Flesh and Fire (33 page)

The words came out of his mouth as though Ao had spoken them, brash and confident, and somewhere part of him cringed, anticipating the blow he had just earned.

“If you could not recognize
ordinaire
you would still be breaking your backside under the vines,” Giordan said sharply. “Finish the exercise.”

The words stung as hard as a slap, and Jerzy meekly picked up the spoon again. “The mouth is. . .stone. Warm stone, carrying over from the nose. I. . .” He took another tiny sip, and let the liquid roll around in his mouth, able to focus purely on the taste without the distraction of magic in his mouth, then opened his mouth slightly and drew air in over the wine, trying to open it up. It was lovely, smooth and cooling, delicate and yet thick at the same time. “I. . .it was grown in a porous soil, and a gentle sun but. . .I can’t identify it. I am sorry, Magister.”

“Confidence is a good thing. Pride is a failing. We craft what the vines give us, but we must also give the vines an understanding of what we want. We are no more, no less than our work.” Giordan let his words linger in the air for a moment, and then reached for a small clay shipping flask. “This is the wine you were drinking.”

The wax seal on the side was that of the Valle of Ivy. His own vineyards.

“Bonewine.” Once he knew, it was obvious.

“A year came, not so long ago, that the vines did not give up their magic. A bad year, that. Some Vinearts panicked, dug up their vine and replaced them with another, or hoarded their stores as though the world might fall down in flames. Your master calmly set about making a
vin ordinaire
that was, in a word, magnificent. Not magic, but magical. A spellwine lasts a year, perhaps two, once it is made. An
ordinaire
might last two or three years, if stored properly. That wine, Jerzy, is almost ten years old.”

He replaced the flask carefully, handling it the way another man might his weapon, or his lover. “My master was. . .a good man, a wise man, and a mediocre Vineart. Your master? Is a magician. Never forget that.”

The thought, rather than reassuring Jerzy, made him more anxious. “Giordan?”

“Yes?”

“Do you ever. . .do you ever actually feel like you know what you are doing? Or is it all. . .someday, someone’s going to find you out, and. . .”

“And?” The Vineart looked at him, his open face showing nothing but an honest curiosity. Jerzy could have asked anything at that moment, anything at all, and Giordan would have answered it, in apology for his unusual burst of temper. Jerzy lowered the spoon, and stared into the remaining wine as though it might speak for him.

“And send you back into the fields?” Giordan finished the question for him.

“Yes.” He didn’t question how the older man knew; it might have been a question that every student asked, or it might have been a lucky guess, or it might not even have been the question he would have asked, but needed the answer to, nonetheless.

Giordan sighed, the first time Jerzy had ever heard him utter such a sound. It wasn’t enough to make him look up, however. Looking down was easier. There was less risk of seeing whatever punishment was coming.

“Our lives seem easy to those outside. They are not. Magic does not come to those who are not. . .tested, and once it comes. . .we pay a price for it, every day of our lives.

“We never escape the fields, Jerzy. We are always in the fields. We are always slaves. The only difference is that now we know what we are slaves
to
.”

There was silence, and then Giordan pushed back his chair and Jerzy heard his soft boot steps pace across the room. Had it been Master Malech, he would have known where he stood, and what sort of response would be forthcoming, be it a slap or a scold. “Go,” the Vineart said, finally. “This test is done. Spend the afternoon somewhere other than here.”

It was an order, not a suggestion, and Jerzy left without asking any of the questions that were now simmering in his mind.

The unease he had felt the day before still lingered in the halls of the main building, to the point where courtiers no longer lingered in hallways or courtyards, chatting, and even the servants were keeping out of sight. Jerzy went back to his room and changed his soft boots for harder-soled ones, wrapped his belt around his waist, added his leather purse to it, and followed his teacher’s orders.

“Going out, young master? Mind you avoid the southern market. Horse market’s today, and there’s always a fight or five the town guards have to break up. Best to avoid it entirely.”

