Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

Lightning leaned into his bow and bent it fully with the strength of his shoulders. The broadhead point drew back to the grip. Across the square the Insect reared up before Vendace. Lightning straightened his fingers, released the string with a crack and the arrow whistled past me.

The Insect’s foreclaws lashed the air in front of Vendace, then it fell sideways. It curled on its right side, the arched plates of its abdomen sliding over each other as it coiled and throbbed. A spasm went through it that flexed all its joints and pulled its limbs in, like the legs of a dead crab. They steepled angularly together, its feet drawn up to the six semi-translucent ball joints under its thorax. By the sunken ring at the base of its feeler, Lightning’s arrow shaft made a second antenna. The shell gaped around it, an open crack showing an organ of dark brown gel deep inside.

The senators gazed at it, and at the library. All the erudition of Tris was rising with the fire. I faced the intolerable furnace as if it was a punishment and spread my wings to accept and be consumed by it. Rolls of heat belched out, shelves split with creaks and thuds. Tremendous flames raged through the library I respected so much; I felt sick in the pit of my stomach.

“Shira!” Lightning called. “Come here, why are you standing so close? It’s falling apart!”

“No. The books are burning…What has Gio done?”

“Get a grip! Speak to the senators.”

I was numbly aware of Lightning ushering the Trisian leaders to the boulevard. Behind us, the coffers lay forgotten. I thought, if I live through this I’ll claim them. The Trisians would disregard the treasure as dross, so I relinquished it for the time being, avoided the dead Insect and stepped over three or four agonized rebels with arrows in their thighs, and ran to catch up with them. They were hurrying down the path with appalled backward glances.

Vendace was holding one of the senators tightly, a young lady. She was kicking and biting, frenziedly struggling and pulling in the direction of the library. I ran to help but Vendace snapped at me, “She’s Danio’s successor. Don’t let her go; she’ll run in to the fire. Every time you come here, you put an end to our librarians!”

We tried to calm the hysterical girl. I explained to Lightning, who said candidly, “I know how she feels. People pass away, there are always more, but the books are irreplaceable. They’re the immortal part of Zascai-how many lifetimes are burning to cinders in there?”

I said to Vendace, “You saw how Gio’s men treated you. They’re causing this catastrophe, not us. We’ll deliver you from them before they destroy the rest of town. Lightning shot the Insect dead. We were sent to protect you from it and from Gio; he’s a wanted criminal in the Fourlands.”

Vendace, mystified, turned his pinched, resilient face from myself to the Archer. The Senate had prized Gio’s rhetoric so highly that they found it hard to trust our actions. As I walked quickly they pressed close, trying to hear over the sound of the blaze. With an earsplitting screech and crash, the library roof caved in at its midpoint. Timbers dangled like fingers from both sides. Glowing tiles slid into the fissure, adding to the noise; the rumble grew to a roar. Sparks whirled up and fell on the roof of the Senate House. It was hypnotic.

Lightning said, “Jant, tell them that I’ll see them to a safe place, then I’ll clear looters from the avenue as far as the rear of Gio’s column.”

I asked, “Are you well enough?”

“I believe so.”

“Then I’ll fly over Mist and Serein, and join you on the main road.”

An elderly senator with a rookery voice coughed. “ What is going on? Where’s Gio?”

I changed language and said, “He’s causing the mayhem-I’m going to find out. Lightning will help you, if you please lead him to a place of refuge. I’m sorry, I am really sorry.”

Vendace pointed a shaking finger at the Amarot. Flames were now lapping on the Senate House roof. Driven to incandescence by the wind, the fire spread to the apartments on its upper story and began to engulf them. “No amount of apologizing will ever repair that sacrilege!”

When we reached the base of the crag, Vendace directed Lightning toward a road called First Street. I left them, and as soon as I carved into the air I found myself battling against the wind being sucked into the inferno. It whipped around the crag in one-hundred-kilometer-per-hour gusts, causing a swirling column of vertical flame to rise eighty meters above the devastated library.

Smoke layered and drifted out at the height of the Amarot. It completely blocked the sunrise and shadowed the town. Burning embers were falling into the gardens of the villas below. The whitewashed walls looked gray and the boulevard was littered with spoil and broken furniture dragged out by the rebels; here and there lay the bodies of the Trisians who had tried to stop them.

Sleepy residents stumbled into the street, looking up at the crag and trying to understand. At the edge of town, people panicked and began moving toward the harbor. I saw Capharnai of all ages responding to a call to make a bucket chain. About two hundred people filled pails, pans and bowls from cisterns and carried them up the winding road to the Amarot, but the air was unbreathable; the rising heat and wind stopped them before they reached the mosaic. A few of the lamed rebels who were still lying among the boxes of money, writhed as they inhaled smoke. Their clothes and hair caught fire spontaneously.

I soared higher, because I was alarming the Capharnai and they were wasting their time watching me. I lost sight of the peach-colored sky beyond the edges of the smoke pall. Flocks of pigeons sped around the tiny rooftops, grouping to roost, confused by the eerie eclipse light. Dawn would not end; the light was dim, as if it was still seven A.M.

The looters were fanning out through the top of town, kicking in doors and pulling shutters off their hinges, leaving a wake of debris, barking dogs and half-eaten food.

Pages and whole blackened pamphlets, scroll fragments burned thin, jostled up in the smoke then fell on the town as hot ash. The residue of hundreds of thousands of books was raining over Capharnaum. The gloaming light and the roar of the library added to the rebels’ edginess. It was much louder than the sound of the wind on my wings.

Gio’s rabble now packed the lower half of the main street, blocking the wide road as they progressed down the slope toward the harbor. Gio walked ahead of them with his rapier drawn. His column was twice the size of Mist’s tight ranks.

Mist’s fyrd was marching up the street from the Stormy Petrel. The boatswains were drumming; their beats got louder as I dropped height and passed over them. I spotted Mist leading by Wrenn’s side; she looked up and raised her hand. She had tied her shawl a round her waist, revealing a cuirass and backplate. Wrenn wasn’t wearing armor; he was in his fyrd fatigues. He was looking for Gio, dissatisfied with their disputable duel in the forest. He was determined to beat Gio on equal terms and leave no doubt that he deserved to be immortal.

Mist was surrounded on all sides by crossbowmen and a bodyguard of her strongest sailors, all in half-armor. After that came one hundred and fifty Awndyn men carrying halberds and spears; no space to wield pikes. They wore dark green brigandines; their helmets shone like globular mirrors.

As I watched, the rear of Ata’s column stopped at the quay and the rest separated and continued up the street. She had left about fifty men, a fyrd lamai unit, to protect Stormy Petrel , moored a hundred meters behind Gio’s ships. From Petrel ’s forecastle and poop deck, archers looked out. Both her gangplanks were down but colored shields lined her railings. The longbowmen were tense, watching the rebel defectors who ran, laden with loot, out of the ends of the parallel streets. They raced up the Pavonine ’s gangway to a deck that seethed with drawn weapons; white faces ugly with fear stared up at me. They had turned pirate; they were prepared to defend their carrack to the death.