A Succession of Bad Days (10 page)

“You very nearly must try new things; of all the many things we know that sorcery might accomplish, we know how to accomplish only a very few in the style of Power use we are teaching you.”

“So why go to more trouble to get worse sorcerers?” Chloris emerges from breakfast that far, and dives right back into it, though
clearly listening.

“A sorcerer of traditional habits co-operates poorly with other sorcerers. Not as a necessary matter of intention, but as a matter of ability; the complex channels of rigid control you develop are not, cannot be, like anyone else’s, just as no two trees grow their branches precisely alike or no two people have the same pattern of veins in their hands.”

Dove puts an empty teacup
down, sits up very straight, and smiles like the end of the world. “Halt’s after dynamic high-precision willed focus instantiations.”

Wake’s returning smile is full of approval. “Halt and some others.”

I must look stunned. Dove looks across at me. “A focus creates an artificial mind. Everybody joins in, you get this new thing that’s greater than the sum of its parts.”

“A really dumb one.” Kynefrid
sounds like someone startled into understanding Dove’s point.

“Yeah, it’s a plough, it’s a dredge, there’s nothing else in there. Even the Line standards aren’t really
flexible
, they’re just more complicated, like a dog that knows more tricks. So if you want to melt a mountain or obliterate a sorcerer, it works great, but if you want to do something detailed you can’t.” Dove doesn’t say any of
this like it’s the least bit open to debate, and with magic, ‘rocks fall when you drop them’ is open to debate.

Chloris looks puzzled. “There was all that copper.”

Dove makes a face. “Got by melting everything in a tailings hill and shaking the melt a bit. You could make glass, too, but probably not pipe to a size and certainly not those foamed glass tanks.”

Zora’s head is being held tipped over
so far it’s practically touching a shoulder. “Isn’t there an enchantment?”

I know this one, from being around machinery discussions at the collective. “An enchantment’s a — ” there is no other word — “spell that’s been given a fixed form outside a mind. If you’ve got it, you can just shove Power into it, you don’t need the skill to make it. We already cast a spell together, with the Tall Woods.
Nothing says we couldn’t do the kind of spell that’s usually put in a focus.”

Wake’s look of approval has moved over to me. “Only not a fixed one. The executive could move, the expertise could alter.”

I’m still trying to get my head around that when Zora says “So,” in a lingering way.

Zora takes a deep breath. “If I say we’re doing a different kind of training, and it’s because Wake and Halt think
there’s a way to get actual sorcerer-teams, that can do better stuff with the Power, and that it’s still not precisely
safe
but it’s probably not worse than the old way, I won’t be lying to my mother?”

“You will not be lying to your mother.” Wake says that firmly, and then actually takes a swallow of coffee, instead of just waving the cup. “If your mother is especially concerned, I will, or Halt
will, be pleased to speak with any of your family about why, in the entire absence of statistics, we believe your odds are at least as good.”

Zora nods a little, the nod is tentative but Zora’s looking much more cheerful.

I’m thinking that there’s an uncounted multitude of voracious hell-things between the Second Commonweal and the First, so I shan’t be sending my mother any letters. Not even
to say I’ve found better work.

“It’s the transition, isn’t it?” Kynefrid’s gaze is fixed on an empty plate. “Use-of-Power stuff isn’t what makes an Independent, it’s not any different, not really, from learning a different bunch of charms from the sorcerer three townships over.”

Wake nods, with a kind of ‘do go on’ overtone to it.

“Sometime, days ago — ” we all smile — “someone said something
about the point of the transition being to be able to handle the Power without lighting yourself on fire, the lifespan is a side effect. And we’re wandering off into a Power-handling style no one else uses.” Kynefrid isn’t sounding hopeful.

Wake’s head tips from side to side. “Blossom’s style of significant Power use is solely this one. Grue is fully capable of it. So it’s not a complete paucity
of example.”

“But we still — ” and Kynefrid stops, I think from not knowing what the words are, not from not knowing what it is there is to say.

Wake’s chin points at Dove, coffee cup swinging wide to let the gesture be clear. “Flame-thrower.” Zora. “Wreaker, probably life-tweaker.” Kynefrid. “Yaldre.” Chloris. “Seven-to-three on summoner, ten-to-one on tagmat, four-to-five on necromancer.”
Chloris looks appalled.

