From Whence You Came (11 page)

He took advantage of her absence to find his clothes, draped over the shelf next to the wineskins. They were stiff from the seawater, but he did not want to face Harini wearing only his smalls, or a blanket. There was no dignity in that.

It was neither Harini nor the solitaire who entered the cabin, but an older man, his face creased with years and weathering, his clothing fine, but durable rather than fancy.

“Svapan, First of the
Youngest Swimmer
.”

“My crewmates?” They had not been his, but he knew no other way to ask after them.

“We rescued a fair number,” Svapan said. “But not all. Not enough.” There was a pause. “Your Captain stayed.”

Bradhai had not known the man well, but what he had seen, he had liked. Vinearts did not form attachments, but the loss ached, nonetheless.

“And Hernán? The Shipsmaster?”

Svapan shook his head. “We recovered only crew, and you. No other passengers, none who identified themselves as such.”

Hernán would not have been silent about his presence. And the First of this ship would have known the importance of having an Iajan Shipsmaster as guest.

Hernán was gone. Dead. Drowned or eaten by the serpents he so feared, Bradhai could never know, but gone nonetheless.

He was free to go. There was no-one on this ship, neither among the refugees nor the crew, who knew the obligation – the threat – he had been under. And by the time he returned to his Vintnery… by the time the Guilds knew what had happened, and determined if they would come after him again, well, he would be wiser than to let them in, much less go anywhere.

His spells had not failed; the danger was deeper than anything he could face, and they would have to deal with it themselves.

“A great loss,” he said to the First, his face composed to show regret. That seemed to satisfy the man.

“Captain's plan is to bring you folk to the nearest Lands Vin port, drop you there. You'll be fine with that?”

“Indeed. Thank your Captain for me, and for your care while I was injured.”

The First nodded curtly, then left him to finish dressing. Thoughtfully, Bradhai washed his face and hands in the basin provided, thankful for the feel of clean water on his skin, and wrapped his belt twice around his hips in proper Vineart fashion. His knife and silver tasting spoon had disappeared somewhere between ships, and Bradhai felt a pang at that: the spoon had been his master's, handed over when the old many lay dying. The old man had been cold and harsh, but the feel of the smooth silver as it left one pair of hands for another had been all the praise – and acknowledgement – Bradhai could have wanted.

And now it was gone, sunk somewhere impossibly deep in the ocean.

Closing his eyes against the pain, Bradhai passed his hand over the wineskins and flasks; he had lost none of the ones he remembered grabbing. That was worth more than a spoon, no matter how many memories were attached to it.

The smallest skin of aetherwine, marked with the sigil of his making, and the sealed flask of firewine he had rescued he hooked to his belt, securing them carefully. After some thought, he took up the vial of spellwine he had incanted just before the attack and studied it. At home in his own study, he would have used precious glass, the better to observe the color and clarity. Shipboard, he had been reduced to fired clay – which had weathered the sea far better, without a crack or seepage to be seen.

He tucked that into the small pocket of his vest, secure and out of sight, and then left the cabin.

Despite the Captain's plans, they did not seem to be any closer to land: from the feel of the boat, Bradhai guessed that they were still anchored, holding steady where they had been, surrounded by flat ocean below, and a flat blue sky above. 

The ship – the
youngest swimmer
– the First had called it, was larger than the
ladysong
, but sleeker and now far more crowded, despite its size. Bradhai saw several crewsmen he recognized, but Po was nowhere to be seen.

The boy might have been high in the riggings of this new ship… or he, too, might not have survived. Bradhai thought of Yakop safe back home, and felt an odd surge of something bitter and sore in his heart.

Walking on, refusing to look up to check the ropes and lines, Bradhai encountered the solitaire again. She had changed out of her sodden garb and was dressed now in leather leggings and a bare-armed tunic, with low boots on her feet, and a thick leather band around her neck. The blade was at her waist, but there were two sheaths strapped to her calves as well, one the length of his hand, the other longer.

