No Present Like Time

by Steph Swainston

  For an instant the water inside its mouth was carried higher than the harbor water. The snake reared out of the sea, bearing the Pavonine up. Sailors clung onto the ropes, dropped off with raucous screams.

  Foaming brine spurted out both sides. The sea krait closed its mouth, with one sickening crunch.

  In the sudden silence, the bitten-off masthead of the Pavonine tumbled to the surf. It floated, no bigger than a matchstick, beside the diamond-shaped snake’s head projecting straight up from the waves. Its body rose to the surface, blocking the harbor entrance, and the length of it extended to the horizon. The King krait lowered its head and turned to look at us.

  Lightning scrabbled for an arrow, stammering, “What is that…?” He flexed his bow, aiming directly for its yellow eye.

  “No!” I put my jittery hand over the arrowhead and forced it down. “Don’t shoot!”

  Lightning gaped at me, striving to understand. “Why not? Its carcass won’t block us in. The sun will rot it. It will rot away.” He yelled at the sea krait, “What are you?”

  The snake’s long mouth stayed closed but the black tongue whipped out like a pennant at the summit of its snout, curling down to our railings, licking slickly in front of me. I assumed the krait was tasting the air for my scent. I actually admired its beauty and overwhelming incalculable strength. I waved my arms to it, grinning madly with gratitude. “Thank you! Thank you in the name of the Emperor-now go find a home!”

  It tilted its head to the side, but as it sank it scanned the Stormy Petrel’s deck with its great amber eye. The sea rushed back with a noise like rolling boulders, closing over the snake’s eye, upturned mouth, pointed nose; the nostrils last to submerge. An enormous V-shaped ripple formed where, underwater, it began to haul its massive body and retract its head from the harbor.

  I swear there was a gust of wind as everybody on the Stormy Petrel exhaled. The quay was silent for a second-it was silent, the fighting had stopped. I heard weapons fall and clanking as bags of loot dropped to the ground.

  Pandemonium broke out as, shoulder to shoulder, some soldiers and pirates moved closer to the waterfront to stare at the floating top-mast, the broken pieces of canoes and pontoons where the krait had been. The rest, especially the Trisians, tried to run as far from the sea as possible, back into town. The rioting on the quayside and all the way up the boulevard had completely ceased; everybody was watching the ocean.

  “Did…?” Lightning stammered. “In the name of…god’s arse…I can’t believe I just saw that.” He turned on me. “Why do you keep stopping me from shooting monsters?”

  “It saved us, Saker; it’s a friend.”

  On my other side Rayne spoke calmly. “You were in too deep, Jant, if you reached Vista Marchan.”

  I goggled at her, but she simply smiled.

  “How did you know that thing was going to appear?” Lightning demanded.

  I seated myself on the deck; I was too nauseous to question Rayne. I moaned, “Oh, please let me lie down. They’ve stopped fighting. I halted the riot; we’ve won.”

  “We los’ so much, Jant, tha’ I doubt you could call i’ winning.”

  Lightning nudged me with his boot. “I see Vendace and the senators approaching the gangway. At the moment I don’t think relations between Capharnaum and the Castle could be any worse. Can you address them?”

  Rayne said, “Jant is very disorien’ed; I don’-”

  I nodded. “Yes. I will speak for the Castle.”

  Scavenger smoke rifled across the sky. The moisture of the sea breeze condensed on the library’s fumes to form a thick cloud descending over the crag; we gradually lost sight of the blackened, burned-out Amarot. The air was filthy and muggy, unfamiliar to the senators. They stood huddled together, coughing. The sea krait had rendered them speechless and their eyes were downcast; they were in mortal fear. Lightning and I walked unsteadily down the gangplank to the corniche which was littered with debris. Vendace’s tunic and unruly gray hair were soot-stained. He looked at the blood on Lightning’s shirt, the puke on mine and the ash on us both. He faltered, “We saw the serpent. Can you communicate with it?”

  “I just did,” I said.

  They conferred between themselves; they all had a tone of defeat. Vendace said, “This is so much worse than legendary Insects coming to life. We had no idea that such a serpent existed. How did you summon it?”

