Flesh and Fire Read Free Page A

slaves, loyal slaves, were even more difficult to replace.
    He got up and walked with steady grace to the monster’s corpse. The sweetwater was gone, burned off his hands, and he could feel the depletion of the magic within his marrow. Sweetwater was dangerous to the user as well as the target. But this was still his vineyard, his lands, and so long as his feet walked the soil, there was strength here for him to take. Enough to ensure this thing was dead, and the immediate threat, gone.
    The corpse was still and cooling. Dead. Even as he bent to check, the wrinkled gray form began to shimmer and shake. Before he could even jump back, sure it was some sort of trick, it imploded, leaving behind only a choking gray cloud of foul-tasting dust.
    He had not caused that. Magic-born, and magic-sent, and magic-destroyed. Whoever had sent this monster against him wanted no trace left to be discovered. Who could do such a thing? Touching the grub, feeling its life-spark pulsing against his skin, enhanced by the sweetwater, had filled him with such dread, such disgust. . .magic should not cause him to shudder like that. Something lay beneath it, something dank and sour on the tongue.
    He could ask no one. A Vineart would have no cause to attack him; they could not benefit from his vines, nor take over his lands. That was not their way; deviation from Sin Washer’s Command to abjure power was unthinkable, unforgivable. And yet, it was a magical attack, so clearly another Vineart was involved. But who? Who could have created such an abomination of a spell? More to the point, who had bought it, used it against him?
    Shaken, Sionio stood, and with a twitch of his hand summoned the slaves to him. Four came, four of the six who had worked this cluster originally. If the two who fled were not dead already, he would remedy that by nightfall. He rewarded betrayal as well as loyalty.
    “Speak to no one of this,” he warned the remaining four. “Speak of it, and die.” No matter that he had defeated the beast, that his magic had been the greater force. The fact was that someone had attacked him— had sent this thing into his vineyard. Any whisper, any gossip that his grapes were tainted by the attack, and his reputation could be ruined forever.
    The slaves dropped to the ground and, foreheads on the soil, swore their obedience. When he released them, they got to their feet and went back to work, joining the others farther away. They all nervously avoided the blasted cluster as though still expecting something else to emerge without warning.
    Sionio walked to the end of the square and looked out over his lands. The ground around where the grub had fallen was seared, the vines dead where they had grown. But there was no further sense of wrongness: there had been only the one massive grub, burrowing in from below.
    “Is it me?” he asked the now-still air. “Is someone spelling for me specifically? Or are others under attack as well?” If so, he had no way of knowing; the demands of the vines made Vinearts into solitary creatures, not prone to mingling with their peers, and their training made it difficult to trust others. There was not a soul he could turn to, not a soul he could ask for advice, now that his master was gone. That was the way things were.
    Sionio stared out across the tops of the vines, a wave of green sloping down to a high stone wall. Odds were that this was a onetime event, a freak spell gone awry and out of control, the caster silent out of embarrassment or fear. Still, he needed to be certain.
    A second wineskin was hooked to his belt, barely large enough to hold one swallow. It never left his person, too valuable to ever let out of his sight. Unlike most spellwines, this one did not fade as it aged, but grew stronger, and all he needed was that one sip.
    Still, he hesitated. This was a spellwine of his own making, and difficult to craft. There would be no replacing it, not for years. But if he did not use it now, there