2
Five years ago
You ask me, dear Marin, how I could get involved with so obvious a trouble-maker (with your usual tact, of course – I’m glad to see that my sister is still wasting money on your finishing school). I found him, if you must know, drunk as a lord outside a tavern, several empty bottles beside him in the dust. It was a sweltering day, and he had his face turned up to the sun, basking in it like a cat. Lying on the ground, a few inches from his long fingers, was the finest sword I had ever seen, thick with partially congealed blood. Well. You know how rare it is to see an Eboran, Marin, so I said to him, ‘Darling, what by Sarn’s blessed bones have you been up to?’ He grinned up at me and said, ‘Killing wild-touched monstrosities. Everyone here has bought me a drink for it. Will you buy me a drink?’
I ask you, how could you not love so obvious a trouble-maker? Sometimes I wonder that we are the same blood at all.
Extract from the private letters of Master Marin de Grazon, from Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
Vintage brought the crossbow up, relishing the familiar weight in her hands. She had, after some scuffling, secured a seat on a thick branch halfway up a tree and, some fifty feet away, she could see the pea-bug in the vine tree opposite, with no obstacles between it and her crossbow bolt. It was a big, slow-moving bastard; rather like an aphid, but the size of a tom-cat, with dark green blotches on its glistening skin – some Wild-touched abomination. It was hanging from the vine, translucent jaws busily tearing into the fat purple grape it had fixed between its forelegs. Her grape. One of the grapes she had spent, oh, only nearly thirty years cultivating and growing, refining and sorting, until her grapes and, more importantly, her wine, were considered the very best to come out of the vine forests.
And the little bastard was munching on it mindlessly. No appreciation at all.
Vintage took aim and squeezed the crossbow trigger, anticipating the shudder and jump in her arms. The bolt flew true and easy, and the pea-bug burst like an over-filled water skin, pattering the tree and the vine with watery guts. Vintage grimaced, even as she felt a small flicker of satisfaction; the crossbow, designed by her brother so many years ago, still worked.
Vintage secured the weapon to her belt, before shimmying down the trunk with little concern for her patched leather trousers. She picked her way through the foliage to where the pea-bug had met its messy end. Judging from the damage to the plant around it, the creature had spent much of the day munching through her grapes, and had had a decent gnaw on the vine itself for good measure. This was gilly-vine, a particularly robust plant with branches as thick as her thigh in places, and grapes that grew to a full hand span across, but even it couldn’t survive a sustained attack from pea-bugs.
‘Trouble,’ she murmured under her breath. ‘That’s what you are.’
There were no more pea-bugs that she could see, but even so, the sight of her decimated grapes had put a cold worm of worry in her gut. There shouldn’t be any pea-bugs here, not in the untainted part of the vine forest. This was a quiet place, as free from danger as anywhere could be in Sarn – she had spent many years making sure of it.
Pushing her wide-brimmed hat on a little firmer, Vintage turned away and began to head to the west, where she knew a particular lookout tree to be located. She told herself that she was worrying too much, that she was getting more paranoid the older she got, but then she’d never been very good at resisting her impulses.
The forest was hot and green, and humming with life. She felt it on her skin and tasted it on her tongue – vital and always growing. The tall, fat trunks of the vine trees rose all around her, most of them wider than two men lying head to toe, their twisting branches curled around each other like drunken lords holding each other up after an especially hard night on the brandy. And the vines twisted around them all, huge, swollen fruit wherever she looked – purple and pink and red, pale green and deep yellow, some hidden in the shade and some basking in the shards of hot sun that made it down here, glowing like lamps.
She had just spied the looming shape of the lookout tree ahead, with the band of bright red paint round its middle, when she heard something crashing through the undergrowth towards her. Instinctively, her hand dropped to the crossbow at her belt, but the shape that emerged from the bushes to her right had a small white face, and blond hair stuck to a sweaty forehead. Vintage sighed.
‘What are you doing out here, Bernhart?’
The boy boggled at her. He was, if she remembered correctly, around eleven years old and the youngest member of their staff. He wore soft brown and green linen, and there was a short bow slung over his back, but he’d forgotten to put his hat on.
‘Lady Vincenza, Master Ezion asked me to come and find you.’ He took a breath and wiped a hand across his sweaty forehead. ‘They have business up at the house that they need you for.’
Vintage snorted. ‘Business? Why would they need me for that? I told Ezi years ago that he could handle such things.’ She narrowed her eyes at the lad. ‘They don’t want me out here in the vine forest. Isn’t that right, my boy?’
