No Present Like Time (12 page)

I felt the mechanism give in the lock; it clicked open and we hefted the hatchway cover. Wrenn stepped down first with his guttering lantern. “Check it out, it follows the shape of the hull.”

The hold’s walls curved up on both sides, like being in a wooden bowl. The ship’s ribs were clearly visible. The ceiling was two meters above and I could stand up straight for the first time.
Melowne
’s side-to-side rolling was not so obvious here; we were standing directly above the keel and the ship felt stable. More equipment had been carefully stowed between the ribs and lashed to each of the knees supporting the deck above.

The timbers for the pinnaces had instructions printed on them like model kits. There was an enormous amount of folded canvas and all sorts of tackle. There were metal buckets full of solid tar like warm black ice, chains, cord on reels, copper nails and many times the ship’s length in coiled hemp cables.

“This is all spare rigging,” Wrenn said, as he kicked the shaft of an anchor twice my height and as thick as my thigh. He clicked a latch on a long oilskin-lined casket. He let the lid fall. “Oh, my god.”

“What’s that?”

“Arrows. Look!” About one hundred arrows with very sharp broadhead points filled the box, laid in leather spacers to keep their flights apart. Wrenn dug his fingers between them and they rattled. I looked up and realized I was staring at a wall of similar boxes. Wordlessly, we counted them and made a quick calculation, “Ten thousand arrows?”

“At
least.
”

“If there’s shafts there must be—”

“Bow staves,” I said, breaking the seal on a larger coffer. It was full of heavy longbows, all with fresh strings and the bowyer’s mark stamped two-thirds along their length where the arrow was intended to be placed. “A couple of hundred bows, one for every man on the ship.”

“Look, there are halberds,” said Wrenn. “And shields!” They were stacked along the hull walls, covered with sailcloth. He unbuckled the straps of a huge sea chest with joyful abandon. “I wonder if there are any swords? Oh, yes, look!”

The chest was full of fyrd-issue swords with double-edged blades and brown mass-produced leather scabbards. Their pristine hilts flashed in the light as he swept the lantern over. “I’d like to test one. Here we are—”

“Put it back! Wrenn, the grid was locked for a reason! Mist doesn’t want us to know what’s down here!”

But Wrenn, happily ignorant of Mist’s cruel streak, was not afraid of her. He selected a seventy-five-centimeter blade and stuck it in his belt.

“By god, what does Mist expect us to do to Tris?” I said.

“Maybe the islanders are fierce.”

“Don’t be a fool. Mist said Tris has no Insects; they’ve nothing to be violent about.”

We went forward, seeing more of the same; the
Melowne
’s hold was a ship’s chandlery and well-stocked armory. I hesitated. “Can you smell something?”

“What?”

A sharp metallic scent like spilled blood or cut leaves lay very faint beneath the hot greased-iron smell of Wrenn’s lantern. “Nothing. Forget it.”

At the bow a huge black tarpaulin hung floor to ceiling like a curtain. A skittering sound came from behind it, as of something metal not made fast. Wrenn took a handful and swept it aside.

A massive Insect launched itself at us.

I ducked. Wrenn yelled. The Insect crashed into the bars of its cage and drew back on six legs. Its antennae whipped around in frantic circles.

Its back legs slipped on the steel floor, scraping bright scratches. Its mandibles opened, a smaller set gaped inside and it jumped again, into the bars. An enormous knife-sharp foreleg stabbed out at us. It clicked and snapped; the bars boomed as it hurled itself against them. Wrenn went for his sword and dropped the lantern. Suddenly we were in total darkness with the red spots of the flare-out dancing before our eyes.

Wrenn and I thought the same thing at the same time. We bent down and pawed frantically around on the floor for the lantern, but we only felt each other’s hands.

“Where’s the—Ow! Damn it!” I burned my fingers on the hot oil leaking out. I stood back, seething with frustration as Wrenn picked it up. “Is it broken?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure? There’s all that bloody rum up there!”

“There’s a sodding great Insect right here!”

Wrenn struck a match and his shaking hand rattled inside the lantern as he lit it.

I shouted, “For fuck’s sake! Give me it, you daft fucking featherweight!”

He hauled his new sword from its scabbard; with the blade balanced in his hand his composure returned.

