Flesh and Fire (37 page)

“What are you doing? What is going on? What? What?” Giordan raced up to them, out of breath and clearly agitated. Whatever was happening, he had not been informed ahead of time. The earlier unease and discomfort had been replaced by confusion and anger as the Vineart reached for Jerzy, only to have Sar Anton push him away.

“Enough, Anton!” the maiar barked, and the nobleman glowered, but stepped back obediently.

“I warned you, Vineart,” Darian said, his hand like an iron band around Jerzy’s forearm. “I warned you to stay within the Commands, and not let your pride blind you to the dangers you invoke. Now is no time for your rebellious studies. And here is the result—your ill-advised student, taking powers that were not given unto him, using magics he has not earned!”

Giordan blanched, his normally lively expression going still.

“I did not!” Jerzy protested, stung by the accusation into forgetting his precarious situation, and Darian knocked him across the chin hard enough to make his jaw snap. To someone not used to such blows, it would have been a felling stroke. Jerzy staggered under it, but stayed upright, ignoring the pain stinging his face. A sideways glance at Giordan’s face, catching the slight shake of his head, and he subsided. Master Giordan would take care of this.

“Brother Darian, enough.” The maiar’s voice was stern, almost angry. “The boy has transgressed, I agree with you. But there is no need for unseemly violence. Put the boy somewhere secure, so we can hear your accusation, and judge its merit.”

“You have no authority over this,” Darian retorted, but he allowed a guardsman to take Jerzy from him. The ropes around his legs were untied, but his hands remained bound behind him, and the guardsman’s grip, although looser than Darian’s, was still enough to keep Jerzy still. “The punishment for breaking a Commandment cannot be argued; it is all that has kept our world safe for generations. He is apostasia.”

Jerzy almost fell to his knees, even as he heard a woman’s gasp of shock. The punishment for apostasy, for a Vineart turning from Sin Washer’s Command, was no mere beating, but death.

The maiar was taken aback as well. “That is a serious claim, Washer Darian, a very serious claim.”

“And it is a Washer’s solemn obligation to find such things, and root them out, before irreparable damage is done,” Darian said. “I will insist—”

“Insist?” The maiar’s voice dropped, becoming dangerously soft. “You are not the master here, not of them nor of me, and while you are indeed the guardians of our virtue, you do not have sole authority to pronounce guilt. Unless I missed a pronouncement come down from the heavens?”

“No.” The “my lord-maiar” that was added after a guardsman stepped forward was only grudgingly said, through gritted teeth. Jerzy could not keep track of what else was happening, too dizzy with his own dilemma, wondering what was to happen to him next.

The maiar turned to look at Jerzy, then reached out and unhooked the leather belt, handing it to Giordan, whose hand trembled as he accepted it.

“Take the boy to his room, and keep him there. Vineart, Washer, come with me.”

Jerzy was led off in the other direction, two more guardsmen falling in behind them. Servants pressed to the walls to let them go by, and looked down at the floor, as though a touch of sleeve or glance of eye might implicate them in whatever trouble Jerzy had found.

They came to his room, and one of the guardsmen went inside first, to check around, while the others waited in the hallway. He came out with a pitcher of water in one hand, and a wineskin in the other.

“Just these; the rest of the room’s clear. If he’s hiding magic, it’s smaller than a thimble”

Jerzy was led into his room, his arms untied and the rope tossed onto the table. One of the other guards produced a thick leather cuff with a heavy chain attached to it. The cuff was buckled around Jerzy’s leg, and the chain attached to a post of the bed frame.

“Sit and wait, and this will all be dealt with.” The first guard was a heavyset man with the patient look of a man who had seen and done everything, twice. “Don’t cause trouble and the maiar will sort this out in time for dinner.”

The door closed behind them, and Jerzy was up off the bed, testing to see how far the chain would allow him to move. He could reach the wardrobe, and the desk, but not the door or the window, and every move he took resulted in the clanking of the metal against the cool stone floor.

The dizziness had faded, as though being chained down literally steadied him. The Washer had not appeared in the vineyard—with witnesses, and a cart!—by chance. Jerzy had, perhaps—no, probably, he admitted to himself—overstepped the boundaries placed on them by strict interpretation of the Commandments, but there was no way that the Washer could have known that, simply by watching.

