No Present Like Time

by Steph Swainston

  The Dace Gate was completely destroyed. Its tower was smashed open to the sky. Holes half a meter across shattered the top of the east curtain wall for fifty meters to our left, and chipped stone blocks lay all over the rutted lawns.

  Northward, in the gap between the palace and the Castle’s outer walls, the trebuchet stones had obliterated the Aigret Tower’s top arches; their uprights remained like broken stalagmites. Cylindrical marble blocks lay among the statues in the monument square beneath and, peering through the skeletal tower, I saw that several of the Finials had fallen. Two whole trefoil arches on supporting pillars lay full length on the ground. I could see the signatures that covered them, like tiny cracks in eggshell. Gio had no right to attack the cenotaph, bring down the statues of mortals or wipe out the names of Eszai more ancient than him.

  Tornado emerged from the Dace Gate barbican and ran heavily across the grass. He looked outsized even without any other men for comparison. He threw himself on his knees and looked up to our balcony, showing a round chin covered in stubble and enormous pectorals. His thick leather trousers and steel-toed boots were smeared with mud and I was satisfied to notice a bandage wound around his huge left shoulder, under a chain mail waistcoat that was mended with pieces of twisted wire. Hooked in his belt was a soup ladle, because whenever Tornado was not fighting, eating or drinking, he was cooking sumptuous meals. He smiled so hard his eyes disappeared. He boomed, “My lord, the cleanup’s going well; we’re just dismantling the last trebuchet.”

  San nodded. “Good. Tornado, Gio will certainly not return. He is in the safe hands of the Sailor.”

  The Strongman said, “I can march the fyrd toward Eske to trawl for any stragglers but-like-I need outriders or we might get ambushed in the forest.”

  Tornado was ten times smarter than people gave him credit for. He glanced at me; I glared back daggers and he looked a bit puzzled. He was easygoing and probably thought that Tern wasn’t worth fighting over. It’s a shame to break such a long friendship but he’s doing the breaking, not me. I will fight him. I dropped my gaze only when I realized how closely the Emperor was studying us both.

  “There is no need,” San said. “Take your Select Fyrd to the Front where the governor of Lowespass is calling for help. Please take the dismantled trebuchets with you; you may well need them.”

  Tawny ran a big hand over his shaved head and the thick corrugations of fat and muscle at the back of his neck. He stood, bowed in a gainly manner, and walked back into the ruins.

  The Emperor said quietly, “No one has attacked the Castle before. Whatever precedent it sets for the future, the governors are now abashed. They are already competing to demonstrate their loyalty by repairing this damage. They are sending their best architects, money and materials. A particularly generous quota is expected from Ghallain and Eske.”

  “My lord, I can fly a circuit around the Plainslands and-”

  San’s voice was unexpectedly sympathetic and warm. “I know you do not want to go back to Tris. You feel forsaken; you do not trust Tern and you want to be with her. But listen, your wife will not stay with Tornado.”

  Then San stepped back into the Throne Room and was gone, leaving me on the balcony. The Emperor had mystified me again, this time with kindness. The warmth of his reassurance sank into my very core; I was overcome with gratitude. He touched me with a word and inflamed me with his energy. I felt like a great Eszai once more.

  Long ago, Lightning told me how Tornado joined the Circle. In the year 885, Tornado strode into the Throne Room while court was in full session. The guards at the gate tried to stop him but Tornado just carried them along. Everybody fell silent as the giant stranger deposited two guardsmen in front of the throne. He leaned on his axe and said loudly, “I’m a Lowespass mercenary. I have no idea who to Challenge but I’ll fight any one of you!”

  The silence continued; everyone stared at the nameless fighter. The Circle members looked perturbed while the Emperor regarded them expectantly. “I didn’t answer him.” Lightning shrugged. “I’m a bowman, not a brawler.”

  The Emperor listened to the shuffling of feet before he broke the silence: “Very well. Warrior, tell me about yourself.”

