No Present Like Time Read Online Free Page A

the top of the Northwest Tower on the outer wall because I found it easy to launch myself from its height. My window gave a view for a hundred kilometers of the river, the playing fields and white goalposts; red dock stalks sticking up from the green rough ground of Binnard meadow. Tern has never persuaded me to move back into the palace.
    Tern shivered and I reached out with a wing to give her a pat on the shoulder. Tern’s wings are much smaller than mine, as are those of all Awians, because although they are the only winged people, they are flightless. I am the sole person ever to be able to fly. As I am half Rhydanne my light, long-limbed build and mountainlander’s fitness, when added to Awian ancestry on my father’s side, gave me my ability.
    Hand in hand Tern and I walked down an enclosed passage over a flying buttress that spanned from the outside wall to the palace. It was a narrow, vertiginous bridge that soared over the roof of the Great Hall, stretching thin and tenuous in the air. Below us, we could only see the glow of lamps in niches outside the hall and on four stone steps that rose to double doors with opulent paneling. The deeply carved decoration inside its triangular pediment was even more ornate: two flamboyant white Awian eagles flanked the Castle’s sun emblem.
    Our buttress walkway crossed above the head of the marble statue that topped the pediment, a slender woman bearing a sword and shield, her luxuriously feathered wings outstretched. Sometimes I land on the roof, providing a sudden perspective—she is twice my size. The hall was built by architects from Micawater, and Lightning is the only Eszai who would remember what the statue actually symbolizes. It could be anything: freedom, justice, the wet dreams of a hundred generations of Awian adolescents.
    As I walked with Tern I thought the whole building seemed smug, as if it had soaked up the atmosphere of too many whispered indiscretions at formal parties and was simply waiting for the next.
    We descended to a small cloister. A colonnaded corridor ran around the misty lawn; we walked along two sides. Outside the Throne Room its stone ceiling was elaborately carved with fan vaulting; bosses hung down like leafy stalactites. Instead of curtains the drapes that framed the Throne Room portal were sculpted from amber.
    The Throne Room seemed even more massive after the narrow narthex. Tern and I walked in down the long aisle past the screen and bowed to the Emperor. The Emperor San was first to be present, according to his custom. This was an important occasion, so he wore the tall spired platinum crown that Awia presented to him when the First Circle was formed. San normally wore no crown at all. We settled on one of the front benches, because they were closest to the sunburst throne and I wanted to hear what Wrenn had to say.
    On this side of the screen, the benches faced each other and were gently stepped as in an auditorium. I watched in silence as the other Eszai walked in and gradually filled the seats. Most of the women gazed at Lightning, but some looked at me. I doubt that I cut a fine figure at court, since the fashion’s long gone for looking pale and disheveled, but there’s no denying the effect I have on them. I may not command the battlefield but I can put the best spin on the outcome. I might not be a keen huntsman but I can gut a weekend newspaper. At sparring, I prefer words to swords, and I used to shoot drugs not arrows, but I’m free of all that now.
    Wrenn entered the far end of the Throne Room, tiny below the huge rose window. It was symbolically important that he came in alone. He looked all around nervously and jumped as the doors closed behind him with an enormous crash. Then he began to walk, stiffly and obviously aching all over, toward us down the length of the scarlet carpet that was far more terrifying than any fencing piste. The Imperial Fyrd archers on the gallery with their pulley compound bows watched him