A Succession of Bad Days

by Graydon Saunders

  I can tell how I’m thinking about the idea, about Dove, what I think, why I think it. It’s why that’s maybe the trouble.

  I think it does. Something I want, unreasonably.

  Call it the memory of a hair ruffle. Dove can tell there’s something back of that.

  Altered alien hunger’s not an obvious thing to trust.

  Maybe love’s just a native hunger. Know what I won’t be trying to explain to Flaed.

  Just as long as you’ll explain it to Chloris. Dove, I don’t think this is amused, it’s close to happy.

  We’re all going to be doing some altering, it’s not like we’ve got to stop, like we could stop, where we’re standing. Dove is happy, the awareness that we’re not stuck in the one spot, Dove isn’t, I’m not, Chloris isn’t, none of us stuck is some one thing to be happy about.

  Wouldn’t care to stop just now.

  All around, troops in armour, marching. I can, I have to think about it, I can hear the metallic tink of Romp and Stomp’s hooves on the metalled road, the pattering crunch of Agonistes. Wake’s there, walking along on silent sandals in some memory of the warded hills of old.

  Chapter 42

  Not many people get marched up to Parliament by a heavy battalion.

  You’d suspect that; I certainly can’t count on it happening twice. Getting there, and suddenly being what Parliament is considering, though, that’s unambiguous.

  A reminder that Parliament’s not a place, it’s a hundred people, these specific hundred people.

  The Captain presents me to Parliament as a conflict in Parliament’s policies; the Line is to protect Commonweal citizens within the Peace, and to repel incursions over borders material or otherwise. There’s a conflict here; would Parliament kindly resolve it.

  I’ve just heard a graul say kindly as though that was what they actually meant.

  Someone, one of the Galdor-gesith’s clerks, points out that the experiment, Halt and Wake’s experiment to produce co-operating sorcerers, sorcerers able to emulate focus-constructs and truly share Power, was approved by the Parliament of the First Commonweal. The notes and the debate and the vote tally and the plan submitted for approval are all in a book chest, quite safe, but not anywhere they can be fetched forth today.

  The Parliament of the Second Commonweal collectively expresses the view that those are all well and good but the First Commonweal aren’t going to have to deal with the consequences, and Parliament prefers to address matters on present merits.

  No-one finishes their sentences, everyone speaks quickly. Present merits must be a familiar ritual.

  It sounds better than What were we thinking?! Dove says.

  There’s six kinds of wrangle over whether or not I really am Edgar. Various people point out that I’m still bound as an apprentice, that the Shape of Peace still has my name, that it’s most unlikely I’m some sort of substitution, that some entity ate Edgar and is impersonating me now, said entity would have to have eaten Edgar’s name out of the Shape of Peace’s keeping, incorporated it.

  It goes in widening circles of possibility for a couple hours anyway until Halt gets up and formally attests that I’m a single continuous entity from my birth in Wending. Sun doesn’t dim, there’s no crack of thunder.

  It rains frogs.

  Small frogs, many small frogs, they seem fine, Zora makes a noise of concern and conveys something froggish about The water is over that way and there’s a sort of mass irritable hopping away, over toward the water.

  Dove looks out at the many, many frogs, up at the clear sky, and starts chuckling. We’re not talking much, doesn’t seem like much left to say.

  There might be lots tomorrow.

  There weren’t chairs, there should be, but Parliament’s in tents on bare rock, the tent posts stick out of boxes of rocks and the guy-lines run to sandbags. Not all the members have chairs, I think more than half are sitting on book chests or biscuit boxes or something. Putting up the House of Parliament was the last thing that happened, building the City of Peace, school says they were arguing laws in the rain for nearly fifty years.

  Going to be a tradition next time.

  Next time, dear?

  All things come in time to die.

  Perhaps not today. Halt’s positively cheerful.