Unfortunately, Jerzy had no way of proving he was innocent, either, even if anyone were willing to listen. Worse, he was not the only one at risk: Giordan might be held responsible for his actions, and Master Malech as well.

He had to warn Malech.

Wrapping the chain around his hand once, he lifted it enough so that he could move without too obvious a clanking noise, and stepped carefully to the wardrobe. With one hand, he opened the door and shuffled through his folded clothes until his fingers touched something hard.

The mirror.

He retrieved it, and stepped just as carefully to the table. Only then did he let the excess of chain rest at his feet, and used both hands to unwrap the mirror.

Placed flat on the desk, the silvered surface reflected the ceiling, a textured white plaster. The temptation to look into it was easily put down: Jerzy suspected that his face would not fill him with confidence.

Without the water pitcher or his winesack, Jerzy had to work to gather enough spit to make a decent puddle in his palm, and when he did, there was a pink tinge to it that told him that Darian’s blow had done more than bruise the outside of his face.

“Well, Malech did say they once called it blood-magic,” he said, trying for humor. The words sounded flat, spoken out loud, and he didn’t feel amused at all. Still, the words of the decantation came to him letter perfect.

“Respond to my will. Carry my words to the maker-glass. Go.”

As he chanted, Jerzy placed his wet palm down against the glass, and pressed hard.

“Stop him! Guard! He works magic!”

The voice sounded inside the room itself, and Jerzy looked up just in time to be knocked over by a body crashing through the courtyard window.

The boy—hazily, Jerzy recognized him as one of the servants whom he’d passed countless times in the hallway, one of the pages attached to the Aleppan Council—grappled for the mirror, trying to snatch it out of Jerzy’s hold, even as the two slammed onto the floor, elbows and knees swinging for maximum impact. “No, don’t,” Jerzy cried, and their hands both clutched the mirror, battling for possession. The servant was small but tough and wiry, and Jerzy struggled to remember Cai’s lessons for defeating a smaller opponent.

The door slammed open, and Jerzy heard bodies rushing in, the heavy steps and cold snick of drawn metal identifying the guardsmen who had been placed outside. Panicked, Jerzy stopped trying to regain possession of the mirror, and instead brought his hand down hard, dragging his assailant’s arm with him, and smashing the mirror against the stone floor. All he could think was that Malech’s mirror was broken and the spell on it destroyed. Nobody could tell now, for certain or sure, what it had been.

A shred caught in his hand and he winced, the thin cut seeping blood almost immediately.

“He works mage-magic!” The servant was wild-eyed and gesturing madly, his face twisted in frustration. “I will show you! I will prove it!” He dove for one of the larger shreds of mirror, grabbing it as though to wave it as proof—or shove it between Jerzy’s unprotected ribs.

And then Sar Anton was there, standing between Jerzy and the servant. The nobleman’s left arm rose, came down, and then pulled back, the blade sliding from the body with a thick, wet-sounding
thwick
.

Jerzy stared at the blade, its length now coated in red grue. He had seen men—even children—die before. He had seen them killed in the heat of passion and the cold deliberation of judgment. But he had never seen death come for him, and land instead on another.

His head stung where the dead boy had hit him, and his ribs ached from the fall to the hard floor, and the echo of the boy’s last shout fading in his ears.

Mage-magic.

He could only have meant mage-blood, the quiet-magic. The ability no one other than another Vineart should know about, recognized by an outsider, shouted about to outsiders. Jerzy felt as though one of the boy’s kicks had landed in his chest, depriving him of air. How? How could he have known?

His worries were disrupted by an angry shout. “You killed him! He was a witness!” The lead guard was outraged, kicking the servant’s body with a booted toe in his frustration.

Sar Anton fixed him with a disdainful glare. “The boy was mad. Do you see any spellwine, any vials or cups? Did you not see the maiar take his tool belt from him?”

“But he cried out—”

“Phah.” Sar Anton’s voice was filled with scorn. “He cried gibberish. A servant? Who knows what a servant might be thinking. Perhaps they fought over a sweetheart, or squabbled over this frippery, and he thought to use the boy’s disgrace to his own ends.” Saying that, Sar Anton’s heel came down on the remaining shard, cracking it into glittering dust.