The Insect raked the bars with its foreclaws. It chewed them, mandibles clicking like shears. Strands of drool hung down and wrapped around its feet; glutinous bubbles stuck to the floor. The Insect rubbed its back pair of legs together; it turned around and around furiously in its four-meter-deep cage. Its body hung from long legs jointed above like a spider’s. It was one of the biggest Insects I had seen, the size and strength of a warhorse; it battered the bars in absolute desperation to reach us.

It tilted its head and tried to push through, but the bulbous brassy eyes wouldn’t fit. It pressed against the bars until its stippled thorax creaked, reached out its mandibles and gnashed. The mottled brown jaws met and overbit; they were the length and shape of scythe blades, chitin-hard and so powerful they could bite a body in two. A foreclaw swept the air. Wrenn and I backed off. He said, “What’s it doing here?”

“I don’t know. I mean to find out.”

The cage’s sliding door was secured by another big padlock. Its roof was a dented metal sheet. Wrenn pointed to some scattered meat bones that the Insect had voraciously scraped clean. It had macerated some into a sticky white paste and dropped it into the space between the cage and hull wall. “They make short work of marrow bones!”

I grimaced. “I thought I could smell the magnificent beast.” I thrust the lantern at Wrenn, dashed aft to the ladder and pulled myself up much faster than he could climb. He struggled behind me, probably realizing for the first time what I can do. I swung my knees between the rungs and bent them to hang on, leaned backward upside-down, face-to-face with Wrenn. I prodded his chest. “Mist will regret her latest trick.”

I flexed back upright and swarmed to the orlop deck. I scrambled onto the companionway and emerged from the hatch onto the main deck. All the sailors were eating their breakfast and rolling up their hammocks. Mouths full of porridge hung open in astonishment as I bounded past.

“Comet!” Wrenn shouted. “Eszai are all equal! Stop and—”

“Kiss it,” I said. I jumped off and flapped across to the
Stormy Petrel.

M
ist is, of course, an early riser; she was already in her office eating ginger biscuits from a toast rack and walking a pair of brass compasses across an expansive chart draped over the table. I touched down outside next to the red hurricane lamp. I pounced into her cabin, right onto her, bearing her to the floor, my knees on her belly. The biscuits and a cafetière went flying. Mist was in control of herself; she saw my expression and screamed, “Saker!”

“No more deceit!” I spat.

“Jant,” she said. “Uppers make you manic. Why don’t you calm down, before I have you locked in the brig?”

Her long white hair spread out, finer than silk. Her right hand edged behind the table’s baluster leg, reaching for a paperknife. I snatched it and clattered it away against the bulkhead. “An Insect!” I said. “All those boxes of halberds! Why is there a live Insect on the
Melowne
?”

Mist’s fair skin turned paler, her amethyst eyes wide. “An Insect?”

“In a fucking cage!”

She caught her breath. “Please get off me.”

I didn’t want to let her move. I could only see one course of action. “We must sail back to Awndyn. Fulmer will turn these over-ornamented crates around and take us home. In the Emperor’s name, with god’s will and the Circle’s protection, you can consider yourself under arrest. I’ll bring you before San, at knifepoint if need be!”

“Comet…” she said calmly.

“The only good thing about being at sea is we won’t be eaten by Insects. And you bring one along! A huge one! I’ll throw it overboard…”

She saw there was no point in dissembling. “Aye, I thought you would pry into everything like a starved rat. Let me up and I’ll explain.”

As I disentangled her cloak folds from around us, Lightning glowered into the cabin with a cursing eye. The sea wind ripped his fur-lined coat into billows. He grabbed me and pushed me away from Mist. I hit the wall hard and sprawled down in a winded pile by the joist. “Damn it, are you fucking trying to break my wings?”

“
What
is going on?”

Mist held her upper arm as if I had hurt her. She conjured an expression of gratitude for the Archer and sobbed experimentally but it had no effect on him. “Jant is such a junkie.” She shrugged. “He’s so screwed up I am tempted to Challenge him myself.”

