No Present Like Time (19 page)

I knew every road and air current of the Fourlands; now Tris was mine to explore. I could learn to discover like a mortal again and not a jaded Eszai. My sense of wonder was as strong as the first time I saw Hacilith city, when I was a foundling from Darkling with aching wings. In my first decade of life I had seen a total of just ten people, all Rhydanne. The city pulsed humans around its streets in a stream that terrified me. I could fly no farther so I hid, amazed, among the mayhem for a year.

I suddenly realized that I hadn’t been thinking about scolopendium. If I was on the ship, my body would be crying out for it by now. I laughed with surprise and relief. If I could spend a few more nights alone on the mountain, in the tranquil rock shelter, I could do withdrawal. If I could spend a few more days in this serene and secure place, I contemplated, my mind would never turn to scolopendium again. No more sliding down the OD ravine. No more cat. No need for coffee, ephedrine or myristica. Or whiskey, papaver, harmine, veronal or datura. Thujone, digitalis or psilocybin; not anymore.

I breathed the island deeply into myself. I wanted to take it in, inhale it, drink it, the whole island, until it became part of me. I felt organized and in control. Alone on the mountain I lost all sense of self, and the troubles that drove me to use cat went too. The Castle was an ocean away. How brilliant, I was still immortal with none of the risks. I wanted to stay alone on the mountainside forever, until eventually with no self left and no thoughts at all I would merge with the landscape. In my haven there was no need for language or communication. For a few hours I was free from the sickly need to identify, classify and name with words every single thing.

I
returned to the
Melowne
very early next morning and had a wash with sponge and pitcher. I decided to go back to sleep until the call should come from Lightning or Mist to engage me in another day’s frantic business with spice merchants and jewelers, and with the host of fishermen-turned-salesmen. They seemed determined to swap everything they owned for our damask steel or a handful of arrows.

I was woken by loud yells and battering on the cabin door. “Comet! Help!
Quickly!
”

From the tone of Fulmer’s snappy voice, I knew something terrible had happened. “What? If it’s a mutiny I’m on your side!” I stooped and wound a sheet around my waist like a sarong, then opened the door.

Fulmer stood on the half-deck, wearing only his trousers. Over his shoulder I saw the cloudless sky, the façade of Capharnaum’s white villas, green shutters and balconies, the merchants waiting on the quay in a stunned silence, the lower deck. It appeared to be covered in tar.

Fulmer pointed. The Insect was poised on the gangplank. Between it and the quayside stood Wrenn. The Insect reared and struck, antennae whirling. Wrenn raised his rapier and dagger.

I dived back into the cabin and picked up my ice axe. Then I shoved past Fulmer to the rack of equipment beside my door. I snatched a long boathook and hefted it, at the same time yelling to Fulmer, “Run down the other walkway! Go to
Petrel.
Wake Lightning and tell him to shoot it! You must knock
very loudly.
Quick!”

Fulmer slid down the ladder and slipped across the main deck. I saw bodies lying at unnatural angles and tightened my grip on the boathook as I realized the thick, dully reflective slick was congealing blood.

With a cold self-awareness I spread my wings, wiggled my ice axe into the folded top of my impromptu sarong, and found the right words to shout at the thirty or forty Capharnai: “Run away! Go home! It will bite you!”

Holding the boathook shaft across my body like a weightlifter, I vaulted the railings. I plummeted straight down past the blue porthole shutters, reached flying speed and hurtled once around the ship’s hull to build up momentum. I skimmed the figurehead and up over the forecastle deck for a straight run at the Insect. I jinked to miss the foremast, by pulling in my right wing and spinning right.

I swept over the Insect. I reached out with the boathook and put my full strength behind it as I swung.

The Insect’s gold-brown compound eyes wrapped around its head and joined at the top with bristly margins. It could see in all directions. It saw me passing above and bent its six knees to squat down. It flattened its body flush against the gangplank, beaded antennae wavering and brushing the wood.

I missed and struggled to lift the hook as it glided toward Wrenn’s head. I snarled, “Fuck!” I turned downwind, dropping height and holding the pole out to the side, not upward to tangle with my feathers. I flew over the merchants’ heads so low my downdraft ruffled their hair. They all dropped to the ground in a wide swath along my path. A few quick beats, and I veered around the stern of the
Petrel,
intending to circle the two ships and come in over
Melowne
for another swoop. There was no sign of Lightning in the frantic commotion on
Petrel
’s deck.

Wrenn had bare feet. He was naked but for shorts, the drawstring hanging down. The Insect stood higher on the gangplank, claws tightly gripping the edges. Wrenn stopped the route to the land, to its food. It struck at him. He blocked its mandible with his rapier and deflected its head aside. It swept its antennae back into their gutters, bore its weight on its hind limbs and slashed with its front legs.

