Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

“This is all spare rigging,” Wrenn said, as he kicked the shaft of an anchor twice my height and as thick as my thigh. He clicked a latch on a long oilskin-lined casket. He let the lid fall. “Oh, my god.”

“What’s that?”

“Arrows. Look!” About one hundred arrows with very sharp broadhead points filled the box, laid in leather spacers to keep their flights apart. Wrenn dug his fingers between them and they rattled. I looked up and realized I was staring at a wall of similar boxes. Wordlessly, we counted them and made a quick calculation, “Ten thousand arrows?”

“At least.”

“If there’s shafts there must be-”

“Bow staves,” I said, breaking the seal on a larger coffer. It was full of heavy longbows, all with fresh strings and the bowyer’s mark stamped two-thirds along their length where the arrow was intended to be placed. “A couple of hundred bows, one for every man on the ship.”

“Look, there are halberds,” said Wrenn. “And shields!” They were stacked along the hull walls, covered with sailcloth. He unbuckled the straps of a huge sea chest with joyful abandon. “I wonder if there are any swords? Oh, yes, look!”

The chest was full of fyrd-issue swords with double-edged blades and brown mass-produced leather scabbards. Their pristine hilts flashed in the light as he swept the lantern over. “I’d like to test one. Here we are-”

“Put it back! Wrenn, the grid was locked for a reason! Mist doesn’t want us to know what’s down here!”

But Wrenn, happily ignorant of Mist’s cruel streak, was not afraid of her. He selected a seventy-five-centimeter blade and stuck it in his belt.

“By god, what does Mist expect us to do to Tris?” I said.

“Maybe the islanders are fierce.”

“Don’t be a fool. Mist said Tris has no Insects; they’ve nothing to be violent about.”

We went forward, seeing more of the same; the Melowne ’s hold was a ship’s chandlery and well-stocked armory. I hesitated. “Can you smell something?”

“What?”

A sharp metallic scent like spilled blood or cut leaves lay very faint beneath the hot greased-iron smell of Wrenn’s lantern. “Nothing. Forget it.”

At the bow a huge black tarpaulin hung floor to ceiling like a curtain. A skittering sound came from behind it, as of something metal not made fast. Wrenn took a handful and swept it aside.

A massive Insect launched itself at us.

I ducked. Wrenn yelled. The Insect crashed into the bars of its cage and drew back on six legs. Its antennae whipped around in frantic circles.

Its back legs slipped on the steel floor, scraping bright scratches. Its mandibles opened, a smaller set gaped inside and it jumped again, into the bars. An enormous knife-sharp foreleg stabbed out at us. It clicked and snapped; the bars boomed as it hurled itself against them. Wrenn went for his sword and dropped the lantern. Suddenly we were in total darkness with the red spots of the flare-out dancing before our eyes.

Wrenn and I thought the same thing at the same time. We bent down and pawed frantically around on the floor for the lantern, but we only felt each other’s hands.

“Where’s the-Ow! Damn it!” I burned my fingers on the hot oil leaking out. I stood back, seething with frustration as Wrenn picked it up. “Is it broken?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure? There’s all that bloody rum up there!”

“There’s a sodding great Insect right here!”

Wrenn struck a match and his shaking hand rattled inside the lantern as he lit it.

I shouted, “For fuck’s sake! Give me it, you daft fucking featherweight!”

He hauled his new sword from its scabbard; with the blade balanced in his hand his composure returned.

The Insect raked the bars with its foreclaws. It chewed them, mandibles clicking like shears. Strands of drool hung down and wrapped around its feet; glutinous bubbles stuck to the floor. The Insect rubbed its back pair of legs together; it turned around and around furiously in its four-meter-deep cage. Its body hung from long legs jointed above like a spider’s. It was one of the biggest Insects I had seen, the size and strength of a warhorse; it battered the bars in absolute desperation to reach us.

It tilted its head and tried to push through, but the bulbous brassy eyes wouldn’t fit. It pressed against the bars until its stippled thorax creaked, reached out its mandibles and gnashed. The mottled brown jaws met and overbit; they were the length and shape of scythe blades, chitin-hard and so powerful they could bite a body in two. A foreclaw swept the air. Wrenn and I backed off. He said, “What’s it doing here?”

“I don’t know. I mean to find out.”

The cage’s sliding door was secured by another big padlock. Its roof was a dented metal sheet. Wrenn pointed to some scattered meat bones that the Insect had voraciously scraped clean. It had macerated some into a sticky white paste and dropped it into the space between the cage and hull wall. “They make short work of marrow bones!”

I grimaced. “I thought I could smell the magnificent beast.” I thrust the lantern at Wrenn, dashed aft to the ladder and pulled myself up much faster than he could climb. He struggled behind me, probably realizing for the first time what I can do. I swung my knees between the rungs and bent them to hang on, leaned backward upside-down, face-to-face with Wrenn. I prodded his chest. “Mist will regret her latest trick.”

I flexed back upright and swarmed to the orlop deck. I scrambled onto the companionway and emerged from the hatch onto the main deck. All the sailors were eating their breakfast and rolling up their hammocks. Mouths full of porridge hung open in astonishment as I bounded past.

“Comet!” Wrenn shouted. “Eszai are all equal! Stop and-”

“Kiss it,” I said. I jumped off and flapped across to the Stormy Petrel.

Mist is, of course, an early riser; she was already in her office eating ginger biscuits from a toast rack and walking a pair of brass compasses across an expansive chart draped over the table. I touched down outside next to the red hurricane lamp. I pounced into her cabin, right onto her, bearing her to the floor, my knees on her belly. The biscuits and a cafetière went flying. Mist was in control of herself; she saw my expression and screamed, “Saker!”

“No more deceit!” I spat.

“Jant,” she said. “Uppers make you manic. Why don’t you calm down, before I have you locked in the brig?”

Her long white hair spread out, finer than silk. Her right hand edged behind the table’s baluster leg, reaching for a paperknife. I snatched it and clattered it away against the bulkhead. “An Insect!” I said. “All those boxes of halberds! Why is there a live Insect on the Melowne?”

Mist’s fair skin turned paler, her amethyst eyes wide. “An Insect?”

“In a fucking cage!”

She caught her breath. “Please get off me.”

I didn’t want to let her move. I could only see one course of action. “We must sail back to Awndyn. Fulmer will turn these over-ornamented crates around and take us home. In the Emperor’s name, with god’s will and the Circle’s protection, you can consider yourself under arrest. I’ll bring you before San, at knifepoint if need be!”

“Comet…” she said calmly.

“The only good thing about being at sea is we won’t be eaten by Insects. And you bring one along! A huge one! I’ll throw it overboard…”

She saw there was no point in dissembling. “Aye, I thought you would pry into everything like a starved rat. Let me up and I’ll explain.”

As I disentangled her cloak folds from around us, Lightning glowered into the cabin with a cursing eye. The sea wind ripped his fur-lined coat into billows. He grabbed me and pushed me away from Mist. I hit the wall hard and sprawled down in a winded pile by the joist. “Damn it, are you fucking trying to break my wings?”