Eagles and Swans
Chapter 26: The Coiled Naga
At the end of work on Saturday, before Eldon had taken them to the dining hall, Ruthenia took her things and snuck away. She soared across fields till they segued into the grey patchwork of roads that was the New Town. Amid the afternoon roadway bustle of chugging engines and clattering wheels, she dodged smoke columns, surveying the ground for the old place of her childhood.
She knew it almost immediately, the dark spot in the landscape, two streets from the eastern plaza; descending towards its rooftop she was filled up with a strange bitter nostalgia. An image flashed in her eyes: the Candle Plaza, the line of guards. She wrenched her mind away from the thought.
She pulled a sandwich she had made herself from her bag, munching on the cured ham and soggy vegetables as she sprinted up the pavement in front of the smoke-stained laboratory block. The imprints of the old vines long torn off pockmarked the facade, the cornice overhanging ornate Belan windows. Reida was waiting at the front stairs, between a pair of white Astran pillars that Ruthenia had once loved. The doors were shut, a shiny chain strung up across it, and the steps were dusty with soot.
Reida was dressed too well for this part of the town, coat dress over petticoats, ribbons in her hair, and her flying suitcase stood on its side beneath her palm. “Is there another entrance?” she asked when Ruthenia appeared.
She cast a glance about, before laying eyes upon the circular drain cover by the pavement. “No doors, but there were a couple of drains in the basement that were large enough to climb through. I doubt they’d be able to fit an entire gang through those, though.”
“It’s worth a try.” They approached the roadside drain cover, Ruthenia squatting to grip the rings with both hands. She straightened slowly to a stand, and the cover slid out with her, making her palms burn.
With a sigh of relief, she dropped the grimy thing with a clatter. The noise echoed down the dark shaft. Then she dusted her hands on her pants while Reida sank to her knees and peered inside.
Her head rose. “Are you armed?” she asked. Ruthenia nodded, slipping the fruit knife, wrapped in a dishcloth, out of her bag to show her. Lifting a hand, Reida began to whirl her fingers about, a tiny loop of light materialising upon her palm. “If anything happens, we bargain. No running or fighting; if this outfit is illegal they would want nothing more than to ensure our silence. I know enough Weaving to make a flimsy net. The knife is a last resort.”
The woman seemed to be saying more than she knew. Dread glittered in her dark brown eyes. With a nod and a pat on the forearm, Ruthenia slid onto the first rung of the ladder, and began her climb, the dark, watery gullet swallowing her.
There was no sound but the sound of carriages chugging overhead, and the gentle splash of drainwater slopping at the bottom of the ladder, smelling of dampness and scum. Ruthenia guided herself down by touch alone, and glanced downward every few seconds. Outside of the rippling reflection of the hole above, nothing else was visible. She shivered.
The Thread light followed Reida in. As her companion approached, certain features of the nondescript black were revealed: a sloshing stream of water, the depth indiscernible, and holes along the walls of the underground canal, spewing water out.
Ruthenia tested the depth of the water first, lowering her left foot until the slurry engulfed her shoe halfway up the heel. Water soaked in. She cursed. Then her foot met the drain bed. “It’s shallow enough to walk in,” she called upward. “But your socks will be sodden at the end of the trip.”
“Secrets are worth a pair of smelly socks,” Reida replied, bringing the light with her while Ruthenia stepped off the last rung, her right foot claimed by the waters.
They paused and fell silent. The Thread light flashed across the water, lighting a patch of the far wall.
“There,” said Reida, pointing at the part of the wall where a circular outlet about two feet up opened into the main one. Splashing through the drainwater, they climbed into the branching way, Ruthenia giving Reida a hand up.
The ensuing drain was barely tall enough for their heads, and the water was no more than a puddle deep. They scurried along through the damp depths, hands on the sides.
Halfway down the tunnel, Ruthenia paused. A flicker of firelight lit the curve of the drain. “There’s someone there,” she whispered, tilting to a side with all her weight on one hand so Reida could peer over her shoulder. “They’ve been doing something under the lab.”
“Shush.” Then they went silent again, and although nothing seemed amiss at first, Ruthenia slowly began to realise that the sound of chugging was louder than it had been before, and that it filled the dim little channel inside which they stood.
