The Shattered Vine by Laura Anne Gilman Read Free Book Online

attention to them rather than Kaï’s sword or the implied threat of Mahault, coming up alongside the wagon.
    These were no brigands. Someone was ill, or injured. Badly enough to warrant a healer, and a welcoming party to ensure the healer made it there safely.
    A flutter of panic hit him, like one of Mahault’s practice blows. Master Malech had been the true healer; it had been he who kept the plague from overrunning this area years before Jerzy was born, he who could coax every drop of magic from healwines to save those otherwise at death’s door. Jerzy did not have that same skill . . . but they would expect him to be, to do what his master had done.
    Jerzy had killed more than he had saved. The memory of the plagueship still festered in his memory, never mind that they had been dead men before he ever saw it, that he had halted their suffering. He had taken their last hope away. He had snuffed the life of a slave injured in a wagon accident, had set fires to burn, risking the lives of innocent sailors, and . . .
    The face of a villager child in Irfan returned to him, the crusted edge of an eye clearing under his fingertips, others crowding around him, curious and trusting. He had made a difference there, in a foreign land, outside the Lands Vin.
    This man, with his diffident posture and cautious voice, was Berengian. His responsibility. His legacy.
    Master Vineart Malech was dead. He was Vineart of House Malech now.
    He was no more free than he had been as a slave. “If I may be of aid?”
    J ERZY’S OFFER of help quickly ran into one difficulty. To reach the village, they would need to cross fields where the cart could not go.
    “We should not split up,” Mahault said, the four gathered off to the side of the cart while the villagers waited, impatiently, for them to come to a decision.
    “I’m the only one who needs to go—”
    “No.” Kaïnam and Mahault both overrode Jerzy’s offer, in unison.
    “I don’t need guards—”
    “Yes, you do.” Kaï’s voice was flat, hard, and refused argument. “You think this is not a trap, but we can’t be sure. You go nowhere unguarded until we have you back in your yard.”
    “I’ll stay,” Ao said. “Not as though I could travel with you, anyway.”
    “You can’t . . .” Kaïnam hesitated, unsure how to state his objection without giving insult or sharing information these strangers should not know.
    “Can’t what? Can’t defend the supplies? Can’t keep someone from driving off with our cart?” Ao lifted his eyes to the skies, as thoughasking for patience. “Fine. Leave one of these stalwart folk with me, to be the legs if anything should happen.”
    “I will stay.” A square-shouldered farmer, with a patient expression and a steady way of standing, volunteered. “Between the two of us, we’ll have brawn and wit.”
    “Half a wit, perhaps,” one of his companions said, and the tension broke slightly.
    “Will that satisfy, O warrior?” Ao asked, and Kaïnam, with a sideways look at Jerzy, lifted his hands in surrender.
    Without further delay, the others took up their packs and set out across the field, the child running ahead to alert them someone was coming, while Jerzy questioned their leader on the nature of the illness.
    There was not one person in the village who was ill, but a dozen or so, in varying stages of misery. The farrier, Justus, also doubled as their healer, having learned how to set bones in his younger years, but he knew when he was helpless. When the illness appeared, he had sent a message to the herbalist who covered this area, asking him to come with haste.
    “That was four days back,” Justus said as they moved diagonally away from the road, following a narrow trail through the crops.
    The remainder of the party—three men carrying glaives that had clearly and clumsily been made from plow blades—followed before and behind, their attention not only on the field around and underneath them, but the skies overhead.