No Present Like Time

by Steph Swainston

  Mist kicked open her folding chair and regarded the coffee soaking into her sea chart. “I have a license. No, not the usual showground license. A warrant you’ll respect.” She unlocked a tortoiseshell casket and removed a paper with the Emperor’s seal.

  She passed it to me and I read aloud: “‘Every item of cargo carried by Mist on her journey is required and permitted in my name. It will benefit the Fourlands at the present time and in the future. San, god’s guardian of Awia, Morenzia, Plainslands and Darkling, January 19, 2020.’

  “That’s all it says. It’s the Emperor’s signature all right. But does he know we have a live cargo?”

  “Comet, I’m surprised at you, suggesting that I could keep information from the Emperor,” Ata said mildly. “Aye, listen, gentlemen. Tris has no Insects. Imagine their surprise, interest and fascination when I exhibit one. I will tell them: the Circle protects the world from these maneaters-see our benevolence. Even the fact that I have brought it such a distance alive will right well impress them. The governors of Tris can have the Insect for a zoo or a circus, or make soup out of it for all I care. I’ll present it to them with all our Darkling silver and Donaise wine.”

  “Bullshit,” I said and glared at her as only Rhydanne can.

  Lightning said, “I think Mist is telling the truth.”

  “I’m going to hang her off the thingy mast on the doojah until she confesses and Fulmer can take us back to dock.”

  Lightning said, “We can’t wrest command of the fleet from Mist. Anyway, Fulmer is not just captain of the Melowne but Awia’s representative to Tris. Queen Eleonora’s spy, in other words. If we turn back he’ll make her a dismal report.”

  The wind changed direction, the ship heaved, we lurched and Lightning shifted position woodenly, his coat hanging in limp folds to the floor.

  Ata smiled and shook her head. She tied her platinum hair into a ponytail, making her strong-boned face look even more martial. She smoothed down her waistcoat with its frogging and brass-domed buttons. “Don’t worry. We won’t risk enraging Eleonora. God, Lightning; I try to show you more of the world, but you just bring your own world with you.”

  I was struck by a thought. If I was Wrenn, sincere and uncertain, or a sailor who witnessed my rapid departure from the Melowne, I would row across and try to eavesdrop on this conversation. I listened for any sounds outside the cabin and called, “I can hear you; there’s no need to bloody hide!”

  Wrenn pushed open the glass-paned door and appeared, abashed. His shirtsleeves were wet with spray; water squeezed out of his soaked boot seams at every step.

  I said, “Great, why don’t we invite the rest of the Circle in here and then we can have a party?”

  “You could really hear me?”

  “Not at all, but I thought it best to check.”

  “Oh. Clever,” he said, downcast. He glanced around, taking in the leaded bay windows that gave a view over the stern, Mist’s cot with its embroidered canopy, a stand of scrolled charts, the navigational instruments laid out on her ledger and ginger biscuits all over the floor. With a fencer’s grace he had adapted well to the ship’s dimensions and he was short enough to stand without stooping, whereas Lightning rested his head on his hand pressing the beam.

  Wrenn was well aware of Lightning’s one-night stand with Ata. It was common knowledge that one night Lightning comforted her a little too assiduously and now they have a daughter. Wrenn folded his wings submissively, their elbows at his backside and the wrist-joints just visible from the front, clasping his shoulders. He picked his way with care: “My lord. Um. Lightning. I respect your experience but this is my first assignment as an Eszai. You know that’s important. I don’t want to return empty-handed only a couple of days after setting out. I’m dependent on Mist for success and I’m sure you don’t want me to fail. Anyhow, we left with such pomp that all the matelots in Awndyn will laugh fit to piss if we sneak back.”

  He slid his fingers into his rapier’s swept guards and grasped the grip worn to the shape of his hand. “When I was in the ranks Lightning’s honorable ideas sort of filtered down. None of us ever deserted. Well, I think it’s dishonorable to turn back.”

  I scowled. Wrenn bit his lip but continued, “I agree that ambassadors shouldn’t carry weapons. ‘Weighted down with iron, weighted down with fear,’ the saying goes. If Mist intends to use the Insect against the islanders I’ll kill it myself. But she has set her heart on exploring Tris. Jant, if you threaten her you will cross swords with me. One sword keeps another in its sheath, so maybe if I support Mist there will be peace. You should be ashamed of yourself for intimidating a lady.”

