A Succession of Bad Days (28 page)

Chloris’ primness isn’t evenly distributed, I’ll go that far.

“I am having a lot of trouble with loneliness.” Same declarative voice, out of a suddenly really not angry Chloris. “Abandoning my sense of self would not improve matters.”

“They’ll let you into a tavern.” Zora is trying hard to be fair. Maybe too hard, and taking loneliness for more
of a euphemism than Chloris means.

“Where I have to worry about pulling the life out of somebody in a fit of enthusiasm.” Chloris sounds really sad about that. Which is good, I suppose, being sad at the specific prospect. Necromancers enough in the Bad Old Days who weren’t sad at all, who thought that was the best thing and made a habit of it.

“I asked Wake about it.” This is the voice equivalent
of the death-of-all-that-lives serene countenance, it doesn’t sound like Chloris except it does. “It’s entirely legal in cases of natural or easeful deaths, it’s entirely fine to do whatever the shade agrees with, statistically they mostly will, it sends them on in the memory of their youth, it might
help
.”

Even Wake won’t claim to know what happens to the dead. The metaphysical part goes somewhere,
strong necromancers have this sense of where you go to go there, the place the journey starts, and that’s it. After that, there’s no knowledge at all, and only really thin inference.

“Bit of a wait.” Dove can, somehow, sound commiserative in a way that doesn’t set Chloris off. If there’s a way for me to do that I haven’t found it.

“The two male students, since, saving Zora’s pardon, it has to
be a fellow-student and I’ve never had much inclination for the lasses, one of them
left
and even if Kynefrid had stayed, Kynefrid had no interest but the other lads
anyway
.”

Chloris inhales carefully.

“The other one appears to be an odd mix of revoltingly cute and oblivious.”

Not something I was expecting Chloris to say.
Completely
not. Dove sort of snickers at me inside our head.
Not wrong about
cute, Dove says.

Zora’s rolled half up to look down the windowsill. “What
is
going on with you two?” Zora makes a vaguely placatory gesture. “I know it’s not really my business only we’re all something, and it’s looking really
odd
.”

Dove nods. “I promised myself that the next time my hopeful nature got the better of me, I wasn’t going to do anything about it for a year.” That means something
to Zora and Chloris, they’re nodding.

Help?

“Edgar, well, Halt used the word
hatch
, and Ed hasn’t yet.”

“
Hatch
?” says Chloris.

Breathe. Your heart can’t stop anymore, you didn’t keep it, just breathe. There’s a huge difference between Dove knowing and anybody else, if I did still have a heart I might be bleeding from the eyes in panic.

“I don’t ask Halt about word choice. I’m sure it’s something
real, I’m sure I don’t feel like an egg, I’m sure I don’t know what an egg feels like.”

“So you’re waiting to find out what you hatch into?”

“What, and when.”

There’s a look from Dove. I’m not sure it shows, not a face thing.

“How long, too, it could have sorta started. Halt showed up for the first shape-shifting class, I don’t think that was overcaution.”

There’s a collective mental pause as
everyone tries to produce a response to ‘overcautious Halt’ as an idea.

“Edgar, why does hatching matter?” Chloris, well, curious is better than angry. Has to be.

“Halt’s worried about it?” That gets me three narrowed looks.

“I have no actual idea, I’m not asking, I don’t
want
to think about it, what we think about tends to become real, it moves the odds. This — ” a wave at the house, the Tall
Woods, all of it — “wasn’t a whole lot more than doing that on purpose. If it was important that I focus on something, Halt would have told me. Halt hasn’t, I’m trying not to think about it so I don’t get all fixated on a bad outcome.”

“So hatching isn’t what you’re doing with Dove.” Zora’s rolled the rest of the way over, looking up but scooted deeper into the windowsill to avoid the ceiling
grabbing at the ability to think.

“There are four things you
can
do about consonance: take off ‘ignore it’, because it’s not
mild
consonance. Building a joint metaphysical brain’s what we picked.” Dove sounds just a little dry.

“Consonance makes you cuddle like, like newlyweds?” Zora does doubtful with real depth to it. Marriage was rare in Wending, rare most places in the Commonweal-as-it-was.
In the Creeks, among Creeks, marriage is unheard of, it’s viewed as evidence of madness, possibly socially functional madness. Zora’s using a locally legendary example. “When you’re not? Or lovers at all, or want to be?”

