A Succession of Bad Days (61 page)

Practical is good,
Dove says, smiling.

The Member of Parliament nods.

“You’re a
mannerly
baby Halt. You don’t have so much as Halt’s active interest
in devouring
something
every now and again, even if it doesn’t talk. Maybe you’ll pick that up when you get older.” There’s a shrug. “The Shape of Peace works. You’ve already done a bunch of good work, far beyond your keep, and I figure in time the pair of you are going to be a reminder that I don’t pity the enemies of the Commonweal.”

Yeah. I lean on Dove. Who isn’t precisely apologetic, there’s
a bit of ‘not stupid enough to expect you to be different’ from my side, nearly wordlessly even in our head. Dove’s going to go fight the enemies of the Commonweal, as and when those enemies show up. I’d better be useful enough to go along.

I’d better hope I can handle the perimeter,
Chloris says.

“I’m going to say thank you,” Dove says. “Blossom wasn’t wrong.”

There’s a nod. “Blossom wasn’t wrong,
and even if Slice don’t count, they — ” a wave at Chloris and Zora — “ surely do. The remedy mustn’t harm the wronged.”

Slice?

The burly fellow in hospital with right arm and right leg not working due to critter spines, dear. A relative.

Zora and Chloris both start to say something, stop because the member of Parliament’s hands say
stop
.

“You surely were wronged; terror isn’t an excuse to threaten
anybody with death, you’re doing the work you’ve been given.”

The work you’ve been given
is more than it sounds like as a moral statement.

“Never mind staying out of the particular swamps around how stupid it is to cripple an actually gentle necromancer with guilt, or convince a really strong life-mage there’s no possibility of their ever being trusted, no matter how well they behave.”

Zora’s
nodding with a catch in it, Chloris has blushed faintly green but not looked away.

“Or what a baby Halt does when you’re going to kill the other half of their mind, and they know it.” The Member’s voice is very dry.

Of course people worried.

“Edgar, you really do deserve the judgement you got on its merits.” The conclusion that I’m a voluntary member of the Peace, able to keep on doing that.
“Dove made it much easier to get the votes, but you merit the judgement you got.”

There’s a small pause. Going to keep standing upright.

“Doesn’t mean thinking about the risk isn’t part of my job.”

I nod. So does Dove. So does Chloris. Zora has this flash of looking tremendously fond, then embarrassed.

If we’d stopped being separate, if I’d let go of all of Edgar, we’d maybe have been able to
make it into the alternate ecology far enough to go on existing. It wouldn’t have surprised Halt, or Wake, or Blossom, but we might have been able to do it fast enough to get away, they weren’t sitting there waiting to stop us, not that I could tell.

Not that I believe I could tell, but it’s what we’d have tried. No question that Dove and Edgar would have been dead, maybe Chloris and Zora would
have come with and been dead, Commonweal Law about incursions would have been maintained. Hard on the forms, hard on half the spirit, but the strict law would have held.

It would have been hard on the member of Parliament, who went some way out on a limb. Should ask after their name, the Shape of Peace just gives the office.

Creon.
There’s a little bit of abashed, Dove forgets I don’t automatically
know everything Dove does about the Creeks.

Thanks.
I
could
, it’d work both ways, Dove’d know a lot more about wood turning, but we decided not to go that far with the integration.

Don’t manage to say anything, to figure out what I ought to say, before Halt says “Children.”

Halt’s looking at us, I don’t know what that facial expression is called. Dove doesn’t, we don’t.

Halt gives us long enough
to make sure we’re all looking back, me, Dove, Chloris, Zora, even Creon, who is managing curious without apprehensive.

“You are all far more brave than sensible. Your teachers do not wish to change that, but would appreciate a postulated utility of sense as employed by other people.”

There are four distinct utterances of “Yes Halt,” and Creon starts laughing.

Creon waves at us to move, to walk,
almost
shoo
, and says “Go, and learn some more,” in a great deep happy voice.

Dove and I are still holding hands as we start walking away. Chloris takes my other hand, and Zora takes Dove’s.

I think we can do this.