No Present Like Time (5 page)

Mist addressed him: “You can’t sulk for a whole generation. Do you want your world view to become obsolete and eccentric like the portraits that hang in your house? Jant, listen to this: Lightning’s family portraits have been repainted many times, about every two hundred years once they start to fade. The artists try to be accurate but scarcely perceptible changes creep in accidentally, flattering trends to the ideal of the era. Next time, those alterations are copied along with the rest and new ones are made. His portraits are as idealized as his memories. Saker, how can you tell what’s real and what isn’t when you rely on the past? If you don’t want to know of new discoveries, how long will you last as an Eszai? Suppose the island has better bows than Awia? A better type of wood?”

“Without Insects to inspire them, I doubt it. Let them come with their Challenges.”

The camera obscura was growing even stuffier and I was gasping for air. I nudged the door wide, looking for my chance to escape. Serein Wrenn caught sight of us and strolled over with a limber gait. I wondered what he thought, seeing three Eszai in an alcove. When everything else at his party was so perfect, we stood out as a great anomaly. “What are you talking about?”

“We beg your pardon,” said Lightning. “This is a private discussion.”

Wrenn bowed and was about to leave us to it, but Mist sized him up. “No, wait…What time is it? We have to tell the truth for an hour.” I could virtually hear her mind calculating. She took in his shirt buttoned down the left side showing his strong torso off to the best advantage, his small round stand-up collar and sharp-styled hair, the worn cherry-red leather thigh boots with the tops folded over his knees.

Out came her travel-worn notebook again. “You need experience. You’ll find this interesting,” she said, and set her plans on him like wolves.

The others blocked my view of the party, so I turned again to the pinhole image. The beam angled by the half-open door illuminated the wall next to me, unfocused and with washed-out contrast. Fuzzy figures rippled over the uneven surface, so small that their activities looked quaint but nonetheless unsettling. I checked them one by one: Gayle exchanging a few words with the Emperor, Frost crammed into a ball gown and wearing steel-toed boots. I couldn’t see Tern. Where was she? Why wouldn’t Mist let me out? I tried to edge away from the stifling corner but Mist stood firm, talking hotly into my face, toes pressing against my toes, only the logbook between me and her ample breasts. Tern’s figure must be in my shadow, but though I inched forward I couldn’t see her waltzing on the wall. The perfume on Mist’s long white hair tickled my sinuses; there was also the pong of Wrenn’s gravy breath. His shoulder was up against mine and the bright love of adventure in his eyes would enthuse the entire fyrd. It was even worse to think I would be on the ship with him.

“…so the Empire must explore Tris,” Mist concluded eventually. Lightning glared; he rightly thought that we were making unnecessary problems for ourselves.

“Are you worried?” she asked Wrenn.

“Nothing worries me,” he said.

“Nothing!” I said. “Poor lad, there’s quite a lot of it out there.”

He stared at me. “I haven’t even unpacked my rucksack. I’m ready to go.”

“Aye, thought so. Gentlemen, you will be discreet and keep this a secret. You must go out into the party with knowledge that no one else in the whole world has. Smile; you’ll find it hard. I will see you at Awndyn by the end of the week; the
Stormy Petrel
is ready to sail.”

Lightning beckoned a butler and said, “Go down to the cellars and bring me a bottle of Micawater wine. The oldest you can find.”

The party sashayed and shone around me. I walked through it, dead to the heart and scarcely seeing Tern in a clumsy two-step with the Strongman.

I ran out to the balcony and jumped to the balustrade, threw myself off. Beating hard and yelling with fury I reached eighty k.p.h. between two spires, just brushing stone with my wingtips. I zigzagged close to tightly packed walls near-missing by a centimeter on every familiar turn. I exploded out of the fog, still climbing to the clear starry sky. The tallest towers poked though the mist’s cotton blanket like black sea stacks; lights flickered deep among them. I reached the top of my trajectory, for a second hung there. Somersaulted. Fell, headfirst, masonry soaring past, the mist’s surface undulating.

I splashed through it, silently.

I flew circuits of the Castle until I slowed down and my anger wore off, turning into hopelessness. I landed on the sill of the Northwest Tower, bounded down into my room, sprang onto the four-poster bed and ripped its curtains together. In its gloomy, ivy-entwined brocade cave I sat and thought. Drugs, that’s what I need. Drugs.

N
ext morning I decided to seek an audience with the Emperor and appeal against the terrible orders that he had given me. I left Tern sleeping in the four-poster bed; I had pretended to be asleep when she came in late. I dressed, ate breakfast and shut the door as the Starglass struck ten. I ran down the frescoed spiral steps three at a time, at a speed that may well be the death of me one day. I ignored the thick rope that serves as a handrail and opened my wings for balance as far as was possible on the dizzying staircase. I hurtled around the last corner and crashed into Lightning, who was climbing up. “Huh? Get out of my way, Micawater.”