When Jerzy made an involuntary noise of protest at the destruction, Sar Anton hauled him upright, yanking him farther away from the collapsed pile of bloody meat on the floor. His other hand still held the blade, and Jerzy tried not to flinch away from it. “Say nothing, boy,” Sar Anton hissed at him, his head bent low to Jerzy’s bleeding ear, quiet enough that none of the others could hear him. “Say nothing and you may yet live through this day.”

Chapter 23

There was a
flurry of activity in the hallway even as the guards were dragging the body of the servant away, and Giordan appeared, with Ao breathless and sweating in his wake. They shoved their way into the room, where Giordan focused his attention not on Jerzy, but the remaining guardsman who had accompanied Sar Anton.

“What goes on here? Is this our Aleppan justice, or conspiracy?” Giordan asked. “The boy was to be kept safe, not attacked in his own room, under the nose of those who were to be guarding him!”

The guardsman opened his mouth to rebut the charge, then shut his jaw with a snap. The bloody floor and broken window was evidence enough that the accusation was valid.

“You dare make accusations against loyal guardsmen?” Sar Anton shot back, still gripping Jerzy’s shoulder with one hand. Only Jerzy noted that the swordsman’s hand was shaking, most likely from anger, although his voice remained steady. “This is too much coincidence for my liking, Vineart, this attack on him, in your own wing, under your own doubtless magical protections. Where did that servant come from, to be passing by at such a convenient moment, to accuse a shackled boy of some new crime? No, this reeks of something foul—some other hand casting shit to distract from the true source of the smell.” Sar Anton took a breath, and stared intently at Giordan.

“This boy is guilty, but even were he the prodigy you claim, he is not versed enough to get into such mischief on his own; more, he cannot be held responsible for such chaos as has come to this city the six months past. I accuse you, Vineart Giordan. I accuse you and his master as well, of being in league against our most noble maiar, of plotting against him, of enspelling his only daughter to spy upon him, and plotting against this House for your own magical gain, against every Command ever given. I accuse you of apostasy.”

Jerzy almost collapsed under this additional, unexpected blow. This was madness! But the men surrounding them nodded grimly, accepting every word, even though a landsman, not even a titled one, could not make such an accusation on his own.

“Guardsman, take this man into custody, and bind him for judgment by my lord-maiar and the Washer Darian.”

The guardsman moved to take Giordan’s arms behind his back, binding them with the same rope that had been around Jerzy’s limbs not an hour before. Unlike Jerzy, Giordan resisted, swearing at the man until he took another length of rope and tied it across the Vineart’s head, fitting the length into his mouth so that he could not close his lips enough to form coherent words.

“There will be no further decanting within these walls, not until judgment has been passed,” Sar Anton said with grim satisfaction. “You, boy. Why are you here?”

“I heard the commotion, and saw Vineart Giordan running,” Ao said, giving his best innocent expression. “You know, Sar Anton, that young Jerzy is an acquaintance of mine. I was worried for him, in light of rumors floating throughout court this afternoon. He is not the best bargain in the bunch, but an honest one—I will attest to that in front of the silent gods themselves, if need be.”

“Trader boy of the Eastern Wind clan, are you? What’s your profit in this?”

“None, Sar Anton. Save if you are correct, then saving the maiar from his enemies may lead my clan to more favorable terms.”

Sar Anton sniffed in disgust, but did not bar Ao from accompanying them, even as the guards shuffled Giordan and Jerzy out into the hallway and down to the main hall, down to where the maiar and Washer—and judgment—were waiting.

THE AUDIENCE CHAMBER was not as large as Jerzy had imagined it, sitting in the gallery overhead listening to voices from below. But what it lacked in size it made up for in grandeur. They entered through a door at the side, and walked into a pool of colored light thrown down from the round window overhead. Jerzy was immediately able to sense the firespell illuminating it—it might, in fact, be one of Master Malech’s own spellwines, although he could not tell for certain. Day or night, rain or shine, the entrance would be illuminated—and anyone entering the hall would be seen clearly by anyone already present.

That fact filtered away, as Jerzy noticed that there were, in fact, very few people already there. The benches that lined the hall were of a deep red wood that glimmered warmly, bare of the courtiers or messengers he would think normally sat there, waiting their turn. The guards did not give him a chance to gawk, moving him up the gray stone floor, onto a narrow carpet patterned in the brown and blue of the Aleppan Council. A small gathering of adults moved aside, and out of the corner of his eye, past Giordan’s frame and the arm of his guard, he saw a tall, white-faced figure.

