A Succession of Bad Days

by Graydon Saunders

  “Entelech-the-word used to mean something that made you all yourself, or all itself, a thing done its becoming.” Something you learn in school, about poetry in a language much, much younger than the Power. Still hesitant saying it. “The use for the Power that can compel anything’s taken that one over, well, and understanding selection.” You can’t really talk about the entelechy of the oak trees anymore, doesn’t work outside good poetry. “School talks about it like a disease, a fatal condition.”

  “No widespread talent, dear; any entelech would live. Not today, not for a long while.” Halt, on the whole, Halt approves.

  Not much difference, well, no, honesty, an infant entelech would be better and more thorough and unfixable mind, not even mind control, Do thou all my desire is a simple declarative sentence. Mind obliteration, mind replacement, as few other weeds achieve.

  The parasite saved my life.

  “Possibly twice,” Halt says. “Your exercise of the Power grew to feed the parasite.”

  So I started trying to learn sorcery with much better access to the Power.

  “You could keep up.” Halt reaches over, pats my, oh, shoulder? back? something, there have to be words. “Which, well, you’ve got that lovely multiplicative effect, sure to be useful. That effect, and much other good, you obtain by justifying Dove’s hope that you shan’t die and bereave them.”

  Again.

  Dove doesn’t need anyone else to die. I can believe that, I can completely believe that.

  “Yes, Halt.” Because, because happy is good, but what matters, it’s not just my happy, or Dove’s, it’s everybody’s, so what really matters is getting Blossom time to enchant stuff and Halt time to machinate so people mostly don’t decide this is too much choice now, stop.

  “Clever child.” Grandma Halt’s terrible smiles are nothing on this, absolutely nothing, there might be a barren patch of shore for the next thousand years.

  “Neglect not your joys, Edgar, none of you. Death and Strange Mayhem, you cannot avoid that, should not try. Your whimsical engineering and moments of absolute insect repellant, don’t avoid those either.”

  Those were fun. There might be a future.

  “Most certainly,” Halt says. “Your future has Parliamentary testimony in it.”

  Chapter 40

  Shifting back to Edgar, all Edgar, people, no, simian Edgar, is work. I have to think about it in steps, bunches of steps.

  Halt folds into the spider and the spider, well, creates, Grandma Halt, the spider sliding into some strange distance. It’s not, I’m pretty sure it isn’t, the same strange distance used for bathtubs.

  It looks easier than the bathtubs did.

  “I was a spider-god for awhile, dear,” Halt says, and we start walking.

  It’s just about dawn.

  It’s not quiet. Bird calls, some movement noises, something, somewhere, wailing.

  It seemed quiet because I’m deaf like that, deaf to anything much above fifty cycles per second, anything you’d call even a really deep noise. Slow rumbles in the ground are about it.

  “There were alarms,” Halt says, after explaining the deafness. “Frantic dogs. People became excited.”

  I’m, we’re, it’s close to forty kilometres east of Westcreek Town, still north of the Western West-East Canal. Be surprised if the stream doesn’t get a new name.

  The time seems wrong, like it hasn’t been that long. Over the ridge, looking down at the old tow road, the strip of meadow, the lines of shadow.

  Two thousand five hundred troops in armour. Battle standard all the way up, I can see the standard’s spectral ideal of victory quiver against the stillness of the air.

  Blossom, Captain Blossom, armed and up on Stomp, also armoured, spectral’s the wrong word.

  Dove and Chloris are standing next to the Captain. The graul Standard-Captain, incapable of mercy. Wake’s there, a little aside, Wake’s not in armour, not in the regular brown robe, this is white and white and green, the embroidery looks like it might have taken a hundred years, the same blue scarf thing, a tall hat, the same long wood staff as coming to get us after the wound-wedges.

  This all seems way too excited, until I manage, keeping walking is fine, I just keep right on walking beside Halt, manage to think. I must have registered as an incursion, something from outside the regular world. Must have, because that’s true.

  If I could see what I look like, and I can, the view is there to borrow, You’ve got the same wild shadow Halt does, only teeny, Dove says. It’s cute.

