No Present Like Time

by Steph Swainston

  I thought, this is what San looked like when he was the only immortal man; counselor turned warrior when, in another world, Insect eggs hatched, imagos amassed, and the swarm broke through into peaceful Awia. One would gain great wisdom by living through such times, witnessing incredible events-Litanee raiders sucked into the space Alyss left, riding at each other through standing crops and the smoke of burning thatch. Maybe the nomadic Plainslanders settled down somewhat once they’d gained Pentadrican farmland. So that, some sixteen centuries later, the Plainslands sprawls with twice the range, merchant families rule Morenzia and, in the city of San’s birth, waterwheels spin in industry.

  Some of Sillago’s story fitted with what I already knew. I was keen to show Lightning my translation, because he had told me that his manor was created from land that was originally Pentadrican, where they prospered from the Donaise hills vineyards. In 549 wealth gained from the Gilt River gold rush brought his family to the throne. The Murrelet dynasty ended, and Esmerillion Micawater made her town the capital of Awia.

  San has kept his position as Emperor for sixteen centuries, I thought. The current Circle is only his most recent system. If he had not founded the Circle, he might not still be Emperor. He must have come very close to being deposed in 619 when the First Circle was defeated. Our immortality seemed dangerously transient and unstable compared to San’s long life. If he found a better system and no longer needed us, I wondered what would happen.

  I stopped transcribing and simply read until my eyes ached. Candlelight shadowed the texture of the page. Sillago’s prose tested my comprehension of old Morenzian but I read on, absorbed. In the Amarot library this was just a flawed textbook, but to the Fourlands it was a priceless artifact.

  As I came down from my high, for the first time I felt the waves’ motion as lulling rather than threatening. Outside, the whistle blew for the three A.M. watch. With a warm feeling of achievement I nodded asleep, curled protectively over the book, the pages kept open with one loving hand.

  I woke with a quick intake of breath. I lay listening, afraid to look around, feeling that something was standing over me. I was used to the wide sky and the enduring size of the Castle-the Melowne was a claustrophobic floating wooden box. I forced myself to ease the cabin door open and look out at the empty night. I thought: shit, someone’s stolen half the moon. But it was only clouds, I think. I must be more careful what I drink. Thin purple cirrus whipped past under the stars. There was no one about. Just a bad dream, I told myself. Go out and have a breath of fresh air.

  I climbed down to the gallery and looked at the water. The open ocean was a wasteland. From edge to edge of its black expanse there was no visible life. But its endless sound and movement made the ocean itself seem like an animal. The whole febrile sea was horribly alive in a way that the static mountains could never be. A cold feeling lapped over me again. Something was wrong. What was that? Running alongside Melowne, about ten meters out from the hull, was a hollow in the inky water, silvery with the reflection of Melowne’s lamps. Is the hollow real? It must be, a trick of the light wouldn’t persist for so long. I thought I knew all the sea phenomena by now. I shrank back; was something sentient there? I glanced up to the lookout in the crow’s nest but he stared straight out ahead. Either he hadn’t noticed, or he thought nothing wrong. The wind was directly behind us. The indentation in the water was pointed at the front and rounded inside. I could see the far side of the wall of water inside, about two meters deep. The waves broke around it but didn’t fall into the hole. It was as if something pressed down on the brine, like it was being displaced by the hull of a nonexistent ship.

  The indentation overtook us and veered away, gradually dissipating as it went. The hollow filled, leaving the surface smooth. I stared at the sea for a few minutes. Had I imagined it? Then a fin broke surface. I struggled with the perspective as the black triangle rose. Its wet tip came up to Melowne’s gallery, then passed it to the height of the deck. I could have touched it. It was fully five meters high. At its base, the rough back of a shark emerged, a thinner, more elongated shape than the ship. Way behind our stern, the tips of its tail flukes projected like a second dorsal fin, moving back and forth in the water. I froze. The shark was the same length as Melowne. It was fifty meters long. There were monsters out there. A flick of its tail would turn us to floating splinters.

