“Maintain?” Chloris says, leaning down to pet the shade of a feline head draped over Chloris’ knee. The shade is sitting on both Chloris’ feet, and the heavy tail coils around the back of Chloris’ legs up and behind the ocelotter’s own neck.
“The legal meaning obliges you to provide good care, as you would for any domestic animal,” Wake says. “Such a ghost requires instead your presence.”
“For the Power leakage?” Chloris doesn’t really think this is a question.
“Sustenance against fading,” Wake says, “but social focus, some living person to be an anchor against dissolution, is entirely as important.”
Chloris goes quiet, thoughtful quiet, then reaches down again, a single finger extended. The ocelotter raises its head to meet the tip of Chloris’ finger with its pale shimmery nose.
“Is your name Spook?” Chloris asks, and there’s an emphatic sequence of head-thumps into Chloris’ hand which somehow becomes gleeful wriggling in response to a tummy rub. There’s an actual sound, a faint, faint sound, of tail on rocks.
“Edgar?” Halt says, it’s not any different from how Halt usually says things, quiet things.
I reach out, just a little. Dove’s always there, I could lose the inside of my skull and not lose Dove. Chloris, a tiny sparkle of kitten, Zora, a rustle of leaves dreaming all the names of trees, my own strange darkness and a silence like a dim ocean. Dove’s awareness lifting out of reverie, fire and four distant horn notes, faint and clear and terrible as joy.
“The Power isn’t supposed to take you good places.” Or it wouldn’t be the Bad Old Days. I hardly sound like myself, to myself, this isn’t, wasn’t, really my voice, only it is.
“Death is easy, help is hard. Power sets you apart. Power gives you a single name, a single shape, everyone fears you. Loneliness will drive anyone crazy. Hurt makes you savage.”
Halt, it’s something in your spine, starts having us hand the plates back, collecting the cake plates and handing them back round with second slices. Halt looks entirely pleased.
“We can’t be lonely. We can’t lie to each other, we can’t lie to ourselves very well, you haven’t taught us warding. Warding has to come naturally from in-the-head sorcery, you’ve got to be trying not to cook your brain. Only we can’t, we don’t know how.” Either way.
Spook’s nose doesn’t, quite, it’s very close, touch the loop, grey-gold-green-purple-black-scarlet-white-mauve, running round the sphere of warmth. It’s not enough Power to do anything, it’s barely enough photons to see, but it’s so easy. Didn’t have to think, didn’t have to ask, it’s a reflex. We all know the others are there. Always, the others always there.
“No one would believe it could work. Blossom doesn’t, yet, Grue’s been grieving for Zora since, since, you have to be thousands of years old and whole to believe it. It’s obvious from that far back, up, the perspective.”
I think they’ve got to where they’ve started us, sorta. Their metaphysical part’s so large and so tough it’s equivalent to manipulating Power outside yourself, the amount’s not a worry.
Only they got there by not making a mistake for a thousand years.
Not sure enough to say that out loud.
I stop, take a forkful of cake, another.
“Edgar.” Zora’s doing a pretty fair stern. “What is obvious?”
“Dove, dear?” Halt says.
The loop of Power spins, looping through the stones, the air, it doesn’t matter, around the sphere of warmth, rotates, splits into four small loops, one landing on each of our heads. Spook stretches up, not batting, but trying to put a paw on the loop settling on Chloris’ head.
“I asked Ed awhile back if you ever stopped being an Independent.”
Halt nods, the spider nods, I think even the thing behind the spider is pleased. Don’t think it could nod if it wanted, even if you don’t need bones.
Zora’s looking quizzical, Chloris has a hat made of ghost-cat. It would never work if Spook had real mass, but Spook’s looking triumphant and Chloris is looking, flickering between, oppressed and indulgent.
Halt raises an eyebrow at Zora, says “Think, child; some told answers are useless.”
Zora sort of pats the power-circlet, and sprouts great gauzy wings, truly iridescent ones. Lines and flickers of red and silver slide over them, dimly. Zora sighs. With just my eyes, it’s too dark to see faces.
