Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

“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 stank of sweat, damp linen and the brown-sugar smell of cheap beet rum; a bowl full of laurel leaves intended as air freshener just added its own scent to the reek. Five porthole shutters on each wall were bolted shut.

“Don’t disturb them,” I whispered. “Let’s go down a level.” I tried to move, and couldn’t. Wrenn was standing on my feathers, bending the quills over the edge of the steps.

“Oops, sorry.” He shuffled back. I put a finger to my lips and descended through the second hatchway. This level was pitch dark but the air smelled better, heavy with camphorwood, pine sap, oak sawdust and quality leather. I investigated some kegs stenciled “Grass Isle,” and Wrenn reclined on a pile of sacks of dried beans and rice, swinging his lantern about. The deck was packed floor to ceiling with well-stowed sacks and oil flasks, as far as the light could reach. “We’re under the waterline here,” he said.

“Don’t.” I shuddered, thinking how the sea’s pressure might cave in the hull, squashing it like an eggshell.

“Mist says this is the orlop deck, for stores and dunnage. The hold’s below us; that’s the lowest level.”

“What the fuck is dunnage?”

Wrenn shrugged. I levered a lid plank off the nearest cask. “Wine, Wrenn, look at all this wine! Half of Lightning’s cellar must be in here.”

He picked up a chunk of cheese covered in wax paper. “Breakfast!”

“This one’s rum.” I dipped a rationing cup in another barrel.

“I’ve found salted meat, oranges, a barrel of sauerkraut. What’s ‘portable soup’?”

We forced our way between the racks. I climbed on top of the hogsheads and walked along, hunched over, brushing the ceiling, but the deck was so crammed we couldn’t go more than a few meters. Wrenn sat back on the ladder, I leaned on the wooden pump pipe next to it, and we nibbled handfuls of booty-me with chocolate and rum; Wrenn with dried fruit, bread and water.

“There’s another grid,” I said. “Let’s go down again.”

“It’s locked, see?” Wrenn crouched and turned over a padlock.

“I should be able to crack that,” I said, wanting to impress the Swordsman, although I was not sure why. I put a hand to the small of my back, selected one of the smallest secondaries, gripped it and pulled. Flight feathers are very strongly attached so I had to give it a hard wrench to pull it out, teeth gritted because it hurt. It dragged the flesh, just like pulling a fistful of hair. It came out leaving a hollow funnel of skin from which another pinfeather would grow in a couple of months.

The quill was old and did not bleed. I flattened its translucent-cream point, and jiggled it about in the lock, turning clockwise and pressing hard to poke the tumblers around. I remarked, “People say I had a misspent youth, but no other Messenger has so many useful talents to place at the Emperor’s service.”

I felt the mechanism give in the lock; it clicked open and we hefted the hatchway cover. Wrenn stepped down first with his guttering lantern. “Check it out, it follows the shape of the hull.”

The hold’s walls curved up on both sides, like being in a wooden bowl. The ship’s ribs were clearly visible. The ceiling was two meters above and I could stand up straight for the first time. Melowne ’s side-to-side rolling was not so obvious here; we were standing directly above the keel and the ship felt stable. More equipment had been carefully stowed between the ribs and lashed to each of the knees supporting the deck above.

The timbers for the pinnaces had instructions printed on them like model kits. There was an enormous amount of folded canvas and all sorts of tackle. There were metal buckets full of solid tar like warm black ice, chains, cord on reels, copper nails and many times the ship’s length in coiled hemp cables.