His sweaty face turned faintly pink and when he spoke he stared fixedly at her right elbow. ‘They said it was really important, m’lady.’
‘Bernhart, on moon festival eve, who makes sure there are honey pastries on hand for all you little ruffians?’
Bernhart cleared his throat. ‘They said you’d been out here for days now and it wasn’t seemly for a lady of your years. M’lady.’
Vintage barked with laughter. ‘Bernhart, promise me that when you’re a grown man you’ll have the good sense never to refer to a woman of forty with the phrase “a lady of your years”. I promise it won’t end well, my dear.’ She sighed, looking at his pale face, already much too pink in the cheeks. ‘Come on. I’m going to have a peek from the lookout tree. Will you accompany me, young man? It seems my old bones might require your assistance.’
Bernhart grinned lopsidedly. ‘Can I have a go of your crossbow?’
‘Don’t push your luck.’
The lookout tree had a series of rough wooden planks fixed to its trunk, so climbing it was easier than her previous perch, although this one was much taller. When eventually they emerged onto the simple lookout bench, they could see far across the forest, the dark green of the canopy spreading out below them like a rucked blanket and the distant mountains a grey shadow on the horizon. And in the midst of all that growth, a vast tract of twisted strangeness. Vintage didn’t need to look at the boy to know he was looking at it too.
‘Is it growing?’ he said after a while.
‘We go down to the border of it twice a year,’ she said quietly. ‘All together, our strongest and our brightest and our bravest, and we burn back the growth and we sow the soil with salt. Marin, gods love him, even brings his priest friends with him and they say blessings over the ground.’ She sighed. ‘But still it advances, every year.’
‘It’s dead though,’ said Bernhart. ‘It’s a dead thing, nothing inside it could be alive now.’ He paused, and Vintage wondered if this was what his mother had told him, perhaps after he’d had a particularly bad nightmare. The House wasn’t close to the Wild section of the forest, but it was apparently close enough for bad dreams. ‘It’s just the broken shell of a Behemoth. Why does it make the forest –’ He stopped, struggling for the right word. ‘Why does it make the forest bad?’
‘It attracts parasite spirits,’ said Vintage. She slipped the seeing-glass from her belt and held it to her eye. The ruined section of forest suddenly loomed closer, and she frowned as she looked over the blackened branches and the shifting mists. ‘It’s long dead, Bernhart. Just the empty husk of a Jure’lia ship and that in pieces, but it’s like a corpse attracting flies. The parasite spirits are drawn to it. If we knew why, or how, or what they really are . . .’ She lowered the seeing-glass and bit her lip. ‘I have always wanted to find out more about them, and what their connection is to the worm people. So little has been written about the Jure’lia, and gods know the Eborans have always been tight-lipped about their periodic scraps with them. All we have left are the remains of their Behemoths, and a lot of very unpleasant stories. If only Eborans were a little more . . . gregarious. But of course these days they have no time for humans at all.’ She pursed her lips as a face from the past rose up unbidden in her mind – eyes like dried blood, a sardonic smile, and the memory of her hands. Her touch had always been so warm. With difficulty she dragged her mind away from the pleasant memory.
‘You must have every book written about it, m’lady. About the Wild, and the worm people, and the parasite spirits,’ said Bernhart. ‘In your library, I mean.’
Vintage smiled and briefly cupped her hand to the boy’s face. Her fingers were a deep brown against his white cheek.
‘There are bigger libraries than mine, Bernhart. And I suspect that what I want to know won’t be found in one. In fact—’
They felt it as much as heard it; a low rumble that vibrated uncomfortably in their chests. Vintage looked back at the Wild part of the forest, half unwillingly. In the darkest part the canopy was trembling, blackened leaves rustling. It shouldn’t have been possible for her to hear it from this distance, but she heard it all the same: a dry empty sound like the hissing of water across arid ground. A translucent shape, a deep dirty-yellow colour, briefly pushed its way up between the upper branches of the trees. It had multiple fronds that carried strange white lights at the ends, and darker stippled marks across its back. The parasite spirit twisted in the air for a moment, its fronds reaching out blindly to the bright sky above, and then it sank back out of sight. Its odd rumbling cry sank with it.
‘Gods be damned, that hardly seems like a good omen.’ Vintage looked at the boy, and saw that he was standing very still, his eyes wide. The blush of colour on his cheeks had vanished. Gently, she patted his shoulder, and he jumped as though he’d been dreaming. ‘You know, I have a good mind to tan Ezion’s hide for sending you out here by yourself. Come on, Bernhart, let us get you home. I’ll have Cook make you some honey pastries.’
