No Present Like Time (27 page)

An Imperial Fyrd guardsman entered, bowing to give his final message without meeting the Emperor’s eyes. “Tornado reports that the rebels have been routed. Gio Ami didn’t dare face him in combat and his body is not among the fallen.”

“Very well. Tell Tornado and Hayl to bring their reports as soon as they are able.”

The guard left and San returned his gaze to me. “So you even left the Insect running loose?”

I picked at the unraveling seam of a fingerless glove. At this very minute the Insect was probably dining on the Capharnai. “Yes, my lord. We respected the Trisians’ wishes. It’ll be difficult enough to deal with them in future; we didn’t want to exacerbate the crisis still further. Vendace found it easy to reject Mist’s offer, because to the Senate immortality is just a nebulous concept. Half of them don’t believe in it.”

“I see. You failed to convince them. In fact you have given them one more reason to mistrust us. The situation must be healed, and quickly. Comet, you have worked hard so far. Can you do better?”

I bowed. During my meal in the empty guardroom San had written a missive that now lay on the marble arm of his throne, neatly sealed with the crimson sunburst. He regarded me carefully, as if he could read all my private thoughts from my face. He resumed: “Gio’s followers hold up our stagecoaches at every point between here and Cobalt. Gio himself is not easily found, except when he wants to be, it seems. This letter”—he picked up the small envelope—“must be delivered to Mist urgently. Do you have someone you can trust to do it?”

That was a poor precedent: a mortal asked to do my work. I said, “Messages are only truly secure if delivered by my hand.”

San’s pale thin lips turned up slightly. “I don’t doubt it, Comet. But I have other work for you. Following his defeat, Gio Ami will attempt to regroup. I know that he will be holding a meeting in two days’ time in Eske, in a
salle d’armes
hall that is a branch of his school.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been there often.”

“I want you to go and listen to what he has to say, and then come back and inform me.”

“Your wish.” Obviously I wouldn’t be able to walk straight in, but I would relish finding a way to spy on Gio. He had once given me fencing lessons and I knew he was an excellent teacher; when in front of an audience he was a born performer. I said, “I’ll send the letter with a fast, dependable rider who should be able to slip past Gio. Mist should receive it late on Wednesday night.”

“Very well. In the meantime, if Tornado needs your assistance as a lookout or envoy do as he asks.”

Help the man who was fucking my beautiful wife? But San gave me no time for introspection: “Comet, what do
you
think of Tris?”

Danio was immediately brought to mind; I shied away from the memory of her drumming feet, and recollected the Amarot library. “The islanders love debate and casuistry that’s misguided compared to our practicality. It’s great that Tris now knows of the Fourlands. If we can make allies with them, if they become willing to communicate with us, their theories added to the Empire’s will increase our inventiveness a hundredfold.”

“What is your opinion of the riches of Tris?”

“My lord, I think they’re very dangerous. They’ll cause avarice, not to mention inflation.”

“And the people?”

I sighed. “On Tris, everything works, but that’s because it’s a tiny island. I think they have sorted out their problems—a very long time ago, perhaps—and they’ve not changed since. On Tris, a thief can become a honest governor…” In our case, it’s usually the other way around. “But I find it strange that the citizens of Capharnaum don’t want to cooperate with the Empire, like Rhydanne, and they hide themselves away when they clearly do care about the world and want to improve it, like Awians…It’ll probably do Tris good to learn of the real world. Maybe they’re in shock. I hope that when they understand us the whole Empire will benefit.”

San watched me carefully, sitting straight in the throne without stirring. He was satisfied that I was telling the truth. “Make sure that letter is sent to Mist swiftly and with the highest security,” he said.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Go now and rest, but return on Friday and tell me exactly what Gio says in Eske.”

San gave me the Top Secret sealed letter. I made obeisance, taking a few steps back before turning and passing the screen. As I left the Throne Room I called, “Immortals and fyrd, bring any letters for Eske to my room before midnight. Any questions about Tris, keep them.”

