“It’s not servitude if it’s an abstraction,” Eirene says, not at all approving.
“Are we picking from the list?” Dove says, and Lester and Creon and Merovich all nod. “Absolutely,” Creon says. “Though it’s proposed to be more a selection of bids.”
“Various other teams might be better value, and should get a chance to say so?” Chloris says, and there’s the mass nod again.
The picking-from-lists part is sounding sensible.
Individuals cannot hold land. That’s in the Ur-law. Land-tenure goes by geans in habitation, and geans may not have productive land. Productive land’s thorpes, mostly, and there was a big legal wrangle about holding thorpe-shares permitting habitation on the thorpe that didn’t get resolved until halfway through the second century of the Peace. Practicality won, so you can live there if you hold or work there, but a thorpe’s extent in taxes is set by what it broadly harvests, as a gean’s is by what its members earn by labour and investment. Some productive land’s common or held by a gesith, like the Lug-gesith and canal towpath pasture strips. The Lug-gesith’s responsible for having those weeded and mowed and maintained.
Being the Galdor-gesith’s towpath strips isn’t seeming like the best analogy.
Lester does the formal left and right semi-stern look against interruption and goes on. “Gean membership involves granting what is likely to be in part productive land directly to a gean, which is not desired.”
Gean gardens are on common, absolutely always and very carefully so. There is ritual generational random selection of which garden plots go with which gean, and it is guaranteed your gean will change plots when that new selection happens.
“Consultation with colleagues suggests that the least objectionable approach might be to consider auspices.”
“I thought I knew the whole of the land tenure laws,” Dove says. “Don’t know the term.”
“It customarily applies to non-human entities who are geographically constrained,” Lester says. “Auspices are not considered land tenure, but rather necessities of life.”
“Like those burrowing things someone found in the second valley?”
“Possibly,” Merovich says. “Those are not presently well understood. The First Commonweal records several groups of such persons, sophont trees, a sophont lake, what can only be described as an indwelling spirit on a particular hill.”
“The land is held to be under the auspices of the constrained entity,” Lester says. “Since they can’t move and would be adversely affected by harm to the land, the land is in their keeping.”
“We’re mobile,” Chloris says.
Lester nods. “Least objectionable is only that.”
“Food-gesith’s got what, eight or nine full thorpes? Just in the Creeks?” Dove says, it’s obviously not really important what the total is. Not especially like a question.
Nods. For the development of new crops, and testing of machinery and technique.
“Any reason the Galdor-gesith or the Book-gesith can’t have one?”
“Perhaps more than one,” Wake says.
Merovich looks uncertain. “The concern … ”
“The concern is we might last a thousand years and just naturally tend to control land and then you’ve got the rule of sorcerers,” Chloris says. “But if it’s like a thorpe, for research, we don’t control it, it’s not ours, it really isn’t supposed to be ours, we’d have seats on the meeting and it’d be stable but we wouldn’t have control of land.”
“If the auspices option is real, I’d like Mulch to have the Round House garden.” Which has nothing to do with us, really, auspices won’t work for people who can take long steps. Doesn’t entirely work with Mulch’s accomplished mobility.
That throws everyone who isn’t us or Wake or Eirene.
“Mulch spends half their time as a tree, it’d be really good for them to have a reliable place to be a tree, and they’re having lasting trouble with the idea they’re protected by the law, same as anybody.”
“We can say no more than that it is a thing to consider,” Creon says, and I nod. That’s not something clerks can decide by themselves, that would have to go to Parliament.
“Can’t call it a thorpe,” Lester says. “Have to share with the Book-gesith, too.”
“We are in the increase-of-knowledge faction” Dove says, with the degree of doubt appropriate for saying “we occupy volume.”
Lester nods, Creon nods, there are these quick smiles from Anicetus and Eirene.
“That handles the abstractions,” Eirene says.
