After the quiet of his own cabin, the noise and chaos of the dock overwhelmed Jerzy, the shouting of men and rumbling of wagons on the land clashing with the hollow thudding of half a dozen ships of every size, their sides gently knocking against the quays. The moment he stepped off the gangway and onto the weather-beaten wooden planking, he narrowly missed getting knocked in the head by a sack being off-loaded, and when he ducked, he ran into a burly shoreman hauling up ropes tossed from the deck of the Baphios. He backed away, stuttering apologies, and bumped into another sailor, this one of a less rude temperament.
“To meet someone I go?” he managed to get out in badly mangled Corguruth.
The sailor pointed to the right, where people were gathered in a cleared area. “If someone’s to meet ya, they’ll be there.” His Ettonian had a strange accent but was clearly understandable. Jerzy nodded his thanks, adjusted the strap of his carry bag over his shoulder, and ordered his oddly wobbly legs to take him in that direction. Sure enough, as he approached, a stranger stepped forward to greet him, effusive in passable Berengian.
“Ah, and you, you must be Jerzy, yes? You are!”
“I am,” he agreed, moving carefully, trying to adjust his footing against land that seemed to rock underneath him. The stranger, who looked perhaps twice Jerzy’s age, with thick black hair and a broad, tanned face that cracked open in a dazzling white smile, stepped forward as though to hug him. Jerzy held up an instinctive hand, warning the man away. “I. . .I did not have an easy trip,” he admitted, taking a step back and stumbling slightly again. “And now the ground itself seems to dislike me.”
The stranger laughed, the sound as open and welcoming as his smile had been, but Jerzy winced, his nightmare of being a fool in public coming back to him with a sudden flare.
“Sea legs,” the stranger said soothingly in Ettonian, to Jerzy’s relief. The accent was easier to follow in that tongue. “All will be well again once you’ve walked it off. So, you are Jerzy, and I am Giordan, yes?” The smile was back, clearly delighted with the fact of Jerzy being Jerzy, and himself being himself, and having it all sorted out so neatly.
“Yes,” Jerzy agreed, more than a little overwhelmed by this man, so impossibly different from his own master. “You must be.”
The Vineart was clearly a madman. But perhaps he had to be a madman to agree to this scheme. Jerzy’s legs wobbled and his head hurt, and it was too much effort to do anything other than go along.
“Excellent,” the Vineart declared as though Jerzy had spoken his thoughts out loud. “And so we will gather your things from this very fine ship, and take you home with us.”
“Us” turned out to be two muscular slaves who were given the responsibility of handling the half casks, and a very thin man with a hook nose and thin lips, who leaned against the wall of a warehouse and watched the slaves work with a look of boredom on his face.
“That? Is Sar Anton.” “Sar,” Cai had taught him, was a title, not a name. It indicated someone of royal favor but no actual birthlines. The title was given for service or fondness or, Cai said, a suitable application of coin. “He does not approve of you. He does not approve of me, either. He approves of no one, save they are exactly like him, and few of them there are, more luck for us. And yet we must take him, and we must be nice to him, for he is much admired by my lord-maiar, who is otherwise a fine man who likes me well as well and therefore has excellent taste in who he chooses, yes?”
Sar Anton nodded acknowledgment of the strange introduction, but otherwise did not look away from the slaves, who were hauling the half casks onto a wagon of far finer construction than Ferd’s, with a wooden bench running along the back and a raised, padded seat up behind the driver’s perch.
Jerzy felt dizzy, and he didn’t think it was merely the ground movement that was to blame. Why had an entitled man come to meet him? But there was no way to ask, even if he’d found the courage to speak.
His trunk was the next to be acquired out of the hold and loaded next to the half casks. When Jerzy nodded to indicate that everything was accounted for, the slaves clambered into the back, making themselves as comfortable as possible on the bench.
“You, up there, yes,” Giordan directed him, indicating the padded bench. “For today at least you are my honored guest. Tomorrow, then we put you to work and we see what it is you can learn from me, and what I can learn from you, yes?”
“Yes,” Jerzy agreed, taking up his cudgel and pack and climbing up into the seat. He tried not to notice how Sar Anton climbed in next to him, holding his thin frame stiffly, as though afraid to let his clothing touch Jerzy’s and risk dirtying himself somehow.
Jerzy felt a fleeting, if unworthy, wish that the seasickness had not passed entirely, that he could have thrown up one last time upon Sar Anton’s fine clothing.
Giordan kept up a rapid pace of conversation the entire trip to the maiar’s House, which he called a palazzo. “I came here when my master sent me out. No wealth, no lands, for my master had none to give me. The lord-maiar here had lands, lands he planted with grain and grazed cattle on. Grains and cattle! I could feel it, the moment I trod down, crying out for the vines, and so it was done, although not easily, no. . .”
