A Succession of Bad Days (60 page)

My turn again,
Dove says, getting up.

Not like last time, there’s the whiff of metal
fire across the Power, and it gets stronger. There’s a definite ripple, there isn’t a Creek side of Parliament, no one wanted that, never mind traditions about geographic seat ordering, but all the Creek members get a common look watching Dove walk forward.

Not the apprentice,
Chloris says, half wistful. Zora makes a faint silent sound of despair, and scrunches over to lean on me. Dove had a lot
of reputation before cutting the hearts out of demons, and nearly all of it frightens Zora.

The Speaker recognizes Dove.

“Entelechy affects the material world.” There’s a mass look of confusion.

“I asked Halt. Parliament’s already decided it trusts Halt.” Real cheer in Dove’s voice.

Lots of faces go wry, appalled, shocky, some of the wry might be embarrassed.

“In terms of the Power, I’m much
stronger than Ed. I’m not at risk. I can walk around in Ed’s mind, all of it, just like Ed can walk around in all of mine. The potential for surprise is low.”

A short pause, waiting for everyone to digest the idea, to recognize none of that statement’s metaphorical.

“It works, we’re happy with it, it’s mutually beneficial, we did it on purpose. It’s not supposed to be, the life cycle’s supposed
to be some sort of necro-parasitic mind-eating horror.”

Dove stops, pauses, you can feel Dove being happy, Parliament can, I can see their faces change.

“Not what we got. Not what we made.”

Another pause, that sinks into quiet.

“Everybody knows what happened to my children. Hardly anyone knows that I didn’t know they were dead, I knew they were unrecoverable but I didn’t know they were dead.”

Everybody didn’t know, all the Creeks didn’t know. There are whispers, noises of surprise, the sense of Parliament going vague between horrified and sad.

“So, yes, Dove’s gone all hopeful again. Hasn’t kept me from doing the needful thing before.”

Dove stands up a bit straighter, takes a formal sort of breath. “Needs must, that job gets done, too.”

No one’s confused. Zora’s horrified, but no one’s
confused.

“I do so attest by the Peace and my name within it.”

There’s an entire silence. Dove nods to the Speaker, comes back, sits down, warm with the smell of burning. I tip my head back onto Dove’s shoulder, Dove who I wouldn’t want to be anyone else.

The member for Westcreek gets up, stands into the remaining silence. There’s a question, what’s this member’s particular concern?

“When you
get letters about over-worked apprentices,” the Member for Westcreek’s tone is collegial, “usually someone’s angry with the teacher. When you get fifty-some letters about over-worked apprentices from gean-offices, refectory leads, team-leads for a range of collectives, and members, former and current, of the Wapentake, those apprentices are your problem, and never mind what the law says about the
keeping of the Galdor-gesith.”

Parliament understands that. There are nods, looks of commiseration, one short barked laugh.

Never mind cousin Eirene,
Dove says.
We’ve been adopted.

Not my cousin,
back to Zora’s spike of surprise.

Chloris is starting to shake, just a bit, and Spook looks hunched and miserable.

“Many of the letter writers have been taking meals beside Edgar, beside Dove, beside
Zora and Chloris. I have not been asked about the risk
from
them, only the risk
to
them. Which should say something to Parliament, if the judgement of citizens is to be valued, since it is most certainly a risk which their host-gean has discussed.”

At immense indirect length,
Halt says, when we’re all but Dove surprised.

“Parliament has a choice, we, each and severally, have a choice. If we wish
to maintain the Peace, we needs must choose what keeps the Commonweal in the better future. I say that future contains this functioning wizard team.”

There’s a debate, three different members bring up unicorns, the almost-hypothetical, there’s been two cases, neither went well, of a unicorn agreeing to live within the Peace.

“Edgar has never lived outside the Peace,” gets pointed out, and that
goes round a bit and eventually must be agreed to, since I avoided harm, not legally different from getting vehement and pounding on the table, alarming but not damaging. “Fear is not the same as harm,” someone says, supporting ‘not damaging’ and that goes round. Trying to create persistent fear, sure, that’s harm, that’s seeking dominion and not tolerated, but feeling fear isn’t of itself a harm.

