A Succession of Bad Days

by Graydon Saunders

  Blossom makes a gesture. I have no idea what it means; Dove understands it completely. It’s a strange feeling.

  “We can stick to illusions and caution until we get the shape right. Won’t shift an ingot until you’re back.” Dove says this in cheerful practical tones, more than usual.

  Blossom looks at each of us, and I nod, Dove makes a “Go, go,” hand wave, Chloris nods, and Zora says “We’ll be careful.”

  Blossom says thanks and isn’t there. Just gone.

  “You, you can’t gate somewhere with no gate?” Chloris finds not knowing how appalled it’s appropriate to be really annoying.

  “Don’t think so,” Dove says. “Even the little water-gates are hard to miss.”

  The ponds are well and truly melted; ice all off, various bits of green doing their best along the verge, tiny shoots above the water all along the south bank. There was still ice on them when we left to go weeding. Still going to be really cold if anybody falls in.

  The useful canoe size for travelling with is seven metres in length. That’s not even a question, it’s settled knowledge. It’s also apparently the only thing any of the other three agree on about canoe design. We don’t know where we’re going or why, nothing about how long a trip or how much stuff we’ll need to bring. It takes close to half an hour before Dove says “Ed? Not much time paddling?”

  “Wending was about a kilometre upstream from the place the Dread River started, everybody wanted to keep kids out of, and off of, the river. So we did just enough boat and swimming stuff for school, a day and a half upstream.”

  Oh. Right. Not something they’d necessarily know.

  “Once you were on where the river turns into the Dread River, you’re never seen again. The boundary moved, some, it wasn’t always the exact same distance from the Iron Bridge. Everybody was a bit nervous about it.” That being the polite way to say ‘unreasonably terrified’. Got a lot worse after the bridge fell, and we thought for a while the Line could hold the hell-things. Kids didn’t go on the water and boat crews didn’t swagger about how they did.

  I’m surprised you got out.

  Folks south of town didn’t.

  That’s a hug, not a hair-ruffle, and neither Zora nor Chloris is looking the least displeased about the undertone.

  Chloris hands me the writing tablet. “You get to count votes.”

  It’s about an hour later that I realize that the intensity of the not-an-argument rests on the prospect of appearing in public in a canoe of your own, their own, design. That’s apparently a very significant thing to do, in terms of that Creek indirect social authority. You’re claiming you’ve got something better, and there’s a real limit to how far making the canoe out of titanium will get them with that, it has to be near-optimal for a canoe made out of the new material.

  After a couple of hours, a lot of vote-counting, and a great many full-scale illusions, I ask if I’ve got that right.

  Apparently I do.

  Halt’s there at dinner. I don’t know why I hand Halt the tablet before I sit down, but it was the right thing to do. Anything Halt will stop knitting for is important. There are a couple of “Hrmm,” noises and a few, not really illusions, illusory, but you can see through them, they don’t look like a canoe, appear while Halt is reading.

  Wake wanders back up to the Round House with us after lunch the next day, or at least to the pond. Wake has some strong opinions about something called tumblehome and something else called rocker, but is mostly worried about a combination of stiffness and reserve flotation. I don’t worry about that, I’ve got yesterday’s list of votes to turn back into one illusion, one held in enough parts that I can change individual things.

  Wake’s had doings with metal boats before, the folks who brought Wake over the equatorial ocean used them. Theirs were much larger than a canoe, riveted iron and larger than the cargo-barges used in the Creeks, but they were always concerned with being sure to have enough air trapped in the hull that it would keep floating, even when something unpleasant might have created a hole. The illusory model acquires air tanks, sealed ones, stuffed up in the narrow parts of bow and stern. That’s the reserve flotation. Stiffness is tougher; there’s an almost snarly discussion, and the illusion acquires a single deep keel, thumb-thick until it tapers outside the double bottom, the double bottom on both sides of the keel, separately filled with a very broad honeycomb of support around empty spaces. You could never make it without the Power, getting the taper and the load-spreading curves on the top and bottom of the honeycomb spacer wouldn’t work even if you didn’t have to put it between two seamless metal sheets.

  “Metal is cold,” Wake says. “Un-wearing. Kneeling pads, something for the seat rails, we’ll want both.”

