A Succession of Bad Days
Page 52
Wake’s ward drops. A certain wariness drops away from Wake’s countenance with the ward.
Dove and Chloris are soaked through with sweat. They’re fine, happy, grinning, Dove’s making hug noises in our head, but Dove has to use both hands on a five litre water can and I need to help Chloris hold one, too wobbly otherwise.
Five litres of water and a litre mug of something cold and very red each, mug and contents apparently plucked out of the air by Wake, Dove’s enough back to a social presence to go Sorry, Ed, and have a wordless discussion the sum of which from my side is no, really, it’s fine, lots of sky, which is all true, it’s got an aurora it didn’t used to have, but that’s fading, I can manage the larger loop.
I wind up squatting down so I can lean my forehead on Dove’s, each of us with arms around the other’s shoulders. Chloris is not precisely helping to hold us steady, the thought’s definitely there but Chloris’ more ready to fall flat than Dove. Spook’s reappeared from whatever corner of Chloris’ internal landscape Spook lurks in and is making a combination of querulous noises and purrbucketing attempts, mostly directed at Chloris.
By the time I’ve stood up they’re both down flat, holding hands with their inside arms. It takes Spook awhile to give up attempts to lie on their arms and drape over Chloris. Not precisely asleep or sleepy but both drifting. Not drifting so much they don’t both smile when Block bows at them, deep enough to be formal, and says “That is the correct technique.”
“Edgar, throwing you into the sky is not meant literally,” Blossom says, “not even by Halt, but it would be a good thing if we can try to get you through a similar experience.”
Wake and Block share a look. I nod at Blossom, think the look is about how Halt’s metaphor would be less unsettling for them if it didn’t seem like that’s exactly what happened, I try not to think about it but my brain won’t let me entirely ignore just how few sorcerers could treat melting a hole through the ancient rock of the hills as the day’s work.
“Dove’s really tired,” is all I manage to say before Blossom says to me, “Any spillover through your consonance or the working link should be helpful,” and “Dove, Chloris, as soon as you start to think you might be feeling uncomfortable, complain,” to them in a voice that pushes Dove’s attention together enough to say Captain, like it’s time to die.
Doing push-hands with Blossom leaves me with the impression I’m exercising with a cheerfully polite landslide. It works, landslide or not; about my size, those who look fourteen to Creeks, immensely fine control, I’m safe, safe from Blossom doing anything accidental, and Blossom’s easy to balance with, surprisingly easy.
Goddess of Destruction isn’t a joke, even though the worship comes from the lingering dead. Blossom isn’t angry as a fundamental trait of character, not a mistake in the Independent process, truly believes in and upholds the Peace. Somewhere down in Blossom’s core character, there’s this rending crash, just the same.
An inheritance of infuriating organization, Blossom says, entirely cheerful. Blossom’s disk is white, not shades of white, it’s utterly uncomplicated. Skilled, would be ‘The Enchanter’ in hushed and fearful tones if this wasn’t the Commonweal, if Blossom didn’t have Halt to stand beside, but it really isn’t complicated inside Blossom. Things fly apart, a universe of lumpy energies and implacable odds, anywhere the Power and a living will hasn’t found them.
I’m complicated, it’s not darkness, it’s not the shadow-limbs of something we pretend are spiders, it’s whatever I pretend is water in the Sunless Sea. It’s cold and it’s ancient and it doesn’t belong in the green world. It’s not all the same cold, it’s not even the same ancient, there are layers and currents and so many slow changes.
Old Lake’s the most water I’ve ever seen and it’s not deep, not geologically deep, not the kind of water that lays down a vertical kilometre of limestone over some millions of years. The Sunless Sea goes down, maybe forever, only I don’t believe in forever. All things come in time to die.
Man is the augmentation of dust, school said that’s been found in a lot of languages, it was a proverb in every language that people spoke when they came together in the Commonweal. Never mind which wizard’s done the augmenting, since, time and mistakes and sunlight are enough to make people out of dust, the dust of dead stars, we’ve known that for two hundred years.