  Not sure why. Parliament’s going round on the lack of constraint on apprentices, everybody has to admit they sleep nights despite Halt’s existence, an entelech’s not without precedent, I’m not a patch on Rust or Wheel or, hunger and dearth, Shimmer, as they were and presumably still are, despite an entire lack of entelechy on their parts. Independents are still more constrained than apprentices. All I have to do is return to be judged; Independents, it’s more complicated. The Shape of Peace won’t make you drop dead, not unless Parliament tells it to, the faction arguing `the future is full of surprises’ won that argument five hundred years ago.

  Surprises, the risk of surprises, comes up, the idea that the four of us together are unmanageably strong, never mind what Edgar’s species may be, apprentices aren’t supposed to be that strong, of course you want them to do well, but we all remember our apprentice mistakes, and what happens if some brain-weed manages to get to them?

  Wake’s considering how to answer that, Halt’s waiting to see if Wake has a good answer, and the Captain says “Brigade problem, as we deem others living,” in a tone of voice that leaves all of Parliament speechless for at least ninety seconds.

  Some of the silence might have been Halt’s outbreak of giggles.

  “Were the Sergeant not occupied with sorcery,” and this voice isn’t anything anyone can find a way to interrupt, either, it’s not the same tone, information, something you desperately need to know, instead of pure certainty, “Dove would at the least be appointed the battalion sergeant-major, and have every lawful right to direct the full battalion output. In such circumstances, the Line should have preferred a course beginning in a warrant of commission.”

  Dove knew that.

  How many people get it said in public that they’re considered fit for a standard-captain? Zora says, startled.

  Not the first time, Dove says.

  Parliament’s getting its voice back, the collective thoughts, the awareness that a battalion’s more power than we can manage. Maybe much more, much more seems to be what the majority of Parliament thinks.

  Yet, Dove says, smiling across the undertone.

  Dove really likes the Captain. Which I don’t properly understand.

  Doesn’t take the prospect of dying personally. Dove’s head tips on to the top of mine. Chloris had sort of sniffed, some relative of disapproval, when Zora came back from herding frogs, and produced a big bench out of nothing. Comfortable, it looks like green stone but it’s cushiony. Zora’s leaning on Dove’s other side, there’s the waving ghost, not visible with eyes, of a butterfly wing in the corner of my vision, Chloris has one of my hands and Dove’s got the other. However much I’m the problem, it’s not a separate fate. Chloris has gone all still and perfect, Spook’s sitting up utterly still outside Chloris, tail prim over paws.

  Wanting to live gets in the way sometimes, Dove says, and gets up, takes half a dozen steps forward.

  Parliament hadn’t really got going again. The Line below the Law is one of those phrases, until someone takes it seriously, and then you have to think about what it means.

  The Speaker recognizes Dove.

  “If we’re a wizard team, I’m the team lead.” Dove’s voice is calm. Dove feels calm. Nothing like ‘maybe we’re all going to die’ to calm Dove’s nerves. None of us the least inclined to argue the team lead part, Zora’s good at bossy isn’t disagreement.

  “Hanging Ed, whatever that happened to require, doesn’t get you a dead Edgar. It gets you a spectral Edgar in my head. You’d have to hang me, too. Might not be enough, but not avoidable.”

  Parliament, parts of Parliament, are thinking seriously about it as Dove says it. Pretty sure the Shape of Peace is more co
mmunicative if you’re a sorcerer, can’t say it’s not their job to think about it.

  Still takes me a minute, several minutes, to get my temper back under control, the prospect of hanging Dove, angry isn’t enough of a word. I miss stuff.

  “Distinct isn’t the same as separate.” Dove’s answering a member’s question, entirely calmly.

  That results in several questions about how somebody born in Wending can also be a horror from beyond the world, ‘sorcery’ not being a sufficient answer from a diligence and planning point of view. Also Dove coming back and sitting down again.

  Wake explains how, starting with the idea of a mirror that responds by changing, instead of reflecting.

  “Something off else-wither turns itself into a living thing, so it can…what?” That’s a clerk with the Food-gesith. “There’s an ecology somewhere.”

  “Exist,” Wake says. “What my colleague was pleased to call hatching is, to the other form, coming into being in this material world. Success is dependent on the Power, but is not of the Power.” Wake smiles, all amiable benevolence. “There have been few opportunities for study.”

