draught must be drunk.” He, Malech, had started this, merely by noticing things beyond his walls … and now he must finish it.

Jerzy’d had the right of it, originally; if they were to find the source of this rot, the origin of the attacks, the Washers would have a new target to throw themselves at. All other transgressions could be forgiven, after that. His House would be secured. Assuming they survived the battle, anyway. The thought was a grim one, but Malech had stood in the middle of a plague house, and come out whole. He would not flinch from this.

Reaching for a scrap of parchment and his inkpot, Malech dipped a pen, and began writing. The note was a quick one, and while he waited for the ink to dry, he withdrew a small vial from a small, hidden drawer in the desk. The identifying seal on the side was worn down to an unrecognizable scarring, but the color of the flask was unmistakable: that particular reddish clay was used only to make a particular flagon, and those flagons were used only to carry a particular spellwine—ones that required quiet-magic to properly decant.

Magewine. He had used it most recently to identify a legacy, the type of grape used, but it took its name from a more specific use: the ability to identify a particular Vineart’s work—or to find the Vineart himself.

Working the stopper out carefully, he sniffed at the contents once, to make sure that the spellwine within had not turned. He had last used this vial months before, when they tested the flesh of the sea beast, and spellwines did not always age evenly. There was no off-note in the nose, however, so he hoped that it was still intact. There was, as always, only one way to know for certain.

Lightly blotting the ink to make sure it would not smear, Malech let a drop of the liquid fall onto his tongue, feeling the slightly acidic liquid burn the flesh. Unlike most spelllwines, it was not a pleasant sensation: the fruits this wine came from were harsh and bitter, less crafted than beaten into submission, and the taste showed the process. Anyone without quiet-magic would taste only a bitter, spoiled
vina
that would beg to be spat from the mouth.

When the wine had blended with the spittle on his tongue, leaving a cooling sensation behind, Malech picked up the scrap of paper and visualized the person he needed to read it.

“From page the words, words onto page,” he instructed the magic, and then with a gentle breath, issued the command: “Go.”

If the spell worked, they would be re-forming elsewhere, on something his target was looking at. If not, well, he had no way of knowing. He needed a second plan, in case that one failed.

“Guardian, call Detta in. I need to speak with her about Household matters.” If the Washers did come again, the House needed to be prepared. He did not think they would harm the servants … but one of the forfeits of apostasy was the burning of the yards.

The thought gave him pause. Would they do so, if the convicted one was student, not master? Would his own reputation protect him and his lands?

He thought that the Washers would not dare risk destroying him as well, but the fact that he did not know was proof, if he needed it, of how far into chaos the world had already fallen.

If they did—would he allow it?

Was that—Washer against Vineart—what their enemy was hoping for? The thought darkened his brow. Land-lords in disarray was bad enough; bringing magic against religion would be the death knell for the Lands Vin, indeed.

“When Jerzy is done with his cleanup, perhaps I will send him out to the North Yard.” In addition to keeping the boy busy and out of trouble, it seemed unlikely that their unknown enemy would be able to strike at him there, in one of Malech’s oldest, best-established yards. More, if the Washers were on their way even now, they would come here first. That would buy him more time to consider his options.

Malech stared at the now-blank parchment in his hand. It had been scraped and reused so many times that the surface had taken on an almost translucent appearance. It was still useful, but not for much longer.

Ser veh.

He did not believe in fate, and he would not believe in omens. But you could not be a Vineart and fail to understand that all things had their seasons, and even order occasionally fails in the face of disaster.

“Not in my lifetime, Sin Washer,” he asked, not even aware that he was speaking the words out loud. “I beg you, not in my lifetime.”

“I
T STINKS DOWN
here.”

Jerzy paused, the cup of aetherwine half empty in his hand and a headache throbbing across his forehead.

“I had noticed that,” he said, irritated. The smell was less than it had been, and nowhere near the deadly levels his spell-attempt had first created, but Lil’s face was scrunched up in an expression of distaste, and she had taken her red kerchief off her hair and was holding it over her mouth and nose, so he thought he might merely have gotten used to the worst of it, in the time he had been down here.

A full day, and everything still stank. It would take at least another day to make the rooms usable again, if that. And neither Master Malech nor the Guardian would speak to him until it was done.

“What did you do?” Lil asked, not coming any farther into the rooms. It wasn’t merely the smell; the House-servants were not allowed down here, unless specifically summoned—or sent. “Master Malech is still furious. He yelled at Detta, just now. I heard it even in the courtyard.”

“You did not.” The walls of the House were thick stone, the same sort that the Guardian was carved from. Sound did not travel easily through them, and the door to Malech’s study was always closed.

