Eagles and Swans
Chapter 31: Calm Before the Storm
It was on this one rare day that Hollia did not run straight home at the closing bell. This evening, she lingered with Ruthenia in the hallway, and they talked about their lives as they walked from window to window.
Ruthenia learned, then, that the sorrow Hollia always wore was not for the aviary alone.
“What happened?”
As Hollia stopped to stare out the next arched aperture in the wall, she murmured, “Long story short…I asked Orrem on a date last week. And Lora didn't like that at all.”
“Oh, whoa.” Ruthenia tilted her head to a side, brow wrinkling. “You have to tell me about the whole thing over some milkshake.”
The sun was beginning to sink below the towers, casting mile-long shadows across the meadows. It showered the fields that they soared over in gold, setting the floating stand aglow as they approached and landed. Surrounded by that peerless view, they ordered their drinks, and leaned against the barrier to talk.
“So what happened with Orrem and Lora?” Ruthenia asked over her honey milkshake.
Hollia sighed. “Well, for context, and I don't think I ever mentioned this,” she replied, “I've been having a huge, dumb crush on Orrem. And to be honest, I was kind of embarrassed about it, it was keeping awake at night and everything.”
Now that she had mentioned it, Ruthenia found the fact that Orrem interested her to be simply self-evident. He was a rare Central Circle student who hadn't been born into his fortune, had worked his way up from the streets of the New Town. He had a breezy magnetism about him that made him easy to like. “I'm not surprised,” she said. “You like the sporty ones, right.”
Hollia giggled. “I mean, he's also a sweet person, and, you know, really good at what he does…”
“He really is.”
“Yeah. I had known for a while that Lora felt the same way about him. She always went on about how she dreamt of getting with him, and I just couldn't bring myself to tell her about my own feelings. I didn't want us to quarrel over it.”
Ruthenia folded her arms. “That makes enough sense.”
“Even then, I couldn't change the way I felt, and I guess I didn't think Lora’s interest meant he was off limits in any way,” Hollia continued, drawing her limbs closer. “So last week, I asked him if he was interested in going out with me.”
“Huh! What did he say?”
Hollia tucked hair behind her ear, eyes darting away. “Oh, he seemed surprised, and said he hadn't thought about that before, but that he would…consider it.”
“Consider it?” Ruthenia muttered. “Like a trade offer?”
“I guess so.”
“Drinks,” called Imessa, placing two glasses on the countertop. Ruthenia picked hers up—the golden hue of the honey always distinguished it.
Hollia took her own, a tea milkshake, and began to sip. “Well, while he was considering, Lora found out about it. And I didn't know it would be such a problem until she came in one day looking all angry at me. She said I…she called me a traitor, and said I'd betrayed her trust for the last time. So now Lora and I aren't talking anymore, and that was all it took for Telis to start ignoring me, too—”
“Wow, is that how it works in Arcane Land?” Ruthenia muttered. “Like boys are a limited resource and you have to wait your turn?”
Hollia laughed despite herself. “I clearly don't understand it as well as I think. I never wanted to take her dream boy from her, but I also just—have feelings too—”
She looked on the brink of tears right now, and all Ruthenia could do was lean over to rub her shoulder, heaving a deep sigh. “All this over one boy.” She threw her free hand up in frustration. “I mean, sure, he's popular, and she wanted him for herself, but…you have as much of a right to ask him out as she does? That's how it's meant to work, right?”
At this, her friend shook her head. “I think Arcane students think it works by a code of honour.”
“Code of honour, more like load of horse crap,” Ruthenia muttered between sips. “I say good riddance to Lora! That's not how real friends would behave.”
Hollia hummed in thought. “I'm glad you're saying this, it makes me feel less crazy.” She moved her glass from one hand to the other.
“So. Is Orrem still ‘considering?’” asked Ruthenia.
Hollia nodded. “I think so. He seemed not to be offended or like he's been avoiding me. He even found me to chat all on his own a couple of times. Maybe he really does have people queueing at his door for a chance with him.”
“Hate to say it, but that wouldn't surprise me either. Those racing fans are something else.” She shook her head. “Well, I hope he comes around, because you deserve him.” She smiled. “I think you'd make the cutest couple.”
“Oh, Ruth!” she gasped, smiling with her eyes on her feet. “Not nearly as cute as whatever's going on between you and His Highness.”
“What? No,” Ruthenia burst out, feeling a flush travel up her neck and over her face. “We just talk sometimes.”
“What was that he said the other day? That he needed you to walk him to the ferry terminal? Ruth, I find it hard to believe that he, of all people, doesn’t have an umbrella.”
Ruthenia folded her arms. “You’re not making me think about this. He’s the Arcane Prince. And I’m a convicted criminal’s daughter. I can't afford to start hoping.”
“Why not? Social class isn't an object these days.”
“Because—because we're enemies by allegiance. He's right next to a seat of power. And I'm…everything that the country can't abide.”
If Hollia understood the implications beneath the words, she did not show it. “I really wish politics didn't have to intrude so much sometimes.”
Ruthenia sighed. “You and I both.”
“But if you're afraid to start hoping…then I think that already means you want it.”
She cast her gaze to a side. “Maybe.”
The sun was beginning to wake earlier than before, and Ruthenia was reminded of it when she opened her eyes the next morning to the six-thirty sky.
The light was softened by a thickening cloud layer, and a moment of silence made her realise that a soft drizzle was ongoing. But under that muted grey, her mind was all knife-sharp purpose. Now was her last chance to align the pieces of this grand machine before it came time to take off.