  The shark swam alongside. I suddenly wondered why the lookout hadn’t seen it. I leaned over the gallery. “Tarragon?” I called. “Tarragon? Tarragon!” The dorsal fin rolled away from the ship, bringing the pectoral fin to the surface. The shark’s silver fish eye, as big as a buckler, stared straight up at me for a second. Water washed through open gill slits like loose meter-long wounds. It rolled back. Water rose up around the wave-cutting dorsal fin as its body sank to the level of our keel.

  “Tarragon…?” The shark gave a slow wriggle, left-right along its length. Its immense power sped the fin past me, then its long arched back, the vertical tail flukes. It was gone, deep under the ship.

  I became aware of panic on the main deck above. Pale, frightened faces appeared at the rails. Shouts in three languages stopped abruptly when Fulmer’s voice bellowed something.

  Tarragon said she would watch over us. Was it her down there? I thought she was a cute fish; I expected her to be girl-sized. I didn’t know she was a hundred-ton leviathan.

  Fulmer slid down the ladder and confronted me with an intent look. “Are you awake, Jant? There’s nothing there.”

  “Whatever it was,” I whispered, “she’s gone.”

  For the sake of my reality, I was relieved I couldn’t see where Tarragon had gone, or what she could see underwater with her cold, filmed eyes.

  WRENN’S DIARY

  June 1, 2020

  Today Mist and Fulmer had a blazing row and one of the sailors was put to death. He had been caught stealing a gold boot-scraper from a chest in the Melowne’s forecastle. He was one of the sailors who didn’t go ashore because we left before it was his turn. The men who missed their chance to see Capharnaum are very restless. Fulmer insisted discipline had to be kept, and for stealing cargo while under way the sentence is death. All seagoing vessels operate under Morenzian law. It is harsher than Awian justice-I think because Awia is in more danger of being wiped out by the Insects, we know better than to harm our own people. But Fulmer says that ruthlessness is needed at sea to stop mutinies happening.

  This ship in Fulmer’s charge is worth a dynasty’s fortune. It’s so crammed that I have to sleep sitting upright between sacks of all-spice. Fulmer said that if the men before the mast can thieve as they wish there’ll be nothing left by the time he reaches Tanager.

  Mist Ata yelled, “I forbid you! After all the losses to the Insect I’m not losing another crewman. Just put him in the hold and lock the hatch. Take your ‘I must make an example’ and stuff it!”

  Fulmer yelled, “I’m sick of interfering Eszai! You’re no better than anyone else just because you can handle a tiller or sword!”

  I learned that at sea a captain is like a governor; on a matter of law Eszai can only advise him, not overrule. Fulmer was adamant and he had the law on his side.

  Mist piled extra sail on the Petrel and swept ahead as if she was abandoning us. Fulmer said, “Never trust a woman who has a point to prove. Yes? All hands to witness punishment!”

  Jant refused to attend; he said it was stupid and brutal. He said that only Zascai exercise power so crudely and severely, but then only Zascai need to. He’s been acting even more weirdly than usual, he keeps saying how vulnerable our cobbled-together hollow ships would be, should any sea monsters actually exist.

  The thief was bound, wrists and ankles. He begged and struggled all the time. He was thin as a lath, a weather-beaten man from Addald Island off the Ghallain Cape. I was sorry his life had to end this way when he had seen so much, navigated the storms of Cape Brattice on the southern tip of Morenzia, Tombolo and Teron Islands off Awia, the reef of Grass
Isle, and the wild seas around the empty coast of the Neither Bight. He was brave enough even to have anchored in the rending whirlpools of the Awndyn Corriwreckan.

  Two of Fulmer’s sailors passed a rope across the bow and paid out line until the loop dragged in the water. They each held it at their waists and walked the loop down under the ship to the main deck.

  One end was made into a noose and the man’s ankles fitted through it. He kicked, both legs together, and screamed for mercy so horribly every man on the Melowne was chilled to the bone.

  They picked him up and threw him over the side like a parcel. He splashed in, curled fetally, the loose rope snaked about him in the water. He bobbed to the surface, waggling his head and gasped, screamed.

  Fulmer gave the order and a team pulled the other end of the rope that ran under the hull. The Plainslander’s yells cut short as it tightened and he sank under. His body was drawn down a long way, still thrashing and bubbles rising all around. He disappeared from view.

