A Succession of Bad Days

by Graydon Saunders

  “Rust translated, Rust’s Reemish is good enough for nuanced insults. Rust could slant it, some, sure, but only some. A false translation would violate the obligation of service.”

  Dove…this really doesn’t bother Dove.

  “Slant that?” Chloris, all of Chloris, is stuck in a flinch.

  Dove shrugs again. “Rust wanted Blossom to have a failure of temper.”

  The idea of trying to make Blossom angry, failure-of-temper angry, sort of sits there. Deliberately, consciously, setting out to make Blossom mad enough there’s a loss of control.

  “This Rust is utterly without even the vestige of good sense?” Kynefrid knows this has to be a question to be polite, near-polite, the attempt’s there, but it’s not enough. No way does that really sound like a question.

  “Pretty much,” Dove says. “One of the old ones.” Dove makes a face. “I’ve only met three of them, but all the Line descriptions insist Wake and Halt are pretty much the sanest, calmest, least-unpredictable old ones.”

  Zora’s eyes narrow. “I’d still rather make Halt mad than Blossom.”

  We all stare. “I don’t want to make either of them mad, but Halt has way more practice not turning people into frogs.”

  Dove’s lips quirk; it’s a lot larger smile on the inside. “Or, in the specific case, lighting them on fire.” There’s a swallow of tea. “Chemically.”

  Chloris’s arms get stuck in the air, half rhetoric and half enough horror that Chloris has to move.

  Dove sets the mug down, looks across at Chloris. “Remember the bit in school about why there’s no point in trying to go back to before there were weeds?”

  It’s more than a bit. Ecology doesn’t work in reverse, you can’t make dead things live. If you can’t make dead things live, there’s no going backward. So there’s nothing to do but to move forward, and pick the least awful forward you can get.

  Chloris nods.

  “There’s an entire mystical, and by now actually old and diverse, ecology alongside the breathing one. The one with unicorns and eel-trees and six different sorts of flower called lover’s-agony. We’re joining it. What does that imply?”

  “That there’s nothing for it but to turn into murderous lunatics?” Chloris is bitter, this isn’t just voice-tone.

  “Or death from a simple error,” Kynefrid says.

  “Why’s everyone so cheerful tonight?” It’s not that I think they haven’t noticed, not really.

  Zora says, a little too brightly, “I got my forms attested?” Maternal permission for Zora to go take up leornere status while still a youth of seventeen. Had to go back in person, Zora’s mother insisted. Blossom, I would have expected Grue, but it was Blossom, ran Zora, riding pillion, home to the Blue Highlands, and back again, last Déci, and the only reason it took six hours was that they stayed for lunch. Which means this Déci coming up will be somewhere near the Shape of Peace, and we start travelling tomorrow, one day on a barge and one day on foot.

  “Feeling irrevocable.” Kynefrid takes a swallow of tea, plain mint, and if it cools off any more the sugar is going to start precipitating out and forming crystals. Wake showed the Creeks generally a trick with reeds, just after arriving at the end of the summer, and sugar is plentiful. It’s been a big help, I’m told, with the canning. I can observe it being a big help with keeping Kynefrid from freezing.

  “Tomorrow’s always irrevocable,” Zora says, not the least sad about it. “Sometimes it rains on Festival.”

  Everyone’s looking at Zora.

  Zora sets the mug down, not a casual motion. “Not a complete idiot, can we agree on that?”

  I nod. There might be other nods.

  “So, here I am, I’ve got something to do, I’m learning a lot, we make these amazing things and when I was learning sewing I was still fighting with getting seams to lie flat when I’d been doing it this long. I get to be an adult, socially, more or less. I’m going to have my own garden someday.” Big slug of tea. “Only really difficult part’ll be finding a lad I don’t light on fire.”

  Dove, very gentle indeed, leans over to punch Zora in the shoulder. Strong approval.

  Might have to share, sneaks into my head behind a grin. My brain locks up.

  Not for all that long, but when I get it unlocked Zora is giving Chloris a narrow look. “Have you talked to Wake at all?”

  Chloris’ head shakes no, Chloris’ whole body screams it.

  “You realize Wake’s a necromancer?” Zora’s pushing.

