Weight of Stone (42 page)

The unease he felt had little to do with being caught. His being here was wrong. Every inch of him understood that, trying to force his body into turning around and leaving. This wasn’t like going into Giordan’s yard—Giordan had invited him in, had given him permission, had introduced him to the vines, and allowed him access. Whatever Washer Darian and Sar Anton might claim, he had done nothing truly wrong, there.

Here …

If he did this, he would have crossed that line. Never mind that Vineart Esoba had tampered with them somehow, never mind that he had masked his spell in order to manipulate them. If Jerzy did this, he would have gone beyond all claims of innocence. If the Washers found out, his yards would be salted for certain, Malech’s name tarred forever.

His throat felt sore, as though he’d swallowed too much seawater, and his shoulders ached from keeping himself standing there, and not fleeing back into the House.

“I need to do this,” he said, as much to the vines as himself, to the memory of his master, to anything that might be listening.

This close, he noted that those leaves were smaller than what he was used to, and veined with a dark orange color, rather than the red he was used to after Harvest. There were, as expected, not many grapes left; the ones that had not been picked had overripened and fallen to the dirt, where they were eaten by animals drawn to their rich aroma and sweet taste. He went down on his knees, looking at the underside of the leaves, hoping to find at least one cluster that had been overlooked by both slaves and animals. It took him a while, his knees aching and the backs of his hands scratched from surprisingly rough vines, but finally his fingers closed on a small cluster, a handful of grapes. Moving carefully, he detached it from the vine, whispering an apology, and drew it back into the sunlight.

At first, he thought that these grapes had simply not ripened at all; they were still small, and a pale, almost translucent green, only lightly touched with red streaks. But the juice within stretched the skins near to bursting, and when he touched them, questing, the sense of magic contained was almost enough to knock him over. Oh, there was magic here, slippery and seductive, and not any legacy he knew, personally. It felt … unfamiliar, in a way that he could not explain, and he pushed deeper, trying to get some understanding of it.

The vines, although they should have been resting, in these days after the Harvest, shivered, as though sensing a Vineart, and under his gentle, questing touch, gave up their secret.

And for the second time that day, Jerzy understood.

“You’re unblooded,” he said, his voice barely above a reverent whisper.

“B
ROTHER
N
ETH
.” W
ASHER
Brion acknowledged the man coming up behind him on the forecastle without turning around; as usual the man knew who was within reach without any seeming effort.

“That is their ship?” They had been chasing the damned thing for months—if it was not their quarry, Neth was tempted to sink it, just for spite.

“The
Vine’s Heart,
yes.” Neth noted the scant smile on his second’s face, but said nothing. Brion had come late to the Brotherhood, and he had his own way of looking at things, but his dedication was undoubted, and his skills were invaluable.

“They are aboard?” Neth took the spyglass from Brion and lifted it to study the tidy little ship, sliding on the waves like a restless filly tethered in a field of bluish green.

“It does not appear so,” Brion said. “We will lower a longboat and approach. Do you wish to accompany?”

“I do not, as you well know.” Neth would willingly ride the length and breadth of the Lands Vin, but he did not travel well on seaback; it was only his desire to end this hunt as swiftly as possible that had
gotten him onto this sow of a ship in the first place. The idea of putting his person into the tiny longboat was not to be thought of, for fear of upsetting his digestion even further, with unpleasant results.

His second nodded, and shouted an order to the sailors who were fussing at the side of the ship. When they did not move fast enough to his satisfaction, he strode forward, clearly intending to light a fire under them. Brion had come from a family of soldiers, and it often showed. He had given up on his robes the first day at sea, and instead wore a vest of dark red over a rough cloth trou similar to those of the sailors, tied at the ankle and waist with cord, but otherwise loose and—Neth admitted—comfortable-looking.

“Rot you, ready on the … what?”

The brother’s voice changed, and his head lifted at a shout from one of the sailors clinging to the rigging. That sailor shouted again, and pointed to where the
Vine’s Heart
was turning slightly on the wave and wind. The bow came around to face them, almost as though she had heard them coming, and Neth almost dropped the spyglass in shock, only the expense of the thing keeping his fingers tight and preventing the piece from crashing to the deck.