Dust in water, the sea is deep, the sea is dark, dust in water falls slow, but it falls, sediment into rock into mountains into slow dust in the water again.
Gravity’s a weak force.
Gravity’s a slow force.
If anything exists, there is gravity.
Sediment falls slow, but there is always dust in dark water, building the world.
Only one disk. Blossom’s left enough energy in it to sparkle against the darkness.
The Power feels like it has mass.
It does, Blossom says, you think it does. Just like Chloris’ illusory furniture.
Going to take hours to spin down. Air-bearings, mustn’t giggle. If it’s what I think it is, it’s incipient rock. It shouldn’t be spinning, it shouldn’t be under the…fluid, in the Sunless Sea, it’s this-world stuff, only slightly metaphorical, it ought to be under the back garden, holding up the form of Edgar.
It is, it’s still and solid and something’s different about the circulation with Dove, not wrong, not simpler, not unstable, I don’t need to worry about it. Dove’s smiling at me, entirely tender smile, not Dove’s usual grin. I think I manage a real smile back. Dove’s sitting up. Chloris is stretched out, head in Dove’s lap, I’m not sure Chloris is awake, Spook’s half-sunk through Chloris’ ribs, tail over nose.
I’m soaked. Kinda wobbly, not all that bad, I can pick up my water can myself and stay standing. Definite success.
Blossom’s produced a towel from somewhere, drying head and hair with vigorous motions.
“I’d say you three have the afternoon off.”
Wake nods. Block, Block laughs. Out loud. Long enough that it trails off into chortles.
Then Block bows at me. I bow back, hopefully without too much wobble.
“Remember us, all of you, remember us from the shining sky,” Block says.
I may look quizzical, I certainly feel quizzical. Dove’s expression narrows, there’s a faint muzzy sense of confusion from Chloris.
“After this, I cannot teach you,” Block says. “Advice, knowledge, I will share gladly, but — ” the angle of Block’s body, the shifted shape of stance, indicates Wake — “if I must call the great master of wards and barriers to attend your exercises, I cannot teach you.”
“A lot of Power,” Dove says, not upset, that’s Dove’s thinking kind of quiet.
“A very great deal,” Wake says, nodding.
“You feed on each other,” Blossom says. “You feed on each other and you’re brave and it’s not so much you’re being flung into the sky anymore as you’ve started climbing, walking up the air.”
“Is our control sufficient?” It doesn’t matter how much Power, it really doesn’t. It matters that the directing will has a firm purpose for all of it.
“I have no knowledge of tomorrow,” Wake says, “but today? Chloris’ control was graceful and impeccable, Dove’s confident and entire, and yours, Edgar, was absolute.” There’s a strange cast to Wake’s benevolence.
Block and Blossom are nodding, not quite together.
Blossom takes us back through town, endures a rather terse exchange with the refectory manager, who is happy to send us off with lunch and not at all happy with our perceived state of overwork, and gets us, floating Chloris once we’re over the bridge across the West Wetcreek, back to the Round House.
“Plunk yourselves in the tub,” Blossom says, after making sure we actually eat lunch. “If I don’t see you at dinner I’m going to send Halt.” I nod, Dove says “Mean,” with a grin, and Chloris snorts into a just-empty tea mug. Third big mug of wood lettuce tea.
Chapter 37
Doesn’t help with my uneasy feeling. I can’t even tell if the feeling is about Zora, or something else. Lots of sorcerer-stuff got easier after the circulation exercise, we’ve achieved the first of the seven things required of Independents, the sufficient quantity of Power.
We, except for Zora.
The problem, if I’m understanding what Halt means, I’m sure I’m understanding what Halt says but it’s not quite the same, is that Zora’s metaphysical brain necessarily grew, changed, expanded, there isn’t a specific verb for ‘met the challenge by restructuring itself’, moving all that forest up in Morning Vale, dealing with at least the idea of millions of names. That’s, generally, a good thing, much better than flubbing a working and vastly better than flubbing that particular working, any working on that kind of scale.