The Line-gesith points out the armour foci were apprentice-work, that we can’t be valued solely on moving dirt and doing what we’re told with respect to weeding, those are new and valuable and the Line would certainly prefer to have more, the technique may well extend across metal-working’s divers uses.

The member for Thines gets up and points out we took risks to get the canal built, that it was
clear we were appropriately concerned for the fate of the twice-displaced, yet we didn’t do an utterly utilitarian job, there was still a concern for aesthetics and quality of work in the haste, that if this is all somehow pretence it’s entirely acceptable, there being no practical difference between the substantial pretence of good conduct and good conduct.

The member for Circle Lake gets up
and expresses doubt; very mighty, few Independents of comparable strength, and outside the obligations of Independents. Could not these apprentices be put into Independent constraints?

Ongen gets up from the Maintainer’s place and explains all four of us, any apprentice sorcerer, are in the middle of a ritual, an admittedly slow ritual, and there is, by careful design, only one way out. Being
evaluated for Independents now would not go well; the requirements are not met.

Doesn’t this worry the Maintainer?

Ongen looks at the member for Circle Lake and asks, in what are clearly amused tones, “How angry would you make Halt?”

The member for Circle Lake takes that several ways, can’t decide which way Ongen meant it to be taken, and is making faces of doubt and confusion.

“Wake? And Blossom?
And Grue? There’s little left to be afraid of, sorcerously, at the end of that list,” Ongen says, “even before disappointed’s worse than angry.”

The member for the Blue Hills gets up, moves a vote, defend or dispel.

The Speaker rules it out of order on grounds of ambiguity and applying to an individual, promulgates three replacement questions.

Are the members of a wizard-team legally distinct
persons?

Can an entelech exist as a citizen within the Peace?

Is this particular wizard-team, with this precise composition, a permissible entity within the Peace?

Parliament strikes the second question, ninety-eight to two. No one wants to banish Halt; the two 'nays’ to striking wanted the formal precedent. Most of Parliament wants more time to think. No one wants to claim they think I’m scarier
than Halt.

The Peace-gesith proposes that the appropriate answer to the first question is ‘not when they are actively working, but otherwise distinct’, by precedent from focus-teams. That passes unanimously.

The third question fails the vote, thirty-nine to sixty-one.

Wait, children,
Halt says.

We do, I hadn’t had time to finish the thought about folding into wherever the Sunless Sea materially
exists, don’t think Zora would want to go. There’s a point in time we’ve all got our eyes closed.

Shapeshifting’s a very good thing. Either grip on my hands would have broken bones, before.

“Parliament should be aware that discontinuing the team does not differ from execution.” Wake’s real voice.

The ‘nay’ side is adamant that there must be an Independent involved, the idea that a group of apprentices,
no matter what its potential or good will, has access to sufficient Power to light a township on fire isn’t acceptable.

“Dove or Edgar could do that as distinct individuals,” Wake says.

Five metres down,
it’s a clear thought, you can’t really say Dove says it.

“Chloris could alone kill everyone in a much larger area. Zora has the ability but entirely lacks the inclination,” Wake goes on, in an
even voice impossible to disbelieve.

“We hardly want them to prove that,” the member for Westcreek says, having got the floor after the shouting died down.

“Parliament is obliged to require things which are possible. This is the first wizard team; where is the existing Independent who could join it?”

“You’re all looking at me,” Blossom says. Parliament is. “I can work with the students, but I’m
joining with their working link, not becoming part of it. Same thing as being on the dredge-spout, you’re not part of the dredge-focus, you’re working with it.”

Some of the most reluctant nods I’ve ever seen, but nods. There’s some listening.

“It’s not impossible that, given time, I could become a part of their working link. Today, it’d be improper, and unbalanced, and would do the students harm,
the same way you wouldn’t put one bronze bull in a six-hitch of live oxen two years old.”

That’s swearing, not reluctant nods, in the sense of Parliament.