  I said, “She’s scarcely a lady.”

  Lightning eyed us pensively. He stroked the scar on his right palm and eventually said, “Very well; we press on.”

  “But-”

  “Enough!”

  Ata relaxed. “Jant, you clown. Stir a mutiny again and I’ll have you towed behind in a barrel.”

  I said, “I need some fresh air.” I walked out to the main deck, slammed the cabin door with my drooping wing. I climbed the whatever ropes to the top of the mainmast and sat up there for hours on the something spar, face into the wind, and let the sea air fan my anger.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WRENN’S DIARY

  February 29, 2020

  Comet suggested that I keep a diary to record my exploits on this voyage. This morning I woke at six A.M. (bell eighteen), and did two hours of rapier-and-dagger exercises on the deck. I improved my time by a second or so on the “wild boar” sequence. I have to be ruthless with myself in practice because a Challenger wouldn’t spare me. Then jogged up and down the keelson in the hold until Fulmer asked me to stop. I would like to practice sparring but no one here is even half as good as they need to be to test my arm.

  Lightning is the best fencer among them, I’ll ask him for a bout and in return he might teach me some archery. He puts target butts forward on the foredeck and shoots at them from the half deck. His arrows fly the length of the Petrel. It’s great to watch when we run alongside, but Mist only lets him have a quarter-hour a day rather than the four hours he needs. It’s amazing to meet Lord Micawater in person-and he treats me like an equal! I’ve always wanted to be like him. I wish Dad could see me now.

  So even though we have been aboard for a month, we are as fit as we can hope to be. Comet is either holed up with his books or away flying. Every morning he slings a water bottle on his shoulder, takes off and flaps up into the sky until he is just a speck and I worry that Lightning might mistake him for a seagull and shoot him. I still can’t get used to a man gliding. He must feel so free. It must be odd to see people from above. He can always tell who they are, I suppose he has got used to it. I wish I could fly-think of the fencing moves I could use!

  I can’t wait to fight Insects. As soon as I get back from Tris, I’m going to the Front. I have loads of ideas to rid Lowespass of Insects completely-such as filling the river with salt, so they can’t drink it. But Lightning tells me they tried that back in 1170. When we return, I’ll be surrounded by foxy girls and, by god, I need it. Who knows, Lightning might be pushed off the most eligible bachelor top spot for the first time in fifteen hundred years.

  It’s a shame Mist swept me away from my moment of triumph. I wish I could be back with all those girls who were longing for me. But Mist said my absence will make them keener. She’s grateful that the best Swordsman in the Fourlands is at her side. Any time.

  March 1, 2020

  The weather is lovely, very bright and a lively wind clips us along. Comet refuses to leave his cabin. I think he is ashamed. He is drinking doped wine every day now. I reported to Mist, but she says let him be, the remains of his cache that escaped confiscation won’t last much longer. Why doesn’t she punish him for bringing scolopendium on board? In the fyrd it’s the most serious offense to be caught with drugs, especially if you deal them to other soldiers. Scolopendium is pretty mysterious and old-fashi
oned stuff. I don’t know anything about it but, god, I can’t accept that an Eszai uses it. I suppose since Comet can fly, in good weather anyway, he takes his success for granted.

  Mist said that people like Comet were the most useful, just as crooked wood is handy to the shipbuilder because odd shapes can be made into parts that hold the rest together. I don’t get that, really. I thought the Circle was of one purpose.

  Rain showers make the boards slippery. The tars say they’re chancing their lives every time they go to the latrine planks at the prow to have a crap. Great waves break over the beakhead so they chance to get washed off, or slip and fall five meters like a turd into the sea where the ship will sail over them. Being valued passengers, our latrine is a tiny cubicle with a hole in the seat, on a private balcony at the stern. If you get the angle right you can piss against the rudder. The whole gallery smells of Captain Fulmer’s poseur aftershave. Fulmer took one look at Lightning’s frock coat and said, “Good grief. This isn’t the eighteenth century.”