“My mother says garden is an intransigent verb, it’s got more past and more future than you do.”
Another sigh. “Edgar’s saying we’re, all of us, we’re all the garden if we’re individuals.”
Chloris manages a stern look, and Spook stops licking Chloris’ nose.
“Different depths of soil.”
Chloris really doesn’t sound hopeful.
“Your fellows cannot mirror death.” Wake’s voice is entirely calm, entirely human, full of not mere benevolence but peace.
“If you believe anything I tell you,” Wake says, specifically to Chloris, “believe that you are mighty enough.”
Chloris nods, picks up the second slice of cake, picks up the fork, waits for the ghost cat to settle.
“Enchanters aren’t usually dangerous, are they? Regular enchanters are people like Ongen, not people like Blossom.” Chloris sounds sad.
Wake nods, Blossom nods, smiling, Halt just smiles.
“Enchantment’s all subtlety.” Dove says this slowly. Not out of doubt, not uncertain, Dove hasn’t got much attention to use for talking. Something about what Halt said, what I said, I don’t know, almost all of Dove is returned to thinking. It’s, it’s a bit like watching a fire try to turn itself into the best gears.
“Or Power.” Chloris, hand stopped on the ghostly head of the ocelotter kitten. “Blossom can do things just because of strength. We can do things, the armour foci, those worked that way because we could all stack and throw Power at the problem, it wasn’t elegant at all.”
Halt’s face tips, a look over glasses toward Chloris. Just a little, ‘Don’t stop there’, not ‘Are you sure?’
“It’s all been good things, useful things,” Chloris says. “Difficult things,” comes out in a voice full of thinking.
“That’s not by accident, Chloris dear,” Halt says. “It won’t always be true but we’d rather you thought it was usual.”
Chloris nods, and acquires a lap full of offended ocelotter. Offended ocelotter that at least fell cleanly through Chloris’ cake plate.
Halt takes the watch.
“I didn’t paddle, and this — ” the thing full of orange yarn — “isn’t going to knit itself”, Halt says.
Dove’s warm. The shelter’s only opaque from the outside. I don’t understand how that works but it’s not difficult to do if you’ve got Halt to teach you how. It’s not cold enough to bundle up, we just lie there and look at the stars for a little while.
It’s, the idea, it’s turning into yourself all the time, that’s the end, condition, not a state, you’re always turning into yourself, not some ideal of a sorcerer.
You sound like me.
You worry about what the job is, I worry about how to do it. There’s a little bit of a glow, opaque from the outside or not, Dove smiling photons at the shelter bounces some of them.
Call it a habit, Dove says. A fixed habit of turning into yourself.
Can you imagine anyone more Wake-like than Wake? Halt is sort of a given, and Grue and Blossom, it’s more like they’ve got a head start. It’s a long head start, but I don’t think they’re there yet.
No Dove says. Question is whether I can imagine someone more Dove-like than me.
Chapter 29
Usually it takes me a minute or two to wake up. This morning, I’m about half into the first minute when I’m awake, because Dove has gone from completely asleep to entirely awake in no noticeable time.
Wild boar bacon, Dove says, getting up. I try to catch up.
Blossom’s cooking breakfast. We experience doubt; Blossom c
ooked dinner. It couldn’t still be Blossom’s turn.
“I like camp cooking,” Blossom says.
Cooking, cooking for fellow-sorcerers, even us, cooking outside on a pile of rocks in the wilderness. Using the Power isn’t going to upset anybody or burn down any kitchens. It makes sense.
Breakfast is amazing.
Dinner was good, but breakfast is amazing.
Eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, sweet preserved cherries, and a huge pot, one of the canning pots, of some astringent tea that’s safe for all and has an odd substance to it, the stuff almost has gravity. It sounds sort of nice, in a ‘the refectory figures everyone’s doing heavy lifting today’ way, but it was just incredible. Wild boar bacon makes the regular kind seem bland, the eggs, I don’t know how you improve eggs but Blossom does, it’s all really exceptional. Blossom can make sure all the potato slices fry perfectly, it’s astonishing. No frying pan, either.
