Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

Wrenn showed me. “All the fittings in their privies are gold!”

“Bring it here,” I said. But the senators’ stunned silence was breaking into embarrassed or inquisitive chuckles. Wrenn looked around at them and pointed to it, “Have you any idea what this is worth ?” he said in Awian, loudly and slowly.

The Senate may have worried that we were dangerous, or that we expected to be treated with obeisance. Instead, they saw we were amazed by a simple chamber pot brought for some reason out of their bathroom. They thought we looked ridiculous. All the senators started laughing, and the tension in the air completely lifted. The ladies in cotton smocks or robes put aside their paper fans. The gentlemen unclasped their cloaks and craned forward to see us. Genial hilarity echoed around the spacious auditorium.

Wrenn thrust it at me, “I can’t believe it. Can you believe it? It’s worth a caravel and it’s a piss-pot of all things!”

“Put it down!” I said. “Bringing the privy into the governors’ hall! You’re making us look really stupid!”

“Why are you interested in that?” said Danio.

I said coolly, “Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve seen pots before. We have them in our culture too. We are civilized, not simple…Oh, god.” I tapped it, and wisely understated, “But we like this metal; we can use it. We would quite like to buy more.”

“Well,” Danio said. “Jant, tell your delegation: if you love this…object so much, if you want this base material, please take it. It can be a gift from Tris, our first offering of goodwill.” Applause broke out from the senators on the stepped benches; appreciative exclamations supported her words. Danio laughed and offered the chamber pot to Wrenn.

“They’re giving it to you as a present,” I explained.

Wrenn took it gratefully and said in awe, “Shouldn’t I give something in return? Oh, obviously.” He unbuckled the fyrd-issue broadsword and scabbard from his belt. He held it flat in both hands and presented it to Danio.

“Thank you,” she said. She accepted the sword and pulled the scabbard to bare a little of the blade, which she examined closely.

“Please be careful,” I said. “It’s extremely sharp.”

She gazed minutely at me again and asked the inevitable question, “What are you, anyway?”

I shuffled one wing out of my shirt and opened it. Duck you suckers was painted in red on the inside but, shrewd as she was, Danio couldn’t transliterate. “I’m winged, see, just like you, well nearly.” I pointed to my face and took a sheaf of thick hair in the other hand. “My mother was Rhydanne; they’re a mountain people who look like this. I know that’s new and strange but please don’t worry-I’m not dangerous. My long limbs are from my Rhydanne side too. My good looks, I get from both sides.”

All fifteen senators accompanied us to the harbor with a surprising lack of pomp and ceremony. They walked without any attendants and just chatted to each other, waved at the townspeople with a familiarity that was nothing like Fourlands governors. The senators were dressed as plainly as the folk in the piazza and tea shops; they did not seem to be very far removed from them.

The Sailor conducted the senators onto the Melowne. I held the hatchway open and helped the ladies descend to the hold. I didn’t see their expressions, but I heard their shrieks, and from Danio I learned a whole ream of Trisian words that I won’t be putting in any guidebook.

We tried to hide the state of the crews from the senators. The sailors had clearly contravened Mist’s orders and discipline on board Petrel and Melowne had started to crumble. They had traded and squirreled away every Trisian commodity they could lay their hands on, especially agate statuettes and the gold beads, chaplets and tiaras that the children wore. Only a few halberds were left unsold and the men had broken open the caskets of broadswords and started trading them. Every single man was completely drunk, some so legless they lolled as they sat dribbling the juice of exotic fruits, sloshing wine into cups or crunching on overcooked sardines. The carpenter retched and farted as Mist’s boatswain sons dragged him down to be locked in the brig. He prattled, “Capharnai might not want us-but their kids have made me rich!”

A bottle rolled around in the scuppers and bumped against my foot. I picked it up and sniffed it. “Brandy, or something similar. The merchants are selling spirits to our men!”

“This is dangerous,” Fulmer confided. “I must keep discipline. Lightning and Mist will stow a fortune in Melowne, under the noses of all our deckhands. I doubt I’ll reach home without a mutiny.”

Throughout the second day, Mist and Lightning employed me to translate their deals with the merchants who waited in long queues. Capharnai carried books in their pockets and either read or stood in groups debating rarefied philosophical points. I yearned to spend the rest of our landfall in the library but the Sailor and Archer kept me hard at work with filthy lucre. My fluency improved, and I made friends with Danio, who taught me many new expressions before she was called away to the Senate, where they discussed us nonstop.

In return for the broadswords the Capharnai filled the Melowne with bales of cloves, tea leaves, sacks of peppercorns; we bought a cask of ambergris and one of frankincense. Our sister ship became a spice ship-I could smell it on the other side of town.

“Gold for steel, weight for weight,” Mist said smugly, examining the pale metal chamber pot. “But that last silversmith-manufacturer of children’s toys-kept the location of the mines a secret.”

Lightning said, “No matter. I have gained a return of seven hundred percent on the initial investment. This tea is too watery for my taste but, seeing as it will inevitably come to the Fourlands, it might as well come with me. And I’ve also discovered some excellent brandy.”

Wrenn used me to question every islander he met about sword fighting, and although I kept telling him it wasn’t a Trisian tradition he was astounded to find that no one knew anything about the art.

“It seems to me they fight by talking,” I said.

Wrenn huffed. “Yeah. But if Capharnaum becomes a manor the Castle will ask for its quota of fyrd for the Front. I’ll be given hundreds of people to train from bloody scratch and I’ve a sneaking feeling they’re not going to like it.” He disappeared into town with a party of midshipmen who were searching for a wine shop. The Senate permitted our men to leave the harbor only in small groups under the charge of Eszai. They didn’t want the boulevard to be swamped with hell-raising sailors.

By evening I was sick of translating; confused with words swarming around my head until they lost their meanings. I was exhausted, but all in all it had been a fantastic day. As the sun set over the horizon where the Fourlands lay, Trisian canoes paddled in through the strait. After dusk the Capharnai entrepreneurs began to disperse and supper was served on board. The Senate retired and Danio came aboard to make notes and sketch the Insect. She was hypnotized by it, loitering in the hold, flinching every time it threw itself against the bars. When at ten P.M. Mist asked her to leave the ship, she stood on the quayside and stared as if insane at the exterior of the hull.

I told Mist that I intended to sleep on the mountainside. I walked out of sight of dainty Danio, who insisted on keeping vigil till tomorrow when Mist would let her back aboard. I took off and flew up, nap-of-the-earth in the pitch-black night, just a few meters above the mountain’s contour. The lower slopes were olive groves, then dim rocky ground streaked along beneath me. I found a low cliff with an overhang and sheltered under it on the rough bare stone.