  Tornado came from the area where Frass town is now, a ravaged landscape since strengthened by the chain of peel towers built by Pasquin, the previous Frost. He led a company of mercenaries who were paid by the farms in proximity to the Wall to protect them from Insects. Back then, the bounty was a pound per Insect head, and his troop made enough money to survive. Tornado loved his itinerant life until his wife died from food poisoning-a dodgy beef curry killed her when a thousand Insect battles couldn’t.

  The day after he arrived at the Castle, Tornado was taken to the amphitheater and the Eszai loosed Insects against him. He chopped Insects into pieces all day until San, satisfied, created a new place in the Circle for the Strongman. Tornado remains the world’s strongest man in eleven hundred and thirty-five years. He owns no lands nor houses, nothing but a shelf of Lightning’s novels and seven-eighths of the Fescue Brewery-from which he takes his dividends in kind.

  My buoyant mood stayed with me all day, as for fourteen hours I rode a convenient southeasterly to Awndyn. It was cold and rather damp, and the clouds gathered at nightfall, hindering my navigation. I gained altitude and flew above them.

  The flat cloud cover ended above the last extremity of the land, precisely following the coastline. As I descended through the clear space in the cloud surface I felt as if I was diving to an underwater Awndyn far below. The full moon gave a much better illumination than the autumn evening daylight; the roads looked smooth as glass. I imagined the news of Gio’s conspiracy flashing in along them from Eske and Sheldrake.

  The promontory at the head of the strand was covered with grass the color of rabbit fur and, with patches of bracken, it looked like aged velvet that was losing its nap. The beach was a peaceful collage; bottle-green waves soughed and sucked back through the sand. It could not be more different from yesterday’s hurricane, which had spun windmill vanes around so rapidly that across the plains three hundred were still burning.

  I landed and ran to the squat manor buildings, finding them dark and silent. The dewy grass around the annex was crisscrossed with smudged footprints. Sometimes it could all just be one of my fever dreams. A glow radiated from one window on the ground floor. Cyan Peregrine was sitting on majolica-orange cushions on the window seat behind a pair of curtains that separated the window alcove from the rest of the room, to make a cozy den. Cyan’s head was bowed; she was reading intently from a large book by lamplight. Her straggling blond hair escaped its ribbons; the sleeves of her dress were puffed like cream cakes.

  I tapped on the glass with a pound coin. Cyan jumped and looked all around, saw me beaming at her. She grinned and reached up to raise the latch and swing the window out. “Jant!”

  I gave her a hug but she pulled away from my cold skin. “Sorry to scare you, little sister.”

  “I’m not scared. Are you looking for Daddy?”

  “Yes. Where is Lightning? Where is everyone?”

  “They went out to the boat. Mist’s red carnival. Caravel. She sailed it into the bay…I saw it. I wanted to go on it but Daddy wouldn’t let me. He’s ill.” Cyan sat back on her heels, hazel eyes wide.

  “He’s awake? How is he?”

  “That old woman said he’d be okay. I don’t remember her name.”

  “Rayne?”

  “Yeah.” Cyan reached for my feathers and I gave her a wing to stroke. She often pestered me to fly carrying her, although at twelve years old she was far too big. “Governor Swallow told me about the battle at the Castle and there are loads of men coming into town who don’t like Eszai…” Cyan made an effort to remember. She forgot the book of natural history that lay open on her knee but her finger still pointed, holding down a page with a gray watercolor of seals reclining on a shingle beach. “Swallow said she…Um, she ‘couldn’t guarantee their safety’
so Mist took them aboard. Are you going to fly after them? You’re not going to stay?” She sounded resigned.

  “Where is Swallow?”

  Cyan sighed. “Governor Fatbottom is trying to get rid of the men who don’t like Eszai. She wants them out of Awndyn. She says they’re troublemakers. I was supposed to go to bed, but I didn’t want to, so I hid.”

  “Fatbottom?” I giggled.

  There was a wicked gleam in Cyan’s eyes. “I keep thinking you’re the same as the rest, but you aren’t.”

  “I can’t be.”

  Cyan complained, “Swallow tries to teach me the harpsichello. The piccoloboe. Loads of instruments…I hate them. She says, ‘You think you’re good because you’re Saker’s kid.’ I feel like I’ve always done something wrong. I don’t belong here.”

