Eagles and Swans
Chapter 14: The Plea
July finally ended, ushering in the start of August in the first warm swell of spring. All over Astra, buds were answering to the warmth, turning public parks everywhere into festival grounds. The cherry blossoms were almost done with their season; they made their statements at crossroads near river bridges, flowering a last time before they lost their petals forever.
The First of August being widely regarded as the pinnacle of Spring, everyone was busying themselves with welcoming it. All about the Central Circle, the windows glowed in the evening, cooks whipping up dinners from the largest stock they'd had in months.
Every gaze out on the field seemed aglow as they flew between the towers practising the new technique of the day—the drop—although gazes were restless, darting every so often to the horizon. When at last the clanging of chimes announced the close of lessons, a murmur broke out and rippled across the field.
"Back, class!" Ms. Decanda's shout brought students soaring back across the field in droves. Bruises were nursed, stray petals brushed off clothes. “Good work! I saw some excellent dropping today. It’s a useful technique to know, especially if being knocked off your mount poses a serious threat to your safety.”
Ruthenia pouted. “You’ll get better,” said Hollia, patting her back.
“Flying just doesn't come naturally to me.”
Hollia smiled and shook her head. “You’ve made wonderful progress, for two years.”
The class began to dissipate in a clamour of conversation. “Flight classes are so unfair,” Ruthenia muttered. “They're rigged against me. I didn't grow up watching others do it.”
Her friend blinked back. “Your parents didn't...?” Then she halted, as if realising she might be treading fragile ground.
But Ruthenia only shook her head. “Why else do you think they were so enthused about their work?” Casting her gaze across the field, she groaned. “Do these people even understand how much easier they have it?”
But no one answered, and Hollia only sighed wordlessly.
Ruthenia sucked in a deep breath and turned to her friend. “Anyway...I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?”
“Take care, Ruth. You're doing amazing, and I mean it.”
*
The first thing Ruthenia did on entering Tanio’s house was to freeze in place. She sniffed the air.
"Seen the news?" Tanio's greeting was muffled by a mouthful of meat.
"The only news I care about is, what's for dinner?" She broke off into a dash, bounding into the kitchen, surveying the spread atop the stove. Tanio had arranged quite a feast (on Calied household standards): a dish of salad with white dressing and a pair of mugs filled with pulpy juice—but the highlight was the centrepiece: a black pan with three chicken patties on fried bread, all steaming hot.
"In memory of the First Coming, of course," said Tanio, following her to the kitchen. We can't eat something that belongs in the scrap pile, now, can we?"
"How did you do this?" she exclaimed, jabbing one patty with a fork. Before he answered, she was already chomping away at it.
"Well, you see, I bought the finest cookbook."
"So you admitted defeat!" she shouted, brandishing a fork at him.
"I suppose I did,” answered the boss with a shrug and a smile. While he opened the pantry, Ruthenia began to scarf the sandwich down, carrying her fruit juice to the living room. There, upon Tanio's coffee table, she glimpsed the headline he had left it open on.
Biochemistry laboratory faces lawsuit over illegal experiments
The Candelabra Biochemistry Laboratory has been prosecuted by the government, and its team are awaiting trial, following reports that they had undertaken field research within the disaster exclusion zone.
The government has made clear that these actions are against the law, and that no individual or organisation should be travelling through the exclusion zone until the crisis has passed. It assures the public that a task force is being assembled to deal with the matter.
“Make no mistake, it's all clergy-led,” declared Tanio, between crinkles of baking paper. “I have it on good word that they didn't just go out there: they actually solved it. They ascertained, with ninety-nine percent certainty, what the sea glitter is. It's Lilin. So of course, the government is sparing no expense in suppressing it.”
Ruthenia's brow furrowed. “Lilin? From the legend? I thought the Ihirin hated her.”
“No. They don't want her involvement known to the public,” Tanio answered. “They don't like what she signifies. Nor the fact she's becoming restless.”
“And they’d rather the disaster just went on?”
“Well, you heard them—they're putting together some sort of ‘task force,’” he replied.
