No Present Like Time

by Steph Swainston

  I advised her, “Sit still. You’re rocking it!”

  “Move your legs,” she said. “You’re in the way.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “I’ll climb over, then.”

  “No!” I did not like being so near the water. My feet were actually under the level of the scooping waves, which was obviously wrong and shouldn’t be allowed. Ata pulled the oars and the dangerous vessel leapt prow to stern. I concentrated on the floor.

  “Are you all right?” Lightning asked.

  “Of course. But this craft is clearly unstable. A single wave could swamp it.”

  “He hates them,” Ata said.

  “I’m just being careful.”

  She dipped oars, pulled on, leaned from side to side and the boat swayed alarmingly. “You’re tipping it deliberately!”

  Ata said dryly, “As if I would. She’s hugely overloaded anyway.”

  “Stop fooling about. It’s not funny.” The rowing boat was completely different from the high-sided caravels to which I had become reconciled. They were designed not to turn turtle but this boat wallowed as Ata rowed. I felt the weight of my two centuries ever more clearly as I searched the extremely close water for Tarragon’s fin, but all the wavelets looked like fins. “Why can’t I just fly there?”

  “Act your age. Now the storm has died down, the rebels will hear your wing beats,” Ata breathed between strokes.

  “I’ll glide.”

  “And see your silhouette…Oh, in San’s name!” she exclaimed in terror.

  “What?”

  “Jant, I forgot the rope. Can you help me? Lend a hand!” She passed me the end of a cable that ran over the side into the water and had been catching on the waves. “Pull on this line. It’s vital! The way she’s built, the planks aren’t safe unless you keep it taut.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes-if you let it slack for a minute she’ll split into more segments than an orange!”

  “I knew this was a death trap! How can you go to sea in a flimsy half-built boat? Shit!” I snatched up the damp rope and hauled on it until drops pinged off.

  Ata nodded. “Good. Now keep it tight or we’ll all be in the drink.” Water ran from the blades as she feathered the oars. Stormy Petrel’s copper-clad hulk was a vague black shape in the distance. Lights on the three levels of decks were snuffed by the crew, and she vanished.

  Lightning talked to the Sailor quietly. “Eszai are not supposed to sneak around like this. Gio’s forcing us to be murderers. I wish I was at the Front fighting Insects.” He had refused to blacken his sword blade even though I offered to do it for him. His concession to stealth had been to remove his signet ring and wrap a black mantle over his dark blue shirt. He held one arm around his new recurve longbow as if it was a lover.

  “When the job’s done return directly to the quay,” said Ata.

  “I’m concerned about Cyan. I hope none of this dishonor rubs off on her.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I find that daughters look after themselves.”

  “And we have no backup plot,” he said. “None of us knows enough to predict the Capharnai.”

  “We have our talents. Gio must be frightened of you, Archer. When his followers show their true colors, his lies will become manifest. The Senate will realize we’re doing the best for Tris.”

  Lightning and Ata fell silent as we came up to the beacon. Its uneven light did not illuminate the whole wide harbor mouth-the farthest point of the marina wall was in shadow. Ata rowed close to it, as quietly as possible. Slimy basalt blocks dwarfed us; thick kelp fronds stirred deep beneath us. I had been straining at the rope for thirty minutes, preoccupied with images of drowning, but I saw the rafts of empty Trisian canoes tied to their floating pontoons, undulating on the waves. In the distance they looked like needles on pine branches. Pavonine, Cuculine and Stramash were monstrous in comparison. At the waterfront, their unembellished sterns faced us, sails furled on skeletal spars, no flags flying. Lights flickered on Pavonine’s living deck. Their three tall masts, thinned by the darkness, were only occasionally visible against the night sky. Still, I sensed their bulk and heard the wavelets that slipped in and splashed back between the carracks and the harbor wall. They were rising on their moorings on an incoming tide.