  “Not in titanium,” Dove says, looking at the illusion and smiling.

  Dove holds a hand out, thumb up. Chloris does the same. Zora passes over big anchored loose rings at the bow and stern, ten centimetres across, and smaller bulges, three centimetres by one or so, one per metre down the inside of the top wales. Dove and Chloris’ thumbs stay up; Dove is looking rueful. Zora puts one thumb up. Wake nods. I bind the shape into one of the aluminium plant tags Chloris made, right about the time we got slushy snow. Chloris admits there are way too many for this year, or possibly the next ten. They weigh nothing, a couple thousand to the kilogramme, and make excellent targets for stuffing a minor binding into. Partially because you can tear them in half and light them on fire if you get it wrong, but partially because they don’t care about wind and rain or regular heat.

  The rest of the day goes to paddling; everybody but me has a very clear notion of what a paddle should be like, and produces one. Wake extracts a material one, wood, some dark hardwood I don’t know, from the battered and nondescript satchel Wake always carries. As a paddle, it’s wider and shorter than what the others are producing, and it’s got a rawhide wrapping on parts of the shaft. I’ve seen baker’s peels that looked like it. Halt’s knitting bag, Blossom’s and Grue’s saddle-cases, something larger on the inside than the outside seems to be a standard Independent thing. I don’t find the canoe hard to paddle, after Dove explains paddle sizing and I conjure myself one. That’s about all I can say. Everyone else is pleased, even with no kneeling pads. Wake takes some careful measurements with a length of string and knots, and asserts a responsibility for the kneeling pads.

  We get Wake again the next day; Blossom, Blossom Wake describes as having been “stricken with inspiration,” which is something I don’t want to think about.

  Copying the illusion in actual metal, well, that takes three tries for the first one. No titanium fires. Complex shapes, shapes that have an inside and an outside and layers, it’s tougher than I thought it would be. Then we realize we’ve made the mooring rings as solid pieces, they don’t lie flat, and have to melt that one back to an ingot.

  Try four works, careful removal of oxides and all. We get five more made before dinner time. Only need four for the trip, eight people, four canoes, but there is a shortage and both Dove and Chloris know people they think are adventurous enough to try a metal boat made by sorcerers. Metal boats right on fifty-five kilos in weight. I’m told this is good for a seven-metre canoe, I still don’t want to carry one, though I suppose it’ll be easier than I expect it to be, now, if I have to.

  Easiest way to take the canoes down to Westcreek is to float them, the ponds run off to a stream that feeds into the West Wetcreek above Westcreek Town. Wake takes one, Zora and Chloris take one, Dove and I take one. The other three we can bring tomorrow. It’s pretty easy, none of the bridges are low enough that anybody has to duck and the water’s high enough that it’s much closer to having to steer than actually paddle.

  There are remarks. Dove’s careful not to seem pleased about them, Chloris isn’t pleased about them, Zora’s ignoring them, and Wake doesn’t have to try to seem anything other than pleased.

  Wake didn’t do it, just made sure we didn’t catch fire.

>   So Wake’s allowed an obvious good opinion of the work?

  As long as it goes unsaid. Dove finds my bafflement at the Creek social rules amusing.

  Chloris isn’t pleased.

  Chloris doesn’t speak barge-crew, it sounds like accusations of laziness. It’s admiration for cleverness. Wouldn’t be if you were doing gean-work.

  Which is what Chloris did, before.

  Docking, pulling up to a sheer wall with bollards and ladders, ought to be tricky, not something we did in school and that was awhile ago. Dove knows what I should do, I can borrow how from Dove’s memory, translating that into something someone with my reach can do isn’t hard, I’m getting pretty good at that, and somewhere in there we stop being entirely separate people. That’s probably overkill, but I suppose it matters that the canoes look handy.

  That you look like you know what you’re doing. The ‘Idiot’ lurks under anything Dove’s contribution to us is going to come right out and say on the water.

  The water’s high in the West Wetcreek, too, still spring, there’s a lot of snow melting in the high places to the north. So getting out is easy, and getting the canoe out of the water’s nearly as easy.