  All that happiness. I stumble, and Halt puts out an arm. Bendier granite. Bendier gravity.

  Thanks. Trying not to cry isn’t going to work, but I can try not to collapse.

  If I could make it into words, articulate a thought, it’d be something like “If they’re battalion-worried why suppose we’ll come walking down to the canal like we’re not a threat?”

  “Fourth of the Twelfth is in Westcreek Town,” Halt says conversationally. “Blossom’s dead artillerists have us in range. The Line does enjoy taking things seriously.”

  We get down the slope, almost to the level, and the Captain says “Stop.”

  Alert, cohered, there’s nothing at all wrong with the battalion, the Power trembles around the standard, Wake and Blossom are in there. Dove and Chloris are in there. No one can ever bring themselves to believe Halt wouldn’t win anyway.

  Laurel won once. No one knows exactly how, or believes it would work again.

  Once, Halt says, contemplative.

  We do stop. Halt makes a tsking noise. “In this time I am called Halt, and I am a Keeper of the Shape of Peace.”

  I get a tiny amount of sidelong look.

  Called, no, not really, “I am Edgar born in Wending, and I am an apprentice sorcerer of the Second Commonweal.”

  Nothing, no one has any trouble believing either of us. Which means we are permitted to approach. It’s still dark enough I can see the standard’s bubble, plain old photons, shimmery on top of a very dense bubble. I don’t think they could march when it’s like that.

  Walking through the bubble around the standard feels odd. Not as odd as Wake looks in that hat.

  “Smiting hat,” Wake says, benevolent as always.

  Walking up to arm’s reach of Dove, my arm’s reach, I can do that, but not and say anything. There’s two conversations we need to have and neither one of them will consent to go second, so I can’t articulate anything, I can’t make a noise.

  Dove’s helmet doffs, not a hand on it, floats over a bit so Chloris can, Chloris does, grab it, Dove takes me by the shoulders, pulls me closer, leans down until our foreheads touch.

  Idiot, Dove says.

  Maybe. Maybe there’s a way forward.

  Never stop, Dove says, with our whole will.

  The words ripple away from Dove, almost with mass.

  I say Never stop, back, agreeing, as sane, as whole, as quietly peaceful as I can make it.

  You’re both dreadful social influences, Chloris says, smiling. Knee-deep in a grey-and-crimson Power ripple, Spook’s swimming in it, rolling face-up behind Chloris before diving again, Chloris is just about entirely happy.

  Dove and I let go, step back. Blossom had some of Halt’s hypotheses, Dove says. Not upset.

  Talk later?

  Has to be later. Dove’s attention makes a swoop at the battalion, all three Keepers of the Shape of Peace, the implied presence of more distant force. There’s going to be paperwork.

  Blossom’s grinning at us, the consonance’s there, it’s fine, it’s probably obvious.

  You might have convinced the standard, Chloris says, handing Dove’s helmet back.

  Dove reaches over and hugs Chloris, firmly, and then they both hug me, carefully, I’m not in armour, taking turns for helmet-holding. It helps.

  No one can comfortably explain the incursion alarms, or the dogs, or the frantic, there were a few things no one’s ever seen before leap out of the West Wetcreek.

&nbs
p; “Didn’t stay out,” Dove says. “Disappointed the naturalists.”

  “I’m sure they’ll enjoy the search, Dove dear.” Halt seems pleased. “I shall enjoy the peaceful circumstances.” Halt is pleased, but that’s just firm.

  The Captain grins. The colour party around the Captain reacts, there’s that lightness of the hands people get before they decide to do something.

  Smiling graul mean something, Dove says.

  Dove’s happy.

  I might be happy. Over with, it’s not over, but at least hatching has happened and I’m not some sort of bird.

  Idiot, Chloris says.

  Chapter 41

  Back to Westcreek Town takes two entirely peaceful hours.

  Not as fast as a battalion can move, it’s regular road march, peaceful rate of advance. Getting picked up and moved along like that would bother me, other times.

