Eagles and Swans
Chapter 30: Helika's Light
As the next day's classes wound down in the seeping golden light, Ruthenia followed Aleigh up the hallway, barely feeling the weight of her bag. Now she noticed, on this rare rainless day, the first scent of summer grass upon the air.
“Where exactly are we going?” she asked, coming up level with him.
“Well…you have shown me where you go to quiet your mind,” he replied, turning to look out the window. “And I would like to show you mine. Though, it is in Helika, so if that is too long a detour…”
“No, I can spare the evening. Are you sure you have the time?”
“I have no business until six thirty.”
She hummed. “If you say so. Why now, though?”
He did not answer for many seconds. “Nothing, I simply enjoy your company,” he finally said. “And I am worried I won't have much more of it.”
A gentle thrill enshrouded her thoughts, like a golden haze. “Well, lead the way.”
*
With Benedice's reins in hand, Aleigh met Ruthenia at the bottom of the stairs to the landing platform, where the equine took to nuzzling Ruthenia’s shoulder.
She scrubbed at his muzzle, only to be rewarded with an ear-lick. “Hey!” she cried at the snort of horse breath against her neck. “Is he trying to eat me?”
Aleigh smiled. “Maybe you smell like hay,” he answered, a hand at the shoulder prying her away from the equine. He took a little too long to let go, and she, too, let him linger.
Both emerged at the top of the steps at the archway. Aleigh was atop Benedice long before Ruthenia had strung up her umbrella, and the horse trotted in polite loops around her until she had finally scrambled onto her mount.
They soared in a meandering line between houses and mills, rainclouds and blue meadows streaking by. Ruthenia was going about as fast her momentum could carry her, and only just keeping up. Perhaps Benedice could fly faster, but Aleigh kept glancing over his shoulder and pulling back when he found her trailing.
The foothills of Calmen Ihira peeked from the horizon, along with the flock of buildings that was Helika, suspended like a cloak of marble and light around the mountain. She began to recognise the route to Palace Street, which she saw every Saturday from the back of Sharmon's table, but today it all passed in a blur.
The palace lake slid like a mirror across the velvet land, and only within sight of the waters did Benedice begin to slow, sinking through the air into the gentle whoosh of its waves. Heaving a sigh of relief, Ruthenia swung downward with a snapping of Threads, towards the glow of the sky in the water. She leapt off her umbrella as she came level with the lake's embanked shore, snatching her mount from the air behind her.
As the whistle of air fell away, the burble of waves on stone rose from beneath. Not another soul was in sight. On the far side of the lake, the spires of the palace rose, the tower highest of all. To her right, Aleigh was offering Benedice a handful of grain from the other saddlebag.
He turned when she arrived beside him. “So, here we are,” he said. “This is where I go when I've had a bad day.”
She drew the sweet air into her lungs. “You have bad days? Why don't you just call a servant over with a hot chocolate or something?”
“True, but hot chocolate doesn't repair my relationship with my brother. Or the state of Astra.”
“Ah—well, this looks like a nice place to sit and sulk,” Ruthenia said, eyes resting on the cloudy sky in the water, through which cracks of luminescent pink showed. “Makes all your problems seem far away.”
She watched him lower himself onto the stone bank, cross-legged, and carefully she followed suit—sitting just close enough to converse as if indoors, just far enough to not quite be touching.
Lifting his eyes to the royal tower, Aleigh sighed. “I wish I could pretend this brewing crisis didn't exist, but it has filled every other hour of my schedule.” He wrapped an arm around his knee and gazed into the water. “The dispatch fleet will sail in two weeks time. If it fails, then I doubt Hazen would sanction another.”
She frowned. “Do you really think they can kill her?”
“You were prescient to mention the Glaive. That is the weapon they intend to use, though she is much larger than its last victim. And I hear explosives are on the roster, too.”
At these words, Ruthenia felt a lump form in her throat. Drawing a deeper breath, she let her eyelids droop shut, soaking in the warm silence, listening to the rush of water and the chirps of crickets.
That was until she heard Benedice's hooves trotting on the stone, and then felt him nuzzle her hair. Her eyes flew open. “Hey, not again!”
“Benedice...” muttered Aleigh, lifting a hand to push the equine's snout away.
She laughed, then returned to musing at the water. “Thank you,” she said. “For, uh, everything. All the help you've given me. You've done so much more than you ever need have.”
He shook his head. "I owed it to you."
She laughed. "You're attached to the idea of owing me something. It's like you want an excuse to help me whenever you please."
He smiled back. “Perhaps I do.”
