A Succession of Bad Days

by Graydon Saunders

  There’s another sigh. “What’s the conflict about?” Chloris says it, sounds baffled, I’m pretty sure the baffled is real and entire.

  Probably my turn. I hoist my head off Dove’s shoulder. “Whether you can be a necromancer and anyone will like you.”

  Dove pats my head, gently. The other three are looking three different flavours of appalled at me.

  “Independents are Independents because nobody wants an actual sorcerer in their gean. Wake’s joke about how people in the right tail of the main distribution have the option of ignoring their talent isn’t a joke, four out of five do. You can be a team lead on a big focus and be really extra-useful without having that whiff of the Bad Old Days and people looking at you funny. Nobody likes a sorcerer.”

  Zora’s looking thoughtful, which is normal enough. Kynefrid’s face is in back of both hands, which isn’t, and if Chloris was as strong as Dove I’d be worried about the edge of the table top. Marble’s pretty, it’s not strong.

  There’s a whole lot of fond coming through from Dove. No idea what Dove’s face is showing, afraid to look, especially after Dove’s forehead touches the top of my head, really briefly.

  Look straight at Chloris. Forget about just dropping dead, look straight at Chloris.

  “Why do Independents point with their chins?” I don’t do as good a job of saying this in completely neutral tones as I ought. Not as slow as I was, the idea that if I get it, it’s obvious to rocks isn’t true anymore. Still there in my emotional responses.

  Chloris’s brow wrinkles and clears. There’s a big shoulder-slump, not quite collapsing in tears.

  Then it goes from not-quite to face goes into both hands, crying. “I don’t want to be frightening,” comes out, muffled and on the cadence of the sobs.

  I’d figure pointing is threatening, not frightening. Fright’s in their head; threatening is what I’m doing, and there’s not much obvious difference between a levelled spear and a sorcerer pointing their hand.

  Except the spear is just going to maim you, worst case.

  Kynefrid and Zora both manage a couple of back pats.

  It’s not especially optional, Dove says.

  Chloris’ head comes up, Zora’s eyes go wide, Kynefrid’s looking half-frightened looking at Dove.

  Ed keeps calculating how high you’d throw a hundred-kilo human being if you applied the same energy that’s lifting a load of rocks. I take it you don’t do that?

  Chloris says “No,” and, weirdly hesitant, No, too.

  Anybody can hit you in the head with a rock, or a bottle, or a big serving ladle. Sorcerers can make your children hate you, or your dead parents haunt you, or make it impossible for you to sleep, and take bets on when you’ll kill yourself.

  There are laws, Zora says. Kynefrid’s looking back and forth like following along is work, is costing concentration.

  There’s weeds, too. And a lot of folk memory, and all the Bad Old Days, just over the borders. Dove’s head tips toward me, then Kynefrid. They got displaced, there’s a Second Commonweal, because whatever those things from the Paingyre are, the Line can’t hold them. People don’t forget what sorcerers are. Dove’s level of dispassion is starting to worry me.

  Learnt skill, comes through, just to me. Excessive practice.

  “No one’s ever going to like me and I just have to cope?” Chloris says, entirely out loud.

  Dove nods.

  “This isn’t children-and-youths school, the point isn’t who likes who.” Dove takes a deep breath.

  “Stop thinking ‘fellow student’ and start thinking ‘study team’,” Dove says. “The job is to get all us to where we’re standing by the Shape of Peace, accepted as Independents. We don’t have to like each other. We have to get the job done.”

  “You can be really bossy,” Zora says to Dove.

  “Yes,” Dove, half-grinning. “I can go right on being really bossy when I can’t remember which of my friends are dead.”

  “Dead?” says Kynefrid.

  “Lots of necromancy in a Line standard. Some of the dead stick around, they contribute to the focus even if they can’t hold a shield.”

  Kynefrid’s shaking. I make a motion at the tea mug Kynefrid’s got half a grip on, much more shaking and it might slosh. Kynefrid picks it up, makes a face, obviously not very warm. I make a reaching motion, get handed the mug, I turn away and heat it up. Stuff-stirring will get the sugar back into solution, unlike the slow light the rest of them use. I hand the mug back, and Kynefrid wraps both hands around it and takes two tries before drinking any of it works.

