A Succession of Bad Days (59 page)

“As a person,” Blossom says, and stops.

A burning whirlwind can’t take a breath, can’t, I have no idea how Blossom’s making actual
noise
, have a catch in its voice.

Aside
from the one catch, an entirely clear, even, peaceful voice.

“It matters who is there to help, no work team’s just random people. This one made itself out of trust and a hope of life, who had been condemned to early deaths by a happenstance of Talent.”

Some of the faces looking at Blossom turn away.
Harm to the wronged
isn’t, that’s not one mind, it’s not precisely the Shape of Peace. ‘Sense of
Parliament’ might mean more than I thought it did, that’s more like a conversation than a tally.

“We teach children that love is a thing you do, that the Peace Established is an accumulation of behaviour.”

The thought about wanting me dead wants to be entirely sure, down there in the Sense of Parliament, no matter what lie that makes out of what’s taught to children. Easier to hang on to my temper
when I’m hanging on to Dove, who would not have long to be bereaved.

The white fire turns back into what Blossom looks like being human, armour and all.

Blossom and the Speaker exchange nods, Blossom hands the stick back to the Galdor-gesith, the clerk’s walking around, behind one side of Parliament. There’s a complete silence, I can hear Blossom’s boots on the rock and Halt’s knitting needles,
and way far off people doing town things, until Blossom’s helmet and gauntlets are back on, until Captain Blossom’s back up on Stomp.

Until the murderously angry Goddess of Destruction has gone back to pretending. Angry enough you can feel it, it’s not visible with eyes but there’s a swirl of angry coiling wider than Parliament, wide out over the Shape of Peace.

Blossom will stop Blossom, Chloris
dear.

I wasn’t paying much attention to Chloris’ thoughts. It’s really tough to breathe for calm, for Dove and I to be breathing for calm, and not do anything with it, to not sink into the mist of fire and darkness and various hungers.

That really wouldn’t help.
Dove, I think Dove would find this easier if I found it easier, but I can’t find any angle of ease in the prospect of Dove dying.

Chloris
killing all of Parliament, that wouldn’t help either.

Deleterious to the Peace, else,
Halt goes on, it’s not cheerful, it’s a conviction that all is not as bad as it seems.

Blossom’s anger coils away. It’s not gone, it’s just not here, I don’t know who else can tell, who hasn’t worked with Blossom. Maybe it shows to the Line.

Making that canal with you, all of you, the scale of help, another militant
enchanter to work with, made Blossom happier than I can possibly explain.
Grue says, from back with the medics behind the battalion behind us. No kind of happy. Grue didn’t get
More family
into intended words, but it was there.

Someone stands up, the member for the Several Townships of the Pines, the north end of one of the valleys in the Folded Hills. “The apprentice sorcerer Edgar is also angry.
I would have Parliament ask why.”

Couldn’t be a cloudy day.

That doesn’t take a vote, no member objects, there’s a collective nod and it’s done. I stand and walk forward. Halfway there, it feels like Dove’s hand releases mine.

“Parliament is proposing to kill Dove. Dove and Chloris and Zora, in order from certain to possibly not.”

No one turns away. Not one pleased face.

“Sometimes people have
to die. I’m not seeing Parliament’s reasons as good ones.”

I’m dead anyway.

“I displaced into the Folded Hills so I could stay with my collective, not my gean. The gean dissolved, most of the people, all the movable value, that displaced northward. My mother and my sister and nearly everyone else I knew went north. I’d spent my whole youth trying to not be useless, and I’d finally almost succeeded,
and I stayed with that possibility of utility.”

Not trying to speak loudly. Have to try not to speak loudly.

“Then I woke up in Westcreek Town, in a better life. It’s…harder work, but a much larger lack of uselessness. The thing that makes it so much less useless — ” and I stop, because there isn’t any way to explain.

Have to try.

