Eagles and Swans
Chapter 17: Counterplays
Ruthenia had begun to sense a shift in the classroom around her—in the kinds of furtive stares and open glares she saw. Before this, there had been an air of affable annoyance, much like one might express towards a tired joke.
Now, things had begun to reek of a deep wrongness. Even Alacero and Calan seemed less inclined to laugh with her. And for days, she could not name exactly what that was.
It was only as Hollia and Ruthenia quietly finished their Physics report and submitted it, and she caught the wary glances from her friend, that she began to recognise what that might be.
“What's going on?” she murmured.
Hollia drew her arms close and wrapped her hands around her elbows. “It's been…spooky,” she whispered. “I worry that I've gotten in too deep. Two of my friends were talking about how they didn't understand why anyone associated with you. And it felt like they were trying to tell me something, without saying it to my face.”
A dreadful chill raked down Ruthenia's back. She had thought as much: that her classmates had been spreading something about her among themselves. “I'm sorry I put you in that position,” she mumbled. “You don't have to spend time with me.”
“No, it's not your fault,” Hollia said, trying at a smile. “I won't let that break our friendship, never.”
But now Ruthenia noticed every time Holliia fell silent and flinched away whenever a classmate walked by.
Two evenings later, the Centrelight ferry terminal fell from the sky. It was all across the front page of the Herald, photographs of the wreckage and stories of the heroes who had triggered an evacuation at the very first warning sign.
The morning after, Tanio sat at the breakfast table with the papers laid out, the wreckage of broken platforms and pillars out on display. And he wore a strange, conspiratorial grin on his face.
Dropping into the chair facing him, Ruthenia picked up a slice of bread and began to butter it suspiciously. “Why are you smiling like that?” she muttered.
“Well! You see, I have much to apprise you of.”
She munched on the corner of her sandwich. “Go on.”
“You remember the spooled Thread you got me?”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, thanks to your help, the project is complete and submitted.” He dusted his hands.
Her eyebrows arched. “Submitted? To whom?”
“The Astran government,” Tanio declared. “I sent my prototype to the Ministry of Maritime Defence last night.”
Ruthenia instantly put two and two together. “Tanio!” she shouted. “Was it powered by Thread? Was it a machine powered by Thread that you sent to the government?”
“Now, now, Ruth.” He lifted his hands appeasingly. “Let me explain. As you may recall, the government is having trouble formulating an answer to the threat in the Deeps. This is partly owing to two things: the exclusion zone they drew up, and their decision to reject the chemists' results. They put themselves in a double bind. They cannot, with their current instruments, investigate the Deeps without either sending a person there—transgressing their exclusion zone—or accepting the results produced by the convicted research team. Now, if only there were a way to do so without flouting any of these rules.”
She folded her arms. “And? What was your ingenious workaround?”
“In two words: flying camera. In more words: a camera that flies along a pre-orchestrated route, without a bearer or a pilot, and takes photographs of the surface of the sea.”
Ruthenia's face went blank. “It's—that's—a flying machine.”
“Yes! It's a flying machine powered by Thread. And it is Thread machine that flies.”
“So, is that doubly illegal? Or is that meant to cancel out? I—” She threw up her hands. “Tanio, why are you doing this?”
He shrugged. “I smelled desperation coming out of the administration,” he replied. “And now seemed like the right moment to give them the answer to their every woe.”
“It's still a flying machine! You know they can twist the law to do their bidding if they decide, right? Aren’t you scared?”
He watched his assistant over the rim of his glasses. “Of course I am,” he said. “But this is the move I am choosing to play, with the information I have.” He smiled idly at his breakfast. “Well, too late for second thoughts. Without a direct channel to persuade them on that matter, it's all out of my hands.”
A flying machine to sthe government! This man is off his rocker.
The bubbling dread of Tanio's revelation did not settle even as Ruthenia halfheartedly landed in school, nor was it assuaged as she sat glazed-eyed through the droning classes.
