Weight of Stone (25 page)

“Hrmph. No, you won’t. But you’re already broader than he, and no mistake. You’re built like one of the Riders, out Seven Unions-way. Which makes sense, your looks and that name.”

Jerzy took a sip of tai, wincing as usual at the taste but relishing the surge of energy he felt returning to his aching body. Guilt swept through him again, at allowing the gelding to be slaughtered that way. If he were in truth Rider-born, they would have cast him out for that; they valued their horses above children, stories said.

“Cai said as much, about me being from the Seven Unions. I even remember a few words of the language.” He missed the Caulic weapons master, who had taught him how to, in Cai’s own words, “move like a man, not a slave.” The weapons master had gone on to other students when Jerzy was away, and the House seemed somehow quieter, and more drab, without his beaded mustache and colorful attire.

He wondered if all Caulians dressed that way, and what stories Ao would come back with, when he returned….

Assuming he returned at all. Why should he? It was a wide world, filled with more things to do than backtrack his steps, and if Ao did indeed find a new source or contact that would convince his clan to take him back—why would he even think twice about one Vineart?

Jerzy was surprised to find that thought hurt. Ao and Mahault, even Kaïnam … he missed them.

A Vineart stood alone and showed no weakness to outsiders. But were they outsiders, truly? He might have asked Master Malech, but it seemed too small, too petty a thought to bother his master with, right now.

“We had two orders come in yesterday,” Detta said, apparently satisfied that he would continue eating. “Both for basic healwines. You’ll check with Malech and make sure we’ll have enough to restock? If not, I’ll be raising the prices on future orders, to make them think twice.”

“Raise the prices anyway,” Jerzy said, without thinking.

“Oh?” Detta tilted her head at him, the short gray curls bounding along the side of her round face as she did so. She wasn’t doubting him; she had been the first to require him to make decisions in Malech’s absence, treating him as his master’s voice in all things, even when Jerzy wasn’t certain he should. He was certain about this. But he wasn’t sure he could explain to her why.

“By how much?” she asked.

Jerzy shrugged, using a chunk of bread to sop up the last of the sausage grease from his platter and cramming it into his mouth so that she couldn’t expect him to answer. He was merely the Vineart; she was the House-keeper. Matters of business were her domain, not his.

He left her to pondering, scratching numbers into a sheet of rescraped parchment with the nub of a pen, then crossing them out and refiguring them. Detta had been running the House since Master Malech was his age—she would do what was best, leaving them to do what they did best. That was how the vintnery worked.

Once he had thought the entire world worked like that—everyone knowing what they were meant to do, the days moving on an orderly basis. Then he had gone to Aleppan, before seeing how different things were there, in the port towns and villages of The Berengia, and Mur-Magrib. The world beyond was chaos and confusion, a constantly shifting landscape of power and entanglements and desires. Vinearts were sheltered, protected … isolated.

Jerzy frowned. It was Sin Washer’s Command, the price of having magic. They traded their work for others to use, but they themselves might not have or hold power beyond the confines of their vineyards. Order, trust, the proper place of all things in the world—all the things the Washers preached, when they spoke of Sin Washer’s solace.

Jerzy had asked if Sin Washer had known about the quiet-magic, the residue of spellwines that built up within a Vineart over the years. Master Malech had not been able to answer him; had never, it seemed, considered the question one worth asking.

It made Jerzy uneasy when he asked a question his master could not answer.

The quiet-magic, more than any Command, was what kept them isolated; the need to keep it a secret. The rest of the Vin Lands—and beyond—believed that magic could be used equally by all, so long as they had the spellwine and the decantation to open it with. The truth—that a Vineart could use magic without a decantation—could draw upon the magic within him, could cause outsiders to distrust Vinearts, wonder what other secrets they hid. Master Malech said only that he would learn more, as his training progressed, and to keep close what he did know.

Jerzy had not spoken to Master Malech of that moment on
shipboard, when he used the quiet-magic without volition, nor had he admitted to using it where Mahl and Ao could see. He had wanted to return to things as they had been, not shake up what was known.

