No Present Like Time

Winded, I picked my axe from the ground and crawled to my feet. The Insect had reached the entrance to the boulevard. It had slaughtered the corpulent man and was standing on his body with front and middle legs. It ducked its head, its lamellar segmented abdomen high in the air. It closed its jaws until they clicked, cutting across the fat man’s belly. It backed, claws skidding on the blood. It pulled taut a length of blue-green intestine, then ate it all the way back down into the man’s body cavity. His sightless eyes and pale mouth were stretched open, rigid; I could see the inside wall of his ribs.

I thought, I must distract it till Lightning shoots it. Breathing painfully, I dashed across. As I ran, avoiding the discarded cloaks and piles of produce, I curved to approach from behind, thinking that the Insect would take a second to turn around and I could chop at its rear. But the Insect did not wait to be attacked. I don’t know whether it recognized me or understood I was armed, but it crawled swiftly from the fat man’s cadaver and leapt toward the boulevard. I swerved between it and the town and headed it off. I chased it. I lengthened my stride to sprint with Rhydanne instinct as if it was a stag. I closed in on the darting legs and aimed a blow at a hind femur, driving it to change direction.

The Insect slowed as it sensed a group of boatmen who, trapped against a villa’s portico, prepared to use their paddles as maces. I made it switch toward the ships where Lightning should be, but it slashed a mandible at the last man, a thin teenager who fell clutching his thigh.

The Insect still carried Wrenn’s sword through its thorax, the hilt like a silver badge. It had stopped bleeding. Its legs swept repeatedly fore to rear along its body. I aimed between them at a suture line that crossed its back like a joint in armor. I tore the glassy tips of its immovable little wings that projected from the middle segment, pressed close to its glossy shell. I tilted over and hit, but the blow nearly ripped the shaft from my hand, wrecked my running rhythm. I pushed hard at the ground to accelerate, change direction; to control the Insect.

My resounding strikes had more effect than Wrenn’s clearly articulated technique. The Insect limped, but still ran rapidly on the bristly black pads under its slightly raised claws. I swung at the three small round eyes that formed a triangle between its compound eyes. But at this angle the plate of its forehead was too thick to crack.

The slabs cool beneath my bare feet, my ankles ached from the pounding. I panted the air. The Insect put on a burst and reached racehorse speed trying to escape. I sprang forward and kept pace with it although my leg muscles burned. I was exhilarated, keyed up with my own vigor. I sped my swiftest, desperate to snatch one more chance-I’ll hook my ice pick into the copper-striped abdomen and I’ll bring it down.

I forced the Insect’s route nearer to the glittering sea as we raced the length of Capharnaum’s harbor. The last building had a blank stone wall. At its base was a semicircular drain opening as tall as my shoulder, edged with blocks. A shallow stream of dirty water flowed out of it into a channel, then over the side of the harbor wall. It was stained dark green and fuscous with flaking algae. The Insect sheered, rattled down into the sloping conduit and splashed straight into the black archway. I lost sight of it instantly in the darkness. I scrambled to a halt, scraping my heels on the verge.

The Insect had gone; no way was I going to follow it into the drain. In the confined space it would rip my throat out before I could even see it. I waited, on guard, feeling my pulse pounding in my neck. It quickly returned to normal but my temples hurt. I coughed a mouthful of frothy spit into the gray water and watched it flow into the sea.

Insects are at home underground and are not disadvantaged by the dark. When culling them in the Paperlands, the least popular operation is the task of channeling river water into their tunnels in order to collapse the deep, honeycombed structures. Fires are also lit on platforms at the tunnel mouths to draw air out and suffocate them, but Insects between the sizes of men and carthorses still burst forth to attack at full speed. I hated natural caves let alone Insect burrows and slimy sewers. If I went in there I would never come out. With terrible images playing in my mind, I loped back to the Stormy Petrel, past the merchant’s bloated, half-eaten body with its ripped-open smock and Danio, headless, lying in a congealed red spray.