“Jant! I have to talk to you. The Emperor’s just asked me to put Gio out of the Castle!”

“Who?”

“Gio Ami. The Swordsman for four hundred years until last night.”

Gio was from Ghallain, a bleak town on the tip of an inhospitable cape. His wealth and acumen were entirely self-made. Three-letter names were often used among the coastal Plainslanders, a tradition dating back as far as the Emperor’s birth. Like Awian names, they’re not gender-specific. I thought, Gio really belongs in sixteen thirty-nine. What the fuck is he going to do out there, in the twenty-first century?

We walked toward the Simurgh Passage on the extreme eastern side of the palace, and along past Lightning’s rooms where pale watercolor paintings covered the walls completely, their frames touching. The Archer said, “Gio refuses to leave. I have sometimes seen defeated Eszai act this way. He has lived a long time in the Castle; he may fear the outside world although he’ll never admit it. It has changed since he was last mortal.”

I remembered Gio’s arrogance and said, “More like he can’t accept that anyone could beat him.”

“Yes, I agree.”

“Well, I hope he isn’t armed.”

“Oh, of course he is armed. That’s why I need your help to evict him.”

We walked up a flight of steps to the attic of the passage and the quarters traditionally appointed to Serein. Bucklers were displayed on the walls outside his doorway, with dusty bullfighting cloaks and wood-and-leather dusack swords for practice. Broadswords and falchions were arranged in circles and fans, next to sail-hilted daggers and Wrought katanas with naked blued steel. There were ceremonial two-handed swords with curlicued quillions and flamberge blades inlaid with gold wire, and several portraits of Gio. Servants passed us, carrying boxes and suitcases down to the ground floor. One wore a sallet helmet and the others had shirts wrapped around their heads.

Lightning and I peered into the awkwardly shaped room, which had a sloping ceiling. It looked like the den of a sports-obsessed teenager. It smelled of rubber-soled shoes, canvas ingrained with sweat, the wooden grips of polearms smoothed and varnish worn away with use. Twinned rapiers in cases and practice foils in holdalls were stacked along the wall, under a shabby dartboard with a fistful of darts jammed into the bull’s-eye. A beautiful schiavona cut-and-thrust sword with a basket hilt and a sharkskin grip hung in pride of place on the opposite wall.

In a big glass tank at the far end of the room enormous yellow koi carp cruised back and forth, their mirror scales glinting like plate armor. Two servants were indiscriminately stuffing the clutter into boxes and moving it out.

Gio Ami was sitting on the divan, slouched against the wall with despair. A foil with a round guard lay across his knees. His long, old-gold-colored hair hung in twists to his shoulders, he had a single ring in one ear. His face was somewhat lined and worn, hollow cheeks offset by a broad chin, which now had fair stubble. His bare chest and taut belly showed under his unfastened frock coat. It was of Awian manufacture because it had wide slits up the back that were empty and looked peculiar without wings. His pale blue breeches matched, but laces trailed from his open boots. A number of Diw Harbor Gin bottles lay discarded on the floor.

Gio still had the quality of those who are great at what they do, an intense concentration unknown to most people. His coat’s rich embroidery was testament to his affluence, gained through running his fencing
salles d’armes
since the turn of the seventeenth century. Branches of the Ghallain School had been opened in Hacilith and the majority of Plainslands manorships.

Gio had taken the dressing off the wound at his throat, which gaped a little, pink and clean. He must be trying to make it scar. He noticed us standing in the doorway, “What do we have here? A lonely aristo and a gangland killer.” He looked from Lightning to me. “Neither high looks of authority nor smart words will make me leave.”

Lightning sighed. “Gio, if you don’t go now, Jant and I will put you out of the Castle bodily.”

Gio spun the hilt of the foil, making the sword roll up and down his thigh. I watched it, well aware that he was still the second-best fencer in the world. His voice slurred slightly. “Don’t call me Gio. I am still Serein.”

“You were outmatched.”

“I have just said goodbye to the Sailor, the Cook and the Master of Horse. All my former friends are abandoning me.” He gestured at the servants. “And the new Serein will have my rooms, as well as my title and my immortality.”

“We’re not deserting you,” I said.

“All immortality belongs to the Emperor,” said Lightning.

Gio gave him a dirty look. “Yes, you nobles are great at knowing who owns what. None of you will stand by me now I’ve fallen from grace. Why should I be cast out? It wasn’t a fair fight!”

The oldest servant began to pack Gio’s combat manuals. “Bugger off,” said Gio, and threw
The Academy of Defense
accurately at his head. “The floodlights in the amphitheater are useless. I demand a retrial.”

I thought for a while. “You can Challenge him in a year’s time, that’s a rule of the Castle.”

“Challenge him as a mortal? Try to regain
my
title from
him
? Damn! I still don’t understand the move he made. He tricked me with an unorthodox caper,” Gio spat contemptuously. “No one will want to be instructed in my method now, the techniques I spent my life recording. My school will empty like the court of Rachiswater and then what will I do for a living?”