“If you’ve had reason to read the reports about the Old Lake Canal,
you’ll know we walked into the hard old stone. Nothing any of us, any of the students, could possibly survive ourselves, by our own skill, if it went wrong. We’ve been doing that kind of thing for a year together. It works, making it work means a decision to trust each other entirely. We don’t have defences against each other in the Power. Wouldn’t work if we did, it’s the same thing as foci,
you have to really want to do it or it doesn’t work, we have to be people the rest of the team wants to get the job done with more than they want to have defences against.”

I think that made sense, that there’s enough experience of focus work in Parliament.

“It’s not safe, school spends all that time on the impossibility of being safe, it’s supposed to help you make better decisions and not crumple
when something like those wound-wedges happens and people just die. It works. It’s safer
with
each other, instead of trying to be safe from each other and failing.”

How much safer, or why, or what that feels like, I don’t think Parliament has the ability to understand. I don’t have great ringing words for them, that will make them see there’s something there
to
understand.

“That’s how it’s supposed
to work, get together, even things out, keep the good luck. There’s a lot of good luck in being a salvage class and working this well, in being our improbable selves in this one time and place.”

It’s a whisper, there’s no will behind it. Still sounds like the sensation of breaking glass, when you have to wonder about slicing and pain.

You who would harm these who are of my particular concern,
be entirely undone.

Even without weight, words of that language wish to alter the world. Half-audible whispers run back to me, tales of substance out six, seven hundred metres, some rising from the impermeable slow curve of the ward masking where the Shape of Peace isn’t, deep in the rock, the strange taste of the fear of others.

Halt stops knitting, nods firmly, and starts ripping back a dozen
rows.
All
the faces go pale, seeing Halt undo knitting, there’s the ghost of a snicker from Dove, from Blossom, something that’s almost a squeak from Grue.

“I have the strength. I have the wit to know there’s no peace that way. The Peace Established is more important than I am, than Dove is, than any single injustice.”

They’re mostly staring, clerks, Parliament, the Speaker, wide of eye.

“It is
still entirely an injustice, what Parliament proposes.”

I turn around and walk back and sit down next to Dove.

Between Dove and Chloris. There’s some sorting of arms.

Do you think that helped?
Zora says, worried, half-angry, half-affectionate.

Can’t get anywhere ignoring why they’re afraid.

There’s this moment of lean.

Halt would be sad, maybe the Captain would be sad or Wake would be sad, it’d
have worked, that’s not really Power.

Most of the problem, right there.

Parliament the
idea
would be fine, it’d be there in the future, individual members aren’t Parliament forever. Worthless empty gesture, to really do it.
Blossom’d be very sad, but not because of being my death. Too much like trying to kill Dove, Blossom would have had the bubble.

The Captain would be sad
Dove says, in a tone
to produce the most utterly traumatized battlements in the history of the world.

Halt would be sad
, Halt says.
No one will ever believe I didn’t let you do that, Edgar.

I suppose not.

I can’t help smiling. Lots of people go their whole lives without surprising Halt once. Whole populations, cultures. If Parliament hangs me, at least I did that.

There’s a
Hmph
noise from Halt, somewhere between
amused and understanding. Chloris looks at me, Spook puts both front paws on Chloris’ shoulder to look at me better, Zora’s perception leans forward, Dove says
my Edgar,
holding on briefly tight.

The Member for Westcreek gets up, and stands there. I think the Shape of Peace has to prod the Speaker before the Member for Westcreek gets acknowledged and takes the floor.

“When I was first elected
to Parliament for Westcreek, my predecessor made a point of telling me that there were two kinds of embarrassment involved in making laws. The kind when you were doing something that you, as a private person, should never do, but which was still something Parliament needed to be doing, and the kind where you were doing something nobody should do. It’s not easy to tell those two kinds apart.”

There’s movement, there’s a good bit of angry, half, maybe, of the members are angry enough to not really care what they’re angry at.

“We’re talking about the necessity of executing an apprentice in a way that certainly kills someone else, someone whose actions can’t possibly be said to merit killing. When the wizard-team they’re all on is closer than you’d expect from a weeding-team.”

There’s
a noise of protest, several waved hands.

“They
are
a weeding team, they’re the best single weeding team we’ve ever had by a ridiculous ratio. First-year apprentices or not.”