Lightning looked down from the Petrel’s highest deck, the back of the stern castle, an arrow at string, and wearing only trousers. Fulmer clutched the rope rail beside him. Mist’s face peered out of an open window in the array directly beneath his feet.

The surviving sailors on the Melowne clung to her rigging. Wrenn was a tiny figure down at the waterline, steadily climbing a ladder of metal brackets up the rounded hull. His short hair was flattened; water dripped from his bedraggled wings. His feathers were completely tattered, split and peeled back to the shaft. His arse crack and leg hairs showed through his soaked white shorts.

“What happened?” Lightning shouted at me. He leaned over so far that I thought the arrows would slip out of the quiver on his back. “Was that our Insect? Where’s Serein? Damn him, damn you! What were you bloody doing, perforating it?”

Mist yelled, “Did it just get those three Trisians? How many of mine?”

Fulmer gabbled, “Serein woke me up. I saw it massacre the sailors on the orlop. Master Mariner, I’m sorry. Serein said he would hold it off and took his rapier but it’s no good against shell.”

Mist turned away abruptly and hurried out of view. A moment later she strode onto the main deck, staring around at the devastation on the quay. The wounded teenager had stopped crawling; I hoped he was just unconscious, rather than slain. The traders’ goods were abandoned. The quayside was deserted by the living, but three or four faces crowded every open window and behind the bronze palings of all the waterfront houses, watching us with shock and outright terror.

“You didn’t kill it!” Lightning raved.

I retied my sarong. “I should have caught it, but it plunged down a drain. I wounded it and so did Serein, with his rapier. Stupid town swords. Fucking constables’ swords. The idiot didn’t have the right gear. It carried his rapier away! You-We must get archers to the tunnel as soon as possible. I need to know if it’s trapped, so you can shoot it.”

“And if it’s escaped to the town?” Fulmer whispered.

Mist shouted, “Captain, to your ship! Why were all the grids open? I’ll want to know! We can’t discuss this outside,” she added sotto voce to me. “Jant, speak to the Capharnai. Don’t let them carry off their dead without an explanation. As soon as you can, meet us in the Melowne’s hold.”

Typically, I had the most difficult job. While I waited on the corniche to be confronted by furious islanders, the other Eszai disappeared into the hold, and from their exclamations I learned that it was also strewn with carnage. I was very aware how alien I looked, wearing a sheet and with my long wings uncovered.

On the Melowne’s main deck the dismembered remains of six or seven men lay scattered, their limbs snipped at the joints and bodies gutted. The quartermaster’s body drooped through the hatchway. Following Mist’s orders, the sailors carried them to the land and lined them up by the anchor ready for burial because in a few hours’ time the morning heat would be appalling.

Step by step, a group of Capharnai merchants approached me, finding courage in numbers. I spread my hands down in the peace gesture and they seemed to understand. The first one, with an expression of awe and distrust, opened his arms like wings. I explained why I was the only man ever to fly, and told them it was nothing to be superstitious about. I repeated apologies as best I could and instructed them to wait in their homes and keep their children inside. Over the hiss of indrawn breath I continued-they should wait for word from the Senate that the Insect was dead. I asked them to bring down one or two goats for me to tether outside the sewer entrance and tempt the Insect out, but I suspected it was too replete for the trick to work.

I found myself talking over the wails and reproaches of families who had come to claim the Trisian merchant, the fainting teenager and Danio. I repeated that it was an accident and I clasped my hands and knelt, begging them to treat us kindly. When they saw that I couldn’t meet their eyes, they understood my sincerity but they were chary. News spread up the town, causing a commotion and banging on doors, until it reached the Amarot and a deliberative silence descended.

Frightened, I retreated to the Melowne’s hold. “I did my best,” I said.

“We believe you,” said Lightning. “This disaster makes us all feel inadequate; it’s far from the work we’re