Mahault. She wore blue again, and her blond hair was pulled back severely, and then she was lost from view as he was pushed forward to stand in front of the maiar’s chair.

The maiar looked. . .ordinary. Neither short nor tall, his hair was dark and his beard trimmed to his chin, and the rest of his face set in lines that suggested exhaustion rather than age. He wore a heavy robe of deep brown, and a dark blue mantle over it, both spilling over his shoulders and hiding the chair itself from view. Three men and a woman stood next to him: two of the men were older, unfamiliar. One was Washer Darian. The woman was young, straight and stern, dark skinned and dressed in thick, padded trou over heeled boots, a worn leather surcoat without any design or sigil on it over an equally plain woven shirt.

A solitaire, one of the female soldiers-for-hire. Jerzy had never seen one before, but no other woman would stand so, dressed so. What was she doing here?

“Not one, but two Vinearts, brought for judgment,” the maiar said, resting his chin in one hand and staring, not at the prisoners but over their heads, at something at the other end of the hall.

Jerzy fought the urge to turn, to see what so held the maiar’s attention.

“This is indeed a serious moment. Serious, yes; a moment I have not, in my life, faced. And yet, here it is.

“Our civilization rests upon three legs: the wisdom of the Collegium, the skills of the Vinearts, and the authority of the Land’s Lord. By Sin Washer’s actions, no one has power over another, but two in concert may judge a third. You, Vine-student Jerzy, and Vineart Giordan, have been brought forth on the most dire charges of apostasy by Washer Darian. I am here as second, to hear the charges, and the defense.

“These three”—he gestured to the men—“are members of the Aleppan Council, here at my request for witness. Solitaire Gennet will carry out the verdict, if necessary.”

Jerzy swallowed, all too aware of what that verdict would be, since it was doubtful anyone would dare speak in their defense.

“Sar Anton. Your charges?”

The killer who had casually killed a boy and whispered cold-blooded warnings was gone. In his place appeared a worried, almost distraught nobleman, his rich clothing merely a cover for deep concern about his fellows. “I was traveling with Washer Darian, discussing matters of history, of which we both have interest, when we saw the boy in the vineyards, unaccompanied by Vineart Giordan. He appeared to be weeding, or some such acceptable task, and at first we assumed him to be on an errand from Vineart Giordan. But then he appeared to go into a trance, and Washer Darian recognized the signs of incantation, the attempt to manipulate another Vineart’s holdings, in direct disobedience of the Command.”

It was such an obvious lie, Jerzy felt a protest rise in his throat, but the ropes around his hands reminded him that his voice would not be heard. Not here, not against these charges. He had not been incanting, not as Sar Anton charged. He had been guilty, yes—only not of what they claimed, and there was no way he could explain what he had been doing, or why it was necessary. Not without admitting to equally dangerous acts, and making public his mission—exactly what he had been ordered
not
to do. His only hope lay with Vineart Giordan. He could not believe the Vineart had sent that servant to betray him. It made no sense. . .the vines had told him that Giordan had not worked the magic that created the serpent.

“Vineart? Is this true? Has this student attempted to influence your vines? Do you have knowledge of this?”

Giordan went down on both knees, his back straight but his voice pleading. “My lord, I swear to you. I knew nothing of this. I have been prideful, perhaps, and too eager to show off what I knew, but all without malice and no thought at all to break Commandment! Whatever this boy did, he did alone—or at the behest of his master!”

The hollow feeling in Jerzy’s stomach surprised him, and then he was surprised at the surprise. Whether or not Giordan was guilty of anything else, the Vineart had been the one to bring Jerzy here, to allow him access to his vines, and that would naturally make him the villain in the Collegium’s eyes. That was what Sar Anton had meant—if he let Giordan take the blame, the Collegium might excuse him as the innocent tool of men who should have known better.

Giordan knew that, too.

Jerzy understood saving your own skin. The sleep house taught you the truth: you could depend only upon yourself. He could not blame the Vineart, who had grown in the same hard soil. But he could not allow it, either. A cold, grim determination grew inside the hollowness. Master Malech had sent him, trusted him. He would not allow himself to fail, and certainly not to let this Vineart besmirch his master’s reputation.

