Safely You Deliver

by Graydon Saunders

  Copyright 2016 Graydon Saunders

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-0-9937126-2-3

  For Claire Dalmyn. This time it’s for excellent advice about unicorn insecurities

  I’ve taken a phrase and an idea from the Secret Country books of the marvelous Pamela Dean, for all that these unicorns are most entirely not those unicorns.

  Copy editing courtesy of the inestimable Jennie Worden. Any surviving errors are entirely my own.

  Much thanks to the thoughtful James Burbidge for high-utility structural feedback and catching some erroneous cheese. (Any incomprehension, doubt, or bewilderment you suffer is and remains my fault.)

  Cover design by Tiger Bright Studios.

  Authorial mood adjustment via Sabaton, Shriekback, and Xandria. (Mostly.)

  And from the sword (Lord) save your heart,

  By my might and power,

  And keep your heart, your darling dear,

  From Dogs that would devour.

  And from the Dragon’s mouth that would

  You all in sunder shiver

  And from the horns of Unicorns

  Lord safely you deliver.

  From Pamela Dean’s splendid Secret Country books, notably The Whim of the Dragon and The Dubious Hills.

  Dean’s verse bears a relation, via the tastes of the unicorns of the Secret Country, to the text of the Twenty Second Psalm as found in John Crespin’s Geneva Psalms.

  Quoted with permission.

  Guide

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 1

  Zora

  Sometimes I just need to go for a walk.

  Middle of the night on the winter solstice isn’t a prudent time, but sometimes I’ll take useful over prudent.

  My classmates are doing fine, despite or because of or in sublime indifference to becoming lovers. They’re not any farther from me than we were, closer, really, picking up twenty thousand tonnes of anything is a cluster of possible disasters and we keep doing it. Not my siblings, not anything there’s a word for, Dove says “shoulder-companions,” which is old and poetic and soaked in death and maiming.

  Right enough for them, closer than family doesn’t mean I’m blind.

  Wrong for me.

  We all know what everyone else knows, we know what everyone is doing, it’s more good than bad and I can’t imagine how they want to be closer than that.

  Doesn’t mean they can’t, that they’re not, that they’re not happy. That it wouldn’t be really, really difficult to show that it’s bad for them, that there aren’t ways it’s necessary.

  Doesn’t mean they can’t so imagine, that they’ve not so become. That it isn’t more good than bad, even when I entirely cannot so imagine. Not for them. Death and Constant Strange Mayhem is sometimes mere necessity.

  Still out here sitting in the snow and wondering if I’m doing it wrong, if the tiny distance I’m maintaining is the correct tiny distance.

  Lots and lots of snow so far, Westcreek Town’s recorded sixteen decimetres. Over my head when I collapse in a funk.

  I’m not cold, I wouldn’t have been cold before, but I could sleep out here now and come to no harm.

  Not even social harm, it’s not like the others don’t understand. They’re really good about trying not to fill the link up with inarticulate expressions of joy. Grue would offer to teach me how to turn into a snowbank. Not a wise thing to learn, not until I’m through the metaphysical metabolism transition, trying to make a snowbank have a material metabolism wouldn’t end well.

  Going to, well, maybe not, not if I’d have to walk away from keeping a bunch of people alive, but odds are I’ll last. I’ll at least be going to my sister’s grave, and my neeves’, and after a few generations the connection goes away. The commonality won’t be there, we’re all proud the Creeks are an orderly place but go back three centuries and read what people wrote — lots of diaries in the library — and it’s still strange. It’s not so hard to live that long. Independent half-life is real, but biased, it’s more about not going crazy than talent for the Power.

  Death and Constant Strange Mayhem are either already crazy, or safe, they’ve got each other in this impossibly close tangle and they aren’t ever lonely.

  I’ve got the working link, which gets me mistaken for a creature of legend, and reminds me just what I could have if there was any way to want it.

  Any way to know what I do want. Sorcery school sounds like you’re going to learn how to do sorcery, that it’s all planned and intended. It really does sound like that, and it’s not, and they don’t tell you. Not dropping the rocks is enough to worry about, it’s no good if all the students flee or cower under the bed. I sort of comprehend why the first month isn’t a careful description of expected outcomes — we did get most of the facts, and were then left to see the implications for ourselves.

  It’s not about doing magic, it’s about being magic, becoming something magic. That’s the whole point, that’s why the transition to a metaphysical metabolism. Practical reasons of avoiding dying aside, it’s what the capability sits on, and it’s not especially controlled or planned. Blossom isn’t putting in the hair-sparks on purpose, Ed wouldn’t have picked hatching, it’s not all voluntary.

  It’s not all bad, not even mostly bad, it’d be fine if I knew I was doing it some correct way.

  It’s my own personal version of correct and no one can tell me what it is, sure, that’s plausibly factual, too, but it isn’t helpful.