Zora says “Edgar?”

Wake shrugs. “We have no idea. Edgar’s agency with the Power gives an impression that’s reminiscent of Halt, but is otherwise unknown.”

“Scion of the spider-god.” Dove’s grinning at me, and it’s not at all unkind as grins go.

It would still be my turn to look appalled, even before Wake says “That is the most favoured hypothesis.”

“So the style will
get us through?” Kynefrid’s doubts, well, if they’re not all emerging in voice tone there are enough for three people.

“Style gives us some understanding of what is required for success.” Wake makes an oddly precise gesture. We get something, shining brown and green, on the air down the table. A few people at other tables look, curious.

A part of the construct, I don’t think it’s a diagram,
blinks. “Success requires seven things; you must be able to invoke, actually gather, a sufficient quantity of Power as a reliable matter of capacity and skill. None of you can do that this morning.”

“You must have a stable expression of skill, a common and habitual pattern of belief concerning the functioning of your talent. Your flesh must have adapted to the density of the Power. Your metaphysical
part must have expanded to support the necessary reflexes, which will not arise from the flesh.” Blink-blink-blink.

“Having done that, you would function at the level necessary to survive as a professional sorcerer; if the magnitude of your talent placed you in the right tail of the main distribution, you could stop there and all should be well.” Wake produces a remarkable grin. “Except possibly
for the boredom.”

“To become an Independent, you must wilfully and consciously alter your flesh, binding your life to the Power.” Blink. “You leave the food ecology and enter the metaphysical.

“You must alter your being so that the primary locus of your self becomes the metaphysical part, rather than the flesh, of your brain.” Blink.

“You must secure the acceptance of the Shape of Peace.” Blink,
and then it stays bright. “This requires that you perform the previous step in such a way that you emerge sane. Most especially, that you accept the authority of the laws of the Commonweal.”

“You — ” this is suddenly not the abstract ‘you’ Wake has been using — “do insist on being an advanced class.”

The construct parts gain glowing cyan letters. Fourteenths. Fifty-fifty means we’re looking for
seven of them.

Shape of Peace’s the hard one; three-fourteenths. The Power-raising step is one; the next three, together, are one. Right. Being a village sorcerer isn’t just safer, it’s
easier
.

Primary-locus into the metaphysical part has a
zero
, apparently that never kills anybody. Altering the flesh has a two. Three, one, one, zero, two. Seven, all right.

“The Shape of Peace is fussy.” Dove
thinks that’s funny. I don’t, I can’t possibly,
know
that, but I can’t make myself doubt my interpretation of tone.

“It is not enough to follow the laws; you must believe in their necessity.” Wake produces, not a usual grin, but a terrible smile. “If Halt can do that, any of you can, but it requires thought and work ahead of time, rather than delight in how mighty you have become.” The coffee
cup’s rise stops long enough for, “It is a seductive joy.”

“Moving your mind out of your brain is
easy
?” Zora doesn’t believe it.

Wake’s head shakes
no
. “It is a consequence of altering your flesh, it very nearly happens on its own. It has the zero because it contributes to the attrition from the flesh-altering and the Shape of Peace, since there is no guarantee that your metaphysic mind will
be sane or reasonable. No one can justly assign the proportions, so we give that step a zero.”

Zora giggles. “Wild yeast in the beer.”

“Just so,” Wake says, approving. It happens, and it’s bad, and no one really knows the odds.

Chloris’s face lifts from Chloris’ hands to give a dark look at the half-full state of the second plate. Chloris stabs something with a fork, almost hard enough to risk
the plate. “Sorry. I know I should have a question, but I’m stuck on
necromancer
.”

Wake’s look goes gentle. “Scarcely famed in story, but useful to the Peace; much of what a necromancer finds themselves doing is asking the freshly dead to explain what they had been doing, just before, or had meant when writing their will. Much else is assuring that someone yet lives, or to survey the general rates
of death in wildernesses, to detect new weed species.”

Chloris’ nose wrinkles. “I’m going to have to learn how to animate skeletons, though, aren’t I? Even if it’s just to make sure I can fight a sorcerer from outside the Commonweal?”