“They’re using the lab machines,” she muttered. “I can’t bleeding believe it. How did no one realise?” She turned to look Reida in the eye. “Let’s go ask them what it’s all about.”
“Be careful. They’re probably armed.”
As they approached, they saw that the glow of flame was hidden around another bend. Their paces quickened. Scraps of metal and paper lay discarded in the water, churned up from the bed as they splashed through. Then they came upon wall paintings, which Reida paused to lift her Thread torch to. No Trespassing, read one. Ruthenia sniffed. “We’re not the ones trespassing,” she muttered.
“Who are you?”
Both were startled out of the water. Feet came stomping down the turning. The two glanced at each other and Reida crushed her Thread light in her fist. Ruthenia began reaching through the folds of her bag for her knife, halted only by her companion’s glare and a subtle shake of her head.
Nodding, she let her hand drop from her bag, and they turned to meet the newcomer as he emerged from the light at the bend.
He was a hulking man with a shaven head, his right leg wooden from the knee. Even though he was almost a silhouette with the light to his back, Ruthenia could make out his clothing. The shirt on his back was patched so many times one almost could not tell which fabric was the original. On his waist hung a belt, and on that belt hung a gleaming Ordiva, just like the one Ruthenia had found on the boy that day. Her ears roared.
“Get out!” he shouted, with a shooing gesture. “Get out or I’ll put metal in you!”
Ruthenia could feel her breath quickening by the second.
“We aren’t here to give you away,” Reida shouted down the waterway. “We just wanted to know why there was noise coming from the building—”
“I don’t care why you’re here. Back to the top with you!” In a fluid motion he plucked the gun from the belt and jabbed it in their direction, cocking it with a click. At the sound, fear snatched Ruthenia bodily, squeezing gasp after gasp out of her. “You have a minute to scarper.”
“No. No,” she only just managed. “This place was my home before you even thought to come here. I know this place better than you. Don’t keep me out.”
The man stepped forward with narrowing eyes, gun still raised. “You’re a scientist?”
“My parents were!” she replied. “In fact, my mother Lita Kyril was the last head of this lab!”
It took about five seconds for the words to register as a widening of eyes. “That's why you look so familiar,” the man breathed. His revolver barrel wavered. “Ruthenia Cendina?”
“Oh, you know me, good!” Ruthenia replied, heart pounding in her throat.
A change was coming over his gaze, like a thawing of ice. He studied her face as if he might find her name written in her features. “Why are you here?” he asked blankly. “Are you here to join us?”
“I’m here to find out where these guns are coming from,” she answered. “And why, specifically, they’re coming out of my parents’ lab.”
The Ordiva had vanished, and the man’s frown with it. “Ruthenia,” he said, tucking the revolver in its makeshift holster. He strode forward through the murk, swinging with a subtle limp. “I’m so pleased to welcome you. I am Greso. Please—you must come with me to see the rest. They would love to meet you.”
At those words, Ruthenia felt the heat and bravado drain from her. “Really? I mean, of course, but—”
Without answering, he waved for them to follow. Reida nodded in her direction before following him. With a frown, she followed suit.
“We knew you were our ally from the very moment we heard of you,” Greso said as they passed into the firelight and rounded the bend. “How delighted we were to hear of the king soiled by his own riches, in his own palace.”
“Whoa, I didn’t mean—” Reida shook her head, a trace of a smile tugging on the corner of her mouth. “Actually, maybe I did.”
They stopped inside a grimy stone chamber lit by kerosene lamps on makeshift metal-strip hooks. Six drainpipes gaped in the walls, wide enough to crawl through. But only one of them released a narrow trickle today; the rest were dry and caked with sedimentary stalactites.
And covering almost every inch of the damp floor, and stuffed into some of the larger pipes, were crates laden with glittering gun parts, wood and brass peeking from beneath the covers. Bent screws and barrels lay discarded in puddles on the ground.
Ruthenia opened her mouth. “Ihir burn me,” she said under her breath, eyes darting about. “You’re making them. You’ve been making them yourself.”
“We have our allies,” said Greso, a smile in his voice. “It’s gunpowder we have trouble with. And that’s what we’re under a lab for.”
“What for?” asked Ruthenia, though she had an inkling as to the answer.
