“In what particular might those forbidden work be found to differ from those forbidden life?” Mulch sounds weary, not angry, and strange, it’s not just the vowel sounds, it sounds like last year’s dead dry leaves are talking.
Doucelin loses the grin, and looks gentle instead. “The Commonweal may not, in regular times, require more than one year in ten of service from Independents. The total ascribed to the Independent Mulch greatly exceeds that figure, to the detriment of the functioning of the Commonweal.”
Halt had Clerks Hyacinth and Lester, at separate times, run us through the reasons for that policy. It’s a prominent example of the kind of math that’s easy to write down and hard to solve, but it reduces to “no slaves” socially without any difficulty.
Mulch is old, a pre-Commonweal sorcerer and old enough that Mulch doesn’t have an official age. Wake has an official age, I’m not sure anybody else but Halt doesn’t have an official age. Never militant, not even the kind of marginally militant Grue or Ongen possess that makes you think there must be a risk to pushing them too far. Mulch might not believe the “no slaves” part of the Ur-law.
Wake says with a cheerful face and a smell of distant burning, “Eventually one must undertake the work which admits what you yourself value.”
Wake’s archaeology, if you can call using necromancy to just ask the former inhabitants archaeology, Wake’s abiding interest in ceramic buildings, I think it’s six geans now in Westcreek Town that are trying at least one ceramic house. I can’t imagine anyone minding those, but that gap in imagination might just be having watched someone come ask Wake to find out if the lower marshalling yard for a barge-basin in Woolmill was haunted. They brought their kid when they came to ask, because it was the kid who was sure about the haunted.
“Might then I depart, and dwell as listeth me, out of all the world?” Mulch’s voice sounds as though the dead dry leaves have become sad.
Doucelin’s face goes still. “Any Independent may petition Parliament for permission to travel outside the Commonweal.”
Mulch nods. “To be trapped and beyond help, both, an doom come.”
“If you can hide so well as that, it scarcely matters where you are” Halt says to Mulch, quite entirely calmly. Halt’s starting a biscuit plate moving and Mulch doesn’t take one, which seems silly. Sillier than calling the plate for cookies a biscuit plate, which takes doing.
“If permitted me not to hidden be, little listeth where.” Mulch sounds, for the little listeth where, too tired to be angry.
Ed’s got the curious head-tip, the link has, approximately, Where now doth Mulch abide? in it as the whisper of a thought.
Faint echoes of an inescapable darkness.
Mulch looks at Doucelin, not Ed, though looking at Ed would have to be through Dove, and not at Halt, which I’d kind of expect whenever that language gets used. “Your masters have permitted another.”
“After much concern and travail of discussion,” Doucelin says, entirely calm. “The Commonweal exists for the increase of choice to those within it.”
“As every light goes out,” Mulch says. “As the leaf was green, and crumbles now.”
This is getting really, really tough to follow.
Spook hops up on the table, which means Chloris is looking directly at Mulch through Spook. Mulch isn’t, can’t be, used to having a ghost ocelotter emerge from the wall because somewhere behind their active thoughts Chloris is wondering where you physically are.
“The tree outlasts the leaf,” Chloris says. Only it’s really Death says, perfect and gentle. Mulch is visibly not used to that, either.
“Little as liketh the leaf to be tied to the twig,” Mulch says, with some echo of good humour.
“Single sovereign power,” Doucelin says. “It should do your mind little good to be disassembled by something mighty desiring to know how focuses are made.”
There’s a slight pause, and “The which you know not,” Doucelin says, with real cheer, not ‘we’re going to keep the meeting accomplishing something’ cheer.
There’s a pause, and Halt says “Really, colleague, I am yet Halt.”
We’re all baffled by that, in a “what else is Halt going to be?” sort of way, until we start thinking. It’s not about manifestation, any of the possible manifestations of Halt. It’s that two kids, someone bringing a knitting question where they have just not been able to comprehend despite some careful non-Halt explanations, and the person who keeps the dishes rotation had all stopped, between the meal and the nibbles, to talk to Halt. One of the kids had a note from a glass-collective team lead.
