A Succession of Bad Days (33 page)

Where the buildings were, once the
swirl of air curls off of them in mist, is a two-hundred-metre circle of dead flat something, colder than ice.

Grue takes a deep breath, another deep breath, while shaking out tension. Starts and ends with hands, but goes over everything, narrow, precise motions. “Better?” Grue says to Dove. Dove nods. Dove’s not wobbly, precisely, but should probably sit down.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,”
Grue is saying. “You stay here, you don’t move from here, you’re all officially contaminated, anybody you see you warn off as far away as you can with word of bad weeds. If that was as infectious as it looked and it didn’t start here this could be very bad.” Whole-digit percentages of the population dead, Grue means by
very bad
.

We all nod, and Grue blurs into a unicorn. Gold hooves and horn
and tail-tuft and leg-stripes, the rest the same sort of crust-on-white-bread-brown colour Grue’s skin usually is, one sweeping glitter of dark gold eye, and gone in a blur of speed and a fading drumbeat of hooves.

Zora’s keeping the cylinder running, doesn’t have to do anything but feed it Power, it’s not a lot, but it needs to be even. The thing accumulates Power, Zora says, Grue explained,
it can’t accumulate very fast, something about safety.

Chloris runs a hand over bare scalp, none of us have so much as eyelashes, never mind eyebrows, sighs, picks up a pebble, stuffs a binding for a big low quarter-circle sofa into it. Zora produces a distracted “Thanks,” moving on to the sofa, one arm reaching behind to find it, you sit on the outside, Zora’s looking away from the road, right
beside the glass cylinder.

I say “Thanks,” Dove smiles, doesn’t want to move. Chloris grabs some bits of grass out of the undisturbed ditch, in a little bit there’s a loop of grass you can toss over your head, holding a big poncho-thing as a binding. There’s waist-ties, and big loose hoods. It’s a help, it’s not precisely warm out, it’s probably going to rain.

“Not going anywhere, don’t need
shoes.” I nod, Dove says “Thanks,” to Chloris getting the poncho settled. Zora’s only barely got a poncho on, doesn’t want to move very much.

Then we’re all collapsed on a big green couch that looks like leather from any distance, wrapped in frost-white ponchos, staring at a big glass cylinder or at a bottle full of pure alcohol, arcane poisons, and apprentice buttons. Now and then we look up
at a lot of empty road.

I’m wondering what just happened.

Zora says
Wound-wedges get in cuts, anything that puts a hole in your skin. The usual kind is slow, it grows between muscle fibre and then bone, you get radial or parallel, both usually produce a smooth raised purple welt, there isn’t any pain. Radial leads to
squishy amputation,
Grue said. Parallel removes long bones, the fungus eats the
marrow. Fatal, they’re both fatal, but it’s usually slow, there’s effective treatment. This stuff’s really fast, Grue was happy the kid’s eyes were clean.

Dove’s leaning on me. There’s a mutter, and Chloris is leaning on my other shoulder. Dove, it’s too tired to call a grin, sticks the arm behind me out so that hand is on Chloris’ shoulder. Chloris starts a bit, uncoils, moves to have a hand
back on Dove’s shoulder, my head’s on both arms.

I’m getting used to feeling a bit buried, and the warmth and the closeness is nice.

There’s a mostly-together concern, it doesn’t make it into words before Zora says
I’m not left out, I’m over here doing my job.
There’s a small pause, Zora thinks twice about saying the next thing, says it.
Today has been enough like cuddling with Death and Strange
Mayhem already.

No argument here,
I say. Which for most of what Zora means is completely true, and one really glorious thing about the whole connecting-up stuff is that there’s no possibility of Chloris hearing I think I’m cuddling with death. Death, yeah, if you accept Zora’s nomenclature I’m Strange.

Zora’s a life-tweaker, stuff-wreaker, going to be a really amazing gardener and feed people.
Block’s increasingly sure Zora’s not militant at all, much less than Grue is, Grue functions fine in emergencies, I’m not sure Zora would. Do the job someone assigns, sure, with the roof on fire and the water rising, Zora just did that, but picking which job first is tough. I’m not sure Zora’s ever going to have the knack for that. Not sure I’m ever going to do that myself, instead of borrowing Dove’s
head. Dove’s good at it, as solutions go that’ll more than do, but it feels like cheating somehow.

