A Succession of Bad Days (38 page)

It’s amazing how even you can get icing if you’re not obliged to use anything material to spread it. Or if you’re Halt. Not sure which it is.

“Despite the eye-rolling, Grue’s a good deal smarter than I am. So is Halt, so is
Ongen, so are any number of people. Talent doesn’t correlate much with intelligence, which’d be a real problem if any of you were actually slow. I get by on persistence and experimentation, rather than brilliance. It works, it’d work for you.”

Blossom, who became the shape of something that has no law but Power.

Blossom takes a slice of cake, smiles thanks at Halt, produces a fork out of nothing,
stops, puts that one away, produces a different one. “No using indestructible cobalt-chromium cutlery on Halt’s festive plates,” Blossom says, half to the air. The second fork looks like it’s carved out of horn.

“It worked for Laurel,” Blossom goes on. “I’ve read every scrap of Laurel’s notes for the standards, everything we have which is nearly all of it. It’s not really true the standards took
Laurel six hundred years, it’s closer to say a hundred years to prove the idea would work, four hundred years to jot down ideas while working on graul, and another hundred years to make and breed enough graul while producing complete working examples of the standards.”

Chloris is handicapped by holding a cake plate, no way to make really expressive gestures about being handed the Wizard Laurel
as an example of conduct. We got forks handed to us, pretty sure they’re nearly pure silver. Specifically cake forks, too. Really part of Halt’s take on civilization, being able to care about which fork to use.

“I never understood something from school,” Zora says.

“All the early Commonweal history says the Foremost marched for Laurel, only then Laurel didn’t assume control of the conquered territories,
Laurel went away, no one knows where,
with
the people who’d been the Foremost. Only they’d never have called themselves that, that’s what they were called after the Shape of Peace got made and the Line came into existence and wanted an example. Only there’s almost forty years in there, and the Twelve were overcome by the Foremost. So what was going on, while everybody was arguing about setting
up Parliament?”

“It was more like thirty than twelve, at the start,” Halt says, counting back and forth on the fingers of the other hand with the cake-fork shaft. “Leaving aside three or four unassuming powers like Ongen, thirty-one.”

Halt pours tea. The other cup, the one with the red light and the steam and the occasional tentacles, it’s still on the side table. Halt directs a stern look at
the emerging tentacles, moves the cake, provides a lump of sugar to the tentacles, and drops another into the teacup with tea in it.

Somewhere, some distance away, something howls, long and wavery and lost. It’s well and truly dark, black-dark and moonless, a night full of stars. What I can see of Halt with my eyes is washed red.

“The Foremost did not march alone, Laurel went with them, and Laurel
was prepared.” Halt says this without any emotion at all, not even a lack of emotion, it’s just words. “What Edgar did with time to the metabolism of weeds, Laurel did something very much like that to the minds of those overcome.”

“I thought…” Chloris says.

“That Laurel was not especially powerful?” Wake nods punctuation to the statement. “Laurel was not, is not, I expect Laurel is up some other
mountain somewhere to this day, having called failed their mighty experiment in being left alone.”

Wake’s face goes some ancient kind of stern.

“Thousands of graul, with the first battle-standards ever seen in the world, melting their way through the warded hills and slaughtering any that dared stand before them?”

Wake looks, briefly, extremely wry, goes back to the stern.

“The standards were
Laurel’s corrective for not being especially powerful, make something mighty beyond the possibility of any degree of individual talent, then make a species of people mete to war, made so you are their chosen god, their ideal of service. Not servile, not controlled, I did not see it myself but any number of well-attested accounts have graul arguing with Laurel, but be sure that the voluntary nature
of the standards does not take them out of your control because everyone bound to one loves you above their lives or kin.”

Wake’s face goes back to, not benevolent, but the sternness falls off it.

“Even one very mighty, trying to fight that, trying to understand
how
to fight that, might not notice Laurel doing something swift and subtle,” Wake says. “We were still those lucky; there were a few
who, by guess or luck or supposition, escaped Laurel’s fetters.”

“The Foremost killed them.” Chloris says this in an entirely human voice.

Wake nods. Halt says, still in a voice with nothing at all in it but the words, “The Foremost ground their ashes into dust.”

“What flavour is this icing?”