  “Can Edgar present in proper person of that aspect?” Lots of Parliament’s not so sure about that idea, but the member for Westcreek, who asked, looks inquisitive at me; I’m starting to shrug out from under Dove’s arm when Halt stands up, stick waving as though a walking stick was a gesith’s signal-stick, implying a right to speak before Parliament. Halt’s chair is off to one side of us, Halt’s been sitting quiet and not knitting, which is nothing to think about.

  “The floor goes to Halt for specific knowledge.” The Speaker sounds dry.

  “The form to which I believe the honourable member to refer exists in sufficient dimensions that it is not recommended that you look at it.”

  Halt sits back down, picks up knitting.

  There’s a mutter with “Shape of Peace” in it.

  “Let the record show that it remains the sense of Parliament that either the Shape of Peace does, in sober truth of fact, work, or Halt owns our souls.” The Speaker sounds very dry. There’s a chuckle. It’s not a happy chuckle, but there’s a chuckle.

  If this goes on much longer, I think I might go mad.

  I don’t want to die. I can’t argue that I don’t deserve to die, not from at least one angle of prudence, but I don’t want to die. Taking Dove with me, I just can’t, not into death.

  And yet these things shall come to pass, Dove says. It’s not giving up.

  “I am old in the years of men, nor shall I see these things, so let me say them.” The voice sounds older than Halt. The member for the Bare Dry Hills, the easternmost inhabited township of the Creeks. “By Hyacinth’s report, in the length of my life once or twice again, these young sorcerers will be grown into their power beside Blossom. Then shall we have the strength of five battalions rise through an entelech, not merely a necromancer or militant enchanters.”

  What everyone has been carefully not saying. Some of them don’t want to think it.

  “This shall be a trouble to the Commonweal’s enemies, perhaps.”

  A couple of clerks, one of the members of Parliament, are pointing, Chloris nudges me in the ribs. The horseshoe shape of tents, it’s a horse with very narrow feet, has the open end point north for the sun. We’re sitting across the open end, so we’ve got long shadows right into the middle where everyone can see. Something happened to mine, it went unstructured.

  “Perhaps it will not. We should not let our concern, or our trust, or our expectation of these four possible Independents before us make us judge entire the practices which produce them.”

  The member for the Western West West-East Canal gets up and says “Move the general legitimacy of wizard teams as a conduct of sorcery among Independents.”

  No one moves debate. The vote passes seventy-eight to twenty-two.

  Somebody planned that, Parliament knew we were coming, there was a plan.

  The even clicking of Halt’s knitting needles starts. That was the really important thing. Even if we’re not the emotional equivalent of a basket of kittens.

  Wise child, drifts into my thoughts, just my thoughts.

  Pretty sure we’re not kittens. Ask me in a thousand years.

  The Speaker sits up very straight; one of the Galdor-gesith’s clerks is walking to where Blossom is sitting Stomp, all armour and a hide that shines like wet blood and a long shadow. Blossom dismounts, hangs helmet and demon-stained gauntlets from the saddle, take the stick from the clerk, starts walking forward.

  Stomp whistles, something with notes, and the clerk stops, turns back to look. Blossom doesn’t. Blossom keeps right on going, past us on our left.

  “The Independent Blossom, one of those in whose keeping rests the Shape of Peace, has been granted leave to address Parliament.” There’s a wave of motion, heads turning back from the Speaker to look at Blossom again. Blossom takes two more steps and drops any human form entire. A compact whirl of white fire drifts into the space in front of the Speaker. The stick seems fine, floating along in the middle of the fire.

  “Unlike Halt, I won’t drive you fatally mad. Unlike Wake, you won’t up and die of infinite bleakness. I do have to talk quick, or you’re all going to sunburn.” Blossom sounds, I don’t know. Friendly, really. Not entirely like Blossom normally sounds, oddly clear, more like Blossom sounds in our head.