  I wind up carrying it, it’s not far to the boat shed our host-gean has a half-interest in, and it’s a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. Ridiculously much easier. Didn’t notice Block’s classes were having that much of an effect, that the new shape had.

  Dove’s acquaintance, Pallas, is in the boathouse. Dove’s mention of canoe availability leaves Pallas torn between glee and a distrust of novelty. Pallas and a partner do maintenance surveys on waterways, work for the Lug-gesith, and have been sharing a canoe with another survey team. Dove watches Pallas reduce to paralytic indecision before saying “There isn’t any magic in it.”

  “None whatsoever,” Wake confirms from where Wake and the boathouse clerk have been discussing getting some kneeling pads made. The translation from string to centimetres is going far more smoothly on Wake’s side of the conversation.

  “Then why’s it metal?” Pallas’ partner, newly arrived. Lots of muscle definition.

  There’s an “Ed, Celandine, Cel, Edgar,” introduction from Pallas that surprises me. I do my best to look pleased and collected.

  “It’s metal because we had some, and nobody’s got a spare regular canoe nor will they until long after Halt wants to take us through a swamp.” Dove gets slow nods from this. Arguing with Halt is widely understood as impractical, and it’s not like you want to walk through a swamp.

  “So, cold, but not very heavy and as strong as Dove thinks it needs to be?”

  Dove’s head shakes, a firm no, almost emphatic. “Stronger, and heavier, than Dove thinks it needs to be.” Dove’s chin lifts. “Wake would they were stronger.”

  That’s supposed to imply something, I can see the little twitches. Presumably that Wake isn’t dead, somewhere past three times the age of the Peace Established.

  “Still drink beer?” Pallas’ tone is too offhand.

  “When I get the chance.”

  “Figure they’ll let you loose for Festival?”

  Dove shrugs one shoulder. “Déci implies Festival.”

  Pallas grins. “See if you can find us. Bring the likely lad.”

  Dove grins back, slaps hands with Pallas, and says “Deal.”

  We’re most of the way to dinner when Wake, who is looking an especially pleased sort of benevolent, remarks that Creeks will apparently forgive sorcery for utility.

  Takes me most of dinner to figure out what Wake meant.

  Chapter 25

  The next morning, we’re just starting our breathing exercises, no running backwards or Power manipulation yet, when Halt shows up with a severed head.

  It’s higher than Halt is tall; it’s at least four times longer than high. It looks more like it’s made out of sculptured metal than anything like flesh, school mentioned some things that had a lot of metal in their scales, but this looks like a single smooth thing. Doesn’t look like skin, it looks like steel got so angry it flowed into a hungry shape.

  Block makes the gesture that pauses the class, turns, makes a short bow at Halt, straightens, makes a narrow head-shake no. Blossom’s head shakes no, too. And the Captain’s.

  Doesn’t look like a herbivore. Can’t imagine what it’s supposed to eat. What do you need eight-metre jaws for? Even if you were a herbivore? Huge trees?

  “Was that in Split Creek?” Zora sounds happy, which is not what you’d expect from Zora presented with a severed head.

  Halt nods.

  “Did it have any legs?”

  “Six,” Halt says. “These are known?”

  “There are stories,” Zora says. “Most of them say Split Creek wells up from a place outside the world where fates are recorded, and there’s a bunch of things like that in the well, chewing on the dull fates.”

  Halt nods to Zora, pokes the head almost irritably. The ferrule of Halt’s stick doesn’t leave a mark on it. “Thank you.”

  “The ones with no legs are supposed to be much worse.” Zora sounds shy.

  Both Halt’s eyebrows go up. “This one conducted itself appallingly.” Halt says that to the sky, or the severed head, and not very loudly. Halt turns to look at the Captain, who is looking searchingly back.

  “Many sheep, three brave sheepdogs, some barns, several hundred metres of roadway, six bridges, a quantity of chickens, and a hitch of oxen, but no persons. It chased chickens obsessively.”

  Gave the people time to run, comes clear to me, I don’t know to who else. Looks like Block, who has an incrementally grimmer look.

  The Captain nods, once, looks at Blossom. Blossom looks tired. Blossom is tired.

  “Fifteen days to the next round of weeding, Captain. Weeding, swamp trip, call it a décade if it works. Not less than three décades after that.”