Before, she had been a bodyguard. Now, she was a warrior.

 They greeted each other with solemn nods, and he took up position alongside her, away from the railing but still looking out to sea. Harini, was downrail from them, her attention focused on where the serpents slid through the waters still. She looked very young, just then, and Bradhai felt very old.

“You saved my life,” he said to the solitaire.

“Your desire to live saved your life,” she said, but seemed otherwise disinclined to disagree.

“I have been rude enough to never ask your name.”

She looked startled by that, a little. “You and I, Vineart, we are known by what we do, more than who we are. But my name is Kseniya.”

He stumbled over the pronunciation, a little, repeating it. “You are not Iajan.”

“No more than you.” 

That was true enough: the slavers had sold him to his master, but he had not been born to those lands. His memories were vague of the time before the sleephouse and slavery, and only his name now remained of the boy he had been.

Kseniya was right; but he was glad he had asked her name.

“Has she slept since all this happened?” he asked, indicating Harini.

“I do not think she will, so long as the beasts remain,” she said, clearly resigned to the fact. “Her nurse coaxed her into eating something, and draping a blanket over her at night, but…. Who am I to tell her to stop? She is in no danger here.”

“You do not think the beasts will attack us?”

“No.” She gave him a curious look. “And neither do you.”

“No.” 

He didn't want to say any more: it was too fantastical, too impossible. And yet he was no less an observer than Harini, trained from childhood to feel the flow and motion of magic. He could no more deny what he had felt before the creatures attacked than he could the devastation of insects, hail, or rot. 

He was not comfortable speaking of magic to outsiders, but the nature of her own life meant that she was as restricted as he, with no way, he thought, to use his words against him – no way, and unlike Harini, a daughter of power, no need. 

And also unlike Harini, she seemed disinclined to argue with him.

“Harini says that they are changing?”

“We've used too much magic on them,” he said. “We saw it years before with birds: for a time a spellbound marker kept birds away, but the more we used, the less the birds were affected – and the smaller animals, even less time was needed. The faster they bred, the more accustomed they became.

“It took time, and more time, but the magic….the spells used to push them away from ships, the countless spellwines used on a ship while on the ocean….”

He was barely aware of the solitaire any more, thinking through the pieces, feeling his way as he might feel the texture and taste of the
mustus
, the first crush of the fruit, when it told him what sort of Harvest he had. “Spells do not travel well over water, we know this. But we never thought how they might travel
though
water.” He tried to imagine such a thing. Even having felt it, knowing how his incantation went awry, it was difficult. 

The boy, Po, had been right, even as he was wrong. Salt water had changed everything.

“You're saying magic has influenced their breeding?” Harini had joined them, drawn by their voices, and now broke in with a voice filled not with shock but comprehension. “The way a dog is bred to be a herder, or sheep for better wool….”

“Magic bred serpents who are drawn to magic,” he said. “It's only a theory, not –”

“No. It makes sense. I don't know how, but it makes sense, and if it makes sense then it must be so.”

“There are many things that are so in this world that make no sense,” Kseniya said dryly.

“That is why they ignored my ship, why I could not bring them close enough to study. Because we use so little magic. There's too much use of it, and we don't think about what it's doing…”

Bradhai ignored her attack on magic and licked his lips, unable to summon even the faintest reassurance of saliva to a suddenly dry mouth. “It explains why they attacked us, when I tried the most recent incantation. They could not help themselves; it was too powerful.”

“Is it also the reason they are larger? And so different-looking?”

“Maybe. I don't know.” There were differences among the vines, the aeathervine fruit larger and lighter than growvine, and the others different still. The
mustus
they created, when crushed, smelled differently, the
vine
, even the
vin ordinaire
, tasted differently. Might magics, driven into flesh, also create differences?