  Wake’s the necromancer.

  “It doesn’t bother Wake!” Chloris does vehement pretty well.

  Yeah. Turning into thump-on-Chloris'-panic, this isn’t going to help.

  “Hey, Edgar,” Kynefrid says, “why aren’t you bothered about the whole thing?”

  “Life is collective and gean and family, right?” Nods.

  “I worked myself into a collective despite being a dull kid and having absolutely no talent. I got some polite letters, but they don’t want to talk to me anymore. I locked up a bunch of them, most of them, along with an anti-panda, and from the slow kid with no talent, that was way too creepy.”

  I’m at least half-lucky they didn’t let me die. Or make a formal complaint of mind control.

  “All the geans are gone, scattered, the Township of Wending as a whole doesn’t exist anymore, it’s under however many metres of hell-things from across the Dread River. The buildings of mine sure are, and the people are everywhere, some displaced north, some displaced into the Folded Hills.” Swallow of tea. Mint, but just mint, no sugar solution.

  “My mother, and my sister, both my mother’s sisters, all my cousins, they went north, they’re whatever the First Commonweal is calling displaced. Went with my collective because it’d been so important to get into one, to get myself real work. I haven’t got any family at all in the Second.” Dove squeezes my hand. It’s gentle, but I know just how much force is back there.

  One of my major problems with anything like sharing, fear of broken bones.

  “There was this one lass, but, well.” I’d asked Chloris, not Dove, to read Flaed’s last reply. I couldn’t figure out what Flaed was trying to say, the letter was talking in widening spirals. “I’m so sorry,” Chloris had said, handing it back.

  “Everything else is gone. So’s the lack of talent, and most of the slow. I basically fell asleep in some nameless place way down the valley in the near Folded Hills, it’s probably got a name by now, and woke up in Westcreek.

  “I was the slow kid, right? Tried, but mostly couldn’t, or couldn’t quick. My mother never really stopped being disappointed, did their best but having an obviously slow kid after a smart one hurt. Lots of people took an interest, I had a bunch of volunteer aunts, two specific people put in a lot of time making sure I learnt enough turning to get into the collective, everybody seemed to agree that tolerating my curiosity gave the best odds I wouldn’t be entirely useless.”

  Which, well. I wave at the ceiling.

  “It’s like I passed through the land of the dead into a better world.” Almost said ‘another’, but, no. Better.

  “Like it so far.” I squeeze Dove’s hand. Dove smiles at me. Zora makes a face, Chloris stirs salt into a fresh cup of tea vigorously, spoon ringing, and Kynefrid says “Yeah.”

  Yeah, had a lot of weight on it, and there’s a moment of general looking at Kynefrid.

  “Family’s all there, thorpe’s all there, gean’s all there, they weren’t very different things. All displaced together. No orchard, no vines, it’s going to be fifty years before anyone’s going to be serious about making brandy. They were all being strong on the necessity of my leaving to study, some of it was real worry for me not cooking my brain. Didn’t much want to go, didn’t think I needed to, I was learning lots of charms for things.”

  There’s a sigh. Not one of Chloris’ heartrending ones, but it’s not Kynefrid’s favourite thing to be thinking about. “Not getting kicked off the cliff means I’ve
got to step. Stepping’s hard.”

  Chloris gets vehement about nodding agreement.

  Then Chloris sighs, and slumps. “Halt convinced my mother, and my aunts, that I really had to study properly, it wouldn’t be enough to hope all the little weirdnesses went away, there would be more screaming from the lemon preserves.”

  “Halt never really convinced me.”

  There’s a visible gathering of courage in Chloris. “Dove, what convinced you?”

  Dove sets the mug down, doesn’t let go of my hand, looks, I don’t know how, but looks Chloris in the eye without any trace of challenge in it. “Cutting the hearts out of demons.”

  Dove, well, call it exhales noisily. “That sounds good, but what really did it was the ichor running off my hand.”

  Zora looks really confused. Kynefrid’s got as much face behind one long hand as will fit, eyes, mostly. Really long fingers. Chloris’ brain might not be past the word ‘demon’. Chloris’ face just stopped moving entirely, hasn’t even blinked.