From his vantage point, still dizzy and overwhelmed by the seemingly endless prattle of his new teacher, Jerzy let the words flow over him and watched the countryside pass by. The road was narrow, not wide enough for two carts to pass each other, and the fields sloped down away from it on one side and rose up into hills on the other.
“Those are the Jurans?” he asked, pointing toward the hills. The tallest of them were still white capped, despite spring’s arrival.
“Yes, they are, yes. You came from the other side of them, yes. Difficult travel. I did it once, when I was younger. Very cold even in the summer. Our ice comes from there.”
“That’s why we took the coastal route,” Jerzy said in agreement. The roads might have been passable now that thaw was done, but they might also have been blocked with mudslides or other disasters, and no way to know until you were already there.
“And did you enjoy your voyage?” Sar Anton asked, his tone indicating whatever answer Jerzy might give, it would be wrong.
“No,” he said simply. He had already admitted that, so there seemed no point in denying it now. “I am afraid that I am not a very good sea traveler.”
Sar Anton looked sideways at him, those sharp dark eyes taking in every inch of Jerzy’s frame. Suddenly the trou and doublet Detta had so lovingly made for him seemed shabby and ill-fitting, and his long arms and legs an affront against all that was decent. Sar Anton wore a formal half coat and leggings, and even Vineart Giordan’s trou and doublet were of a finer cloth than Master Malech wore most days. Jerzy stared at his shoes and took some satisfaction in the fact that they, at least, were the equal of anyone’s footwear, soft leather, with thin wooden soles flexible enough to walk all day without wearing down. Sar Anton’s boots were polished and clean, but they were worn at the heel and ankle, and the laces needed replacing.
“And here we are,” Giordan announced happily. “For you, your first sight of the palazzo of my lord the maiar of Aleppan!”
From the tone of triumph in his voice, Jerzy expected some great shining structure to rise before them, blinding in its wealth, surrounded by vineyards in full bloom. What he saw, instead, was a great stone wall rising out of a hill, with a single stone tower rising from behind it. Then the road rounded the hill, and spread out behind the wall were the familiar terraces of grapevines, sloping down a gentle grade to a ribbon of river half hidden by tall, angular trees. To the left, a grove of darker leafed trees grew, surrounded by small huts.
“What is your yield?” he asked Giordan, to hide his disappointment. The Vineart launched into an explanation of their harvesting process, with sideways swoops into how they alternated the grape harvest with the olives taken from the grove of trees. “The oil, it is very important to this land. We cannot cook without it. We cannot eat without it!”
Jerzy had tried a few of the brined fruits, at Malech’s urgings, and not been impressed, but did not say so. Then they rounded the hill again and were riding under the arched entrance, and suddenly Jerzy understood why Giordan had been so excited and why Sar Anton looked down his long nose at a poor Berengian farmer.
Through the arch, the first things Jerzy saw were the buildings. Where his master’s house was splendid in its isolation, these buildings were taller and far narrower, pressed up against one another and yet not seeming crowded at all. They were built of the same gray stone as the external walls, with dark red roofs that slanted down at the corners, so rain could drain off them and into gutters carved into the cobbled streets. The windows were small but the shutters were brightly painted in yellows and reds, making the stone seem not cold but welcoming, and almost every ledge boasted an overflow of flowers in the same yellows and reds and leafy green. He tried not to gape, but suspected his jaw was hanging open anyway. The people passing him by in the street were all as finely dressed as Sar Anton, although many of them were carrying their own packages and baskets, something Jerzy suspected the Sar would never deign to do.
“Welcome to Aleppan,” the Vineart said, and Jerzy heard nothing but an understandable pride in his voice. “Indeed, it is a grand city, but our humble home, as well. My yard is outside the gates, and we shall spend much of our time there, but we are given the honor of housing with the maiar at his own palazzo, yes. It is a grand palace, worthy of the ancient founders. . ..” Giordan looked up at Jerzy and grinned. “And with their plumbing, as well!”
Jerzy started to ask what the Vineart meant by that, then the wagon cleared another, smaller stone archway, and came out into a huge courtyard filled with flowering trees and a huge white stone statue of a woman with her hand on the back of a stag, its head proudly upraised. He barely had time to take that in, when they were getting out of the wagon, the slaves taking it, and the half casks, away, and Jerzy had his personal belongings in hand and was being led up white stone steps into the palazzo.
“Gracious Lady,” Giordan was saying to the woman who came out to greet them, making an extravagant bow that Jerzy wasn’t sure he was supposed to imitate, not that he could have managed it without falling on his face. “May I present our honored visitor, the Vineart-apprentice Jerzy of the House of Malech?”