What could she possibly do? She knew the state's appetite for capital punishment had waned since her parents' execution, and the worst that Tanio could land in was jail. But even the thought of jail, for however long, paralysed her with fear.
It was pondering all this, with her squashed lunch bag in hand, that Ruthenia wandered out into the hallway to the lift. She only became conscious of her surroundings again when she heard voices in the lobby.
Iurita's clique. Dread welled up, quickly followed on its heels by a red-hot anger. Inhaling deeply, she pushed onward.
Iurita lifted her head at the sound of Ruthenia's footsteps, casting a glance over her shoulder. When their eyes met, she held up a hand to silence her crew. “Look who's here,” she drawled. “The wannabe rebel!”
Averting their eyes, steeling her resolve, Ruthenia walked into their midst. But she could sense them bristling around her, their hackles raised—Caela, Magnis, and a boy and a girl perhaps from the year below. A flock of vultures circling for carrion.
Iurita was the daughter of the mayor of Astra's largest township. She had always had them in a chokehold, in part because she acted the part. All her training made itself felt, even in the school halls: in her posture, her poise, her manicured words.
Their ringmaster murmured, “Miss Cendina, surely you know your place.” Ruthenia could hear the bloodlust glinting on the harsh edges of their answering laughter. “You won't be bringing your filth into the lift with us. So wait your turn.”
“Who's letting you make rules about school property?” Ruthenia snarled before she could check herself.
“Ooh, feeling bitey, are we? Careful, you're the one playing on our turf,” Iurita murmured, clicking her tongue. “You think having a celebrity mum gives you a right to talk back, do you? Well, let me remind you: she was no better than the scum in Astra's sewers.”
Ruthenia could feel her jaw trembling with how hard she was clenching it. It was a losing fight from the start, always would be, and she knew this. But if there was one thing to which she would always hold true, it was that she wouldn't lie down and take it.
“I'm sorry, Mayoress in Training,” she growled, “I didn't know we were comparing parents! But at least my mother actually made a mark on Astra.”
There were open hisses from the crowd. “Oh, is that so!” Iurita replied, eyes flaring. “Well, why don't you tell us all about how great of a mother she was, and how much she cared about you.”
Ruthenia wrestled with the words, fought to bar them from her thoughts. She knew what happened when she let them in.
“Nothing to say?” the girl continued. “I thought so. Because only one of our mothers actually raised her child.”
By then, a choking fog of rage had drowned Ruthenia's thoughts, pushing her, pushing her inch by inch towards the edge, as she tried to coalesce a retort before the tears could form—
But before she did, a voice cut in from behind her. “Iurita. This is disgraceful.”
The fog evaporated. She froze, everything too bright as her gaze drifted over her shoulder, though she knew Aleigh by his voice. He was looking at Iurita with a face of bitter cruelty that she had only ever seen when he'd been about to eviscerate her in front of Mister Caeben—a smile, almost.
“How embarrassing,” he went on, “that a woman of such lofty status should stoop so low.”
“But, no, Your Highness,” Iurita sputtered, suddenly dropping her poise. “You heard what she said to me first.”
“Oh, she hit you first? Listen to yourself, making a petulant toddler's rebuttal. Now, unless you're about to tell me Ruthenia picked this fight on her own, then save whatever scraps of dignity you have left, and begone.”
For an unbearable half-minute, Iurita seethed and shook like a pot boiling over, and her gaggle of friends pulled away in fright. “Ruthenia, how dare you…I'm not done with you!” she snarled through her teeth, but only thundered past them, shoving her aside by the shoulder. The rest of her clique quietly followed, each firing her a glare.
Then, the lobby was empty. Ruthenia stood there for a minute, trembling in her shoes while their footsteps faded from earshot. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“No need—take it as reparations for all the times I did that to you.” He strode passed her. The lift doors clattered open. “Ruthenia, this isn't the street—the rules are different. If they try that again, your safest answer is to keep silent and walk the other way.”