The Food-gesith gets up and gives the ratio, which means twenty minutes of supporting statistics to quell disbelief. Not what you want, waiting to die.

Helpful statistics,
Chloris says.
Everybody’s worried about food.

The
Lug-gesith has things to say about the Old Lake canal, too, and different statistics. The major constraint on canal expansion in the Creeks might now be qualifying lock-clerks, the barge supply’s nearly enough and easier to fix. The Folded Hills, the problem’s still mountain ranges.

The Lug-gesith and the Food-gesith between them think we’ve, the Old Lake Canal, not just us, we’re not pushing
the barges through it, have avoided something like twenty thousand deaths from privation, it’s not all the twice-displaced, it’s taking load off food and transport in the Folded Hills.

I think that was the point the Member for Westcreek wanted to make, that we’re useful. Picking up the rest of the argument gets tripped up when a member from the Folded Hills wants to know how it was possible for
me to use the Power in a threatening way.

“Neither the Power, nor an attack,” Wake says, voice full of diminishing mountains. “Further, apprentices are not constrained beyond returning for judgement.”

There’s a pause. Everyone keeps looking at Wake.

“We by no means understand the entirety of the process of becoming an Independent. Nor should we seek to increase the already lamentable loss rate.”

That produces five attempts at a question, and the Speaker sorts out who goes first. They use a lot more words, but it comes down to asking if being a full Independent would prevent me from doing something like that.

“No,” Blossom says. “Question of scale.” It’s an even sound everywhere, Blossom’s doing that, not the Shape of Peace.

The whole area of Parliament warms, maybe five degrees, cools
ten, goes back to the way it was. “The Shape of Peace would object to lighting you on fire.”

That would be an attack on Parliament, objectionable whether it’s the Power or somebody with an axe. This one thing the Shape of Peace watches over directly.

That would be another tangle, everyone reminded there must be a definition of
attack
somewhere, but Halt gets leave to speak.

“The Shape of Peace
uses names,” Halt says, “real ones. Death for going naked above four hours would be simple enough for everybody. Not wearing plaid. The rules come down to
no demons
,
no making people
,
nothing else from beyond the world
,
never lie to Parliament
, and
come when you’re called
.”

Some thin edge of Halt’s will leaks into the list of rules.

Less than your whisper,
Dove says.

People shudder, and shudder
more.

I’m not Halt.

Halt pauses, adjusts hat and eyeglasses and posture. It looks like not gesturing with needles presents challenges just now, Halt’s knitting is back in the bag, the bag’s closed and sitting on the rock, not Halt’s lap.

Halt’s shadow doesn’t look like Halt, it looks like the spider, but a composed spider, sitting and still.

“Rules about compulsion or killing are law.” Perfectly
clear, but entirely normal spoken words, no overtones at all. “The unconsent of the possessed being entirely sincere.”

Halt takes the view that the member for Westcreek loaned the right to speak, and gives it back.

The Member for Westcreek waits for the Speaker to nod.

“Ninety-three times in the last five hundred years has Parliament been asked if some living thing is legally a person.” The Member
for Westcreek’s doing calm well, it’s making me calmer. It’s making Zora calmer, which is a great deal right now.

“It would have been a mighty achievement for the Founders to predict each of those, and the answers.”

Nods, a few, everyone’s getting back toward their job from frightened.

“Nor should we seek to prevent sorcerers of whatever degree from using the Power in lethal ways. It would be
a worse present day had these students as a whole been unable to weed, or if Chloris had not been able to extirpate wound-wedge spores over a wide area.”

The Food-gesith’s statistics sit there in recent memory and keep anyone from arguing. People
want
to argue, you can feel that, it’s obvious, but they admit they can’t, not on facts.

Someone finds a way. Member for Second Mills stands up and asks
how to evaluate risk. There’s been three other entelechs born in the five centuries of Commonweal records, none of them lived past six. There’s no statistical basis for judgement, there’s no way to prove I can’t take over the Shape of Peace somehow, it’s not precisely the Power, there’s no way to prove a negative.