The next morning Malech walked through the harvest shed of the northern enclosure, listening to that yard’s overseer update him on their progress. This yard was planted with firevines, which ripened more slowly than healvine, but the longer growing season resulted in a powerful vintage that earned his House a nice sum. The Mariners’ Guild bought out most of his stock every year, firespells being far safer to use shipboard than any open flame, and the remainder he shared with the local chandler to craft smokeless candles that princelings gave solid coin for.
Once all the grapes were picked and crushed into mustus, their potential had to be judged, and Malech alone could make the determination if they would become spellwines, vin magica, or be shunted off into vin ordinaire.
Inspecting and approving the mustus took most of the day, and it was midafternoon before Malech was able to approve the final batch and set out for home. Exhaustion made his body ache, but once in the saddle, the matter of the odd blood-staunch order from Atakus came back to him. Such things were normally left to Detta, who ran the House accounts, and dealt—quite admirably—with them. So why did the order remain in his thoughts? Perhaps thinking of the Mariners’ Guild early that morning had reminded him, since Atakus was a major port for trading ships coming to and from the southern lands.
Was it the Guardian’s comment about needing more blood staunch that was bothering him? A demand that could outstrip his stores was rare indeed; blood staunch was not a plague-wine, nor taken for fevers—it was purely to heal wounds. He had never run out before. Large quantities would indicate battles, disasters. . .not things one associated with the island-state of Atakus. And yet, the size of the order indicated just such a disaster. . .perhaps one yet to have happened, or a battle yet to be fought. . .His thoughts chased each other, making him progressively more uneasy with every step his horse took.
Fortunately the beast knew its way home, because he could not remember a moment of it until they were plodding up the track in the gathering dusk and Per was coming to take the reins from him.
“All is well, Per?”
The yardman nodded, ducking his head. Per never spoke, and at times seemed half as sly and wild as a marten. He had been a slave once, too, but his touch with the horses brought him out of the yards and into the stable. Perhaps it was another sort of magic, save no spellwine had ever been found to control animals.
Malech patted him on the shoulder, and went inside, pausing only to knock the dirt off his boots. No alarm or uproar met him, so the Household must also be calm. Good. Dinner, and then to bed. All else could wait until morning.
MALECH WAS UP before sunrise, as was his habit, and down into the workrooms with a mug of steaming tai in his hands, his dreams having been filled with flashes of fire and a sense of foreboding, no doubt brought on by his thoughts the night before. There was, he finally concluded, nothing he could do about any dire history to come, save ensure they were able to fill the order and replenish their stock.
For now, he needed to focus on the mustus in front of him, his ruby-red healgrapes. Four of the five vats made his senses tingle, indicating that they might have the potential. The fifth, like the vat that had spilled two days before, had no such tingle.
“Master?”
He had heard the inner door open, and sensed the arrival of the newcomers, without having to turn around. “Ah, Jerzy. Good. Thank you, Guardian.”
The boy came down the three steps, his gaze taking everything in without a further word. The stone dragon, his escort duty done, winged quietly into the wooden rafters, watching the activity below with unblinking eyes.
“Welcome to the first step of the magic, young one,” Malech said. He was aware he sounded like a pompous bastard, but it had been so long since he had been able to share this moment with anyone, he couldn’t resist. Magic was a thing of wonder, the process from incantation to decantation, and too much of the world saw only the results, not the alchemical transformation.
Jerzy did not disappoint. He looked around slowly, still drinking every detail in, his dark eyes wide and his jaw slack with amazement. For the first time, in that expression of wonder, Malech saw the attractive boy-child he must have been, before the slavers took him and the sleep house beat him down. Malech felt a moment of pity. It was easier to be an ugly slave than a pretty one.
And now, what would the House of Malech make of him? What sort of Vineart might this boy become? It was not an easy life but better by far than that of a slave. And if the boy had never been sold? A question for the silent gods to answer, if they cared to. Were those with magic within them sold, or did exposure to magic create it within a slave? Either way, none came to the Vines save via slavers.
“This is where the pulp goes? After we crush it?” Jerzy’s gaze went from the seven wooden tanks, twice times his height and three times his reach in girth, and then to the great wooden door that led to the outside.
“After the crush, and the clearing. This is where the mustus is brought.”