Dove makes a passing gesture at me, which I suppose is fair. It’s not like Dove doesn’t know the panic has passed. Doesn’t mean I can think of what to say quickly.

“Kynefrid was
sure you weren’t one for the lads.” Chloris says this slowly.

“I wasn’t. Whatever happened when the parasite came out more or less shut down any experience of sexual attraction.”

Which is something I am so entirely glad I didn’t, won’t, have to explain to Flaed. It would have been difficult, when that was past half of what we had.

I know Dove’s figured it out, we didn’t talk about it directly
but I was hoping we wouldn’t have to. It’s not something Dove’s at all nervous about, which would be more reassuring if I could think of anything that did make Dove nervous. I suppose Zora and Chloris do deserve to know, we are, all four, a something.

“Whatever there is to hatch into, back in my metaphysical self, thinks you smell good. Tasty, the way food smells good. I think it’s tied to the
amount of talent.” Zora’s staring at me, Chloris is nodding, very slowly, and Dove’s slid me something that’s half a hug and half a hair-ruffle.

“Leaving it as hunger would be stupid. So it’s a desire for skin contact, something someone could consent to. Shutting it off wouldn’t work, I’m not crazed enough to try, it’s something really basic.”

“More basic than your heartbeat.” Chloris, marvelling.

“Wasn’t on purpose.” It wasn’t. Never occurred to me, which might be why, too.

“Didn’t notice you’d done it.” Dove’s voice has nothing in it but affection.

I nod. I really hadn’t.

Chloris has a sudden smirk. Doesn’t want it, can’t stop it. “You know what the Line is saying.”

Zora makes a
snrk
noise, and nods. Dove, I think that’s a fond look.

“The Line troopers are saying something about my heart?”

I really hope not.

“Not the recruits, the injured veterans from the hospital.” Dove looks, I don’t know, wry? Sharing a mind doesn’t mean Dove isn’t complicated. “They’ve about settled on a view that I’ve finally found someone tough enough.”

I must look bewildered. I
am
bewildered, but I can see Chloris and Zora looking at me like I’m looking bewildered.
Tough enough?

“That draught of Halt’s.
Most people can’t make themselves drink it the second time, even knowing it will fix the hurt. Not with Halt standing there looking prepared to be disappointed if they don’t. Some of those spine-stuck had been dosed with it, hurt in the battle before the one with the spine-critters. They’ve had the indescribable horrible dreams and the days and days of their food tasting wrong, and it does that to
absolutely everyone but Halt and you.” Dove grins at me. “Kinda sad I missed the faces when you asked for a second mug.”

“You’re not worried about this?” Zora, very serious, talking to Dove.

Dove’s head shakes.

“Salvage, remember?” Dove gets up, walks along the windowsill to where I am, sits on the floor and leans on my legs. Chloris stands up, moves the notes, turns the desk off, and sits on
the other side of Zora, who, still lying face up, has scooted in. One of those conversations you could almost have in the tub. Not that we don’t, for somewhat less fraught things like the housecleaning schedule.

“Back in the tent, on the odds, I was already dead. We were all already dead. When you’re already dead, you can give up, you can do whatever does the most good that’d get you killed because
it hardly matters now, or you can go on because you might be wrong. I’ve been wrong before, it was
odds
, Blossom was real clear it was odds, so, go on. Only sorcery doesn’t muddle, you do it
well
or it kills you.”

Chloris is, very reluctantly, nodding. Zora’s, somehow, never actually sat up, pulled into a knee-hugging posture and leaning on me a bit. I put an arm around Zora. Everybody has to
grow up, but going to this particular sorcery school can’t be one of the easy ways. Regular sorcery school probably wasn’t, isn’t, easy, either, but it’d be slower. Nobody’s had a ‘get it right or die’ meltdown so far. Though I suppose the first décade, the whole house building, was a concerted effort to make that our
regular state
. I even suppose it is, any time we have to do something new.

You are distractible.

Sorry.

“Only I thought I was dead.” Dove doesn’t sound sad. I put a hand on Dove’s shoulder. Out of hands. “So, well, don’t worry about it. There’s a high-felicity consonance, ridiculously so, some — ” Dove turns, inside arm reaching all the way around me — “skinny displaced lad who tended quiet. You get consonance with high-talent people who grow up together, who have similar
mental outlook. Strong consonance cross-gender’s almost unheard of, it gets studied in specific cases, there’s only four.”