  I’m trying to figure out what’s likely to happen next. Why Halt isn’t at all sure the next thing is peaceful, no more than peaceful travel, peaceful travel with a Line battalion notwithstanding. That’s rare and astonishing if you’re Halt, maybe especially if. Halt doesn’t get sent anywhere with the Line, none of the Twelve did, that was somewhere between policy and tradition, so the only time it happened was the March North.

  Fortunately so, Dove says, from a haze of harsh emotions.

  The battalion crosses the bridge, all of it around us, I’ve about realized that the point of the exercise is to keep me in the middle of the battalion, just in case.

  Alarms get shut down. People emerge from shelters. The town stops looking deserted. Some small fires get put out. Yesterday’s ruined lunches start getting cleaned up. I’m, Dove and I, Zora, Chloris, are just outside our host-gean’s refectory. Don’t know why we’re stopped here.

  People have been in the shelters since just before lunch yesterday. It’s, embarrassing isn’t enough, I feel increasingly ashamed, in the middle of a couple thousand troops in armour.

  Stop that, Blossom says, still in armour, still up on Stomp. Captain Blossom’s just through talking to some, I think it’s ‘dead people’, not ‘ghosts’. Disappointed dead people, it’s all over their memory of body language.

  Hatching happens to you, you don’t choose it. Blossom’s being firm. My metaphorical ears ring.

  Moreover, dear, you reacted by minimizing all the harm you knew about, despite an unusually complete hatching. Halt’s really, seriously, unambiguously pleased with me. That helps. Not entirely, I don’t know what would entirely help with spoiled food, being the cause of ruined food, not having known about the alarms doesn’t. I don’t know where Halt is, not that far away, but Halt is pleased with me.

  Wake walks up, still in the formal white and white and green robe, but without the hat or the staff. “I should be very curious to know what brought the Creek sorcerous tradition to an end.”

  “Lots of focus-wreaking collectives,” Chloris says, puzzled.

  Wake’s head shakes. “Worthy and skillful, but none therein could perform the workings necessary to create such alarms.”

  “Those alarms are above twelve hundred years old.” All those letters about overwork, it’s our gean so far as reality and society go, host won’t hold it, so it’s our gean’s refectory manager’s trying hard not to look down at Wake. They have to stand further away than feels really polite. “Perhaps they don’t still work.” I’m getting a look, Dove and I are getting a look.

  Wake’s benevolence goes formal, somehow. “The Westcreek Town alarms work in their entirety.”

  The manager’s eyes narrow. “The kid who compliments the pumpkin cake isn’t — ” and stops, and says “Sorry, Edgar,” and I make the usual demurral noise. In some emotional context or other, the manager really can’t believe I’m not fourteen. Not one of the people who worries about me being too young for Dove. No idea how both of those things manage to be true at once.

  Halt arrives outside the refectory trailed by a large ram walking delicately. “It is good of you to worry, Eirene,” Halt says in placid tones.

  Eirene the refectory manager gives Halt a very narrow look, before their hands go up as a preface to walking back inside.

  Don’t think the ram is Eustace. Carrying the howdah, but the horns don’t look right for Eustace.

  Halt says “Agonistes,” as a command, and the ram kneels down, grumbling.

  Eirene re-appears from the refectory with a tray, hands me, then Dove, then Chloris, then all of the school, Zora, reaching up to Grue and Blossom who are still mounted, formally to Halt and, after a quirked eyebrow, Wake, small glasses of brandy. Eirene takes the last glass. Maple-gooseberry brandy, so I’d borrow Dove’s tastebuds, only, well. Different now, it’s not the same taste as formerly. Dove borrows my tastebuds, just to see, for the last couple sips. Different good than it tastes to Dove.

  Halt and Wake each get a sustained complex look, as the glasses go back on the tray.

  “Will I need to run for office?” However our refectory manager is saying it, it’s not really a question.

  The edges of what passes between Halt and Wake feel like success.

  “Up to Parliament more than I,” Halt says, tone somewhere between careful and firm.

  “More than enough extra funerals this year,” Eirene says.

  There are nods, from most of the Line battalion who hear, too.

