Safely You Deliver

by Graydon Saunders

  “You are twenty-five. You gaze back unconcerned for more than difficulties of knowledge.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  Wake nods. “Entirely. Also unsettling to your teacher.”

  “That … Reems person. The sorcerer running the attack ritual, not the plague one.”

  Wake nods.

  “Killing a sorcerer like that’s surprising.” I know it is, I want that to be a question anyway.

  Wake produces two much smaller ceramic tumblers, they look like jars, square sides and a round top, hands me one.

  “Sip,” Wake says.

  There’s an old cookbook phrase about “warming to the liver.” Drink this too fast and your liver might catch fire.

  Tasty, though.

  Wake smiles. “One can drink only so much chocolate.”

  “A sorcerer of that accomplishment and skill is not generally killed by someone. They make a mistake in a major working, they succumb to a coalition, an excess of demons, some greater mass of force.” Wake looks wry. “Locally, Line battalions.”

  I can’t think of anything to say.

  “There would be much confusion in Reems had any of those involved in the ritual survived Dove’s wrath,” Wake says. “The chief and best-protected of them, holding executive function for the whole considerable working, dropped abruptly and entirely dead. The working itself ceased, which is the kind of thing you examine students on and expect them to tell you it couldn’t have happened, that no means exists for necromantic talent to be applied at such strength.”

  “Then Dove lit them all on fire.” After Ed ate whatever was trying to stuff Dove into the otherworld, and had been meant to do that to Halt.

  Wake nods. “It is comforting in its way.”

  I get a smile. “All of you acted with wild disregard for your own safety. One expects, the habits of centuries predict, perhaps especially among sorcerous lovers, a concern for defenses, a cautious analysis. You, all of you, acted like a critter team going in with axes.”

  “So we don’t seem like we’d want to kill you for status?”

  Wake nods. “You must consider what I would fear to arrive at the possibility.”

  Very true.

  “So making me into the Lady of the Ice seems like it’s acceptably risky?”

  “I cannot do anything to quantify the risk, I have done this, I know of no other. Doubtless in all the long years another has, but occurrences are sparse.”

  “Someone’s still going to come after me.” I can hear myself sounding mournful.

  Wake makes a hand-tipping gesture for maybe, not a head tip, I wonder if that means something else in Wake’s culture of origin.

  “It is quite possible no one in Reems, that specific polity which we suppose is Reems, survived aware of a strong necromancer in the response to their attack. Halt left no-one associated and sorcerous over two hundred alive.”

  Wake makes a your drink gesture, I don’t drop it, I take a sip, another and another.

  “Just like that,” Wake says. “That plague did not constitute a trivial attack.”

  There’s a pause with a couple more sips in it.

  “In time, some enemy of the Commonweal will learn of you, and seek to do you harm.” Wake says this, well, compassionately. Wake’s had five hundred years of it. And the thousands more before that.

  “Not alone,” Wake says. “By no means alone.”

  “How difficult is the ritual?”

  “No ritual,” Wake says. “A single spell, impossible to know without using.”

  Chapter 45

  Chloris

  It’s a really big ritual ward, a circle in a triangle.

  The points of the triangle have Wake and Halt and Edgar. Edgar’s got Dove and Constant and Blossom to push, they’re the main node. Ed fronts it because Dove and Blossom aren’t unearthly. Constant might be.

  Having this go wrong slaughters the earthly, no matter how intangible.

  Probably won’t get Blossom. “Unlikely,” is what Blossom said. Everybody thinks Dove’s sort of behind Ed, safer there than anywhere, because Ed is neither earthly nor unearthly, so the question doesn’t apply. Constant’s behind Ed and Dove.

  For “many hundreds of kilometres,” Wake says, which is why the big ward. And the formal application, the Eastern Waste, and the Line pulling all the potash miners back to Edge Creek.

  Not thinking about it won’t work. Have to think about, Wake says it’s not doing it right, there isn’t a doing it right, this is more like the Rune of Unbinding, Halt says. Wake had nodded.

