Eagles and Swans
Chapter 32: The Verdict
The sun lay shrouded in blankets of grey, through evening to the next day. The entire land was blue. Blue and grey. Astra awaited its verdict in the rain, the seas churning against its rocky cliffs from all sides.
In the cold of the afternoon, Ruthenia submerged herself in fragments of stories, exchanged in black and white. The nation was restless. Everyone knew something was about to happen, something that would rend the nation eternally.
Weeks of research have been conducted into Lilin’s behaviours and patterns of activity, and five warships will be launched at seven o’clock on the Twelfth of October, and strike at eight in the night, when Lilin begins her sleep.
Celebrated hunter Leon Alemer will enter Lilin with the Glaive of Laveda and shred her heart. This will be no easy feat, and we ask that you send this future hero your blessings.
*
The low-lying regions of the New Town are experiencing the worst flooding yet. Yesterday afternoon, the River Colura overflowed and broke its banks, swamping the basin west of Calmen Ihira. The total damages caused are calculated to value over two hundred thousand aurs.
She clenched her teeth but every bone in her body ached. “You don’t care about the country or the people. The votes matter more than the lives,” she muttered. The blood in her veins burning.
Then she turned the page. And her insides turned to ice.
Slush Funds And Illegal Dealings Discovered: Royal family secretary Eldon Legars suspected of funding illegal engineering project
“Eldon,” she whispered. “Eldon?”
Her breath quickened to a pant, but she was too numb and dizzy to notice most other sensations. Throwing the newspapers onto the couch, she rose, eyes darting about in the living room for Tanio.
“Tanio—Tanio!” She felt despair bloom all through her, like poison as it started its attack. The world grew soft and muffled in her ears when she squeezed her eyes shut. Again she retrieved the papers from the couch. Blinked with camera-shutter rapidness.
The words were still the same, bold and unmoving.
In the latest development of the war on heretics, anonymous persons who suspected Mr. Eldon Legars of criminal activity tipped the police on the matter, leading up to what was one of the most shocking discoveries concerning sacrilege since the period that has come to be known as the Purging.
Investigations revealed that Mr. Legars, ex-secretary of the royal families, has been paying multiple steel factories with funds he previously claimed to have set aside for “miscellaneous property development projects“.
Further searching uncovered unsigned blueprints for a machine, its purpose clearly marked: flight.
On interrogation, Mr. Legars refused to reveal the location of the machine or the identities of collaborators. If charged, he will face a minimum of three years’ jail sentence, on top of twenty years’ house arrest.
Mr. Legars has been placed in police custody while further investigations are conducted on the matter.
If charged, all offenders may be sentenced to at least twenty years of house arrest.
Ruthenia could neither eat nor talk for the rest of the evening. The thought of food alone made her sick to the stomach. Tanio was hardly doing better. They stared soundlessly across the dining table, the wavering electric light making his eyes seem sunken with age, cavernous almost.
Her attempts at conversation withered in her lungs. Their food went cold between them. Her boss wordlessly swept half his plate into the scrap heap.
Late in the night, when the silence went on unbroken and the stars barely breathed through the smothering clouds, Ruthenia finally did speak.
She said “good night” to Tanio. He returned the greeting shallowly, his voice barely a shadow of its usual drawl.
Tonight she was afraid of the dark again. She was afraid of the things that hid in it. Restless, burning and shivering, she locked herself into Tanio’s guest room and curled up in the cold blankets, turning them warm. Blood stormed in her head as she struggled to keep her eyes shut.
*
The sun woke Ruthenia near ten o’clock on Friday morning. The rain had begun to murmur at some point past midnight, but she had barely felt the cool. She could hear every second passing, like thunder, heralding the storm about to come.
It seems, Lilin, she thought, resting fingers on the misted glass pane of the guest room, we are soon to be in the same predicament.
Your father killed my parents and now I'm going to be imprisoned because of him, too.
There was no message cancelling this Saturday’s building session—wise, of course, since any message now would as good as reveal them to the Royal Birds.
What would become of Lilin, of her plan? Perhaps she could flee, and finish what she’d begun. What did it matter if she added another crime to her list? Save Lilin, or die trying. It’d be prison after that, but better prison for being brave than prison for an unfinished project.