They were gathered in the dining room, the best silver and porcelain laid out on the vine-wood table, as if they were waiting for the Emperor himself to drop by for a currant bun. Vintage’s family were wearing their best silks and satins, despite the heat. Vintage took a particular pleasure in watching their faces as she trooped up to the table, letting her solid boots sound noisily against the polished floor. She snatched off her hat and threw it on the table, her eyes already scanning the dishes the staff had laid out for supper. Just behind her, Bernhart loitered in the doorway, technically dismissed but reluctant to leave what might prove to be the scene of an argument.
‘Is there any of the good cheese left?’ she asked, dragging a plate towards her with dusty fingers. ‘The one with the berries in?’
‘Sister.’ Ezion stood up slowly. He wore a deep blue silk jacket and a starched shirt collar, and his dark eyes were bright with impatience. ‘I am glad to see you’ve returned to us. Perhaps you’d like to change for dinner?’
Vintage glanced around the table. Carla, Ezion’s wife, met her eyes and gave her a look of barely restrained glee, and Vintage tipped her a wink. The woman was heavily pregnant again, her rounded belly straining at her exquisitely tailored dress, while Vintage’s various nieces and nephews made a clatter of their cutlery and plates.
‘I do believe I am fine as I am, Ezi.’ She reached over and made a point of picking up one of the tiny pastries with her fingers, sticking out her little finger as she did so as though she held a fine porcelain cup. ‘What were you thinking, exactly, by sending Bernhart out into the vines by himself?’
Ezion was frowning openly now. ‘He is a servant, Vincenza. I was thinking that it is his job to do such things.’
Vintage frowned back at him, and, turning back to the door, held the tiny pastry out to the waiting boy. ‘Here, Bernhart, take this and get on with your day. I’m sure you’ve arrows you could be fletching.’
Bernhart gave her a conflicted look, as though the brewing argument might interest him more than the cake, but in the end cream won out. He took the pastry from her fingers and left, decorously closing the door behind him.
‘The boy will maintain the vines for us one day, it is his job to be out there, Vincenza, as well you know. If we don’t—’
‘The Wild is spreading.’ She cut him off. ‘And we saw a parasite spirit today, rising up above the canopy. It was very large indeed.’
For a few moments Ezion said nothing. His children were all watching them now, with wide eyes. They had grown up with tales of the tainted forest, although it wasn’t something often discussed over dinner.
‘It is contained,’ he said eventually, his voice carefully even. ‘It is watched. There is nothing to be concerned about. This is why you should stay at the House and not go gallivanting around the forest. You have got yourself all agitated.’
Vintage felt a wild stab of anger at that, but Carla was speaking.
‘How can it be spreading, Vin? Do we need to check on the borders more often?’
Vintage pursed her lips. ‘I don’t know. This is the problem. We simply do not know enough about it.’ She took a breath, preparing to rouse an old argument. ‘I will go in the spring. I’ve waited too long already, but it’s not too late. Ezion, dear, we need to do some research, need to get out into the world and find out what we can. There are Behemoth sites I could be learning from, out there beyond our own forests. We need to know more about the Wild, and the parasite spirits. Enough reading, enough peering at old books. I need to go.’
Ezion snorted with laughter. It didn’t suit him. ‘Not this again. It is ridiculous. You are a forty-year-old woman, Vincenza, the head of this family, and I will not have you traipsing off across Sarn to gods only know where.’
‘A forty-year-old woman who has spent her entire life running this place, growing these vines, and making this wine.’ She gestured viciously at the glass goblets, all full of a pale golden wine – it was made from the grape called Farrah’s Folly. She could tell from the colour. ‘And I have had enough. All of this,’ she lifted her arms wide, ‘is your responsibility now, Ezion. And I am not.’
She plucked her hat up off the table, and, for the look of the thing, stuck it back on her head before stalking out of the room, slamming the door so hard that she heard the cutlery rattle.
Outside in the corridor, she leaned briefly against the wall, surprised at how wildly her heart was beating. It was the anger, she told herself. After a moment, Bernhart’s head appeared from around the corner.
‘Are you all right, m’lady?’
She paused. A slow tingling feeling was working its way up from her toes; some sense of a huge change coming, like the heaviness in the air when a storm was building. There would be no stopping her now.
‘I am absolutely fine, Bernhart darling.’ She grinned at him and was pleased to see the boy smiling back. ‘Fetch my travel bags from storage, boy. I’m bloody well going now.’