Weight of Stone (43 page)

Jerzy tasted the air, carefully, trying to determine if the scent of the taint hung over the two merchants. It did, but no more than what he had felt elsewhere, and with the hum of the vines still in his skin, Jerzy was not quite sure he trusted his judgment in anything just then.

“We are an … interesting group,” he said only, carefully, in response to Esoba’s comment, not sure what else his companions might have said previously. When he had asked them to cover for his absence, he had not warned them off any topics—but they were smart, and they knew what not to say. He hoped.

“Sadly, as interesting as you are indeed, I must excuse myself,” the merchant said, rising with another, deeper bow of his head to Esoba, as his companion moved with him, a voiceless, nameless shadow. “My apologies, Vineart. But there are things that cannot wait for my attention.”

“Of course,” their host said carelessly, waving off the man’s apologies. “You shall rejoin us when you are done.”

“Of course.”

There was a moment of silence as the two men left, during which a slave came forward to place a platter in front of Jerzy, and fill it with some sort of meat that smelled better than anything Lil had ever prepared—although some of that might have been due to living on ship rations for so long.

Ao, as ever, leaped to fill the gap. “When Jer’s master asked us to
find new places where he might try transplanting his vines, we never expected to find a Vineart here,” he said smoothly. “Outside the Vin Lands … and doing so well. Your work is quite extraordinary.” He lifted the glass he was holding, as though offering it to Jerzy. “This spellwine, it aids in the digestion,” he explained. “A glass before meals, and no matter how inedible the food, no rushed trips to the privy, after!”

“A healwine?” Jerzy asked, picking up his own glass and sniffing at it carefully, looking for the telltale nose that would identify the legacy. He was not surprised when he could not recognize it at all. A spell like that could come from healvines or aethervines, according to Master Malech’s lessons.

“Ah, not exactly healwine,” Esoba hedged, looking both shy and sly, tilting his head and looking at Jerzy. “My vines are rather unique—that is why I have so few; they require most careful handling.”

Jerzy would not doubt that for a moment. The power he had felt in those vines could outproduce Master Malech’s main yard, even in a poor year. If the Vineart were able to craft them properly … It seemed impossible to Jerzy that Esoba could do that. But they might also all still be enspelled into thinking him a jovial fool.

Jerzy did not know, and the not-knowing was the problem. Was Esoba their enemy, or another victim? He needed information, before they went any further.

“How old are your vines?” It was a fair question, one that would raise no eyebrows even among the most conservative of Vinearts. The age of a House was one of its strengths; even Vineart Giordan, who had been a complete rebel in that regard, had taken his master’s vines with him when he planted his new yards—for all the good it had not done him.

And yet, for all the innocence of the question, Esoba hesitated. “I have worked them for nearly two decades,” he said finally. “I do not know how old the vines themselves are.”

The others could not know how odd that answer was, and Jerzy hid his reaction under the guise of taking a sip of the spellwine. His Senses open, looking for any hint that this
vina
was more than Esoba claimed,
he let it linger briefly on his tongue, and then allowed it to slip down his throat. As expected, it tasted much as the previous
vina
had—smooth and ripe, but with more of a structure than that altered pour. Beyond that, there was no sense of magic to it at all. A true
vin ordinaire.

Jerzy was at a loss. He was not a scholar, he did not know the ancient legacies, did not understand the intricacies of the Blooding. He knew only that something was off here, that magic was being used on them, and he could not rely on the others—if he, with his own spellwine in his veins, could not be certain what was real, then how could they?

“How much of this spellwine do you produce,” Ao was asking, leaning forward with his elbows planted firmly on the table, his dark eyes opened wide in an attempt to look honest and trustworthy and, perhaps, a little innocent. “Because no matter how good your merchant friend might be, there are courts I have contacts in where this would go for a plentiful coin.”

Kaïnam laughed, breaking into the conversation with an easy chuckle enough unlike him that Mahault raised her head to stare, curiously. ‘’Forgive Ao, Vineart Esoba. His instincts are sound, but like all the trader folk, he cannot resist the urge to bargain—even in social settings.”

