A Succession of Bad Days (26 page)

I don’t get anywhere. There’s a lot of Power swirling around, I’ve got the concentration to do something, if I could get a grip on
what
.

What
eludes me. I’ve
had time to stiffen, it’s been at least a couple hours or it’s much cloudier, no, a couple hours, turning around to look out on these window sills keeps feeling like looking through the wall, and this time it serves strong notice that I’m stiff.

Grue’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by something swirling, lots of narrow lines in different colours. Grue’s eyes open as I step down,
close again as I point at the door to the main-floor privy-room.

The others are still off somewhere. Zora goes sparkly, there’s no other word for it. I put a big pot of wood lettuce tea to steeping, and make a small pot — in the Creeks, a small teapot holds a bit more than a litre — of something that won’t poison me. It smells like hay, dry, but it’s quite nice steeped. Grue sort of flows upright
and collects a cup, which leaves us both standing by the counter, well aside from the big teapot with the wood-lettuce.

“Blossom would be easier to talk into a hypocaust if she ever felt cold,” Grue says, not really to me or the teacup.

Chloris emerges next, walks, it looks like floats, but I don’t think it really is, over in a cloud of silver-green lamentation, fair and terrible.

Self-image lags
behind,
drifts into my head from Grue, wrapped in the secrecy of a smile, watching Chloris’ green mug poured full and salted, spoon ringing faintly. For just long enough for Chloris to lift the mug, take a sip, and set it down, Chloris’ face stays the perfect still countenance of the death of all that lives.

“Nothing,” Chloris.

“It takes practice,” Grue says, smile behind the teacup.

Zora scowls
the sparkles back into nothing or Zora, I can’t tell, walking over, it’s not illusion, I don’t know what it is, it’s still mostly purple, a lot of shades of purple. Zora’s mug’s half vinegar, and gets heated all back to the tea heat. Creeks are
weird
about food.

Dove comes over last, a waft of hot metal and fleeing enemies. I don’t know how I know, no one’s ever so much as hastened out of my way,
but it’s fleeing enemies.

Grue sets the cup down as Dove lifts the gold mug. “You’re going to practise shape-shifting in the afternoons until you can. It’s going to take awhile.”

“Awhile?” Zora, apprehensive.

“As long as it takes.” Grue is completely serious, raises a hand. “This isn’t like going for an Independent, there aren’t inevitable horrible consequences to stopping.”

Grue waits, to be
sure we’ve all understood that.

“We’re teaching you backwards, by the traditional standards. Simple things that use lots of the Power first, then less simple things that use substantial Power, and finishing off with complex stuff, which is generally required to use small amounts of the Power so as to be possible.”

We all sort of nod.

“Shape-shifting — ” Grue briefly has golden skin and light brown
hair — “isn’t the easiest, but is probably the safest, and certainly the most generally useful, of the less simple things.”

“Keep at it 'till we’ve got it?” Dove doesn’t believe that’s a question.

“If you keep at it, you’ll get it.” Grue’s head shakes, in some kind of solemn good humour.
Two of them
makes Dove blush, I’ve never seen Dove blush before. Which is good cover for how confused it makes
me
, Grue means, I think Grue means, Blossom is the other one.

“If we get it, can we change ourselves on purpose?” Zora doesn’t normally sound tentative.

“Can, but not necessarily should.” Grue’s gone considering. “What do you want to change?”

“I’m over on the reliable side of things.” Zora’s trying to say this as though it isn’t important. “Not much in the way of prospects.”

Grue looks sympathetic.
We might all, legally, be the same social age, we might all, legally, be adults. If Zora likes reliable, tavern visits aren’t much of a solution, and none of us could get into a tavern anyway. None of us should consider trying.

Anybody Zora’s actual age and brave and interested, after the water tank and the wings and the eight thousand tonnes of marble, well. Either uncles or aunts would sit them
down for a long talk, as many as it took.

“You’re actively using the Power,” Grue says, wry and friendly and implacable all together. “You’re developing control, you haven’t actually got control yet, not surprised or distracted or orgasming. Anyone you have sex with right now dies, possibly of joy.” Grue makes a face and half a hand motion and what might have been an illusion doesn’t happen.
“Even if they were as talented as you are, and the Power balanced.”

“A larger mess,” Dove says, not precisely amused.

Zora and Chloris certainly aren’t amused. I’m trying to tell distressed from morose when Grue straightens up, goes formally teacher somehow.

