“ … Durable, we’re durable, lasting hurt means overcoming our collective will to be whole. None of us will, would, or can stay flesh, either. I don’t know what I’m going to be, I don’t know how Chloris is going to be living inside Death, or how Dove’s going to be another coil of thinking fire like their sister Blossom, but I know we will.”
Dove sort of grins at me, turns a bit to look straight at Grackle.
“Mama, I can’t be reassuring so I’m going to be honest. Ed, that polite lad, concerned to be useful, is completely constructed. More than Ed will actively admit, the hatchling shape, the shape that can manifest here, it’s not everything back there. Something that’s supposed to take many years, maybe hundreds of years, it doesn’t matter how voracious for the Power you are if there isn’t that much there.”
“That incursion alarm,” Hawthorn says.
“Entirely real,” Blossom says. “A newly-hatched entelech, between me and Wake and a battalion we’re entirely sure we’d win. Halt would win.”
“Ed was horrified that I might not have had the opportunity to really consent to the consonance.” Dove’s, I’m going to say “fond” because I have to put a metaphoric hand on a unicorn’s neck to prevent panic. Dove’s kingdom of wrath exists to make sure Ed is safe, that Chloris is. Then I’m tied with Blossom.
And you’re just after Grue, kin-of-mine Blossom says.
We can’t have material kingdoms, not entirely, not really. Anybody who thinks we don’t have abstract ones, that we could not, that there’s any way to be an Independent and not, is just wrong.
Halt doesn’t care about physical territory. Anybody who doesn’t recognize that the idea of the Commonweal has gone into Halt’s kingdom, the particular forms of organization that say, with so much else, Halt can’t do that, well, I suppose that’s almost everybody.
The ghost of a shoulder squeeze comes through from Blossom.
“Are you safe, doing that?” Grackle’s voice and face are calm.
“Halt told Ed I could turn him into slurry.” Dove’s voice is entirely cheerful.
“So, no, Mama, none of this is safe, safe means we know all the risks and can account for them in ways that stand up to formal scrutiny, and we can’t because it’s new, never happened before. But if you mean do I have to worry about being devoured, no, I don’t. Not even if Ed’s mind gets replaced with something that entirely wants to devour me.”
Grackle gets up and walks around the table to hug Dove.
The Independent Ongen and the Independent Order, independently and respectively, assert that my character is useful predictor for the long-term outcome of Dove and Edgar’s consonance.
Chloris and I get the same smile. We shouldn’t be able to, different faces, but we do anyway. Dove looks fond, Constant’s always in there, never mind that Ed’s hundreds of metres away in the Captain’s House back garden learning sword fighting from a graul.
Mostly because Ed can learn sword fighting from a graul.
Grackle and Hawthorn look, I don’t know. They heard that, they know what it was, and I think who, but it’s a surprise.
“Constant is a bit spooky and often distant,” Blossom says. “Constant also lacks any actual character flaws.”
“Of course you can’t say that,” Blossom says to Dove’s look.
Mikka has a small pad of paper out of a pocket, a pencil, has performed calculations. “Did anyone measure the affection effect?”
Dove says “Yes.” There’s a strange sort of smile, that goes with all the space between a re-seated Dove and Chloris disappearing. “It splashes on everyone in a five hundred metre radius.”
Dove’s regular expression comes back as Dove says “We were hoping for a lot less range.”
“Round House wall-wards, the room wards on the third try, being in the working link, or being a teacher all stop it,” Chloris says. “If something else does, we don’t know about it.”
Eirene makes a sympathetic noise at Dove, squeezes Dove’s shoulder.
The splash was five hundred and twelve metres exactly from Dove and Edgar holding hands.
Mikka’s shoulders square up. “If you were a weed, it would be a brigade problem.”
Dove nods. “Two, if the link’s active.”
Mikka looks at me, as sternly as Mikka possibly can. Everybody at the table who isn’t me or Mikka carefully fails to smile or snicker.
Grackle says, in grandmotherly tones, “There isn’t a socially acceptable way to say you’re special.”
