A Succession of Bad Days (57 page)

Shifting back to Edgar, all Edgar, people, no, simian Edgar, is work. I have to think about it in steps, bunches of steps.

Halt folds into the spider and the spider, well, creates, Grandma Halt, the spider sliding into some strange distance. It’s not, I’m pretty sure it isn’t, the same strange distance used for bathtubs.

It looks easier than the bathtubs did.

“I was a spider-god for awhile,
dear,” Halt says, and we start walking.

It’s just about dawn.

It’s not quiet. Bird calls, some movement noises, something, somewhere, wailing.

It seemed quiet because I’m
deaf
like that, deaf to anything much above fifty cycles per second, anything you’d call even a really deep noise. Slow rumbles in the ground are about it.

“There were alarms,” Halt says, after explaining the deafness. “Frantic
dogs. People became excited.”

I’m, we’re, it’s close to forty kilometres east of Westcreek Town, still north of the Western West-East Canal. Be surprised if the stream doesn’t get a new name.

The time seems wrong, like it hasn’t been that long. Over the ridge, looking down at the old tow road, the strip of meadow, the lines of shadow.

Two thousand five hundred troops in armour. Battle standard
all the way up, I can see the standard’s spectral ideal of victory quiver against the stillness of the air.

Blossom, Captain Blossom, armed and up on Stomp, also armoured, spectral’s the wrong word.

Dove and Chloris are standing next to the Captain. The graul Standard-Captain, incapable of mercy. Wake’s there, a little aside, Wake’s not in armour, not in the regular brown robe, this is white and
white and green, the embroidery looks like it might have taken a hundred years, the same blue scarf thing, a tall hat, the same long wood staff as coming to get us after the wound-wedges.

This all seems way too excited, until I manage, keeping walking is fine, I just keep right on walking beside Halt, manage to think. I must have registered as an incursion, something from outside the regular world.
Must have, because that’s true.

If I could see what I look like, and I can, the view is there to borrow,
You’ve got the same wild shadow Halt does, only teeny,
Dove says.
It’s cute.

All that happiness. I stumble, and Halt puts out an arm. Bendier granite. Bendier gravity.

Thanks.
Trying not to cry isn’t going to work, but I can try not to collapse.

If I could make it into words, articulate a thought,
it’d be something like “If they’re battalion-worried why suppose we’ll come walking down to the canal like we’re not a threat?”

“Fourth of the Twelfth is in Westcreek Town,” Halt says conversationally. “Blossom’s dead artillerists have us in range. The Line does enjoy taking things seriously.”

We get down the slope, almost to the level, and the Captain says “Stop.”

Alert, cohered, there’s nothing
at all wrong with the battalion, the Power trembles around the standard, Wake and Blossom are in there. Dove and Chloris are in there. No one can ever bring themselves to believe Halt wouldn’t win anyway.

Laurel won once. No one knows exactly how, or believes it would work again.

Once,
Halt says, contemplative.

We do stop. Halt makes a tsking noise. “In this time I am called Halt, and I am a Keeper
of the Shape of Peace.”

I get a tiny amount of sidelong look.

Called, no, not really, “I am Edgar born in Wending, and I am an apprentice sorcerer of the Second Commonweal.”

Nothing, no one has any trouble believing either of us. Which means we are permitted to approach. It’s still dark enough I can
see
the standard’s bubble, plain old photons, shimmery on top of a very dense bubble. I don’t think
they could march when it’s like that.

Walking through the bubble around the standard feels odd. Not as odd as Wake looks in that hat.

“Smiting hat,” Wake says, benevolent as always.

Walking up to arm’s reach of Dove, my arm’s reach, I can do that, but not and say anything. There’s two conversations we need to have and neither one of them will consent to go second, so I can’t articulate anything,
I can’t make a noise.

Dove’s helmet doffs, not a hand on it, floats over a bit so Chloris can, Chloris does, grab it, Dove takes me by the shoulders, pulls me closer, leans down until our foreheads touch.

Idiot,
Dove says.

Maybe. Maybe there’s a way forward.

Never stop,
Dove says, with our whole will.

The words ripple away from Dove, almost with mass.

I say
Never stop,
back, agreeing, as sane,
as whole, as quietly peaceful as I can make it.

You’re both dreadful social influences,
Chloris says, smiling. Knee-deep in a grey-and-crimson Power ripple, Spook’s swimming in it, rolling face-up behind Chloris before diving again, Chloris is just about entirely happy.

Dove and I let go, step back.
Blossom had some of Halt’s hypotheses,
Dove says.
Not upset.

Talk later?

Has to be later.
Dove’s
attention makes a swoop at the battalion, all three Keepers of the Shape of Peace, the implied presence of more distant force.
There’s going to be paperwork.

Blossom’s grinning at us, the consonance’s there, it’s fine, it’s probably obvious.

You might have convinced the standard,
Chloris says, handing Dove’s helmet back.

Dove reaches over and hugs Chloris, firmly, and then they both hug me, carefully,
I’m not in armour, taking turns for helmet-holding. It helps.