  That sounded like me at her age. “You don’t have to do what Swallow says! You’ll be a governor when you’re twenty-one.”

  “When I grow up. Yeah, yeah.”

  “It’s not a long time to wait. Take it from me; I’m twenty-three.”

  “Hmm. That’s reallllly ooooold,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Isn’t it?” Cyan had everything she could possibly want, but her fortune was just a spacious cage, as Lightning had planned out her life. Swallow, her guardian, knew of nothing apart from music and she found the child an obstruction to her obsession. Swallow may well never succeed in joining the Circle but she was determined to spend her whole life trying. I thought that if the bitterness set in, she wouldn’t stand a chance. “Remember that you can do anything you want.”

  “I want to grow wings-it’s like having four arms. And to fly like you.”

  “Within the bounds of possibility. Cyan, lots of people who live in Awia don’t have wings. The Emperor doesn’t, either; it’s not important that you take after your mother.”

  She gave the concept serious consideration. “I like it when Daddy teaches me archery. I wish he was here more, but he’s very busy and now he’s hurt. Everything’s collapidated again. I like talking to him-he brings me presents-but he says I should do what Swallow tells me.”

  I waved my hands emphatically. “You don’t have to believe anyone, no matter who they are-not Lord Daddy and not Diva Fatbottom. Think things through for yourself instead. Swallow isn’t teaching you the right subjects, for a powerful governor-to-be, so you will have to observe and question. Remember, brother Jant is at your command; all the Eszai are. Governors don’t seem to realize their power, and we need you to keep us in check with Zascai reality. That’s what’s been going wrong recently.”

  She scowled, slightly resembling Lightning. Her tattered socks were rucked round her ankles and her shoes were scuffed with the gray-green mold found on tree trunks. She clenched her jaw to stop her teeth chattering; her breath hung in the cold night air.

  “Goodbye, Cyan; look after yourself.”

  “Are you going to fly? Why can’t I fly?”

  “Because you’re normal.”

  “Why can’t I see this island?”

  “Soon you will, sister. Soon everybody will.” I ran on the wet grass and took off, bound for the harbor.

  Many humans envy wings. A few years ago, a serial killer murdered only Awians, chopped their wings off and wore them. But it doesn’t matter whether one has wings or not when none of them can get off the ground. Cyan was more perspicacious; she envied flight. I worried about her as I remembered the Carniss saying: Wolves track lonely people.

  When I was her age, in 1807, I was solitary too. No child wants to be left alone, but Rhydanne children grow up quickly. When they fall, they don’t cry; when abandoned, they’re independent.

  My childhood in Darkling came to an abrupt end in my fifteenth year. Eilean insisted we remain every winter in our scanty summer dwellings in the high peaks. She said it was for my own protection that we did not go down to Scree pueblo with the other herders, although winter storms brewed and raged in the cirque every night.

  Eilean Dara, my grandmother, was forty years old. She was a good runner; she had only ever let herself be caught by one man, who married her and treated her gently, but he died shortly after their daughter was born-my mother inherited a very fast speed indeed. I never understood how my rapist father could have caught her and Eilean wouldn’t say.

  My presence forced Eilean to change from her beloved hunting way of life to herding. She built our shieling herself, although it looked as if it had grown, part of the uncompromising mountains; an antlered hillock with moss on the roof that the goats ate in summer when the ice thawed. The shieling was a one-room box with bedding on the floor. Every wooden surface was covered in pokerwork designs, my grandmother’s pastime in our desolate world. She burned board games into the low table top-a checkered square for solitaire and trapper’s luck, brown teeth for backgammon, and rectangular patches where packs of cards were placed for telling fortunes. When hunters visited they played games that were fast and simple compared to those I learned later at the Castle.

  I discovered the rules of flight from trial and error; no child was ever as covered in cuts and bruises. Eilean made me look after our eight goats; I was good with a sling but I was never taught the bolas so when hunters came to poach them, I had to call her for help.