It’s very good, I’ve never had anything that tasted like it before, and I entirely do not want to hear
Halt say anything else in a completely toneless voice, especially not after ‘ground their ashes into dust.’

“Strawberry, dear,” Halt says, a little absent but sounding mostly like Grandma Halt.

“Strawberry?” Zora says. I can near enough hear the rustling as book pages turn in Zora’s head. “Do they grow in the Creeks?”

Halt sets teacup and saucer down and smiles, quite gently. “I haven’t seen an
actual strawberry in, oh, a very long time.”

Grue’s head tips over in a particularly inquisitive way.

“It was in a pot, on a windowsill, in a city on another continent, Grue dear. I’m not going to try to reconstruct the eclipses.”

“It’s really good,” Zora says, and we all nod.

Halt smiles, and makes a complex sound, I think it’s words, and says “Here, child,” handing Zora something.

Zora takes
it. It vanishes into Zora.

“All my knowledge of strawberries,” Halt says. “Perhaps you shall make them live again.”

Zora’s eyes get wide and rather bright, and Zora nods several times.

Not what people think when you say ‘The Book of Halt’. There are all sorts of stories about how the only physical copy is kept by Null librarians in a cavern under the Shape of Peace, the first one, right next to
the recipe for making the battle-standards and the Shape of Peace itself.

Chloris makes, I thought Chloris was thinking of asking for a second slice of cake, there’s enough, but it’s not a planned wave of the plate, Chloris almost squeaks. There’s an ocelotter butting its head into Chloris’ knee, quite determined.

Chloris gets a strange look, and looks across at Wake while petting the ocelotter;
it’s intensifying its head butting, but into Chloris’ hand.

“The wards do not interfere with harmless things,” Wake says.

“It’s dead.” Chloris doesn’t, is trying hard not to, say this as a contradiction.

“And yet harmless to we here.” Wake smiles, leans to rescue the empty earthenware cup Chloris is trying to set somewhere safe. Ocelotters have heavy, muscular tails, and that close to Chloris
the ghost of this one is near enough to solid, something Chloris’ small table is not meant to withstand.

“Ocelotters possess a modicum of wits,” Wake says. “Some gentle death can leave the shade of such to wander for a time.”

“Should I…help it?” Chloris says.
Finish dying,
hangs in the air, a loud thought.

The ghost is twining between Chloris’ feet. A fully-grown ocelotter’s maybe twenty kilos;
this one would have been large for its kind, but it’s, I don’t know, it’s a large kitten. Gangly. There’s an audible purr, very faint, but I can really hear it with my physical ears.

“Commonweal law does not approve of taking familiars,” Wake says, “but it is entirely permissible to maintain a volunteer.”

Zora’s best illusory air-fish get a sniff, and some elaborate, between-all-the-toes, paw
washing. Chloris’ much paler version works splendidly. The ocelotter springs and swims down through the memory of water and brings the dead illusion back to drop at Chloris’ feet, ghost fish from a ghost cat.

“Maintain?” Chloris says, leaning down to pet the shade of a feline head draped over Chloris’ knee. The shade is sitting on both Chloris’ feet, and the heavy tail coils around the back of
Chloris’ legs up and behind the ocelotter’s own neck.

“The legal meaning obliges you to provide good care, as you would for any domestic animal,” Wake says. “Such a ghost requires instead your presence.”

“For the Power leakage?” Chloris doesn’t really think this is a question.

“Sustenance against fading,” Wake says, “but social focus, some living person to be an anchor against dissolution, is
entirely as important.”

Chloris goes quiet, thoughtful quiet, then reaches down again, a single finger extended. The ocelotter raises its head to meet the tip of Chloris’ finger with its pale shimmery nose.

“Is your name Spook?” Chloris asks, and there’s an emphatic sequence of head-thumps into Chloris’ hand which somehow becomes gleeful wriggling in response to a tummy rub. There’s an actual
sound, a faint, faint sound, of tail on rocks.

“Edgar?” Halt says, it’s not any different from how Halt usually says things, quiet things.

I reach out, just a little. Dove’s always there, I could lose the inside of my skull and not lose Dove. Chloris, a tiny sparkle of kitten, Zora, a rustle of leaves dreaming all the names of trees, my own strange darkness and a silence like a dim ocean. Dove’s
awareness lifting out of reverie, fire and four distant horn notes, faint and clear and terrible as joy.