  Two years older than I am, Dove says. Which is supposed to mean something, but I don’t know what, it doesn’t translate out of Creek, nothing simple enough to get out of the consonance.

  Or I’m not thinking so well.

  We don’t wait any much longer to start moving, there’s food, dry chewy stuff to eat walking. I don’t understand how it works, the Standard just sort of picks you up and carries you along, you’re not moving faster, the distances are getting shorter. Same kind of thing as bathtubs and the strange angle of distance, maybe.

  Fourth of the Twelfth’s leading, then the First Creeks. First of the First, when there’s another battalion.

  Can you sort of face out for a bit? I get indulgence back from Zora and amusement, enormously gentle amusement, from Chloris. They do, though, they’re sort of around me and Dove, it’d be active work to see, sense, whatever you do with the Power, in through them.

  Halt insists nothing constrained your free will in — what is the word for the thing that isn’t really a consonance?

  Link? Bond? Dove seems amused. Darkly.

  Ed, it’s not hesitation, it’s certainly a pause, do you remember when Halt first gave you draught?

  Hard to forget the chicken.

  Nothing entirely in the food ecology can drink draught like it’s wholesome. I knew that from asking Blossom about it, before, before I ever met you or most of us died. It’ll put you back together but there’s a cost, it’s something Halt makes for Halt, the medicinal effect on human-type people is secondary.

  Oh.

  Pallas isn’t wrong about excess hope in my social history. Determined not to do that again. Had a talk with Blossom, and another one with Wake. Dove sounds almost rueful. All that ancientry and power came down to ‘Not that we can tell’ and ‘Ask Halt’.

  So I did.

  There’s a shy sunrise that would insist it was a smile if you asked.

  Halt promised that you couldn’t devour me. I got, I asked for, an explanation of what Halt thought was going on. Usually, apparently, even Halt hasn’t got many examples, the point isn’t so much physically consuming the fixation, that happens, it’s a way to incorporate them metaphysically.

  It takes me awhile to find some words.

  This hasn’t been a good few days for self-knowledge. Trapped. What an utter horror. Necro-parasitic social life.

  You’re a fright, you’re not frightening. Dove has no doubts about that at all. Worst, scariest, something, thing about this is not being frightened of Halt.

  I feel quizzical.

  You don’t think Halt is frightening. Anyone human does, except m
e, now. Wake does, Wake hasn’t been mortal for a millennium and was mighty enough to have a chance to get away from an angry Halt before the Commonweal, is mightier now, they all are, the increase of knowledge. It’s, it’s more proof than you know, could know. Halt’s never been scary to you.

  Can’t argue the point.

  Can’t think very well. Some distance goes by, I don’t even have to move my feet, I do, it takes thinking not to, but you can just stand there and keep up with the marching battalion.

  Be kept up with the marching battalion. The battalion that’s there so you can’t get very far if you decide to devour everyone around you.

  Not very much of a continent, Dove says, after awhile.

  Hard to be useful ruling anything. A continent’s probably impossible.

  Probably. Dove can think of ways to try.

  So can I, but getting a parliament to stop being expansionist would have to be tough.

  This really seems like a good idea? Hard thing to ask.

  Not the continent. Everything in front of us gets brighter, Dove’s really smiling.

  People die, Dove says. Gets so it seems they die because I care about them. You, you’re a really comfortable person to have a mind with, and Grue has to mix metal salts in glass cleaner to get you drunk.

  Expectations of durability? Wasn’t much inclined to get drunk even before it took glass cleaner.

  Dove punches my shoulder, so lightly I’m not sure there’s physical contact.

  Lots of expectations. Really careful warding required for some of them. Dove sounds happy.

  Nothing says you can’t blush with a distributed circulatory system. I don’t, mine doesn’t, not anymore. Now sure I can’t, don’t think I mind.

  There’s a gap of time, still moving forward, still being moved forward. I can feel Dove wrestling with words.

  You think this works for you?

  Dove’s emotions aren’t in the words, pretty much. No idea how, consonance, might as well keep calling it consonance, isn’t good for reserve.