Jerzy acknowledged the door guard’s advice, even as a small, annoyed voice inside wanted to tell him that he, Jerzy, had faced down worse things than a market brawl. The urge to go directly toward the southern market followed, and was likewise firmly squelched. Instead, he headed into the center of town, following the circular streets that curved away from the palazzo at the northern point of Aleppan, past narrow gray stone houses pressed up against one another like Giordan’s vines, resting their walls on one another for support. Members of the Aleppan Council lived here, he knew now from Ao’s chatter, within the beck and call of the maiar. The only other people on the street were servants, on their way to or from errands for their Houses. A single older man walked an unsaddled gray horse, possibly coming from the market.

The neighborhood in the next, nearest section out from the palazzo belonged to the Perfumers’ Guild, and the smells from their shops that afternoon were wafting on the breeze, making his nostrils twitch. The maiar might find them appealing, but Jerzy couldn’t quite rid himself of the desire to sneeze; it was too much, too thick, and he walked more quickly, hoping to escape before his head began to ache from the confusion.

The cobbled stone streets broadened slightly as he moved into the next neighborhood, and the smells were thinner but less pleasant, bringing a note of overcooked meat and clay on random wafts of air. The buildings here were made of the same gray tone, but were wider, and occasionally had narrow alleys between them, leading to glimpses of greenery hidden out of public view. The sight made him think wistfully of the open skies and wide fields of The Berengia. The city was exciting, but it was also confusing, and complicated. Jerzy decided that he would not want to live here, not even for the comfortable surroundings and secure living Vineart Giordan had negotiated with the maiar.

There were more people in sight here, gathered in groups of three or four, either pausing to look at a storefront or talking amongst themselves. Good pickings, to harvest gossip.

One group in particular caught his attention, although he couldn’t have said why. Four men, dressed in the half coats and hose he knew now indicated a high level within the maiar’s court, were standing near a small gray stone fountain: a likeness of Sin Washer with the water running from his elbows down into the basin at his feet. Drawn by a tickle of something in the back of his thoughts, Jerzy walked closer, trying to keep his path as seemingly random as possible, thinking casually that the fountain seemed a good place to sit and rest awhile, perhaps while waiting to meet a friend. The men kept talking as he drew near, and he was able to see that two of the men wore a palm-sized device sewn onto the breast of their half coats, an archway picked out in silver thread. Jerzy had seen that mark before. Like the Coopers’ bronze barrel, the silver archway was a mark of guild membership; in this case, the Carters’ Guild. Detta dealt with the cartsmen, making arrangements for Master Malech’s spellwines to go to his buyers, and for supplies to come back in return.

“And half our shipments never arrived,” one of them was saying, his voice thin with displeasure. Jerzy knelt against the fountain, just out of sight of the men, and looked out across the street, as though he were searching for someone. “No sign of pirates, no report of wreckage, just disappeared from the ocean’s skin like the air itself ate them. And then we are expected to make good on our Agreement, and we have no one to turn to for compensation ourselves! This will bankrupt us within a year, if the maiar does nothing.”

“Nothing is exactly what he means to do.” A lighter voice, tight and hard. “I was to see him the halfweek before, to plead for a reduction in the taxes he has placed on us. Impossible, to pay such a fee, and no reason for imposing it. The metalwrights are always willing to do our share, but there need must be a reason for it! He cripples us to build his treasury, and forces honest men to find work elsewhere.”

“The day I meet an honest metalwright, I’ll eat your hat,” a third voice said. “But you have the right of it, otherwise. He brings forward taxes and fines that he claims are needed, yet will give us no satisfaction when we ask for reasons. There are those who whisper he is in the pay of another city, to beggar us so that we would be easy pickings for annexation.”

“It’s not only the guilds that are suffering. Have you seen the markets lately? Fewer traders, fewer goods, fewer supplies coming into port. And the one trading clan that is in court has been made to cool their heels, rather than being begged to negotiate. It makes no sense; it’s madness.”

Jerzy’s ears perked up at that. It wasn’t what he had been sent for, but he could all too easily imagine the fate of a vessel, laden with supplies, if confronted with one or more sea serpents, in the open waters. . ..