No one can comfortably explain the incursion alarms, or the dogs, or the frantic, there were a few things no one’s ever seen before leap out of the West Wetcreek.

“Didn’t stay out,” Dove says. “Disappointed the naturalists.”

“I’m sure they’ll enjoy the search, Dove dear.” Halt seems pleased. “I shall enjoy the peaceful circumstances.”
Halt
is
pleased, but that’s just firm.

The Captain grins. The colour party around the Captain reacts, there’s that lightness of the hands people get before they decide to do something.

Smiling graul mean something,
Dove says.

Dove’s happy.

I might be happy. Over with, it’s not
over
, but at least hatching has happened and I’m not some sort of bird.

Idiot,
Chloris says.

Back to Westcreek Town takes two entirely peaceful hours.

Not as fast as a battalion can move, it’s regular road march, peaceful rate of advance. Getting picked up and moved along like that would bother me, other times.

I’m trying to figure out what’s likely to happen next. Why Halt isn’t at all sure the next thing is peaceful, no more than peaceful travel, peaceful travel with a Line
battalion notwithstanding. That’s rare and astonishing if you’re Halt, maybe especially if. Halt doesn’t get sent anywhere with the Line, none of the Twelve did, that was somewhere between policy and tradition, so the only time it happened was the March North.

Fortunately so,
Dove says, from a haze of harsh emotions.

The battalion crosses the bridge, all of it around us, I’ve about realized that
the point of the exercise is to keep me in the middle of the battalion, just in case.

Alarms get shut down. People emerge from shelters. The town stops looking deserted. Some small fires get put out. Yesterday’s ruined lunches start getting cleaned up. I’m, Dove and I, Zora, Chloris, are just outside our host-gean’s refectory. Don’t know why we’re stopped here.

People have been in the shelters
since just before lunch yesterday. It’s, embarrassing isn’t enough, I feel increasingly ashamed, in the middle of a couple thousand troops in armour.

Stop that,
Blossom says, still in armour, still up on Stomp. Captain Blossom’s just through talking to some, I think it’s ‘dead people’, not ‘ghosts’. Disappointed dead people, it’s all over their memory of body language.

Hatching happens to you,
you don’t choose it.
Blossom’s being firm. My metaphorical ears ring.

Moreover, dear, you reacted by minimizing all the harm you knew about, despite an unusually complete hatching.
Halt’s really, seriously, unambiguously pleased with me. That helps. Not entirely, I don’t know what would entirely help with
spoiled food
, being the cause of ruined food, not having known about the alarms doesn’t.
I don’t know where Halt
is
, not that far away, but Halt is pleased with me.

Wake walks up, still in the formal white and white and green robe, but without the hat or the staff. “I should be very curious to know what brought the Creek sorcerous tradition to an end.”

“Lots of focus-wreaking collectives,” Chloris says, puzzled.

Wake’s head shakes. “Worthy and skillful, but none therein could perform
the workings necessary to create such alarms.”

“Those alarms are above twelve hundred years old.” All those letters about overwork, it’s our gean so far as reality and society go,
host
won’t hold it, so it’s our gean’s refectory manager’s trying hard not to look down at Wake. They have to stand further away than feels really polite. “Perhaps they don’t still work.” I’m getting a look, Dove and
I are getting a look.

Wake’s benevolence goes formal, somehow. “The Westcreek Town alarms work in their entirety.”

The manager’s eyes narrow. “The kid who compliments the pumpkin cake isn’t — ” and stops, and says “Sorry, Edgar,” and I make the usual demurral noise. In some emotional context or other, the manager really can’t believe I’m not fourteen. Not one of the people who worries about me
being too young for Dove. No idea how both of those things manage to be true at once.

Halt arrives outside the refectory trailed by a large ram walking delicately. “It is good of you to worry, Eirene,” Halt says in placid tones.

Eirene the refectory manager gives Halt a very narrow look, before their hands go up as a preface to walking back inside.

Don’t think the ram is Eustace. Carrying the
howdah, but the horns don’t look right for Eustace.

Halt says “Agonistes,” as a command, and the ram kneels down, grumbling.

Eirene re-appears from the refectory with a tray, hands me, then Dove, then Chloris, then all of the school, Zora, reaching up to Grue and Blossom who are still mounted, formally to Halt and, after a quirked eyebrow, Wake, small glasses of brandy. Eirene takes the last glass.
Maple-gooseberry brandy, so I’d borrow Dove’s tastebuds, only, well. Different now, it’s not the same taste as formerly. Dove borrows my tastebuds, just to see, for the last couple sips. Different good than it tastes to Dove.

Halt and Wake each get a sustained complex look, as the glasses go back on the tray.

“Will I need to run for office?” However our refectory manager is saying it, it’s not
really a question.

The edges of what passes between Halt and Wake feel like success.

“Up to Parliament more than I,” Halt says, tone somewhere between careful and firm.

“More than enough extra funerals this year,” Eirene says.

There are nods, from most of the Line battalion who hear, too.