  I heard knocks as his body scraped over the rough, barnacled hull. Blood swirled up, it looked black. I hoped that he had exhaled the air from his lungs and breathed brine in before the scraping started.

  The wet rope coiled onto the deck, water ran from the hands of the men pulling it in. Behind them a team of men paid the dry rope out. Halfway through, Fulmer wanted to stop the teams and offer each man a tot of rum, leaving the body under the boat while they drank Queen Eleonora’s health. But the rope snapped. It went slack. Fulmer said, “Lads, reel him in, yes?”

  The men pulled the rope up fast, hand over hand. They dragged a pale pink and shredded mass to the surface. The cable hadn’t broken, his body had. His arms were worn through, nothing was left of them. The noose had protected his ankles and feet but his legs were bare to the bone. Tiny waterlogged pieces of muscle tissue floated off, into the depths as fish food.

  I saw his face had gone, just eyeballs in a fleshy cranium. His back teeth showed in the gums. Tufts of wet gray hair still stuck to the skull. His back was flayed.

  This wet skull on a spinal column dropped to the deck. Fulmer made sure every man of his crew saw it before they washed it overboard.

  Mist is still furious, and rightly so. I hope I live till god-comes-back, but if I die, I swear it will be by steel or chitin, and not by Morenzian law.

  I was in my cabin, putting the finishing touches to A History of Tris, when the Petrel raised a series of flags. Mist was asking Wrenn and me to come across for a meeting. I found Wrenn talking uneasily to Fulmer. We were all three thinking of the mess she had made of diplomacy with Tris, although only I had witnessed the worst of it. Fulmer said, subdued, “She’s making preparations for landing. We want to avoid pirate vessels as we cross the trade routes, yes?”

  I flew and reached the Petrel long before Wrenn’s boat rowed over the gently purling water. “It’s July the tenth,” Mist said. “I’m confident that sometime today we’ll have sight of the Fourlands. Watch for the coast, it’s heartwarming to see it appearing. It feels like the first time a newborn babe is placed in your arms.”

  I sipped water that was faintly brackish, owing to the habit of refilling seawater ballast casks with drinking water. Mist watched the big, gimballed compass in the binnacle dipping as if it was dowsing for land. The morning sky was a slightly powdery pale blue that meant it was going to be a hot day. The haze had burned off by mid-morning and the temperature was so intolerable that I climbed the rigging and clung there, a black-clad starfish in a giant net, with my wings spread as a shade. When I opened my eyes the bright world was tainted blue.

  Thick white salt dried on the stern carvings, encrusting them like the lumps of salt that fyrd throw into trapping ponds to immobilize Insects. It smelled as dirty as flotsam; I could practically hear it crystalizing.

  Whale fins gnomoned all over the ocean. Seagulls trapezed in the sky. We came in slow. The lookout in the Petrel’s crow’s nest used his own feather as a plectrum to strum his guitar. He gave a false shout of “Land!” twice and Mist snarled that if he did it again she would slice his tongue out and fly it as a pennant. It must be her time of the month. There were tiny glossy plaques of severe suntan on her shoulders. A sweat sheen covered the golden-brown skin above her breasts, startling with her cream clothes. She had cut her platinum hair short and ruffled like dandelion fluff. She squinted at the sun glare and when she relaxed the folds at the edges of her eyes showed white.

  Evening set in, and dry, porous ship’s biscuits were dealt out among the crew. Heat was radiating back out of my sunburned skin to fill the cool air. A thin black line began to rise on the horizon, becoming a part of the night sky where there were no stars, but nobody dared say anything until Wrenn strolled over and said, “I might have heatstroke, or is that land?”

  “Aye, that is land,” Mist admitted, tiredly. She raised her voice. “Land, ho! We’re home, boys! Send a signal to Master Fulmer.”

  The Melowne’s sailors read the series of flags. They took up the shout and jubilation broke out all over the ship, in the topgallants and below in the galley. From the Petrel’s half-deck I heard them shouting and cheering Mist. We had been on our own so far from anywhere that sighting the Cobalt coast was like seeing an old friend. We surveyed it with unbridled joy but, because we had been self-sufficient for three months, with slight trepidation.

