Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

I thought of the many times when I have been asleep or drugged and gradually wakened to find her touching me, my cock already hard under her hand. I wanted Tern. It took a trial as harsh as a sea voyage for me to feel the first pangs of loneliness and realize how much I need her. I was wrong to neglect her. I must apologize. I’ll win her back.

After midnight, people were gathering at the fencing school in Eske. I landed on the tiled roof, well concealed by a chimney stack, looking down at the wet streets. Below the dripping thatch of the last houses in the town, I could see dark coats underneath bobbing umbrellas. Men carried lanterns hung from hooks on their shields. Some drunken kids on tired nags clattered past on the Hamulus Road from the direction of Hacilith, slowing and relaxing as they traveled the opposite way from the city’s magnetic pull. I perched on the roof, out of sight and watched through the rain.

A cold front was coming in. The clouds scudded across to merge in one mass in the eastern half of the sky. Lightning flickered in the fingers of the bare forest. The rain fell with more intensity and the pitch of its noise increased. I really didn’t think it could rain any harder. The constant hiss of the wind in the trees was indistinguishable from the rain hissing on the roof. Drops pattered on the sagging willow leaves along the river bank.

Dace River wound through the south side of town close to Gio’s hall. I could still see the river but the surrounding countryside was too dark to make out detail. Silver snakes slithered over the river’s surface. I watched them resignedly; Tern had put me in a melancholy mood. I had run out of people to shout at, and was rather regretting storming off in disgust with the world because it was evident by now that the world had no intention of going away and leaving me alone.

Some of the snakes are actually part of the river. Fascinating. I tried to disentangle the snakes’ silver bodies and the reflection on stirred water, before I realized that the whole thing was simply a hallucination. Only take me a couple of weeks to quit. Shouldn’t be any problem. Theoretically. I shrugged, sending all the water that had gathered on my broad-brimmed hat down my back. I swore silently, taking my hat off and wringing out the rain.

I don’t even know if fucking her will be the same now Tawny’s had his big cock in her. I pulled the hip flask out of the top of my thigh boot and took a satisfying swig. It tasted green, like cut grass smells. I felt lighter and tighter every second. Under my long coat, my wings were warm. To cope with the gusts I had had to fly constantly flexing them open and closed at the elbow, and now they were aching.

The fencing school’s steep roof was a sheen of water reflecting the lanterns of people arriving. Rainwater was running in wide rivulets over the tiles, dripping off the guttering. Yellow lamplight beamed out of a high square window just below me. At the far corner of the whitewashed hall Gio’s watchman swung a lantern, illuminating the empty road. He saw there was no one else to come and banged the door closed. I flicked my wings out from the slits in my coat and bounced along the ridge. A couple of slates gave way. I scrabbled madly, slid with them down the roof. I hit the gutter, heels in the trough, my pointed toes over the edge. The tiles shot off, fell and broke on the road ten meters below. I lay with my back against the slope and listened. There was no response from the hall.

I grasped the lead gutter, swung myself over in a controlled drop onto the window ledge. I pressed against the frame, pulled myself into the smallest area possible, inhabiting space slyly as if stealing it, with the concentrated acrobat grace of a Rhydanne. I peered through the window.

Gio’s fencing academy was packed. About eight hundred people were taking off their coats and settling down on the folding chairs. Some were seated on the floor; between them on the floorboards I saw white diagrams painted to teach fencing exercises.

A small stage directly below me was decorated with the coats of arms of Gio’s past pupils from the nobility. The walls were hung with charts and geometrical figures, the rear wall was covered with a mirror. Padded gloves and chain mail gauntlets hung on racks, with rapiers and their corresponding diamond-sectioned daggers, round leather target shields and lead-soled shoes-which Gio used for training lightness of foot. A pendulum clock with a large, clear ceramic dial had run down and stopped, showing the wrong time. Beside it in a polished glass case awards were displayed in tiers-engraved silver cups and plates, tiny posed figurines of swordsmen on black plinths, and hundreds and hundreds of satin rosettes.

Gio stood by the stage, looking at his audience. He was as relaxed and confident as always, perhaps more so now that the anger of being dropped from the Circle had caused him to lose his respect for people.

Veteran Awian soldiers grouped at the back of the hall, probably fresh from fighting Tornado. They carried their reflex longbows in waxed cotton bags on their shoulders, arrows in lidded quivers. The edges of their dark blue cloaks were cut to look like feathers, drawn across each man’s body and pinned at the shoulder with enameled or billon badges. The shell-edged armor on their legs was damp with condensation. Their worn, damp lorica had some chrome scales missing. Their expressions were as grim as the weather; they only spoke among themselves. I guessed they were men disbanded from the General Fyrd who, upon finding their homes and crops destroyed by the Insects, had a very valid reason to harbor grievance against the Castle.

The same was not true for the excited, fractious Hacilith kids, in tooled leather jackets, loose jeans and chain-link belts. Some seamen in oxblood check or orange shirts laced at the neck tucked their wet oilskins under the chairs. Unshaven highwaymen brushed down the arms of their greatcoats that were silvered with rain. They undid the spurs on their side-laced boots and let them hang loose. Gio had no coherent force. He had gathered deserters, poachers, outlaws, smugglers and fugitives.

Twenty fencing masters leaned against the walls, with wryly amused expressions at the defiant party taking place within their hall. They were Gio’s accomplices now, not potential Challengers. They had the swagger of swordsmen who knew the brilliance of their skill.

The cold Insect-wing window was steamed up inside and droplets ran down, channeled along by the black veins. No one could see me at this angle and the hubbub was so loud I was quite safe. I was so intrigued, I became unaware of the chill seeping into my body from the stone. I seized up, wedged into position in the corner of the window with my legs out along the ledge.

A limber young man wearing a beautiful rapier tiptoed to the stage and held up his hands for silence. He was shaking so hard he practically blurred. The crowd fell quiet in patches, and Gio picked out one or two individuals at the back to stare at until the hall was completely silent. I strained to hear the young man introduce his master: “Gio Ami, rightfully Serein.”

Gio nodded, stepped forward, and immediately a hundred voices vied with each other, shouting out questions. A frown line appeared between his eyebrows. He walked beneath my window, so I could no longer see his expression. He still wore the same coat, still open to a bare chest, but he wore the light purple Ghallain armiger ribbon in his buttonhole as if it was a manorship badge. His lank hair was pulled into a little ponytail.

Gio looked at the stage floor as if thinking the elevated position didn’t suit him. He sat down on the edge, with his legs dangling over. He began to talk to the crowd rather than at them. He was a teacher and he knew how to make his voice carry.