Two years older than I am,
Dove says. Which is supposed to mean something, but I don’t know what, it doesn’t
translate out of Creek, nothing simple enough to get out of the consonance.

Or I’m not thinking so well.

We don’t wait any much longer to start moving, there’s food, dry chewy stuff to eat walking. I don’t understand how it works, the Standard just sort of picks you up and carries you along, you’re not moving faster, the distances are getting shorter. Same kind of thing as bathtubs and the strange
angle of distance, maybe.

Fourth of the Twelfth’s leading, then the First Creeks. First of the First, when there’s another battalion.

Can you sort of face out for a bit?
I get indulgence back from Zora and amusement, enormously gentle amusement, from Chloris. They do, though, they’re sort of around me and Dove, it’d be active work to see, sense, whatever you do with the Power, in through them.

Halt insists nothing constrained your free will in — what is the
word
for the thing that isn’t really a consonance?

Link? Bond?
Dove seems amused. Darkly.

Ed,
it’s not hesitation, it’s certainly a pause,
do you remember when Halt first gave you draught?

Hard to forget the chicken.

Nothing entirely in the food ecology can drink draught like it’s wholesome. I knew that from asking Blossom about it,
before, before I ever met you or most of us died. It’ll put you back together but there’s a cost, it’s something Halt makes for Halt, the medicinal effect on human-type people is secondary.

Oh.

Pallas isn’t wrong about excess hope in my social history. Determined not to do that again. Had a talk with Blossom, and another one with Wake.
Dove sounds almost rueful.
All that ancientry and power came
down to ‘Not that we can tell’ and ‘Ask Halt’.

So I did.

There’s a shy sunrise that would insist it was a smile if you asked.

Halt promised that you couldn’t devour me. I got, I asked for, an explanation of what Halt thought was going on. Usually, apparently, even Halt hasn’t got many examples, the point isn’t so much physically consuming the fixation, that happens, it’s a way to incorporate them
metaphysically.

It takes me awhile to find some words.

This hasn’t been a good few days for self-knowledge.
Trapped. What an utter horror. Necro-parasitic social life.

You’re a fright, you’re not frightening.
Dove has no doubts about that at all.
Worst, scariest, something, thing about this is not being frightened of Halt.

I feel quizzical.

You don’t think Halt is frightening. Anyone human does,
except me, now.
Wake
does, Wake hasn’t been mortal for a millennium and was mighty enough to have a chance to get away from an angry Halt before the Commonweal, is mightier now, they all are, the increase of knowledge. It’s, it’s more proof than you know, could know. Halt’s
never
been scary to you.

Can’t argue the point.

Can’t think very well. Some distance goes by, I don’t even have to move my
feet, I do, it takes thinking not to, but you can just stand there and keep up with the marching battalion.

Be kept up with the marching battalion. The battalion that’s there so you can’t get very far if you decide to devour everyone around you.

Not very much of a continent,
Dove says, after awhile.

Hard to be useful ruling anything. A continent’s probably impossible.

Probably.
Dove can think
of ways to try.

So can I, but getting a parliament to stop being expansionist would have to be tough.

This really seems like a good idea?
Hard thing to ask.

Not the continent.
Everything in front of us gets brighter, Dove’s really smiling.

People die,
Dove says.
Gets so it seems they die because I care about them. You, you’re a really comfortable person to have a mind with, and Grue has to mix
metal salts in glass cleaner to get you drunk.

Expectations of durability?
Wasn’t much inclined to
get
drunk even before it took glass cleaner.

Dove punches my shoulder, so lightly I’m not sure there’s physical contact.

Lots of expectations. Really careful warding required for some of them.
Dove sounds happy.

Nothing says you can’t blush with a distributed circulatory system. I don’t, mine doesn’t,
not anymore. Now sure I can’t, don’t think I mind.

There’s a gap of time, still moving forward, still being moved forward. I can feel Dove wrestling with words.

You think this works for you?

Dove’s emotions aren’t in the words, pretty much. No idea how, consonance, might as well keep calling it consonance, isn’t good for reserve.

I can tell how I’m thinking about the idea, about Dove, what I think,
why
I think it. It’s
why
that’s maybe the trouble.

I think it does. Something I want, unreasonably.

Call it the memory of a hair ruffle. Dove can tell there’s something back of that.

Altered alien hunger’s not an obvious thing to trust.

Maybe love’s just a native hunger. Know what I won’t be trying to explain to Flaed.

Just as long as you’ll explain it to Chloris.
Dove, I don’t think this is amused,
it’s close to happy.

We’re all going to be doing some altering, it’s not like we’ve got to stop, like we could stop, where we’re standing.
Dove
is
happy, the awareness that we’re not stuck in the one spot, Dove isn’t, I’m not, Chloris isn’t, none of us stuck is some one thing to be happy about.

Wouldn’t care to stop just now.

All around, troops in armour, marching. I can, I have to think about
it, I can hear the metallic
tink
of Romp and Stomp’s hooves on the metalled road, the pattering crunch of Agonistes. Wake’s there, walking along on silent sandals in some memory of the warded hills of old.