  Being right isn’t necessarily helpful, who I am might not be suited to being magical.

  I’ll be finding more ruthlessness in this whole grow-up-or-die setup for years, I know I will.

  Right now I’ve got a sleeping garden, and the snow, and the silence. Maybe I can do something with that.

  Chapter 2

  The sorcerer shines and shines and shines, singing something to the morning or the snow.

  Clean here, nothing hungry, nothing waiti
ng.

  Maybe a clean death.

  No wild hunger, no wrenching illness, no food that lies, clean, shining clean, ponds of water, roots drowsing under snow, life imposed on the blasted earth. One sorcerer dreaming a tree, one singing, all sung a wall, air and Power and dense requirements of death, bulks as mountains across the hills’ long slide.

  Tree is older, woman stronger, whosoever sang the wall mighty unto mountain’s roots.

  Water clean, water chill, shade under the tree.

  Drink, lie down in the shade.

  Worse could be, than death a little rested.

  Chapter 3

  Zora

  “Bite.”

  Grue’s put all four fingers in the unicorn’s mouth, gripped it by the jaw, across the front teeth, teeth that will go through rock and steel helmets.

  It looks terrified, but it does bite. Hard.

  I can hear the teeth squeak across something. Grue’s not showing distress.

  “I am the least of Zora’s teachers.” Grue’s still got the unicorn by the bottom jaw, it can’t move its head, can’t flee, and everything about it says it wants to flee.

  “I know your name, I know your shape, I know you breath and bone.” Grue’s other hand does something blurry, something rises buzzing from the empty air.

  It looks like a wasp wrought in gold. Live wasps come forty centimetres long, too, but not with a high thin hiss of turbines. The blur of its wings is full of rainbows, the gold of its body glitters bright here in Mulch’s tree-shade.

  “There is not swiftness enough, not in all the world.”

  Unicorns can faint.

  Chapter 4

  Grue

  The unicorn is quiescent.

  Spike’s worried, this is the worried hug, that and the invisibility.

  About me. Try getting her to worry about a unicorn.

  It’s worrying you.

  It’s starving, it’s in early stage personality collapse, it’s hurt. Zora’s …

  I don’t want to say defenseless. Helpless is worse.

  Entirely true. But unkind.

  You’re being absolutist about conflict, Spike says.

  Layers like an n-dimensional onion and I never quite know where Spike is inside Blossom, if the Independent is inside or outside the Goddess of Destruction.

  The unicorn’s got its head across Zora’s lap.

  Pretty, as an image, there under whatever unique tree Mulch shifts into, the horn-shine, only just brighter than the little faint sparkle off Zora’s hands, it’s only technically dawn. It shudders, but it stays put.

  A map of energy, change, shifts in organization, cells, protein, appears as a question. Spike can see individual atoms, has no knack for biology.

  Fixed its jaw joint. Another unicorn kicked it, probably.

  They do talk, Spike says, layers of comment on it.

  Zora’s left hand acquires an oven mitt, white and red and festive. It makes Spike smile. Good enough idea of an oven mitt to turn a unicorn’s head, very gently, by the horn.

  Lots more scars.

  Zora’s being methodical, scars unbound to wholeness one by one.

  Slow care, and far more skill than Zora knows it to be.

  You do a good job of teaching, Spike says.

  Not for unicorn guts. Eating sorcerers, eating the Power out of sorcerers, is a way to gain strength, it’s part of their stories the way sorcerers are nasty and wizards might not be in ours.

  Were violence against Zora to result in a hungry shadow, Halt says.

  Makes me shake, even with Spike right there, holding on. Those shouldn’t work. Halt shouldn’t be able to pass between perception like that, nothingness and then Halt, just as invisible as all of Blossom.

  Is that not how you tell, Halt says, deeply amused. The wizard has a grasp of the subjunctive?

  Not wizards yet.

  Education full of probability and characters full of certainty. A century or two shall amend that, Halt says, talking, mostly, about the current students.

  Five centuries, and Zora will still be helpless, right here with me.

  Mulch’s excellent grasp of the subjunctive, it is, dream in ecosystems it must be, Mulch still has to run.

  Just until they’re in the Commonweal. Spike’s never going to understand, can’t, it’s not fish, water, it’s empty, sky.

  This ilk of unicorn, Halt says.

  One of the hierarchical ones. Someone trying, again, for cavalry mounts usable in a wizard-war.

  Mastery, Spike says, hardly pleased.

  Peace, Blossom dear. The unicorn has never known any, and Zora has never known anything else.

  Across the pond, under Mulch’s spreading branches, Zora starts unbinding scars into hale flesh down the length of the unicorn’s outstretched neck.