Ruthenia glanced up at her window. While the rain whispered outside like a prayer, the weight of this loneliness that she’d spent her life ignoring suddenly felt like a hundred feet of dark water, roaring to crush her.
“Ihir, I hate you!” she screamed at the sky outside, voice breaking on the second word. “Why do you have it out for me? Why do you try so hard to ruin my life?” She snatched handfuls of paper from her desktop and flung them at the floor, all crumpled. When at last all her belongings were on the floorboards, she curled up in her desk chair and cried herself back to sleep.
The teachers might have thought it strange that Ruthenia was being more agreeable today than she had been for the rest of the year. Beside the looming imprisonment sentence, school seemed like paradise.
The sky was blue and wide in the windows, and from here she could see the towers and ferries of the Central Circle, the columns of smoke and the gilded roofs of opera houses that she’d never visit.
She stopped by Hollia’s desk when she came, and smiled at her without explanation as they chattered as if nothing had changed.
The usual chatter died when Ms. Arina entered. It was life as it had always been, and always would be—even though the sky broke with rain every hour, and the New Town was flooding, and she was waiting to be arrested.
*
A cold silence held Ruthenia and Aleigh prisoner as they walked down the corridor, in which she drew inward, trying to keep a million words inside her.
It was Aleigh who broke it. “I heard about our secretary,” he began, before the words fizzled out.
Ruthenia’s eyes clung resolutely to the light of the lobby far ahead. He must already have figured out the connection. “I know,” she replied simply.
“The investigations will be carried out over the weekend,” he replied, some implacable fear burning in his green eyes. “You will be safe till Monday, when the paperwork is filed. But once this comes to light…my brother will almost certainly have me sever ties with you.”
“Oh.” A knife of grief plunged through her heart.
Haltingly, he whispered, “Ruthenia—what about…your earlier plans?”
She clenched a fist as she said, “I will go through with it. I have to. If it comes to that.”
People hurried about them, deep in their own conversations. Just an ordinary day. Rain breezing outside, muffled by the sound within the hall. Bluebells opening their flowers.
They pulled into a corner of the lift, as always, and she bowed her head. Then she felt his fingers brush the back of her hand. When she turned in surprise, his gaze dodged away. She found it in herself to smile, to lift her hand to wrap his.
“Hey,” came an unfamiliar voice inside the lift. “When's the wedding?”
Ruthenia glanced about as laughter broke out from the rest. The crowd left laughing at the bottom level. Lingering behind, they walked with hands linked for a few nervous seconds, neither looking at the other, until they let go as they entered the view of the cafeteria.
In a week, all this warmth would have vanished. All the joy and shame, all possible futures. By next week, there would be nothing left but a mere soundless nothing.
When they found their seats in the cafeteria, Ruthenia realised Aleigh did not have a novel to read. “Is there an hour of room in your schedule tomorrow?” he asked.
“What for?”
“If you must go through with this…I reckon I could help you.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you sure? What if your brother finds out?”
He frowned. “Don't make me reconsider, this is hard enough,” he said. “But if I can help you avoid an untimely death, then I shall do so, at any expense.”
She could not meet his eye. “Where do you want to meet?”
“Helika Plaza, if that suits you.”
“I can make that. Four thirty?”
From his pocket he pulled his planner, flipping it open to the bookmark. “I'll see you at the Helika Plaza on Saturday, at four thirty,” he said. “After that, we shall go our own ways, and you may do whatever you please, wherever that takes you.”
She couldn't help it when her breath caught. “I'm so sorry. I have to do this. I only wish it didn't mean…”
“Oh, Ruthenia—” His eyes darted away. “You are truly like no one else I know. For better or worse.”
*
Tanio’s study window glowed well into the dusk, the Friday evening sun cooled by the fey of clouds boding another fall of rain. Ruthenia didn’t investigate, nor did she grow alarmed when he didn’t come to join her for dinner.
The gloom grew tighter about the house, and Ruthenia tried to focus on her plans. Tried to tidy up the routes she’d been drawing in her mind.
Then she picked up the pen, and began a new message.
