Free No Present Like Time by Steph Swainston Page B

term.”
    “Oh, I understand,” said Cinna. “But I hope Eszai realize how quickly Plainslanders forget Insects once the immediate threat cools off.”
    “Look, you have to stop dealing. In Hacilith now, the punishment for pushing cat is death. I’ve seen dealers broken on the wheel. In Awia they just jail them for life.”
    He nodded. “Well, ergot pastilles are all the kids want these days. They have no taste.” He wallowed over to a side table where there was a decanter of port and some crystal glasses. He poured one for me.
    “To the Emperor,” I said, and drank.
    He topped up my glass. “And another toast. To all the kids who ever sang protest songs against the old king’s draft.”
    I put the glass down. “It’s the Empire’s war,” I said evenly. “Let’s talk business, not nostalgia. I know how you feel about the past but I have to obey the Emperor’s command.”
    “You singled me out and saved me because I was an Independent, Deregulated Pharmaceutical Retailer,” he said. It was true; I wanted a dealer and I found Cinna trustworthy, who owed me his life and his livelihood. Once I got my fingers around the edges of his ego, he was a business partner more loyal than a fyrd captain. “Do you know it’s twenty years ago almost to the day, when you appeared with a handful of draft notices,” he continued. Worry lines on his forehead came and went as he talked. “Nailed on the lifeboat house door—lists of families to contribute to Tornado’s division. My mother wanted to hide us but I knew how relentless you were. She showed us a trapdoor to the coal cellar, but, god-who-left-us, what use is that against someone who knows every Trick In The Book?”
    I swirled beeswing in the glass, embarrassed on his behalf that he would rather hide than fight.
    “You took my brother. He was killed at Lowespass. All they could find of him to bury was a handful of feathers; the Insects cemented the rest into their Wall.”
    “Many people die in Lowespass.”
    Cinna grimaced and picked at one of the spots around his mouth. “Jant, I remember we had to line up in the courtyard—you were there checking names off on a list. You looked younger than me and I hated you, the way schoolkids hate swots. You looked as calm as a merchant checking sacks of corn, a buyer at a livestock market—”
    “As if I’d done it a thousand times before.”
    “Yeah. It made me want to strangle you, and you looked so frail I was sure I could. My brother knew what I was thinking; he elbowed me in the ribs and said Comet’s Two Hundred Years Old! Knowing that I wouldn’t stand a chance. Then he climbed onto the cart bench with the rest of the stevedores and that was the last I ever saw of him. Taken away to the General Fyrd. Every one of the five hundred men in his morai were slaughtered.
    “Well now I’ve witnessed Insects flatten Awndyn I can understand why we need to keep the Front—but back then I’d never seen one and it took me fifteen years to recover. Your frozen age is so misleading, it makes us mortals underestimate you. You can run faster than a deer, but you just looked like a Bloody College Kid.
    “We know the effect scolopendium has on the people who trade it, let alone the users. I haven’t sought friendship or lovers—just money—thinking that at any second the governor’s fyrd could snatch me away.”
    I glanced up from the mediocre port. Cinna was not known to be a man of great imagination. “What are your plans?” I asked. I knew he would find it hard to relinquish his beautiful suite. He had become too much of a bon viveur. He was too fat to return to life as a sailor, honest or otherwise. “Are you holding any now?”
    “I’ve a quarter kilo of Galt White to sell, and that will be The Last Deal. Maybe.”
    “Let me take it off your hands.”
    “Oh ho!” He pointed a finger over the top of his wine glass. “I thought there was another reason for this visit! Once an addict, always an