  It was comforting, and I must not think about that, have to not think about thinking about that. The Rune of Unbinding unbinds the sorcerers who learn it, unless they figure something out in time. You can’t learn the answer ahead of time. It’s not an explainable answer, it won’t go into words or pictures or even those pseudo-mass articulated structures Dove loves for explanations.

  So I’m standing on a salt flat that shines pale in the dark. No moon, not until almost dawn.

  Zora’s in the ritual space at the Round House, so is Grue, so is Pelōŕios, warded, as disconnected as voluntarily possible. Grue said something about forest hawks, the forest hawk, that’s the common name, not all the hawks that live in forests. They’re not hawks, this amuses Grue, they’re small eagles. Big if they were hawks, larger than redtails. And soarers, soaring hawks, aren’t, they’re an aggressive vulture, and chicken hawks can’t fly and aren’t even really birds despite the feathers, and somewhere in there I think I got Grue’s point.

  The ward goes clear. It’s been all blurry and now the sky shines clear and sharp and excessively bright, you can imagine people who make up constellations always see the sky like this.

  Halt’s eerie singing stops.

  All the way warded, with a ward that wouldn’t stop a snowball. It’s not supposed to stop anything material.

  There are four scattered little lizards looking at me. Not that close, they all have really long toes and thick scales.

  Didn’t think about that at all. I can see in the dark, I can see close what is far, I’ve pretty much forgotten I ever couldn’t.

  I hope you’re all material, lizards.

  You won’t hurt if this goes wrong.

  It’s not a scroll, Wake’s from a place that doesn’t do scrolls or books, codexes. It’s a length of complicated ribbon, flat-weave stuff with bits sticking out and knotted.

  I don’t know know to read it, which in this case doesn’t matter at all.

  Pull with the left hand, Wake said, Wake had me practice the motions over and over with plain ribbon. You have to pull the ribbon out of the coil in your right hand really slowly with your left hand, across your right thumb, mind open, not any kind of sense of purpose, that’s why this is hard.

  Well, why it’s hard to start properly.

  Death is scary because you stop. Stepping off a cliff, going under water, those are scary because you have to stop.

  Don’t have to stop.

  It’s like whirling, dancing, you need your partner to balance, they have to give weight back, you can’t do it yourself, not the same way, it’s a different kind of balance than just spinning on your toes.

  So there’s one of me here, and another me there, and the balance isn’t difficult at all, just slight adjustments, like with anyone new.

  There really are turns like this, turn inside and you’re facing the other way.

  Earthly.

  Unearthly.

  Always to be dancing.

  This isn’t complicated at all.

  The ward blinks out.

  All four lizards are alive.

  Sensibly alive, they scuttle away.

  Halt looks just like Halt, if I’m careful. Wake, I can see the door, I don’t have to pay attention to it, the social presence is really half, it’s not the same balance, it’s static, it really is like a door frame, there’s fixed parts, balanced construction instead of a dance, but the halves, that
’s the same kind of thing.

  Dove’s, there something I don’t understand about the categories, Dove really is the unconquered sun, sunrise colours, red and gold all mixed. Blossom’s more like a mythical star fallen to earth, ordered fire in a thousand shades of white.

  Ed’s between them like a hole in the world, dark in the darkness.

  Not really surprising, not as scary as Halt, couldn’t be, so much self delusion over being just the one many-jointed chitinous fright.

  Shh Dove says, and I get a look from Constant.

  I can hug Ed. I’m glowing.

  Faintly, but I’m glowing.

  Wake’s really benevolent, that’s not just confidence. Halt’s pleased, I can trust that it’s pleased, can’t see all of Halt, I’d go mad, but this much I can believe.

  “Certainly, Chloris dear,” Halt says, smiling.

  Dove strides up, kisses me. Which is really nice, but I’m still, and Dove grins.

  “Nothing like strong enough,” Dove says, and kisses me again.