  I went to Comet’s cabin and disturbed his work. I lost money at cards as we chatted. Those flat-chested mountain girls are so wild their love-bites need stitches, he says. We talked about rapiers and the new spring-loaded daggers whose blades split open into three points to trap swords. They impressed Comet but I told him they are just for show and would be dangerous in a real fight. I said, if you see a man wielding one you know he is a braggadocio.

  I slipped Wrenn’s diary back under his bunk and returned to my cabin. I worked there during the day with my notebooks that are so pleasant to begin and to dent the neat paper with a fountain pen. Contrary to what Wrenn thinks, neither flying nor languages is instinctive. I have learned the shapes of the air; I have to think carefully about my moves when aloft and sometimes I make mistakes. And if I make a gaffe in jotting down a translation, it’s just as dangerous as a botched landing.

  Mist had noted Trisian words from her first expedition, although without phonetics or even context. I figured out most of the unknown words from their roots, working back from modern equivalents. A few remained tantalizing. The Trisians appeared to speak a form of Old Morenzian, pre-dating the first millennium. Nothing of that language survives recorded, apart from dusty learned works in a weird thirty-letter alphabet, ten letters more than I was used to. It dated from before the time of the First Circle when the fricative Low Awian language became the common tongue of the Fourlands. At around the same time, to be fair in the standardizations, San advised that the Fourlands’ currency should be based on Morenzia’s system, which was far simpler than Awia’s.

  I knew that the Trisians would be expecting us. The canoeists and governors that Mist dealt with will have spread the news across the island. They’ll know it’s human nature for us to return prepared to a great discovery, to tease out every detail. When our sails appear on their horizon, whatever plans they have made will be set in action. The Trisians will scurry to receive us, but I could not predict how.

  I will just keep working and if I do too much cat and collapse, the others might realize how much torment my constant thoughts of Tern are causing me. I doubt she’s dwelling on me this much, back in the Castle with her lover.

  “Damn it!” I said aloud. “Just stop the waves for one hour and let me think!” I wished myself back in Darkling, where I would still be drinking happily in the Filigree Spider if Ata’s message hadn’t got through. I reverted to thinking in Scree, a good language to be misanthropic in, as it has no words for groups of people and no plural verbs. Best of all it lacks a word for ocean. The Rhydanne word for climb is the same as the word for run, and there are plenty of words to describe the various types of drunk.

  The only pub in Darkling is in the center of Scree pueblo, where the bare rock buildings merge shapelessly on both sides of the raised single track. The pueblo has a shallow, all-enveloping roof with a hatch for each room, to prevent winter snows sealing people in completely. The Filigree Spider was busy, as it was the height of the freeze season. The herders had arrived, bringing their goats down from the high pasture. A few hunters visited to rest; they were nomadic and they pleased themselves. Many were afternoon-drunk (drinking becomes moreish and you write off the day).

  I sat on one of the benches by the low bar and ate bread with rancid butter and salted llama’s cheese. A row of freeze-dried rabbits hung tacked up by their ears behind the bar-Lascanne catches them by hand. I pushed my cup across the counter again; he slopped more whiskey into it with an exaggerated gesture. “It is snowing and drifting,” he said, as if that was news. “Want a pinnacle rabbit?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Lascanne was alone-drunk (everything seems vaguely amusing). I suppose I was slightly daytime-drunk (no matter how much you drink it doesn’t seem to have any effect).

  The walls and most of the slate floor were covered with bright flat-woven kilims with warm red and indigo geometrical designs. A big hearth was on my right, its chimney shared with the distillery. A hunter lay on the furs beside it, very occasionally murmuring. She was drunk (dead-drunk); her sharp face rested on her folded hands. A family of four slept piled together nearby.

  Three or four howffs were stacked against the wall. Howffs are tents of thin leather attached to rucksack frames. They could be rolled out and propped up by the frames to form triangular shelters. There was the ladder up to the Filigree Spider’s unfurnished second floor, where many people were lodging until the thaw season. Square, dark openings were the entrances of small passageways that led to other parts of the pueblo, again to escape heavy snows. The pub smelled of peat smoke and stew.

  The door crashed open and two hunters struggled through man-handling a heavy bundle between them. At first I thought it was a rolled-up rug. The hunters, Leanne and Ciabhar, dropped the bundle in front of the hearth and turned it over. It was an unconscious body.