When we’re all Independents,
Dove says, complete with mental image of all of us as bronze bulls.

Maybe,
Blossom says.
Everybody closer to potential.

The member for Curse-grass Fell stands up. Someplace I’m glad to not to be displaced, south
of the road in the far valley of the Folded Hills. “Is there an option other than trust or execute?”

Silence.

Zora stands up, the Speaker nods.

“You do know we don’t know how to make a ward? We can’t do anything — ” Zora grabs at the air for a word — “substantial without a teacher, or we’ll kill ourselves.”

Zora sits back down.

Thought we’d said that, I’d said that, but from the faces, people
didn’t get it. Glad Zora said it again.

It isn’t obvious,
Zora says, voice trembling.

Good timing,
Dove says. Gets a smile, smiling doesn’t help Zora’s trembling.

The member for the Western West West-East Canal gets up. “Point of information, for the teachers involved; the students are participating in major focus enchantments standing in the blast pit while relying solely on others to keep them
alive?”

“Yes.” Halt, against a backdrop of mutters.

“You could see the glow off the clouds fifty kilometres away,” summarizes the mutters pretty well.

“The teaching plan originally presented to the ethics board provides the rationale for not teaching warding,” the Galdor-gesith says. “The mechanism of instruction depends on the functioning link between them, a thing any reflexive warding would
call into question.”

“It’s to the student’s
benefit
to walk through the mountain they’re melting, without knowing how to protect themselves?” The Member for the Western West West-East Canal doesn’t readily believe this.

“Entirely,” Halt says.

“We ward them,” Wake says. “It removes a concern for neglected components of the warding on the part of the novice.”

Halt planned this,
Chloris says, awed.

It takes time for Parliament to be brave, Chloris dear.

Halt’s trying to sound entirely contemplative.

Just as it should, being brave for everyone.

Halt’s enjoying the challenge.

“Would I be correct in understanding that the students must be taught warding, to be qualified as Independents?” The member for Westcreek Town.

“There is no formal requirement,” Wake says, “but their own-work projects
will require the ability.”

Own-work projects are the very last thing.

Everyone, absolutely everyone, knows you must be warded, working with major sorcery, or you die. Dominant part of focus design, or focus use, clear areas, safe distances. I knew that when I couldn’t use a focus, could never consider using a focus.

The vote to continue with the training plan, our training plan, us, as proposed,
passes seventy-seven to twenty-three.

Parliament adjourns.

Parliament looks wrung out.

Dove hugs me a little more vehemently, and I squeeze back.

Then we get up and walk out. Chloris leaves the seat behind, someone else will wind up before Parliament, they’ll want it. Ongen might have to maintain it, too.

We get past the bounds of Parliament and stop, in something between a hug and a clump and
disbelief, standing on the bare rock.

The member for Westcreek drifts out of Parliament toward the little clump of sorcerers, comes up to me, we’re all still paused. None of us, not even Dove, are thinking very clearly. Standing and not being dead seems like a good use of time, just now.

“History’s a hobby of mine,” the member for Westcreek Town says. “Halt used to eat people, out of irritation
or voracity.”

Halt nods when we look. “Would say
temper
, children, but — ” a casual wave — “let it stand.”

The member for Westcreek looks at me. “As a practical matter, you’re a baby Halt. People smell like food.”

“I think it’s mostly the amount of talent.” Which is a stupid thing to say, from one angle, but I get a calm nod.

“Ever want to chew on your fellow students?”

I shake my head. “It,
shifts, alters, there’s a verb, the voracity turns into, I turn it into, skin-hunger in the human shape.”

“When you didn’t know if Dove was going to want to take you to bed or not?”

“Had to pick something legal and meaningful enough someone could volunteer for. Didn’t see a lot of other choices.” Being devoured being neither legal nor likely to attract volunteers.

I get an indecipherable look
from the member of Parliament, a disapproving one from Chloris, an appalled, not a look, entire stance, from Zora, at the idea of having to make a decision like that, and Dove reaches over and puts a hand on my shoulder, no hair ruffle, a slow squeeze.