No Present Like Time (8 page)

I
left the nightclub, crossed Seething Lane and went down a couple of slippery steps onto the hard expanse of the beach. The breeze blew stronger and colder here than in the sheltered town. I left no prints on the rippled wet sand. I won’t get addicted again, I told myself; this is just casual use. The empty ocean was a sucking black space; there were no lights out there. I swung my lantern but it only just illuminated the lapping water’s edge.

Far beyond the harbor mouth an obscure profile merged with the night, a motionless hulk like a premonition. It must be the
Stormy Petrel.
By god it was a huge ship.

I passed the quay, the only part of town that the governor bothered to maintain properly. Small vessels were roped together across the harbor mouth, each one bore a swinging lamp. Their yellow arc reflected in the gentle ripples; they made a silent blockade. A succession of boats was rowing out toward the
Stormy Petrel
from the quay. I dimly saw a man in each, straining at the oars. Every boat was stacked with barrels; the last stocks of fresh water were being loaded. Mist’s night workers on the jetty stooped and rolled kegs, muttering in a smuggler’s undertone. The first rowing boat blurred into darkness but I still heard with dread the rhythmic splashes of its oars distorted by the breeze. The rower gave a shout; at his familiar voice a passage opened through the blockade.

Mist had spread the word that this voyage of discovery was no different from the others she had attempted, but if you compared the current level of secrecy to the previous expeditions you would draw a very different conclusion.

T
he following day, the subculture of Awndyn was invisible in the bright winter sunlight. The black and amber crosstrees and crow’s nests of fishing cogs anchored in the harbor protruded above the houses as if the rooftops had masts. The harbor master’s office had sculptures of caravels in shining bronze on its tower tops, complete with wire rigging.

I met Lightning and Serein Wrenn at the quayside. They were watching the procession of boats still plying out to a deep channel called Carrack’s Reach where the tall ships were anchored. A crowd had gathered on the promenade. The air was cold but a glorious sun beat down, flattening the waves to translucent ripples that lapped up inside the harbor wall, hardly moving its heavy sheaves of green-brown bladderwrack.

Wrenn and the Archer descended to a rowing boat that was stowed with our belongings. Wrenn sat upright on the plank bench with his scabbarded rapier and sword belt gripped between his knees. Lightning leaned on the gunwale, trailing his fingers in the water, with a distant smile on his woodcut face. He carried a bow and a quiver of exquisite arrows, and the circlet around his short hair glinted in a most annoying way.

I sprinted along the jetty, wings half open to build up airspeed. I ran faster and faster still, toward the lighthouse at the end. I passed it, reached top speed; the jetty ended, I jumped off into the air. My wings met below me, I swept them up till the primary feather tips touched.

I flew over the waterfront that was lined with several hundred people. Some ducked, swearing. They had a glimpse of my boot soles and ice axe buckled across my waist. I heard their murmur of envy ripple like waves.

I leaned with my wings held up in a V-shape to circle tightly, and began to rise on a weak thermal above the chaotic roofs. I reached the height of the buff sandstone cliffs and soared above, seeing their grassy tops. Then I turned out toward the ships; the sea’s surface sped beneath me. I would miss Awndyn’s homeliness. I had taken a pinch of scolopendium with breakfast and as a result I was less afraid of the ocean. When you’re intoxicated, the balance changes between all the facets of your personality, making a different character. I was eager for Tris.

A group of people proceeded along the rough stone jetty. From high above I mostly saw their heads. The woman with a walking stick had long red hair over a green shawl held tightly closed; it was Governor Swallow, surrounded by her attendants. They stopped at the foot of the lighthouse and looked out to sea. Swallow began to sing. She keened, she swelled the dirge with all the force of her opera voice. The wind gusted the melody up to me; clear and high, it slid over eerie minor notes that prickled my skin. Her melancholy lament rose past the crowded quay, past the rowing boats to the caravels. The rowers heard it. Lightning heard it and looked back. The breeze blew it to Tris. I didn’t know why she sang a dirge, but it seemed apt.

O
utside the harbor, the boats began to churn from side to side. At least I don’t have to sit in one of those little tubs. Colorful caravels lay at anchor, scattered some distance apart. As I gained height and my viewpoint widened I saw around thirty—like brightly painted models, some with windmills on deck to wind winches, some drab and barnacled, some with men sitting in the complicated cat’s cradles of their rigging, all lashed to buoys with flags atop, and streamed out in the same direction by the flowing tide.