  I wind up leaning on, not precisely Ed, segmented shadow limbs, just to see, they’re entirely tangible to me, not to the salt, or the air, but when I’m like this, it’s not more than half imagination anymore.

  The segmented souls of razors rearrange and rise so I’m leaning back purring into Constant’s arms and Constant’s wordless murmured joy.

  “That might have been the easiest thing I’ve done,” I say to Wake, because it was and I wasn’t expecting it to be comprehensible, never mind easy.

  Wake nods. “Now there are two successes. Perhaps someday there shall be enough that it were not rash to speculate.”

  Halt says “Hmph.”

  Wake tips a hand at Halt, and Halt says “There are kinds of Power the world does not like to hold. You start to fall out of it, bleed away, namers and necromancers and enchanters all suffer from this, as the stuff-stirrer and the life-mage and the shapeshifter do not.”

  “Suffer?”

  Halt nods. “Things get slippery.”

  I get a head-tilted bright-eyed look.

  “In your case, Chloris dear, you are more than strong enough that you were already falling through the world. Doing so in an orderly way becomes prudent.”

  Halt knows just how to phrase things. Falling, involuntarily falling, out of the material world, becoming half a ghost, not something worth mentioning, but finish the sentence with prudent and that nice Chloris girl won’t worry so much.

  Halt taps me, solidly, on my immaterial nose. “Takes several hundred years, in the regular run of things. Even in your case another five.”

  I nod and say “Yes, Halt.”

  Five years. Lots of time.

  Lots and lots, if this hadn’t worked.

  “At least one more thing,” Blossom says, and reaches out and takes my hand.

  Something like sticking your hand in the fire and wondering why it doesn’t hurt.

  “That’s greater Power and coherence,” Blossom says. “Dove has that, you don’t get to that.”

  “Distinct isn’t separate,” Ed says, really smiling, and seems entirely human leaning over Constant’s immaterial arms to kiss me.

  Chapter 46

  Zora

  “Chloris?”

  Chloris is looking at the Round House kitchen as though it’s just slightly possible it’s not perfectly clean.

  “Perfectly clean,” to Chloris, is this thing where utterly sterile and impeccably neat had offspring, and the offspring all aspire to better conduct.

  Still not as excessive as Dove using declarative language to set unwholesomeness on fire.

  I get a raised eyebrow, and most of Chloris’ attention, people-Chloris.

  “Available for project testing?”

  “Need someone on the ward?” Chloris asks.

  “Need someone to try it on.”

  It’s an aluminium belt buckle, purple, because why not, empty, because that’s part of the point. Chloris finds the binding activation, gets the belt, puts it on.

  Which means there’s another binding.

  Chloris says “Well,” in approving tones, and triggers that one.

  Great big mass of frills, still purple, three quarter length tulip shape. Size mostly set by the belt length, it fits just right.

  Chloris looks puzzled, does a half spin. There’s a huge smile after that.

  “How’d you get the swirl right when it doesn’t weigh anything?”

  “It only experiences inertia for moments perpendicular to the force of gravity.” In scalable amounts, too, but Chloris can tell that from the binding.

  Chloris picks up a single frill, looks contemplative.

  “Texture’s really good.”

  I get a superfluous head tip; Chloris can’t tell what it feels like.

  “I asked Halt what the fibre in the fabric used in our apprentice hats feels like.”

  Chloris nods. Not quite silk. Colder, firmer, harder isn’t right. Halt handed me the sensation, I said thank you. Still don’t know what that fibre’s called.

  Chloris switches both bindings off, hands me the buckle back, looks very pleased. “Fit anybody, never have to wash it, can’t get crushed, doesn’t weigh anything, you’ve done something really elegant with the balancing forces in the other two axes.”

  There’s a considering pause from Chloris. “Ought to cost less.”