“The brigadier-designate for the Wapentake, all three Keepers, and the first wizard-team we’ve ever had are eating in your refectory,” Creon says to Eirene. “Never mind the Independent Mulch and an increasingly civilized unicorn.”
“It’s getting political,” Clotho says, sounding worried.
“We do need to eat somewhere,” Wake says, much more present than Wake’s been earlier in the meeting.
“All together?” Merovich, in the for-the-record voice.
“I and my colleagues as Keepers do not possess the combinatorial skill of these our students,” Wake says, entirely formal. “Yet I should offer that the Keepers are, as you propose to define such things, a wizard-team. Merely one at the disposal of Parliament, rather than the populace entire.”
Creon nods. “That’ll sit better.”
“We could pay refectory-fees, we could do our share of dishes.” We really ought to do those things. “People do that for barge-crews so there’s a place to eat all down the route. Can’t see why we couldn’t.”
“Anybody else volunteering, instead of muttering?” Anicetus asks Creon. “In Westcreek Town, I doubt we’ll see the Captain’s House move this year or next.”
“Lots who’d rather not,” Eirene says, and sighs at the looks that gets, because it’s a little too true to say out loud.
“The Line troopers like us, some of them because if they didn’t the survivors would kill them.” I mean that literally and perhaps the survivors of the March North do, too.
Near enough, Dove says.
“Eirene likes us, and that’s maybe personal now but it started as idealism about treating Halt decently.” If I’m not careful my voice will go fast. “And I just thought how I was missing my cuddly big lump of a unicorn, so I don’t get to say I’m not scary.”
How I wish I could say I wasn’t.
“Not as scary as they are and they’re not as scary as Wake and Wake isn’t as scary as Halt.”
“You left out Blossom,” Dove says, smiling. Thinking rather more smile.
“I’m scarier than Thinking-Blossom, you’re scared for Thinking-Blossom, might walk off the wide side of a bridge. All-there-Blossom’s tied with Wake. All-there-and-angry Blossom’s probably past Halt. Blossom’s complicated.”
I don’t want proof.
Wake looks delighted; Dove doesn’t provide any memories of angry Blossom, or maybe just Captain Blossom.
“So best I know Eirene talked the whole gean into pretending Halt’s not terrifying out of what was right, in thanks for the glass-maker collective, the March, for staying and making it plausible that this Commonweal’s going to find a way to survive, and they do it, the whole gean’s acting like we’re regular people when it almost kills them, Pelōŕios was tough even if he did look scared.”
He makes Merovich’s face blank. Clotho’s face twitches with not snickering at the blankness.
Clotho thinks Pelōŕios extremely pretty Chloris says, prim over the grin.
“If there’s a political benefit, I think it’s deserved.”
“It’s a cost,” Eirene says. “For the next couple generations.”
Looks at Creon. “You know that perfectly well.”
Eirene’s whole posture goes determined.
“Has to be paid,” Eirene says. “Or we’re going to be looking at the future from a worse place.”
Chapter 55
Zora
> “I want to check some postulates.” I don’t suppose Halt hears that very often, but I get a nod and a smile. We wind up sitting at the end of a sheer bank that used to be a lot busier, before the barge-yards moved across the Creek to the south bank of the west end of the West-East Canal. I’m sitting on the end, feet just above the water. Halt’s chair is there, as always.
Lovely late summer day, so lovely that the long low shapes of ducks going by puffing steam is pretty without any worry in it.
No point in waffling.
“The divergence point for the Regular species cluster’s at least fifteen thousand years ago.”
Halt nods a little, not even knitting.
“Edgar’s parents were Regular Threes; Blossom’s parents were Regular Fives. So anything in the water has to have happened before the Regular cluster split.”
The idea that it could be something in actual water really annoys me.
“Ed might just be entelechy, but I don’t think so, the few facts available have actual sorcery by entelechs exhibiting wide variation. Some of the speculative stuff suggests that they might not have had any to start with, there’s this possible trend of increase over time.