  Dove’s looking quizzical at Kynefrid. Not concerned, yet, to look at, there’s some behind Dove’s eyes. “Some of Toss’ stories just turned real on you?”

  Kynefrid’s head shakes no while every other part is still shaking. Looks wrong. “The nature of the work.”

  Dove looks sympathetic.

  I’m pretty sure I look baffled. Zora’s at least half-baffled, and Chloris is fighting to have a brain that’s functioning, for thought to be possible. Looks like the impulse to think is winning.

  Two big swallows of tea later, and Kynefrid starts talking. “We’ve been doing safe things. Moving dirt, almost all of it, melting dirt, the one big weed, helping maintain the drainage. It doesn’t feel safe, I’m usually terrified, but it’s safe things.”

  I nod. Zora’s looking like this is a comprehensible line of argument, which puts Zora’s understanding way ahead of mine.

  “The actual job, the useful thing Wake and Halt are hoping we’ll be able to do, is to go deal with the Bad Old Days, as they are now. Not get really good at weeding a particular thorpe, not improve some maker-collective’s water power, but keeping those bad days over the border.”

  Dove says “You didn’t think about that before?”

  Kynefrid’s mouth twists. “Thought about it. Didn’t feel it.” Looks at Dove. “You’re, well, you’re only a little more determined than most Creeks, and you’re talking about using your dead friends to get the job done, as though that were a normal thing to do.”

  “In the Line.” Dove’s looking quizzical again.

  Kynefrid makes some vigorous slashing motions through the air. “The attitude, the outlook, the willingness to just keep going. The reflexive belief that getting the job done is more important than survival.”

  “If it’s everybody? Isn’t it?” Zora doesn’t sound happy, but does sound certain. “If there’s a critter or a bad weed or a dragon or a foreign wizard or anything like that, where the risk is to everybody? We’re not important, that’s the whole point.”

  Kynefrid nods. “Yeah. That’s right. That’s unquestionably right, that’s the whole reason for the Peace and the Law.”

  Kynefrid had mostly stopped shaking. “Doesn’t mean I can do it.”

  Dove nods. “Three-fifths of Independents aren’t militant.” Dove visibly decides not to pour another mug of tea. “Grue isn’t militant.”

  Kynefrid says “What do you think a sorcerer team, really collaborative magic, is for?”

  Dove smiles, softly. “Freeing up Blossom to enchant stuff.”

  Not the answer Kynefrid was expecting.

  “The Commonweal’s built on Laurel’s discovery that voluntary mattered, that a focus enchantment that required everyone participating to be a real volunteer could be stronger than the sum of its parts. We get the Shape of Peace from that, the Line standards, the things that let us make the Commonweal work.” Dove sounds cheerful. “Now the whole economy is foci of one kind or another.”

  Kynefrid actually says “Do go on.”

  “Inventing the standards took Laurel hundreds of years. Sitting on a mountain nobody else wanted, avoiding other sorcerers, not doing much else. We’ve got a bunch of big problems, starting with how we move stuff between the Folded Hills and the Creeks, it’s not a natural territory, making replacement standards for the Line, and whether only a million people can keep a Commonweal running.”

  �
��So you think the point is to free up Blossom to work on those, rather than keeping the borders?”

  “Probably.” Dove looks, I don’t know what that’s called. Frustrated, in a really specific way? “I don’t claim I know what Halt’s thinking. But the problem is that Blossom is militant and is about as effective as Halt and there are only two of them. Keeping the borders isn’t the best thing to do with either of them, long term, it’s just we’ve got to get to long term.”

  Chloris looks awful, face under rigid control. “So we’re going to be keeping the borders? Actually killing people is the point?”

  Dove’s running out of patience, I can feel it.

  I put up a hand. “We’re the experiment. There aren’t eight of us, any kind of live focus with good-at-co-operating sorcerers probably takes at least eight, just like a regular focus. We’re the experiment to see if the pure form teaching approach works.” Chloris looks doubtful, Zora looks thoughtful, Kynefrid looks like there’s a serious chance of fainting off the chair.

  “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to only do this with third-modality sorcerers. If they can get fifty regular right-tail Independents, even village sorcerers, really co-operating, it’d be stronger than eight of us, eight third-modality sorcerers, and the population ratio’s something like ten to one. Laurel’s focus enchantments already changed everything. If there’s a way to use that much Power in a precise way, it’ll change everything again.”

