A Succession of Bad Days

by Graydon Saunders

  Wait, children, Halt says.

  We do, I hadn’t had time to finish the thought about folding into wherever the Sunless Sea materially exists, don’t think Zora would want to go. There’s a point in time we’ve all got our eyes closed.

  Shapeshifting’s a very good thing. Either grip on my hands would have broken bones, before.

  “Parliament should be aware that discontinuing the team does not differ from execution.” Wake’s real voice.

  The ‘nay’ side is adamant that there must be an Independent involved, the idea that a group of apprentices, no matter what its potential or good will, has access to sufficient Power to light a township on fire isn’t acceptable.

  “Dove or Edgar could do that as distinct individuals,” Wake says.

  Five metres down, it’s a clear thought, you can’t really say Dove says it.

  “Chloris could alone kill everyone in a much larger area. Zora has the ability but entirely lacks the inclination,” Wake goes on, in an even voice impossible to disbelieve.

  “We hardly want them to prove that,” the member for Westcreek says, having got the floor after the shouting died down.

  “Parliament is obliged to require things which are possible. This is the first wizard team; where is the existing Independent who could join it?”

  “You’re all looking at me,” Blossom says. Parliament is. “I can work with the students, but I’m joining with their working link, not becoming part of it. Same thing as being on the dredge-spout, you’re not part of the dredge-focus, you’re working with it.”

  Some of the most reluctant nods I’ve ever seen, but nods. There’s some listening.

  “It’s not impossible that, given time, I could become a part of their working link. Today, it’d be improper, and unbalanced, and would do the students harm, the same way you wouldn’t put one bronze bull in a six-hitch of live oxen two years old.”

  That’s swearing, not reluctant nods, in the sense of Parliament.

  When we’re all Independents, Dove says, complete with mental image of all of us as bronze bulls.

  Maybe, Blossom says. Everybody closer to potential.

  The member for Curse-grass Fell stands up. Someplace I’m glad to not to be displaced, south of the road in the far valley of the Folded Hills. “Is there an option other than trust or execute?”

  Silence.

  Zora stands up, the Speaker nods.

  “You do know we don’t know how to make a ward? We can’t do anything — ” Zora grabs at the air for a word — “substantial without a teacher, or we’ll kill ourselves.”

  Zora sits back down.

  Thought we’d said that, I’d said that, but from the faces, people didn’t get it. Glad Zora said it again.

  It isn’t obvious, Zora says, voice trembling.

  Good timing, Dove says. Gets a smile, smiling doesn’t help Zora’s trembling.

  The member for the Western West West-East Canal gets up. “Point of information, for the teachers involved; the students are participating in major focus enchantments standing in the blast pit while relying solely on others to keep them alive?”

  “Yes.” Halt, against a backdrop of mutters.

  “You could see the glow off the clouds fifty kilometres away,” summarizes the mutters pretty well.

  “The teaching plan originally presented to the ethics board provides the rationale for not teaching warding,” the Galdor-gesith says. “The mechanism of instruction depends on the functioning link between them, a thing any reflexive warding would call into question.”

  “It’s to the student’s benefit to walk through the mountain they’re melting, without knowing how to protect themselves?” The Member for the Western West West-East Canal doesn’t readily believe this.

  “Entirely,” Halt says.

  “We ward them,” Wake says. “It removes a concern for neglected components of the warding on the part of the novice.”

  Halt planned this, Chloris says, awed.

  It takes time for Parliament to be brave, Chloris dear.

  Halt’s trying to sound entirely contemplative.

  Just as it should, being brave for everyone.

  Halt’s enjoying the challenge.

  “Would I be correct in understanding that the students must be taught warding, to be qualified as Independents?” The member for Westcreek Town.

  “There is no formal requirement,” Wake says, “but their own-work projects will require the ability.”

  Own-work projects are the very last thing.

  Everyone, absolutely everyone, knows you must be warded, working with major sorcery, or you die. Dominant part of focus design, or focus use, clear areas, safe distances. I knew that when I couldn’t use a focus, could never consider using a focus.

  The vote to continue with the training plan, our training plan, us, as proposed, passes seventy-seven to twenty-three.

  Parliament adjourns.

  Parliament looks wrung out.

  Dove hugs me a little more vehemently, and I squeeze back.

  Then we get up and walk out. Chloris leaves the seat behind, someone else will wind up before Parliament, they’ll want it. Ongen might have to maintain it, too.

  We get past the bounds of Parliament and stop, in something between a hug and a clump and disbelief, standing on the bare rock.

  The member for Westcreek drifts out of Parliament toward the little clump of sorcerers, comes up to me, we’re all still paused. None of us, not even Dove, are thinking very clearly. Standing and not being dead seems like a good use of time, just now.

  “History’s a hobby of mine,” the member for Westcreek Town says. “Halt used to eat people, out of irritation or voracity.”

  Halt nods when we look. “Would say temper, children, but — ” a casual wave — “let it stand.”