  “Swamp trip?” The Captain’s voice is calm, tone polite. I can feel Dove tensing. Something about this is serious.

  “Essential ingredient. I need Grue, I need Wake, we’ll be too busy to worry about the perimeter, so Halt. Can’t leave the students unsupervised.” Blossom says all of this is the same recitation-of-facts voice.

  Zora looks somewhat offended at ‘unsupervised’. Or maybe ‘students’, Blossom says it the way you’d say ‘kids’, your kids, your cousin’s kids. Dove’s will puts a map of the West Wetcreek across all our minds, bracketed by the patches of a hundred-fifty square kilometres at a time where we killed all of something. We really did; weeding teams have been sending complimentary thankful messages since before we got back. Longer lists to Wake for the second pass in fifteen days, too.

  Zora sort of nods, not physically, I don’t think, Zora’s behind me, I can’t actually see, but the acknowledgement is there. Nothing at all says we couldn’t do that to people, as a matter of capability.

  The Captain doesn’t, not that I can tell, move, do anything, but Blossom grins. It’s a rueful grin. “Everyone in the shot shop’s busy as can be. Put them on pointy sticks and it stops being three décades.”

  “While the dread of my name could not begin to claim the tenth part of the shadow of the shadow of the rumour of the dread of Halt’s due and insufficient harbinger,” Block says, in cheerful calm observational tones, “I may perhaps prove dread enough.”

  It makes the Captain look, not calmer, less tense isn’t always calmer. The troops around the Captain, still looking a bit scuffed, they look calmer. Halt’s looking entirely pleased.

  I think Block’s plenty dread enough. We’ve been sprinting uphill backward with big rough sacks full of wet sand over our shoulders.

  After we got back from weeding, Block’s taken to tossing shapes and patterns of energy at us while we’re sprinting, some of them have duration, they go on for ten or fifteen seconds and change while they do it. Somewhere in the middle of today’s round of that, Dove thinks No one has any armour. It’s an explanation for the sacks of sand, not ours, the on
es the Line recruits have been carrying while exercising.

  Dove’s got armour, it’s on a stand in Dove’s room. Blossom’s got armour, the Captain’s got amour, I’m pretty sure the Line troops who go critter-team have armour, too.

  Short company, very short after spines and ichor. Trying to raise a battalion. Not enough, it’s all fitted.

  Block doesn’t object to us talking; Block doesn’t object to us talking out loud. Any lapses in concentration hurt, it’s not likely to be lasting damage, Grue gets complicated when you ask about that, but catching Block’s notion of energy packets with the Power is something you really want to do.

  This one tries to wiggle on me, they’ve started doing that, you get the front of it and it folds up and tries to splash on you. Sphere isn’t a thought, anymore, it’s just a reflex, and there’s a smell like leaning into something completely solid and it’s not the energy Block threw anymore. I have to throw something on, but I don’t have to throw what Block threw. Zora looks relieved. Zora’s been having to work at keeping up with Block’s class.

  It’s bothering Dove, no armour for the new battalion. Brings it up when we’re walking to the pre-lunch sluicing. Doesn’t want to suppose Blossom will be at lunch.

  “Captain Blossom?” Dove doesn’t do deferential questions, and this one isn’t, but it’s more of a real question than Dove usually manages.

  Blossom goes right on looking tired. “Nothing to do except answer questions from the shot shop until you’re all done weeding.” Blossom doesn’t weed; something like that critter Halt showed up with the head of, yes, reported very good at that, but in general, no. Halt says “No capacity for subtlety,” Wake says, Chloris asked, “Creativity is not desirable in all things,” and pretty much everybody who isn’t an ancient terror of the world says things like “I would have sworn on my name that couldn’t possibly burn.”

  There’s, well, not precisely cake, something involving a lot of carrot preserves between two layers of sticky gingerbread, with lunch. One of those things where you suspect someone of wanting the jars the carrot preserves were in more than the carrot preserves, but it’s good. Sticky, amazingly sticky, but good. We’re all working on our second slabs when Blossom says, apparently to the air, “No iron, no steel foundry, no rolling mill, no annealing ovens, and two-thousand-plus to fit in fifteen days.”