“I did. That’s why I came downstairs. I figured it would be safer here. Although maybe not. What did you do, Jerzy?”

For a moment, indignation held Jerzy speechless. For all that she was cook now, Lil was only a House-servant, not a Vineart. She had no right to be here, no right to be asking questions.

The indignation passed, driven by a weary sort of resignation. Lil had been senior to most of the kitchen children when Jerzy was first taken from the sleep house, had seen him stumble and fall, and succeed. She was asking not to mock him, or to take advantage of him, but because she was curious. Because whatever happened in the House, to the Vinearts, happened to her as well.

Survival alone did not give her the right to question him. But it wasn’t merely survival behind her worried expression. She was concerned … for him.

Jerzy didn’t understand it. But he had seen it before, on Malech’s face when Jerzy had undergone his testing with the mustus; in the way Ao had half carried him out of the meeting hall, when they escaped from Aleppan; the time Mahl had asked him if he would be all right, without spellwines.

Lil cared.

Like the feeling of loneliness he got when he thought of Ao or Mahl, this made him uneasy, so he shrugged and turned back to the work at hand.

She waited. Lil was patient; she could set a roast to cook and not touch it before it was completely done, or prepare bread dough and then leave it to rise perfectly. Waiting out a reluctant boy was nothing.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he burst out suddenly. Talking to Lil wasn’t the same as Mahl, or Ao—or even the Guardian. But she was all he had, right then, and he found that the stoic silence he had perfected in the sleep house no longer satisfied.

“What? Where else would you be? Oh, you’d rather be in the field? I suppose I can understand that. It would certainly smell better.”

“No. Not …” Jerzy shook his head and lifted the cup to his mouth, taking a small draught of the spellwine into his mouth to keep from having to respond further. It wasn’t the same. This wasn’t Ao, or Mahl. Lil didn’t understand. She didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t know he was a danger to the House. Not the Washers—Master Malech could handle them. But their enemy … nothing had happened since that attack on the road; he had no reason to believe that he would be a target here, through the Guardian’s protections, but …

Once he had decanted half a dozen times, the words were no longer needed; like the candle-lighting quiet-magic his master used with merely a twitch of his fingers, Jerzy could raise a breeze merely by exhaling with
vin magica
–scented breath.

A faint, fresh wind started around Jerzy, swirling around to gather the lingering spell-fumes and carry them out the door. Lil gagged as they passed her, moving aside to avoid the smell, the kerchief clutched to her face. “It’s safer upstairs, even with the yelling,” she managed, and fled.

Safer. What was safe? Jerzy had thought he knew, once: safe was not being noticed by the overseer. Safe was doing everything perfectly, so that Master Malech would keep him. Safe was running, so that the Washers could not take him. Safe was returning home …

None of those things were safe, anymore.

Lil didn’t understand. Detta couldn’t understand, no matter how she fussed over his needing new clothing, or how dark a red his hair was becoming. Master Malech understood, but he didn’t
know
.

The thought stopped him, the spell-wind swirling and fading as the decantation wore out and the air became still again. Master Malech did not know.
He
had been the one sent out, sent into the world, not his master.
He
was the one who had worked the
vina
of another Vineart, had crossed the lines Sin Washer had laid down, had felt the taint of an unnatural magic against his thoughts.
He
was the one who could not fit himself back into the comfortable Jerzy-shaped space of House Malech.

The frustration he had been feeling surged again, until even the familiar, comforting sense of spellwines and
vina
casked and waiting around him failed to soothe it. Like a toothache or a cramp, only the feeling spread from his chest out toward his knees and elbows, his fingers tingling, the headache from the noxious fumes twisting his thoughts into puzzling, tantalizing shapes he could neither understand, nor forget.

He felt prickly and uncomfortable, twisting inside his own skin.

“Guardian?”

The cool, hard awareness of the stone dragon was in his head, immediately.

“What’s happening to me?”

The Guardian did not respond, but the weight of its presence grew
stronger, as though trying to enfold Jerzy within itself, giving him something familiar, something reassuring to lean against.

For the moment, it was enough, and he could feel his nerves settle back down, regaining the cool, measured temperament required of a Vineart.

Finish the cleaning
, the Guardian told him.
Help will come.

W
HEN THE WORKROOM
was usable again, Master Malech sent Jerzy off to check on progress at one of the older, more established yards. The trip was blessedly boring, and he returned four days later, falling into bed too exhausted to eat, waking too exhausted to wash.

The next morning, rather than setting him to a new task, or picking up their lessons, Master Malech sent him out to work alongside the slaves, weeding. At another time it might have seemed like punishment, and Jerzy knew that a few months ago he would have resented the mindless, muscle-aching work, wanting only to learn more of magic.