No Present Like Time

promenade. With the grating of a thousand millstones, it scraped great grooves into the cement and uprooted the iron mooring posts on either side. Its eye moved back and forth, appraising me.

I declared, “Tarragon will show you the direction to the Fourlands’ ocean. You and your people can live there if you promise me three things. First, destroy the ship called Pavonine afloat in the center of the harbor, that Tarragon will show you. Second, after that don’t damage any other vessels or harm any people. Live in the depths and stay away from the shoreline, so you’ll be less likely to cause accidents. Third, our world is threatened by the Insects too; that makes us allies and in the future I might call on you for help again, via Tarragon.”

All the time, the krait’s pennant-tongue flicked in and out of its long colubrine smile, picking up vibrations in the air. It was tasting my words. It twisted its head looking for Tarragon and slithered dangerously close to crushing her car before she ran around in front of its eye. It hissed, and I felt its hot, fishy, miasmic breath blow from the arched hole in its lip.

“What is it saying?” I asked.

Tarragon said, “He wants to know if your sea is of sufficient size. I don’t think the Fourlands’ ocean is roomy enough to hold every one of the sea kraits. I will tell him that there’s only space to allow a few of them through. That way at least some will escape the disaster and their species will survive.”

The snake’s glistening body writhed along its whole visible length. Tarragon gave me an encouraging look. “The King accepts. He is convinced of your honesty; he says he can taste it.”

“How do I know whether to trust a sea snake?”

Tarragon laughed. “You have a Shark’s word that you can.”

The meanders of the krait’s kilometer-long body drew tighter and closer together as it pulled its head back and smoothly submerged under the water. I stared at it, openmouthed.

“You will see him once more,” said the Shark. “Goodbye, Jant. I have to act as their guide and we have rather a long way to swim in this delicious water. Still, we’ve plenty of time.” Her red dress turned gray, and stippled to continuous sharkskin all over her body. She walked to the very edge of the massive wall, hooked her bare toes over and raised her shagreen hands above her head.

“Don’t leave me here!” I cried. I was not only in a completely unknown, alien world, but somewhere in its past.

She turned a shark’s cold eye on me. “Have you not been practicing? You should be able to will your way back by now! I advised you to study and I expected you to learn. Well, this is an excellent opportunity to try.” She leaned forward, gave a little jump, and fell through the air in a perfect dive. She splashed into the crystal-clear water and did not rise again.

I might have to stay here forever, I thought in panic. I might have to live here. Berating myself, I examined the stinking abandoned car but it was already beginning to rot. I kicked it. The dock workers had left when we were talking to the King krait, and I was alone. I sat down and for about an hour, though I had no way of measuring time, I tried to copy the feeling of my return Shifts. I imagined the pull-a plausible path to the Fourlands-growing stronger, solidifying. I grasped it, and dragged myself through.

I lay somewhere that smelled of feathers. Darkness surrounded me. I felt nothing. My body was paralyzed; I couldn’t move. “Because you’re dead,” a heavy voice pronounced in my ear. I screamed with no sound. This is the wrong world; I’ve no body to return to. I struggled and thrashed and forced myself awake.

I came to lying on the worn carpet in Ata’s cabin, by the linenfold paneled walls and brocade bench on which Rayne sat in front of the stern windows. “Well done,” she enthused. “You saved us!” The windows behind her were completely black. “Shame i’ killed you, though.” She smiled and her mouth widened on both sides. She smiled and smiled and smiled. I’m still not home. I’m still not awake!

I squeezed my eyes shut and fought desperately. I then saw a lowering landscape with ruined bridges, fortresses, windmills all benighted backlit with raging fire, vast buildings with stone stairways running in every direction. I did not set down there. Someone’s fingers were on my face, probing like worms in my mouth; they forced my jaw open and rammed down my throat. I simultaneously woke up and vomited helplessly.