  Leanne Shira saw me. She paused with one foot in the air before placing it down slowly. “Jant! Look what Ciabhar found…We would have left him but we thought you might be interested.” She darted over and bit me gently on the shoulder, for a kiss. I think she was working-drunk (just a light haze on your life that lasts for days). Her face was cold to the touch. I watched her sleek narrow body, hard muscle flowering under pale skin at every movement. Fast movement, a melting of potential, she was gracile but strong. Her rubbery sprinter’s midriff showed between her crop top and short black skirt. She had two pairs of snowshoes tied on her belt, one on each hip for herself and her lover.

  “Bring some whiskey,” Ciabhar suggested.

  “No alcohol!” I cried.

  “Idiot! You’re supposed to give them hot water,” said Leanne.

  “What about whiskey and water?”

  Curious punters clustered around, making helpful suggestions: “Take his coat off.”

  “Put him in a hot bath.”

  “Or under the snow.”

  “He looks weird; I don’t like it. I’m off.”

  Now that they had accomplished dragging him in, their effort fell apart into the typical Rhydanne unit of organization-one. Ciabhar Dara stood back and stared. He was tall and so lithe I could see the muscle fibers through his tight skin and the hollows where they joined the bone. His black hair was wrapped in a ponytail. The nails on his long fingers came to hard points. His trousers were worn buckskin; bright ribbons crisscross bound his woven shirt’s loose sleeves close to his arms. A heavy three-stone bolas was wrapped around his waist-a bolas is the best weapon for mountain conditions, and Ciabhar was a very skilled and patient hunter. He blinked cat-eyes. “This man is really ill,” he said lucidly.

  I pushed through. “Let me see.”

  The handsome stranger’s skin was so waxen he looked like a statue carved from tallow. His lips and nail beds were blue; his breathing crackled. “Oh, god,” I said, feeling snow-wet hands and an ice-cold forehead. He was severely hypothermic, but the Rhydanne wouldn’t know that. Leanne flickered to my side and tried to pour hot water into his open,
frost-blistered mouth.

  “I watched him for ages,” Ciabhar said. “On the Turbary Track. Walking on, walking up, without crampons. He wasn’t a featherback so I left him in peace. He was searching around but he never saw me. At the top of Bealach Pass his pony lay down and died.”

  Leanne gave him a look meaning “Breakfast is sorted.” She sped out, leaving the door open. She ran without pause over the bridge across Scree gorge that was just a single tightrope with two handrail cords, then lengthened her stride and disappeared, sliding, down the gritty path. She ran over the crystalline swathes of erosion between the naked rocks. Distant peaks looked as if ice had been poured down from their pointed summits and sharp boulders thrown sporadically up their slopes.

  I said, “I can’t do anything for him here! Stupid! You should have descended. Downslope-toward Carniss.”

  Ciabhar shrugged.

  “It’s the altitude that’s killing him. You just made it worse.”

  I thumbed open an eye, the iris brown, pupils dilated. The lids were dark and swollen. I handled him gently as I took his pulse, which was slow. He stopped making the effort to shiver, as there was no warmth to gain by shivering. His breathing rate was dropping back to normal-too exhausted to keep the rapid pace. He coughed once, dryly, and a bubbling noise began in his lungs as he breathed.

  “We’re at eight thousand meters here. When did you last see a flatlander in the Spider?”

  “They don’t come to the plateau,” Ciabhar mused.

  “That’s because they can’t breathe! They can’t get sustenance from thin air; even I take days to acclimatize. And they freeze easily. Ciabhar, you know nothing. Help me carry him down to Tolastadh.”

  I wrapped more rugs around the man’s jacket, and noticed a small ink-blue tattoo of Cobalt manor’s fishing bear on his wrist. “A sailor?”

  “What?”

  “He’s traveled a long way.”

  As we hefted him his body convulsed once, froth ran from the corners of his mouth, and he died. Ciabhar dropped him, gave up cooperating and sloped away. Some more (cheery-drunk, boisterous-drunk, and totally pissed) hunters appeared and eagerly began stripping the corpse’s clothes but I chased them off.