Eagles and Swans
Chapter 28: Eyes Wide Open
The school day closed in a reluctant rustle of paper and a clatter of pencils, but even then the rainstorm had not shown any signs of subsiding.
The discreet, miserable grey that curtained every window seemed at once impermeable and endless, and the meadows below were hopelessly swamped, not the late warm springtime they were accustomed to.
Watching the shadows lengthen and deepen to blue, nostalgia washed over Ruthenia. She almost did not notice when Ms. Vina began dusting the board, and seats began clattering and rumbling across the floor.
Awakening from her daze, she began packing her belongings away with her eyes nowhere at all, and rose to leave. At the doorway, she said a hello to Hollia, who returned it timidly.
“How's migration season going?” Ruthenia asked.
Something about her expression felt to Ruthenia like a pulling-away. But she answered, “I'm doing my best for them. I fear I may have to start skipping classes, to meet all my duties.”
“Taking a leaf from my book?” She folded her arms with a grin.
“Well...knowing you has warmed me up to the notion,” Hollia confessed.
While they wandered up the hall, their conversation meandered through the subjects of work and the weather, until they were interrupted by a call of Ruthenia's name, whose perpetrator she discovered to be Aleigh.
“Good afternoon to the both of you, and my apologies," he said as he came up beside them, “but I must ask a favour of Ruthenia.”
“Well, I hardly know what I could do for you,” Ruthenia replied. “But sure, what sort of favour?”
He glanced out the arched window at the downpour. “I’m afraid Benedice wasn't feeling well today and I'll be taking ferries till he recovers.”
“Oh, with the riffraff? I'm so sorry.” She stuck out her tongue. “What’s this have to do with me?”
“It's raining. And you have an umbrella.”
It was only now that Hollia cleared her throat and took a step back. "I shall—leave the both of you to plan in peace, have a good evening!" she gasped.
“Hollia!” Ruthenia answered, but she was already brisk walking away. Then she turned back to Aleigh. “I use this umbrella to fly, in case you hadn’t realised.”
“You do not use it for shelter?”
“Well, I do, but not when I need it to fly!”
He nodded. “I understand. Well, then, I shall have to find some other means of sheltering myself.”
Ruthenia shook her head, lips curving at the corners. “I’ll do it if you pay me.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “What are your rates?”
She laughed. “A tenth of the royal treasury, perhaps?”
“Ah, how enterprising, Miss Cendina.”
“‘Miss Cendina,’” she snorted. “It’s been a while since you last called me that.”
“Miss Ruthenia Cendina, most esteemed,” he replied with a mock bow. “You may refuse me if you wish.”
“Oh, I don't mind,” she said with a shrug. “I really should take the ferry home on rainy days, too.”
It felt too easy, walking side by side. She forgot he was a royal, though perhaps he wanted that forgotten, too. Past giggling classmates they strolled, until they had arrived in the lobby of the western tower.
“Have you been to the Central Circle south station?” asked Aleigh.
Ruthenia shook her head. “The one over the Es Orica? I’ve seen it at a distance.”
“It’s a fifteen minute walk away at the most. Not the most impressive of stations, but it serves its function.”
Exiting the lift at the bottom floor, it struck Ruthenia that she had never been in this part of the building before. The back door was underneath the cafeteria, connecting the building to the ground. The granite steps were pristine beneath her shoes, like holy ground. Perhaps no one at the Central Circle School ever deigned to walk home.
They paused at the base of the stairs at a small gate in the old perimeter fence. A wet breeze swept over them: the rainy afternoon whispered beyond the grilles of the gate, and a barely-used gravel path began there, meandering through the fields. As they left the campus boundaries, she released the catch on her umbrella and let it bloom bright orange overhead.
They began down the road, feet crunching on the pebbles, dodging grassy puddles here and there. Ruthenia rarely shared her umbrella, and she struggled to find a compromise between sheltering her companion and not accidentally bumping into him, so her walking path began to meander left and right.
In the middle of the path, Aleigh came to a stop and turned to her, extending a hand. “I’ll carry it,” he said. “You're the one doing me a favour by being here.” She blinked and stared, before shrugging and handing it over.
The gravel clattered beneath their feet, the gentle patter of the rain on the umbrella punctuated sometimes by gusts and flushes of rain. The cold damp sent chills through her body, so she drew in closer under the shelter—noticing, for the first time, the faint scent of lavender in the air surrounding them.
“Why do all your things smell like lavender?” she asked.
“It's Aligon's favourite,” answered Aleigh. “He insists that we scent everything with the herb, including our clothes. I did not realise it was that outstanding, sorry.”
“Oh—no, I think it's pleasant, I just—noticed.” Ruthenia wished she could burrow into the ground and never leave.
The Es Orica station hung in the air above the meadow, hovering over the southern border of the Central Circle, its shape blurred by the rain. The staircase of suspended granite slabs stretched from the path to its very edge. She began to climb, turning now and then to check that her companion was following.
Arriving under the shelter of the station drew a sigh of relief from Ruthenia. Every step echoed. She dropped into an empty bench and pulled her arms about herself. Aleigh hesitated to seat himself, but she turned with an insistent look, shifting to make room for him. Gusts howled across the platform while he joined her on the bench and put his briefcase down by his feet. There was one other passenger in the station but they were facing the other way.
“So, could I leave you here?” said Ruthenia, turning when he placed the umbrella in her hand. “Or do I have to baby you all the way to the palace?”