Reida, I need you to do me a really big favour.
The sun lay shrouded in blankets of grey, through evening to the next day. The entire land was blue. Blue and grey. Astra awaited its verdict in the rain, the seas churning against its rocky cliffs from all sides.
In the cold of the afternoon, Ruthenia submerged herself in fragments of stories, exchanged in black and white. The nation was restless. Everyone knew something was about to happen, something that would rend the nation eternally.
Weeks of research have been conducted into Lilin’s behaviours and patterns of activity, and five warships will be launched at seven o’clock on the Twelfth of October, and strike at eight in the night, when Lilin begins her sleep.
Celebrated hunter Leon Alemer will enter Lilin with the Glaive of Laveda and shred her heart. This will be no easy feat, and we ask that you send this future hero your blessings.
*
The low-lying regions of the New Town are experiencing the worst flooding yet. Yesterday afternoon, the River Colura overflowed and broke its banks, swamping the basin west of Calmen Ihira. The total damages caused are calculated to value over two hundred thousand aurs.
She clenched her teeth but every bone in her body ached. “You don’t care about the country or the people. The votes matter more than the lives,” she muttered. The blood in her veins burning.
Then she turned the page. And her insides turned to ice.
Slush Funds And Illegal Dealings Discovered: Royal family secretary Eldon Legars suspected of funding illegal engineering project
“Eldon,” she whispered. “Eldon?”
Her breath quickened to a pant, but she was too numb and dizzy to notice most other sensations. Throwing the newspapers onto the couch, she rose, eyes darting about in the living room for Tanio.
“Tanio—Tanio!” She felt despair bloom all through her, like poison as it started its attack. The world grew soft and muffled in her ears when she squeezed her eyes shut. Again she retrieved the papers from the couch. Blinked with camera-shutter rapidness.
The words were still the same, bold and unmoving.
In the latest development of the war on heretics, anonymous persons who suspected Mr. Eldon Legars of criminal activity tipped the police on the matter, leading up to what was one of the most shocking discoveries concerning sacrilege since the period that has come to be known as the Purging.
Investigations revealed that Mr. Legars, ex-secretary of the royal families, has been paying multiple steel factories with funds he previously claimed to have set aside for “miscellaneous property development projects“.
Further searching uncovered unsigned blueprints for a machine, its purpose clearly marked: flight.
On interrogation, Mr. Legars refused to reveal the location of the machine or the identities of collaborators. If charged, he will face a minimum of three years’ jail sentence, on top of twenty years’ house arrest.
Mr. Legars has been placed in police custody while further investigations are conducted on the matter.
If charged, all offenders may be sentenced to at least twenty years of house arrest.
Ruthenia could neither eat nor talk for the rest of the evening. The thought of food alone made her sick to the stomach. Tanio was hardly doing better. They stared soundlessly across the dining table, the wavering electric light making his eyes seem sunken with age, cavernous almost.
Her attempts at conversation withered in her lungs. Their food went cold between them. Her boss wordlessly swept half his plate into the scrap heap.
Late in the night, when the silence went on unbroken and the stars barely breathed through the smothering clouds, Ruthenia finally did speak.
She said “good night” to Tanio. He returned the greeting shallowly, his voice barely a shadow of its usual drawl.
Tonight she was afraid of the dark again. She was afraid of the things that hid in it. Restless, burning and shivering, she locked herself into Tanio’s guest room and curled up in the cold blankets, turning them warm. Blood stormed in her head as she struggled to keep her eyes shut.
*
The sun woke Ruthenia near ten o’clock on Friday morning. The rain had begun to murmur at some point past midnight, but she had barely felt the cool. She could hear every second passing, like thunder, heralding the storm about to come.
It seems, Lilin, she thought, resting fingers on the misted glass pane of the guest room, we are soon to be in the same predicament.
Your father killed my parents and now I'm going to be imprisoned because of him, too.
There was no message cancelling this Saturday’s building session—wise, of course, since any message now would as good as reveal them to the Royal Birds.
What would become of Lilin, of her plan? Perhaps she could flee, and finish what she’d begun. What did it matter if she added another crime to her list? Save Lilin, or die trying. It’d be prison after that, but better prison for being brave than prison for an unfinished project.