  “Ed’s hatched. Now there’s an apprentice sorcerer who’s some kind of horror from beyond the world. We don’t know how that works; we’d like to, but we won’t be able to figure it out unless we find a bunch more. That means we don’t know what Edgar is, any more than we know every bit of meddling that went into the ancestry of everyone here.”

  Dead quiet.

  “I was born in the City of Peace, which we hope is still there. I was unquestionably a human child. I’m not — ” the whirlwind of fire rotates through another dimension, looks briefly like a conjoined torus, each with a stick — “ human today. That’s what Independent means, not human any more. Edgar’s just got a bit of a head start.”

  Two or three people clearly consider standing up to argue the humanity of Independents, and nearly as clearly notice what they’d be arguing with, and cease being moved to rise.

  People’s wider than human.

  “This thing we’ve got, this Commonweal, works. It works because it has laws, and it works because it benefits everybody that those laws make it work for everybody. It works because nobody, sorcerer or otherwise, can compel or command or punish outside the law. We don’t have to be afraid of each other, and a lot more work gets done.

  “Once we start insisting on being afraid of each other anyway, on having safety through control, it stops working.”

  Utter silence.

  ‘Keeper of the Shape of Peace’ isn’t an empty title, people haven’t worked out what it does yet, no set custom, but everyone here has an idea what the Keepers know. That’s not an opinion, and if the Shape of Peace works at all, Blossom can’t lie to Parliament about anything, ever.

  “As a person,” Blossom says, and stops.

  A burning whirlwind can’t take a breath, can’t, I have no idea how Blossom’s making actual noise, have a catch in its voice.

  Aside from the one catch, an entirely clear, even, peaceful voice.

  “It matters who is there to help, no work team’s just random people. This one made itself out of trust and a hope of life, who had been condemned to early deaths by a happenstance of Talent.”

  Some of the faces looking at Blossom turn away. Harm to the wronged isn’t, that’s not one mind, it’s not precisely the Shape of Peace. ‘Sense of Parliament’ might mean more than I thought it did, that’s more like a conversation than a tally.

  “We teach children that love is a thing you do, that the Peace Established is an accumulation of behaviour.”

  The thought about wanting me dead wants to be entirely sure, down there in the Sense of Parliament, no matter what lie t
hat makes out of what’s taught to children. Easier to hang on to my temper when I’m hanging on to Dove, who would not have long to be bereaved.

  The white fire turns back into what Blossom looks like being human, armour and all.

  Blossom and the Speaker exchange nods, Blossom hands the stick back to the Galdor-gesith, the clerk’s walking around, behind one side of Parliament. There’s a complete silence, I can hear Blossom’s boots on the rock and Halt’s knitting needles, and way far off people doing town things, until Blossom’s helmet and gauntlets are back on, until Captain Blossom’s back up on Stomp.

  Until the murderously angry Goddess of Destruction has gone back to pretending. Angry enough you can feel it, it’s not visible with eyes but there’s a swirl of angry coiling wider than Parliament, wide out over the Shape of Peace.

  Blossom will stop Blossom, Chloris dear.

  I wasn’t paying much attention to Chloris’ thoughts. It’s really tough to breathe for calm, for Dove and I to be breathing for calm, and not do anything with it, to not sink into the mist of fire and darkness and various hungers.

  That really wouldn’t help. Dove, I think Dove would find this easier if I found it easier, but I can’t find any angle of ease in the prospect of Dove dying.

  Chloris killing all of Parliament, that wouldn’t help either.

  Deleterious to the Peace, else, Halt goes on, it’s not cheerful, it’s a conviction that all is not as bad as it seems.

  Blossom’s anger coils away. It’s not gone, it’s just not here, I don’t know who else can tell, who hasn’t worked with Blossom. Maybe it shows to the Line.

  Making that canal with you, all of you, the scale of help, another militant enchanter to work with, made Blossom happier than I can possibly explain. Grue says, from back with the medics behind the battalion behind us. No kind of happy. Grue didn’t get More family into intended words, but it was there.

  Someone stands up, the member for the Several Townships of the Pines, the north end of one of the valleys in the Folded Hills. “The apprentice sorcerer Edgar is also angry. I would have Parliament ask why.”