No Present Like Time

by Steph Swainston

  I felt like a voyeur in the undergrowth next to Lightning’s cousin as she pressed herself against him and lay between the roots of an oak tree. She pulled up her tunic, her necklace’s fine links pooled in the hollow of her throat. I peered to see a young Saker kiss her neck and full breasts and repeat her name tenderly and urgently. Her red curls spread on the crisp leaves as Saker mumbled, “We mustn’t do this,” desperately down the front of her blouse.

  I felt uncomfortable because I had always considered Lightning to be sexless and celibate; the thought of him shagging Martyn was strange and a bit disgusting.

  His hollow voice continued: “I see her again and again. Sometimes a woman’s beauty reminds me of Martyn, but she doesn’t act the same. Anyway, even the most breathtaking beauty only approximates to Martyn’s. If I wait long enough…well…the types of characters are not endless, and with time they recur. She looked very much like Swallow, but taller, and she resembled Savory too-remember her?”

  I nodded cagily. Lightning sent me to deliver his love letters to a fyrd captain called Savory, and she let me fuck her after she read them. I was single, individualistic and hedonistic, so I took it as proof of how wrong Lightning was about women. I now keep the burden of guilt to myself, because for his peace of mind and my own safety he must never know.

  He continued without noticing. “Martyn was as close to perfection as it’s possible to be. A happiness so intense can’t last long; it’s always the case that the arrows we shoot up to the stars fall back on our own heads. The Insects swarmed ever closer, decimating the First Circle, and in the year six-twenty San announced the Games. Martyn watched me win through the hundred rounds in the archery tournament but she did not travel with me to the Castle, where he made us victors immortal. I whispered to her afterward how nobody in the Circle felt immortal and we hardly believed the Emperor. I established myself, organized my lodging in the Castle, and next thing I knew, San sent us to the Front. The Wall ran on the north bank of Rachis River and we struggled very hard-they stretched the Empire to breaking point. I had no sleep for a week, I fought to the last of my strength. It took years to push the vermin back into Lowespass. It was a harder struggle than that of twenty-fifteen.

  “Then San gave me leave. I visited my family, and everything looked different. They were all older.”

  Lightning pulled his knees up under the blanket and wrapped his arms around them. The informal gesture made him seem shockingly smaller; I suddenly saw the boy in a man I had thought too old and awesome to contain one.

  “The gentry and my brothers gave sidelong glances from the periphery of the courtroom as I knelt before Teale. She raised me to my feet, pinched my cheeks and turned my head. ‘By god, it’s true,’ she said, with both pride and envy. Their bodies changed with time, mine didn’t. The world had seen nothing like Eszai before. I seemed to be a threat although I had no power to intimidate them; I couldn’t even age. The stilted politeness of the quality crowd barely covered their distrust. I was keeping their wealthy world safe from Insects but because the Circle was successful the courtiers lost the concept of danger. They took my sacrifice for granted. They drifted, I fought.

  “I proposed to Martyn but she could not deny the will of our Queen. She would not leave the court and the country. Although it would have been easy, at the time we couldn’t see how. What happened to the carefree rowdy girl in those years I was away? Martyn didn’t…Now she was older I don’t think she trusted what I’d become. I think I frightened her. I wasn’t strong enough to take her from the court, and she wasn’t as strong as I thought she was…or maybe I appeared stranger to the world than I realized. In the blink of an eye she was married, raised a family of beautiful children, was an old woman; she died. She was always very changeable. I admired her ability and loved her all the more. I adored and guarded her until the end, but I never spoke to her.

  “Life seems to be more about the choices you don’t make. San decreed that I could be Eszai or King of Awia, not both. The throne passed to Avernwater. I threw myself into my work again. Eventually I saw Martyn’s own line die out. The bustle and crowds had gone from the palace and I lived there on my own. Hardly anything happened for two hundred years. I had a lot of Challenges because, after all, archery is the national sport. Next time I looked up, I barely recognized the kingdom.”

  Lightning realized he was staring at nothing and seemed surprised. He gave me a sharp look and said harshly, “Never mind. I had expected to outlive you, Comet, but these are not Insects we’re fighting now. Will you carry the message to Martyn?”

