Safely You Deliver

by Graydon Saunders

“Advances the art,” Whorl says.

  There are nods, and attestations, and it’s done, with some formal congratulations and bowing.

  Gibbert asks to keep the abstracted wood sphere. Nulls generally work around researchers, not really much active research right now, they’re mostly sidling up to Power-using weeds while someone else goes in with shovels, but the future possibilities “Include amusement,” Gibbert says.

  It’s not like the things are hard to make.

  That thought gets me a look from Crane, and I make something out of an abstraction of air, Crane’s a namer, air goes with voices, a small sphere and a sort of spirally support for it that will twist on to the top of Crane’s staff.

  Crane takes it, with a small precise bow and a small precise smile.

  “Perhaps I shall discover a use for it,” Crane says, and I nod. It would be good if someone did, a general one that didn’t depend on strong affinities.

  I look over at Whorl, at Loft, who are looking at Crane with some doubt. “Not that brave,” Whorl says, and Loft nods.

  Lester really wants to smile.

  Chapter 50

  Zora

  There are hectares and hectares of Screaming Buttweed, only it sounds more like Histrionic Buttweed.

  The weeds are failing to harvest words for mercy from the minds of giant killer sheep, so we’re getting uncertain bleating noises in much too high a pitch. From the way various ovine eyes glitter, the final panicky shrill baah as the stalks rip out of the ground is the pleasant desperation of a dying enemy.

  Screaming Buttweed usually overwhelms your mind with raw psychic noise, paralyzing all volition. Eventually you fall over and more eventually, you rot, which helps make new weeds.

  Eustace trots over, ringing the ground and snorting purple fire. Halt looks welcoming and performs chin-scritching. A hazy hemisphere of glowing white appears in front of us to keep the fire away. I pat Pelōŕios’ shoulder, absently. Eustace would be more frightening without Halt, like many other things.

  Like the future.

  Screaming Buttweed, established Screaming Buttweed over any wide area, is a problem. The eustacen are making the Buttweed a much simpler problem, but some other problem is getting away.

  One of the sheepdogs bounds up, blurring fast, a tonne of silicon bronze made into long legs and long jaws. It stops close enough for anyone to see the flush-set heads of the bolts that hold in replaceable steel teeth before it bows the way any dog would to say “play?”

  Pelōŕios sings something short and glowing, then makes a broad head-sweep. The ball of spectral fire flies a kilometre.

  The dog spins in a shower of loose dirt, the eustacen haven’t left anything green above ground where they’ve already grazed over the Buttweed, and sprints off to catch the ball.

  There’s been three nights where the shepherds woke just in time to see the broad fire, and morning didn’t show anything but a hectare or two of soot and scorch marks. No ash, and no tiny seeds wafting on the wind; eustacen don’t precisely breathe fire, and that much of the reason not to burn Screaming Buttweed fails to apply.

  “Needs this thing then must fly,” Pelōŕios says, “or by some means sufficient deludes it all the kin of Eustace.”

  All three shepherds look displeased.

  “Oh, highly resistant,” Halt says, cadences odd because Halt is scritching Eustace vigorously along the jaw. “Hence the digestive recording function, Eustace hasn’t got a mind in any usual sense.”

  Handy for many sorts of weeds when there’s nothing metaphysical there at all.

  The sheepdog bounds up again, paws sliding, forehead into Pelōŕios’ ward with a faint deep belling. Pelōŕios doesn’t move at all. The dog surrenders the ball of fire, tail scything, and Pelōŕios throws the ball over the chomping flock of Eustacen, to a different place and a longer distance. The dog tears off, ignoring how undevoured Buttweed screams as bronze paws rip it up.

  The three shepherds carefully explain that they haven’t sensed anything, that their wards haven’t tripped, that they can’t find any indications of anything on the eustacen. Halt hasn’t introduced them, so I shouldn’t introduce myself, no matter how rude that feels. Just because people in Westcreek Town will use my name doesn’t mean village sorcerers working as shepherds feel comfortable giving their names to someone who shows up behind Halt with a unicorn at their shoulder.