  I nod. It does, less than a quarter. You don’t own your own crinoline, you maintain one for as long as you’re that inclined to dancing. These, well, they’ll last better, even done really simply in aluminium like this. The shot-shop design leads have been having a big discussion about stability of materials versus the stability of fashion, someone else will have to get involved, they’re too busy to make dancing skirts as a product, but we know them, they’re calm about being asked to try novel designs.

  “What’s the rest of it do?” Chloris’ sure that can’t be all. It’s an elegant treatment of a binding in a binding, but that’s not new. Not even getting it straightforward enough for a wreaking team to make them.

  “Remember the unfortunate attempt at a bodice?”

  Chloris nods. Illusory clothes sound wonderful, and then you have to make them work. Something that looks pretty but won’t change area, really won’t, you can’t breathe.

  “I think I’ve got it right.”

  “So I need to take my shirt off?” Chloris says, and I nod back.

  “And maybe shapeshift out of those added local skin muscles for the test?”

  Chloris nods, which is better than the scowl I wondered about maybe getting.

  It’s a little round pendant, two centimetres across, hole in the middle, looks like a washer if anyone made those in aluminium.

  Chloris gets this expression after switching the binding on, turns abruptly, jumps, really jumps, looks intent, says “Oh that’s smart.”

  Can’t do it, well, we can, could, Chloris went with shapeshifting and Dove goes with not much needing to worry, it’s not inherently difficult but if you do the three axis structure and three axis damping, that’s a month’s work for a good wreaking shop, for one binding. Complicated. Hopelessly costly.

  This is following your skin to define a volume, that’s easy, and then putting error bars on volume, surface area, and radial and rotational inertia. What the error bars ought to be was tricky to figure out, discontinuous functions, but putting them in the binding when you have them isn’t difficult.

  Chloris does the full ribcage inhale, twice, because believing the complete lack of squeeze the first time was obviously emotionally difficult.

  It wasn’t difficult to put a “set” switch in, not an extra state, just a decision, doesn’t much complicate the binding. You can turn the thing on, adjust yourself, and then tell it to hold that. Pressure on the outside gets distributed, the illusion’s locally rigid. Easiest thing to do is turn it on when you’ve got your arms stretched over your head. Chloris picks up on the thought and does that, off, stretch, on.<
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  “It’s invisible?” Chloris says, curious.

  I hand Chloris one of the rectangular beads. They fit across the notches in the flat face of the binding.

  Chloris can tell that, puts the bead there, sees the colour flush into the illusion.

  “Modular binding?” Chloris says, and I nod, say “Yes.”

  Bindings in multiple pieces, people do that, people have been doing that for as long as we’ve got bindings. This is like building a wall, the lower course of stone blocks accepts the next course.

  Could, in principle, just keep going like that, might want to for flood control, you only deploy to meet the need, a metre of illusory wall height per course of bricks, much faster than dedicated bindings. Or water pipe that’s mostly illusions and easy to move, there’s a bunch of possibilities.

  With that bead, the illusion is purple with gold marigold flowers, it really does look like massy gold. Not a lot of coverage, Chloris put the bead in vertically.

  “Turn the bead,” I don’t really need to say that, Chloris is, there’s a mirror illusion Chloris just called into being, the hole in the middle of the main binding’s so people who can’t just make the bead move by wanting it to can get it loose, six positions, it goes from frank invitation to snug neck-to-wrists-to-points-of-hips shirt.

  Still purple, still with gold flowers.

  “It’s got the hand of silk,” Chloris says, rubbing one cuff between thumb and forefinger.

  I nod. “Seemed better to make it feel like something,” which I think is true, no seams anywhere is a feature, cool and eldritch isn’t, not for most people.

  Chloris, if Chloris makes any, one’s going to feel cool and eldritch enough to make almost anyone shudder for days.

  “The hinterlands of shadow,” Chloris says, grinning.

  “How many different beads did you make?”

  “Twelve.” By then I was running out of ideas. I don’t say “want to try them?” because Chloris is already reaching out a hand and looking delighted.

  Chloris goes through all twelve. Goes through the settings on the two green ones and the white one twice.