“Sin Washer, defend us,” someone cried, and there were several loud thumps as sailors dropped to their knees, raising their hands in cupped supplication.

“What is that?” Neth asked the man who had come to stand beside him. The captain of this ship, a grizzled Iajan sea dog who had been sailing for more years than Neth had drawn breath, took a pull off his pipe, which emitted a noxious stench as the weed burned, and grunted.

“Figurehead,” he said.

“Thank you.” The irony was thick, but unheeded.

Around them, the sailors were still muttering and praying, while the rest of his men gathered around Neth, waiting for direction.

He waited a few beats, to show them that he was in control of the situation, and then called his second over. “Brion.”

“Yes?”

“You are seeing what I am seeing, yes?”

The younger Washer matched his laconic tone, a careful contrast to the simmering panic and awe around them.

“The figurehead appears to be made of flesh,” he said calmly. “More to the point, it is moving.”

“Ah.” That was what he was seeing, yes. “Thank you.”

Ships normally had a woman’s figure carved into the bowsprit; or a fearsome creature designed to frighten other flesh-and-blood creatures away; or a coat of arms, if the ship were under sail from a House of power. The cupped hands and circle of vine was decidedly untraditional, and yet perfectly matching the ship’s name, painted along the side in clear gold lettering.

This is a Vineart’s ship,
it announced.
Approach with caution.

Never mind that Vinearts did not have ships, did not take to the sea. It was not forbidden, simply because it was not done to
be
forbidden. It was not tradition; it was not custom. Vinearts were creatures of the soil; they did not travel, they did not sail, they did not do anything that took them from their slave-rotted roots….

But this boy, Jerzy, did.

Neth would have applauded that sort of courage … in anyone else.

The why of the boy’s actions no longer mattered, to the Brotherhood. The fact that he so disrupted what was, leaving chaos and disaster in his wake, was cause enough to bring him in; the fact that he stepped so close to apostasy, even if he did not—yet—overstep entirely, was cause enough. In unsettled times, a man who did unsettling things was a danger. The deaths that occurred within the House of Malech … Some within the Brotherhood whispered that the boy went insane, killed his master and the Washers sent to take him, and fled. Some spoke, more loudly, of the boy not fleeing, but going to rejoin his true master, the source of the unrest itself.

Neth had met the boy, interrogated him. He did not believe him mad, nor evil. But facts remained: the Vineart was dead, two brothers were dead and the others missing, and the boy had fled on this ship.

On this ship with a figurehead made of flesh.

A figurehead in the form of Sin Washer’s hands, cupped in blessing.

Made of flesh.

The thoughts warred with one another in his head, giving him the beginnings of a headache to match his upset stomach.

Magic. Possibly. Probably. To a sailor, a superstitious lout, it could be magic … or a miracle.

And in truth, Neth was uncertain enough of the boy he was chasing that he was not entirely certain, either. The Brotherhood carried out His blessings, it was true. But Sin Washer had touched the Vinearts directly. His blood fueled their magic, directed their lives. If Sin Washer’s gift were to cause such a transformation of wood to flesh …

Magic or miracle, this apparition needed to be treated with caution, and respect.

“Hold the longboat,” he said, and heard another voice carry his order to the sailors waiting with towropes. “If they are aboard, we will know soon enough. If they have gone ashore, they will return, eventually. We will wait here and see what happens.”

Jerzy knelt
in the vineyard, hidden by the clustered vines, with his fingers cupping the fruit and his thoughts whirling with his discovery, until the sun sank behind the hills and the air filled with shadows. Only when a bat swooped overhead, off for its evening hunt, did he realize how long he had been gone. Placing the grapes carefully on the ground, he retraced his steps to the House, so wrapped up in his own thoughts he almost did not care who saw him—in fact, he was not aware if anyone had seen him, or spoken to him, or tried to stop him.

He made it back to the rooms, only to be greeted by a young slave waiting by the door.

“I take you,” the boy said, his Ettonian rough but clear, with a respectful bow that almost brushed his flat nose across the floor.