  Another dogged clong into Pelōŕios’ ward, another long throw. The shepherds don’t look delighted by that, either, but the other two dogs are lying on bare dirt and Buttweed, respectively, looking outward and alert. They’re guard dogs, rather than herding dogs, and apparently smart enough to either work shifts or take turns making friends.

  Smart enough to be safe around people when they’re sixteen decimetres at the shoulder and have steel teeth for shearing, not gripping.

  Halt returns a nod for my direct and inquisitive look. Arms up and out is just easier, it has nothing to do with the Power, not directly, but if you want to take a really deep breath to remind yourself what you’re doing the wide gesture helps.

  Not so these shepherds Pelōŕios says, the words on top of a snicker.

  I’m expecting ground-nesting hornets, or something of that kind; a diffuse threat, already in place. Even very tough hornets wouldn’t leave much trace after eustacen snort nitrogen plasma on them.

  Not material at all. Probably looks material, enough dust and dew you can make something functionally material without ever having anything put weight on the ground.

  Eustacen, Halt’s handed me the mind-analog as an abstract structure, it’s exceedingly clever but no eustacen is ever going to decide something might be immaterial so let’s not attack it.

  Is there any value to an ancient temple complex? I’m getting more than a hundred thousand years, none of the construction was very tall when the soil started covering it, something had knocked the buildings over and most of the colonnade, but it’s not especially far down. Maybe three metres to worked stone, and the deepest part isn’t over fifteen.

  Temple, well, the place of sacrifice, places, those retain the memory of blood and death and screaming. Death and screams soak further into the rock than blood does.

  Perhaps a younger one, Zora dear. Halt sounds placid. It’s not as though I can expect something like this to bother Halt. If it retains the initial mechanism for a weed, or the pattern of compulsion that’s affecting people, you’d want those.

  Those are gone. I’d like to think this is where Screaming Buttweed came from, and that’s what’s setting off the fragments of spectral guardians, but it’s not very likely. The general psychic distress ought to be enough, the Buttweed’s emanating all over the place, which is why the shepherds are sleeping well back behind considerable wards. Even if the Buttweed can’t overwhelm you, it’s going to give you nightmares.

  Scarcely thou, Pelōŕios says, from out of the middle of switching sheepdogs. They really are well-behaved dogs, the dog with the ball goes and drops it in front of the next dog when it’s that dog’s turn.

  Not that the guardians were initially meant to be spectral, there isn’t much left down there.

  Rot untimely of a certainty, the memory of blood in the stones should have rotted long, long ago. I could make that have happened, but who knows what that will do. Enough to pull the structures apart, blur the lines of Power-shapes into homogeneity through the rocks. Stuff-stirring slow enough there’s not going to be noticeable heat up through the ground.

  Still sad old stones, but not haunted when I’m done.

  Halt nods approvingly when I start paying social attention again, and more when I take a moment to pat the sheepdog dropping the ball of fire at Pelōŕios’ feet.

  I can’t feel anything else, but that’s not absolutely certain. It could be intermittent, it could be two universes over and leaking into this place, it could, possibly, be the cyclic remnant of a god. There had been more than enough blood on the altars for a god.

  The
shepherds are adamant that the manifestation, whatever it is or was, has happened every night for the past three.

  Which means Halt and I need to be back out here tonight, but not that we need to skip dinner.

  Dinner gives me a chance to check when it last rained. The weather station’s usually near the refectory, it makes it easier to check the barometer on your way out from breakfast. This one isn’t any different, the little cabinet’s stuck out from the north-east corner of the refectory building, with this décade and last décade’s readings written on the back of the door on each side of the tall window that lets you see the barometer and the thermometer.

  Halt’s got a corner table. Halt’s got a pot of lettuce-root tea, which I’m pretty sure the refectory didn’t. Everybody around here are Regular Threes, it’s vegetable-processing collectives and most of several thorpes from around Wending. Halt’s sign for the teapot says “If you drink this, you will die hideously” in crisp block printing, instead of Halt’s extremely neat archaic cursive. “Hideously” is in red, and larger.

