Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

Iopened my eyelids to two slivers of glazed-green iris but lay otherwise inert. Rayne’s pair of bloodstained pumps and Lightning’s thick-soled buckled boots stood in front of my face. God, I hate it when I wake up lying in the recovery position.

“He’s no’ responding,” said Rayne. I felt her thumb my eyelid.

“I am,” I said, but it came out as a breath.

Lightning’s voice sounded very weak. “Well, bloody make him respond.”

Rayne made a sound like a shrug and slapped my face. “His pupils are so thin they’re like threads. Can you feel t’ Circle working t’ hold him?”

“Yes, damn him.”

Rayne slapped my face again and I gasped and spat.

Lightning said, “Ah, Jant. Everyone fights to survive but you wipe yourself out! You couldn’t poison Gio but you do a bloody good job of poisoning yourself! We need you to fly above and drop missiles on the trebuchet team. I know you prefer to be comatose under heavy bombardment; are you hoping to be revived by the cold water when we sink?”

I rolled into a kneeling position and blinked at him. He half-lay on a chair, still shaking with pain. Instead of his longbow he held a smaller bow with pulleys that could be kept drawn effortlessly.

Rayne said, “Lightning, don’ make him feel bad or you’ll give him an excuse t’ take another dose.”

“The gamin wretch! I’ll-”

I whispered, “You’re wrong. You told me to stop the riot and that’s exactly what I am doing.”

A ripple jolted Petrel hard against the harbor wall, throwing Rayne off balance. The snakes have arrived. I swallowed dryly, then I stumbled to my feet and out of the cabin. Rayne hurried and Lightning struggled after me, up the ladder to the poop deck where I gazed from the rail. The quayside was littered with bodies; its pavement was cracked and the walls of houses demolished where Pavonine’s shot had struck. Our figurehead and forecastle had been smashed into a mass of splintered wood. I took it all in with one glance, not knowing if I had really woken. The sky was dark-was this Fourlands or still Shift?

Looking down to the lower level through an open hatch I saw Wrenn sitting on a rope coil, drinking a canteen of water voraciously. Rayne’s assistant was sewing the gash that was open to the bone in his arm. The sight brought me back to earth. He knew that Eszai can take wounds-although not wounds as serious as that. He must have badly misunderstood what I told him about the Circle.

The Pavonine continued her bombardment. Cinna spun the wheel, keeping the ship’s stern toward us, rudder at full lock. Tirrick commanded the sweating pirates scurrying inside the treadwheels to ratchet the catapult back. They stacked its sling with slimy rocks from the ship’s own ballast.

The Pavonine jolted. An unnatural ripple circled her. The water on either side of her hull began to churn and bubble; waves lapped in every direction. Behind her, between her and the beacon island, a long black ridge surfaced. It was domed like a whale’s back but it rose higher and higher out of the water, passing the height of the Pavonine’s rail. It was the King krait’s top lip.

Lightning and Rayne stared, stunned. The men on the Pavonine ran about in confused terror as the ridge continued to rise. Two curved sharp fangs emerged parallel with the waves. Longer than pikes they projected from the black arch on the far left and right. The sea krait’s jaw showed its green and blue stripes and the water seething as it emerged glowed with phosphorescence.

A hundred meters away from the top lip, in the water between us and the Pavonine, the slick lower lip crested up. Men by the catapult shrieked and pointed; on the main deck they ran from one side to the other, unable to fathom what the arches on either side of them could be. The krait’s open mouth ascended, its teeth curved toward the Pavonine. The ridged black skin of its upper palate faced us, twice the size of the mainsail and glistening like tar. Water sluiced off its smooth bony head.

The smoke-filled sky resonated with the pirates’ screams as far as the town. I had the impression that the whole sea bed was ascending. Water thundered out of both sides of the krait’s open mouth; in the rocketing froth between its upper and lower jaws the Pavonine danced and spun like an eggshell in boiling brine. The cocked catapult went off, hurling shot vertically into the air.

I heard Cinna screeching. The snake’s lance-long teeth reached the height of Pavonine ’s foremast, curving above the ship and caging it in. Pavonine canted over so far the crow’s nest on its mainmast slapped the water, now on the port side, now the starboard, throwing off men. The krait’s bottom jaw obscured the ship. Its yellow eye emerged, surrounded with wet black skin, waves battering against it.

For an instant the water inside its mouth was carried higher than the harbor water. The snake reared out of the sea, bearing the Pavonine up. Sailors clung onto the ropes, dropped off with raucous screams.

Foaming brine spurted out both sides. The sea krait closed its mouth, with one sickening crunch.

In the sudden silence, the bitten-off masthead of the Pavonine tumbled to the surf. It floated, no bigger than a matchstick, beside the diamond-shaped snake’s head projecting straight up from the waves. Its body rose to the surface, blocking the harbor entrance, and the length of it extended to the horizon. The King krait lowered its head and turned to look at us.

Lightning scrabbled for an arrow, stammering, “What is that…?” He flexed his bow, aiming directly for its yellow eye.

“No!” I put my jittery hand over the arrowhead and forced it down. “Don’t shoot!”

Lightning gaped at me, striving to understand. “Why not? Its carcass won’t block us in. The sun will rot it. It will rot away.” He yelled at the sea krait, “What are you?”

The snake’s long mouth stayed closed but the black tongue whipped out like a pennant at the summit of its snout, curling down to our railings, licking slickly in front of me. I assumed the krait was tasting the air for my scent. I actually admired its beauty and overwhelming incalculable strength. I waved my arms to it, grinning madly with gratitude. “Thank you! Thank you in the name of the Emperor-now go find a home!”

It tilted its head to the side, but as it sank it scanned the Stormy Petrel ’s deck with its great amber eye. The sea rushed back with a noise like rolling boulders, closing over the snake’s eye, upturned mouth, pointed nose; the nostrils last to submerge. An enormous V-shaped ripple formed where, underwater, it began to haul its massive body and retract its head from the harbor.

I swear there was a gust of wind as everybody on the Stormy Petrel exhaled. The quay was silent for a second-it was silent, the fighting had stopped. I heard weapons fall and clanking as bags of loot dropped to the ground.

Pandemonium broke out as, shoulder to shoulder, some soldiers and pirates moved closer to the waterfront to stare at the floating top-mast, the broken pieces of canoes and pontoons where the krait had been. The rest, especially the Trisians, tried to run as far from the sea as possible, back into town. The rioting on the quayside and all the way up the boulevard had completely ceased; everybody was watching the ocean.

“Did…?” Lightning stammered. “In the name of…god’s arse…I can’t believe I just saw that.” He turned on me. “Why do you keep stopping me from shooting monsters?”

“It saved us, Saker; it’s a friend.”

On my other side Rayne spoke calmly. “You were in too deep, Jant, if you reached Vista Marchan.”