  His confidence overwhelmed me. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll bring her balsam blooms and chat to her on your behalf this day every year for the rest of my life, and then, if I can, I’ll pass the duty on to another willing Eszai when I die.”

  “God, Jant; so generous. I am indebted. Thank you very much…” He sighed; he was too exhausted to continue. The silence that followed purged the air. We both knew that we would never mention Martyn again.

  I looked at us there: a young and old immortal. The lanky Rhydanne one curled up, safe in his own self-interest, had a bright pride in his eyes because he had the chance to watch over and listen to a prince aged fourteen hundred and thirty-something, talking in a tired attempt to unpick his past. You could peel away shell after shell and still never understand Lightning, because you only get a little of him with each shell. In response I told him everything about Tern’s affair, and I asked for advice. “When Tern’s in Tornado’s rooms I’m too scared to confront them, because it’s his territory, you know.”

  Lightning scowled, then surprised me by saying, “But from the start she was so keen to marry you! I can have a word with her if you like. I can explain how you feel, to show my gratitude for the favor you have promised. I once told Rayne about my cousin, but no one else. You will keep the secret?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You are a good friend.” He lay down, propped on one elbow, and said, “Leave me for the night. I have to sleep.”

  Next morning I waited till the rain dwindled, then ran out of my cabin along the slick bowed deck past the wheelhouse that Mist had constructed around the helm. She had also lashed a copper rod to the mainmast like a lance. Two sailors clinging to the wheel muttered, envying my sense of balance and the way I can relax into the cold.

  Stormy Petrel barreled along furiously under full sail, an arrow shot toward an as yet invisible target. The knife-sharp waves scooped up water and rushed forward, all the water slipped off, then up went the peak again, farther on.

  Every time the Petrel bucked up she went “whoosh,” then slammed down “splash.” This whoosh-splash wound my muscles tight; I was sure it would tear the ship to pieces. When she pitched forward the bowsprit dipped and touched the waves. I waited for it to break off. Water sprayed over the prow, rushed down the deck, sluiced off between railings and down drain holes. I thought we were going to do a headstand on the figurehead all the way to the sea floor. Next second the bowsprit pointed straight at the sky like a flagpole. It described an enormous curve as it crunched down again. The masthead drew a wide circle in the sky as Petrel rolled.

  Worse, the five-meter waves pushed by the hurricane started overtaking us, and pushed Petrel forward a little in time with each tip-up. With each tip-down the bow slammed in the waves and braked the ship, so a stop-start jolting added to the vertical lift and fall.

  In Mist’s cabin my entrance was met with a nod. She was busy with her charts, while her navigational instruments hurtled from one edge of the table to the other with every whoosh-splash.

  “It’s been one hundred days,” I said. I wedged myself in the corner. “When will this stop? You said we should be able to see Tris by now.”

  “If there was no sea-fret we could,” Mist muttered. “How’s the Archer?”

  “Variable. He can walk but his wound keeps catching.”

  Wrenn’s voice interrupted me: “Fret, she says! It’s not a fret,
it’s a hurricane.” He lay abjectly on the bench by the stern windows. His angular Adam’s apple pointed at the ceiling. His short chestnut-colored wings folded neatly to fit under the curve of his spine, so he could lie flat on his back. His face had a greenish pallor; sweat bristled his hair and stubbly razor-cut sideburns. I noticed a tiny lip of fat over the waistband where he used to be trim. The sea crossing was taking its toll. Happily, I thought, I’m better company for Lightning now he’s injured. Lightning wouldn’t have told Wrenn his secret.

  The whole room seesawed up and free-fell down. I winced at the crash. The Swordsman moaned, “After I puke I feel better until fifteen minutes later I have to puke again. My nose is full of it. The teeth ache in my gums. When we lift my stomach is left up there. I plunge with a hole in my middle-on the next rise I meet it and god knows what other internal organs.”

  “Try flying,” I said merrily.

  “Oh, god…”

  The salt-smeared panes behind him gave onto the pockmarked water. Stormy Petrel trailed a green wake. Air bubbles deep inside the waves jiggled and struggled to rise, broke as froth.