“Fewer traders and goods in the market, perhaps.” The fourth man, who had not spoken until then. “But money flows through the city, in goods and coin. And all of it comes from elsewhere, via strangers with easy access to our beloved maiar. . ..”

“Ahhhhh,” the second speaker cautioned, his voice lowering. “The one thing you don’t want to do right now is speak ill of the maiar, even in jest, even among friends. He has a chancy temper, and even the court familiars are watching their step around him now. Grumble all you want about conditions; he does not seem to care. But against the man himself, stay quiet, and keep such thoughts to yourself.”

Jerzy was distracted by whatever response was made to that by a familiar figure coming into view.

“Ah, there you are! Excellent, I was worried I’d be wasting my entire afternoon trying to decide which fountain you had meant. Come on, we’ll be late.” Ao took Jerzy’s arm even as he was speaking, and pulled the Vineart forward, walking away from the statue at a steady but un-hurried pace.

“What are you. . .I was listening back there!” Jerzy was indignant at being taken away, just when he had finally gotten somewhere.

“I could tell. And doing a good job of it, too. But you’d been there long enough for one of them to notice you, and then they would have shut up anyway, even if they didn’t decide you needed accosting, or maybe even a quick dunking off the piers, to wash the snoop out of you.”

“Oh.” Jerzy had thought he was doing well. “How long have you been there? Did you follow me?” It was ridiculous, but how else could the trader have found him, in the entire city?

“Of course I did. And don’t look so downcast; you’re absolutely getting better, didn’t I just say so? It’s entirely possible, if they were merely passing the time of day, that they would not have looked at you with suspicion at all. Did you hear anything useful?”

“I don’t know,” Jerzy said plaintively, not even bothering to protest being followed. “How can you tell if something’s important, if you don’t know what’s going on or even what you need to know?” The moment he heard those words hit the air, his jaw snapped shut, and he felt like an idiot. Why had he said anything? Malech would be angry with him for letting even that much out.

Ao clapped an arm around his shoulders and, thankfully, didn’t respond to the question. “You, my friend, are in need of something to drink. And, lucky us, I know just the place to get exactly that.”

The “place” was down two long streets and around a corner, in a neighborhood that obviously catered to a less affluent customer. The wooden placard over the door showed a badly drawn goblet lying on its side and a crescent moon over it. Jerzy hesitated at the doorway: other than the roadhouse he had stayed in during the trip down to take passage here, he had never been in a public house. But Ao gave him a friendly shove, and he was inside.

“Two ales,” Ao told the woman leaning behind the bar, and put a coin down on the surface, keeping his fingers on it just enough to ensure it stayed there until their drinks arrived. Jerzy let his gaze flit around, not sure what to expect. In truth, it looked a great deal like the dining hall back home, although the ceiling was lower: a long wooden table with an assortment of benches pulled up to it, a fireplace down at the far end that, although unlit, looked like it had seen long years of hard use, and a plank floor that was worn down with the countless shuffle of countless shoes.

Ao handed him a mug of some dark brown liquid and pointed to the far end of the table. “Over there.”

The liquid turned out to be thick and strongly bitter, as unlike a
vin ordinaire
as could be and yet satisfying for all that. Jerzy took another long pull and decided that he approved.

“The first time I tried to listen in on a conversation I shouldn’t have been near,” Ao said thoughtfully, clearly reliving the memory, “I almost got my ears cut off. They were Eopan riders, fierce as the wind and smelly as twice-dead fish, and I thought to learn something to aid my elder in our negotiations.”

“And they caught you.”

“By my aforementioned ear. Held me up by it and trotted me back through camp until he came to our tent, then bartered my release for a double-fold of cloth and a new saddle for his oldest daughter. And the worst thing? I spoke maybe ten words of Eopan, so anything I heard would have been gibberish, anyway!”

They finished their first ale, and Ao waved at the bartender for another round. By three mugs, he was in full storytelling mode, to an appreciative audience not only of Jerzy, but two other merchants and a kitchen boy who had snuck out from behind the bar to listen.

“And then we had to make amends with the Dyers’ Guild, but they got over it. Eventually. But it took another month before they would resume discussions with us.”