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entire life working the land, his fingers and toes in the dirt, and he could feel it oozing out of the land, and in the faces of the people they passed, their eyes too wide, their mouths too tight. He had thought to return home to gather strength. Instead, that strength had been sapped away.
    “The crops are failing, the livestock not grazing the way they should,”Jerzy went on, voicing what he saw so clearly now. “The land is under a blight.”
    A sudden fear for his vines shook him to the bone, and the urge to gather up the reins and cluck the beast to a faster pace had to be fought down: it would do him no good, not now. He had been away this long, another day would change nothing.
    And yet, the feeling remained: unsettled and anticipating all at once, like hunger spiraled around his rib cage, the almost-forgotten wait for the overseer’s crop to land on unprotected flesh. How could he not have felt it, before? Was it . . . was it because of Master Malech’s death?
    Even as Jerzy considered it, he rejected the thought. Vinearts died; the land lived on. This was Ximen’s doing: the land itself sensed unrest.
    They rode in silence, each wrapped in their own thoughts, the only noise the calls of birds overhead and the comforting sound of hooves on the packed-dirt road, and Jerzy had almost managed to convince himself that the fear was merely his own uncertainty and exhaustion playing tricks on him, when Mahault’s voice carried forward from her post behind them.
    “We’re being watched.”
    “What?” Jerzy’s entire body tensed up again, and he felt Ao shift in the wagon behind him, bracing his body against the sudden jolt of the wagon as the horse, sensing the change, slowed down.
    “Don’t stop, don’t look around,” Kaïnam said. Then, backward over his shoulder, still quietly, to Mahault. “Yes, I know. One?”
    “One,” she confirmed. “Hanging back a bit. On horseback, but staying off the road. I think he’s one of our Washer friends. They can’t seem to let go of the red, even when they’re trying to be stealthy.”
    Jerzy chewed at his lower lip, instinctively pulling a hint of spittle from the flesh there into his mouth, feeling the bitter tang of quiet-magic waiting to be called. “Oren didn’t like my leaving without an answer.”
    Kaïnam did not look impressed. “He’s going to follow us all the wayback to the vintnery? Poor use of available men. Why merely shadow us, if they’re that worried? Why not force the issue?”
    “They don’t have the authority.” It was the only thing that made any sense, their meeting him at the docks, using surprise and his own exhaustion against him, hoping to catch him off guard, before he realized that they could not force him to do anything. Whoever wanted him did not have the entire Collegium’s support. But the thought raised another worry: if a smaller group within the Washers was looking to claim a Vineart of their own, if control of magic had become that contested . . . they would not rely merely on someone like Oren to woo him. What might a Washer with more authority do to those who rejected their offer?
    True, Washers had always stayed clear of the battles other men might engage in; that did not mean that the Collegium could not be deadly in its own right. Even though Jerzy had been cleared of charges they had levied, he did not trust that would keep him or his companions safe if the Collegium again deemed him a danger. Or a risk.
    “Lurker up front, too,” Ao called, hard on that thought. Sure enough, a man had come to the side of the road, still as a tree. Unlike their follower, he was in clear sight, and obviously waiting for them. He wore a leather smock over his clothing, and his hair was close-cropped and gray, his face clean-shaven and jowly with muscles beginning to age.
    “Blacksmith?” Kaïnam asked, squinting a little.
    “Farrier,” Jerzy said. “And he brought friends.” There was a group gathered farther off the road,