W
alking down the corridor I caught sight of a flicker of movement on the opposite wall and went back to investigate. It was my reflection, pickled in a tall mirror speckled with tarnish. An expression of horror crossed its face—even in the half-light I don’t look as good as I did this time last year. Still the same age of course, but my eyes were ringed with deep shadow; my cut-off T-shirt was the gray texture of clothes washed hundreds of times.

I called at the stables and watched my courier race away with San’s letter. Enormous plane trees grew in the wrecked paddock outside. I walked past the one that I had sheltered underneath, two hundred years ago. Suddenly I saw a vivid image of my tattered self back then, leaning against the tree trunk. If I had known that any Challenger was welcome to walk into the Castle at any time, I would not have spent three days sitting under this very tree, wondering how to present myself. On our way from Hacilith, highwaymen had murdered my girlfriend and stolen the money I’d gained by blackmailing the city’s governor. I owned nothing but my crossbow and a switchblade.

On the third day under the plane tree I felt a presence watching me—a man, all his colors subdued and outline unfocused as if seen through gauze. I felt a chill and didn’t dare move. I stared at him and he looked back, so strange, full of confidence and concerns larger and more frightening than I could comprehend. An adult world, seen by a young man terrified for an instant by the inkling that he will join it and have heavy responsibilities every day.

I didn’t know in eighteen-eighteen that I was looking through thinned layers of time, at myself. But now I realized that I was the ghost that my younger self saw. I wanted to tell him that everything would work out fine, that he would win his Challenge and two hundred years later he would still be twenty-three. I couldn’t speak to him, but I smiled—and I remember receiving that warm compassion, because when I sat with my back against the plane tree’s bark, I wondered at the manifestation but felt heartened and at ease.

Two centuries ago, what happened next was that at nightfall some immortals returned from the Front. I rushed to hold the reins of a horse carrying a well-built man with stripy gray and white hair, and the Castle’s sunburst on a big round shield. His horse’s withers were smeared with yellow blood.

I don’t know why I expected Eszai to look different. A sparkle of the Circle about him was simply my excited imagination. He said, “You’re no groom.”

“I want to be Eszai.”

He must have wondered at what in the Empire I could possibly excel. “Then come in, waif.” He kicked the horse’s ribs and it cantered forward. Its hooves boomed over the wooden bridge and echoed between the weighty towers of the massive barbican.

I
picked up some more steak sandwiches; I expend so much energy flying that I have to eat vast amounts. I walked from the kitchens through the ground-floor corridor of the Mare’s Run, the inner west wing, past Hayl’s apartments. I passed the Southwest Tower, where Tawny’s well-lit room was located, full of indiscriminately chosen prizes: Insect legs, bear pelts and jousters’ helmets. Then I climbed the three hundred and thirty steps of my tower, leaning on the wall all the way up, past the myrtle-green storeroom and the bathroom on its first floor that smelled as musty as hessian. I could lie on the bed for a while and fantasize about Tern—although I am more in a mood for a Rhydanne. Or I could, and I know I will, be distracted by the obvious alternative.

Wind-thrown rain began to scour the shutters. Tern had not been in for months; my room was dark and bundles of letters overflowed the shelves, piled everywhere. My valuable pendulum clock had stopped; I wound and set it to the right time and date. Masquerade masks hung around the mirror, beside a hookah as tall as I am, its fuzzy orange tube coiled around its brass pipe like a python. I spun the oval mirror around on its stand, face to the wall.

Faded posters taped to the round ceiling advertised music festivals, marathons, and Challenges when I wiped the floor with the mortals who wanted to contest me. I’m usually Challenged in winter when conditions for flying are at their worst, and I set the same test that won me my immortality—a race from the Emperor’s Throne Room to the throne room of Rachiswater and back.