Its hooked claws stabbed at Wrenn, who batted them aside. Its jaws closed on, then slid off, the rapier blade. Wrenn parried the tarsi feet in a sequence so rapid it was a blur. He had lost none of his skill—he was too focused to feel fear. But he couldn’t predict the Insect’s actions.

He followed the moves of its four claws and mandibles all at once, every cut the Insect scrabbled at him. But his totally inadequate rapier clicked and slid over its cuticle—it wasn’t heavy enough to bite into the shell.

He thrust his blade past the base of one antenna, then drew it back, slicing through the feeler. It severed and fell between the Insect’s feet. A drop of yellow liquid like pus oozed from the hollow cut end and dropped on its eye, running over the curved surface. The Insect recoiled. Wrenn feinted, and its left claw swept the air trying to catch his blade. Wrenn lunged explosively and hit its thorax squarely, under its mandibles. His rapier tip pierced the chitin.

The Insect took a step toward him and the blade slid into its body. Fluid the color and consistency of cream welled up around the blade and trickled down its shell but the Insect did not react. It crawled toward Wrenn, spitting itself on his rapier.

The sword point burst from its back, pushing out a length of cream-streaked steel. It forced itself down the blade until the hilt was flush against its thorax. It stooped to bite Wrenn’s arm. Wrenn shook his hand free of the swept guards and jumped backward, leaving his thin sword embedded through the Insect.

I cleared the height of the foredeck, came in fast.

Wrenn’s face set in a grim expression. He cut with his dagger left to right, scratching the Insect’s eye, but the blade skittered off, only etching a thin line over one hexagonal lens. It struck; he slammed the dagger into its mandible. The dagger blade shattered from tip to ricasso so violently that two long glittering steel splinters spun away from the gangplank in different directions. Wrenn was left holding the grip.

My wings shadowed his head. “Here!” I dangled the pole from its very end. He had enough sense to drop his hilt and jump for the brass hook speeding toward him. I let go and passed it to him.

Our contact caused a drag that slowed me down too much and slewed me to the left. The quayside rushed up; I saw the pavement cracks. Too big, too close! I was going to crash! I leaned right and beat down—my wingtips smacked a crate of oranges. The shock transmitted through my feather shafts and hurt my fingers. I pulled out of my dive; the crate tops scraped my knees and feet. I flapped, stubbing my wings. I banked up steeply, groaning with effort, my feathers rasping the air.

I glanced at Wrenn and saw him teetering, the pole held out for balance. He recovered, pointed the boathook at the Insect. It crouched, lowered its head and pounced at Wrenn, forcing him sideways. He swung the boathook and clubbed it weakly as it pushed past him. The spines fringing its legs lacerated his skin.

Its barreling bulk threw Wrenn off balance. His boathook flourished in the air; he toppled off the gangplank and fell headfirst, spread-eagled. The soles of his feet vanished below the level of the harbor wall, into the strip of deep water. A second later I heard the splash.

I glanced at the crowd; their faces were full of doubt and disbelief. The Insect was real; this was no drama laid on for entertainment. It was coming down the gangplank. About half of them trotted backward, still staring, then turned and fled for the streets. The rest seemed frozen. Those not gaping at the Insect were gawking at me.

“Go!” I yelled. A couple more people responded to the urgency in my voice.

The Insect landed on all six legs on the harbor pavement. At first it moved unevenly, angularly; it leapt and hobbled. It quickly became accustomed to freedom and the sailors’ blood it had lapped up helped the hydraulics of its legs function properly. It ran as smoothly as it had done in the Paperlands and the people scattered before it.

They fled with screams, leaving one woman sitting alone. I recognized Danio instantly; at the water’s edge near
Melowne
’s hull, in exactly the same place as I had left her last night, her bare legs dangling over the harbor wall. She remained transfixed a second too long, not knowing what to do. She pulled her self to kneel, then sprang up, all the while watching the Insect with a mixture of fascination and fear. She sprinted, arms out stretched, very fleet of foot. But she was too slow.

The Insect bounded after her. Its claws in the small of her back brought her down, face to the paving. She started screaming, high-pitched, struggling to turn around and beat it off.

The Insect dipped, sheared Danio’s leg off at the knee and picked it up with its middle pair of arms. Its external mouthparts stripped the calf muscle from the severed limb. It held the dripping muscle with two sets of palps, which hung down like black sticky fingers. The maxillae behind its jaws guillotined up and down as well as left and right, masticating it into paste. Danio kept screeching until the Insect grabbed her around the hips, mandibles sinking deep, and tossed her into the air. She crashed full-length on the paving. The Insect jumped on her body and decapitated her with one powerful bite.