Greso paused, a hand on the handle of the narrow old access door, its base already rotten to fibres. “These guns aren’t just for us. They’re for the town.”
All at once, comprehension dawned upon her. Again she gaped. “Rebels?” He nodded, shoulders squared with pride. Then she frowned. “I don’t think they’re using them the way you want them to.”
“Of course not!” answered Greso. “Better an unruly town than a town in chains.”
Ruthenia pursed her lips. “How long have you been here?” she asked.
The man grinned. “Little more than a year.”
“I leave for two years, and you guys come up with—” she spread her arms— “with this.” She was no stranger to secret basement projects, this put all others to shame.
“This is quite special, indeed,” murmured Reida.
The door handle screeched. It swung inward to reveal a dank staircase, lit flickering orange, as with the chamber below. The rhythmic clack of Greso’s wooden leg on the steps echoed up the stairwell. The sounds of lab machinery, and the ever-growing swell of chatter, rose into audibility.
The access staircase ended in an alcove of a room Ruthenia recognised by the low hum and clatter of machinery as the ball mill room. The air was humid and it smelled of something they shouldn’t be breathing.
In the corner, watching over the nearest machines, sat a woman chewing leaves. She made the barest effort to lift the head to greet Greso—but on seeing the two accompanying him, she straightened.
“Who’s that you have with you, Greso? I know her face,” she said, pointing a finger at Ruthenia. “Nudge my memory, will you?”
Greso cast a glance backward. “She’s the one who threw wine at the Arcane King.”
“Oh, fancy seeing you here!” the woman exclaimed, spitting leaves into her clay pot and breaking into a grin. “Why do you grace us with a visit?”
“We had to find out where the guns were coming from.”
“You did us all a favour.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” she answered, warming up enough for a smile. Then Greso was waving them onward once again.
Through a broken door they passed, towards the heart of the noise. Ruthenia remembered these doorways; they looked different in the lamplight. And as they passed into the assembly hall, she began to understand that this was no longer the facility that had been her home.
It was still a home, just someone else's: paper bags and beer bottles lay strewn about, a village of folded-sheet mattresses and makeshift tents inhabited by raggedy folks with scars and tattered shirts, curled around rolled-up jackets, playing games on boards drawn with charcoal. The white-tiled sterility of Lita Kyril’s precious laboratory was lost in the warmth of the conversation passing back and forth.
A surge of silence accompanied their arrival, then a small smattering of “welcome”s and “who are you”s—and a few whispers of recognition that quickly grew into a rowdy exchange.
“I knew we’d meet, I knew she’d find us, what did I tell you!” cackled an aged lady. “You did good, you little demon.” Clamours of welcome paved their way past the gathering. Reida had the patience to spare for acknowledging each one, but Ruthenia offered no more than a nod.
Greso stopped at the head of the hallway, where there sat a figure at an old lab bench, robed in black and hunched over a notebook. He formed a singular contrast to the gathering about him, his dark hair combed back and his posture statuesque. He did not lift his head until Greso bowed to whisper something in his ear, and a quiet conversation proceeded between them.
He had a pale, narrow face and ghoulish eyes, and looking him in the eye was like being stabbed through the head. “Who are these,” he drawled, like an actor in a stage play. He squinted. “I know the one with the auburn hair. You’re the young lady who defied the Arcane King! Ruthenia Cendina!”
Ruthenia froze. All across the hall there was a wave of fervent conversation. A tinderbox clicked. The heat smelled faintly of hallucinogen smoke.
“My name is Derron,” he went on, “the leader of the hungry. You made a perfect portrait of rebellion that night.” His glare was like a plough through her thoughts. “Who are you? A proper rebel? Or just a child caught in the crossfire?”
A flash of annoyance dispelled the last trace of Ruthenia’s petrification. “My life was ruined by the king and queen,” she answered. “I am not caught in the crossfire. You are in my mother's lab. We were revolutionaries long before you were.”
“Ah, those are the words I like to hear,” said Derron, closing his eyes as if to savour them. “We would be very pleased to have you among us. We have been waiting. Waiting to bite back. Our plot has been a year brewing, but only recently has the climate become good. Your act of public dissent has fanned the embers. Oh, I feel it already, the fire waiting to devour all.”