The fleet was a sober reminder of Mist Ata’s talent. Her patience and willpower could conquer the world. In the fifteenth century, caravels were developed from ungainly merchants’ carracks, although since that time they have undergone many improvements. San recognized their use for bringing supplies and troops to the Insect Front, so he made a place in the Circle for a Sailor and held a competition that Ata’s predecessor won. The first Sailor immediately tried to deter Challenges by forbidding any Zascai company to build caravels. It was a plan that the Emperor certainly didn’t condone. Ata knew it, and ignored the ban. For her first Challenge in fourteen-fifteen she made caravels in sections, in Hacilith where the Sailor couldn’t observe them. She had them dragged overland on a road she commissioned to be built, to a secret assembly yard made for the purpose at the coast. She sailed her new ships cockily around Grass Isle—their sudden appearance frightened her predecessor. That’s the kind of determination Ata has, and joining the Circle had not affected her admirable ambition. She planted vast forests to grow elm and oak for future ships.

The
Stormy Petrel
was by far the largest caravel, sixty meters in length. No surface was left undecorated. At her rear was a high aft castle, painted red and spiraled with gold curlicues. The forecastle at her bow was slightly smaller, and between them was a low deck with the largest of her four masts. The black hull was very rounded, its sides slanted in steeply, giving her a teardrop shape when seen end-on.
Stormy Petrel
’s figurehead was a muscular young man with a folded breechclout. Above him projected a square prow heavily decorated with scarlet zigzags and the Castle’s sun. A varnished spar jutted from it like a tusk, and at the waterline five meters below the prow a taut anchor cable ran from its port. The foremost part of the deck was a sort of promontory with cross-planking through which I saw the waves.

The Sailor must seriously want to impress the islanders with the Empire’s ingenuity and riches.
Stormy Petrel
inspired confidence in me, too: Mist was pragmatic, so if she had spent money on decoration, the rest of the ship must be sound and formidable. She would be as trustworthy as the best Sailor in the world could make her.

A narrow balcony ran the
Petrel
’s length on both sides, three meters above the waterline. Baroque wood carving clustered around the stern, picked out in the Castle’s colors, red and yellow. The vertical dimensions of the fixed lanterns were tilted to the rear, and the entire top of the aft castle slanted backward, so the
Petrel
looked like she was racing along even when she was sitting still. The diamond-leaded stern windows were adorned with ruby-stained glass sunbursts. The sun-in-splendor formed a sumptuous centerpiece below them, covered in dazzling gold foil. It scintillated with sunlight reflected from the waves.

Banners twined from the masthead, spinning on their cords like kites. Mist’s plain white pennant was the longest. I also recognized the argent swan of Queen Tanager, and Cyan Peregrine’s sleeping falcon. There was the black plow insignia of Eske manor, Shivel’s silver star, and Fescue manor’s crest of three sausages on a spike. Carniss manor must have sent funding too, because its flag was there, a black crescent pierced by an arrow. One hundred years ago I told a Rhydanne girl called Shira Dellin that she had just as much chance of driving the Awian settlers from the lower slopes of Darkling as she had of hitting the moon with an arrow. The settlers founded the manor of Carniss and they immediately took that image for their badge, which made it even more painful when they proved me right.

I made a controlled descent between the first mast and mainmast, and dropped with a hollow thud onto the deck. I settled my wings and folded them. Cinna’s scolopendium was so good I couldn’t feel them ache at all.

Lightning and Wrenn climbed aboard and joined Mist by the wheel. Wrenn grinned uncontrollably. He was brimming with excitement. Sailors began to stow the flags. Mist called, “Make sail! Half-deck hands below for the capstan. Brace full the foresails! Send order, if you please, to Master Fulmer on the
Melowne
; we shall be under way…Welcome to the ocean, Serein,” she added.

With the
Melowne
behind us, we slipped past the ships in Carrack’s Reach, black barrel buoys on our left side. An Awian racing yacht called the
Swift Shag
ran close to escort us; her bell rang in salute. “They’re wishing us luck!” I waved. I was completely high on the fact I wasn’t afraid.

Ata leaned on the wheel. “How are you, Jant?”

“Yeah. Uh-huh.” I was staring at the carved mascle emblem on the bow of our sister ship. The
Melowne
was painted in the colors of Micawater, dark blue and white lozenges; she carried so much ornament she looked as if she had been decorated with the fittings from a bankrupt brothel.

“Tell me, what day is it today?” Ata asked.

“Mmm.”

“Let me see your eyes.”

I took off my sunglasses and looked at her. “Well, okay,” she said eventually, but with some doubt.

The
Melowne
flew all the canvas she could, to match our pace and kept behind us on the right. Lightning didn’t greet me, being deep in conversation with the Swordsman. He pointed to the great blue wedding cake of a caravel. “She’s named after my sister. Little Melowne…”

“Yeah,” I said. I leaned over the railing and noticed that no two wave peaks were ever the same shape.