The bad thing is that Zora’s physical brain didn’t change. It can, that’s one of the reasons to teach us shape-shifting as soon as we could learn it, to let the metaphysical brain change the physical brain, our physical brain structure’s still the, Grue says, Dominant substrate, the thing that we’re using most of the time.
“Less and less,” Halt says, “as it should be”.
Right now, still what we’re using to talk to people and walk around and generally function, we’ve started being entirely in our metaphysical minds when we’re handling large amounts of the Power, this is, all three present teachers are clear, just what should be happening, but we’ve got to shift back to the meat-brain the rest of the time. Which is fine as long as it keeps up, reflects what the metaphysical brain becomes, and then Zora’s reflexive shape-shift restored a brain ‘suitable to previous challenges’. It’d been hurt in the first place because the new organization, structure, of the metaphysical brain involved assumptions about the physical, and those were wrong, the working pushed Power through Zora’s physical brain, Zora’s whole body, it’s not at all purely a brain thing, in damaging ways.
Makes me wonder if you want a physical brain for anything, once you’re an Independent.
“Facial recognition, social cues, physical sensations, proprioception,” Grue says. “Works fine if you stick to one brain organization per shape, label them, keep track. Lots of evolution in a brain.”
Clerk Hyacinth’s spoon ticks distinctly on a plate. The Clerk looks at Grue and says “Is this a refectory conversation?”
Grue says “Why not?” just before Blossom says “Workings of our trade. The kids discuss melting rock by the thousand tonnes, it’s less concerning than having us mutter about this stuff in private.”
Kids, gets Blossom identical severe looks from Dove and Chloris; Blossom raises both hands and looks abashed, just for a second before Blossom grins at them. Hyacinth, an amiable matronly sort whose neck and wrists show considerable muscle definition, translates that more easily than I do as ‘kids’ meaning family members of a later generation, not the objectionable ’not adult'.
Someone going by catches Hyacinth’s eye and says “We like knowing what else we’re worried about,” and keeps going, hands full of pickle-caddies.
“A tradition of aloof sorcerers need not constrain the future,” Halt says, somehow in a combination of perfect grandma voice and utter ruthless certainty. “The aloof isn’t good for the sorcerers.”
Clerk Hyacinth’s doing well. That much determination from Halt makes, is making, Blossom a little uneasy, and Hyacinth’s maintaining a proper professionally disinterested clerkly face. Though I suppose I can only tell Blossom’s uneasy because we’ve been linked up.
Makes me wonder what clerk school is like.
Makes me wonder what Blossom expects, Dove says.
Maybe Blossom’s got the same sense of incipient dread I do. If it’s really dread. It might be dread when it gets here.
Explaining the details takes longer than lunch, we wind up walking toward the hospital in a clump, but the basic idea is simple. Zora needs to shape-shift to a different physical brain, that’s not something Zora knows how to do on purpose, none of us do. There’s a tendency to have it happen, if we’re ‘conscious of novelty’, is how Halt puts it. Zora didn’t realize the sheer scale of names would make something so much harder, that the risk, having cognitive substrates out of step with each other like that, needed to be addressed.
Not that Zora had any trouble doing the work, Blossom points that out, we’re all nodding. The tunnel and the canal-turn from the stream down from Sad Goat Lake involved more Power, there wasn’t any indication Zora was under strain when the forest was moving, that’s probably the problem, Zora thought it was easy because it seemed easy.
It’s not legal for anyone else to rearrange Zora’s brain. There’s no question that Zora’s sane, competent, and legally adult. Practically, it’s almost impossible to do in a way that doesn’t badly constrain future ability with the Power. You tend to get stuck where you’re put, and that’s not even a temporary solution, we’re learning fast enough that it might not last the month, Grue says. A good trade for someone with some troubling madness and regular or even stable amounts of talent. Ornate murder in Zora’s case.