The thought stirred memory with him, uneasy. If magic changed flesh… what then did that make him? All the slaves who lived and slept, breathed and drank of the vines, Vinearts who spent their lives working the juice, taking the magic within them, forming and structuring it, using the ability to draw on the magic within themselves….

What were they?

“It will only get worse, won't it?” Kseniya, her voice quiet, but her body tense, as though waiting for a fight she knew she could not win.

“I don't know.” He didn't want to know. He wanted to go back to his vines, to do the things Sin Washer had created him and set him to do. This was none of his concern…

But it was magic. And magic, by Sin Washer's command, was his sole purpose and concern. “Did you see this, Zatim?” he asked the long-dead god. “Did you plan this? Or is it simply a spill you never thought to clear?”

“Vineart?” 

They looked to him for an answer, as though he knew what to do.

“Rot it to the root,” he said, bitterly. He wanted none of this, not the knowledge, nor the women staring at him, one curious, one worried, and the safety of the oceans resting solely on him – for who could he tell? The idea that magic –undirected, unintended – could wreak such changes…

“No one can know,” he said. “I will find a way to fix this, but we can never speak of it.”

“But…”

“He's right, Harini. You choose not to use magic, but the world needs it, needs to
t
rust it. If they knew…”

“But…” The girl looked at them both, her eyes a little wild, as though they'd just told her to cut off a hand. Then her body deflated, the fight leaving her. “I'll know,” she said. “I'll know, and I'll write it down, and even if I can't tell anyone. The record will be there.”

That seemed important to her, so Bradhai nodded. Writing it down in her notes seemed harmless enough.

“What are you going to do?” Kseniya still watched him, still waited.

“Undo what was done,” he said. 

Thankfully, she didn't ask how.

o0o

He had no access to the casks and sacks he had brought aboard the
ladysong
, now lost to the deep sea, along with the rest of his tools. But he had saved enough – he hoped.

And what he did not have, he would improvise.

The ship had a small amount of coldfire spellwine; even Harini's objections were not enough to induce sailors to use open flame on the open sea. He claimed that, and the growspell the Captain took from one of his crew, who had hoped to grow himself into something the ladies might like better. The spellwine was not his work – some lesser Vineart, Bradhai could tell by the feel, without even tasting it – but it would do. Firewine and growwine and his aetherwine: He would have liked a dose of healspell, just in case, but he might as well wish for Sin Washer to come down and lend a hand, as the captain refused to hand over what little the
young swimmer
carried. 

Bradhai supposed he couldn't blame the man.

He gathered all his supplies together in the cabin they had given him – he alone seemed to rate his own space, while the other refugees were clustered together – and stared at it, willing the
vin magica
to tell him what to do.

Before, he had worked with what he knew. An incantation was a delicate, careful thing, precise and formal, to bind the wilder magics to obedience, but there were forms to follow, structures to use. This…

He was not directing the magic to do something for him, this time. He would be asking it to
change
something.

Nothing he knew told him how to do this. Nothing he had ever learned, led to this. You could not draw back the day, you could not unwind time. Growspells pushed forward, healspells could mend, but could not undo damage already done.

Bradhai stared at the wines, then turned to stare across the length of the ship, simply observing the scene the way he might his vineyard, waiting for an answer. Men worked as though it were an ordinary day, as though they were not all on edge, waiting for the first twitch, the first break in the water's surface. Men hauled rope and toted bales, polished gear and mended nets, making sure that there were no rips where the larger, valuable fish might escape.

Nets. Bradhai's gaze narrowed, and he looked at the sailors as though he had never seen such a thing.

“A net to bring what you want….and let the things you don't want slip through.”

o0o

 Two days later, the crew was on edge, too long in one place, anchor down despite the wind rising with the sun, urging them elsewhere. Bradhai waited, alone, at the forecas'l. He had ordered all but the helmsman away, sending the other crew down-below, and the Captain had enforced the order. Only he, the Captain, and a handful of men armed with bows and squid-poison quarrels, remained. None of them knew what might happen, but all expected the worst.