Only now did he admit, to himself, that that would not happen. If someone meant to destroy the Vin Lands, break Sin Washer’s Commands, and turn two millennia of order to dust, then Vinearts would be the first wall to breach. But if they fought back, revealed their hidden secret, the power they had not shared … what would happen then?

You would be powerful … and hunted. Feared … and abused. The structure would break, and chaos would rule.

The dragon was never that eloquent, and for the first time, Jerzy thought he felt emotion with the Guardian’s words, Sadness. And … fear?

The thought that the dragon might have emotions startled Jerzy enough that he almost walked into a doorway, rather than going through it. “What do you know, Guardian?”

There was a silence, an absence of the weight of the Guardian’s voice that made Jerzy feel suddenly dizzy, and then the dragon returned.

Ask Malech.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Jerzy woke to orders, sent via the Guardian, to check on another vineyard’s progress. This was a two-day trip, with an overnight at a wayhouse where Jerzy slept in an alcove over the sheep, and came away feeling as though he were wearing wool himself, his skin was so itchy. Jerzy managed to keep himself focused on what he was doing, not allowing a hint of either quiet-magic or what might be happening beyond the low stone walls of the vineyard to distract him. To anyone looking on, he was the perfect ideal of the student-Vineart, his master’s well-trained factor, concerned only with matters that properly concerned him.

The vines here were healthy, the clusters of grapes progressing properly, but the overseer was ailing, as much from age as any ailment. Jerzy
did as much as he could, and promised to arrange for a replacement to be chosen before Harvest came around.

On the third day, finally back home, a late rain came in, tiny hailstones pounding from the sky. Jerzy had heard the first sound as he was finishing breakfast, and headed for the yard at a run, ignoring the stinging feel of the icy pellets on his skin. Every slave—and the entire Household—was needed to cover the vines as best they could, setting up tarps on wooden stakes and placing smudge pots underneath to keep the plants warm.

The storm lasted, off and on, for most of the day, and everyone was too busy to think of anything beyond protecting the grapes. On the fourth day, in the aftermath, Malech and Jerzy walked the rows, determining how much damage had been done.

It wasn’t until much later that night, when everyone else had collapsed, exhausted, into their beds, that Jerzy had time to wonder again at the Guardian’s words, to go beyond the immediate concerns of the day. He lay in his own bed, staring at the smooth stone ceiling overhead.

Ask Malech.

Ask him what? What the Guardian knew? What his master knew? What did his master know that he had not shared, and why had he not told Jerzy? A sense of anxiety unfolded in him, his certainty in Malech shaken again by the realization that he did not, entirely, trust his master.

A question he had not allowed himself to consider before rose to the surface, as though the Guardian’s words had lifted it. Why had Malech called Jerzy back when he was ready to start the search? To calm the Washers? That had been done; they were calm, as calm as they were like to be, and yet the taint still spread, a more subtle damage than sea serpents or flamespouts, but, like root rot or leaf powder, more dangerous the longer it went unchecked.

Why did Master Malech not do something?

What
could
Master Malech do?

Unable to sleep, Jerzy threw off his blanket and pulled on the pair
of trou he had shed a few hours before. Barefoot, bare-chested, he went down the narrow stairs to the main level of the House and out into the courtyard.

The moon was a bare splinter overhead, but the stars splashed across the sky bright enough to light his way. The stones here were cool beneath his feet, while the air was moist with night dew. A dove hooted somewhere on the rooftop, and the scent of the flowers in the front yard drifted on the slow breeze. Jerzy breathed in deeply, and felt a softness creep into his limbs. On a night like this, there could be nothing bad, nothing violent, happening anywhere.

A flash of memory: the sight of the sea creature, rising up out of the waters, a hapless villager caught in its maw. The sound of the wine seller’s voice as he told of the Vineart dead, the slaves gone without a trace. The look in Kai’s eyes as he recounted the fate of his sister and the attacks on his homeland.

The tainted magic, creeping through the corners of the Aleppan court, touching the edges of the Tétouan marketplace, wafting over the sea from somewhere unknown: able to cross any boundary, creep unseen into any House.