  Pelōŕios’ simiform shape takes after mine, so drinking lettuce-root tea only looks a little silly; the largest mug in this refectory is four decilitres. It’s certainly not going to hurt me, and there may be something somewhere that will hurt Halt but lettuce root tea certainly isn’t it.

  “One must consume demons sparingly,” Halt says, quietly. “A sufficient quantity becomes intractable of digestion.”

  It sounds exactly like your actual grandma explaining why you shouldn’t have a third slice of cake.

  Which, to Ed, is just precisely what it would be. I get a smile from Halt a bit wider than I would for the plate of fish-and-crawfish steamed buns and the bowl of bitter beet and carrot salad, which seems to be a some-of-the-older-people taste among Regular Threes.

  I manage to get some steamed buns into Pelōŕios by pointing out no one’s manners have a problem when you eat steamed buns with your fingers. It helps that they’re bite-sized given the different scale expectations of the cooks, no real chance of anything dribbling down Pelōŕios’ chin. Food-flavours are still very startling, and food-as-social-event baffles in practice, but there’s progress.

  Even if the goat cheese in the bacon-cheese buns is appropriately considered savage. Might be the goats, might be the forage, but I suspect it just didn’t culture quite right. There’s sharp, which new cheese shouldn’t be, and there’s whatever that was, which I admit I rather liked after the startlement had passed.

  Pelōŕios muttered something about the acquisition of tastes being not of the law.

  Someone comes up after the nibbles, we’re just about gathered up, and says “Excuse me, are you from the sorcery school?”

  I say “We’re from the school in Westcreek Town,” because there are, if you count wreaking-shop apprentices as you should, six more. Plus whatever wandering thing Crane is doing, and probably a few others I don’t know about.

  “I’m Flaed,” wasn’t the response I was expecting. “You must be Zora,” even more so.

  I nod and say hello, in the way one does with partial social introductions.

  There’s a deep breath. Flaed, standing up, is shorter than Pelōŕios sitting down, and it would be worse with proper chairs. If they know who I am, it’s impossible they haven’t figured out who Halt is. This is being notably brave even before there’s a rush of talking.

  “Is Edgar all right? I get letters, they’re really very nice letters and there are pictures these last couple years when Ed couldn’t ever sketch before, but I want to reach through the letters and shake them until they tell me what’s really going on.”

  Halt isn’t smiling anywhere eyes can see.

  I nod. “Ed can be opaque about feelings.” In large part because Ed can’t help being a bit wistful about how very tasty everyone seems. I never really met the Edgar Flaed remembers, but if the Edgar from the first couple months is close, that Edgar was even more worried about getting things wrong.

  I get a firm nod back. “I can never tell if this Dove thing is an angle with this Chloris person, or all together, or if they’re all content with it, or if Ed really thinks it’s a good idea.” There’s no expectation of sorcerous ethics in Flaed’s statement at all, no knowledge of what Ed’s like now. Pelōŕios is having a struggle keeping the expected results of anything trying to compel any of us off their face. I’m having a struggle keeping myself from seeing Chloris’ utterly tactful response to “this Chloris person.”

  I can hardly start with feathers made of fire and darkness on invincible wings. I surely cannot start with the way they look at each other full of eleven-dimensional feelings that don’t, and should not, have names. Or with how it didn’t matter, not even to Chloris’ intractable propriety, who had died or how, so long as they all came out safe from that arcane fight on the Folded Hills high road, and how safe meant Dove stepping out of that fire.

  How Ed’s voice starting that fire made Blossom wince from the terrible control of a will outside the world. How Grue shook in the Round House basement while we hid from Chloris’ metaphysical transition. How everyone in the hospital looked up when perish in flames rang down the whole of the Power.

  “It’s something Edgar really wants, something Dove and Chloris really want.” I can keep my voice to a human scale, without the awareness of how much reality bent to give them exactly what they wanted.

  Flaed doesn’t look completely reassured. I have no idea what to say, because, well, I can say —

  “You know how some people are easier to work with than others?” Flaed’s trade is cooking. People disagree about how things are done when you’re cooking. That might be part of the definition of people.

  Flaed nods.

  “Right from the start, Dove and Edgar worked together extremely well.”