I opened my eyelids to two slivers of glazed-green iris but lay otherwise inert. Rayne’s pair of bloodstained pumps and Lightning’s thick-soled buckled boots stood in front of my face. God, I hate it when I wake up lying in the recovery position.

“He’s no’ responding,” said Rayne. I felt her thumb my eyelid.

“I am,” I said, but it came out as a breath.

Lightning’s voice sounded very weak. “Well, bloody make him respond.”

Rayne made a sound like a shrug and slapped my face. “His pupils are so thin they’re like threads. Can you feel t’ Circle working t’ hold him?”

“Yes, damn him.”

Rayne slapped my face again and I gasped and spat.

Lightning said, “Ah, Jant. Everyone fights to survive but you wipe yourself out! You couldn’t poison Gio but you do a bloody good job of poisoning yourself! We need you to fly above and drop missiles on the trebuchet team. I know you prefer to be comatose under heavy bombardment; are you hoping to be revived by the cold water when we sink?”

I rolled into a kneeling position and blinked at him. He half-lay on a chair, still shaking with pain. Instead of his longbow he held a smaller bow with pulleys that could be kept drawn effortlessly.

Rayne said, “Lightning, don’ make him feel bad or you’ll give him an excuse t’ take another dose.”

“The gamin wretch! I’ll-”

I whispered, “You’re wrong. You told me to stop the riot and that’s exactly what I am doing.”

A ripple jolted Petrel hard against the harbor wall, throwing Rayne off balance. The snakes have arrived. I swallowed dryly, then I stumbled to my feet and out of the cabin. Rayne hurried and Lightning struggled after me, up the ladder to the poop deck where I gazed from the rail. The quayside was littered with bodies; its pavement was cracked and the walls of houses demolished where Pavonine’s shot had struck. Our figurehead and forecastle had been smashed into a mass of splintered wood. I took it all in with one glance, not knowing if I had really woken. The sky was dark-was this Fourlands or still Shift?

Looking down to the lower level through an open hatch I saw Wrenn sitting on a rope coil, drinking a canteen of water voraciously. Rayne’s assistant was sewing the gash that was open to the bone in his arm. The sight brought me back to earth. He knew that Eszai can take wounds-although not wounds as serious as that. He must have badly misunderstood what I told him about the Circle.

The Pavonine continued her bombardment. Cinna spun the wheel, keeping the ship’s stern toward us, rudder at full lock. Tirrick commanded the sweating pirates scurrying inside the treadwheels to ratchet the catapult back. They stacked its sling with slimy rocks from the ship’s own ballast.

The Pavonine jolted. An unnatural ripple circled her. The water on either side of her hull began to churn and bubble; waves lapped in every direction. Behind her, between her and the beacon island, a long black ridge surfaced. It was domed like a whale’s back but it rose higher and higher out of the water, passing the height of the Pavonine’s rail. It was the King krait’s top lip.

Lightning and Rayne stared, stunned. The men on the Pavonine ran about in confused terror as the ridge continued to rise. Two curved sharp fangs emerged parallel with the waves. Longer than pikes they projected from the black arch on the far left and right. The sea krait’s jaw showed its green and blue stripes and the water seething as it emerged glowed with phosphorescence.

A hundred meters away from the top lip, in the water between us and the Pavonine, the slick lower lip crested up. Men by the catapult shrieked and pointed; on the main deck they ran from one side to the other, unable to fathom what the arches on either side of them could be. The krait’s open mouth ascended, its teeth curved toward the Pavonine. The ridged black skin of its upper palate faced us, twice the size of the mainsail and glistening like tar. Water sluiced off its smooth bony head.

The smoke-filled sky resonated with the pirates’ screams as far as the town. I had the impression that the whole sea bed was ascending. Water thundered out of both sides of the krait’s open mouth; in the rocketing froth between its upper and lower jaws the Pavonine danced and spun like an eggshell in boiling brine. The cocked catapult went off, hurling shot vertically into the air.

I heard Cinna screeching. The snake’s lance-long teeth reached the height of