“Then there’s Creeks. We’ve got no cultural support for considerable talents. We’ve got too many enchanter-ish talent flavours. There’s a dead tradition somewhere, we had, the part of us that were Cousins had, a dynamic sorcery tradition before Creeks happened as a species. We maybe lost it when speciation happened, there’s nothing much like history until Laurel arrived and we didn’t have an active sorcery tradition then. Only we hadn’t been conquered, which is not how it usually goes. And the main contributors besides Cousins to what we’re like now were a botched soldier-species and a less botched but really limited heavy-labour one, both so far as we know surviving only in us.”
Deep breath.
“Sometimes when you get new heredity it doesn’t express in the phenotype at all, or for a while, it takes generations for there to be a developmental pathway to express it. Talent’s funny that way, the possibility’s there that it took three or four generations for Creeks to start having talent, the merge dropped the old kind, the kind the Cousins still have, and we’ve got a different kind and the sorcerers just quietly went extinct because they couldn’t get enough apprentices — being an old-style apprentice isn’t safe, you probably go through five or six before you get a successor, if you can only find four that’s it.”
Halt says “Mur-urm,” sorta.
It can’t have been more than three or four generations because someone had to teach the wreakers, the people making lights and anti-sickness charms and weed-stranglers, the make-a-thing-and-pretend-it’s-not-magic social norm’s way older than the Commonweal. There had to have been a few left for long enough.
“Mulch is really old. Spent most of that time as a tree, I think sometimes as a rock formation, I don’t think Mulch even knows what there was to hide from any more, but Mulch is really, really old. Mulch remembers … it probably wasn’t all of twenty thousand years ago, but it was more than fifteen, because Mulch remembers people who just about have to be Regular precursors and an empire and the Empress didn’t look anything like you but demons were afraid of the Empress.”
Halt nods, in a do-go-on sort of way.
“If Mulch is really old, Mulch isn’t the only really old sorcerer. After awhile, it stops being about empires and starts being about what kind of empires are possible.”
Deep breath.
“That’s where Grue stops being willing to listen.”
Halt nods again, it’s a rather commiserative nod.
“Grue is smarter than I am, Grue is so smart you have to be awfully smart to notice how smart Grue is, Grue is about as much smart as Blossom is powerful.”
There’s a chuckle from Halt, but I can’t stop talking.
“Grue is terrified, Grue can barely function some days for being terrified, I don’t think it’s simple anxiety, Blossom would come for Grue across several hells, you would, we would, I wouldn’t be much help but, and Grue doesn’t feel better because of that.”
Not enough better.
“It’s not just anxiety, some of it’s anxiety, most of it isn’t, it’s not doubt about Blossom, so I have to suppose Grue’s doing an accurate threat assessment.”
Another deep breath. Halt hasn’t told me I’m crazy.
“Nobody can stop being descended from their ancestors. The probability thing, you could maybe switch ancestors, but then they’d be your inescapable ancestors, the ones you’d always had.”
Halt’s smiling, as kindly as Halt knows how, and not mentioning my acquired abstract unicorn ancestors who never existed.
“So this has to be like trying to turn something really weedy, something that was meant to be a weapon, not just poisonous, into a food plant. The Power’s nasty, it’s much easier to light someone on fire than it is to fix a burn, that’s not all entropy, it’s not even mostly entropy, there are all sorts of complicated ways to kill people that are easy.”
This comes out quiet, I don’t want it to, but it does. “You’re in some kind of really long term fight with some of the other really old ones about what kind of food plant, or if, or something else I won’t be able to notice until I’m a thousand.”
“Not precisely a fight, Zora dear.” Halt’s approving. “Overt fights are seldom decisive and are inevitably extraordinarily messy.”
Split Creek messy. Geologically discontinuous messy. Not mere well-aren’t-they-all-over-the-landscape messy.
“So it’s down to tiny percentages and lots of time.”
Halt nods. “With occasional drastic responses.”
Which I’m no good for. Has to be the tiny percentages.