To her surprise, his words made her feel squirmy. All the answers she could give felt wrong on her tongue.
That bladelike gaze met hers again. “The Arcane hegemony has harmed every one of us. But do you care to join us in dismantling it? I ask you in all seriousness, do you wish to be a part of this?” He swept a hand out at the gathering along the hallway.
“What do you intend to do?” the question was out of her, and she readied herself to be admonished for prying into their affairs.
But Derron only smiled, a sleek raven smile. “To flood the streets with fury. To bring death to those who deserve it.”
“And I hope you succeed. But I cannot join you in earnest. I have much of my own work to do—work that will lead us towards a common victory.”
“I understand,” answered Derron, dipping his head. “But let it be known that you are our friend, and that you are welcome here anytime.” Then, he turned to fix Reida with the same incisive gaze. “And how about you? You, the news lady on the street corner. Are you, too, an ally?”
Reida bowed. “I'm Reida Breyte. I am not only a news seller, but also a journalist with the Swan’s Post.”
In the chair, Derron studied the woman with a quirked eyebrow. “The Swan’s Post is complete drivel,” he muttered.
“It is an embarrassment,” Reida replied. “I too have had enough of us selling out to the government.”
“That is all well and good but, respectfully, you can’t possibly have sought us out without journalistic motives.” He nodded at Greso, and Ruthenia saw a flash of a blade at the corner of her eye, as did Reida, whose shoulders tensed.
“We were concerned that this supposedly abandoned laboratory did not seem to be abandoned,” Reida said. “But now I know of the truth, I have no intention of exposing this outfit. I swear it on my life.”
“Well then,” he said. “I know your kind—would talk their ways out of anything if they could.” He stroked his chin. “No, if we are to let you go, you must give us something in return, some surety. Ah, I have just the right assignment for you.”
She seemed ready to bargain, but Derron gestured at Greso, and he came up to the seated man’s side, knife gleaming. “What—will you have me do?”
“Put something in the papers for us,” he said. “Something small, a rebel call-to-arms. ‘The coiled naga hungers for swan’s flesh.’ We'll look out for it. And if we don't see it within a week…we know where you work.”
The unease had crept into Reida’s face, but she kept her gaze steady. She exchanged a trembling look with Ruthenia.
“Put your money where your mouth is,” Derron jabbed.
“Yes, I’ll do it,” Reida burst out. “You will see your message in the papers—tomorrow.”
Ruthenia swallowed. She’d spent so many years hungering for another rebellion—but now that they were closer to the cusp than she could imagine, she felt a bottomless terror bearing down.
“Oh, and, good sir,” she added. “We have a couple of friends whom I’m sure would be thrilled to join you.”
“Oh?” Derron’s head perked up in interest. “Do send them to my scout, the shoe shiner on Thyme Street. I would be delighted to welcome like-minded rebels into the fold.”
Nodding, he leaned back, arms behind his head. Greso lowered his knife and stepped away, resuming his smile. “You are both free to go. Thank you for gracing us with this visit, Ruthenia. I trust you to keep your friend in check.” He winked at her, and Ruthenia barely managed to produce a smile in answer. “Oh, and next time, please enter through the other drain.”
As Greso escorted them back down the corridor, they were wished goodbye. The man waved them both goodbye at the canal, where they took it in the opposite direction, trudging through ankle-deep water to a drain hole that opened in the ground beside a scrapyard.
As soon as she had clambered off the top rung, dripping soles and all, Reida heaved a sigh. “What an ordeal.”
“Why’d you tell him about our friends?” Ruthenia snapped from the ladder.
“It’s what they’ve always wanted, is it not?” answered Reida. “To join a revolution?”
Ruthenia sighed. “Too late to fret about it. Ihir burn me, this is a bigger tangle than I could have imagined.” She shook her head. “Well, are you really going to do what he told you to?”
The journalist closed her eyes. “Fair exchange is far from just good manners here; it is law…and more importantly, I want their victory more than their downfall. As long as I am not on the streets when the banks break, their plans line up with my own.” Straightening her skirt, Reida turned around to wave her goodbye. “Well, I'll let you know how it goes next time you visit. Take care not to start any revolts by accident.”