No Present Like Time

you take?”

“As much as I could.” I wriggled out of the constrictive cabin and pulled myself up, water bottle in hand. I scraped a match, lit one of the cigarettes I had stolen from Cinna and sipped at it. I blew the smoke out of my nose and coughed. I was never going to be any bloody good at smoking. It doesn’t agree with Rhydanne as they are accustomed to thin air. I only do it rarely, when I’m under extreme duress, because if I ever got hooked it would destroy my ability to fly.

Wrenn joined me at the rail, standing upwind of the smoke. “Are you all right? Apart from being dark and moody, I mean.”

I said, “I loathe this bloody floating coffin of a boat.”

“It’s a ship.”

“She’s a ship. Apparently it’s female. I hope all her masts don’t break off when they fuck in the shallows.”

The Swordsman fell quiet, looking at the midnight-blue water. The waves swept up into points, lapping and sidestepping. Their ridges looked like cirques of the Darkling Mountains. Apart from a sailor manning the wheel and a watchman at the prow, all was quiet. Only knavish sailors, rakish swordsmen and drug-addled Rhydanne are about at this hour.

“The Stormy Petrel’s close by,” he said, pointing forward at two faint lights, one red, one white, which rose and fell gently. The dawn clouds were gradually becoming paler, but the Petrel’s sails and hull were blurred, a drifting perse-gray shape. The ships creaked continually, and when they weren’t creaking they groaned and flapped and sighed. They were like animals talking to each other.

“Hm. I’m surprised Lightning and Mist can bear being on the same boat.”

“Can you see who’s at the helm?”

I glanced at him. “Rhydanne can’t see in the dark, Wrenn; that’s just a story. In fact I have crap night vision. Rhydanne eyes reflect to cut out snow glare so I don’t get blinded. It’s not much of an advantage at sea level…”

“Really?”

“Yeah. While I’m putting to rest myths about Rhydanne, you should know that they don’t turn into lynxes on their birthdays. They can’t survive being frozen solid and thawed out again. And they’re not cannibals, whatever Carniss may say.” I lit another cigarette with the stub of the first. “As for the bit about shitting in little pebbles like goats do, I reserve comment.”

“I didn’t mean to be nosy. I’m sorry.”

“You should be. I stay smooth-skinned, mind. It would take me weeks to grow as much stubble as you.”

Wrenn rubbed his chin. I turned back to the cabin thinking that I needed more time to recover. From behind me Wrenn said, “What’s it like up there? In Darkling, I mean. Is it true Rhydanne don’t talk to each other at all?”

Much as I wanted a few hours alone, that made me smile. I said slowly, “Oh, they say all they need to. But that’s not much compared with flatlanders, for sure. Even Scree village was only built by accident-it started out as a cairn. There was a tradition that every traveler puts a stone on the pile when he goes past. So it grew, very gradually, into a pueblo with rooms and an inn. Rhydanne come to the village every winter, when any person can occupy any room. They all get snowed in and drink themselves legless. In summer, they leave the rooms empty. The conditions make Rhydanne very self-reliant; they can’t act in large groups. When an avalanche destroyed my shieling I couldn’t find anyone to help me…The cornices were hanging waiting for the slightest shock. Eilean was crushed by the barrage and the whole valley changed shape.”

I hung on to a rowan tree’s upturned roots as the mountainside liquefied and tabular ice thundered down. The air filled with powder snow. The next day saw me scrabbling at the granite debris until my fingers split, trying to dig her out.

I smirked. “She’s still up there under tons of rock, flat as a waffle.”

“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

I huffed and tapped ash off the cigarette. “I hated them. I grew up too slowly for Rhydanne and in the end I’d no love of their way of life. But Darkling paled into insignificance when I went to Hacilith and fell in with the Wheel. They were named from their habit of nailing enemies to the waterwheels of the city. The weird thing was that I was happy as a chemist’s apprentice and I didn’t need a gang’s protection until I joined them. The longer you live, the more scars you gather, see?” I traced my fingertip over the deep scarification on my right shoulder, a circle with six spokes, the initiation to the gang.

“Shit, Jant. That’s terrible…”

Felicitia pulled apart the hilt and suede sheath of a hunting knife until its long steel emerged. It was unbelievably sharp: Felicitia had a lot of time to spare. His hands shook and he fumbled as he traced the lines drawn on with lipstick. My washed-out feeling of suspense tipped into agony. Unlike tattoos it was not superficial; it was deep. It could not be dealt with lightly. I swear the first cut went straight to the bone. My hands were bound behind me to a cast-iron chair in a beer garden. I struggled, and when I started screaming they gagged me.

I stumbled home, leaving a trail of blood that rats scented, scurrying out from refuse piled on street corners. I dressed the wound myself, though my fingers slipped into and through the lacerated flesh.

“It didn’t hurt as much as Slake in ’twenty-five though,” I said, pushing my T-shirt up so he could see the remains of an Insect bite, a sixty-stitch-long scar that curved into the left side of my belly, ending in a puckered mark where its mandible hit my lowest rib. “I held my guts in with one arm. I crawled a meter, collapsed and started to drown in the mud.”

“God. Slake Cross Battle. I heard stories…”

“Well, I took all the cavalry but none of them had mounts. Every man was sliced to bits. That’s why we introduced testing the ground with poles for Insect tunnels before we camp. The Doctor knew I was still living but god knows how she found me because she said I was nearly buried. She pushed all my innards back in and stacked my stretcher on the cart. Because the Circle holds us, we can gain consciousness with life-threatening wounds and no desire to witness them. That got me back on scolopendium again but it also won Tern’s attention. I was in hospital for a year; I kept turning up the drip’s dial and passing out until Rayne threatened to take me off painkillers. While convalescing I began to panic that I had lost the ability to fly. I tried to glide out of the hospital window and ripped all my stitches…Zascai were queuing up to Challenge me but, true to the rules, San held them off until I had recovered. Lucky you, Wrenn; Insect battles to look forward to.”

“I get it. You’re scarred by living an adventurous life. The same will happen to me…You’re brave, Jant.”

I am? “Well, not so brave as to duel with Gio,” I said, and we stood for a while in an uncertain quiet. I found talking like this reassuring-I had almost forgotten about the Aureate.

I lit a third cigarette but simply held it. I wondered how long it would take for me to fill the entire sky with smoke. When immortals think those things we are not being entirely whimsical. “Couldn’t you sleep?” I asked. I was fully aware that Wrenn had been left here to keep an eye on me.

“No. I keep thinking about this island. Then I got too excited and had to come up here to cool down. I can’t wait to see Tris.”

“Personally I think it’s Mist’s plan to take all her enemies on one ship and scuttle it. I warn you, she’s very dangerous.”

“But gorgeous.”

I glanced at him. “So Ata has her hooks in you already? She’s certainly beautiful; it’s all the more reason to be wary. Even Lightning was taken in by her deceit, her callous human inventiveness and her beauty. She probably put you here on Melowne so he can’t advise you, or to preserve her mystique. She plans centuries ahead; you haven’t been alive long enough to think on our timescale.”

I ground the cigarette into a flurry of sparks on the rail and flicked it into the sea. “Do you want to explore this boat?”

“Oh, yes!”

I raised the grating and trotted down the open-plank steps, looking around. Wrenn followed with his lantern. The Melowne’s hundred sailors were asleep. They mumbled and stirred in white canvas hammocks that hung three deep on the left and right of the deck, leaving a clear walkway down the center. Some of the Plainslanders were snoring. Awians sleep on their fronts or their sides so they hardly ever snore. The deck