“She was the youngest of my family,” Lightning began. “The youngest of nine. She died when she was only six years old.”

“That’s a great shame,” Wrenn said.

“Oh, I’m all right. I got over it around the turn of the first millennium,” Lightning said staunchly. I heard that in the year one thousand, through the use of many economic pressures, he eventually managed to run the Avernwater dynasty into the ground and turn their manor back into parkland.

“It was a long time ago, you understand,” he said quietly. “Melowne was the youngest of my family; she was full of life, happy all the time. My second-eldest brother, Gyr, was exceptionally fond of her. He tended to be morose and she brought out the life in him.

They were playing, one morning in midsummer, while we prepared to celebrate godsloss day. A flowery parade headed by the July Queen came toward us down the avenue and the young maiden playing queen was about to pass in front of the palace. People lined the streets to cheer her. Inside the palace we wanted a good view, so all us children ran up to the top floor. I found a roof window. Melowne and Gyr were just below me, out on the parapet. Melowne had daisy chains around her head and in the buckles of her shoes. She leaned right out over the balustrade as the procession passed below and he held the back of her dress. She was laughing with delight, pointing at the chariots and kicking her feet. She kicked Gyr under the chin accidentally and, in shock, he dropped her. I just saw her vanish.” Lightning pointed down over the railing.

“That’s terrible.”

He nodded slowly. “My little sister’s death caused an uproar. Nothing was the same after that. My brothers hated Gyr…and I did too. He became enraged and silent; eventually he left us to found a new manor at Avern. I don’t think I ever forgave him.”

I
paced across to Mist in the hope of less sentimental talk. She watched the supply ship carefully before relinquishing the wheel to her second-in-command. I think she had appointed her sons and daughters to all the officers’ positions. “Gentlemen,” she said, “let me show you your cabins.”

Mist explained that the
Stormy Petrel
had five levels, including the open-air decks and topcastle. The hold was the largest, where pinnace boats for exploration were carried in a dismantled state, and at the stern, an animal pen full of ruddy, bright-eyed chickens. We climbed down the hatch to the living deck, which was above the waterline and had small, sunburst-painted shutters from bow to stern. Every sailor had just forty centimeters by two meters’ length to sling his or her hammock. I marveled that Awians could force themselves into such a claustrophobic space. Rather than their leafy towns that nestled in countryside, and their small families in roomy houses, here featherback men were crammed together without enough space to spread a wing. Mist’s cabin cut into their quarters at the stern and extended into the deck above; I could almost stand upright in it. She had a bedroom and a study that doubled as a dining room, with a polished mahogany table quite incongruous on the ship. It seemed that she intended the
Petrel
to be her manor house.

Back above, she said, “Jant, you have the cabin under the poop deck.” She opened a door onto an empty compartment with a sloping floor, one meter wide by two long, and a meter high. One hinged shelf was folded back against the wall above a hook for a hammock. Was I expected to fit in there?

“It’s a fucking closet,” I said.

“I swear, it’s the most luxurious passenger accommodation we have! Well, if you want to sleep outside, feel free…Come on, Lightning, let me show you the fo’c’sle.”

At least my cabin was farthest from the waves. I could lean out of the porthole and judge the level of water against the planks of the hull to determine how fast we were sinking. It had the best view, fresh air, and I could fly from the deck above. The motion of the waves swayed my cabin the most but that didn’t bother me. I was anxious to be rid of Mist’s smiling face so I folded myself into the tiny wooden box. What the fuck was I doing here?

Once noticed, the ship’s movement was relentless. I could still fly home, but then I would have to face the Emperor. I was stranded between two terrible eventualities. I sat cross-legged, elbows on knees, head in hands, fingers through my black hair like a waterfall.

F
ootsteps boomed up and down the tilted ladders between decks and above me. Timbers creaked. On second thoughts,
Petrel
seemed extremely flimsy. The sailors adjusted something, the floor righted and, even-keel, she began to gather speed.

I shuffled farther into the cabin, bolted the door and opened my razor. I started to divide up my quarter-kilo hoard of cat. I tipped out the powder on a book cover, cut it and made paper wraps of roughly a gram apiece. Why did I buy so much scolopendium? So that Cinna couldn’t sell it to his victims? No, because I need enough to stay high for the whole voyage. With an ex-addict’s ingenuity I hid the paper wraps in every possible niche, wherever they were concealed from view. I wedged them in the ceiling joists and between the floorboards. I taped them to the underside of the shelf, packed them into the lantern and the squat candlestick. I concealed wraps between the pages of books, in the whetstone pocket of my knife scabbard. I even sewed them into my coat lining.