Halt smiles. So does Eirene.
“I left a lot out because there isn’t any way to explain it. And I left a lot out because Mother gets either a success or an early death from this daughter and I told Mother that, carefully, right at the start, but I don’t need to give Mother reasons to worry because absolutely no one knows how it’s going to come out.”
Mother will worry, and there are many solid reasons to worry and only a few abstract bits of hope for counterweights.
Mikka looks over. Not only is Halle still asleep, Pelōŕios’ head is curled right around so Halle’s outside hand has fallen just behind the base of Pelōŕios’ horn.
“Unicorn Fours understand family” Halt says, entirely calmly.
“Yours,” Eirene says to Hawthorn, “volunteered to help mop after the cutlery.”
“A certain expectation of cake,” Hawthorn says, leaning forward past Grackle’s smile.
Eirene nods. “Dried apple pie.”
Mikka’s more collected, not a lot more collected, but somewhat. “The Shape of Peace isn’t going to reject you.” It’s a completely flat statement. “Sorcerers get rejected for not believing in the Peace, and you’ve always been the kid who wouldn’t take apples from branches grown over the path.”
“I made a couple hundred new species of freely reproducing animals.” At least, insects are animals, and a count of the plants might never be finished. “I directly altered something like seventy thousand people, there’s another thirty to fifty thousand affected metabolically by the history switch, and maybe more affected cognitively if they talked to someone with the new past.” Calm, this has to be calm even if I’m not. “The Shape has grounds to object if it wants.”
“There was a vote,” Eirene says.
“To do something else.” Dove is calm. Dove would probably be calm even if it was another batch of demons. When. When it is, if the Shape accepts us. “The malice was a surprise.”
Mikka makes what would clearly prefer to be broad gestures of disbelief, and have to be mostly vertical instead. “You saved a lot of people.”
“I could have turned them into potted plants.” I have to nod pretty vigorously, because Mikka doesn’t want to believe this. “I could have done anything at all to their beliefs, their personalities, their heredity, species, absolutely anything.”
Drink some tea.
“There wouldn’t be any way to tell. Even inside the link, I’d have to not lose any names but I had to do that anyway. I can’t turn random single people into cabbages because it’d be noticed, but there’s fundamentally no way to tell what I did from outside the working and I did the whole ecology, people and all, by our strength but with my own will and ability.”
“Nor are there simple questions of truth to ask,” Halt says, offering to pour me some more tea. “Zora needs must alter folk, to have altered the land that feeds them. Everything else may reduce to accident or belief.”
I nudge my cup forward, nod thank you.
Grackle’s head tips, just a little and I wouldn’t want Mother to look at me the way Grackle’s looking at Dove. Dove just grins. “I do structure and order and patterns, so Zora’s ecology got knit into the world.”
“After the malice got removed from it.” A firm voice from Grackle, no kind of question.
“That was me and Ed and Chloris,” Dove says. “Joint effort.”
“I kill things and maintain boundaries, so Dove and Edgar don’t exalt themselves into something too te
rrible to exist” Chloris says, pleased and gentle and eternally beautiful. “All I did with the lower Third was push and keep track of lives.”
Eirene says “All” with vast disbelief.
“Comparatively,” Chloris says as though serene was a verb.
“But you didn’t,” Mikka says, thankfully entirely certain.
“I didn’t, but I could. The Shape of Peace works off of everybody’s minds, I’d need some kind of ritual but there’s only a million people in the Commonweal. I could do that by the time I’m fifty at the outside. I can even come up with good reasons, make everybody a little smarter and a little more forgiving and a little more patient and society works better, it would have to, and you’d still recognize everybody, you’d still recognize yourself.”
Dove’s nodding. So are Chloris and Halt, and, reluctantly, Eirene, who has to get through a menu meeting once a season.
“The Shape’s going to want someone who would never ever do that, even if the alternative was everybody dying and the Commonweal going down into ruin, because meaningful consent to having your mind altered by magic isn’t possible, the cases that are allowed now are explicitly all based on legal reasoning that says it’s equivalent to suicide.”