  I left the goats tethered while I improved my gliding, soaring too far to hear their bleats and bells clacking. A pack of white wolves attacked the herd. The goats panicked, leapt high and strained at their ropes but the wolves devoured them in a leisurely fashion. When I landed hours later I found a pile of bones, tethers and bells. I hid from Eilean for days before she gave up trying to throttle me. She then steadily reverted to her previous life, chasing ibex and swigging whiskey to forget the strain of my existence.

  I sat cross-legged in front of the hearth and stared at the flames. After a while the door was nosed open and two massive tame wolves slipped through, padding solemnly. I relinquished my space on the mat for them; they lay down and sighed simultaneously. Compacted snow sticking to their pelts became translucent as it melted and dripped. Thunder tumbled down Darkling valley; there was a great sense of waiting in the air. Eilean Dara kicked the door back on its leather hinges and strode in. She hung up her bolas, reclined on the rugs, resting an elbow on the table, and looked around vaguely for me. “Look at you, Jant; why are you still here? You should have left home by now. Have you no sense of shame whatsoever? I think you’re determined to slow me down like powder snow. First, I can’t even marry you off because how do I find someone who wants a deformed Shira as a husband? Second, you remind me of what those vile Awians did to the daughter I loved. Third, then you killed her, with your chunky body and wings trapped in her belly. We had to cut you out with an axe.”

  I gathered her plate from the fireplace, pine nut crackers and meat stew cooked for so long it was a stringy paste. Eilean continued: “A full seven-month pregnancy and you were still tiny. I fed you goat milk and raised you despite the fact that of course your birth wasn’t timed and you arrived in the middle of the freeze season. So now you’re grown, the way you show gratitude is by feeding my vicuna to the wolves.”

  She reached out and I flinched. “Have you caught anything?”

  She carved a chunk off the stew, stuck her fingers in it and licked them. “Nothing,” she taunted. “Not faun not fowl not fuck.”

  “Do I go bring them in?”

  “Not green sludge in a dead deer’s gut, not frozen milk in a dead girl’s tit. There’s no game this side of Chir Serac anymore. I think we all starve.”

  I peered at the whited-out valley. The temperature was plummeting and the sky was fantastically clear. There were more stars above the Darkling Mountains than anywhere else in the Fourlands, because they liked the clear air. Stars gathered there and fell as snow.

  Two grouse were strung up on the shack’s wall, their feathers harassed by the wind, purple in the impure light. A llama from Mhadaidh shieling still had a bolas wound around its legs, and a light covering of snow
settled on the black antlers of a buck chamois. Its slack tongue was freezing to the ground; it looked at me with yellow teeth.

  Eilean’s fingers chased the last shreds of meat around her bowl. “Oh, you are always under my feet. I need some space. Get out! Out!” She shoved a couple of thin skewers into the embers, knocking out sparks onto steamy wolf fur.

  There was nowhere to go but the empty goat shed high on the rocks, built around the twisted trunk of a rowan tree that spidered up the cliff as if trying to creep away from me. I had believed Eilean’s gibes that if I ran down to Scree the other Rhydanne would pull my wings off.

  I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and nestled in the bothy among the heather hay. Thick cornices hung over the vast black splintered cliffs, looming dark against the snow clouds. Eilean shouted, “And don’t come back in tonight!” She slammed the door, cutting off the firelight abruptly.

  I listened, motionless, as from far up on Mhor Darkling, the highest spire of the range, an ominous creaking echoed down the valley. Tabular layers of snow began to slide.

  My head was full of its white roar as I flared my wings and landed on the deck of the Stormy Petrel. I shook my head to silence the resounding smashes and splitting, buckling rock. For two centuries the avalanche has echoed in my ears.

  I ducked into Mist’s cabin and she immediately leapt up, dashed across and flattened a piece of paper against my chest. She yelled, “What is the meaning of this? What’s going on?”

  “Huh?” I tried to pick at the note but her palm pressed it tightly to my shirt.

  “What have you done, Jant?” she demanded, clapping the paper to emphasize every word. I recognized it as the Emperor’s letter that I had sent to Awndyn with a loyal rider four days ago. My handwriting covered the back of the envelope.

  “Hey, hey…Don’t blame the Messenger. San sealed this, not me. I haven’t read it.”