Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

“There is no need,” San said. “Take your Select Fyrd to the Front where the governor of Lowespass is calling for help. Please take the dismantled trebuchets with you; you may well need them.”

Tawny ran a big hand over his shaved head and the thick corrugations of fat and muscle at the back of his neck. He stood, bowed in a gainly manner, and walked back into the ruins.

The Emperor said quietly, “No one has attacked the Castle before. Whatever precedent it sets for the future, the governors are now abashed. They are already competing to demonstrate their loyalty by repairing this damage. They are sending their best architects, money and materials. A particularly generous quota is expected from Ghallain and Eske.”

“My lord, I can fly a circuit around the Plainslands and-”

San’s voice was unexpectedly sympathetic and warm. “I know you do not want to go back to Tris. You feel forsaken; you do not trust Tern and you want to be with her. But listen, your wife will not stay with Tornado.”

Then San stepped back into the Throne Room and was gone, leaving me on the balcony. The Emperor had mystified me again, this time with kindness. The warmth of his reassurance sank into my very core; I was overcome with gratitude. He touched me with a word and inflamed me with his energy. I felt like a great Eszai once more.

Long ago, Lightning told me how Tornado joined the Circle. In the year 885, Tornado strode into the Throne Room while court was in full session. The guards at the gate tried to stop him but Tornado just carried them along. Everybody fell silent as the giant stranger deposited two guardsmen in front of the throne. He leaned on his axe and said loudly, “I’m a Lowespass mercenary. I have no idea who to Challenge but I’ll fight any one of you!”

The silence continued; everyone stared at the nameless fighter. The Circle members looked perturbed while the Emperor regarded them expectantly. “I didn’t answer him.” Lightning shrugged. “I’m a bowman, not a brawler.”

The Emperor listened to the shuffling of feet before he broke the silence: “Very well. Warrior, tell me about yourself.”

Tornado came from the area where Frass town is now, a ravaged landscape since strengthened by the chain of peel towers built by Pasquin, the previous Frost. He led a company of mercenaries who were paid by the farms in proximity to the Wall to protect them from Insects. Back then, the bounty was a pound per Insect head, and his troop made enough money to survive. Tornado loved his itinerant life until his wife died from food poisoning-a dodgy beef curry killed her when a thousand Insect battles couldn’t.

The day after he arrived at the Castle, Tornado was taken to the amphitheater and the Eszai loosed Insects against him. He chopped Insects into pieces all day until San, satisfied, created a new place in the Circle for the Strongman. Tornado remains the world’s strongest man in eleven hundred and thirty-five years. He owns no lands nor houses, nothing but a shelf of Lightning’s novels and seven-eighths of the Fescue Brewery-from which he takes his dividends in kind.

My buoyant mood stayed with me all day, as for fourteen hours I rode a convenient southeasterly to Awndyn. It was cold and rather damp, and the clouds gathered at nightfall, hindering my navigation. I gained altitude and flew above them.

The flat cloud cover ended above the last extremity of the land, precisely following the coastline. As I descended through the clear space in the cloud surface I felt as if I was diving to an underwater Awndyn far below. The full moon gave a much better illumination than the autumn evening daylight; the roads looked smooth as glass. I imagined the news of Gio’s conspiracy flashing in along them from Eske and Sheldrake.

The promontory at the head of the strand was covered with grass the color of rabbit fur and, with patches of bracken, it looked like aged velvet that was losing its nap. The beach was a peaceful collage; bottle-green waves soughed and sucked back through the sand. It could not be more different from yesterday’s hurricane, which had spun windmill vanes around so rapidly that across the plains three hundred were still burning.

I landed and ran to the squat manor buildings, finding them dark and silent. The dewy grass around the annex was crisscrossed with smudged footprints. Sometimes it could all just be one of my fever dreams. A glow radiated from one window on the ground floor. Cyan Peregrine was sitting on majolica-orange cushions on the window seat behind a pair of curtains that separated the window alcove from the rest of the room, to make a cozy den. Cyan’s head was bowed; she was reading intently from a large book by lamplight. Her straggling blond hair escaped its ribbons; the sleeves of her dress were puffed like cream cakes.

I tapped on the glass with a pound coin. Cyan jumped and looked all around, saw me beaming at her. She grinned and reached up to raise the latch and swing the window out. “Jant!”

I gave her a hug but she pulled away from my cold skin. “Sorry to scare you, little sister.”

“I’m not scared. Are you looking for Daddy?”

“Yes. Where is Lightning? Where is everyone?”

“They went out to the boat. Mist’s red carnival. Caravel. She sailed it into the bay…I saw it. I wanted to go on it but Daddy wouldn’t let me. He’s ill.” Cyan sat back on her heels, hazel eyes wide.

“He’s awake? How is he?”

“That old woman said he’d be okay. I don’t remember her name.”

“Rayne?”

“Yeah.” Cyan reached for my feathers and I gave her a wing to stroke. She often pestered me to fly carrying her, although at twelve years old she was far too big. “Governor Swallow told me about the battle at the Castle and there are loads of men coming into town who don’t like Eszai…” Cyan made an effort to remember. She forgot the book of natural history that lay open on her knee but her finger still pointed, holding down a page with a gray watercolor of seals reclining on a shingle beach. “Swallow said she…Um, she ‘couldn’t guarantee their safety’ so Mist took them aboard. Are you going to fly after them? You’re not going to stay?” She sounded resigned.

“Where is Swallow?”

Cyan sighed. “Governor Fatbottom is trying to get rid of the men who don’t like Eszai. She wants them out of Awndyn. She says they’re troublemakers. I was supposed to go to bed, but I didn’t want to, so I hid.”

“Fatbottom?” I giggled.

There was a wicked gleam in Cyan’s eyes. “I keep thinking you’re the same as the rest, but you aren’t.”

“I can’t be.”

Cyan complained, “Swallow tries to teach me the harpsichello. The piccoloboe. Loads of instruments…I hate them. She says, ‘You think you’re good because you’re Saker’s kid.’ I feel like I’ve always done something wrong. I don’t belong here.”

That sounded like me at her age. “You don’t have to do what Swallow says! You’ll be a governor when you’re twenty-one.”

“When I grow up. Yeah, yeah.”

“It’s not a long time to wait. Take it from me; I’m twenty-three.”

“Hmm. That’s reallllly ooooold,” she said thoughtfully.

“Isn’t it?” Cyan had everything she could possibly want, but her fortune was just a spacious cage, as Lightning had planned out her life. Swallow, her guardian, knew of nothing apart from music and she found the child an obstruction to her obsession. Swallow may well never succeed in joining the Circle but she was determined to spend her whole life trying. I thought that if the bitterness set in, she wouldn’t stand a chance. “Remember that you can do anything you want.”

“I want to grow wings-it’s like having four arms. And to fly like you.”