Dove, especially right now, after being all folded wholly together, that’s just cuddling with the rest of me. Me-that-is-us involves a lot of potential mayhem, that’s been clear for awhile. So I’m feeling pretty contented, even if I’m exhausted and today went horrible and it has started to rain pretty
hard.

We’re tired, Dove and I, but not so tired we can’t make sure Zora, unwilling to shift any attention away from keeping the cylinder running, stays warm while it rains and rains.

Chloris mutters and tweaks and makes sure the sofa won’t puddle water.

After about an hour of being rained on, Dove says “No smoke,” out loud. That matters, I don’t know why. Then Dove starts talking.

When I was twenty-four,
my father died. Wasn’t fifty yet, it was sudden and unexpected, had just taken up an eighth-thorpe by inheritance, Gran was getting on, and to look at Da was fine. Probably, looking back, Da’s where I got the talent from.

I got Da’s eighth-thorpe, none of Da’s sisters’ kids wanted anything to do with being farmers, already, and Gran’s, too, Gran didn’t want to go back to farming. Been too tired
before being too sad. So I and my two brothers and my regular lad
 — faces drift across our awareness, all the people Dove’s mentioning — 
we took the farm up. Went really well, I had Lark almost right away and then Niketas and Agathon arrived together, it was a lot of hard work but we were prospering.

Four adults for a quarter-thorpe? Even with whomever might have had established profit-shares,
and how common focus-implements are in the Creeks, ‘a lot of hard work’ seems like understatement.

One day I was away, down to the canal landing to talk schedules and barge-rates for kegged flax oil. Two kilometres, maybe an hour.
Dove’s staring at something that’s not here. Not rigid, but that’s pure will. Chloris is looking past me, trying to see through Dove’s pulled forward hood and the hard
rain.

Got back, there was a lot of shrieking and running going on. Kid-thorn had got the twins, then Lark, Lark was always trying to be a good child and take care of the twins. My brothers and Dion had tried to get them out, more courage than sense.

Chloris doesn’t know any words that are bad enough to apply to kid-thorn.

Fast sprouting vine-like pseudo-plant.
It’s a recitation from Zora, a list
of facts from a book.
Very long dormant time in soil, encysts deeply. Mobile only with a host. No leaves, even when fully mature; purely carnivorous. Neurophagic, not classical mind-control with the Power. Victims unrecoverable. Spores will spread on the heat-plume from a fire. Victim-husks will protest their essential health and ask for help. Disperses by hosting in victim-husks and walking.

Zora can’t maintain an even voice, saying that. The feed to the glass cylinder doesn’t waver.

Just like that,
Dove says.
What was left of the kids cried and called for Mama, my brothers told me to be careful, Dion’s husk avowed undying love.

Got some of the neighbours, got a dredge focus, piled up dirt a metre over the highest Dion’s husk could reach a hand, and stood there until the road crew
got there with a fuser and we baked the whole pile solid.

Nothing got out, no smoke, not the shadow of a scream.

Can’t start hugging Dove, I
am
hugging Dove. There’s not a thing in the world to say, I can’t imagine having to do that. It’s right there, it’s in the memory we share, it ought to be something I can imagine, but my imagination still won’t.

I can open all the doors, Dove has the sunny
side but sometimes you need stillness and peace. The Sunless Sea’s dim and peaceful, and that bench is still in the garden.

Passed the farm to some cousins, Gran’s mother’s brother’s daughter’s daughter’s daughters, three of them, then went for the Line. Wasn’t going to stay there, didn’t much care what happened. Was just about done doing nothing but grieving, was glad I’d found Hector, was feeling
useful again.

Then we went on the March North.

Half of everybody died. Hector went early, got brave and effective confused.

The rain’s cold. A little of the water trickling down my neck is hot, maybe scalding hot. Dove’s head is in my poncho hood, I’m holding on as well as I can. Dove cries quiet.

It’s really odd, holding on to Dove in the rain, half-leaning on Chloris who has an arm across the
curve of the sofa to hold Zora’s shoulder, Zora’s crying, too. So’s Chloris.

I’m not, I’m sitting on a garden bench in my own head trying to murmur something comforting to Dove. Dove’s weeping there, too, not as quietly.

