“How is that not slavery?”
“It doesn’t say anything about what you do, just who you are. Same as I can’t be someone who wanders about, killing people and taking their stuff.”
Blossom snorts. The Line runs exercises that are never called “suppressing graul bandits”; that would be tactless, since graul have never taken up banditry. Actual graul, usually graul who are Line veterans and suffer from a desire to exercise their sense of humour, are reliable about showing up to pretend to be bandits all the same. New junior officers are reliable about having several bad days.
“Being someone who does the job they’re given isn’t enough?” If you made me guess, that’s the foundation of the sadness.
“I might be that. You have the ghosts of your dead gunners pleased to accept the live ones pouring out beer for them so their shades will remember they were living long enough to train their replacements.”
Blossom looks away.
That happened when we camped on the gravel bar. Blossom teared up then, and maybe now.
“They’re not serving the Line; they’re serving you. It’d be a worry if you had the talent of a wheel of cheese.”
An actual smile.
“Point.”
“Once I turn over the standard in Westcreek Town, I’ll be carrying around the same transfer token I used to get here, so I don’t drop dead of having no assigned standard.” The token is in the Captain’s House, which is, after all, where it belongs.
“You know it works.” Blossom gestures. “I can read that, and know what I know that Laurel didn’t. I can even write it down, so maybe the Second” — there’s a small catch in Blossom’s even voice — “Commonweal’s standards will be more efficient, if I can get everybody to agree it wouldn’t damage the rest of the working.”
I turn, and start heading out of the records room. Blossom follows along. “Everybody survived the first Shape of Peace” — only one of them is known to be alive now, but the Shape of Peace isn’t what killed the rest of them — “and if Halt isn’t worried about the name transfer, you hardly need to be.” The number of things bound with Blossom’s name probably isn’t small, but Blossom just hasn’t had time to catch up with Halt.
It will be exciting if Halt’s name actually changes, switching Shapes of Peace, and many mighty things need to be bound anew. They’re supposed to go into the Shape of Peace, the knowledge of all the bindings, when an Independent dies, and the load sort of gets diffused across those Independents yet living. Can’t expect that to work, switching Shapes of Peace.
Every Commonweal citizen’s true name gets stuffed back of the Shape of Peace. You can ask if someone is really who they say they are without knowing their true name, and the Shape will answer. Try to fake who you are and it will kill you. Try to take any Commonweal citizen over through their true name, try to use their name to take or crush the power of a Commonweal sorcerer, any sorcerer, some guy who can do four charms reliably as much as one of the Twelve, and you have to overcome the Shape entirely to get the one name. Also the one time you want the Line to find you before the Independents do.
A second Commonweal means a different Shape of Peace, and, since there’s no time, presumably something like the original working, that bound names based on geography, rather than the present mechanism of descent.
“Do you think the current Shape of Peace won’t let go?”
Blossom makes the hand-rocking gesture of doubt. “Theory says it’s fine.”
“How much of the red shot you expended was theory before we marched up north?”
I get the metal-bending grin. “The short black-black-reds are close to regulation.”
Blossom goes out of the standard ahead of me; it would let the Part-Captain stay, if I left first, but that wouldn’t be polite.
I don’t have to give it up quite yet, but I pat the wood and iron frame of the thing that isn’t a door anyway.
I’m going to miss it.
Chapter 38
Dove and two files stay in Headwaters. There are more spine-stuck than the hospital can readily handle, and harvest is ramping up. Not a slow time for any hospital. Dove had just looked at Radish, when Radish had tried to suggest taking that detail, and Radish had nodded, and shut up.
The dead think they’ve had a rest. The hale living have had, and we march out of Headwaters in good time and good order. Breaking step for the bridges goes by without notice. I’ve got a veteran half-company of regulars now, along with orders to get the designation caught up.
Also an unburdened Eustace following Blossom, and therefore also Blossom’s horse-thing. Eustace isn’t doing much of the fire-breathing; there’s a faint glow over fleshy nostrils, but no jets. Eustace is acting like one false move will bring on wishing to be cutlets.