Wake nods. “All of you will. We seek to teach you what you can learn, not what is most narrowly applicable to your particular expression of talent.”

Oh, why not.
If the answer is worse than ‘scion of the spider god’ I’ve grounds to spend the day having a good gibber. “The metaphysical-part stuff; we’re eventually moving our whole minds there, so there must be a way to think with it. So I think that means using the Power changes how you think, which must mean it changes your personality.”

“Precisely correct,” says Wake. “The important thing, the matter
to keep in the forefront of your mind, whatever substrate that mind happens to be using, is that the personality you get is chiefly a matter of your conscious choices.”

Which is good, in that it’s basically ‘don’t fail’, and failure already means death, so it’s hardly
worse
, and horrible, because it means I’m going to have to start believing I’m a sorcerer
right now
.

“Wait, the Power works with
our brains; if we’re — ” Zora makes the gesture of not knowing the word — “growing a new brain, growing more brain, something, can we get more talented? Or less, or differently?”

“You’re growing a new brain, that you’ll eventually move into, rather like building a new house in stages before you move from the old one into it; you can certainly get less talented, more is expected with maturity but
a slow process, and differently isn’t impossible.”

“So I could learn to enchant stuff?” Zora’s voice is full of hope.

“I expect you’ll all learn to construct enchantments. It’s not exceptionally challenging as a skill. The rare thing is the talent which views the Power so the most natural way to produce a spell is to fix it in metal and words.

“It is not entirely unlike cooking,” Wake goes on.
“Following the recipe, making small improvements, adjusting to local ingredients, is something most anyone can do if they care to expend the necessary effort. The insight to invent a way to make cake out of gelatin and cold fat and coarse meal is much less common, and what we mean by describing someone as an enchanter.”

“It makes that much difference?” Kynefrid, who has a clean plate and from
the sound a full brain.

“An enchanter can hit you with a thousand years.” I tip my head up and back, to see who said this, and then tip it promptly forward again. Standing
right
behind me, not a portion of someone’s anatomy to tip your head into without specific invitation.

Wake makes an wry face, Dove looks past me rather fondly, Kynefrid looks lightly stunned, and, looking left, Chloris looks
like Kynefrid except for the angle of regard. Zora sparkles with hope.

There’s this strange tickle of a feeling, and when I reach into it, not even really thinking, I’m looking out of Dove’s eyes. I look like a fish, and close my mouth. The person standing behind me, well, it’s the Wicked Queen from a fairytale.

Not a Creek, curly gold hair, tall as one, but way too skinny even ignoring the hair,
and an implausible, I would have said impossible five seconds ago, body-language smoothly combining ‘Oooh,
hello
’ and ‘Anger me and die’. As much as I can see past myself, implausibly good-looking, too, to the point where the second thing you think is that some kind of cheating must be involved.

“Hey kid,” this person says, looking at Zora, “you were asking about baking?”

Zora nods, twice, and
looks at Wake. Wake makes a gesture of dismissal, and Zora shoots up so fast their chair would have fallen without a hasty grab for the back, and then Dove has to — my vision is going double, I’m seeing Dove’s view and my own — wave at Zora or Zora would have left plates and cutlery behind. There’s a blush, but Zora doesn’t slow down very much, collecting utensils.

Back of my own eyes, I see Wake
looking speculatively at Dove. Dove’s looking back at Wake entirely calmly. No idea how Dove can possibly do that.

“If you take Edgar with you, can you not do that?” Wake asks it as a real question, it’s not an instruction phrased as a question.

“I can intend not,” Dove says.

Zora’s pattered out with, well, it has to be Grue. I am going to have to count on my fingers to figure out how many different
kinds of joke that choice of name is. Chloris is finishing off the now-cold second plate, radiating frustration. Kynefrid appears to be reassembling a capacity for social function, and I’m medium certain Kynefrid’s entirely one for the lads.

Wake stays thoughtful until Kynefrid and Chloris have headed out themselves. I think they’ll be in the tavern before they notice just how clean Wake’s unspoken
wave of dismissal left them. Chloris is furious enough to maybe not notice at all. Or to want a whole barge crew.