“Shape-shifting out of urges is one of the two big reasons Independents don’t fall in the average range of sexual appetites.” Grue’s being
carefully neutral. “I wouldn’t make that choice quite yet.”

“What’s the other reason?” Chloris, well, call it nervous.

“Not including an interest in sex in their metaphysical self.” Grue has a moment of looking as though contemplating seducing laid bricks. “It’s surprising what people forget.”

My eyes are some of the wide ones.

“Sex is necessary to life.” Halt’s unmistakable voice. Halt, unmistakably,
sitting at the kitchen table, knitting away. “Sorcerers reproduce ever so much more reliably through teaching.”

“Here in case Ed pupated?” Dove was surprised, my surprise and Dove’s surprise sorta splashed through each other, but Dove doesn’t sound it.

Halt smiles. “More concerned for hatching, Dove dear.” Soundless knitting needles really don’t explain how we could possibly not have noticed
the door opening. That door
clanks
.

Chloris looks away from Halt, at Grue, takes such command over voice and features that the aura of lamentation extends past the kitchen table. It eddies around Halt, a metre or more away. “I have no right to ask this, it’s not any of my business at all, but it makes a huge difference to how I understand your advice. Are you and Blossom lovers?”

Grue nods, gently.
“Yes. Though that is much like the principal flavour of my talent in terms of how it is discussed.” Infrequently, among Independents, and not at all otherwise.

Chloris says “Thank you,” and looks even more confused.

Grue, quietly male, says, even more gently, “Blossom has no sexual interest in women, but it works out.” This particular smile, well, Grue, just being male is no reason one can’t
seduce laid bricks. Probably the second course of bricks, hidden in the wall. “Twice a season wouldn’t work out, except the rule is no other women when I’m male, and anything I like otherwise.”

Dove takes my hand. I’m not actually appalled, but it takes thinking. Of course a shape-shifter has more social options. Dove knew, this isn’t new in Dove’s knowledge. Zora’s visibly thinking very fast,
and I think Chloris has just stored it all,
not
thinking so it’s possible to get to the rest of the question.

“But with
who
?” Chloris says. “Tavern visits, even if I look just like this, feel just like this, when I’m a hundred? I mean, it might be, be
decent
if they’re feeling celebratory and hopeful and everybody thinks it’ll be fun, but that wouldn’t be enough
now
, it’ll be a lot less then.”

Halt’s voice, quiet over the clicking of needles. “You can change your mind later, dear.”

Grue nods. “Lots of Independents go along for awhile and then just turn the whole subject off in their heads. Some wind up with Independent lovers. You can get just about any sensation from an illusion. I’ve got something of a kelpie habit.”

Chloris’ face goes slack.

“Dangerous-critter kelpie?” Zora says,
appalled.

Grue’s head shakes. “They’re people. Socially limited people, created for a nasty purpose with an even nastier biology, but they’re people, howsoever trapped outside the Peace. They can’t abide each other but they’ve got excellent conversation, someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure they’d be good seducers. If they’re sure of the outcome they’ll spend hours and hours seducing
you, it gets them warm, they’ve got immense stamina, and they live a long time. I don’t have to worry about the compulsive anthropophagy or the parasitic reproduction. The ones who will learn decent manners are a lot of fun, it’s not like they’re fixated on the event of reproduction, just the precursor. Great way to spend Déci. Great way to spend three or four days if you’ve got them, kelpies tend
to wear out after the fourth day.”

“Decent manners,” Zora says, and stops. For a couple of instants, Zora’s just not there, metaphysically.

“Grue exerts selection pressure on the kelpie population,” Halt says in a firm voice. “All to the good.”

“That sounds like a really nice arrangement.” Chloris’ voice comes out so you can tell all the wail has been strangled out of it. Chloris isn’t being
sarcastic, it’s finding that’s the real truth, Chloris’ honest opinion, that’s making Chloris want to wail.

Grue nods. “The rate you’re learning, five years from now I could make some introductions.” Grue shifts back to female while taking two steps, pats Chloris’ shoulder. “Nobody thinks getting through those five years is easy.”

We need to be talking about this?
Dove says.

Not from my end.
Which feels odd, but it’s true.
Won’t have the interest until after I’ve hatched, I don’t think.
Whatever hatching means, that wasn’t a joke, Halt meant that.
That work for you?

After you’ve hatched seems like a good time,
Dove says.

There’s this tiny curve of smile from Halt. I’m supposed to catch it.