Ruthenia could still feel the rage and grief and confusion pumping through her veins, booming in her ears. “Easier said than done,” she replied, then followed him wordlessly into the lift. But Iurita's words had sunk their hooks into her, and she felt like she could shatter in a breeze.
*
Spirit leaden with the desire to never be perceived again, Ruthenia dropped in at the milkshake stand. Carving an apple while she drank, Imessa asked after the state of affairs in school.
The exhaustion of the afternoon descended upon her like a heavy blanket. “Awful. Couldn't be worse,” she said in a monotone. “I feel like my classmates are looking for reasons to hate me.”
“Well, I think you're quite likeable,” replied Imessa. “I’m sure they only hate an idea of you that has no basis in reality. Those Central Circle kids, they don't know what to do around people who are different from them.” The woman flicked some peel off the fruit. “You can’t help who you are, and in some ways, they can't help who they are, either. Blinkered to the world that you have seen the darkest pits of.”
“Sometimes, I feel like I've seen nothing, either,” she replied, lowering the glass to the countertop.
“Well, I hope you don't let them get to you. The world deserves you at your greatest.”
Ruthenia continued mulling over the afternoon as she climbed onto the umbrella. But instead of beginning homeward, she made a detour towards the New Town.
Ruthenia descended between the walls of the station and bank to find her gang preparing a dinner of stale meat and bread on a mock table raised on rocks, huddled in the dark barely touched by the sputtering streetlamps.
“Ruth, just in time!” exclaimed Gordo with a big wave, smile gleaming in the dark. “Could you light us a fire?”
She picked up an old steel scrap from the pile, snapped a thin plank from a shattered crate, and gestured for Tante’s lighter. He offered it grudgingly. Throwing it in the curve of the steel, she lit the wood and put it on the ground a foot away.
“What’s been keeping you?” asked Hyder, grey eyes glimmering in the firelight.
“All sorts of problems cropping up,” she replied. “My schoolmates hate me. And my boss may or may not have just broken the law.” She folded her arms. “But I'm not here to talk about him. How have you been doing?”
“Pretty decently, actually,” said Hyder, chewing on a stick of beef. “Reida’s been donating her spare change lately, which is awfully nice of her. I think it’s supposed to mean something?”
Den smiled. “It means she’s warming up,” he replied. “Her prospects within my father’s news company are looking up. She’s all poised to take the reins now. If I could just win her over...”
Tante shook his head. “I’m telling you it’s a terrible idea, getting romance and grudges tangled up,” he said. “You’ll wind up losing both.”
Ruthenia frowned. “Gotta agree with Tante for once,” she muttered. “What would Reida think if she found out it was all about your feud with your father?”
“Oh? I never said it was about the company,” answered Den, hands up in an appeasing gesture. “It just so happens that a venture with her could yield multiple benefits. Which I’d be loath to pass over.”
“You’d better not toy with her,” replied Ruthenia in a low voice.
“She’s much too clever to be toyed with,” Hyder said with a grin.
“It’ll be a while yet, in any case,” Den went on. “She’s been resistant to my charms. Perhaps I should redouble my efforts.”
“Or maybe you’re getting too full of yourself,” sniffed Tante. “A silver tongue isn’t enough, you know. You’ve got to be good in bed. Walk your talk.”
Ruthenia munched on the stale jerky, listening idly as the conversation devolved into a debate about prowess in the bedroom. She watched Den and Tante fence with quips. The steel-scrap flame began to gutter, and their faces grew increasingly concealed in shadow, but the conversation did not end.
When, on finishing the little snack, Ruthenia stood to leave, she was met with a chorus of reluctant goodbyes. She arced out of the alley atop her umbrella, and flew away from the New Town through the deep blue night, staring behind her as the warm lights shrank into each other and pulled farther and farther away.