Ruthenia glanced up at her window. While the rain whispered outside like a prayer, the weight of this loneliness that she’d spent her life ignoring suddenly felt like a hundred feet of dark water, roaring to crush her.
“Ihir, I hate you!” she screamed at the sky outside, voice breaking on the second word. “Why do you have it out for me? Why do you try so hard to ruin my life?” She snatched handfuls of paper from her desktop and flung them at the floor, all crumpled. When at last all her belongings were on the floorboards, she curled up in her desk chair and cried herself back to sleep.
The teachers might have thought it strange that Ruthenia was being more agreeable today than she had been for the rest of the year. Beside the looming imprisonment sentence, school seemed like paradise.
The sky was blue and wide in the windows, and from here she could see the towers and ferries of the Central Circle, the columns of smoke and the gilded roofs of opera houses that she’d never visit.
She stopped by Hollia’s desk when she came, and smiled at her without explanation as they chattered as if nothing had changed.
The usual chatter died when Ms. Arina entered. It was life as it had always been, and always would be—even though the sky broke with rain every hour, and the New Town was flooding, and she was waiting to be arrested.
*
A cold silence held Ruthenia and Aleigh prisoner as they walked down the corridor, in which she drew inward, trying to keep a million words inside her.
It was Aleigh who broke it. “I heard about our secretary,” he began, before the words fizzled out.
Ruthenia’s eyes clung resolutely to the light of the lobby far ahead. He must already have figured out the connection. “I know,” she replied simply.
“The investigations will be carried out over the weekend,” he replied, some implacable fear burning in his green eyes. “You will be safe till Monday, when the paperwork is filed. But once this comes to light…my brother will almost certainly have me sever ties with you.”
“Oh.” A knife of grief plunged through her heart.
Haltingly, he whispered, “Ruthenia—what about…your earlier plans?”
She clenched a fist as she said, “I will go through with it. I have to. If it comes to that.”
People hurried about them, deep in their own conversations. Just an ordinary day. Rain breezing outside, muffled by the sound within the hall. Bluebells opening their flowers.
They pulled into a corner of the lift, as always, and she bowed her head. Then she felt his fingers brush the back of her hand. When she turned in surprise, his gaze dodged away. She found it in herself to smile, to lift her hand to wrap his.
“Hey,” came an unfamiliar voice inside the lift. “When's the wedding?”
Ruthenia glanced about as laughter broke out from the rest. The crowd left laughing at the bottom level. Lingering behind, they walked with hands linked for a few nervous seconds, neither looking at the other, until they let go as they entered the view of the cafeteria.
In a week, all this warmth would have vanished. All the joy and shame, all possible futures. By next week, there would be nothing left but a mere soundless nothing.
When they found their seats in the cafeteria, Ruthenia realised Aleigh did not have a novel to read. “Is there an hour of room in your schedule tomorrow?” he asked.
“What for?”
“If you must go through with this…I reckon I could help you.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you sure? What if your brother finds out?”
He frowned. “Don't make me reconsider, this is hard enough,” he said. “But if I can help you avoid an untimely death, then I shall do so, at any expense.”
She could not meet his eye. “Where do you want to meet?”
“Helika Plaza, if that suits you.”
“I can make that. Four thirty?”
From his pocket he pulled his planner, flipping it open to the bookmark. “I'll see you at the Helika Plaza on Saturday, at four thirty,” he said. “After that, we shall go our own ways, and you may do whatever you please, wherever that takes you.”
She couldn't help it when her breath caught. “I'm so sorry. I have to do this. I only wish it didn't mean…”
“Oh, Ruthenia—” His eyes darted away. “You are truly like no one else I know. For better or worse.”
*
Tanio’s study window glowed well into the dusk, the Friday evening sun cooled by the fey of clouds boding another fall of rain. Ruthenia didn’t investigate, nor did she grow alarmed when he didn’t come to join her for dinner.
The gloom grew tighter about the house, and Ruthenia tried to focus on her plans. Tried to tidy up the routes she’d been drawing in her mind.
Then she picked up the pen, and began a new message.
Reida, I need you to do me a really big favour.