Mikka makes an odd noise, raises both hands, tries to be placatory. “It’s hard to think of my kid sister like this.”
I nod. It’s hard to think of me like this, and I have a lot more practice.
“Eirene? Can I expend some glassware and some cutlery?”
Dove, who sees what I’m thinking, says “Small some,” and Eirene says “Certainly.”
Glass is really, really strong if it doesn’t get scratched, and there are ways to manage that. And syrinxes are versatile, and I really liked yesterday but three’s style of dinner music. So there are three glass birds there on the table, clear-winged and purple-bodied and foot-scutes mostly nickel, that fly up to the balcony railing with a fierce clear whirring of wings. Each glass bird makes a few odd preparatory noises, getting in tune with each other, before they start singing soft complex music.
“Nicely done,” Halt says.
Eirene’s looking at me inquisitively; Mikka’s looking at the birds, and at me, and the birds, and Halle, and me, eyes large.
In fifty-odd years, I will have to lose my sister. Don’t want to lose anyone today, and especially not Mikka.
“Diet’s sand or broken glass, some salt,” I say to Eirene. “They will molt, but not often.” Every five or ten years per feather, I think. “The feathers should be soft if they’re flat, and safe to pick up from the quill. No solid or liquid defecation.” You can do a lot with a metaphysical metabolism.
“Why didn’t that take you years?” Mikka’s vehement, but that was the point.
I reach across the table, squeeze Mikka’s wrist, let go. “Because it isn’t difficult.”
“The lower Third was difficult, the plan was risky and I’m still surprised we survived the actual events, so something like that can happen, too, it doesn’t have to be the Shape of Peace. But those birds aren’t difficult because they’re just not. Enough knowledge, that much Power.”
“We could use that for the team motto,” Dove says.
Swift and Junco and Poesy and Nimblewill come in, looking a little shy before what are still strange people even if it’s not very much a strange place after three meals. They make a point of saying thank you to Eirene for the pie.
Eirene tells them that the pie is a reward for mopping, not for trying to mop, so they certainly deserved it.
Dove floats them home, dozing in a heap. Pelōŕios floats Halle, who curls back into the lift and stretches one hand out to rest on Pelōŕios’ shoulder. Halt’s smile at that follows me all the way home.
Mikka goes from not knowing what to think to being my sister again, though it takes the whole walk.
Chapter 34
Edgar
We were done breakfast and talking about taking visitors through the Tall Woods and Wake’s voice came out of the air, asking for help.
We ran.
There’s five hurt, none of them are dead, it’s not any sort of mercy.
Chloris got their pain walled off, can’t suppress it, can’t do much, scalds, burns, it’s pretty horrid, nerves still dying. It’s a process that peels the pain out of them and walls it off outside, only thing that actually helps. Various medics looking relieved, the hospital’s got beds that can do that, this is a brewing shed. Have to get the hurt brewers to the hospital without them dying of shock. Pelōŕios has been sent sprinting to the hospital with terse, precise notes from Grue, as to what the hospital must get ready.
All I’m doing is floating people, Dove’s got the temperature, cooling people, cooling the room, Constant quietly between us trying to do something about the moisture on the walls, Zora’s linked up with Grue, they can’t do this sequentially, the last four will die.
Wake’s looking, it’s not angry, precisely, but certainly not benevolent. The wort kettle, great big copper cylinder when it’s whole, it must hold fifteen tonnes of water, the one end’s just off, not split, the whole area around the joint failed all at once, tearing away from the careful rivets. They weren’t even brewing, just a good scrub, last day before Festival.
Wake makes gestures, there’s a jagged purple-black glow around the rent copper.
“Mischief,” Wake says. Not benevolent at all.
Which is when one of the postal clerks runs in, looks at us, looks at the medics, looks at Wake, looks over the nearly dead, and says, face shut, barely with the air to say it from sprinting, “Outbreak, dire bad outbreak in the First Valley, way north, Township of Threeshelf.”