  Dove turns to look at Zora. “The warsword melted, the gauntlet melted, the vambrace melted, but my hand was fine, with enough ichor left on it to boil the first bucket of water.”

  Zora’s eyes are huge. “I don’t want to know?”

  Dove nods. “You don’t want to know.”

  I, no, I need to know, however much I could have done without some of the images leaking through from Dove. This March North seems like it went half-way to some special hell.

  “Maybe a third,” Dove says, smiling at me.

  “I am seven separate sorts of idiot,” Kynefrid says, a little too much biting-off the words for it to be really conversational. Hand’s still up across the eyes, it’s not distress, precisely.

  Everybody looks at Kynefrid. Speaking harshly isn’t usual behaviour.

  The hand comes down, and Kynefrid looks at Dove. “That first Déci find-a-barge-crew tavern visit, one of the lads went by Toss. Had a strange band of scars around their upper right arm and more odd scars over their left hand. Everything worked, it couldn’t have been as bad as it looked, only from what Toss said it was a lot worse.”

  Dove nods. “Toss didn’t have an especially good time.”

  “There aren’t that many Creek women named Dove, are there?” Kynefrid says. No more impulses to hide, it looks like.

  Zora puts their mug down to look at Kynefrid, the way one might if asked if there weren’t very many Creek women with wings instead of ears. Dove grins.

  “So far as I know, one. Lots of Roses and Lilys and Meadowsweets, for nature names. The occasional Lark.” Dove takes a swallow of tea, reaches for the pot. “Mama’s a bit eccentric.”

  Kynefrid is nodding. “How honest is Toss?”

  Dove gets an odd sort of smile. “Lad called Neat there?”

  Kynefrid looks cautious. Maybe even skittish. “Might not be the right one, but there was one.”

  “Toss’d be pretty honest with Neat there,” Dove says. “Neat has issues with exaggeration.”

  “Rot,” Kynefrid says, says it with feeling.

  Kynefrid draws a deep breath, looks at the teacup, looks up, well, looks like looking up, the ceiling doesn’t grab at Kynefrid’s attention at all. “Halt doesn’t terrify you?”

  “Not especially.” Dove’s head tips from side to side, just a bit. “I’m not about to try overthrowing the Peace.”

  “Rot,” Kynefrid says, a lot quieter.

  “If I asked you what really happened, and you told me, I’d have a lot of trouble with it, wouldn’t I?” Chloris says to Dove.

  Dove nods. “Probably.” I can’t call this a smile. “Not doing ideally well with it myself.”

  I squeeze Dove’s hand, just a little. Don’t know if it helps. I hope so.

  Dove takes a big slug of tea, sets the mug down. I can feel a mental shake, and a sense of it takes time.

  Chloris’s turn to duck, face behind both hands. “I just want to be good.”

  Zora, obviously unsure, pats Chloris’ shoulders. I’ve got a bit of brain-lock, some of it splashed from Dove. Good?

  Chloris looks up, face blotched. “There’s all this…horrible to deal with, possible horrible, all the ways for things to go bad, for me to go bad.”

  “Knew somebody,” Kynefrid says. “Single best grape-picker there was; more grapes, less leaves, less damage, pretty much did the work of two other pickers, better. Figured that allowed them a claim to be good at it.

  “Not getting the impression you want to challenge Wake for necromantic excellence.” Kynefrid’s voice has found a way to friendly teasing, doing the little turn-aside, pointing the mug away just in case tea-heating with the Power results in mostly steam.

  Chloris’ face goes murderous, really briefly. Really did look like a desire to kill Kynefrid, just that one flash, and Chloris gets up and starts pacing.

  Lots of room for that. No idea what kind of furniture one puts in a huge round space twenty-five metres across, so we haven’t. The kitchen takes a smaller slice out of it than you’d think. The corner-closets sort of hide against the wall. Zora moves to get up and Dove puts out a hand. Zora sits back down and looks worried, watching Chloris pace around in big figure-eights, precessing slowly, covering most of the floor.

  “Chloris.” Dove’s voice is entirely neutral. “Lots of buildup.”

  Chloris produces a choppy nod, walks over to the door, stamps into boots as both sets of doors clang open, stomps outside.