“No! This is nothing to do with cat!” I can’t escape my one failing; my fellow Eszai use the label to taint
everything
I do, even when I’m clean. With always the same friends, I can’t move on and begin anew, my mistakes stagnate around me. I smacked my fist against the joist, to take the heat out of my frustration. “Don’t tell me it’s a hallucination, because Serein saw it too! There’s an Insect, hundreds of cut-and-thrusters, a hundred caissons of arrows.”

Lightning listened carefully and at the latter he held up his hand. “I know about them. Of course, Jant, think about it. Stop flouncing around and sit still. Would you travel to an unfamiliar country without armaments? Our ships are our only means of returning home so they’re worth more than the Empire to us now. We have to protect them.”

“Mist said the island was peaceful,” I said sullenly.

“On the other hand, shipping Insects sounds sinister in the extreme. What is it for?”

Mist kicked open her folding chair and regarded the coffee soaking into her sea chart. “I have a license. No, not the usual showground license. A warrant you’ll respect.” She unlocked a tortoiseshell casket and removed a paper with the Emperor’s seal.

She passed it to me and I read aloud: “‘Every item of cargo carried by Mist on her journey is required and permitted in my name. It will benefit the Fourlands at the present time and in the future. San, god’s guardian of Awia, Morenzia, Plainslands and Darkling, January 19, 2020.’

“That’s all it says. It’s the Emperor’s signature all right. But does he know we have a live cargo?”

“Comet, I’m surprised at you, suggesting that I could keep information from the Emperor,” Ata said mildly. “Aye, listen, gentlemen. Tris has no Insects. Imagine their surprise, interest and fascination when I exhibit one. I will tell them: the Circle protects the world from these maneaters—see our benevolence. Even the fact that I have brought it such a distance alive will right well impress them. The governors of Tris can have the Insect for a zoo or a circus, or make soup out of it for all I care. I’ll present it to them with all our Darkling silver and Donaise wine.”

“Bullshit,” I said and glared at her as only Rhydanne can.

Lightning said, “I think Mist is telling the truth.”

“I’m going to hang her off the thingy mast on the doojah until she confesses and Fulmer can take us back to dock.”

Lightning said, “We can’t wrest command of the fleet from Mist. Anyway, Fulmer is not just captain of the
Melowne
but Awia’s representative to Tris. Queen Eleonora’s spy, in other words. If we turn back he’ll make her a dismal report.”

The wind changed direction, the ship heaved, we lurched and Lightning shifted position woodenly, his coat hanging in limp folds to the floor.

Ata smiled and shook her head. She tied her platinum hair into a ponytail, making her strong-boned face look even more martial. She smoothed down her waistcoat with its frogging and brass-domed buttons. “Don’t worry. We won’t risk enraging Eleonora. God, Lightning; I try to show you more of the world, but you just bring your own world with you.”

I was struck by a thought. If I was Wrenn, sincere and uncertain, or a sailor who witnessed my rapid departure from the
Melowne,
I would row across and try to eavesdrop on this conversation. I listened for any sounds outside the cabin and called, “I can hear you; there’s no need to bloody hide!”

Wrenn pushed open the glass-paned door and appeared, abashed. His shirtsleeves were wet with spray; water squeezed out of his soaked boot seams at every step.

I said, “Great, why don’t we invite the rest of the Circle in here and then we can have a party?”

“You could really hear me?”

“Not at all, but I thought it best to check.”

“Oh. Clever,” he said, downcast. He glanced around, taking in the leaded bay windows that gave a view over the stern, Mist’s cot with its embroidered canopy, a stand of scrolled charts, the navigational instruments laid out on her ledger and ginger biscuits all over the floor. With a fencer’s grace he had adapted well to the ship’s dimensions and he was short enough to stand without stooping, whereas Lightning rested his head on his hand pressing the beam.

Wrenn was well aware of Lightning’s one-night stand with Ata. It was common knowledge that one night Lightning comforted her a little too assiduously and now they have a daughter. Wrenn folded his wings submissively, their elbows at his backside and the wrist-joints just visible from the front, clasping his shoulders. He picked his way with care: “My lord. Um. Lightning. I respect your experience but this is my first assignment as an Eszai. You know that’s important. I don’t want to return empty-handed only a couple of days after setting out. I’m dependent on Mist for success and I’m sure you don’t want me to fail. Anyhow, we left with such pomp that all the matelots in Awndyn will laugh fit to piss if we sneak back.”