Blossom’s will, or attention, I can’t tell, has been unable to entirely tamp back into Blossom’s junior officer face. Doesn’t feel Shape-of-Peace related. Even the veteran artillerists were visibly careful of Blossom’s mood, loading up a barge in the pre-dawn near-dark. Artillery to cover the northern border is obvious critical supply, didn’t look like social embarrassment that they were getting water transport.
We’re a kilometre south of the causeway end, rolling along, Eustace and Blossom’s horse-thing on the grassy verge, the dead stirring no dust from the road behind me, when the lookout notes the presence of a riderless horse-thing on the east, left, wet, side of the roadway. There’s maybe thirty metres of mixed trees and swamp and the kind of grass that doesn’t mean this is a safe place to put your feet before the channel of the Wet Westcreek on the east side of the road, all the way along the first ten kilometres. The horse-thing is right at the point the road starts to curve because the Wet Westcreek does, too.
The horse-thing, visually identical to the one Blossom is riding until you get to the tack, is just off the verge, not in the damp stuff. It’s alert, it’s looking at something under the trees, and it’s flicking an ear. No sign of wanting to move.
The half kilometre up to where the horse-thing is goes quick, and I call a halt.
“Part-Captain?”
I remember the horse-thing Blossom rides kicking Reems guys into spray. Sending someone to grab the reins isn’t the first thing to try.
Blossom dismounts. Blossom’s horse-thing and this one whistle at each other, sounding like what you’d get if penny-whistles were a social species.
Blossom takes some slow steps from the side, clucking, and puts a hand on the other horse-thing’s neck. There’s an ear flick, but no other movement. One more step forward, even with the horse-thing’s head, and it shies; Blossom’s going metal-fire.
Someone with a large cat half on their head rises from behind the waist-high grass. The reflex reaction to Blossom going angry-sorcerer is for the focus to close up; nobody orders it, it just starts to happen, and then it stutters.
The cat looks up with hisses and tail-lashing, and the woman smiles.
If there’s a way to punch humans in the gut so they sigh, instead of folding up, that’s what happens. The dead do it.
“Spike!” says the woman, out of the astonishing smile. From what I’m getting back through the focus, human people will die for a chance to see that smile again.
Blossom takes six steps through the grass and hugs whoever this is.
Whoever it is reacts to Blossom’s advance by shifting the cat into a lower, away-from Blossom grip, and leans into Blossom’s approach. Whether the cat’s resulting ear-gnawing is affectionate or not, the woman takes no notice of it. Brief razor-fine lines, magenta and orange and a blazing teal, show everywhere teeth touch flesh. The tail-lashing is impressive; there are a couple of resolute bong noises from Blossom’s tassets.
Three dead guys, a couple of file closers back in two, and Radish, for half a step, start forward. Radish stops them all. Sir! That’s an ocelotter. It’s wild, not safe to pick up.
Ocelotters are considered lucky, much more calmly from Twitch. Mostly because any p
lace they live has relatively few weeds species established.
The new horse-thing’s ears are staying back; the woman with the ocelotter stops, two steps into coming forward, scritches behind the ocelotter’s ears — I can hear the purr from ten metres, and there’s an ornate head-butting — and sets it down.
I get enough height out of the focus to watch it bound twice and vanish into swamp water. Something happens to the ears before it hits the water. The thick tail sculls, and it dives. There are…four more, watching from trees. Yearling group? And the brave one or the crazy one went to talk to the nice sorcerer?
Blossom looks happy, every bit as happy as looking out over the crater where the commander of the army of Reems had been.
“Captain, may I present the Independent Grue?”
“It’s short for Gruesome”, Grue says, smile intensity adjusting upward. I can feel the standard-bearer’s knees start to give before there’s a general mental retreat into the focus.
I give the standard short bow, thinking the other one while I do it.
It’s really Grew, but try to get someone who wound up two decimetres over average height to use that. Blossom can get a lot of fondness through the focus.