Nobody ran,
comes only to me, in the back garden of our mind, looking out at the Sunless Sea. It’s the only comfort Dove’s got. More than half of them died, the ones in the hospital
were mostly the lucky ones. Dove thinks the job, Dove’s job, was to keep them all alive. No idea what Blossom would say, or the Captain, I might need to ask them someday. Don’t think keeping them all alive was anything like possible.

“Ed?” It’s Chloris’ voice, very carefully calm.

I look up. We’re, sofa, the four of us, the glass cylinder with the poor kid in it, a chunk of road, all of it, in
a space marked off by a basket-weave of shadows, shadow-forms of legs with far too many joints to be the many-jointed legs of spiders.

It takes me three or four tries to find the right place in my head, the place the protective impulse has fed into the metaphysical world like that.

The weave of shadow, the slide-back of the sense of doom that’s radiating outward, that fades out. Takes me a few
minutes to do it, a lot of my attention is still on Dove.

Not just Dove, we’re still all a something.

“The really troubling thing,” Zora says to the rain, “is that I can’t convince myself I’m not in a life where knowing someone who can do that isn’t purely a good thing.”

Dove snorts into my neck, pulls back, head out of my poncho hood, starts laughing. Dove stays there, slowly running down to
chortles with the rain running off bare scalp, for a good long while.

Better?

Dove puts the poncho hood up.

Much better.

Dove goes back to leaning on me. I’m entirely fine with that.

Chloris sort of leans in again, too, now that it will balance.

It’s full dark, we’ve, even Zora, who decided it was the smaller risk, shifted to rested and well-fed versions of ourselves, there’s been a bit of pacing
in illusory shoes, mustn’t risk cut feet, just to make sure no one’s legs kink, it’s a strange little bubble of warm and doesn’t need to be dry in the hard cold rain.

Sometime around midnight, we haven’t been talking, the link’s up, not
active
as such, but it’s all the way up, it’s an oddly comfortable way to spend a night out in the rain trusting each other, there’s a sense of something approaching.

We remember Grue’s instructions about warning people off all at the same time, and make a light. Too much light, thinking
light!
like that when we’re already linked up is excessive. The rain breaks it into a vast sphere of rainbows, really pretty, but not good for much, can’t see anything. We’ve got it turned back down and have said “Stop!” and
STOP,
before it registers for any of us that what
we saw, half a kilometre down the road, was Wake and a unicorn.

Wake and a unicorn and six or eight people in warded suits.

We’re prepared.
Grue isn’t sounding cheerful.

Wake comes forward, nods to us, once, the motion full of reserve, Wake’s got a staff, Wake’s working, wreaking, someday I’ll know how that distinction applies, there are broad motions with the staff and arms, the staff passing
between hands.

It’s something immense. School books use the phrase ‘in their kingdoms of wrath’ a lot, it was the standard phrase about the pre-eminent sorcerers, those that had their own stable territories, back in the Bad Old Days. It’s not something that makes a lot of sense, not if you grew up in the Commonweal, never mind have had Halt sitting at the end of your refectory table knitting and
asking you how the barge trip went.

This doesn’t make me understand, it’s one thing, I know it’s not directed at me, but it gives me some idea. It feels as though the night and the rain are flinching away from whatever Wake is doing. It’s an enormous, really immense, amount of Power, it’s not abstract, it’s this terribly specific extension of Wake’s will that the world should be different.

The
folks in the warded suits have a rain canopy on poles, and lights, and a lot of stuff with them on a couple of the one-big-wheel-in-the-middle wheelbarrows Creeks prefer. And they’ve got wet boots, I can hear them squelching. We get checked, and given horrible stuff to drink, and checked again. Very thoroughly, there’s a long sequence of tests.

“Your lungs are full of stuff that used to be wound-wedge
spores,” a voice from a warded suit says.

Wake’s huge working completes. For, I don’t know, I’m sure there is duration but I couldn’t tell you what the duration is, there’s nine distinct moments, moments with different real time to them, where the whole world feels like it’s
gone
, that I’m hanging in the otherworld, physically, that I’ve passed living into the land of the dead.

It stops, and I’m
trying to figure out what it was. Chloris is clearly trying to understand
how
Wake did that. Dove’s looking concerned at the medic who was about to take a blood sample. Zora’s looking worriedly at the glass cylinder, Grue’s making some sort of reassuring unicorn head motion back at her, Grue’s taken the feed to the cylinder back while Zora’s being examined.