Jerzy nodded, then went inside and shut the door in the boy’s face. Moving quickly, he went to the basin, pouring water over his hands and splashing his face and neck to try to wipe every trace of the soil from his skin, all the while wanting nothing more than to keep it to himself, to lay claim to the vines from root to leaf.

They were not transplants. They were not wild vines, gone feral without a Vineart to shape them. They were …

They were not his vines. This was not his vineyard. He kept repeating that to himself, trying to make his still-quivering senses understand. But the way the vines had called him, until he could practically feel the tendrils curling around his wrist and ankle, the roots pulling him down into the soil, left him shaken and disturbed. Did Esoba know what he grew, isolated out here? Did he
understand
?

The effects of the heal-all was wearing off, and Jerzy could feel the lassitude creeping back into his mind, trying to convince him to relax, that nothing was wrong, that he should not worry about anything. If he wasn’t aware, hadn’t been able to sense the magics subtly influencing him, he would have thought that a perfectly reasonable suggestion. Jerzy took another sip of the heal-all, then a longer pull, careless of how much he used, trying to clear his mind.

Unblooded.

The First Growth had been, legend went, pale green even when ripe, their flesh full of magic. When Sin Washer broke the Vine, his blood spread through the roots of the world, changing the vines throughout the Lands Vin. From the Blooding came the legacies, the Second Growth, limited in what it could do. No more concentration of power, no more mages who thought themselves equal to the gods.

Some vines were deeper red than others. Master Malech had said that the less touched, the stronger—and less amenable to incantation—the
vina
would be. Giordan’s vines, the weathervines, were the most stubborn, the most delicate … but even they were tinted with the red of Sin Washer’s sacrifice. Even they were bound to what they could do, what they could be.

There were no unblooded vines left. The First Growth was gone, its tart, pale green spellwine as much a legend as Sin Washer himself. Therefore, the vines Jerzy had touched could not be unblooded. It was impossible.

But they were the closest thing Jerzy had ever felt. Even now, the
magic in them was thrilling his bones like a deep vibration, an almost painful hunger and an ache and a longing all in one.

He had touched the vines, and they had touched him, and his mind was flayed open, his senses raw and ragged, and he could not allow the magic to rule him, could not allow it control.

A Vineart controlled himself.

And so Jerzy scrubbed the trace off his skin, and changed his clothing, and slicked back his hair—too long now for neatness, and too thick for a thong, he left it wet and tucked behind his ears—and rejoined the patient slave, who led him to the main hall, where the others had been keeping Vineart Esoba distracted, as Jerzy had requested.

There was another man with them, solidly built, with skin color closer to Ao’s bronze than ebony, but dressed in the same brightly colored fabric, tied securely at shoulder and hip. A younger, darker-skinned man with a flat-nosed face like the slave boy’s stood behind him, dressed similarly.

“Ah, there you are. I hope that your walk was satisfying.” There was veiled curiosity there, but no suspicion that Jerzy could discern.

“My apologies,” he said to their host, in response to the combined greeting and accusation. “It has been a long journey, and I felt the need to refresh myself, by touching soil more thoroughly than has been possible until now.”

He did not care if the others thought he had rolled in a mud puddle—if Esoba was any kind of Vineart at all, he would understand.

“Yes, your friends tell me you traveled by water. You are a most enterprising young man, indeed; I have never even seen a boat, much less stepped on one.” Esoba cocked his head, watching Jerzy with an unnerving intensity.

“May I introduce you to Merchant Benit, who handles the sale of all my wines for me?”

“Vineart,” the merchant said, inclining his head in a polite, if neutral greeting, not bothering to offer his companion’s name.

Normally a trader clan would handle such dealings. Jerzy looked
at Ao curiously, but his companion looked down at his plate and said nothing.

“Merchant Benit,” Jerzy replied, taking the cue to ignore the man standing behind Benit, and slid into the seat offered, to the right of the Vineart, next to Ao. Kaïnam sat on the other side, with the merchants, while Mahault was a little farther down the table, as though there were an invisible wall between the males and her. Jerzy looked at her, uncertain, and her chin dipped slightly, her attention never leaving Esoba. A female servant sat behind her, on a stool—a meek demure mouse of a woman, nothing at all like the scowling guard her father had set on her, in Aleppan.