Only the most trusted, most experienced slaves were allowed within the vintnery itself. Here, where the real work was done, even fewer had access, and then only to bring the barrels in and out through the sliding wooden doors.
“It is brought in here to these tanks, to sit until Harvest is done, and all the lots have been pressed. Then we sort the mustus into levels, and vinification begins.”
“Vinification.” It was another new word, and the boy said it carefully, enunciating every letter.
“This is where it all begins,” Malech said again. “Can you feel it? Can you feel what waits?”
Some never did. He did not think the boy would fail so easily.
“Like. . .someone sitting on my chest. No. . .” Jerzy’s eyes scrunched closed and he put his hands over his ears as he concentrated, trying to block out all distractions. “Like someone pushing from inside my chest. It doesn’t hurt, but it feels strange.”
Malech almost smiled in relief. “Yes. I sense it as something stroking my skin, lightly, as though with a feather. It’s different for everyone, we’re told. Learn that feeling inside you, Jerzy. Learn it so well you can recognize it in an instant, can hear it calling you from within the grape as it grows. That is the mustus calling you, the raw, unspecified magic, still seeking its form. So tell me. . .which ones push most strongly at you?”
The boy walked to the nearest tank but did not touch it, or come close enough to touch it, as though some force kept him just so far away. He circled it, taking his time, then went on to the next.
“This one; it almost shoves at me. Those two, less so. I don’t feel anything from the other four.”
Malech nodded, but did not confirm or deny the boy’s findings. As he studied, his senses would grow stronger, and he would learn to make his own estimations and to trust his own judgment, not to wait for the confirmation of anyone else, even his master. Magic was not taught, but grown. There was no need to confuse the boy with philosophies, however.
“For the next two weeks the mustus will wait in these giant vats, stirred twice daily to ensure a flow from top to bottom, forcing the flesh and juice to mingle. That will be your task, to attune yourself to the feel of each vat, to learn its temperament, and what it would be best suited for.” It was a deceptively simple step for such important results, and a Vineart needed to know every one of them the way he knew his own heartbeat.
Jerzy’s eyes flicked to the vats again, clearly measuring them against his own height, and just as clearly remembering the fate of the slave killed for overturning the vat. Good. It would keep him alert and careful.
“You will use those rakes,” and Malech pointed to the four long instruments racked along the wall behind them. “Twice a day. And yes, there will be more vats added as the rest of the yields are brought in. You’ll wish you were back in the field by the time you’re done.”
The look the boy gave him suggested that he highly doubted that, and Malech almost laughed. He, for one, was thankful to have someone else to pass this chore along to. Not only would it free his time for more advanced work, but his arms would ache considerably less this year. A few weeks of this and Detta’s cooking, and the boy would bulk up to better match his height and stop looking quite so fragile.
“When it is ready, we will transfer it to smaller barrels, and from there the final transformation.” Some of it would be bottled immediately as vin ordinaire, sold to those with coin who desired the intoxication of near-magic, without the risks—or costs—of spellwine. Only then would the final, most important touches be put on each spellwine, refining and finishing each for specific results. “But that will not be for at least a month, and there is much you must learn in the meantime.”
“More magic?” Jerzy asked hopefully.
Malech laughed, if a trifle ruefully. “Nothing so simple, I fear. You, boy, must be civilized.”
* * *
CIVILIZED, JERZY LEARNED, involved many things, including regular baths. Once a week one of the kitchen children brought steaming water into the bathing room, and he, like all the others in the Household, was expected to emerge clean all over. After the first dousing, Detta let him wash and dry himself, although there was a brief but embarrassing lesson on how to clean his teeth and ears, and properly trim his fingernails and toes.
Lil took the shears to his hair after a few days, trimming it in the same style as the Master’s, short at the front so that his eyes and mouth were kept clear, but longer at back, over his ears and neck. Another handspan of growth, she said, poking him in the shoulder in a familiar manner, and he would be able to pull it back and tie it at his neck with a thong the way the master did.
It would take longer than that to grow even a close-trimmed beard like the master’s, however, she added, and laughed when he blushed.
Civilized also involved lettering. Every morning after breakfast, once the dishes and platters had been cleared and the kitchen children set off to whatever other duties they had, he was directed to sit at the long, polished wooden table with Detta, and she would show him how to recognize letters and then words, and eventually how to write them as well.