  “You don’t mind being the experiment?” Chloris is in some strange country beyond appalled.

  “No. Land of the dead, remember? That parasite would have killed me. If I had never been displaced, never been terrified by an anti-panda, I’d have blown up by now, probably taken my collective with me. Anything from here is pure fortunate circumstances.”

  Chloris, well, might be listening.

  “Remember what Wake said, back in the tent at the start, about our odds? I’ve been doing some reading. Our traditional training odds, at our ages and with no prior background, well, Zora’d maybe make it. Nobody over twenty would. If I can read clerk, it’s got a lot to do with why they test so hard for talent in school, people kept dying when they found them older than fifteen. We’re, well, salvage. It’s a chance to try the training style Halt and Wake wanted, and the Galdor-gesith probably let them because, on the odds, we’re all dead anyway. Wake’s being totally honest saying we need to get to being Independents, immaterial mind-substrate and all, if we want to live, and being just as honest saying they’re sure, the teachers are sure, our odds aren’t worse this way. The odds the other way are one-hundred-percent dead.”

  “Salvage.” Dove sounds contented.

  Contented?

  Salvage is a lot easier to imagine than special.

  Yeah.

  Zora’s eyes narrow at us.

  That’s worse than whispering. Zora sounds prim.

  Guilty, Dove sends back.

  “I’m supposed to work really hard to be salvage, and lose my family, and turn into something terrible?” Chloris doesn’t sound distraught, that’s disbelief, real, utter, cannot imagine.

  “You’re supposed to outlive your parents. There’s a proverb about it.” Zora sounds frustrated. “If we manage to outlive them for a really long time, being hale and active when our sibs are old, that’s going to hurt, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.”

  Dove’s hand tightens in mine. For a second it starts to hurt, and then the grip slackens.

  “Chloris, look, is Wake terrible?” Dove sounding determined to be calm is not the most relaxing thing I’ve heard, even tonight.

  Chloris’ head shakes. “Not even especially creepy.” Not like Halt hangs there, unspoken and clearly heard.

  “Wake’s the strongest necromancer known. Right there, one of our teachers, in a lot of ways our main teacher. If Wake can be not-terrible, starting from the Bad Old Days, do you really think it’s impossible for you?”

  Chloris’ head shakes, only nearly firmly, Chloris says “No,” in a small voice, “I don’t know who I am anymore,” in a smaller voice.

  “That’s the whole point,” Zora says. “We get to do the whole caterpillar thing and turn into butterflies, only we have to make up the butterfly.”

  Chloris looks at Zora, face a mask of doubt. “You aren’t having any trouble with this.”

  Zora snorts. “If you’d asked me in the summer if I liked metal working, I’d have backed away from you because you were crazy. Baking on Déci is important so I can wail and cry on Grue, I’m not feeling useless because I can’t make anything at all anymore, but some of those Déci days there’s been a lot of wailing.”

  Kynefrid sounds kinda like heartbroken. “I was so determined not to be a sorcerer. Now we’re going off to be confirmed as students, attested to the Shape of Peace, and I’m caught up in a season, I’m the regular age for it. You three — ” Kynefrid’s chin points, leaving out Dove — “are ahead.”

  You’re coming, too. It slides out of my head without any conscious decision on my part.

  Wherever we’re going, I’m coming too. Dove’s reply has a feeling of contentment in it.

  Zora looks kinda like the way youths do when they can’t avoid seeing their mother smooch somebody. “Does this consonance stuff explain why you read each other’s minds?” Not sure if Zora means the question for me or for Dove.

  “It’s not that Edgar can read my mind. It’s that I don’t want it to stop.” Dove goes right on sounded contented.

  “Reading minds is normal?” Chloris tries not to sound judgemental, not successfully, but it’s a real try.

  What do you think this is? Dove says. We’re all open books.

  Kynefrid’s face does five things, and sticks at of course. Zora’s a little behind Kynefrid, Chloris just slumps a bit more.

  “To keep us out of trouble,” Zora says, not entirely bitter.