Mulch’s eyes narrow. “Seems, and seeming.”
“We be seemings all, thou smoke of other burnings” Blossom says, grinning.
Doucelin’s still got a gentle look, and what I can only call a peaceful voice. “As you are experientially newly displaced, and in a country unfamiliar, perhaps you would consider to teach for a time?”
“My chief accomplishment of haste?” Mulch says back to Doucelin, with not entirely mock disbelief.
“Your accomplishments botanical,” Doucelin says.
“Fear is found in strangeness.” No dry leaves, no anything at all in Mulch’s voice.
“Hope, also,” Dove says back, in the voice of the unconquered sun.
Mulch hasn’t got an answer, which is how I wind up with what amounts to a biology and gardening tutor.
I’m glad, I’m very glad, but it doesn’t seem entirely fair. Nerving yourself up to argue with Halt is bad enough, adding the gesith-via-a-fylstan in doesn’t help whatsoever, and then Dove.
Mulch doesn’t seem to mind. Mulch will be sleeping in the spare work shed. We made six when we made them, one each for the material people and one for general storage and one for “we’ll think of something.” “Think of something” has turned into “house an Independent,” but “work shed” turned into eight metres by twenty four inside with a full cellar and hypocaust when we made them, so it’s hardly privation, or inhospitable. Wake called the construction, monolithic silicon carbide with titanium plank shingling almost purely for the looks, “sturdy.” The only thing the sheds don’t have is a tub, and they do have big strips of corundum clerestory window, there’s no view at all but we angled the cuts into the south side of the ridge so there’s some sun.
Really ornate blast pits, in a sense of just-in-case, but secure and sturdy and quiet.
Which might have turned out better anyway; the view would be the ponds, if we hadn’t set the work sheds well below the ridge, and the ponds are full of swans, two swans is remarkably full in a four hectare pond. We didn’t plan on swans.
Mulch doesn’t show any sign of distress at the swans. The swans don’t show any signs of distress at Mulch, which is reassuring. I wasn’t sure if the swans thought Mulch belonged or not, but just changing shape from tree to human doesn’t seem sufficient to confuse the swans. Switching to being a unicorn doesn’t confuse them, either.
I get a décade of finding out how much I don’t know about the garden before an emergency happens.
Chapter 14
Edgar
A wet spring, after a snowy winter.
I try not to say anything about the mud. It’s not like it bothers us, we get practice at being offhand about hoisting mired people out, a broad cylinder of them and the mud and then let the mud drain, straight lift isn’t a good plan, it’s stubborn mud.
Dove figured out how the Round House entry hall tiles work this past winter, it’s not precisely difficult but it’s not a natural way to think even for enchanters. It took some effort to convince Blossom, one of those things that’s so elegant you have trouble believing it’s not incomplete.
They’re horrible to make, you have to get the whole elegant idea in your mind and keep it there, it makes Dove swear and Blossom mutter darkly. Not a question of Power, we don’t need to help, it’s not very much Power at all. Just … elegant.
The tiles work, though, and Dove and Blo
ssom between them made enough to reflag the entryway for the refectory.
We’re told it helps a lot. The muddy chunk of spring is always a strain, the mud wants to come inside and near enough to works at it.
We’re doing own-work exercises in the mornings, not own-work projects but part of a general teacherly desire to have us practice working on our own enough that we reliably can, the link’s pervasive. Our teachers really don’t want a hive mind, or at least not a relentlessly subsuming one, that’s Grue’s joke. It makes Halt look stern.
All the own work has turned lunch into a general discussion about work combined with explaining what table manners are for to Pelōŕios. I’ve only noticed three failures of composure at nearby tables so far, I don’t think any of them have been over the table manners.
This lunch turns into Blossom showing up without bothering to walk through the door, a complete failure of decorum.
“Time to go stave off a dam collapse in the Folded Hills” is what Blossom says. Various composures smooth out. If people are at serious risk of dying, decorum changes.