“It’s a thing of power, same as spellwines,” she said when he protested the time and effort after a particularly frustrating session. Where recognizing mustus came naturally, writing did not. “All part and parcel of what you’re to become, boy.”
Jerzy did not doubt her. He did not even think to doubt her, any more than he would have doubted the overseer, although he did not fear Detta in the same fashion. If this was what they wanted him to do, he would do it. You did not complain in the sleep house, no matter how bad things got. In the Master’s own House, where he was well fed, and bathed, and had his own room with a bed and a warm blanket, Jerzy would have died rather than balked. But he still did not see the point to it, especially since Master Malech seemed to have near forgotten him those first few days.
A FEW DAYS later, just as he was beginning to feel comfortable in his new bed, his new clothing, and his new cleanliness, if not quite with the gentle teasing of the kitchen children or Detta’s brusque instruction, another lesson was added to his days.
“Jerzy,” Master Malech said, making a rare appearance at the morning table. “Come with me.”
Leaving his bowl on the table still half full, he followed the Master out into the courtyard, where a stranger waited. “This is Mil’ar Cai.”
The newcomer was short and strongly built, with milk-pale skin. He had no hair anywhere on his scalp, and a long brown mustache tied with red and blue beads. His clothing was more colorful than anything Jerzy could remember seeing before: dark red pants that billowed over calf-high leather boots, a bright blue sash, and a brighter red shirt with sleeves that tied at the elbow with green ribbons that fluttered when he moved.
“Cai is from the Caulic Isles,” Malech said. “Across the narrows, come to teach your body, as Detta instructs your mind.”
“Ey,” Cai said in a thick but understandable voice. “There’s no magic grows in Caul, and so we use our brains, instead.”
Master Malech chuckled, as though Cai had said something amusing, and left them to it. Jerzy stared at Cai, half fascinated but slightly uncertain.
“Master Vineart was right: you stand like a slave, not a man, and certainly not like a magician! We’ll begin at once, and soon your body will have the right of it. Ready yourself, boy!”
Jerzy had no time to ask what he was to ready himself for before Cai had him in the air and landing hard on the morning-cool flagstones.
“Up. Again. Be ready this time.”
The next time, Jerzy saw Cai come at him, and went limp in enough time for the fall to hurt less, although it still knocked the breath out of him.
“All right. Better. You know that much, at least.” Cai pulled at one end of his mustache and studied Jerzy again. “So, now we know where to start.”
Every other day, from then on, they met in the courtyard in the late afternoon, after Jerzy had taken his second turn in the vatting rooms, punching down the mustus. The Caulic fighter taught him how to stand, to bow to a greater, inferior, or a worthy opponent, and how to move across a room—“not as a slave but as a magician!” Cai insisted, over and over again, thwacking Jerzy across the backs of his knees with a short, thick cudgel when he moved wrongly or hunched his shoulders instead of standing up straight.
Once he moved to Cai’s satisfaction, the soldier promised him, there would be more interesting lessons using the cudgel itself, to defend against a mad dog, a hungry beast, or an angry man.
Jerzy wasn’t sure which he dreaded more, the frustration of Detta’s instruction or the bruising of Cai’s lessons, but each night he tumbled into bed, exhausted and sore, and thinking there was no way he could survive another day.
Worse, while he was learning letters and movement, the sunup-to-sundown madness of the Harvest went on outside. During lessons with Detta he would look out the window and see the Master striding through the fields, or hear him moving in other rooms, calling for something or muttering to himself. Often he was gone the entire day and night, checking the progress of his other yards.
It surprised him how very much he missed the feel of the grapes in his hands and the soil under his feet, until he was dreaming of it sleeping and awake. A week after he had left the yards, when Jerzy came down for the first meal, tying up his pants even as he stumbled into the dining hall, he found Master Malech already there, discussing the day’s matters with Detta. Still caught up in his dreams, he blurted a request before he could wake up enough to be afraid.
“Master? May I go with you into the fields today?”
Malech stopped with his mug halfway to his lips, and stared at Jerzy with those clear blue eyes.
