No Present Like Time

dropped and struck the pavement, and the broken pieces skidded, stopping two meters from Lightning’s feet. He stepped forward and kicked them, as if to check they were real and he wasn’t imagining it. He sounded aggrieved. “What have I done to warrant all this? They think they can outshoot me. I’ll attempt to confer with them.”

“Talk to them?” I stopped because Lightning took a handful of distance arrows, long thin shafts with stiff triangular red and yellow fletchings. He held them together with his bow grip, and shot rapidly along the line. “Twenty, nineteen, eighteen.” Another handful. “Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen.” The rebels ran like their arses were on fire, but they all ended up lying on the ground moaning or yelling. People in the next line pointed us out then made a break for it, forced to run toward us to reach the side streets’ empty entrances.

The horn tips of Lightning’s longbow shook. He lowered it, breathing deeply, gazing downhill to the churning front of the fray where Gio and Wrenn appeared and disappeared. His legs were trembling and he was pale with pain.

I watched the Sailor’s bodyguards, in dark blue and steel, hacking at the rebels with Ata close behind. From the midst of Gio’s rabble a spear looped up, fell steeply onto them. It hit Ata, impacting on her breastplate. She staggered, unhurt but knocked off balance. The mob surged forward and she fell under their feet, out of view. Her bodyguards lurched back, tried to stay upright by grabbing each other and the soldiers around, but simply pulled people down together, opening a hole in the crowd.

“Get up,” I said. “Quick, Saker; shoot!”

Lightning now shot to kill, aiming at the rebels standing over Ata, in the most accurate volley I had ever seen: an arrow every two seconds.

“Get up! Get up!” he muttered.

The rebels fell around the place where Ata had gone down. He picked them off in the solid crush, no space between them. They couldn’t even raise their shields. The arrows started to hit the same men again and again; dead bodies kept upright in the crush were filling with them, their heads and shoulders pinned with the bicolor flights, but Ata and the men stabbing her were underneath. We couldn’t see her.

The bodyguards tried to shove forward, stabbing the rebels facing them in chests and stomachs. They shouted and tugged at the clothes of the men to either side, urging them to push ahead.

Lightning hissed in exasperation. “I can’t get a clear line of sight. Nine. Eight. Seven. Move out the way!”

His quiver was nearly empty. The ends of his bow vibrated; rapidly his right hand reached down for the short nocks, pulled one up and fitted it to string. Hooked the string with three bent fingers. Drew it past his ear to the side of his head, swinging his shoulder back for a couple of extra centimeters.

He shot with unflagging speed but dimples appeared around his pursed lips. “Five, four. Jant, brace yourself; the Circle’s going to break.”

Zascai are slaughtering Mist. And there’s nothing I can do. I tried to feel it starting-couldn’t-and it hit me. Time rushed past us; I felt torn across the middle. My awareness raced out, expanding in all directions. It stretched, flattened, spread thinner and infinitely thinner until my own identity and individuality vanished. I lost consciousness of my surroundings. I ceased to exist. The Circle reformed with a snap. I woke and blinked around at the battered shopfronts and blue domed ceiling overhead.

It happened so quickly I was still on my feet but I had dropped my sword. I felt cold, very aware of my body and the battle’s noise.

“Three, two…” Lightning stopped with an arrow at string. “I…I am still here,” he said deliriously. We looked at each other.

“Killed by Zascai,” he whispered.

At the battlefront crush, Serein Wrenn staggered. New to the Circle, he didn’t understand what had happened. Gio, on the other hand, had known it well. He took advantage and cut at Wrenn’s forehead, drawing a red line across his temple to blind him with blood.

Wrenn came to and tried to defend himself but, concentration lost, all he could do was retreat. Gio pushed him back, slashing at his face to further unnerve him.

“Serein!” Lightning raised his bow again, arced an arrow up high over the entire rebels’ column.

I just had time to see that someone had grabbed Wrenn from behind. Wrenn, still confused, struggled to free himself. The arrow came straight down into the top of the assailant’s head; he crumpled up.

“One.” Lightning fitted his penultimate arrow to the binding on his bowstring. Behind Wrenn a man in a painted leather jacket brandishing a curved falchion leapt at him. Lightning drew and loosed; the arrow pierced the man’s forehead and his body fell, knocking Wrenn. The crowd realized that anyone who closed with Wrenn received an arrow between the eyes. They left the duelists alone.

The Archer gasped, “Serein is an Eszai and must win his own duel. But I made it an even fight; there won’t be two Eszai murdered today.”

His shirt hem was soaked with blood; it was spreading to the tops of his trousers.

At the place where Mist’s dismembered body was being trodden underfoot, someone raised a halberd, her head on the spike. I could only tell by the short white hair, because it was crushed and gashed. The pole turned and the head jigged around to face us. Its indigo eyes were turned up, its mouth open, its nose flattened and bloody.

Lightning’s legs buckled. He staggered back to the rotunda wall, sat down against it, then collapsed sideways leaving a smear of blood. I helped him sit upright with the bow across his knees. He pulled the leather tab off his right hand with his teeth and dropped it. His face was ashen. “The animals. How could they do that-tear her apart? An Eszai, and Cyan’s mother…Immortality’s pointless in the crush. We’re too used to Insects. They don’t throw spears. Damn, don’t you feel like you’ve died? I hate feeling someone else’s death and the years I’ve cheated catching up with me. You know…we all become a second older before San mends the Circle.” He bowed his head. “You know that with me it adds up to minutes…”

Lightning hugged arms around his waist and squeezed his eyes shut in agony. I crouched and laid a hand on his shoulder, trying to bring him around because he was drifting and talking to himself. “They killed her. Her schemes were useless…I don’t know what they’ll do next.”

He could not fight in this condition, and the rotunda gave sparse cover. Lightning knew this and made a tremendous effort. He nocked his last arrow and eased his short sword loose in its scabbard though it took all his mettle to lift it.

“Wait and gather your strength,” I said.

He nodded. “Yes. I’ll try to make my way back to Rayne…I’ll meet you at the Petrel.” He sighed, chin on his chest. He was thinking about Mist; the reality hitting him was as incapacitating as the wound. “You and Serein must persevere. Kill Gio, for Ata…for me. You are Eszai and that is your purpose.”

He looked so ill that I didn’t want him to tangle with any more rebels. “Don’t stay here, those bastards will come up. Go all the way to the end of Fifth Street before you turn down to the harbor. The roads are quieter at the edge of town. Saker, I really think-”

He spoke through gritted teeth. “‘Saker, I really think’ nothing. Into the air and stop this fight!”

He watched me pick up two jewel-encrusted pieces of plaster, one in each hand. I ran to take off.

I dived at Gio and dumped both bricks on him. They hit him, one on his towhead, one on his forearm, and he reeled. Wrenn jumped forward and thrust.

Gio’s neat last-minute parry saved him-the rapiers clanged hilt to hilt. Their blades bound, they wrestled. Gio kicked Wrenn’s shin. The muscle fluttered in Wrenn’s calf but he threw the taller man back and wiped blood from his eyes.

“Shoot him!” Gio bellowed at a crossbowman. “Shoot him, someone, why don’t you?”

In return Wrenn spat at Gio and swiped low behind his knees to sever the hamstring. Gio pivoted on the ball of his foot and let the soft thrust go past.

A bruiser of a man offered his rapier to Gio. Gio fluidly slipped his dagger into his belt and snatched the sword from the man’s fist. He leveled both rapiers at Wrenn. They must have had different hefts but I couldn’t tell from the way he handled them.

Instantly at a disadvantage, Wrenn hit at the new rapier’s side. Gio parried and at the same time attacked.