  Chloris gets about thirty metres beyond the overhang, just where the path starts to turn east toward the warded edge, throws head and arms back, and screams at the sky.

  We all grab for the things that are trying to rattle their way off the table.

  There’s a big round flat space in the snow, when anybody looks again, and the last bits of a big round cloud of snow. It looks like it flew too far to make a circular drift, except where the arc of the circle nudged back under the overhang, where there are little four-decimetre-high snow-arcs bulging between pillars.

  Chloris stomps back inside, kicks the boots off, shuts the doors. Dusts off for remnant Power bits, though there aren’t any showing.

  “Sorry. I hate feeling like I’m being told to grow up.” Chloris is not looking especially sorry, but is looking more balanced.

  “Grow up is not the same thing as give up and stop arguing with your mother,” Dove says, actually smiling.

  Chloris laughs. Really doesn’t want to, but it’s a real laugh.

  Like the other two, Chloris never drags the chair. Unlike the other two, it sometimes looks like it takes Chloris an effort of will to pick the chair up, but not right now. The chair floats away from the table, Chloris sits down, grimaces at lukewarm tea, and freshens it up from the pot.

  “Leaving tomorrow. Have to sort this out now. Understand that. NO IDEA HOW.” It’s not the scream, but the potential for the scream is back there somewhere.

  “Did your school do picky/hopeful and reliable/exciting?” Zora says.

  Mine certainly didn’t. I look at Kynefrid. Just as baffled. It’s some kind of Creek thing.

  “It’s a two-axis description of how you can map your approach to selecting sex partners,” Dove says, letting go of my hand to stretch. I get a quizzical look as Dove’s arms come back down, and then Dove’s picked my chair up and moved it snug against; the two chairs are the same height even if we aren’t. I take Dove’s hand back and tip my head to rest on Dove’s shoulder. I’m finding the stressed-out necromancer unnerving company. Dove hides it much better than I do.

  “I’ll admit I’m way far off in the picky/exciting corner, which isn’t making my life easier.” Chloris is actually smiling, like there’s real cheer back there somewhere.

  Zora’s head shakes. “I don’t mean directly, I mean sorcerers do something like that, there’s — ”

  Zora’s hands wave, trying for a grip on a clearer idea — “Intuitive/exacting, and a scale of perceived distinctness from the Power, and clever/tested.
We spend a lot of time in clever because there isn’t any tested for us, the way we’re learning, but you can see it bothering Wake a lot and Grue some and Blossom because it’s supposed to and it doesn’t bother Halt at all.”

  “And Blossom doesn’t regard the Power as distinct, not at all, and Halt completely does.” Kynefrid says it thoughtfully. You can practically hear the gears start to turn, trying to make something out of the idea.

  Zora nods. “So we’re not really trying to figure out the right way, sorcery isn’t a the right way thing, it’s somewhere in the civilized rules there’s something that works for you, like finding someone to snuggle.”

  Not entirely worth lifting my head off Dove’s shoulder. Should try to contribute. “There’s a continuum between quietly local and broadly active, too. Read the Galdor-gesith’s records and most Independents do things like work on pre-natal care in one township or specialize in weeds for one particular place, there are Independents who work on one thorpe.”

  I’m getting a look from Chloris.

  “Our teachers are mountain-movers, active with the Line and either affiliated with or they just are a political faction among Independents. They’re not the statistical norm.” I don’t find that easy to remember, we’re not supposed to find that easy to remember, no reason why Chloris, who might be less fundamentally sneaky than Blossom, should find it easy to remember.

  “Are”, says Chloris. “I don’t understand Halt but affiliated is the wrong word.”

  I can feel the muscles in Dove’s neck move with the grin.

  “You all right Edgar?” Kynefrid’s looking concerned, real concerned, not social concerned. Can’t nod, don’t want to move my head.

  “Yeah.” Which isn’t convincing. “Never been good at conflict.”

  Chloris looks murderous again, sets the tea down, consciously smoothes the look of murder away from visibility. Then sighs. “All right, yes, this is a conflict, it’s not just the mess getting loose from my head.”

  Chloris sort of nudges at the mug. When Chloris’ face isn’t wearing a desire to kill us all, it keeps slumping into utter misery.