“I—I. . .” Jerzy felt himself start to stutter, and slammed his jaw shut, his courage gone as swiftly as it had appeared.
“You miss it already?” It didn’t feel like a question, and so Jerzy did not answer.
“Of course you do. It’s Harvest. Time enough during Fallow for you to learn your other lessons. Detta, would you mind terribly if I took this worthless child into the fields and put him back to work?”
Detta’s round face was equally solemn as she considered Jerzy, who held very still, barely allowing himself to breathe.
“He has been distracted,” she said slowly. “Much like another male in this household, when forced to look at figures and facts. . .”
Malech chuckled, the sound of water over rocks. “A true Vineart in the making, then. Put food in your mouth, boy, and be ready to go as soon as you swallow.”
Jerzy almost choked, belting down his meal, and was ready before Master Malech had finished his drink.
The cobbles felt different underfoot through the leather of his shoe than they had barefoot, and Jerzy was aware of the fact, suddenly, that he walked differently in them. In the House, it wasn’t noticeable. Here, where he had spent most of his life either barefoot or wearing the heavy wooden pattens inherited from an older slave, every step he took made him feel as though everyone were staring at him.
In truth, nobody looked as they walked across the road and down past the vintnery building. A new slave was in the spot Jerzy had been only a week before, but the bustle of activity had slowed considerably. While they passed, a wagon came up the road, drawn by one of the three thick-muscled white horses that spent most of their time in the enclosure behind the icehouse. A single driver held the reins, and the wagon itself held two wooden casks lashed to the frame. Jerzy’s nostrils flared, although all he could smell in the cool air was the familiar scent of dirt and horse.
“From the southern enclosures,” Malech said, watching the wagon turn off toward the great sliding door that led to the vatting room. “A light yield this year, but I have hope for it. That’s what you were sensing in those barrels. Come.”
Malech led him deep into the field, pausing occasionally to check a leaf here or a vine there to make sure that nothing had been damaged during the harvest.
“Even the most delicate of hands can pull too hard,” Malech told him, lifting a vine that had come off the supporting stake and tying it back up with a piece of twine he took from his pocket. “There is stress that is good, and stress that is bad. Letting the fruit touch dirt—does what?”
“Increases the chance of rot, or animals reaching the fruit.” Any slave knew that.
“And after Harvest, when there is no fruit to rot or be eaten?”
Jerzy looked at the vine in his master’s hand, the twisted brown plant as thick around as his wrist and gnarled like an old man’s face, and had no answer.
“The vine must be stressed, but it must also be respected,” Malech said. “Lift it to the sky so air moves under the leaves and moisture runs freely to the root, and the fruit responds. Leave it hanging, discarded once the magic is taken, and the next year’s harvest will be poor. Remember that always, boy.”
Malech frowned, then bent with an ease that mocked his age and plucked a small cluster of fruit from a vine in the next cluster. The fruit was small but deep red and should not have been overlooked. Jerzy braced himself against the ire that would doubtless erupt from the Vineart at such waste.
“Ah.” Malech did not sound angry, and Jerzy risked looking at his master’s face.
“Here,” and Malech plucked a single grape from the bunch and held it out to Jerzy, an offering.
“Master?”
“Place it on your tongue and crush it gently. Use the roof of your mouth, not your teeth.”
His muscles froze even as he was reaching out to take the fruit, as his mind understood what Malech was saying, telling him to do.
“Master?”
“It’s all right, Jerzy. It’s all right, now.”
Still uneasy, expecting at any moment to be knocked to the ground for his blasphemy, Jerzy took the fruit and did as instructed. The skin burst against the roof of his mouth and he tasted the clean clear juice running down his throat, tingling and itching and tickling all at once, the tingling of what he realized was magic fainter than from the barrel of mustus, but unmistakable nonetheless.
It was a revelation, a moment that etched into his memories, and no matter how many times after that he tasted one, no matter how many times Malech took him into the vineyards, the tingling was never so intense.
A WEEK LATER, the Harvest ended with the usual feast. A long wooden table was set out where the crusher had been, and slaves and hire-workers mingled freely, filling wooden mugs with vin ordinaire and ciders. Detta and Lil had produced seemingly endless loaves of bread, stuffed with roasted fowl and cheeses, and a massive wild pig was roasting over a fire pit, Per watching carefully to ensure none of the younguns got too close. Cai, off to the side, was playing a thin reed instrument with two local farmers accompanying him on drum and tambor, and a few of the slaves, suddenly finding new energy, were dancing, arms linked in a circle.