  Behind the harbor, Capharnaum’s streets interlaced up the dark mountainside. Tris seemed far from fragile but, now we had touched it, it was starting to destruct. What if across the immense sea is an even stronger Empire, more pervasive still, that will do the same to us? San would be furious if he knew that thought. God has not left anything other than us on this world and, since it nominated San to protect the world, San and his orders are right. I will one day announce contests for Capharnai to join the Circle. I will fly over the town carrying their pennant, letting it stream out behind me, and Ata will ride her white horse up the boulevard. Trisian travelers would eventually visit the Fourlands; I could hardly wait to show them the sights.

  The harbor lamps reflected in the water. The end of the wall was in shadow, with some canoes upside down outside a small square building. Ata maneuvered us toward it past the last pontoon. Lightning whispered, “I see no guards, but have a care. The wall’s very near.”

  She braked the oars. Lightning reached both arms over the side and fended us off. He pulled the boat around, long side to the wall. We all looked up to the top, two meters above. “I don’t see anyone.” He stood on the gunwale, palms on the flagstones, and pulled himself up. The boat bobbed and scraped the wall. His face appeared over the edge. “Pass me my bow.”

  “Sh! You should let me go first,” I said, nettled.

  “Stop hanging on to the painter, please.” Ata took the rope from me, and gave me a leg up. I scrabbled to the promenade, lay flat on my stomach and peered over. Ata picked the rope from the water, running it the boat’s length, then unwound it from the bow post. She threw it up to Lightning, who coiled it on the ground.

  I gaped. “Oh. It wasn’t attached to anything?”

  She sniggered. “No. I just needed some way of shutting you up.”

  “You-”

  “Hush!” said Lightning.

  Ata arranged knotted-cord fenders around the boat’s hull, then she raised her hands to us. I turned my back, but Lightning took her hands and heaved her up, with a rasp of metal on stone. Her hair showed in a white flash under the hood of her black shawl-so different from the dazzling armor she wore in battle. She whispered, “I’ll hide by this depot. Lightning, follow Jant; he’s done this kind of thing before. Jant, for god’s sake stop sulking. Remember; return at five A.M., Starglass time. Good luck.”

  I set off a few paces, found myself alone, turned to see Ata and Lightning still looking at each other. She gazed at him straight, and a whole spectrum of unsaid things passed between them. Then Lightning gave a little shake of his head, and stepped away to join me.

  The façade of houses along the harbor was dangerously exposed because lamps on posts every fifty or so meters cast light on the paving. They were so bright I couldn’t see the stars. We had to dash across the yellow pools and pause in the very narrow slices of shadow.

  I reached one of the puzzling black and white posts that had a wooden cross-arm and dangling wires. I crouched behind it. “Saker, we must keep silence from now on. I know you don’t like this and I don’t blame you. But, just once, please follow my lead.”

  The Archer nodded. He carried his strung bow over his right shoulder, leaving his arms free. His mantle covered the quiver on his back, giving his shoulders a spiky crest, and was pleated into his belt. Nocks and fletchings of fifty arrows projected from the quiver on his left hip, crammed in so tightly they hardly rustled. He hunched awkwardly, trying to hide his broad frame. With an Eszai’s determination, he was trying to be a sneak. I said, “Let’s go.”

  Oil lamps on the shopfronts lit the entire boulevard. But the grid-streets of Capharnaum were perfect for us assassins; we stole down the adjacent parallel street.
I kept near the wall and walked rapidly, ducked into a doorway, waited for Lightning to catch up. The main street glowed on our left every side alley we passed. A statue on a plinth. Sculpin’s wine shop; Opah’s seafood; Ling and Zingel, grocers, the shutters closed. I ran across the road and continued up on the other side. Lightning piled into the shop doorway behind me. He was favoring his wound. I waved him back into shadow while I took a look around.

  Time to change streets. I sped right across an intersection, away from the boulevard and left uphill again. The junctions were sharp right angles, since Trisians don’t have coaches. We heard a bell chime, the Senate’s patrol calling for the next watch. This street was darker-the buildings were all homes. We dashed past open colonnades and hugged house corners.

  If Capharnaum was scruffier and a lot more disorganized, then slinking through it in the early hours would be just like Hacilith: hiding at a corner, giving the constables the slip. Doubling back to be rid of the rival Bowyers gang.