  “It’s so hard to imagine Ed as any kind of sorcerer, even without trying understanding hatching.” Flaed makes hand-motions of disbelief. I wouldn’t know for sure without the cognitive penumbra, but that’s disbelief. “Ed would always work hard but wasn’t ever much for wits or talent.”

  “Working hard counts in sorcery.”

  “I suppose it must,” Flaed says, completely unconvinced and not wanting to argue.

  “It really does.” That, I can say with emphasis and certainty. There’s a tiny gleam of amusement from Halt.

  Flaed looks compressed for a second and blurts “Did you hatch, too?”

  There’s a wave and an apologetic little head-duck. “I know it’s some sorcery thing, but I can’t tell if it’s a joke or not, and that would be even less like Edgar.”

  “There’s something like hatching for all of us. I haven’t, yet, though all the rest of us have.”

  Flaed looks a little concerned at me.

  “It’s a metaphor, but what hatching is a metaphor for isn’t the same thing for everybody who becomes an Independent.”

  “I suppose it is your trade.” Flaed smiles, carefully and with effort but it turns real somehow. “Edgar really does get to feel useful?”

  With a little bit of the implication of seeing as they’re not here, since Flaed has no idea the rest of us are off with Blossom mining samarium after doing something too emphatic to call divination to find it. To the great relief of both Blossom and the Standard-Captains, but not something I should casually mention.

  “Edgar really does get to feel useful.” I say that with just people-emphasis, not the thing of inescapable certainty I could make it if I didn’t pay attention.

  Flaed nods at me, and says “Thank you. It’s a help. And now I’ve got to go soak some beans,” and heads out briskly, quite composed.

  Which is respectable for talking to sorcerers.

  Should less composure had speaking unto shepherds?

  It’s difficult to maintain a dignified silence in one’s own head.

  Not, thankfully, difficult to make an illusory pavement; putting chairs right on new bare dirt is something to avoid.

  Pe
lōŕios goes quadrepedal, snorfles approvingly, and stretches out behind my chair. Not asleep, too much horn glow for asleep even if I couldn’t feel the alert watching.

  Halt hands me a cup of tea, for which I murmur thanks.

  Sometimes the best thing about sorcery is being sure your tea won’t get cold. It’s going to be a long night watching.

  I’m sure the eustacen cropping the buttweed off let more water get down to the ruins when it rained, and that did something, ions, the wetted memory of sacrificial blood, there’s not really any telling without having dug it all up and doing lengthy careful experiments, to activate what was left of the guardian mechanisms. Certain is not the same as correct, so we’re going to see what happens.

  The shepherds make their usual camp, about a kilometre away. They’ve got respectable ward-bindings, Blossom’s work, which I suppose keeps them from having the inevitable moderately creepy overtones of Halt’s. They’ve got a small stove and reasonable singing voices even if they can’t tune a mandolin very well. The eustacen stand in a companionable horns-out circle on rutted bare dirt and chew their cuds with a wet grinding noise a lot like the sound feeding a cabbage mangle too slowly makes. The lambs, face horns almost grown and back-curving goat horns only starting, go in the middle like one-tonne miniatures of the adults. Their cud-chewing adds a note as though it’s the turnip mangle turning almost quickly enough.

  The sheepdogs come and look so expectantly at Pelōŕios there’s a sigh and a switch to bipedality so using a wire brush back of the dog’s ears is practical.

  All the dogs have, and have delicately brought, their own brush, and being bronze constructs, don’t drool. Pelōŕios is deeply thankful for the lack of drool.

  It’s important to face the dog so the scything tail isn’t near anyone, but Pelōŕios didn’t have any trouble figuring that out. One dog goes and lies down by the shepherds; the other two curl up in the middle of the eustacen, I suppose in the fashion of a horrible surprise for any attacker trying to get away.

  Full dark has me feeling slightly uneasy, not because I can sense anything untoward but because it’s so peaceful. Most of the eustacen are drooping-headed asleep, sheep would lie down but sheep don’t weigh tonnes. The lambs do lie down, two with their heads on the same sheepdog.