The link deepens and what’s left of lunch goes away, another failure of decorum outside emergencies.
Zora and Pelōŕios dash out to run for the Round House, really run, sprinting as unicorns, even if the bridges and traffic rules will slow them down a bit. We all keep travel bags packed, round trip won’t be more than ten minutes.
Really want to learn how to do the larger-on-the-inside storage trick. We’re told it’s generally a first-few-decades thing for new Independents.
Presumably the desire to have more than a pair of clean socks and something to sketch with becomes overwhelming.
The rest of us stack dishes on trays, put it all back carefully on the dishwashing side. Devouring things like that leaves shiny clean dishes, no one wants there to be a mistake.
Grue shows up with Romp and Stomp; Stomp has both bigger-on-the-inside cases back of the saddle, cruncher hide and plain. Blossom’s writing a note for Mulch about Zora, Mulch might not be reliable about meals but they’ve been entirely reliable about showing up to teach Zora in the afternoons.
Eirene’s working on the meals. It makes Mulch visibly uneasy if your perceptions include the Power. Can’t shake a feeling Mulch feels like they might be being fattened for slaughter.
We’re not going up to the highway, we’re headed south. There’s a narrow awkward-but-usable pass about twenty kilometres north of Longbarns, found in the first year of the Second Commonweal. There’s another from the closest valley to the next one over, which is where we’re going.
“Thorn Company of the First’s going to run us down to the pass,” Blossom says. “We figure out how to get the rest of the way while that’s happening.”
Run’s not a sustainable rate. Dove’s surprised.
Haven’t been to the dam site, Blossom says. Meaning we have to get there overland, there isn’t any way to get there with the Power that Blossom can use to get us all there.
Food’s packed, wry and merry and full of edges from Grue, and we all sort of nod and head out of town. Food’s nothing to make assumptions about, anywhere in the Folded Hills, still. No one starved last winter, no crippling malnourishment. It was close. The first winter was closer, some places.
The marching and hastening Line rates of advance move you, but you don’t really feel it. You can move your feet or not, you’re being carried, it’s all done with the Power, even for the Line guys, but it feels like walking. “At the run” doesn’t, it feels like being picked up and hurled like a stone.
Dove sort of pats Slow on the shoulder after we get there, says thanks quietly.
Not a sustainable rate means there’s a company’s worth of collapsed Line guys slumped across the township landing, it’s not enough to call any kind of town, library, landing bank, archives, township hall, nine houses and six tax barns, but the people who live there get started on pouring water and soup into the Line guys. They’re calm about it, they had some notice, the what-why-us happened before we got there.
Not quite fifty minutes, bit over a hundred kilometres of road, less on a map. There’s going to be a lot of people asking about a Line company moving that fast.
“Romp can take Chloris,” Grue had said. Which is true; Chloris is only a little taller than Grue, not significantly heavier, and Romp can deal with Chloris. Romp’s convinced I’m a bad idea, categorically and entirely. Dove’s fifty-ish kilogrammes heavier than Grue, which would matter for distance if Romp thought Dove was safe, which Romp doesn’t. Not objectionable, precisely, but not safe. “Pelōŕios is a unicorn, I can pretend, Zora can pretend,” Grue says.
Dove had nodded, and said We can manage.
Which, well, no, this isn’t something I can do, not for moving fast. Dove’s going to move both of us.
Grue’s shifted, Zora’s shifted, Romp’s agreed Chloris is an acceptable rider, Dove gets a quirky smile and turns into a bird that would mass more than Dove. The standing eye height’s constant.
All the feathers are burning red. Once Dove gets flying, it’s not metaphorical burning.
Beak’s gold, and hooked, and shining, a little less than the eyes.
I sort of reach out and the burning has smoke, the feathers have dark tips and black edging and I’m not standing there anymore.
Chloris says You are showing off, feeding us both what it looks like from outside.
That isn’t shapeshifting, Grue says, undecided about being concerned.
Read me again from the Book of Snow Dove says, to me, in a way Grue will hear.
Well, Grue says, and then You shouldn’t have, possibly half serious, to Blossom.