Chloris has reassembled a social presence, Zora’s mind has restarted, which involves muttering
something about turning into a tree.

Grue’s looking entirely kind, there really isn’t another word for it.

“Can I ask some more questions?” Zora, not Chloris. Chloris is looking skittish.

Grue nods, motions ‘go ahead’.

“Is it safe? I mean — ” Zora is talking quietly and very quickly — “are we going to interact badly with a regular partner, is sex with other students going to light us on fire
because we lack control, how can we tell?”

“A regular love, it’s not inherently safe, but you can build caution into your metaphysical self. Other sorcerers, no, not safe, you have to think about it ahead of time.” Grue, it’s not a wistful smile, it’s what wistful would be if you were looking forward to it. “Blossom gets excited and forgets the fleshy envelope.”

“Doesn’t that hurt?” If I’d thought
at all, I wouldn’t have said that. Maybe Grue is the ward, rather than the ward being on Grue, but Blossom really is that coil of white fire.

“Gloriously.” The tone of voice, the, I don’t know the word, Grue’s smile, that’s not any kind of joke.

Zora’s blinked out again. Chloris’ cloud of lamentation’s coiling in, shrinking, and there’s a halo of silver-green sparkle showing. “It’s a day for
appalling questions. Grue, what do you think of yourself as? Does shapeshifting…” and here Chloris runs out of the ability to form words.

“Alter the imagination of the self?” Grue says, quietly, to Chloris, as though it’s just to Chloris.

Chloris nods.

“Like any sorcery, it depends what you do with it. Get rid of a hangover, no, not much; spend ten years as a tree, you’ll come back different.”
Grue’s smile goes wider, bright. “If you ever wonder why Mulch is like that, there’s a good place to start.”

There’s another truly gentle smile from Grue, just at Chloris.

“For myself? I identify as happy.” Grue says that in a completely serious way.

Chloris nods. That wasn’t any kind of a joke, Grue completely means it.

Halt’s taken the needles out of something, looks like it’s done. The butt-ends
get tapped on the table, reflexive length checking, I think, only maybe it’s not as reflexive when Halt does it, all that knitting patterns into the Power. Grue looks up, over at Halt, back at Chloris and Zora.

“What does not kill us makes us stranger, and who would be a stranger?” It might be a quote, it’s meant kindly, but Grue says it as a definite thing. “We all get eccentric, and agree not
to use words like normal or even regular at one another unless we mean statistics, and then only if we must.”

Zora nods, five or six times. Chloris nods, on the way to sitting down and folding over, head in hands. I tuck myself under Dove’s arm, and Dove leans on me. Just a little, or we fall over, but Dove leans back.

“Halt?” I can feel Dove’s head tipping, just a little to the side, before
Dove asks this.

“Yes?” Halt says, looking up from rapid needles.

“Do you ever shape-shift?” There are all manner of stories. The knowledge of them isn’t in Dove’s voice, asking the question.

Halt smiles. “Never, Dove dear. Though sometimes I stop pretending.”

Dove grins, nodding thanks at Halt. I can feel it just about as easily as I can feel myself smiling.

Halt gives me a look, and I peel myself
out from under Dove’s arm, heat up the teapots, and start pouring tea for everybody. Grue’s got one of the glass company tea mugs, Halt’s always got a teacup. Well, a teacup from an extensive collection, this one is painted with dark blue dusk-roses at an incredible level of detail. There’s a plate of, cookies? biscuits? Thin square shapes. We didn’t have that in the larder.

Everyone gets their
tea, social tea, not the desperate need for fluid, there’s a tinkling of spoons, and everyone gets a, call it a biscuit. Nothing I’ve ever had before. Some kind of shortbread?

“It is customary,” Halt says, “to label
leornere
for the public safety.” We get a smile. “Polite circumlocutions confuse. You know enough to be dangerous, and not enough to be reliable.”

We’re all nodding.

Halt starts producing
lumps of fabric, hats, they’re hats, from that voluminous knitting bag, and hands them to us. If it’s knitting, the needles weren’t a millimetre wide. You know basic 'one black fleece, three white fleeces’ grey? They’re that colour, but it’s not wool. Some kind of silk? There’s really no guessing what kind of fibres Halt has access to. Round hats, no brim, it’s an eight-centimetre-deep band
with an oval top and something even finer for a lining. Darker lining. Of course it fits. Two black buttons, one over the other.