There was a vase of dried flowers, the only plants that withstand Tern’s immortal forgetfulness. There were a few neglected old projects: my guitar, tennis rackets and a crossbow, all equally broken. There was my bike on which I lavish much attention, wrapped in its red rope that I use to lower it out of the window. Hanging on the wall above it was a series of obsessively concentrated little pen-and-ink sketches by Frost of jousting tournaments. The mantelpiece was cluttered with some wax seals in their skippet boxes; a souvenir from Hacilith—a spider’s web preserved between two sheets of glass; and a lump of solidified Insect paper with a coin pressed into it. By the window stood “Butterfly” my Insect trophy wearing a sailor costume, and my suit of armor stuck fast to the wall with decades of rust. An array of kettles, toast forks and dirty plates filled the hearth. On the dusty table beside my still’s retorts and condenser was a note covered in Tern’s dying-spider handwriting. I screwed it up and threw it in the cold fireplace. Looks as if the temptation of Tornado was more than the pretty lady could stand, I thought, fishing in my satchel for my syringe.

Once I start to feel the need I can go downhill very rapidly, and the room seemed suddenly very warm. I have to shoot some, I found myself thinking. No, I don’t need it. Oh, yes, I bloody do; I don’t want to be sick. Maybe when Tern sees how badly her adultery affects me she’ll come back. The trouble is that we spend so long apart that when we do meet we are still self-sufficient, which is a barrier to becoming really close.

I sat down at my desk, reached behind me to pull down one wing, unfolded it in front and held it between my knees. I preened fingers through feathers like a harp, hearing them rasp, and felt the thin skin ridged over my quills. Here are veins I haven’t used and they looked tempting. But if I made a slip and something went wrong, or if I damaged it and was paralyzed, that would be the end of me. I have only shot up in a wing once before when I was desperate. This was sacred. Sighing but pleased at some show of willpower at least, I untied the pendant thong from around my neck, looped it over my right arm and licked the ends up between my teeth. I flexed my fingers, impatiently tried to raise a vein. Don’t poison yourself, Jant. Meditate your way to Epsilon. Yeah, right. Why did Tarragon think I wanted to go to Epsilon? The Shift was an unwanted side effect when I only needed the drug to make me forget my pain. Why walk through worlds if you’re immigrant in each?

I sat with the needle poised, feeling a last blast of guilty defiance, then pushed it in neatly. In the space of a heartbeat it hit like a coach-and-four. Feeling like a god, if a rather incapable one, I located the chaise longue under my maps and lay down. This was like flying into a wall.

M
y thoughts played out in the air above me, but they were rudely curtailed by the door unlatching. A graceful and chic figure entered, and seemed to flow over to me. Tern looked at me closely. Her body was a fair; there were dances there. Her spine a snake, voice like icing on cakes—

“Oh, typical,” she said crossly. She touched up her lipstick in a mirror above my head.

“Where have you been?” I asked suspiciously.

Tern glanced down and must have realized from my expression that subterfuge was pointless. “At Tawny’s apartment…I had a good time.”

“What, all of it?”

“Tornado single-handedly held Gio off from attacking our home. He said if Gio came nearer I should run to the Throne Room. I have been encouraging him…Is it okay for you to enjoy yourself but not me? I’ve heard that Tris is a perfect land. You sailed off and left me here.” Tern slipped out of her dress and searched around for her silk dressing gown, clad only in a white bra and underskirt. I was too stoned to be angry. I found it hard to care about anything, not even if the strongest man in the world came in and bent her over in front of me. I gave her my orphan look: please take me home and put me in your bed.

“Wipe that off,” she said. “Are you going to lie there all night with your hand dangling? We had a pact, Jant. You’re not being sophisticated, just sedated.”

Yes, we had a pact, which we began after the span of a mortal lifetime had lapsed. We promised that it is acceptable to have affairs because we will still love each other the most, and we will always return to each other. Actually, sleeping around should be refreshing because we have to spend the rest of eternity together without becoming bored.

I propped myself up on the velvet cushions. “Tern, why Tornado?
Amre,
he’s stupid;
demre,
he can’t converse worth shit;
shanre,
he’s bald;
larore,
he’s ugly;
keem
he’s poor! Is that the kind of man you really like, so you don’t love me anymore? Was your pride among the possessions you lost in the fire?
Keemam,
is he better in bed than me or,
keemdem,
are you so worried that I might be beaten in a Challenge that you’re prepared to shag the whole Circle?”