“Having been in the Circle will bring you fame enough,” I said in a conciliatory tone.

“Fame as a has-been.” Gio pointed the foil, working himself up. “Why did I ever aspire to such a corrupt little world? Wrenn killed me in that duel! All right—so I might die forty years from now of old age, but he has killed me. Ruined by a non-fraternity fighter, opportunist, someone who never studied! A coarse recruit from a frontier town who wasn’t even listed in the top five hundred swordsmen. He never competed in the annual tournaments. I hadn’t even heard of the insane kid before he turned up!”

Gio did not realize how hidebound he had become over four centuries. He had systematized the art of fencing and relied so much on his perfect knowledge that Wrenn’s irrational move confused him completely. Immortals who are afraid to risk their lives are as useless against the Insects as those who become lazy or overconfident, solitary or debauched. San’s rules for the Circle are wise; fresh blood will take our place if long life causes us to lose our edge.

“You’ve gained a year and you can try again.”

“A year for what? A year to practice?” He gestured at a wall-chart of footprints coding positions for rapier exercises. “To shape up, lose weight, gain stamina?” He bent a sinewy arm until the long muscles knotted.

I took Gio’s point that clearly he was in the best fitness and still got beaten, but none of us could know what effect the following year of renown and a six-month sea voyage might have on Wrenn’s condition. The Castle has lost all Gio’s knowledge now, replacing him with someone who is expert but inexperienced. It struck me as wasteful; I wished they could all be saved. I wondered why the Emperor refused to widen the Circle to accommodate more warriors; we would never pose a threat to San because we would never accumulate enough experience to be as wise as him.

I said, “Gio, the Empire needs you too. We don’t want to lose you.”

“The Castle’s already rejected me. Though I devoted my entire life to its service…I defended Hacilith in the last swarm.” His voice was drained of its usual energy. He would take days to recover from such an intense fight. “I felt the Circle dropping me. I knelt down and couldn’t get up. You bastards. But now I don’t feel much different, I suppose because I’m only twelve hours older. I think mortals feel like they’re twenty-one years old all their life, though their body gets slower and then they die. I’ll provoke a few duels before I die, though. I’m going to send a few of them ahead of me.”

Gio picked up his predecessor’s book,
Treatise on the Art of Fencing,
and weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. “What happened to the Serein before me? When I displaced him from the Circle he went mad and hung himself.” A downward twist of his lips showed what he thought of a Swordsman committing suicide. He spun the book through the air and swore when a servant ducked and it hardly clipped him.

Lightning said, “We are nowhere near restoring Awia and people already gripe about the necessary austerity. We need your imagination, not to mention your leadership.”

“Saker Micawater, what the rich fuck do I care about Awia now?”

Serein Wrenn, in his fyrd fatigues, hurried into view down the corridor. He made as if to enter the room but Lightning spread his blond wings across the doorway. The youth blinked at him, bewildered.

At the sight of Wrenn, Gio leapt to his feet, the foil loose in his right hand. Wrenn swept his rapier from its scabbard. Great. Now I was trapped between the best and second-best swordsmen in the world.

“No!” said Lightning. “You may not fight.”

I took the knife from my boot and pressed the button for the blade.

Gio eyed me. “Nice. A Rhydanne with a flick-knife.”

Lightning said, “Put it away, Jant.”

“If you think I’m afraid to keep dueling, you’re wrong,” Wrenn called.

“Every single year until one of us is dead,” Gio spat.

“You were wide open with that moulinet. You bloody deserved it!”

Lightning repeated, “You may meet in twelve months. You may not fight now.”

“Step aside, Archer.”

Lightning stared at Gio, arms folded and wings spread.

Wrenn stretched out in a broad ward stance, an action that seemed to say: come on, stab me in the chest.

Gio shook with fury. “I swear, Archer, get out of my way! Or I’ll cut every tendon in your bow arm! I’ll have my title back within an hour!”

“Honor demands a respite.”

“I’m mortal, I’m going to die anyway! Where’s the honor in that? I’ve nothing to lose!”

Wrenn watched guardedly through the gap between Lightning and myself. He was calm, in control, just as I am aware of every centimeter of my body when I prepare to fly.

Gio flourished the foil. “I’ll die famous by running you both through!”

“Jant,” Lightning said eventually. “It looks like we need Tornado’s help to close this situation. Go to his room and fetch him; quickly, please.”

I hesitated.

“I can skewer you all on one blade!”

I nodded, ducked past and sprinted away. Gio watched until I reached the stairs and then he threw his foil aside. He pushed past Lightning and Wrenn, head up and haughty eyes averted. I stepped out of his way; he descended the staircase and walked out swinging his arms, across the wet grass of the quadrangle toward the Dace Gate and the Castle’s stables.

Lightning exhaled and rubbed his forehead. “God,” he said. “Such a worthy adversary.”