What works, if anything works, is to connect the person up to someone with sufficient shapeshifting ability, “Any able sorcerer,” Halt says, which is not an accurate description of Grue on the subject of shapeshifting. Grue says ‘more than fifteen species is hard,’ about turning into a cloud of dragonflies, something done for fun, because it’s a nice sunny day worth enjoying better.
Halt can make the connection, it takes Halt because Zora’s strong, the person doing the connection has to be stronger, as much stronger as you can get, but also subtle enough.
The way Hyacinth nods, Halt might be the only Independent who could do this for Zora. Nobody could do it for Dove.
Or you, comes to me with half a smile and all of sunrise.
Blossom’s there to turn off the enchanted sleep in a controlled way, to backstop Halt and lend power to Grue.
None of that’s the problem.
“Let us take as given that Zora’s present capacity to exercise choice is only very slightly greater than that which obtains for the dead; that no one would not wish to see Zora’s entire capacities restored; and that the proposed course of treatment is that least likely to render the situation worse.”
Hyacinth’s got a definite voice. I’d expect the walls are thick enough, we’re in discussion room in a corner of the hospital’s third floor, at least one side’s storage, not patients. Plaster over brick, no door, but four bead curtains down the entrance hall.
“I am here in an official capacity to investigate formal complaints of overworking apprentices, all three of you present and certainly including Zora. Since those responsible for your training, and thus the overwork, were overwork to be found, are those who propose to provide Zora with an opportunity to magically alter Zora’s own mind, there is an unresolved conflict of interest.”
We’re blinking in unison. Pretty sure Hyacinth notices. Blinking’s not as obvious as talking in incidental eerie unison, but it unsettles some people.
“The phrase bicker like cousins appeared in several of the letters.” Clerks aren’t supposed to smile when they’re working, so I suppose this is something else, even if it was rapid. “Concerns that you are collapsing into a hive mind are slight.”
Hyacinth does the Clerk paper-tapping thing, not to straighten the edges, it’s the dry end of a pen going down a list of points.
“Concerns that you are rarely seen sitting down, as distinct from collapsed in heaps, that you arrive to the refectory in haste, that you miss meals, that when you do sho
w up it’s even odds you’ll be nearly late, seriously muddy, covered in black burnt metal dust, drenched, sometimes in sweat, or so tired you’re giddy.”
Hyacinth looks up. “Further, there’s what I can only call a consensus among the Line recruits that the minimum honesty required of them as good Creeks compels an admission that they couldn’t possibly have survived the drills you did with Block.”
A specific letter is picked up, there’s that brief moment of finding where the part you want starts, and Hyacinth says, in a voice for quotations, “They grin about it, and run uphill backwards juggling spectral fire. It’s the fun part of their day.”
The letter gets set down.
“The existing consensus that sorcery is dangerous and that the young have no sense about risk does not appreciate being expected to add juggling spectral fire as the fun part of your day.” You’d almost think Hyacinth thinks that’s funny.
“Hardly fire,” Dove says.
Hyacinth looks at Dove, medium sternly.
“Not all energy is fire,” Dove says. “Not even when it sparkles.”
“Overwork is when you get weaker.” Chloris says this with the authority of the formal legal definition it is, that everyone learns in school. “When you go back the next day and you do less and worse, because everything hurts and you ache and your muscles haven’t recovered.”
Hyacinth nods, formal as a judge.
“None of what we’ve done was overwork, none it was close to overwork, the armour foci hurt, but we got stronger. If we weren’t worried about all those people, the canal would have been fun. Parts of it were fun anyway.” Chloris sounds worried, a little, all those people. We’ve been seeing the barges go through Westcreek, turning into the West East Canal. Maybe forty people to a barge, by the time they get to Morning Vale the barge is going to need five tonnes’ load for each of them, mostly food.