  The violet rings under Mist’s eyes were the same color as her irises; with her pale hair and fading bronze skin she looked unearthly. She pushed a wooden rule back and forth along the raised rim of the tabletop. “Patience,” she snapped. “I can’t help that we’re hindered by dirty weather, or that Pavonine missed it by days. I can’t control the seasons! I need to know what Gio is doing. I hope to predict him…Against this gale every maneuver I make is as pointless as a Circle masquerade.” Her lips cracked as she smiled. She bent over her chart again, preoccupied. “It’s simply chance. I thought I’d find him! I can’t run him down with the wind in my face no matter how much sail I fly. The Pavonine’s skipper isn’t better than me. He’s just a lucky fucker.”

  Wrenn and I remained quiet. The thought that Mist was failing filled the cabin with despondency. She stretched her arm across the table and neatly caught a brass protractor as it slid past. “Can Lightning draw a bow?”

  “He says so.”

  “Can you fly in this weather?”

  “If I can get above the clouds. Otherwise the rain-”

  “Good.” She beckoned me to the chart and stroked her finger along some ruled pencil lines. “Here’s your direction from our current position and we are making just over a kilometer an hour so we’ll be at this point by the time you return. If Gio reached Capharnaum at the rate I watched him leave Awndyn, he’ll have been on Tris a fortnight. We’ll have to catch him there.” She sighed and continued almost in a daydream, “When Gio was Serein, I liked the man, I can’t pretend otherwise. We were friends for three hundred years of campaigning. He plays to his strengths so he’ll stay ashore. Aye, I recognize that Zascai extreme desperation; they drive themselves so far and so pitilessly they can’t survive. There but for San’s favor go I. Right. I admit I don’t want to deal with Gio on dry land, but I have no choice. I’ll let Lightning and Serein take their turn.

  “We’re coming up on Tris in the next day or so. See? Scout around, Comet, and bring us some intelligence.”

  I memorized the calculation and said to Wrenn, “Don’t worry, there’s only one day left.”

  “Aye, go back to training,” Mist gibed him. “I want you as keen as a harpooner when I set you on Gio. This surf will break straight onto the rocks. I’m lucky that the Capharnai built such an imposing harbor wall for their piffling little canoes.”

  The sky and sea were so overcast that the very light was gray. Cloud lowered to liquefy and make the ocean. The Petrel was always the center of a dull opaque sphere, half-filled with thrashing water. Great spirals of spitty white foam went around and around on the sea’s surface.

  Waves thumped on the bow and resonated through the whole ship, playing her like a drum. She crashed down, the displaced water spurted up over the figurehead and pattered on the foredeck. Half a meter of white spray stood solid on top of the waves, where raindrops were bouncing back off. Their power smoothed the waves, filled the troughs-the sea was white as a snow field. Spume blew off the wave tops. I was inhaling it; the air was full of salt.

  I shrugged my leather coat on over three layers of T-shirts, and shoved my hair down the collar. I drank a mug of hot reconstituted soup with stale biscuit broken into it. Then I set off and climbed unevenly, beating painfully against gusts that came from every direction. Behind me rain fell as a slanting gray strip from a single patch of cloud onto the heeling caravel.

  Flickering lightning illuminated the clouds from within. I zigzagged up, terrified of it. I beat a path with great difficulty through the wind, already waterlogged by raindrops as big as snowflakes.

  I disappeared into the cloud base and continued climbing calmly to avoid disorientation. Rain streamed down my coat and cold wisps whipped past my face.

  I emerged, pulling up shreds of cloud, into a most perfect, tranquil world-with a population of one. The sky above was a uniform winter blue, a bright sun shone on complete cloud cover beneath me like a second, motionless ocean. Its wan surface was hollowed and carded into static points like a blanket of wool. The light was so brilliant it reminded me of the glare on the Darkling glaciers.

  I breathed deeply in the thin air. Directly ahead cumulo-stratus lapped around the summit of Tris’s mountain, its charcoal and olive colors muted with distance. Farther away the silhouette tip of the second island in the archipelago poked through the cloud. They were like islands in the sky.