Chloris is carefully not fussing. Blossom smiles, and says “The bacon was a thank-you for — ” and there’s an illusion, a hollow one, just the outline, of a set of gears, huge gears, I think it’s the stepper gears for a big air compressor, all helical cut and the main gear, the feed off the water wheel, probably a turbine, it looks like it’s three metres across. “Lots of water power up in the Corner, lots of staying in and working time, they were really glad to get something that supports more factory space.”
Chloris nods. “It’s, just.”
“Expensive?”
“Unfair,” Chloris says. “It’s something special you get for putting up with living in the Corner.”
Blossom nods. “Not a fun place.”
Blossom’s doing something with dough and oil and squinting, deep frying in the air. Doesn’t use much oil at all, and the results get rolled in sugar. Well, roll, in a cloud of sugar.
We all say thank you.
I have three; Dove has five.
Spook was very disappointed not to get a doughnut. Three ghost-fish, I can’t tell if Chloris makes them out of nothing, illusions, or if they really are fish-ghosts pulled out of the stream, but either way Spook devours them with a mix of glee and growling.
It’s such an amazing breakfast I’m expecting a dire day.
Doesn’t start that way.
Halt’s still knitting, Halt’s paying focused attention to the process of knitting, muttering along with it. I get to eleven needles, five of them moving, and stop counting and look at something that’s not doing that to my mind.
Wake’s not muttering, Wake’s got some kind of compound pendulum and a slab of clay to take notes on. Not the first slab. Certainly not just gravity acting on the pendulum, you can see, I can see, it takes paying attention, the Power getting involved.
“There’s a pause,” Grue says, looking entirely cheerful not quite in the usual manic way. “Wake’s looking for where we’re going, Blossom’s got the perimeter, Halt’s — ” Grue visibly thinks about word choice — “taking advantage of not being interrupted, we get to pack up and then I get to show you an essential Independent skill.”
Packing’s a lot easier when you can make the shelters cease to exist. We get everything bundled back up, well, Blossom does the cooking gear and it just vanishes back into Blossom’s cruncher-hide saddle case. Going to be handy if we’ve got any portages ahead.
“Kinda sticky, right?” Grue says, after we’re looking around, convinced we’ve got everything stacked by the canoes. And that the paddles are still there. There are animals, and some critters, that sneak up and steal the paddles for the sweat-salt soaked into them. Wake’s ward might have thought them no more dangerous than an ocelotter ghost.
There’s general agreement that we’re pretty sticky. Wiping down with a washcloth has definite limits, even without a day of paddling.
“It took,” Grue says, “a couple hundred years to get some of the old ones to stop being indifferent to smelling like the place rancid went to die. And while dirt is forbidden Halt, and Wake sends it to its doom, I can at least help you not start any bad habits.”
“You — ” Grue means all four of us, all the students — “will immediately think of pulling five or six tonnes of water out of the stream, sterilizing it, heating it, and providing yourselves with illusory showers.”
“If Wake hadn’t told us to avoid using the Power,” Zora says, illusory baths hovering not very far back in Zora’s thoughts.
“That would bother anyone’s dowsing,” Grue says. “More than having Blossom and Halt in the same township.” Grue smiles. “There is another way.”
We wind up with little spheres of sterile pure water, maybe a litre each, and moving them a very specific way, it’s not imagining a container, it’s imposing on the motion of every water molecule. I can get the water to turn into a whirling approximation of gloves. It’s got something to do with knowing where my skin is, it’s really hard to explain but not very hard to do.
It would have been impossible if we’d started moving stuff like that, but thinking at an angle has been getting easier with practice.
“Got it?” Grue says, it’s not much of a question, it’s obvious that we have.
“Next, toss your clothes in a heap, make it five litres of water, add a bit of soap.”
It’s not a shower, but it works. And you can really rinse, no soap-sticky after the second round of rinse water.