  “Drinks all around,” I said.

  “Order!” Mist snapped. “We return as we left. Clear the decks shipshape and Sute fashion. Wait till you have your feet on dry land before howling with your hounds’ tongues, or by god I’ll separate them from you now.”

  I was obsessively trying to judge the distance to the coast-the moment that I could safely fly back. I wanted to travel under my own power, at last! More important, I had to catch up on six months’ worth of news. I was desperate to know the latest, and even more keen-as a Messenger should be-to give San my report of Tris. I was also determined to face Tern and demand the truth from her about Tornado.

  Mist observed me hopping from foot to foot at the prow. She collapsed her telescope back into its casing with a snap. “You want to fly?” she asked.

  “I need to know the news.”

  “Please don’t leave us. I need you to deliver my account of Tris to San. I’ve just finished writing it.”

  “I intend to give my own; it’s Comet’s duty.”

  Mist scratched her fluffy head. “Since when were you objective, Shira? You and your stupid eyeshadow.”

  “It’s not eyeshadow it’s late nights. Look, Ata, I’ll come straight back. I only want to buy a newspaper.”

  She looked at me closely. “If you go to land, promise not to breathe a word about what happened on Tris. Aye, god knows I can’t stop you, but I’m trying to contain this discovery and you can see how important it is not to blab.”

  “I’ll just bring you the news, I promise.”

  “Then off you go. And buy me a couple of bars of chocolate, as well.”

  I landed on the dark strand, and jogged up the beach from the hard wet sand to the dry sand, then climbed some steps to the promenade. I looked back and laughed to see my footprints appear from nowhere at the point where I touched down. The days were already getting shorter; I somehow felt cheated. It was ten P.M. and the Artists’ Quarter, that reputedly never sleeps, was just beginning to wake up. One seafront kiosk was open. A gray, hircine old man chortled when he saw me. I asked why, and he pointed to the headlines.

  I said, “Oh, fuck,” and bought a copy of every newspaper he had. I jammed them into my satchel. I gave the man a handful of pound coins and for my fifty-pence change he used a pair of clippers to cut the last one along the line stamped on it. He returned half the coin.

  As instructed, I also picked up some chocolate but I had eaten most of it by the time I reached the Petrel. I called Mist, Lightning and Serein to Mist’s office and spread the newspapers on her table:

  REBELLION POISED TO STRIKE THE CASTLE

  Troops rais
ed by Gio Ami are proceeding toward the Castle itself. Lady Governor Eske has, of her own accord, given over the first four divisions of General infantry and more than thirty Select Fyrd to his cause.

  Gio Ami has also commandeered Insect-wall-breaking machines from Eske. They include two battering rams and seven catapults, probably midsized trebuchets although it is difficult to specify the exact type. At the time of going to press, the engines are en route along the Eske Road.

  Gio Ami’s volunteer force and noncombatant supporters are extremely varied in background and opinion but are strongly united by their discontent at the Castle’s role in the slow recovery of the Empire from Insect damage. Gio Ami will address them in his second meeting, to be held at midnight on Thursday at the Ghallain Fencing Academy in Eske.

  In response, the Castle has received command of four thousand General, one thousand Select Fyrd from Fescue and Shivel, placed under the control of Tornado and Hayl. The internal guard of the Castle, the Imperial Select, are on alert.

  Sporadic clashes occurred today on the Dogvane Road from Ghallain between demobilized soldiers loyal to the Castle and rebels attempting to join Gio.

  Kestrel Altergate

  7/10/20

  “How can Gio dare?” Wrenn said. “This is all on its head! We’re their guardians!”

  “Many things are happening recently that have never occurred before,” Lightning said quietly, as if adrift.

  “There’s an embargo on ships,” I read.

  Mist pressed her hand on her belly, growled, “What kind of stupidity? Where does it say that?”

  “Look, here. It says Gio’s men have occupied Awndyn and nothing can enter or leave the harbor, including your caravels.”

  “Oh, for god’s sake. If I’d been here things would never have gone this far.”