It had been a good Harvest, and Master Malech was pleased, which meant that everyone was happy. The Vineart brought a mug of cider over for Jerzy and lifted his own in toast. “Warm days, cool nights.”
“Warm days, cool nights,” Jerzy echoed, and sipped at the tart liquid. They had no pear trees of their own, but a local brewer always brought over enough for the celebration every year. Some of it was sent to the other enclosures, where smaller versions of the feast would be occurring as well.
In earlier years he might have been among those dancing. Now it was as though he had never been part of it, and they did not see the young student any more than they acknowledged the Master. Slaves kept their eyes down and never asked questions.
“Master?”
“Hrmmm?” Those cool blue eyes weren’t quite so terrifying anymore. “Why are the healgrapes so dark red, but others are so much lighter?” He was thinking, especially, of the greenish-pink flesh of firegrapes. “If it’s not—”
“It’s not a foolish question, no, although if you’d listened to the Washer preaching, you would know that already.” A Washer had come by on the last day of Harvest, as was traditional, to say a blessing over the depleted vines and take his customary cask of vin ordinaire, but Jerzy had been too busy to attend, working in the courtyard with Cai.
“All grapes are blooded, touched by Sin Washer’s sacrifice,” Malech explained now. “How deep a touch they received is shown by the color of their skin. The darker the skin, the closer to the source the origin grape was, and the more specialized it became.”
Jerzy watched the dancers go around and around, laughing harder the faster they spun. “So a grape with a pale skin. . .is not as powerful?” That didn’t feel right: the bonegrapes had almost no red to them, and yet they mended cracked and bent bones that might otherwise take months to set. And when he tasted one, the pulp on his tongue and the juice running down his throat, he felt the magic rising within.
Malech stared out into the sky, looking, as always, for a hint of weather change to come, even now with the harvest safely in. “Not less powerful, no. Less specialized, and therefore more difficult to craft into something useful. Legend says that the First Growth was pale and thin-skinned, easy to crush for its juice, ripe with limitless magic. We have no white-skinned grapes left; Sin Washer took them from us as you would take a knife from a baby.”
“That is. . .a good thing?” The Washers said it was, when they preached Sin Washer’s gifts, but Master sounded almost wistful.
“It is a good thing. But the knife is shiny, and the First Growth was powerful, and we all wish to grow up enough to be trusted with the things we are denied. The blooded grapes are enough for us, Jerzy. We have no other choice.”
THE WEEKS AFTER Harvest passed, and Jerzy spent even more hours every day in the vatting room, now filled to capacity with mustus from all the enclosures. He moved the liquid within the vats with his long-handled rake, punching the thick surface down so that the skins and juice mingled and mixed. His arms ached, and the smell of the grapes would not leave his skin or hair, and even the fascination of being so close to mustus wore off after a while.
The advantage to vattage work was that it required no thought, and he could let himself consider what Malech, Cai, and Detta were teaching him, allowing it to sink into his understanding the same way the skins sank into the liquid, the magic swirling and deepening with every turn. Slowly, speaking into the quiet echoes of the vatting room, he built a new vocabulary, words taking on meaning, his speech patterns changing until not even Detta could find fault with his recitals.
It was not all physical or mental labor, however. Although Master Malech typically ate in his study while Jerzy took his meals in the hall with Detta and her kitchen children, one eve-meal he came to join them, sitting on the wooden bench next to Detta, eating off a wooden trencher and passing bread and a pitcher of ordinaire as though they were all of equal status. Michel, Geordie, and Roan were struck dumb, but Lil and Detta kept up with their discussion of the meats they would need to put away for the winter, and what spices Detta should order when the traders passed through town next. As though reminded by that thought, Malech reached into his pocket and removed three small green fruit. Jerzy had never seen anything like them before. They were shaped like hen’s eggs, although the exterior was rough, but when Master Malech sliced one open, the inside was pink and juicy.