“I swear to you,” Giordan was saying, his words coming hot and swift. “I did not allow the boy to do anything beyond watch, to help in the tasks any slave would do. If he learned anything of my grapes it was through sneaking and—”

“The Vineart is his vineyard; the vineyard makes the Vineart,” Jerzy said. His words were a direct quote from Sin Washer’s Lessoning of the Mages, a quote he had read during his lessons with Detta a dozen times or more. The words had the same cool hard feel to them in his mouth as the Guardian’s thoughts, and he took strength from that. “Within his enclosures, the Vineart is supreme and all-knowing, and none move there save he allow it.”

Unlike Giordan, he remained upright. He would kneel before his master, but none other. A Vineart stood apart, and showed no weakness.

“The boy speaks better than the man,” the Washer said, with a touch of what Jerzy would have sworn was relief, confirming his suspicion. This was not about him. He was only the bait to lure the fox out—the hook to catch Giordan.

But if Giordan was not guilty, why would Sar Anton, much less the Washer, so badly want the Vineart disgraced and dead? What game was being played here?

“Indeed,” the maiar said thoughtfully, leaning forward on his gilded chair. His cloak of state slipped off one shoulder, and an aide stepped forward to fix it for him, as though he were too feeble to do so himself. Jerzy frowned. Had the aide’s hand touched the maiar’s skin, where neck met shoulder? The gesture was similar to the one he had seen Master Malech use, had used himself, on the mirror, and yet that aide was no Vineart but servant. . .and there was no spell that could influence a man, save he allowed it. . ..

And there was something. . .familiar in the air. A scent, almost too faint to catch. No, no a scent, a taste. . .

Without thought, a part of him cut itself away from the trial taking place around him, searching the air for that tingle of magic.

“Vineart Giordan,” the maiar continued, seemingly not noticing the aide at all, “we have long been in Agreement. I would not think you guilty of anything beyond arrogance, but arrogance was what led to the downfall of the prince-mages of old, and woe to me for overlooking that.”

“Lord Ma—”

“Silence!”

Giordan quivered once, and stopped speaking.

“The lands you till are under my domain, yours only under the terms of our Agreement. Your actions have put me at odds with the Collegium, which is breach of that Agreement. For that, I declare the Agreement void and done. The vines you have tended, the spellwines you have crafted, remain yours. But you will remove them from my lands.”

Vines uprooted need to be replanted swiftly. Without a ready new home . . . the way Giordan swayed and almost fell, he knew what it meant. Jerzy could not spare a thought for his former teacher, even as the maiar went on to argue with the Washer over the punishment to be meted out to Jerzy himself. That magic, that taint, it was so close; faint but he knew it, and knowing it, he could follow it. . .

His head jerked up and he stared into the face of the aide who had touched the maiar, into his eyes and down a deep dark hole, an endless falling tunnel of swirling reds and blacks, thick with a familiar-yet-unfamiliar stench. Soil. Stone. Pulp and juice. . .but something more. Something darker, more dire. Heavy and weightless, smooth and slick, and the very touch of it even in this no-space made Jerzy’s flesh crawl, and his heart sorrow.

The same scent—stench—he had looked for in the vineyard earlier that day. The stench that he had sensed on the shores of that fisher village when the sea beast towered overhead, and then again in the ice-house, while Master Malech tried to identify the remains. . .

“Blood,” he gasped, falling to his knees at last while the stench overtook him. “Blood and flesh, ash and bone.”

“What did the boy say?”

“Nothing. He is overcome, overwhelmed.” Sar Anton, his face close in front of Jerzy, too close; he tried to pull away but the nobleman would not allow it. “Be silent,” he said urgently. “Be silent or you will share the Vineart’s fate. It is not too late for you, but you must remain silent!”

“Even now he works magic, trying to influence the lord-maiar!” Giordan cried, flailing his long arms at Jerzy, despite the guards’ hold on him. He was literally frothing at the mouth, like a terrified horse. “He and the trader boy! It was not me, I did nothing wrong, it was him!”

The maiar stood, and Sar Anton swore, pushing Jerzy aside as he turned to deal with the maddened whirlwind that was the Vineart. And then, the whirlwind was literal: an impossible burst of wind knocked over several of the guards, shoving Jerzy onto the ground and rattling his teeth.