The morning was well-spent between the New Town and Helika. She bought a messenger for cheap, the kind easily taken apart and altered.
Then she made a beeline to Eldon’s mansion. He seemed surprised at her arrival, but a look of knowing crossed his face as she asked to be taken to the basement, and he did not question her as he led her there.
Lit by thin beams of sunlight through slits in the ceiling, she laid her notebook—the culmination of two months’ planning—on the workbench, and began to fit the last pipes and gaskets into the machine's engine. Pausing to have lunch out of the cans in the corner cupboard, she laid the cheap messenger on the bench and dismantled it, scrounging up transistors and quartz from around the workshop.
Six hours' work got her tantalisingly close, but there was more to do yet.
The looming of school hours barged in on her attention, and right then, she made the decision to end her work, kicking tools under the curve of the hull.
“Just a little longer,” she murmured over the dashboard, a glittering collage of steel and brass and glass. She pressed a hand against the nobbles of the rivets. Just a week now. Her eyes hung onto that gaping cavern beneath the bonnet.
*
Rather than go to school, however, she detoured to the Lantern District. Rae Threaders was easier to locate the second time around, and she did not crash into a pillar this time. She stole into the shop, taking care to keep away from the perilous shelves.
Only Mister Rae was in attendance today, but when she showed her face, he said, “Nira would be delighted to know you came in today! What can I get you?”
“I'm looking for another thirty feet of Thread.” This time she knew she needed the full length.
“Gladly. It'll be thirty minutes. New project for your boss?”
“It's for me this time,” she said.
Today, there was no one to wait with her. She strolled along the boardwalks of the Lantern District, taking ladders and stairs to other terraces. She sat watching the afternoon sky turn grey, the rain fall, the clouds thin, coming and going in straggly blankets.
The Thread was offered to her in a wrapped package, which she traded for thirty aurs. Safe in the canopy of her umbrella, she floated back to Helika, descending to the balcony and down the stairs to resume her work.
*
In that very last last light of day, Ruthenia flew to the New Town, but not to see her gang. Instead, she made for the newsstand on the street corner, where Reida was ringing her bell, crying the headlines of the Afternoon Herald.
“Reida,” she barely gave the woman a second to greet her, before lifting her hand and pressing the modified messenger into it. “Please keep your eye on this.”
The newsgirl's eyes widened as she lowered her bell. “Oh, love, what is it for?”
“This one leaves no trace on recording instruments,” Ruthenia replied. “I cannot tell you why you need to have it; I want as little known as possible. But you'll know what it's for once I send you a message. Can I trust you to watch for it?”
“Of course.” There was a seriousness in Reida's gaze that told her she had picked up on what was not spoken: that there was a grander design to this.
Now all that was left was the last link in the chain: Sharmon.
It rained through the whole of the next day, and the day after, and when Ruthenia arrived half-wet on the school landing platform, the sky was an endless thick grey pudding of clouds.
She thought it seemed vaguely sad, the way it murmured on the school’s windowsills, no longer furious or cruel. The fields were bluer than they were green, for the bluebells were on every knoll, across the countryside. When she peered out the classroom window in the afternoon, she thought the clouds looked like wings.
She waited for a fragment of blue—Astra’s sky blue—to show. But all there was was grey, and the clouds filling the sky, and their rain flooded the drains and canals—Helika and the New Town alike.
Excusing herself from classes at break time, she detoured to the offices at Swan’s Cross. The building, a roughly top-shaped tangle of roofs and balustrades, gathered hundreds of units, each tacked onto others in every direction.
She landed on the deck of a north-side shop painted pink, five from the bottom named Illume Paints and Pigments researcher office. The wind battered her, and she peered down at glowing windows all along the surface of the block, hooking her umbrella to her shoulder. Platforms with black rails outlined every deck and balcony, doors opening and closing intermittently as customers and clients came and went, inviting the glows of lamps through, both gas and Thread.
It was a cold and unassuming interior, and made no effort to seem welcoming except with its carpeted blue floor. A receptionist sat in the lobby, his desk beside a polished door, filing his nails into a rubbish box.
Ruthenia strode up to the table and explained the cause of her visit. “You should have written ahead,” the man muttered.
“I'm one of his close collaborators,” she replied.
“Yes, yes, Ruthenia Cendina, I know.” With a sigh, he waved her towards the door.
She found Sharmon rinsing his hands in a paint-spattered sink. From here, every stained bottle of reagent in that windowless room was within arm's reach. Paint swatches and brushed lay on every open surface.
He turned at the sound of her entrance, grinning when he caught sight of her. “Oh, fancy seeing you here today,” he said, patting his hands dry on his coat.
“How’s the fuel coming along?” she replied.
Sharmon cast a glance at a section of the bench that bore flasks and tubes of conspicuously colourless liquids. “It’s...coming along.”
“Will it be ready by next week?”
“Whoa, Ruth, why the hurry!” he exclaimed, moving to tidy up the glass apparatus in that portion of the bench. “We have no deadline on the project.”
She folded her arms. “No, I need it by next week,” she replied, and slowly, a look of understanding dawned on Sharmon's face. “You said you had made a seventy percent purity fuel.”
“Ruthenia…don't do anything you can't come back from,” he replied. “I can have enough made to meet the engine's capacity in four days.”
“Perfect, thank you. Deliver it to Eldon's basement,” she said, turning to leave. “And deliver it as soon as you can.”