“I am not offended,” Esoba assured them. “Sadly, I produce only so much each year, and I already have an Agreement with Benit. A local lord has been pressing me for Agreement, but I … I do not like his words. Benit suits me.”

“So you have no contact with the Vin Lands at all?” Jerzy asked, although he already knew the answer.

“The old world does not know we exist.” He seemed almost proud of that fact. “My master left there, cultivating this yard and building the House. He took his slaves from the local population—I have never known anything else.”

So it was possible Esoba had no idea what he tended, how amazing, how impossibly rare. Or he was playing a deeper game than any of them suspected.

Master Malech had suspected a Vineart. They had not conceived of a Vineart who did not know his own strengths. Or unblooded vines. These were vines that could—in capable hands—potentially create the spells that their enemy had used: to animate dead flesh, strike a blow from an impossible distance, hear words whispered on a far-away wind, and send a blow of magic to eliminate a threat.

But was this man—this seemingly simple, comfortable host—the master behind the plot? Or was someone else using him, manipulating him as others had been? And if so, where was the whispering voice, the spell-bearing aide?

Step carefully, Jerzy could almost hear Ao telling him, teaching him how to get information, back in Aleppan. Go one way when you are looking in another.

“Where did your master come from, do you know?” Jerzy asked, and then turned to the others. “The slavers collect us from everywhere, and we are dispersed like seeds on the wind, the magic claiming us when we come to the proper vineyard, when we find the correct master.” They knew this; he hoped they would realize he was trying to set a trap.

Their host frowned. “He never—”

There was a loud crash, coming from the front of the House, and raised voices, shouting. Kaïnam was on his feet in an instant, the chair sliding back behind him as he rose, while Mahault followed an instant later, more clumsy, knocking her chair over.

“Stay here,” Kaï ordered the others, his hand going to where his blade should have rested at his belt. He swore under his breath, then shook the lack off. “Mahl, with me, to the left.”

Mahault moved into second position by his side, as though they had trained for that when sparring on the deck of the
Heart,
and disappeared out the door of the dining hall.

“What?” Esoba began to say, and was interrupted by a sharp, shrill scream, and the sound of something large and heavy breaking open.

“The front door,” Ao said, tensing, but not rising from his seat. “Someone’s coming in. With a bit of violence.”

“Impossible!” Their host stood now, his frame practically shaking with indignation. “I will put a stop to this immediately!”

Jerzy let him go: it was his House; he should be front and center of any defense that was mounted. That was Esoba’s responsibility. But the image of Malech’s body, still and bloody, made him stop Ao when the trader would have followed out of foolish—and possibly deadly—curiosity. “Wait until the others return,” Jerzy said, when Ao protested. Mahault and Kaïnam were fighters. He and Ao could defend themselves, if need be, but their skills were in other directions.

With that thought, he picked up the goblet in front of his plate and drained it.
Vin ordinaire
or not, if this came from unblooded grapes … he did not know what it might do, what it might add to the magic pooling within him. That thought, rather than frightening him, made him more eager to discover the result.

The
vina
filled his mouth and his senses, intensifying the now-fading effect of the heal-all, and tickled the awareness of quiet-magic into wakefulness. He did not know what he could do that might be useful in this case, but he would be as prepared as possible.

There was another scream, this one longer, and the sound of voices shouting—then their host, angry and demanding. Another voice answered him, and there was the sound of running steps, heading toward them, not away.

“Come on.” Mahault stood in the doorway. Her hair had come down from the neat knot at the back of her head, her skin was flushed, and she was carrying a blade she hadn’t possessed earlier in her left hand. The edge reflected the candlelight in a way that said it was wet.

“Come on,” she said again, more urgently, when they didn’t respond. “We have to get out of here, now. Whoever came to visit, they’re not interested in conversation.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jerzy said, the image of Master Malech, of the shocked, sorrowing faces of Detta and Lil foremost in his mind. A Vineart protected the House…. If Esoba were as feckless, as badly trained as he seemed … “He’s our host. We owe him—”

“We owe other people more,” Mahl said, and they stared at each other until there was an explosion of some sort, and the walls rattled in response.