“The Power isn’t supposed to take you good places.” Or it wouldn’t be the Bad Old Days. I hardly sound like myself, to myself, this isn’t, wasn’t, really my voice, only it is.

“Death is easy, help is hard. Power sets you apart. Power gives you a single name, a single shape, everyone fears
you. Loneliness will drive anyone crazy. Hurt makes you savage.”

Halt, it’s something in your
spine
, starts having us hand the plates back, collecting the cake plates and handing them back round with second slices. Halt looks entirely pleased.

“We can’t be lonely. We can’t lie to each other, we can’t lie to ourselves very well, you haven’t taught us warding. Warding has to come naturally from
in-the-head sorcery, you’ve got to be trying not to cook your brain. Only we can’t, we don’t know how.” Either way.

Spook’s nose doesn’t, quite, it’s very close, touch the loop, grey-gold-green-purple-black-scarlet-white-mauve, running round the sphere of warmth. It’s not enough Power to do anything, it’s barely enough photons to see, but it’s so easy. Didn’t have to think, didn’t have to ask,
it’s a reflex. We all know the others are there. Always, the others always there.

“No one would believe it could work. Blossom doesn’t, yet, Grue’s been grieving for Zora since, since, you have to be thousands of years old and
whole
to believe it. It’s obvious from that far back, up, the perspective.”

I think they’ve got to where they’ve started us, sorta. Their metaphysical part’s so large and
so tough it’s equivalent to manipulating Power outside yourself, the amount’s not a worry.

Only they got there by not making a mistake for a thousand years.

Not sure enough to say that out loud.

I stop, take a forkful of cake, another.

“Edgar.” Zora’s doing a pretty fair stern. “
What
is obvious?”

“Dove, dear?” Halt says.

The loop of Power spins, looping through the stones, the air, it doesn’t
matter, around the sphere of warmth, rotates, splits into four small loops, one landing on each of our heads. Spook stretches up, not batting, but trying to put a paw on the loop settling on Chloris’ head.

“I asked Ed awhile back if you ever stopped being an Independent.”

Halt nods, the spider nods, I think even the thing behind the spider is pleased. Don’t think it could nod if it wanted, even
if you don’t need bones.

Zora’s looking quizzical, Chloris has a hat made of ghost-cat. It would never work if Spook had real mass, but Spook’s looking triumphant and Chloris is looking, flickering between, oppressed and indulgent.

Halt raises an eyebrow at Zora, says “Think, child; some told answers are useless.”

Zora sort of pats the power-circlet, and sprouts great gauzy wings, truly iridescent
ones. Lines and flickers of red and silver slide over them, dimly. Zora sighs. With just my eyes, it’s too dark to see faces.

“My mother says garden is an intransigent verb, it’s got more past and more future than you do.”

Another sigh. “Edgar’s saying we’re, all of us, we’re all the garden if we’re individuals.”

Chloris manages a stern look, and Spook stops licking Chloris’ nose.

“Different depths
of soil.”

Chloris really doesn’t sound hopeful.

“Your fellows cannot mirror death.” Wake’s voice is entirely calm, entirely human, full of not mere benevolence but peace.

“If you believe anything I tell you,” Wake says, specifically to Chloris, “believe that you are mighty enough.”

Chloris nods, picks up the second slice of cake, picks up the fork, waits for the ghost cat to settle.

“Enchanters
aren’t usually dangerous, are they? Regular enchanters are people like Ongen, not people like Blossom.” Chloris sounds sad.

Wake nods, Blossom nods, smiling, Halt just smiles.

“Enchantment’s all subtlety.” Dove says this slowly. Not out of doubt, not uncertain, Dove hasn’t got much attention to use for talking. Something about what Halt said, what I said, I don’t know, almost all of Dove is
returned to thinking. It’s, it’s a bit like watching a fire try to turn itself into the
best
gears.

“Or Power.” Chloris, hand stopped on the ghostly head of the ocelotter kitten. “Blossom can do things just because of strength. We can do things, the armour foci, those worked that way because we could all stack and throw Power at the problem, it wasn’t elegant at all.”

Halt’s face tips, a look
over glasses toward Chloris. Just a little, ‘Don’t stop there’, not ‘Are you sure?’