Grue looks up, not cuddly at all, pure Wicked Queen, says “leave me Zora” to Wake, waits while Zora picks up the pain block from Chloris, Zora can run it once it’s up, it’s creating two things at once that’s the problem. Dove waits just long enough and passes the temperature control to Zora. I pass the lift to individual pairs of medics, they’ve got charms for that, doctor-tattoos active on inside left wrists and foreheads. We all think a hug at Zora. Wake signs four terrible words and the whole of the copper kettle, everything upright and fallen, crumbles into green-black dust, then Wake’s said As close together as you might to us and we’ve taken a step to the shoulder of a mountain.
It goes valley, mountain, mountain, mountain, valley, mountain, valley, valley, other side of the valley, really quick after that, only just not so quick the terrain is flashes. We’re scrunched down tight together, three bodies, four minds bobbing along behind Wake.
Not like the standards, which compress distance, this is some way to exchange place, not a gate. I’ve seen Wake do this before, but never so fast. Didn’t know people could be taken along.
People cannot, Wake says. I should not such test as this have chosen.
We’re standing in a half-finished, it’s going to be a town, lots of sod walls and still some tarp roofs, I can smell the tile kiln, we’re near what’s obviously a refectory, a big two-gean shared one, post office across from it, library, open side of the square looking out over the lumpy terrain down to the river. Look up, across the valley, and there’s the shelving in the valley wall, where the township name comes from. Pinned ropes down to the river, you can see the argument about where to put the stairs in the placement of the ropes.
Nobody outside, plague flags everywhere, nailed across and over doors.
I don’t think everyone’s dead Chloris says, doubtful.
Wake touches us, one by one, on the forehead. Let us not rely on mightiness.
It’s, it’s strange, I’m nearly blind with eyes. Dim, cool, presumably protective. Takes a second to figure out how I could shut it off, don’t, don’t need to, couldn’t put it back up, Chloris, maybe, lots of fast thoughts.
Don’t know extent, don’t know what it is, don’t know the vector Dove says, waving a stretch of dirt mirror flat.
Everywhere I can reach, Chloris says, and we start getting a
map across the flat dirt, illusion that will stick.
Thousands and thousands. Everywhere Chloris can reach is a long way.
I’m on the perimeter, the message said nothing about an attack, doesn’t mean this isn’t one. Can’t find anything except sick people, nobody’s coughing, lots of fever, what was raving, barely muttering now as the last living wind down to die.
Nobody moving, no threads of intent, nothing willed, not that I can find.
I’m shaking my head when things come back into focus. Can’t find anybody pushing.
Not very old, Dove says. No sense of depth.
We’re falling back together, little bit of distance after Wake’s long steps but this is feeling dangerous.
Too virulent, it’s got everybody, the people who live here are Regular Fours and Skittish and maybe sixty Broadthews, it’s got them all. Chloris would like to have time to be upset.
The very consistent feeling of moving information around, Zora’s back in Westcreek Town but the consumed book’s still within us in despite of mountains. The book gives me odds, some constrained guess at odds.
Attack? turns into It’s an attack as a thing decided between us and Wake looking concerned at us, I start wondering if it’s a mistake or not, something not meant for us, decide it can’t be error, it’s getting all the Skittish and all the Broadthews, they don’t have the same oxygen transport mechanism as each other or as any Regular, it’s all iron but not the same molecules, there are no Skittish outside the Commonweal, a plague released accidentally in the Commonweal’s ridiculously unlikely.
So I shouldn’t be looking for intent, it’s done, I’m trying to find watching.
SLEEP.
Gotcha.
Whoever it is, they’re ten-twelve kilometres over that way.
Remember that they shall die sleeping save as you rouse them, Wake says.
I nod. Said that pretty loud.
Can we make it not happen? Like our wound-wedges exposure? Chloris has drifted from upset to intense.
Wake waves, not a specific gesture.
Safely You Deliver Page 20