  I beckoned the Archer close as we approached a lighted house and together we strode confidently past their front door. When people are at rest in their homes, a furtive movement can alert them, but they don’t look twice if they think you’re a watchman.

  The houses were all of equal size and gave no cover; we walked swiftly. The boulevard’s light shone out of the side streets; we sneaked along close to the muraled walls. Behind me, Lightning trailed my movements soundlessly. I value faithfulness among friends. If you have not honored every childhood oath of allegiance to the gangs that changed every minute; adventuring among the rambling rose, the margins of ponds and darkened streets, you have not been true to yourself. I still have the Wheel scar on my shoulder. I have honored those intense oaths of friendship, and as a result I am still a child.

  The streets came to an end in darkness at the foot of the Amarot crag. Only the lit boulevard continued, climbing it in a zigzag path. A group of Trisians was descending the ten-meter-wide pavement from the Amarot into town. They wore cloaks over loose white shirts and wide trousers; they carried lamps and weapons. If they saw us they would recognize our outlandish Fourlands clothes immediately. We would have to pretend to be two of Gio’s brigands, which would be the worst way to meet him. I urged Lightning back with a wave, and we lurked behind the corner of the last house.

  The curfew meant that Gio’s men were not wandering in the town. Unfortunately they were all corralled on the mosaic at the top of the crag-nothing between us and them but the Senate House itself. We watched the patrol pass by two streets away and descend into Capharnaum.

  Lightning said, “They’re going the other way.” I seized his cloak and pulled him back as the previous patrol emerged. They exchanged a few words in a low tone with their colleagues and proceeded up the boulevard. We waited for what seemed like hours until they were thumbnail-sized at the top of the outcrop.

  I mouthed, “Our turn. Ready? Keep a good look around, your eyesight’s keener than mine. Remember that bloody Insect. We can’t see as well as it can scent us. It can certainly outpace you; it’s very well fed.”

  For the first few hundred meters, the crag’s white boulders were conspicuous. Then we found ourselves stumbling up the escarpments, over the scrubland. I feared there was a scorpion under every rock. A woody smell rose from the damp thyme shrubs, and spiny bushes scraped my shins. Lightning struggled behind me kicking them.

  At the lip of the crag there was no cover at all. The stony soil crunched under our boots and a gentle wind gusted down from the mountain above us. I lay flat on the hillside and after a dignified pause Lightning copied me. We listened. Gio’s men were obviously on the rum again. They all seemed to be gathered around the roasting fire, lounging and enjoying themselves. Good.

  Lightning touched my arm and pointed behind us. Capharnaum was spread out below; the boulevard gleamed like an amber river. Lights shone in the quadrangles of villas, picking out tiny green gardens, lit red-tiled roofs that were otherwise gray, highlighted smudges of color on the frescoes. The harbor beacon blazed continually in a black strip, a single star under the lowest constellations. I found it hard to believe that, far beyond it, Stormy Petrel skulked up and down. Capharnaum was beautiful, but the curfew did not explain a sense of foreboding, an expectant hush. The town waited, but I doubted if any citizen knew why.

  The tall outline of the Senate House blotted out the stars. Lightning and I glanced at each other. I tucked my coat back over my sword hilt; he nocked an arrow to string. We climbed as quietly as possible over the edge of the crag and onto its flat summit, into the Senate House’s shade, beside the first of twelve columns with square podia that were arrayed along its length. Wind blew the rebels’ cooking smoke over the roof ridge. Gio’s room was above and around the other side.

  Lightning steadied himself with a hand against the stone and looked up. The building towered over us; its columns were fifteen meters high, their edges wavered in the gloom. Lightning patted a smooth corner block, whispered, “Can you climb it?”

  “You do say some bloody ridiculous things sometimes. Look at it.”

  “Damn. I hoped our scheme-”

  “Well, of course I can.” I grinned. “This reminds me of when, before I left Hacilith to come to the Castle, I climbed the governor’s palace and left a blackmail note on Aver-Falconet’s own pillow. It was easy.”

  Lightning’s volatile sense of morality flared. “What? I don’t remember you divulging that to the Circle!”

  “Sh! It’s a long story; forget it.”