Not that it’s going to help enormously, Blossom says, but don’t land until I’m already there and people have a chance to react calmly. Blossom’s face hasn’t moved, but the grin in the thought fills the world.
We’ll wait Dove says, launching.
Snow was a pre-Commonweal sorcerer by not very many years. Wheel’s, you can’t say teacher, you could maybe say Wheel survived Snow’s service, Wheel is one of the Twelve now.
We think now, Wheel’s back in the First Commonweal last anyone knows.
Wheel’s, Wake said flamethrower, that first month, listing our talent flavours, about Dove, and Wheel’s known for that same kind of thing. If you’re being polite, sometimes it’s balancer or evoker or something like that, but mostly everyone says flamethrower, because almost everything visible that got done with manipulating energy involved lighting people on fire. Things, people, stuff that isn’t supposed to burn. It’s Blossom’s secondary talent flavour, and a lot of why Blossom can’t weed effectively: things will burn. Halt says that by the time Blossom’s five hundred it won’t be a problem, and not to let Blossom’s enormous competence blind us to the fifty year head start.
That’s Halt not seeing why, given a few centuries, we can’t catch up.
Neither does Blossom.
It’s not a sisterly rivalry, it’s joint delight in observing what part of the world will bend in new ways. Two of them means more ways.
Energy, flows and balance and moving way too much into small unsuspecting volumes, is Dove’s primary talent. Easy enough to miss, it’s something you notice fighting, and we haven’t.
Get good enough at it, and it’s not shape-changing, you’re not in the form of anything alive, you’re dreaming yourself out of a circulation of the Power. Where your body goes is a question with at least five contradictory answers. If you got that far, it’s not much of a worry, you know where you are, you know where your body is, it will come up out of the undone circulation for you easier than waking from sleep.
It’s considered very advanced. Block says the Book of Snow is pretentiously obscure, but sound on the theory.
Even borrowing my head to read it with, Dove found the text a struggle. It reads different ways depending on how you look at it, the literary style conventionally supposes four opposed viewpoints and most statements should b
e ambiguous across all four.
It leads to an appalling terseness, the thing is also the thing in the season of unknowing, it doesn’t in any way qualify as instructions.
Block’s take on the subject is a fifth, equally contradictory, viewpoint.
Dove got stubborn about it, and is now more than skilled enough to become one single burning in the sky.
Structuring shadows for fast movement’s challenging, can’t do that with myself. Can become shadow, a structure of darkness, much more easily than switching to or from the fright.
Shadows have no weight, not that kind of weight, so I can tag along with Dove.
It’s restful. Dove doesn’t think in words like this, it’s happy, the word’s probably “meditative,” Dove’s hunting the intentions of those below, the little flock of things similar to unicorns.
The pass is only just marked, Blossom’s not having trouble following it but there isn’t a track, someone’s been this way precisely twice: it’s wilderness.
Pretty much everything in a wilderness will stay away from unicorns. No one has trouble, no one puts a hoof into a hornet’s nest or finds unsafe ground. Saturated soil and the force of running’s a bad combination on a mountain slope, it’s up and over and north up the valley and across that river, Blossom wills a bridge into being for long enough, then up and over again.
We get rained on, some, in the valley, a strange hiss off the fire-feathers as we’re spiralling lower. Don’t want to lose sight of those below.
Photons, sight, it’d be difficult to lose those on hooves, a hastening constellation in the Power.
Not a reason to try Constant says, amused, not admonishing.
The second pass is better, lower, not a road but you could call it a trail, you can see the intentions of the road, survey crews have been through.
It’s dark, well past dark, down in the valleys the sun gets a certain amount west and there’s a mountain range in the way, you can see the valley empty of light, but now it’s dark sky through the width of the world. Running up the west bank of the river, the road has a high feel, going along the gorge top, coming up to a long house set back from the road, just before the works of the dam. A few faint lights show against a square bulk in the dark, mist. Enough mist to make sight dim to these excellent eyes.
Safely You Deliver Page 6