Our clothes aren’t sticky. Our clothes are utterly clean. Grue makes a head-tip at Blossom, Blossom grins at us. “Wake’s tricks — ” translate that out of Independent, it’s things Wake’s either invented or is especially good at — “are either quiet or,” and stops, leaving us to remember the world, the world we were standing on, vanishing and reappearing in great ringing noiseless crashes, the Power as a whole rung like a gong.
We say thank you, a distracted one from Chloris and Zora, they’re still fighting with their hair. Grue’s offering helpful instruction, not tangling hair this way is tricky, “Unless you’ve got nerves in your hair,” Grue says, horrifying them. Me, too.
Zora gets this look of mad glee, and pulls water out of untangling hair which divides and braids itself, the individual plaits sorted neatly by colour. Those four braids do something complex, looped together and wound round Zora’s head.
The sphere of extracted water floats lower, Zora’s attention isn’t really on it, and Spook’s whole curious head gets stuck in it. So then it’s a sphere of water with vast magnified ghostly cat eyes. Spook’s ears do something, looks like folding into covers.
It’s not like I didn’t know someone made ocelotters. Still mildly creepy to watch.
Wake stands up, packs up the pendulum. Blossom and Grue head over to where Wake was, Wake hands Grue one of the clay tablets, heads over to where we’re standing by the canoes.
Halt hasn’t stopped knitting, I didn’t see the chair move, but Halt’s over by us, by the canoes, closer to the water, and whatever the current knitting is, it’s different, it’s not whatever it was that had all the orange and complexity.
Chloris’ hair is done up much more simply than Zora’s, but it’s still braided and head-wrapped.
You want all your hair under your hat. Dove, filling in something else I don’t know about living in the Creeks. Bug net won’t stay snug, otherwise.
Right, no ward when we’re moving over water. Bugs. Probably at least medium-grim bugs. Not likely to give us diseases Grue can’t handle.
“Wake?” Chloris doesn’t sound tentative, but that’s an act of will.
“I understand, I think I understand, the idea is to never stop turning into yourself as a sorcerer.”
Wake nods.
“How do we, how do I, how do I know I’m turning into something good?” Chloris is terrified, saying this. You couldn’t tell, looking with eyes, but it comes through the working link like screaming.
“Being good is not a wise course,” Wake says.
“I should not care to see you set out to do good, either.” Wake makes a sit, sit motion.
Wake sits cross-legged on a rock. Chloris creates a giant cushion of a chair, I sit on a rock. Dove just sort of sinks down. Zora makes this ornate thing, taller than Zora’s standing height, the back is kinda like a small version of the peacock feathers in the Round House top floor ceiling.
“The consequences of defeat are permanent; the consequences of victory persist until the next defeat.” Wake says this conversationally.
“So with good; what you do that is good persists until the next evil. This is very simple, if you can reliably decide what is good. Good would be a struggle to create a series of victories as little broken as you might arrange.”
Put that way, struggle is mild.
“Each of you may live a long time; each of you is of significant strength. You could do good, if you could judge all the consequences of what you might do. Yet the world is immense; a full understanding of consequence is direly difficult to obtain, even should you live for thousands of years to see how what you have done works on the world, and yet good remains a judgement.”
Same as not building in the flood plain. Simple rule. Figuring out where the flood plain really is, for the flood you don’t get every ten years but every thousand, that’s hard to do. If you pick everywhere it might be, you don’t leave yourself much farmland.
“Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can, act to remove constraint from the future. This is a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together. Sorcerers are not made free of a need for their fellows; much of the lamentation of history derives from attempts to be safe despite that need.”
Wake sort of gathers into some more absolute version of Wake.
“Remember that the least constrained future anyone has yet managed prefers the rule of law to the whims of wizards.”
Not going to forget that. Wake’s usual presence, the impression that this is a pleasant man, skilled in crafts, is real, but it’s something made. That whole sentence didn’t have any usual in front of it.
It makes me shake.
Dove and I wind up leaning on each other. It’s, it’s not wrong, it’s, it’s really Wake’s best advice. Things Wake really means, it’s like entropy decided to talk to you.
A Succession of Bad Days Page 38