  I had asked for a whole one thousand pounds and I was amazed when Aver-Falconet paid up. I thought it was a fortune; how little I knew. Still, I bought horses and new kit, and kept enough change to make it worth the highwaymen’s while when they robbed me of everything not ten hours later on the Camber Road.

  “Stand here in the shadow until I return. Don’t move. Apart from if the shadow moves, of course.” I took a firm grasp of the stonework with both hands, found a toehold with my leg fully bent and kicked off with the other. Hugging my body close to the stone, my rangy reach gained another handhold and toe. I was fully above Lightning. He kept his arrow nocked and waited flanked by a column. The darkness gave grainy texture to his severe face.

  I strained to make out cracks in the mortar. Tiny white pinpoints prickled in my night vision. I folded my wings tight because their weight pulled me away from the wall. I stabbed my strong, pointed nails into the gaps, my fingers clawed. I jammed my boot in, straightened my leg. I raised my weight and stretched out for the next hold. I undercut the grip, cheek to the chill stone, stepped up.

  The wind was stronger here. It blew around the exposed corner and cooled off my sweat. I hung on with one hand and both feet, stood up straight and took a break. I exhaled a long breath of admiration at the view: hundreds of houses and twenty thousand lives that Gio had snatched as a stake in his game. Well, now he is dealing with Comet who learned to climb in the precipitous ice-split chimneys of Darkling’s cliffs.

  Above me was a narrow ledge. I reached up and felt about in the seagull shit. I secured a good foothold, bent my knees, sprang gracefully onto the cornice. I ran lightly along it, rounded the corner to the side of the building facing the mosaic. I flattened myself against the architrave of Gio’s window. The brigands’ camp was below, at the other side of the square. If any of them glanced up, they would see me plainly against this white stone. I quickly pushed the shutter open and peered into the room. No one inside, so I hopped over the sill and landed in a crouch, silently on the mint-green tiled floor.

  Gio’s apartment was enormous. A square bed stood in the center, no curtains as in the Fourlands, just a taupe silk coverlet. The walls were covered in a trompe l’oeil scene of a sumptuous feast. Elegant diners in Trisian robes poised with grapes halfway to their mouths or in the act of raising goblets. Their eyes seemed to follow me across the room as I skirted a wooden screen and approached an alabaster side table on which burned one of the open-flame lamps.


  Beside it was a glass half-full of clear liquid and a bottle with a familiar label: Diw Harbor Gin, Gio’s tipple of choice. I released the lid of my ring and dropped both aconitum tablets into the glass. They dissolved instantly. I swirled the glass and set it down beside the lamp. The oil lamp was pure gold, in the shape of a breaching dolphin. Irregular coral in claw fittings and priceless pearl clusters encrusted its base. It entranced me-

  “Yeah, right…” a voice came from just outside the door, “which I need like Mica Town needs more coffee shops! Goodnight, Tirrick.”

  “Goodnight, Gio.”

  Gio! I sprinted back across the room. Gio’s foot appeared at the door. I couldn’t reach the window. I jumped behind the screen. I was five clear meters from the window. Shit.

  Poised to move, I peered carefully through the fine fretwork at the top of the folding partition. Gio slipped his coat off and threw it on the bed. He was wearing the same clothes as when he left the Castle, and though washed they smelled of ingrained mud and brine. He had still not bothered to find a shirt and wore the 1969 Sword slung on a double red belt across the waistband of his blue breeches. His bare ribs and hips were sinewy furrows.

  Gio’s obsession for revenge might be just another form of despair, but it had kept him disciplined if not hygienic. The scar Wrenn had given him showed as a pale pink incision at the base of his throat.

  I wondered feverishly what to do. I was fast enough to escape but Gio would certainly see me and he wouldn’t drink the gin; he would send his swordsmen against Stormy Petrel and Ata’s plan would fail. I kept still. I could stay here until Gio was either asleep or dead.

  Beside the bed and ranged against the wall I saw six steel coffers. If they were full, Gio was undoubtedly a millionaire. Stacked on top of the strong boxes were three ormolu jewelry caskets with more primitive locks, because like many Awian mechanisms form is valued over function.