  Chapter 5

  Zora

  It’s a deep narrow shop, subdivided out of the old lock-gate manufactory. At the end, so only one dividing wall that doesn’t go to the roof so you can hear hammering from the next shop over.

  The thing about Halt being there, it takes people time to notice the unicorn. I don’t think the person talking to Halt has noticed.

  Still a wobbly unicorn, but there’s enough bare floor even for a unicorn to lie down. Flagstones won’t be warm, but they’re dry, they’ve been swept. Only a little waft of the sharp scent of unicorns, I don’t think enough to be a problem.

  Unicorns, healthy unicorns, can run faster than thirty metres per second for hours. Walking down from the Round House was a struggle, at a slow walk. Slow for me, who is not a unicorn. Over paths that the rest of us had rendered clear, dry, and well above freezing moments before.

  Don’t know the Creek. I know the other person’s name is Benton, they’re a pianomaker, they got displaced and came to Westcreek Town because that’s where their apprentice is from, but I cannot remember the apprentice’s name at all. The township gave them the shop under the displacement rules, I don’t even remember if it’s still properly apprentice or journeyman.

  No one’s told me. If they had, I’d remember. I’ve grown too much metaphysical mind to forget.

  Nobody’d want to go on quite that much of a journey, being displaced. You’re supposed to get shunted at tricky work for five years or so, until you either settle down somewhere or get into a specialty and start being able to design.

  Best impression I can get, Independents are the same way, generally, except fifty years instead of five. We’re not going to get that. I could tell, even if Grue hadn’t said.

  “You wanted more notice,” Halt is saying to Benton, quite cheery. “This ought to do.”

  The apprentice comes round, well, not within reach, but nearer; pulls out a stool; flips up a cover. Starts playing.

  Halt goes out, stick tapping.

  I’ve got a lap full of unicorn head. It’s not an especially comfortable floor, I didn’t think about a cushion in time, but the unicorn is breathing better, the weak pulse seems to steady at the music.

  The hammering stops next door.

  Halt comes tapping quietly back.

  The music goes on, ripply and cheerful and broad. It’s got something in it, it’s easy enough to believe someone would go learn to build the instrument, even in the slow, picky, saws and chisels and glue way, so that they could play this.

  People keep coming by, and looking in the door, or the window by the door. Nobody opens the door, you don’t let the warmth out in the presence of the sick. Eirene waves, I smile back. Everyone seems to conclude that even unicorns will behave around Halt.

  After about an hour the music stops. Much happier unicorn, not especially conscious but not obviously distressed anymore. The apprentice gets up from the piano, mutters something apologetic about that’s all the tunes they know, does their best to be quiet stomping into boots, and zips out, or as much zip as you can in winter boots.

  Benton hands me a mug of tea, going carefully wide around the unicorn horn, but still. Anywhere near a live unic
orn’s a lot to expect.

  “The Creek kind” gets said with a kind smile and I smile back and say thank you as well as I can.

  It’s good. Most people who aren’t Creeks make lettuce-root tea too weak. Ed makes it the way Dove likes it, where “too weak” isn’t the problem. It needs a lot of vinegar, brewed like that.

  Halt’s little side table has two cups. And a substantial teapot. And a plate of pastries. Benton accepts a teacup with, well, Halt can tell it was a pause if I can, but even Chloris’ mother couldn’t complain about it, it’s shorter than the plausible length for “which cup is mine?” by half at least.

  Halt nods permission, and I float three of the pastries over. I don’t strictly-strictly need them, but I’d still rather, patients mean no breakfast sometimes but no breakfast isn’t good. Two of them go much larger and savory on the way over. Thank you, Halt. Even when I don’t know …

  Quail and pears Halt says. I say thank you, thinking I at least know what both ingredients are.

  Quail and pears is good. I take a deep breath and remember the second pastry with sufficient precision.

  You’d think unicorns would be warm, but they aren’t. Or maybe this one isn’t, Romp and Stomp are warm, but that doesn’t tell me anything about unicorns, I don’t know exactly what kind of unicorn Grue based horse-things on, or if they’re supposed to emulate the metabolism or just some of the results, there’s more than one extant unicorn species so maybe I’d be judging by the wrong model.

  I’m supposed to be most of a sorcerer. I should be able to figure this out.

  Set the tea down first. Unicorns aren’t plants, spilling tea on them can’t help.

  Supposed to be warm, definitely supposed to be warm, I can make the air warmer, carefully, slowly, too warm is probably bad, too. The room’s heated, but not very much, you don’t want much if you’re working, it’s not a big stove binding.

  The apprentice comes back in, there’s rustling, while I’m not paying much attention to anything other than the temperature of the unicorn. Relaxed unicorns have heavier heads, turning the heat up means a more relaxed neck.

  The apprentice came back with sheet music, somebody with a cello, two people with different sizes of reed-horns, and a most extremely dubious youth with a flute.