“That didn’t sound like blackpowder,” Ao said, cocking his head to evaluate the sound. “Magic?”

“Magic,” Jerzy confirmed, feeling the waves of it carry through the building, the taint hot and sour. The intruder was the source. He grabbed the pitcher of wine from the table, looking for something to carry it in without spilling. Seeing nothing, he took a long deep swig of the liquid, ignoring both his own uncertainty and the reactions of his two companions. It was not done, to treat
vina
the way one might ale or water, but he could see no other way to carry it.

The liquid splashed down his throat, the sense of the magic within it almost overcoming him, in such a dose. There was a reason spellwines were taken in small sips; more did not increase the power of the spell, but rather overwhelmed the user until the decantation was impossible to perform.

A Vineart was not overwhelmed. A Vineart
controlled.

Jerzy took a deep breath, not looking at his companions, and then slipped past Mahault and out into the hallway. The door she had indicated was to the left. The fighting was coming from the right.

He turned right.

“Jer!”

He heard the others calling his name but did not respond. They could go if it suited them. Esoba could not defend the House alone. Jerzy would not abandon these vines to anyone who came in with violence, stinking of that taint.

That, in his mind, would be the true apostasy.

The hallway was disturbingly empty, the sleepy-looking guards gone, although he did not know if they had fallen, or run. A year before, the slave called Fox-fur would have hidden, hoped the violence would pass him by. Now Jerzy pushed through, unhesitating, to find the source.

The only noise now came from the main hallway, where they had first
been greeted. The massive door had been battered down, now lying flat on the floor, and half a dozen bodies were sprawled, bleeding or already dead. Most were slaves, dressed only in their colorful wraps, but two bodies belonged to strangers, fighters, wearing worn brown leather trou like the solitaires and leather bands across their bare chests, with some sort of metal plate the size of a spread hand fixed on them, front and back. A sigil of some sort, but—not surprisingly—not one Jerzy recognized. Ao might, or Kaïnam.

A man stood in the middle of the carnage, dressed like the fallen soldiers, only he still held a thick, deadly looking blade in his hand. In front of him knelt a handful of others, including Kaïnam, his proud head bent, but not—if Jerzy could read him at all—subdued. The stranger looked up and saw him, then shouted words in a language Jerzy did not understand. The man—thick-muscled, with skin so dark it seemed almost to absorb the light around him—shook his head and then said again, in passable Ettonian, “You! Put up your weapons!”

Since Jerzy had no weapon in his hands, he held them up, palm front, to indicate he was obeying. A hard push came from behind, between his shoulder blades, as the intruder’s men found him, and he stumbled forward, falling to his knees with the others.

The scent of the taint came to Jerzy’s senses, like spoiled meat, or the aftermath of a charnel fire. This man was coated in it, but Jerzy did not think that he was the source. There was power in him, but no magic.

“You all fought well,” the man said, switching back and forth between the two languages, one a liquid roll of sounds Jerzy could not understand, the other an oddly accented Ettonian. Clearly, Jerzy’s arrival had interrupted him. “You fought well and there is no disgrace in that. But it is over, now.”

There was another disruption—shouting and the clash of bodies—and Jerzy turned his head just enough to see Esoba dragged out to join them, a guard at each elbow and his hands bound behind his back. The Vineart saw the man standing in front of them, and his face—previously so open and friendly—folded into a fierce scowl.

“You dare?” Esoba was outraged. More, he was offended. “Sin Washer’s Command—”

“Has no bearing in these lands, I have been informed,” the intruder replied calmly, speaking Ettonian, as Esoba had. “These are not his lands, and we are not bound by those rules. I made my offer in good faith and tried to reach Arrangement. You refused. Now, I take what I want.”

Jerzy started to object, that arrogance moving him where the violence had not, but a sharp elbow in his ribs stopped him.

The elbow had been Kaïnam’s. His gaze was focused on the man in front of them, his face grim set and stern, but a faint twitch in the side of his cheek nearest Jerzy indicated that he was not as resigned or as calm as he seemed. His blade had been taken, and there was a ragged cut on the prince’s arm that needed tending, but he waited along with the other defenders, demanding nothing, saying nothing.