Aleigh shook his head. “This will do.” He paused as a sun ray broke through the rainclouds from the far horizon, briefly illuminating the platform in gold. “Thank you, it was very kind of you to take the time.”
“Don't get used to it,” she chuckled. “Being my friend doesn't mean I'm at your beck and call.”
“Ah, am I your ‘friend’ now?”
“It's not as hard as you think, you know. Making friends. And keeping them.”
He smiled, and again she found herself thinking that it was quite a beautiful smile, especially catching the late afternoon sun like that. What a perfectly unoriginal thought. “Not everyone is like you,” he said, “Earnest and trustworthy.”
“Alright, that's enough flattery,” she muttered, elbowing him.
“You can't take a compliment, can you?” His voice was teasing. “Well, you are also excellent company, and a delight to talk to.”
“Oi, stop that,” she exclaimed, shoving his shoulder. As she drew back her hand, he caught it in his own.
Briefly, their gazes connected, and Ruthenia felt her heart spill over with a curious effervescence, like when metal met acid and neither could withstand the other.
She laughed, a little too loud. “That's my hand,” she said, pulling her fingers out of his grip.
“Sorry,” he replied quickly, folding one hand into the other on his lap.
Ruthenia’s ferry south arrived first. It came in a creak of masts, the wind-battered hull looming over the station before it began to descend, all the sails furled. She stood abruptly as the shadow swept across the platform. The ropes were thrown and the gangplank lowered, cabin doors opening on opposite ends.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said with a wave.
“Goodbye, Ruthenia,” answered Aleigh, softer than usual.
Ruthenia left for the open ferry door, plunging into the shower without opening her umbrella. Once hurried payment had been made to the cashier under the eaves, she vanished into the cabin to escape the rain.
Once she was dry and had nothing but the wood walls and the indifference of passengers to look upon, she became aware that her face was flushed with warmth.
She pondered the storm outside the cabin, and the swamping of the fields down below. But thoughts of her classmate, of the sorrow hidden behind his gaze, kept creeping into the gaps between. They occupied her all the way to Beacon Way. Staring down at the crook of her umbrella between her knees, she gripped it tightly, right where he’d held it.
At last, the two-day shower ended in a glorious Thursday morning, the sky scrubbed clean of clouds so it glowed a dreamlike pale blue.
Ruthenia arrived at Tanio’s house this morning to find it empty, a seventh note of apology beside her breakfast of bread and softboiled eggs, bearing the following tip: You might want to pick up a copy of the news today. Not the Herald, something more open-minded.
With a shrug, she took two eggs and cracked them into the bowl, slurping the contents up without bothering for a spoon. Then, taking off, she flew through the spotless morning, following the Colura to the New Town. There was a newsstand on the outskirts that she could always trust to have the Eagle Eye in stock. Indeed, she plucked one copy of today's issue from the rack, dumping the three cupres' price onto the cashier's counter without a glance.
“Will you look at this git,” she muttered, opening the papers to find the inventor’s monochrome photograph grinning daftly from the bottom right corner. She turned her umbrella over for the journey home, the newspapers lain across her lap.
Today in alternative news:
Evidence of Lilin’s Awakening Recorded! Calied Co's camera provides stunning evidence of the deity’s activity
Tensions ran high yesterday, as the Calied Company’s Aperture I set off from the Centrelight Harbour on the eastern coast of Astra. The launch was not publicised by the government, but our insiders report it was a bash.
The controversial flying camera's inventor and chief operator, Titanio Calied, was fussy about the details of the launch, and a minor issue with lubrication saw launch time being pushed back by fifteen minutes.
The efforts gave bountiful returns, however. The Aperture I traversed an arc spanning twenty miles across the Deeps, two hundred feet in the air, capturing photographs of the surface every tenth of a mile. It arrived at the port after its three-hour flight with film rolls full of spectacularly clear photographs of the situation at sea.
“I’m just glad a storm didn’t start in the middle of the flight,” admitted Mr. Calied after the historic flight. “This could have gone wrong a dozen different way. Thankfully for us, our luck held.”
And thanks we should give, too, because the images captured by the Aperture I have provided the solution to a month-old puzzle. Now all that remains to be seen is how the clergy and the Kings respond to the confirmatory evidence.
There was no need for text, really, for the images spoke for themselves. Printed in the best quality the tabloid could afford, the two lone photographs claimed an entire page of the papers to themselves.
Above, a photograph of the sea surface with its many gleaming ripples, and a dark shadow smudged across its centre, beneath wave crests and reflections, the shape of a large shimmering tail. There was nothing beside it for scale, but if what the article said about its elevation was correct, then it had to be the size of a small island at least.
The other photograph featured something far more alarming: it was something white and sharp, glimmering beneath the waves. The immaculate shape of a wing. A pale white wing, black-tipped silver, neither bird nor fish.
Staring at the photograph, Ruthenia could feel and hear nothing but the sound of Lilin’s pleading. It wasn’t that she felt pity for this strange apparition, of which she’d only seen a wing and a tail. But she felt anger. Anger at all these things she’d couldn’t change in a lifetime, in ten. But what could she do to resist? The law of Ihir would always run the country—or, whatever the clergy and the kings could pass off as Ihir’s law.
Opening the door to Tanio’s house, Ruthenia flung the papers onto his coffee table, watching it skid to join the rest of the stack. She took her umbrella to the river below, but did not throw her head into it as she had before, sitting instead on the hard clay soil, soaking her feet in the breezy current as she pondered her choice.