An ache between fondness and anxiety speared through her chest, and she hugged her knees closer. “Could I ask you a question?” she said then.
“Certainly.”
“If I told you I was about to do something foolhardy and possibly life-threatening that could land me in big trouble, what would you say?”
“I'd probably ask why it keeps happening,” he replied. “And then I might try to dissuade you, even knowing I have no power to change your mind.”
She chuckled. “There's very few people who could talk me out of a terrible plan,” she said. “And you're one of them.”
“For your sake, I hope this is nothing but a hypothetical.”
She grinned. “Well, keep guessing.”
“Never a dull day with you.”
By now, Ruthenia had noticed that they had leaned together in the course of talking, and their shoulders were brushing. The gentle warmth through her sleeve brought a tiny jolt of surprise. Then the rest tided in. The scent of lavender. The realisation that it would be so easy to lean closer, to bury her face in his shoulder and drown in his warmth like falling into the lake.
Once the thoughts crossed her, she found herself battling them at every turn. Each time, the sensations of blushing became more undeniable. Stop it, stop it! You can’t go around thinking about the Arcane Prince of Astra like that.
Then a rumble of thunder rippled across the lake, accompanied by a frigid breeze, startling Ruthenia out of her daze. Clouds had thickened all across the sky.
“Storm’s coming!” the words spilled out of her mouth. She leapt to her feet, umbrella brandished. She fought to Weave it into place, until Aleigh, too, crawled to his knees and strung up the ferrule end for her. “Thanks! Take care, don't get too wet. I must be off now!”
“Oh—what a shame, but have a safe flight home,” he answered, still blinking in confusion as he retreated to Benedice.
The freezing rain-flecked wind bore down as Ruthenia leapt onto the umbrella and kicked off in search of a gate road to the southbound tunnel. The city gates were better marked than the ones beyond, with trails of round yellow markers leading in chains between mansions, towards the mouth of Gate 2.
As Ruthenia descended out of the flurry of rain and into the echoes of the gate tunnel, she let out a drawn-out sigh. But her thoughts slowly and surely drifted back to the companion she had just left behind.
She flew slowly, and wondered about him all the way home, about the things he’d said of the future, his dream of becoming a secretary and leaving this all behind. She hoped that she wasn't one of the things he'd leave behind—that that future contained her in some way.
Perhaps, after they graduated and went their separate ways, she would still find him sometimes, the way she still found her street friends. Perhaps they would sit together on the bank of a lake, and talk like they had today, forgetting the difference between them.
Picturing that future made her shiver with delight, and moreso when she imagined leaning against him, entwining her arms with his…
Growing conscious of these thoughts, Ruthenia angrily shook her head. It won't happen that way. It was never meant to. He'll inherit his ascendant future, and find someone worthy of his bloodline. And I'll still be here on the ground, little old me, dreaming of the lifetime where I wasn't a criminal's daughter…
Ruthenia could hardly stomach more than a mouthful of dinner that evening.
The night was stirred by breezes through the curtains. Across the oval table, Tanio ate calmly, looking quite content despite the lines of exhaustion on his face. On any other month, they would be bickering over something inconsequential. But tonight she couldn’t find the words with which to begin.
She sighed. The sound drew his eye. “You look unwell,” he said. She stared intently at her food. “Or uninterested, I should say, and a little lost in thought. Is my little Ruthenia thinking about someone?”
“Stuff your mouth with something. Like that burnt chicken, maybe."
Tanio stroked his chin. “Well, why were you late home today?”
“I visited Helika City on my way home.”
“On a date?”
“It wasn't a date. What's putting these ideas in your head?”
“There's a feather in your hair.”
Eyes widening, she reached up to feel about in her hair, till she brushed it from where it sat lodged in her fringe. She watching it flutter onto the table like a snowflake.
Tanio's mouth curved into a smirk. “Were you out fraternising with royalty?”
Growling, Ruthenia tipped back her bowl and slurped up the rest of the noodles, chicken and all. She stood up, kicked her chair away, and picked her empty bowl up. Then she vanished into the kitchen, where Tanio hadn’t turned the lights on.
Dumping the bowl into the empty basin, she peered out through the window into the dark. She saw faint pale patches beyond: the shimmer of an ocean of wheat, and a faraway glitter of lights. Helika’s lights.
The air suddenly felt colder, and a shiver rippled across her skin, with a pang she now knew to be longing.
Which of these is the light in your window?
She snapped her gaze from the distant glow and growled, but the thud of her heart pierced through any flimsy denial she mounted. “I refuse to become a cliche,” she muttered, blocking out the view with her hand, though she knew it was too late.