The Gracious Lady was a tall, elegant woman with gray hair swept up on the top of her head and hard, lean features that still managed to look feminine. She was dressed in a flowing green robe, and yet reminded Jerzy, oddly enough, of the overseer, although he could not have said why.
She offered her hand to Jerzy and, helplessly, he took it. The fingers were slender and cool and bore a single ring of gold and red stones that reminded Jerzy of his master’s ring, although that had no stones. Acting on the whisper of Cai’s voice in his head, Jerzy bent his head over that hand and raised it to his lips, not quite touching the powder-rough skin.
“My Lady,” he said in what he hoped was passable Corguruth. “The pleasure is mine.”
“Indeed it is,” the woman said, but when he glanced up, her mouth was curved in a smile. “We hope that you are made to feel welcome in our home. Sar Anton”—and this was directed over his head to their erstwhile traveling companion—“attend me in my rooms.” With that, she took no further notice of Jerzy, gliding serenely out of the hallway, Sar Anton in her wake. Giordan clapped his shoulder once, roughly, to reassure him. “She liked you, and of course she did. Go now, settle in, and I will see you soon.” Giordan likewise hurried off to some destination of his own, and Jerzy was left standing, feeling like a witless fool.
A young woman dressed in a simple dark blue dress and a wide leather belt similar to Jerzy’s own, her dark blond hair coiled at the nape of her neck, stepped forward out of the shadows. “We run at breakneck speed here,” she said in Ettonian. “You will learn the pace of it soon enough. My name is Mahault. If you have any questions, you may ask me.” She seemed young to be the House-keeper, especially of a place this grand, but perhaps she was the House-keeper’s assistant. Unlike the Gracious Lady, her gaze was steady and her body language that of calm competence, very much like Detta’s.
With a gesture, she handed him over to a young, soft-spoken servant of his own age, who in turn directed another servant, less grandly dressed, to take Jerzy’s trunk, and gestured for the Vineart to follow him to his quarters. Overwhelmed with the sheer amount of people and stripped of Giordan’s companionship, Jerzy complied.
The hallways were simple stone, covered by finely worked tapestries and lit by torches. Jerzy allowed himself a smidge of smugness—the torches burned with a strong smell and flickered in every breeze, and there were dark spots in the ceiling above, where they had scrubbed away accumulated soot. Malech’s firespell candles were clearly superior in that regard, at least.
They made a turn and entered a different part of the house. The hallways were narrower here, and the walls of a less brightly white stone. It might have been less grand, but the difference made Jerzy feel immediately more comfortable.
“These are the Vineart’s quarters,” the servant said. His accent was not as good as the House-keeper’s, but he spoke clearly enough. “You will stay here.”
Jerzy wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a command or merely informing him of where he would be sleeping, but all he wanted to do was find a bed that wasn’t moving and lie down on it. Everything else could wait.
“These are your rooms,” the servant said, as they came to the end of the smaller hallway. They paused in front of a dark brown wood door, then the servant reached out and, with a small flourish, opened it to display the space within.
The first thought Jerzy had was that the servant had made a mistake; surely this was not to be his room. But there, his battered trunk was in the corner next to a huge wooden cabinet, the doors open to show how meager his belongings would appear, once they were placed within.
The servant, his duties discharged, bowed himself out, closing the door behind him. For the first time in too many days, Jerzy was alone.
The silence disturbed his ears at first; after the constant sounds of the sea and sailors, and then the bustle of the palazzo, it was strange to be able to hear his own breathing. Soon enough, that silence became soothing, and he could relax. No fear of making a fool of himself here, alone.
The Vineart’s wing might be less grand than the main palazzo, but the room was twice as large as his chamber at home. The floor was tiled in an irregular pattern of cream squares, while the walls were cool and rough to the touch, washed a pale green color that reminded Jerzy of bonegrapes ripening on the vine. There was a bed, draped in a darker green coverlet, and the clothing cabinet, and a heavy, raised table of the same dark wood that Jerzy surmised could also be used as a desk. The rest of the room was empty space, and it made him feel dizzy all over again.
He sat on the bed, noting as he did so that despite the height of the bed, his feet still touched the floor, and that the floor itself, rather than a rug, had colored stones set into the middle of the room to create a design of a sort. He squinted but could not determine what the design was meant to be.
It had been morning when the ship docked, and the journey from the docks had not taken long, but somehow Jerzy felt as though he had been awake an entire day, and the thought of resting was an appealing one, especially since he did not know if he was supposed to stay here and wait or go in search of Giordan.
As tired as he was, there was something yet he needed to do, and now was the time to do it. Going to his trunk, he spat into his hand the way Malech taught him, to waken the quiet magic, the mage-blood, and held his palm over the iron lock.