  “What are they asking-?” Lightning began.

  “One minute!” I said to him. I gathered my thoughts and addressed the senators. “Yes, I summoned the snake to stop the battle and save your homes. I don’t want to call up any more but the Archer is furious and unmerciful. You heard us arguing on the ship; he wants to show you what we can do. I’m trying to make him agree not to encircle the island with giant snakes.” I turned to Lightning and addressed him gravely in high Awian. “We must look like we’re conferring. I’m bluffing, but the senators will appreciate the Empire after this. Pretend to be angry and speak to me; quote theater or something.”

  Lightning was quick to understand. He shook his head and said in a stern tone, “Well, in that case-balsam for lovers.”

  I inquired, “Willows for brides?”

  “Briars for the maidens,” Lightning retorted. “Look, you will explain this afterward, please?”

  I patted his shoulder as if in agreement, “Oh yes, but I’m positive you won’t like it. And to wives we give lilies. Right.” I switched back to Trisian and said, “My friend and I have decided not to summon the snakes, and to let them abide in the deepest ocean where they will be no threat to your country again.” I extended my hand to Vendace. “There are many more wonderful things in the Fourlands. We’re your allies; please join us.”

  Vendace and the others seemed doubtful. His lean shoulders were sagging. “If all the trials to face Tris from now on will be this arduous, then we cannot resist them alone. We’ll give you a message for”-he paused and blanched-“for San, now he has done to us what he did to the Pentadrica.”

  “What?” I said.

  Vendace looked at his associates for support, shrugged. “Everybody knows that centuries ago San let the Pentadrica be destroyed so he could seize power. He deliberately contrived that unfortunate Alyss be slain, and now he’s done the same to us.”

  I shook my head. “No, no. San was only an adviser. He would have told Alyss not to visit the Insects’ enclave and she must have ignored him.”

  Vendace glanced at the murk covering the Amarot, through which glimpses of the blackened library walls came and went. “That is not what Capelin wrote. I have read the manuscript, many of us have, but now…how do we prove it? It is ash with the rest.”

  I didn’t know what to say or who to believe. I searched around for more evidence of our goodwill, took the books from my pockets and gave them to Danio’s successor, who was still choking back sobs. “Here…”

  “Oh, thanks,” she said sarcastically, looking at the titles.

  “The Castle’s Doctor is here; she’ll help your doctors with the wounded Capharnai. Her knowledge and supplies will be useful. We’ll repair the damage that has been done, as far as we can. If you need grain ships I shall send them. The Circle is at your command; whatever you think about the Emperor’s history and motives, I promise you we will work day and night.”

  I thought, we have brought them misrule. Our presence has made Tris grow out of childhood to delinquent adolescence. But scolopendium was still hitting me in waves of sickness and bliss. I was simply glad to be alive, one of the lives remaining.

  Our soldiers, seeing Lightning on the quayside, approached him. But he was feverish, so he simply sat down and left me to give the commands while Rayne tended to him. I told the Awndyn Fyrd captain to round up the rebels and put them in the hold. Then came Viridian, Ata’s daughter, who had collected the gory pieces of her mother’s body. She insisted that Mist Ata Dei be buried at sea, with the respect that was due to a famous explorer and the Circle’s Sailor.

&nb
sp; I said, “It’s terrible that Mist can never know how Tris turns out.”

  Lightning glanced over the broken paving stones, the trebuchet shot and abandoned gold loot on the harbor pavement. His gaze loitered on the sea that splintered the dawn light. He was now as suspicious of the ocean as I used to be, and I loved it because it was not the same sea now the kraits swam in its depths. “Yes, it is, Comet. And I wonder if the Empire will ever regain a vestige of normality.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE CASTLE, JANUARY 2021

  The paths under the Finial’s arches were slippery with snow that had partially melted and then frozen again. The translucent footprints preserved the detailed marks of boot treads and hobnails. Frost rime edged the stone leaves on the Architect’s Tower, and icicles so long you could spit Insects with them hung from the Bridge of Size, which took the cobbled Eske Road across the Moren River. On the lawns between the Simurgh Wing and outer wall, two centimeters of snow were sealed beneath a centimeter of sparkling ice, blue in the early morning light.