  I held my wings out in a long shallow glide. On the ground I never had freedom from responsibility, from people, freedom from drugs. This was the ultimate release. Only the dull and earthbound sit in hulking carracks, the humid forest. They will never understand my world because I am the Messenger and I have all this air.

  The clouds’ surface sped away under me. While Stormy Petrel and Capharnaum town labored under the storm, the setting sun cast the colors of northern lights over my private sea. Meringue cloud turned opalescent blue, pale orange and rose pink; the mountain’s shadow lengthened. I loved the uninhabited mountain. The splendor of Tris from my unique perspective filled me with elation, but I wished that I could show it to Tern. I would paint it in words for her if we were ever snug in bed together again.

  I reached the mountain’s slope after nightfall. The gale concealed my wings’ noise, so I descended through the clouds to Capharnaum and circled at height trying to discern detail. It hadn’t rained on Tris; the main boulevard and its rotunda were lit but the surrounding streets were completely dark. A few people stood by the crossroads. A group of men walked toward them, carrying lanterns and some sort of polearm. The loiterers started up, slouched downhill toward the harbor and filed into a wine shop, leaving the paved street empty. From the foot of the Amarot crag, a bell pealed ten strokes, and all was silent.

  I sailed over the Amarot, seeing its walls lit flame yellow. About a thousand men were bivouacking on the mosaic between the Senate House and the library. They were Gio’s rebels and they had lit a cooking fire right on Alyss’s face. The aroma of goose fat rose up to me. Real food! God, I wanted some of that meat.

  Shadows ten times life-size reared and lunged on the Senate House columns as they dipped tin mugs and tarred horn cups into an enormous keg of rum and passed them around. Dirty faces reddened by the firelight jeered and laughed. Thousands of hours of effort had been poured into constructing the mosaic, and now Gio’s thugs were trashing it.

  The night seemed to jump darker by degrees, making me blink; my eyes were adjusting all the time. I made out a small building perched on the cliff edge behind the Senate House. A shape as fat as Cinna waddled out of the dark entrance, buttoning his fly. I bent back my wings to descend. Yes, it was Cinna, appearing like a coagulation of all the lard in the Fourlands.

  He sauntered, his hands deep in his pockets. I swung into a standing position and dropped to the ground behind him. Cinna halted in his tracks and turned around very slowly. He said, “I’m
not wanking. I’m just keeping my hands warm.”

  “Huh? Shut up and follow me.”

  I ran, hugging close against the library wall, to the unlit colonnade that joined the library to the Senate House. I slunk inside and beckoned to Cinna. He reeled; his peacoat was spotted with rum. I grabbed his lapels and positioned him squarely behind one of the columns where he stood less chance of being seen, although he overlapped it on both sides. His red nose was darker than his shocked white expression. Drops of sweat detached from his shiny forehead and rolled down puffed-out cheeks.

  I drew the ice axe from the back of my belt and whispered, “If you cry out I’ll kill you.” Cinna gave me a beseeching look, wiped his palms on his knees and pointed at the ground. I let him sit down and lean against the column. I hunkered down too, in shadow and well out of sight.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Quickly. Why is Capharnaum so dark? The streets are deserted and a bell was tolling. I saw men loitering; there was nothing threatening about Capharnaum before. What’s Gio done to them?”

  Cinna’s frightened whisper was so low I scarcely heard it. “You saw that, Messenger? Yes, the patrol just called for the next watch. They’re not fyrd-the Senate appointed men to maintain the curfew and guard the houses.”

  “Curfew? There’s a curfew? Why?”

  “Because of an Insect that’s loose. It’s killed eighty people so far. The Senate and Gio have divided the town into sectors and they’re searching systematically, even sewers and attics, but they can’t find it. One Insect is causing more trouble than all the swarms of Lowespass. See those posters over there? They warn people to stay indoors.” He nodded toward some sheets of paper pasted on a board at the end of the library. “They carry a picture of the latest victim. But the fact that Capharnai have discovered The Joy Of Insects isn’t the only reason for the curfew. Thieves are roaming the streets. Gangs.”