“They’re called pieot,” the Vineart told him, taking a slice and eating it with obvious satisfaction. Jerzy took a slice as well, watching to see how to eat it without getting juice all over his face. The moment the fruit hit his tongue, however, he forgot to worry about eating cleanly, as Cai had taught him, and instead gaped in wonder.
Master Malech laughed, while the others at the table busied themselves with their own plates and pretended not to notice. None of them took any of the fruit themselves.
“It tastes like. . .” Words failed him. It tasted like sunshine and straw, like bitter anjas traded from Leiur to the west, those meaty nuts that looked like the knuckles of a man’s hand, but this carried a sweetness to it that Jerzy could not identify.
“It tastes like bonegrape,” he said, almost in a whisper, as though suddenly afraid to identify it. How could a table fruit taste like one of the most essential of all healwines, second only to bloodgrape?
“There is a similarity, yes.” Master Malech was openly pleased. “A Vineart must be able to identify flavors and scents, which means opening himself to new experiences. Good ones, and occasionally bad ones. This—” and he took another slice of the fruit “—is one of the better ones. They’re from Iaja, a land warmer than our own. Like limon, with a harder, greener finish.”
Jerzy had no idea what a limon was, but if it tasted like this, he thought, it must be wonderful.
STRANGE NEW FOODS and experiences, a comfortable bed, and only the occasional clip to the head when he made a mistake: Jerzy was not fool enough to doubt his good fortune now. You did not come under the slavers’ hands without learning what would be expected of you the rest of your life: food and care, yes, but work, endless work, until your back broke and your arms failed. To have that suddenly, magically change. . .
And yet, it was difficult. Harvest might have been backbreaking as a slave, but now Jerzy crawled into bed every night, his arms aching from the seemingly endless vat-work, often sore across the legs and ribs from Cai’s ongoing lessons, and his head whirling from letters and numbers that would not disappear even when he closed his eyes and slept like a dead thing until the morning chime woke him, and the now almost-boring cycle began again. In that, at least, the five weeks since the spill had passed very much like his life before, in a constant repetition of meals and chores. Worse, because after the promise of that first day in Malech’s study, despite the constant exposure to the mustus, feeling that nascent power constantly pressing underneath his breastbone, there was no spellwine. No crafted magic.
Every day he thought that today might be the day he asked, and every night he fell into bed, the words unspoken.
One night, however, he woke quietly, immediately, the way a slave learned to, and realized that it had not been sunrise that alerted him. He lay on his back, arms holding the blanket to his body. The pillow lay on the floor; he had pushed it off the bed at some point during the night, as usual.
The single window was open. He had closed it the night before, against the lashings of rain coming down off the ridge. The rain was not a disaster now: Harvest was complete, with the grapes from all the fields gathered, crushed, and vatted, the soil protected and prepared, and the slaves set to repairing the stone wall of the enclosure before the weather turned colder. Master had seemed pleased, if distracted, and missed the eve-meal two nights in a row because he was off doing something with samples from each of the vats Jerzy had been punching.
The night sky was clear now, but the stars were blocked out by a thick gray shadow perched in the middle of the window.
“Guardian?”
It could be none other, to come in through the window without an alarm being raised. The soft thump of something landing on the floor, allowing the stars to be seen again, confirmed his guess. The Guardian had accompanied him everywhere the first few days, but he had seen it less recently as time went on. He rolled out of bed, picking up the pillow and replacing it on the cot, then turned up the lamp on the desk, raising the flame until the room was illuminated.
The stone dragon waited on the floor, patient as only an inanimate thing could be.
“I’m to come with you?”
The Guardian could not speak, and its stone muzzle could not convey expressions, but Jerzy nonetheless got a distinct sense of “what else?” from the creature.
“All right. Let me get dressed.” It wasn’t cold yet outside, but for all that the House was grander than any sleep house, it still had corners where a chill could and did linger once the sun went down. Detta had given him three pairs of pants and two brand-new shirts, plus a sleeveless jerkin and a quilted jacket that actually fit him across the shoulders. He put on a pair of those pants, a shirt, and the jerkin, and picked up the hard-soled shoes he was supposed to wear when outside, just in case. Lastly he wrapped the leather belt once across his hips, fastening it with the dragon-head buckle that was a smaller version of the Master’s own.
Whatever Master Malech had in mind, he was ready.