  I waited outside the Throne Room in the small cloister, staring out of one of its pointed glassless windows. I was contemplating the fact that if you put the world’s finest-athletically or intellectually-into one Castle and let it stew for a thousand years, the results will not always be palatable.

  Looking south between the outer wall and palace, the roof had been rebuilt on the Harcourt Barracks, where the Imperial Fyrd are based. Men were repairing the Dace Gate barbican, and all along the curtain wall flags flew at half-mast.

  Next to me, on the spandrels between the little arched windows, were green-men carvings, dead faces with branches growing out of their loose decaying mouths. Their sole purpose was to remind us that one day we will die and be nothing but plant food. It is a thought that spurs Eszai to keep their places in the Circle and mortals to do great deeds and join them, or be remembered for their great deeds alone.

  Tris would take years to recover from the damage Gio caused. Lightning, Wrenn, Rayne, Viridian and I had left the island one month after the riot. I last saw it diminishing in the distance under a sunset pink from the amount of soot and burned book dust high in the air. “Ata’s sunsets,” the Capharnai have come to call them.

  Lightning was staying at Awndyn convalescing, and with Wrenn’s help he was arranging for a monument to be built on Grass Isle in honor of Ata. Thousands of her extended family had gathered there; I found the way her whole network had clung together rather alarming. But most of all I felt sympathy for Lightning because he also had to find some way of explaining it to Cyan.

  I had spent yesterday relating the battle to San, the ensuing riot and the debt we owe to the fifth land: Tris, manorship of Capharnaum. I was now to answer for giving the sea kraits a lodging in our world.

  I looked up as Rayne emerged from the Throne Room. “Now i’s your turn,” she said. “I told San everything I witnessed.”

  “You told him about Vista Marchan?”

  “Yes, but I couldn’ tell if he was surprised.”

  I said, “It’s hard to believe I’m not the only Eszai who knows about the Shift. And to find out that you have taken cat.”

  Rayne grinned like a crack in a walnut, showing mottled gums. “When I were a girl. I was a lass once, Jant; isn’t tha’ amazing? Rumors were rife a’ t’ university about i’s effects. I only experimen’ed once, in a spiri’ of scientific inquiry; I didn’ like t’ hallucinations because they were extremely intense. When I saw t’ snake I though’ i’ were like t’ krai’ I saw when I dreamed I was walking in Vista. Then I though’: hmm, that was under the influence of t’ fern scolopendium too. Jant, I wanted t’ go t’ Tris. I wanted t’ keep abreas’ of new discoveries. But t’ mos’ interes’ing thing I learned wasn’ Trisian; I have reconsidered my hypothesis.”

  I sighed. “People can learn to meditate their way through the Shift worlds. I doubt I’ll ever be successful at it, but you might be able to-you’re good enough to feel the Circle.”

  We looked at each other, wondering if the Emperor himself might have visited the Shift. For all we knew, he might walk there nightly, observing the Insect hordes preparing to burst through into different parts of the Fourlands.

  “I have no desire to go back to the Shift, Rayne. Ever since seeing the King krait, how powerful he was, the beauty of his striking colors, and how content and happy the stinguish are, I feel freed from my craving. I’m ready to straighten out. When I’m through withdrawal and recovered from the trauma, I’m going to spend Gio’s treasure on Wrought.”

  “For t’ stability of Awia.”

  “To win Tern back.”

  “You know, Tern felt t’ Circle break. She said tha’ she worried herself sick with t’ though’ tha’ i’ was you. She asked t’ Emperor if you had died and if she was aging, bu’ he wouldn’ tell her.”

  I was aware that San was waiting. I pointed to the Throne Room door. “Come with me. I don’t want to walk in there by myself.”

  We progressed down the scarlet carpet and through the portal in the screen like a couple about to be married: Rayne in her shawl that had seen better days at the turn of the millennium and me in a new shirt and waistcoat, with a long velvet scarf, fine black eyeliner and my hair cut so short it was cruel to my sharp-boned face.