I flew low over them, frantically looking for a space to land. The Insect paused as my movement caught its attention. Its single elbowed antenna waved; the stub of the other one was covered with a yellow crust. Now all the Capharnai had gone from the harbor but a merchant in a tunic had stopped at a distance to look back at the abandoned goods, his chubby face white and eyes bulging.

Danio! I thought. It’s killed Danio; what have we done? I found a clear gap between the baskets and boxes, but I was moving so fast I was in danger of breaking my legs. I stretched my wings back fully and flared off some speed. Gasping at the strain in my stomach muscles I swung my legs ahead and hit the ground braced, knees bent. I put my hands down and somersaulted over and over, till I crashed into a crate of cinnamon bark.

Winded, I picked my axe from the ground and crawled to my feet. The Insect had reached the entrance to the boulevard. It had slaughtered the corpulent man and was standing on his body with front and middle legs. It ducked its head, its lamellar segmented abdomen high in the air. It closed its jaws until they clicked, cutting across the fat man’s belly. It backed, claws skidding on the blood. It pulled taut a length of blue-green intestine, then ate it all the way back down into the man’s body cavity. His sightless eyes and pale mouth were stretched open, rigid; I could see the inside wall of his ribs.

I thought, I must distract it till Lightning shoots it. Breathing painfully, I dashed across. As I ran, avoiding the discarded cloaks and piles of produce, I curved to approach from behind, thinking that the Insect would take a second to turn around and I could chop at its rear. But the Insect did not wait to be attacked. I don’t know whether it recognized me or understood I was armed, but it crawled swiftly from the fat man’s cadaver and leapt toward the boulevard. I swerved between it and the town and headed it off. I chased it. I lengthened my stride to sprint with Rhydanne instinct as if it was a stag. I closed in on the darting legs and aimed a blow at a hind femur, driving it to change direction.

The Insect slowed as it sensed a group of boatmen who, trapped against a villa’s portico, prepared to use their paddles as maces. I made it switch toward the ships where Lightning should be, but it slashed a mandible at the last man, a thin teenager who fell clutching his thigh.

The Insect still carried Wrenn’s sword through its thorax, the hilt like a silver badge. It had stopped bleeding. Its legs swept repeatedly fore to rear along its body. I aimed between them at a suture line that crossed its back like a joint in armor. I tore the glassy tips of its immovable little wings that projected from the middle segment, pressed close to its glossy shell. I tilted over and hit, but the blow nearly ripped the shaft from my hand, wrecked my running rhythm. I pushed hard at the ground to accelerate, change direction; to control the Insect.

My resounding strikes had more effect than Wrenn’s clearly articulated technique. The Insect limped, but still ran rapidly on the bristly black pads under its slightly raised claws. I swung at the three small round eyes that formed a triangle between its compound eyes. But at this angle the plate of its forehead was too thick to crack.

The slabs cool beneath my bare feet, my ankles ached from the pounding. I panted the air. The Insect put on a burst and reached racehorse speed trying to escape. I sprang forward and kept pace with it although my leg muscles burned. I was exhilarated, keyed up with my own vigor. I sped my swiftest, desperate to snatch one more chance—I’ll hook my ice pick into the copper-striped abdomen and I’ll bring it down.

I forced the Insect’s route nearer to the glittering sea as we raced the length of Capharnaum’s harbor. The last building had a blank stone wall. At its base was a semicircular drain opening as tall as my shoulder, edged with blocks. A shallow stream of dirty water flowed out of it into a channel, then over the side of the harbor wall. It was stained dark green and fuscous with flaking algae. The Insect sheered, rattled down into the sloping conduit and splashed straight into the black archway. I lost sight of it instantly in the darkness. I scrambled to a halt, scraping my heels on the verge.

The Insect had gone; no way was I going to follow it into the drain. In the confined space it would rip my throat out before I could even see it. I waited, on guard, feeling my pulse pounding in my neck. It quickly returned to normal but my temples hurt. I coughed a mouthful of frothy spit into the gray water and watched it flow into the sea.

Insects are at home underground and are not disadvantaged by the dark. When culling them in the Paperlands, the least popular operation is the task of channeling river water into their tunnels in order to collapse the deep, honeycombed structures. Fires are also lit on platforms at the tunnel mouths to draw air out and suffocate them, but Insects between the sizes of men and carthorses still burst forth to attack at full speed. I hated natural caves let alone Insect burrows and slimy sewers. If I went in there I would never come out. With terrible images playing in my mind, I loped back to the
Stormy Petrel,
past the merchant’s bloated, half-eaten body with its ripped-open smock and Danio, headless, lying in a congealed red spray.