“Unlock,” he told it quietly, and heard a small metallic click in response as the hasp swung open.
Inside, neatly folded, were his trou and shirts and jerkins, plus a few pieces that Jerzy did not recognize and, on closer inspection, turned out to be close-fitting pants similar in style, if not richness, to what Sar Anton had been wearing. Someone—Detta, Jerzy would guess—had been aware that styles were different. He held up the garment against his body and frowned. Maybe he would keep to what he was comfortable with, even if it did make him look like a hopeless foreigner.
Underneath the clothing, and placed above the boots and tools, was what he had been seeking. Lifting the cloth-wrapped bundle carefully out of the trunk, he laid it on the bed and unwrapped the fabric, revealing a precious mirror barely the size of his palm.
Malech had given it to him, with strict instructions on its use. If he were to discover anything, anything at all about a threat being directed against Vinearts, or heard of anything similar to what they had experienced—sightings of strange beasts or sudden unexplainable infestations of vineyards—he was to use that mirror to contact Malech rather than trusting to pigeons or human messengers.
Until then, Malech had told him, he was to keep the mirror hidden, safely away from prying eyes and possible breakage. “It cost me more than you did,” the Vineart told him seriously. “Although at this point you would be more difficult to replace.”
Jerzy was no longer certain in his ability to fulfill Master Malech’s directions. This place was so much larger and more confusing than he had expected, so much grander—it was not as though he could wander the halls of this palazzo, asking strangers if anything unusual had happened recently, anything they thought might be suspicious, or dangerous. . ..
Giordan might know something. But Malech had warned Jerzy not to share his concerns even with the other Vineart. How could he ask, without betraying what he sought?
Jerzy’s head hurt even more, thinking about it. For now, he would play the role he knew: student. He rewrapped the mirror and placed it back into the chest. He would have to find a proper place to hide it, soon, but it should be safest there for now.
He looked at the bed, but decided that if he slept now he would doubtless be up half the night. Instead, he took the opportunity to explore a little while he waited for someone to come fetch him. He went over to the single window in the room, a tall fixture that ran from floor to ceiling, and pushed aside the drape, only to discover that it swung open onto a small courtyard filled with more of the colorful flowers he had seen on the way in.
“Aha, there you are!” Giordan called happily from a chair and table set in the center of the courtyard, waving his arm in greeting. “They place you in very nice room, yes?”
“Yes,” Jerzy answered, stepping through the window-door. “A very nice room.”
“Good, good. It is a good thing.”
Jerzy sat down at the table with him, awkward in the presence of this man who was a Vineart, and yet seemed to be given so little respect. Had any man acted so toward Malech as Sar Anton had. . .Jerzy could not imagine what Malech might do, because it was not possible such a thing might happen.
“Not all welcome you here, you know.”
“No?” Sar Anton for one, Jerzy would guess.
“No. Others of our kind, they are, how do we say, vine bound. They do not want to ripen; they do not want to change. It would be better for you to fail than for them to see it can be different.”
“Oh.” Giordan meant other Vinearts, not people here. Malech had said the same thing, only it had been a distant worry then, overridden by other concerns. Giordan made those people seem more. . .unwelcoming, a threat rather than a worry.
“My maiar, he agrees to host you because I tell him it is good thing, will increase his status, not diminish it. He is much of status, he must stand to the council and be stronger than they, to control them. So we will do so, yes? We will make Giordan not a liar?”
Jerzy felt his throat tighten, and he suddenly wished that he was back on the boat, sickness and all. Why was Giordan looking at him like that? What did Giordan know? What did he want of Jerzy, in return? He was here to learn what he could, and to report back to Malech if he saw anything suspicious, and now this Vineart wanted him to be some kind of. . .commodity?
“Yes, of course,” he said to Giordan. What else could he do?
WHEN JERZY RETURNED to his room a few hours later, after being shown the workrooms within their wing where Giordan did his blending and incantations, something looked different. A moment of puzzlement, and his heart leaped into his mouth when he realized that someone had been in his room and moved the contents of his trunk into the wardrobe. He shoved his hands into the fabrics, panicked, only reassured when his fingers encountered the mirror, still carefully wrapped, on an upper shelf. If anyone had looked at it, they would have seen only an expensive item, too expensive for a servant even in this place to risk damaging. No one could know what its actual use was. He forced himself to breathe normally. Master Malech said that quiet-magic was a secret. No one save another Vineart could possibly even guess, and Giordan had been with him the entire time.
Reassured, he pushed the package back under the pile of clothing and crawled into the oversized bed. He was exhausted, every handspan of his body aching and stressed, but Jerzy was certain he would not be able to sleep at all, in this new place, with so much newness around him, so much uncertainty. He believed that even as his eyes closed and his body gave in to the day, and he slept.