  Rayne curtsied and seated herself on the bench and I knelt before the dais. The shining sunburst behind the Emperor’s throne reflected light in all the zestful colors of the stained glass windows.

  “Comet,” San said. “You brought serpents from the Shift to infest our ocean. I cannot think of anything more dangerous and irresponsible than your playing with the boundaries and indigenes of worlds.”

  I bowed my head. “Tris is part of the Fourlands; the Fourlands is part of the Shift. They’ve always affected each other. As far as Insects, maritime creatures and…and myself are concerned, it’s a continuum.”

  “The snakes will pose as big a problem in the sea as Insects do on land!”

  “My lord, I assure you they won’t attack us. They only eat the huge whales that never come near land.”

  “And do we not need the whales and shoals? Furthermore the sudden appearance of a sea serpent will threaten people’s very perception of reality.”

  I was still desolated that Capharnaum library and its precious manuscripts had been lost. I looked up to let the Emperor perceive my anger. He couldn’t expel me from the Circle so soon after Gio’s rebellion. Although there was much less unrest in the Fourlands now, a bibliophile Messenger can be just as dangerous as a vengeful Swordsman. The Emperor needed me, a Trisian scholar known to the Senate and the sea beasts, and, though unwilling, his loyal servant all year. He sent us out to deal with battles and infernos and he offered no reward, just the measly Castle grant and yet more lifetime. I wondered again about his motivations, but no matter how much I cared I could do nothing. If I angered San he would make me mortal, and without him the Fourlands would be swamped by Insects.

  I thought of the picture in the history book, showing San as an unassuming sage-turned-soldier. I spoke with determination: “I know that my decision was best. It saved us and Capharnaum. We stopped Gio, and the Senate will be governors of Tris. You gave me to understand that we should use whatever means necessary, and calling the kraits was the right thing to do…” My voice crawled slower and slower and dried up like a snail on a dirt track.

  “You sound unrepentant, Comet.”

  “My lord.” I fixed my gaze on the apse where the fifth land’s column should be.

  The Emperor understood and regarded me for a long time. “Whatever happens, we can do little about sea kraits at the moment. If mariners and whalers sight them, hopefully they will believe that kraits have continually inhabited our sea. There have always been legends of monsters.” He paused. “Comet, you will not tell anyone of the Shift.”

  “I promise.”

  “I doubt a debauchee such as yourself can keep his word! How many times has the Circle brou
ght you back from the Shift when you would otherwise have died? Immortality was not meant for that purpose, Comet. Next time I am afraid the Circle will not be able to hold you. One more fatal overdose will indeed be fatal.”

  The rest of the world would believe that scolopendium had at last killed me. I fiddled with my earring, thinking that anyway my private playground was somehow spoiled, now that I knew other Eszai had visited it. The meaning of Epsilon had changed and I no longer had a yearning to go there, especially after my experience trying to Shift home. I didn’t think I was going to miss it.

  I said, “I can do without it. I don’t want to be addicted anymore; I want to be cured. The last thing Mist said to me was, ‘Stop sulking, Jant.’”

  Rayne stepped in on my behalf: “I’ll look after him and treat t’ condition. I don’ think he will go back to scolopendium again. T’ prognosis is excellen’.”

  The Emperor said with a warm tone, “Well, I thank you, Comet. Despite your injudicious decision with the sea kraits, your service to the Fourlands has been invaluable. Now go with Rayne, and in the fullness of time you will invite the Trisians to compete in a games for the Sailor’s position. You will send mortal emissaries who weren’t involved to talk at length with the Senate, to invite them here and reduce tensions in Capharnaum.”

  I bowed and took my leave. I paced past the screen and the first of the Zascai benches. San’s voice called from behind me, “What of Gio Ami’s fortune?”

  I stopped dead. Damn. I turned around slowly and slunk back, as the Emperor continued, “That which you salvaged from the Senate House square? Rayne told me that she saw you leading a retinue of servants dragging metal coffers up to your apartments.”