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able to summon, even as panicked as he was, in a way he had never before encountered. He had …
    “I lifted into the air,” Jerzy told the sky, blinking at the sunlight. “And I didn’t mean to. I didn’t prepare, or try to decant a spell … I just did it.” That shouldn’t have been possible: magic required conscious thought, the drawing of moisture from within to mimic spellwine, the uttering of a decantation to force the magic into action.
    Still. He had done it, and therefore in his panic he must have blanked out, the salt water masking the spittle in his mouth, the words uttered and forgotten in his fear. It was the only answer that made sense … and it terrified him even more than the idea of a sea monster below him.Not the fact that he had forgotten, but that he had been able to do it at all. Where had it come from?
    Once his breathing calmed down a bit, Jerzy was able to look over his actions with the dispassionate evaluation a Vineart needed. With any taste washed away by seawater, he could only evaluate the spell by its results. A windspell. It had to have been a windspell, to lift him that way.
    His body shuddered involuntarily as the realization hit him. A windspell should not have been part of his quiet-magic. The House of Malech did not grow weathervines; he had none of that legacy within him. Vineart Giordan grew those vines, but the time Jerzy spent in Aleppan could not have been enough, should not have been enough….
    The shudder turned to a cold dread in his stomach. There was more quiet-magic within him than he recognized—a legacy he had not felt within his veins. Now, though, it had woken; he could taste it in his throat, feel the thrum of it in his blood. That pocket of magic, if he had taken that much from working with those vines, that wine … then the Washers were right, and he had broken Sin Washer’s Command, all unknowing.
    He was, in truth, apostate.
    K AÏNAM, ONCE N AMED -H EIR of the island Principality of Atakus, now a homeless, nameless sailor with only his honor to recommend him, stared at the maps spread out in front of him and felt a burning in his stomach that had nothing to do with the meal he had just finished. According to his charting, he should be nearing the coast of Tursin. The thought left him dizzy. A normal voyage would have taken three times as long, but a normal voyager would not have had access to the magics he could command.
    It was those magics that left him feeling queasy, discomforted, and not sure if it were he rocking back and forth, or his ship. He, who had been born on a swiftship, who had spent his entire life as much in the water as on land … there could be no other cause of this illness. Kaïnam smoothed out a tiny wrinkle in the topmost map and brought thespell-lit lamp closer in, refusing to give in to the toss of his stomach, no matter how it complained.
    Kaïnam plotted his position on the chart and frowned, then replotted it, getting the same result. He drew in a deep breath and then let it out. Incredible, and yet it was exactly as he had hoped.
    It should have taken him months to cross this distance with a larger ship and a full crew of men. Alone, it would have been impossible.
    Knowing that had driven him to desperate measures. The night before his departure he had taken aside Master Edon’s student, asking him what spellwines of Master Edon’s were best suited to speeding a vessel along. The student had unthinkingly, unhesitatingly pointed them out. Why should he not? Kaïnam was the son of Erebuh, the Principal of Atakus, and as such had every right to ask about the magics that kept his island home safe and wealthy.
    Later that night, Kaïnam entered the cellar where those spellwines were stored and took what he thought he might need, then another two flagons more. In their place he left his marker, a silver coin with the icon of his rank engraved upon it. When they came to question him … he would already be gone.
    It was not the