Chloris almost says something, and Dove says “Counting me and Ed. Only if we’ve got a similarity of outlook, it’s not obvious. And we’ve got unrelated talent flavours, Ed might not
have
a talent flavour, not the way anyone means, could just be whatever hatching results in.
So it’s new. Can’t guess about the outcome. Go with it anyway.”

“But,” Zora says, looks up at me and then looking at Dove.

“Not trying to be happy, trying to get the job done. Consonance is a way to patch some of my weak spots, to get skilled enough fast enough I can survive to be an Independent. It’s a way to be a better Independent, there’s a multiplier, we don’t just add together.”

“Letting
someone, it’s not even into, is it? It’s
become a part of
your mind.” Chloris sounds, well, troubled, if Chloris’ propriety’d permit it. It’s Chloris’ emotional-reaction-later voice.

Dove nods. “When’s the last time you dropped the general linkup between the four of us?” Chloris looks a bit confused, I can feel Zora twitch. “Not stopped paying attention to it, removed yourself from it.”

There’s
a startled metaphysic blink, as Zora and Chloris drop entirely out, and then very quickly reappear in, re-create, the basic joint working link. “I’d forgotten it was there,” Chloris says, shaken.

“The Line’s a lot like that, it’s a focus, it’s not your own head, but you get used to having it there. You know you’re not alone. I didn’t figure the consonance was going to be a lot different.” Dove’s
head won’t fit in my lap from there, the windowsill is too high, not a lot too high but enough, so Dove’s head leans into my hip instead. “Wrong about that.” I can’t quite hug Dove, with the angle and one hand around Zora, but I try.

Dove’s, it’s not sad, exactly. “Really didn’t want to lose the not-alone. I’m on the books as Regular Line, I’ll be the senior in authority of the Wapentake until
something kills me, but I’m gone for an Independent. Won’t be the same.”

Dove inhales enough I can feel my right hand rise, there on Dove’s shoulder.

“Anyway. We’re not merging. We’re not deliberately disassembling the consonance. It’s this thing we’re doing together, on purpose. Not-being-alone is you — ” Dove’s chin points at Chloris, Zora. “Ed’s like my head got bigger, I don’t think there
are words.”

Haven’t found any.

Having someone nod with the top of their head resting just below your hip is an odd sensation.

“So once you’ve hatched you
might
want to be lovers with Dove?” Chloris, directly to me.

“I might.” I don’t know how to say this. “Don’t know how I’m going to come out when I hatch, don’t know what will be there, I don’t know what
hatch
means as material events. It might
change what Dove wants.”

Careful deep breath.

“In the end, attraction’s a decision, it’s something to add or leave out. Can’t be any tougher than neglecting a physical heart was. If Dove wants me as a lover, after I’ve hatched, if I add it back in I’ll want it. If it’s there anyway, and Dove
doesn’t
want, I can take it out. Consent gets
odd
with sorcery.”

“Solely for Dove?” Chloris’ voice takes
no notice of what emotions move in Chloris.

“Not taking any bets Dove’ll be interested, consonance or not, after I hatch.” It’s a tough thing to say out loud. “Never been much of interest, and sorcery’s bad enough without whatever I hatch into.”

“You sound like you don’t care.” Zora, talking to the windowsill.

“I care.” No hands to gesture with, don’t want to let go. Making some kind of waving
gesture anyway, a faint clatter of shadows. Chloris puts a hand on one, and I leave it there on the windowsill under Chloris’ hand, shadow of the shadow of the shape I’ll hatch into. “I’m talking about the other half of my mind, when I’m turning into, into whatever you’d expect if you weren’t used to the way my aura goes.” I can feel Zora wince a bit, under my arm, and then Zora straightens right
up and hugs me.

“Remember the cautions about wanting things at people?” Dove’s straightened up a bit.

Zora nods around me, Chloris eyes close before there’s a quiet, pained “Yes”.

“I can’t make this a story, Ed can’t make this a story, or we start going decision-observation instead of observation-decision. We get what we get, we make the best decision we can, we go from there and get something
else. Try
anything
else and it — ”

“Gets coercive”, Chloris says. Chloris’ emotions have caught up.