Grue’s about nineteen decimetres, a decimetre taller than Blossom. Typical female Creek height. More leg and less shoulder and an odd impression of a truly floating stride, feet not quite touching the ground.
“Was the Independent proceeding south or north?”
“The Independent was waiting to ambush your Part-Captain; I have Blossom’s luggage.” Vast gentle amusement.
One of the cases behind the saddle of Grue’s horse-thing is waxed leather with brass corners, not significantly different in design from what anybody with things that mustn’t be crushed uses instead of a saddlebag. The other one is…
Cruncher hide? I can’t tell if Twitch is appalled or astonished.
Killed it with a spoon. Only a very little bobbling to get first latch to the standard. Of the Line the Foremost’s worn boots.
Now Twitch is both appalled and astonished.
Sergeant-Major?
Twitch gets everybody informed and moving again. There’s a couple hundred other happy meetings coming up, as soon as we get the company home. It doesn’t seem necessary to ask if Grue is coming along, or if the new horse-thing can keep up.
The only other time I ever saw a riding dress, it was on some foreign dignitary really determined to stay in a particular style of long robe. Grue is wearing a pale blue frothy one over cavalry boots, the scout-cavalry over the knee kind that has marked those wildly more brave than sensible for the last four hundred years. Grue mounts by a process indistinguishable from levitation and rides well enough that Grue’s horse-thing backs and turns to flank Blossom’s on the east without Grue laying hand on the reins.
There’s a generally pleased-sounding set of quiet whistles from the horse-things.
Blossom hands Grue the letter tube from the back of Blossom’s sword belt; Grue produces a half-dozen, and hands them to Blossom. Grue’s letter gets read; Blossom, on duty and on the march, tucks the half-dozen away.
A quiet five kilometres or so later, proceeding at the full regular rate of advance, Twitch asks, privately, A spoon?
A high-velocity spoon. Blossom tries for repressive, doesn’t quite manage it, tone somewhere between the Part-Captain and the Independent.
The image is of an older-looking, and thus much younger, Blossom; the cruncher’s great triangular head and tree-snapping beak are reaching fast, Blossom’s hand is inside the gape, and there’s a flash and an awful mess. Crunchers are not easy to kill, but nothing does all that well with its brain blown out of the back of its head and what looks like all its extensor muscles locked.
Grue shouldn’t have heard the question, or been able to tell who it originated from.
The next bit of image comes directly from Blossom. There is muttering in it, and what are presumably the younger Blossom’s hands, picking up a spoon folded in half and crushed nearly into a cylinder around the long axis and proceeding to bend and squeeze it back into a proper spoon shape using thumb pressure, like a potter making a clay figurine.
The one spoon the Part-Captain had? Twitch is still appalled, but it’s the appalled that will stuff itself into the general category of Independents. I’m not sure if it says more about Twitch or Blossom that Twitch really wasn’t sure Blossom hadn’t beaten a cruncher to death with a spoon.
Wasn’t even an ensign then. Blossom reaches into a harness pouch, twists to reach into a saddlebag, straightens up holding a fan of five identical spoons, strangely shiny.
One Platoon, who can perfectly well see the spoons, start off perplexed and finish with smiles as Twitch explains. Blossom puts the spoons away with good humour.
I no longer believe in Independents randomly arrived.
Independent
Grue, for all love
Are you in the Creeks for some particular purpose?
I do medical stuff, some agricultural work — which could be anything, weeds, crop enhancement, encouraging birds to eat the bugs you want eaten — and Halt sent me a letter saying that there was no limit to the work to be done in the Creeks.
The smile and the cheerfulness fade, for a second. “By the pricking of my thumbs” isn’t something you want to read in a letter from Halt.
Blossom’s face goes bleak. I hear the next thing Blossom sends, Grue does, and it’s clear to me that the focus is forbidden to pass it more widely. It’s happening faster than Halt expected.
Grue reaches up, brings a butterfly that perched on the raised hand as though butterflies all do that down into the path of a wider smile, blows gently. The butterfly sails off; somewhere behind me, troopers fall out of step.