“Hm. What I don't understand is, why now? She’s been there for three hundred years. Why should that be changing now?” Ruthenia frowned. The scales had not come off by themselves. But since Lilin was a deity, she could not possibly be dying, or in a state of infirmity.
It was only when Tanio began waving his hands at her that Ruthenia realised he had sat down in the armchair opposite her, dinner on his lap. “Wakey wakey,” he sang. “School getting to you? Or are you fantasising about some classmate or other?”
“What? Why's that your first thought?” she gasped, trying, and failing, to recall the contents of her prior thought.
“So, out with it. Who do you fancy, huh?”
Ruthenia groaned. “You’re the worst conversationalist, you know.”
“I’m trying, I'm trying,” answered Tanio appeasingly. “After all this time, I still haven't figured out how to be your guardian.”
“Well, then, don't,” she snapped.
Then they made an unspoken agreement to leave that subject behind. She finished up her dinner quietly but with relish, and this time remembered to thank Tanio for it. Despite all else, he had earned the gratitude.
Ruthenia lay awake in the humid night air, staring up at her inky black ceiling.
As she closed her eyes, her mind swam with warping visions. She barely wanted to know where dreaming would take her. But the images grew more viscous, more distinct, each time she closed her eyes, and she finally began to fall asleep.
Silver wings unfurled, splashed through the illusion so it turned into a thrashing sea. From them erupted the crackling roar of a storm.
She opened her eyes again, breathing deeply, skin cold as if she’d been running all the way from the coast.
A chill pierced her. She closed her eyes again, and at once began to drift in a haze of images. There was a gush of water in her ears, and the blackness cracked into pieces in her eyes, in a spine-tearing burst of lightning.
She could hardly think. A black chain burst through the sky, hurtling towards her, like the tip of an arrow.
It dove straight into her abdomen. She felt a great splitting in her core—and screamed, and gasped. Her throat was clawed by saltwater; only then was she aware that an ocean was all about her, tugging her feet downward.
She screamed again; it was an unfamiliar sound, almost as if she had forgotten it. Her throat hurt. In a blur of whites and blues, she was dragged, down, down, through a flurry of silver bubbles. Lightning netted across the waves again.
She thrashed, limbs breaking into a thousand pieces when they struck the sea—and her heart was seized, suddenly, by a sadness beyond her explaining.
How long is “forever”?
Forever ends, doesn’t it?
The silver wings were there, again—all about her, glinting through the storm—bloodied, featherless wings, beating uselessly against the currents.
She’d seen those wings before. Searching for a light somewhere. A path through the storm.
*
Ruthenia awakened to the sound of rain muttering gently outside. She glanced at the window, but all was a grey blur beyond the rectangle.
She stumbled across the bridge through the drizzle, and its swaying brought on such a wave of vertigo she almost slipped off. She found herself in a seat soon enough, dampening the cushion as she listened to the sloshing of Tanio in the bathing room. It made her think of the tides, and again she felt the world give an enormous lurch.
It was fifteen minutes before she regained enough steadiness to find her breakfast.
“Bad night?” Tanio asked as he reappeared at the foot of the stairs, buttoning his shirt.
Ruthenia paused mid-breakfast, and felt her vision swim again. “Nightmares,” she answered.
“I had those myself. Oceans and storms.” His gaze grew cold. “Well, definitely deity business, then.” Her palms grew clammy. Tanio drew his lips into a thin line. “I know I was being vague before, but I would like you to hurry with that spooled Thread. I need it as soon as ever.”
She raised an eyebrow. Whatever this had to do with the nightmares, she wasn't liking it. “Whatever you say,” she replied.
With the end of the drizzle, the morning birds began to call out at each other across the river. Ruthenia returned to the shed, the last of her dizziness slowly deserting her. Ripples swept the wheat stalks thrusting up from the earth. The colours of the wild grass had changed too—the strips between agricultural fields had turned into mottled patchworks of flowers.
Without closing the door, Ruthenia noticed the glow of a new message on her messenger. Plucking it from the tabletop, she saw a cursive hand that was starting to grow familiar.
