Eagles and Swans
Chapter 12: Declarations
Ruthenia was woken by the glow of the early sun through the eastern window, to the muffled noise of the river through the morning mist.
Crossing for her morning duties, she paused at the centre of the bridge beneath the quiet grey sky to glance over its edge, feet cold on the damp planks. Thin mist sat upon the wheat fields, rifted by the River Colura.
Tanio’s living room was empty. Some papers remained, evidence of its previous occupant. In the silence, the light filtered blue through the windows, and the tiniest sounds sifted into prominence: the rustle of the curtains, the chatter of grassland cicadas in the dew.
Ruthenia found her boss asleep at his study table upstairs, head in a nest of paper scraps, a lamp burning low with a secretive hiss. She passed the door by without uttering a word.
When Ruthenia soared into the New Town alley, she almost fell off her umbrella when she found it stuffed to its mouth with crates. “Guys!” she shouted as her feet met the ground, racing around the crates only to find yet more blocking her way. “Do you want the police smoking us out? What’s happening, and what’s with this junk?”
“She’s ‘ere!” Gordo’s head peeked out from behind a stack of crates. “This junk, it’s our fake blood.”
“Fake...what?”
“Yes, Ruthenia,” answered a calmer voice from behind her. She turned. Den had emerged from the street, boots gleaming beneath the hem of a dark longcoat, his gaze pierced hers. “We succeeded in our ambush, and intend to decorate the palace in very befitting style. In commemoration of the lives they have so lovingly dispatched over the years.”
Ruthenia stared. “Well, the symbolism won’t go missed,” she replied, then turned to resume her inspection—only to be interrupted again.
“Ruth!” Not five seconds after the exclamation did Hyder leap from hiding, grinning as if he’d found treasure. He slowed to a nimble tip-toe as he approached the village of crates, unlacing the bag in his hand. “Just in time for our breakfast. Care to join us?”
“Yeah, I have the morning to spare.”
They exchanged greetings and jabs as Hyder passed bread and butter around, which did not smell nearly as fresh as the boy was insisting. Tante was nowhere to be seen, which brought her a smile mid-conversation.
“How’s everything with you, Ruth?” asked Hyder between indulgent mouthfuls, a hand cupped below his chin to catch the falling crumbs.
She grinned, shrugging. “Not much is happening,” she said. “Tanio is as infuriating as ever. I helped fix an engine yesterday. But the pay has been good.” She glanced aside. “Maybe too good.”
He grinned. “I'm just glad you aren't starving anymore.” The words twanged her heart.
As they talked about their plans, she stared absently at the crates, wondering how they had transported so many at once. She wished them luck, and when she departed, their faces were glowing with excitement.
Ruthenia took the usual route southward, meeting the River Colura mid-meander and following it home. When she arrived at Tanio’s porch, only his study light glowed through the twilight murk. The creak of the door resounded through the blue shadows. Patting the surface of the dining table, she found no dinner.
She tiptoed into the kitchen, paused at the counter and lowered the electric switch, the stove light flickering on. She found raw meat in the pantry, a few eggs, well-used butter, and a packet of stale bread. Then she yanked the stove lid open and got her hands sooty searching for the matches.
As it turned out, cooking was not the simple matter of dumping food on the grill and applying heat to it. She could not prevent the melting butter dripping between the bars, sending a huge flare up that threw her sprawling backward on the floor.
Within the minute, her dinner was as burnt as any of Tanio’s daily presentations, and she fished the pieces out with the tongs, sweating and swearing in the heat. Like guardian, like ward, she supposed.
Retreating to her shed with her dinner, all covered in the stench of soot, Ruthenia lit the kerosene lamp and settled herself into her chair with her library book.
The lights blinked out a few minutes after eleven o’clock. She glanced out the window, and saw the faint but constant glow of lamplight in Tanio’s study. By then she had passed the two-hundred-page mark of Constructing Compact Engines, and yet another of her dog-eared notebooks was beginning to fall apart at the spine.
The Saturday morning cold was pierced by the shrieks of river birds. The rustling reeds were just beginning to sprout out tall, lining the banks with thickening green borders.
Tanio paced furiously across his porch, hands clutching his head. “I’m so sorry I forgot dinner,” he muttered as he passed Ruthenia, meeting her eye so she could not ignore the bruise-black rings around them. “I’m sorry, I was occupied, I forgot.”
“It’s fine, I made something for myself,” Ruthenia answered with a shrug. She occupied herself with staring at her umbrella, point pivoting on the porch’s granite floor.
Sharmon emerged after ten minutes from the grey distance, his messy coat fluttering behind him. He hurtled to a stop beside the porch with a cheerful “good day!” waving them aboard—but his geniality went unappreciated, for Tanio only nodded dully, retreating to the back-left corner of the table without so much as a greeting.
“Don’t mind him,” murmured Ruthenia as she stepped aboard after him. “He was up all night designing some contraption or other.”
“Oh, no, I know.” He grinned. “Seen it all before.”
They commenced their flight, although it quickly became obvious that Sharmon wasn’t doing all that well at the head of the table. Ruthenia braced herself against the wind, clinging to its edges as it swerved wildly through the grey. “Sharmon!” she yelled. “What’s happened to your flying?”
The man shouted something about the Threads, but she was far too busy trying not to roll off the side to catch his exact words.
Eldon welcomed them at his balcony door, escorting them to the basement where the clangs of iron against steel alerted them to the intern brothers’ presence long before they had left the study.
Working amid the gurgle and hiss of steam pipes, Ruthenia quickly grew soaked in sweat, her palms red from yanking and wrenching. Work was dull except on the occasions when one of the brothers used the wrong bolt or wrench and she found herself delivering grumbling reprimand.
She caught snatches of the conversation between Tanio and Sharmon. None of it held her long, until the chemist chimed in with a revelation most bewildering.
“Ah, did I mention? The Chemistry labs have determined the origin of the ocean glitter,” he said. “Despite the clergy trying to lock down the case.”
Tanio raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
Sharmon nodded, voice dropping to a whisper. “Some of them ran tests that we’re better off not discussing in the open. It was the Candelabra biochemistry lab that first confirmed the identity of the glittery silt: they’re fragmented fish scales.”
“Fish scales!” Tanio exclaimed. By then, his gape had transformed into a grin. “Solid, examinable fish scales!”
“They have yet to identify the species,” added Sharmon. “Their chemical composition is novel. Our catalogues yield no answers…” All the same, he folded his arms with a self-satisfied smile. “We’ll see how the clergy likes that.”
By the time they returned, a windless, lazy afternoon had settled upon Beacon Way, and with it balmy air and a whole lot of sweating.
Even so, Ruthenia failed to change out of her clothes before falling asleep at her desk. She woke feeling filthy, and with a wide yawn, she shuffled to her wardrobe and took her pick of clothes, watching the sun filter through the dust inside the shed.
It was impossible to miss the smell of blooming spring, thick with nectar and pollen; Ruthenia paused momentarily on the far side of the plank bridge and raised her face to the air above Tanio’s porch, taking a good whiff of the heady scent.
After another dinner that wasn’t as outrageously terrible as usual, she returned to her shed and took another stab at the reading Legend. Her eyes laboured over the text, suddenly so unbearably tiny, and she made it twenty pages before sleep became too heavy on her eyelids.
She turned in at nine-thirty, snuffing out her desk lamp with a snick. The light continued to glow through Tanio’s study window as she drifted into slumber.