Differently, maybe. Halt called the auguries grim. Grue doesn’t get the smile into that.
Blossom inhales; Blossom’s horse-thing curvets. Halt’s understanding of grim is a bad thing to find yourself trying to imagine.
Grue looks, I think, wistful. Side-on and upward doesn’t help with subtle human expressions. The auguries and the news that the Eastern District had assigned the Standard-Captain to the Creeks crossed, getting to the Line-Gesith. Halt didn’t expect much support from the Line, and did expect to have trouble with Rust.
This one’s easy, it’s approval, slanting past Blossom who is looking oddly at Grue. When Halt says even Rust could see not to try your ruthlessness, Captain, that’s a rare compliment.
I suppose it must be.
Chapter 39
Getting back to Westcreek is bad.
That there are dead is not a surprise; that made it to Westcreek Town with the first barge down the river, days ahead of us. Various attempts at a rough count, likewise. No list of names.
No one in Westcreek expects the dead, or some of the dead, to be visible; the dead don’t expect their loved ones to pass right through them. Failed embraces have living friends standing in for the dead, who find themselves offering spectral patting motions. Sometimes there are no living friends, and the spectral patting has to suffice.
It takes an hour, the first time, to get through the shrieking and crying. There will be several other hours, as people arrive from progressively further away. Blossom discovers that the artillerists had more social success in Westcreek Town than Blossom realised, and that the battery’s list of dead is wanted with urgency.
No missing. They’re all known dead — all of whom are officially ashes in barrels and not demon digestions — in a Commonweal hospital with a known prognosis, or right here in shape to march. That’s a better thing than anyone else here realises, except maybe Twitch. Don’t think Twitch has ever had to tell someone that the Line has no idea what’s become of their child.
Four days later, there’s a memorial garden a hundred metres wide, centred on the sunny south end of the turning basin that joins the east canal and the Wet Westcreek and the public docks have moved from the south end of the turning basin to
the north. Fuller’s Mill is still where it was; that relatively narrow plot of land might suit what Toby thought was appropriate, but one twenty-fifth of the Creeks’ population has had a year’s worth of deaths from causes other than age for the whole Creeks happen to it. Surviving parents have a lot of grief to work through, and it’s catching.
The flanking trees will go in come springtime; the argument about what species, and how many, and where, isn’t going to be settled this month.
The combined length of the mirror-flat memorial stones, each a metre high, is more than the hundred metres; they’re set at the top of an embankment, with turf above and dry stone wall below, and the two embankments angle out from the standard-shrine in the middle. It’s some hard, dark, crystalline rock; however skilled the teams with the rock-saw foci are, they’d have been the next six months getting the names written in with chisels. One of the dead asked Blossom, and another had a word with their uncles doing the bronze-work. The end-scroll on the left of the front of the roof of the standard-shrine hides a drawer, just big enough for the spoon.
The dead have mostly been wise enough to point out, when asked about the memorial, that’s it’s for the living, not them, not really, but there’s always that one small thing.
Blossom did use the spoon, and the handwriting on the dark granite matches the barrels, way out on the far end of the left arm. That was Toby; public memorials often start at the shrine, and alternate outward, but Toby knew the Line tradition, along with what had happened to the Eighth and the Eighteenth. No-one in Westcreek Town could cope with one of the shades of the dead asserting wouldn’t want anyone thinking we thought we were special, with all the other dead nodding along behind.
Grue is astonishingly good at dealing with a weeping, ranting, this-emotional-pain-is-unfamiliar Blossom. Losing people you’re responsible for hurts. If it didn’t, the Line wouldn’t give you a warrant of commission.
If it stops, they take the warrant away.
The barrels got sawn up with extreme care and went name by name into private memorials. The ashes of the dead, artillerists too, are in the pair of raised flower beds running north-south, on either side of the walkway from the water up to the standard-shrine. Those have been mulched over, waiting for spring. No-one wanted to plant those in haste, months to first frost or not.
The March North Page 23