  The member for Westcreek looks at me. “As a practical matter, you’re a baby Halt. People smell like food.”

  “I think it’s mostly the amount of talent.” Which is a stupid thing to say, from one angle, but I get a calm nod.

  “Ever want to chew on your fellow students?”

  I shake my head. “It, shifts, alters, there’s a verb, the voracity turns into, I turn it into, skin-hunger in the human shape.”

  “When you didn’t know if Dove was going to want to take you to bed or not?”

  “Had to pick something legal and meaningful enough someone could volunteer for. Didn’t see a lot of other choices.” Being devoured being neither legal nor likely to attract volunteers.

  I get an indecipherable look from the member of Parliament, a disapproving one from Chloris, an appalled, not a look, entire stance, from Zora, at the idea of having to make a decision like that, and Dove reaches over and puts a hand on my shoulder, no hair ruffle, a slow squeeze.

  Practical is good, Dove says, smiling.

  The Member of Parliament nods.

  “You’re a mannerly baby Halt. You don’t have so much as Halt’s active interest in devouring something every now and again, even if it doesn’t talk. Maybe you’ll pick that up when you get older.” There’s a shrug. “The Shape of Peace works. You’ve already done a bunch of good work, far beyond your keep, and I figure in time the pair of you are going to be a reminder that I don’t pity the enemies of the Commonweal.”

  Yeah. I lean on Dove. Who isn’t precisely apologetic, there’s a bit of ‘not stupid enough to expect you to be different’ from my side, nearly wordlessly even in our head. Dove’s going to go fight the enemies of the Commonweal, as and when those enemies show up. I’d better be useful enough to go along.

  I’d better hope I can handle the perimeter, Chloris says.

  “I’m going to say thank you,” Dove says. “Blossom wasn’t wrong.”

  There’s a nod. “Blossom wasn’t wrong, and even if Slice don’t count, they — ” a wave at Chloris and Zora — “ surely do. The remedy mustn’t harm the wronged.”

  Slice?

  The burly fellow in hospital w
ith right arm and right leg not working due to critter spines, dear. A relative.

  Zora and Chloris both start to say something, stop because the member of Parliament’s hands say stop.

  “You surely were wronged; terror isn’t an excuse to threaten anybody with death, you’re doing the work you’ve been given.”

  The work you’ve been given is more than it sounds like as a moral statement.

  “Never mind staying out of the particular swamps around how stupid it is to cripple an actually gentle necromancer with guilt, or convince a really strong life-mage there’s no possibility of their ever being trusted, no matter how well they behave.”

  Zora’s nodding with a catch in it, Chloris has blushed faintly green but not looked away.

  “Or what a baby Halt does when you’re going to kill the other half of their mind, and they know it.” The Member’s voice is very dry.

  Of course people worried.

  “Edgar, you really do deserve the judgement you got on its merits.” The conclusion that I’m a voluntary member of the Peace, able to keep on doing that. “Dove made it much easier to get the votes, but you merit the judgement you got.”

  There’s a small pause. Going to keep standing upright.

  “Doesn’t mean thinking about the risk isn’t part of my job.”

  I nod. So does Dove. So does Chloris. Zora has this flash of looking tremendously fond, then embarrassed.

  If we’d stopped being separate, if I’d let go of all of Edgar, we’d maybe have been able to make it into the alternate ecology far enough to go on existing. It wouldn’t have surprised Halt, or Wake, or Blossom, but we might have been able to do it fast enough to get away, they weren’t sitting there waiting to stop us, not that I could tell.

  Not that I believe I could tell, but it’s what we’d have tried. No question that Dove and Edgar would have been dead, maybe Chloris and Zora would have come with and been dead, Commonweal Law about incursions would have been maintained. Hard on the forms, hard on half the spirit, but the strict law would have held.

  It would have been hard on the member of Parliament, who went some way out on a limb. Should ask after their name, the Shape of Peace just gives the office.

  Creon. There’s a little bit of abashed, Dove forgets I don’t automatically know everything Dove does about the Creeks.

  Thanks. I could, it’d work both ways, Dove’d know a lot more about wood turning, but we decided not to go that far with the integration.

  Don’t manage to say anything, to figure out what I ought to say, before Halt says “Children.”

  Halt’s looking at us, I don’t know what that facial expression is called. Dove doesn’t, we don’t.

  Halt gives us long enough to make sure we’re all looking back, me, Dove, Chloris, Zora, even Creon, who is managing curious without apprehensive.

  “You are all far more brave than sensible. Your teachers do not wish to change that, but would appreciate a postulated utility of sense as employed by other people.”

  There are four distinct utterances of “Yes Halt,” and Creon starts laughing.

  Creon waves at us to move, to walk, almost shoo, and says “Go, and learn some more,” in a great deep happy voice.

  Dove and I are still holding hands as we start walking away. Chloris takes my other hand, and Zora takes Dove’s.

  I think we can do this.