“So I don’t know what to turn into.”
Halt’s head tips at me, inquisitive.
“Grue’s, I shouldn’t say stuck, Grue’s not a dynamic construct, it’s the best ward they could possibly design, sixty years ago. Grue’s incapable of not worrying about it, it’s optimized for general indestructibility but Grue doesn’t have any way to react if it’s something they didn’t think of designing the ritual.”
Halt nods. “Dove and Edgar and Constant.”
Halt, Halt likes Grue, Halt approves of Grue. Halt still thinks this is funny in some wit-of-fate sort of sense.
Even without Chloris, they’d be hard to stop. In a hundred years, maybe hard to stop for Halt.
Cloris alone, just someone as strong as Block or Crane who had time, Grue’s brilliant but Grue’s talent is under the median for considerable talents.
“Is Chloris going to wind up all the way inside?” Inside probably isn’t the right word.
“Permanent, Zora dear,” Halt says, and nods. “Barring traumatic events.”
“Are they the hammer?”
Halt grins.
“Near enough a heavy brigade,” Halt says, approving. “But only one.” The calm, considering voice.
“Most any sorcerer aware of your classmates will be inclined by habit to believe they’re in authority, be too much focused on them.”
Halt looks out over the water.
“Strategically useful, but you’re likely to worry.”
“Yes.” So very much yes. Because I can’t see how I’m going to survive.
So hard to say. “That attack construct on the high road, I’d have been gone. If it’s just regular death, if we’re all there, Chloris will catch me, if there’s anything organic I’ll be able to reinstantiate, I’ll probably survive.”
Halt nods.
“But if it’s just someone trying to do harm? I’m the easy target, I’ll be doing biology, we’re not always going to be working together.”
The long stepping really helps, saves a lot of time, even if Pelōŕios can’t do it.
Someone’s going to try to kill him, just because they hope it will upset me.
“Not unlikely,” Halt says, tone kind.
“If I go for a fixed
construct, I think I’d get a better one, I’d need help, I’m not an enchanter, either, but Grue’s experience is there and Blossom and Dove together are about the best enchanter help I could possibly get, I’d understand it while I was doing it.”
Blossom knows what other enchanters to ask about details, too, I don’t.
Let Halt’s murmur of agreement flow by.
“Only I think that’s the wrong answer, not being able to alter is a big part of what makes Grue anxious, no way to fix it and the awareness of it maybe being wrong gnaws.”
Given enough time, it will be wrong. There’s no knowing just when that starts being true.
“What else is there to do?”
Halt smiles. I didn’t sound plaintive, it’s the sensible question smile.
“Why, many things, Zora dear. The Power is indeed nasty, but also flexible.”
There’s never any noise unless there’s supposed to be, Halt not making noise doesn’t mean anything.
“It can’t be anything I can imagine.”
Halt quirks an eyebrow. “Mulch becomes ripples on water, dustmotes, the wave-front of explosions, many things at need, and so survives.”
One reason to hide being a capable shifter.
“Chloris split in half.” Got less creepy, somehow, it’s either Death or Chloris, less of the unsettling mix.
Halt nods. “Neatly.” Halt entirely approves, Halt went and stood in the ward, this is more approval than that. Chloris did, changed, well. Skillfully.
It’s a tricky thing, skillfully, when you can’t practice.
“I can’t imagine shapeshifting well enough to get away from Ed.” There has to be another entelech out there somewhere. “Dove or Blossom would fry square kilometres if they were serious.”
“An enraged Blossom’s quite spectacular.” Halt’s smiling fondly at a memory.
“Though, Zora dear, if you’re setting your standards by an ability to withstand your teachers, you may expect too much.”
Thousands of years of practice.
“Precisely,” Halt says. “This worry is much of what troubles Grue, what if someone comes who might overmaster Blossom? What if we meet a hostile brigade with a better focus enchantment that allows sixteen thousands to participate?”
Safely You Deliver Page 39