  “Blossom still hasn’t shown us the failure mode for tilting a gravity-sock,” I say, as cheerfully as I can. “Probably a good thing Steam could tell me to stop in time.”

  “Probably,” Dove says. Dove isn’t deciding to be amused, that just is amusing. To Dove.

  “It’s not the same social rules. It’s not the same construction of responsibility. It’s not…tolerant of human frailty, put it that way. That’s what the whole make yourself into someone magical part of this is about. It’s not just that you can’t use the Power, it’s the social definition of can’t use the Power, too. Can’t be that patient, or can’t be that responsible, or just can’t not take it personally, if you’re using the meat brain you were born with.” Dove says this talking to the ceiling.

  “Fragile or likeable.” Chloris says it like sentence of court.

  “You lose more kinds of fragile than likeable.” Kynefrid’s out of tea, looks morose, but doesn’t sound it. “There’s this collegiality among Independents, it’s not all lonely contemplation on mountaintops. Even if you don’t — ” Kynefrid’s chin tips at me and Dove — “count these two or Blossom and Grue.”

  Zora pats Chloris again, says “It really is hard.” Zora’s trying hard not to smile, but it’s not all working. “I wasn’t done growing up the first time, and being told to do it over’s still wretched.”

  “I don’t know what to do.” Chloris is somewhere way past sad. “I have just no idea.”

  “Talk to Halt.” Dove says it gently, then says “Talk to Halt,” again, even more gently, when Chloris’ eyes go wide. “Halt wants this to succeed, and Halt has seen everything twice. Maybe you even need to tell Halt you’re not convinced.”

  Chloris twitches, but we’ll call it a nod.

  “Tonight, though, you and Kynefrid get to bed. Zora gets the lights, Ed washes, I dry, we get to bed, and tomorrow.” Dove sits up straighter, looks at all of us.

  “We’re going to take a nice barge trip, we’re going to get off the barge and walk west to the Shape of Peace, we’re going to go through the ritual, and we’re going to come home without embarra
ssing our teachers.” Dove says all of this like a description of natural law.

  “Home?” Chloris says.

  “Home,” Dove says, waving at the dome. “We made it, we live here, it’s home.”

  Chapter 19

  Getting off the barge is easy.

  Not to slight the barge; it’s the apparently usual big, well-maintained, sturdy thing, and this one has glass windows for the passenger space. Between us, Crane, and what looks like representative adult members of most of a thorpe, it’s warm, too. Warm enough that Zora’s doffed jacket and sweater, nothing but the shirt left, leaning beside a window, one layer of cold glass, and still looking warm. Stepping outside would work better, but the door’s dead-centre ahead, and it lets the wind in. Since it took an hour or so for the room to warm up in the first place, I think Zora’s decided that would be unacceptably rude.

  If Chloris wasn’t pleased to be handed a detailed list, specific instructions, and a letter of credit by Halt, I was entirely fooled. Back together, had done the work of reassembly, I think. Couldn’t outright ask.

  Coffee seems to reanimate Kynefrid, going through a couple extra mugs, talking to Wake after Wake went through the details of what we’re doing on the trip with us. It’s not complicated.

  I, well, I get breakfast, I stack some chairs, I wipe some tables, I try not to think. Dove had terrible dreams, mostly dreams, some of it’s memory but I have no idea which parts. Wouldn’t know it at breakfast. Might have guessed, once Dove slept pretty much the whole of the barge trip north.

  Crane isn’t talkative. The sense of being observed would make me very nervous indeed if I were a small terrestrial creature. It ought to make me a little nervous anyway, but after Halt’s full attention, checking to see if we’re doing the wrong thing making glass? It’s reassuring; not a familiar grown-up, but there’s still one to hand, just in case any of us have the Power equivalent of a sneezing fit. Allergic to weeds in the water or something.

  None of us are. None of us fall off the barge, either, nor trip on the way to the hostel. It used to be the Hill Road Landing, and just about just that, not a single proper bollard, I’m told more than once. Since the new Shape of Peace, just before I became a student, there’s a full sheer bank, shored back of big driven piles hung with barge-bumpers, and bollards for twenty barges downstream of the ferry. “Upstream can go worse,” one of the barge crew remarks. “Takes about four hundred seconds to get the keel-focus up enough to move against the current.”