“I hereby request your audience at teatime tomorrow, at the corner of the mezzanine.”
“I hereby request your audience,” she muttered in a mocking grumble. Nevertheless, the timing was impeccable, so she replied:
Sure, I’ll see you there.
Come the Thursday tea break, Ruthenia was at the cafeteria as promised. She was well-practised with the route by now, to the staircase to the mezzanine, then up the steps two at a time. Levitating beside a window nearly two stories tall, the mezzanine enjoyed a panoramic view of the meadows and hillocks beneath the granite bridges of the Central Circle School.
Ruthenia paused at the top of the staircase, taking a deep breath of the sweet spring air as the wind whipped through her hair. The gentle rustle of grass in the distance accompanied chatter over clinking spoons. Although the crowd was thinner here, every table was full, except for the one at the far corner, where a lone figure sat reading as usual. Shaking her head, she wove between the tables.
Only several seconds after she slapped the tabletop did Aleigh finally lift his gaze from the pages of his novel.
“Please, sit,” he said, gesturing at the seat opposite him.
While he shut his novel and laid it on the tabletop, Ruthenia dropped onto the bench and began unwrapping Tanio’s pie. The smell of burnt fish hit her, and she frowned. One step forward, two steps back. She glanced across the table at Aleigh’s own blueberry cake (surely known by a fancier name) and shook her head.
“Now, regarding the procurement of spooled Thread,” he said, “I will be able to meet you on Thursday morning if that suits you as well.”
“Thursday morning is good to me, I have nothing else going on,” she said through the chewed remains of an overcooked fish pie. She held her breath and swallowed.
“Perfect. Please meet me at the old palace gates at nine o’clock with at least thirty argents on your person.”
At the mention of the palace, Ruthenia frowned. “No thank you. I don’t want to meet the guards.”
He blinked at her. “I will ask them not to bar your entry.”
Her voice grew insistent. “Let’s meet outside the palace. Please.”
Aleigh must have understood something in her plea that even she did not. He sighed. “We shall meet at Helika Plaza, then. But with haste. I don't like crowds.”
Ruthenia let out the breath she’d been holding. “Nine o’clock on Thursday at Helika Plaza. Got it.”
“You aren't…going to write that down?”
“No, I just remember my appointments. Don't other people do that?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You have either either very few obligations or an excellent memory.”
“Both,” she answered, smirking.
He nodded. “Fair enough, you are dismissed,” he said.
She gritted her teeth. “I was going to leave, but now I'm not.”
But Aleigh did not reply. He had picked up his novel—titled The Temper of Darkness, with a suitably dark cover trimmed in gold—and opened it to the page where he had stopped. With a sigh, Ruthenia resumed contending with Tanio’s “pie,” gagging with every mouthful or spitting out bones. Every minute or so, between mouthfuls, she glanced over at her companion to find him ever more engrossed in his novel.
“You’re not very sociable, are you?” she said.
“Your observation has been noted,” he replied without looking up.
“I’m sure you’d have more friends if you tried being a little nicer,” she said. “You’re the brother of the Arcane King. They'd be throwing themselves at you.”
“You misunderstand. I have taken deliberate steps to prevent that.”
Ruthenia folded her arms on the tabletop. “Why?”
He paused for several seconds. She thought for a moment that he might retort impatiently, or not answer at all, but then he said, “I want nothing to do with sycophants.”
She frowned. “What’s a sycophant?”
“One who courts my goodwill for their benefit and nothing more.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Is everyone like that?”
“It comes with the title.”
“Well, that's just dumb,” she said. “But typical of Central Circle students, I guess.”
The Arcane Prince eyed her in bewilderment, but seemed to decide against advancing the conversation. Once again he buried his face inside The Temper of Darkness. Shrugging, Ruthenia resumed toiling through her singularly horrible pie, closing her eyes with every breeze as thin clouds crossed the sun. But now and then she noticed Aleigh was glancing over the top of his book, frowning deeper each time.
“What are you eating?” he finally cut in.
Ruthenia glanced at the last mottled morsel of her meal, then spat out a bone. “Honestly, I don't know.”