Feared, or abused, the Guardian had said. A Vineart freed from Sin Washer’s Command could control a seaport or empower an army. He could pick and choose who received his spellwines, without fear of reprisal or rebuke.

Or a man of power might overwhelm a Vineart, take control of his yards by force, his work gone to one man’s whim only, never shared save at another’s direction. A slave, once again.

Impossible. For nearly two thousand years, unthinkable.

The structure would break, and chaos would rule.

Spellvines were creatures of order, pattern. There was a time and a place for everything, a reason for each action, a result from each action. Tested, consistent, known.

Would chaos destroy the spellvines … or change them once again into something else? What would Vinearts become, in the aftermath?

Suddenly, the quiet night seemed ominous, not peaceful.

“Jerzy?”

Malech’s voice made him start, leaping up from the bench in a reflexive motion. For that instant, he was once again a slave, nameless and disposable, without value.

“Boy? Jerzy? What is wrong?”

“I … was startled.” His heart slowing back down to a normal pace, he saw that his master, too, looked as though he had dressed in a hurry, wrapped in a deep green robe with a pattern of vines embroidered along the sleeves and hem. Jerzy noted almost absently that the vine pattern glowed with a faint green light, under the cool white light of the stars. A year ago, he would have been intrigued; two years ago, he would have been awed. Now he recognized it as a variant of Malech’s own spell-lights decanted into the threads, and returned to his master’s question.

Caught off guard, he asked not the question he had meant to ask, but one that rose from him, unbidden.

“Master … what is the Guardian?”

M
ALECH OPENED HIS
mouth to respond, and then looked more closely at his student and closed his mouth, thinking carefully. He called the boy a boy, but in truth Jerzy was a young man—grown and no longer so green. There were things he needed to know.

Things that needed to be passed on.

“I spoke to you once of the Iajan foreseer wine, yes?”

Jerzy nodded, sitting down again as though sensing another lecture. Instead, Malech sat down on the bench next to him and looked up at the stars overhead. Sin Washer’s Pour splashed across the dark blue backdrop, and off to the side was the Great Ship, and the hindquarters of the Bull …

Aware that he was avoiding the question, he closed his eyes once, and continued speaking.

“Foreseer wine is a tricky thing. It will show you what is to come, yes, but magic does not speak in human tongues, for all that we use our
words to incant our desires into the wines. What is shown must be interpreted, adapted to what is already known, or suspected.

“I prefer, generally, to let events come as they will, to face them when they arrive, and not worry overmuch over the inevitability of hard times, or rejoice too early for good times. What will, will.” He smiled ruefully, as though remembering something that did not entirely please him. “We can only harvest what grapes have been grown, not those still to come.

“But my master Josia was of a more … mystical bent, or perhaps more anxious about my place in this world, what role I might play. He paid dear coin for a hand flask of foreseer, and had me drink it all in one long pull.”

Malech still remembered, vividly, how the smooth, silky liquid had swirled within his mouth, almost as though alive, and then slithered down his throat, leaving a trail of tingling warmth behind.

And then, how the vision had hit him.

“I fell to the ground as though felled by one of Mil’ar Cai’s backhand cudgel swings. When I awoke, all I could remember was a wave of red, sticky and slow, washing over me, filling my mouth and lungs with a taste I’d never encountered before—or since. I retained nothing more—save a weight, heavy as stone, on my chest, not weighing me down but lifting me up, whispering to me that the world would need healing.

“I did not understand the whisper, but the feel of the weight, the shadow that fell over me, remained in my mind, even after the rest of the vision had dimmed and been near-forgotten.

“Josia took the whisper to mean that I should focus on my healwines, even to the exclusion of the other vines he had cultivated, all his life. He also arranged for me to receive training from the local physick, an old man who had seen more lives come and go from this world than the Old Woman could count.”

Jerzy made an involuntary warding gesture at the mention of the guide of the dead. It was a silly superstition, as though a hand
movement might ward off death’s attention, but he did it anyway, and Malech’s long fingers twitched in a similar fashion.