The Shattered Vine by Laura Anne Gilman

though it had come from a blade, but it was well-healed: a former solder for Lord Ranulf, perhaps, returned home after his term of service. Not one who would easily admit to illness, or failure. He did not open his eyes as Jerzy stood by him, as though even that was beyond his capability.
    The next three cots held women, grouped more closely together as though to give comfort to each other. Two were Jerzy’s own age; the third older. Their mother? Unlike the men, they were thin, as though they had lost the will to eat well before they took to their beds, or been ill far longer.
    He moved on, moving more swiftly as he noted the consistent patterns, exhaustion and pain with no visible signs of illness or injury, only the faint scent of healwines lingering about them. Eleven cots in all, evenly split between men and women, no children. Eleven, in a villagethat could not hold more than a few hundred. The numbers were too high, Master Malech would say. Too high for coincidence, in times such as these.
    Illness did not come out of nowhere; Master Malech taught him that.
    Jerzy could sense the illness lingering within the structure, the way a traveler on the road could feel fog even in darkest night, but he could not discern its source.
    “No animals died, or fell sick,” he said, already knowing the answer.
    “No, none. And there was no filth in the well’s water.”
    When the sea serpents attacked The Berengia last year, those who came into contact with the dead body were struck by an illness that made them dispirited, unable to shake off their sadness. This did not seem the same, and there had been no reports of anything untoward occurring in the days or even weeks beforehand, but Jerzy could not rule out a spell, not after all that he had seen; they knew now that their enemy worked with a very long spoon.
    To deal with the serpent-brought illness, he had brought Lord Ranulf a healwine for melancholia. Here . . . he had no access to his House’s cellars this moment, but something stirred within him, sorting through the legacies within his quiet-magic, waiting for something to rise in answer. Healvine, yes. But that alone . . . not enough. Not here; not with an illness tied to an external cause, not if magic were already involved.
    Jerzy tried to consider the bodies before him the way he would vines in a yard, assessing the vigor of new growth, the swelling fruit. Like the feel of the wine in his blood, the knowledge came to him.
    The illness was a form of magic, yes, but it was settled within the victim. Deep inside, to show no visible signs on the skin, no fever or bruising, no buboes or patching, no loss of hair or skin. In the blood, perhaps, but he would not bleed them to discover it, not when the slightest movement caused pain.
    He had to find another way to ease their suffering, while he tried to disconnect them from the spell’s influence itself.
    “Aetherwine,” he said finally. “Mahl, the wineskin with the pale blue binding, and an aethersigil on the side.” There were five sigils; water, earth, fire, healing, and aether, one for each legacy, for easy identification. Vinearts did not require them; all a Master had to do was pick up a skin or touch the side of a cask, and he would know whence the vine had grown, what sort of magic rested within. For others, though, the labeling was necessary.
    “Aetherwine will clear the air,” he said out loud, having fallen into the habit of speaking his thoughts out loud to his companions, even though they had no training, no skills to correct or guide him. He did not stop to think that there were others in the room as well. “If the spell lingers around us, it will be pushed aside, long enough for a healspell to work.”
    His fingers curved around the healspell at his waist. The vines that had produced this vintage were half a day’s journey from here. The soil they had grown in was similar enough to the dirt outside that he could practically feel it humming in the