Eagles and Swans
Chapter 40: Lightning Strikes Twice
Ruthenia burst from troubled sleep. She came out of it as if breaking through the surface of a cold lake, from the longest nightmare.
There'd been all sorts of things in this nightmare: ocean and crushed ribs and a shipwreck in a goddess' mouth and dead people at poker and a bullet in a diver's shoulder. And Ihir.
It all replayed in her memory, over and over—surreal and suffocating. It floated in the ether of her subconscious as the memory of a dream did.
But when she strained and twisted, all tangled in linty greyish blankets—and when gashes of pain lit up all across her ribcage, front and back—Ruthenia was forced to realise that the dream had been real.
Gasping for breath, she began to study her immediate surroundings, dragging herself with bumps and moans into a sitting position. The room was nothing more than what it had to be. There wasn't a window; the space was lit by clean white Thread lamps floating overhead. Austere grey walls grazed both head and foot of her bed. The bedposts were wooden stumps. The door at the far corner was no better-worked. Adjacent to her bed, a simple dresser stood with its rectangular mirror turned towards her.
She stared into her own face for a while, bruised on her left cheek.
Three knocks clattered against the door, followed by a rusty creak. "Good morning, Miss Cendina," a voice muttered perfunctorily from the open doorway, snatching her gaze. Ruthenia stared on as a uniformed man she did not know, stocky and greying on the head, marched into her room with a tray. "Breakfast."
The tray carried what-smelled-like-gruel and a steaming drink. Her stomach growled.
The man smiled wanly at her eagerness, laying the tray upon the dresser. Grudgingly and with moans of exhaustion, she stumbled onto her feet and crossed to where her tray of consumables gleamed.
She ate all the gruel while she stood, like livestock guzzling feed. The scalding heat of the water was only enough to deter her from gulping it down in mouthfuls.
"Miss Cendina," the man said once she was done, "please be informed that you are scheduled to be transferred to the holding room in twenty minutes."
"Holding room?" Ruthenia answered. "What holding room? What for?"
"Your execution," he replied.
The gruel turned cold in Ruthenia's stomach. She found her limbs locked in place. Half of her heart had been ready; the other half had been clinging to the hope that they'd known about her conversation with Ihir somehow. Her skull felt too small, the air too tight in her ears.
“Won't there be...a trial?”
“No. You have been declared a threat to the nation. The decree bypassed the court.”
She only dropped onto the bed, hoping she hadn't paled though she felt so dizzy. "Alright, then," she replied. "I will...I will be there. Where do I go?"
"There is no need for you to know," answered the warden. "You will be escorted."
He nodded and turned to depart. She hardly heard the slam of the door, or the turn of the key. She bowed her head and stared at the grey fabric of her pants, spotted with teardrops.
Curling up both fists, Ruthenia pulled her feet onto the bed's edge so she could hug her knees.
Executions of this sort were never kept quiet about. Who knew who'd be watching—her friends? Her foes? The ones who'd always told her she couldn't be anything? They'd finally know how wrong they were, and they’d also watch her die for it.
Ruthenia scrubbed uninvited tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand. Why cry, when she had nothing to lose?
Then she began to think of how Tanio might finally shed a tear when she died. Or Hollia. Or Aleigh. Her gang. The flight machine team. Imessa. The Arcane Viz. For no reason a laugh seized her at the thought—a laugh interspersed with violent sobs, tears suddenly flooding down her chin to stain her grey shirt collar.
Ruthenia squandered the rest of her minutes crying her heart empty. She lay in bed among the covers, sobbing and clenching her fingers deep inside the layers of linty grey cloth, thinking suddenly how wonderful it was to feel their texture and this spearlike pain inside her head, to know this sharpness of sensation.
She watched how the light sparkled dazzlingly through her tears. She loved how the bulb became a burst of flowers in her eyes, and blinked so their petals changed, again and again. In minutes she would no longer know this vividness. In minutes she'd no longer…be.
And it should not matter—because you are the hero you wanted to be! The thought pounded in her head. You have done more than a lifetime's worth. You were brave enough to give everything.
They'll always remember Ruthenia Cendina now.
Yet the loss engulfed the second of bravado, and she bent to her knees again. She didn’t want to die. Life had only just become something she liked.
Ruthenia was glad that she managed to choke back her last sob before the escort entered. They marched in—six of them—faces clean-shaven and hair cropped, boots clicking. Rifles rested against their shoulders, but these ones weren't for killing her. If she was meant to die before a crowd, then she would.
She tightened her fists as she held her wrists out behind her for the handcuffs. She saw her own mother, walking with the same posture, hands behind her back. One of them shoved her head down, and before she had caught her breath, she felt the steel collar click around her neck.
He tugged on the jangling chain to test it, jerking the ring against bones. "Get her moving," one man snapped. The metal abraded her skin as they kicked her forward.
Head bowed with the weight of the ring, Ruthenia glared up at her handler as her feet began to move. They shoved her out of her room. She let them.
The prison floors gleamed around her, made of rock that wasn't marble nor granite. She saw no cell doors on the way to the holding room. They took her up ramps and stairs, rough hands pushing her on course at every bend, bruising her shoulders, then through a heavy door that they locked thrice over.
They pushed her onto a bench, and took position around her. Staring resolutely at the single iron door at the end of the room, she thought about that vision of Ihir, seated in His gleaming marble throne, declaring her His messenger. As she never had before, she whispered a plea in His name.
Then the fifteen minutes were up, and she was dragged off the bench to stand. Chains scraped on the floor. She stumbled towards the fateful door, and as she approached, a sound rose to audibility.
It was the noise of a crowd. Hearing it, the escort men's strides turned robust and purposeful. They kicked at her heels, and she found herself being dragged, her thin prison shoes scraping dirt. Yet Ruthenia fought their callous yanking, and lifted her head against the weight of the chain. Put up the fight of a hero! Even if you are hero to no one else.
They flicked the steel door open as if it were paper. The exit loomed, blinding with daylight, and the roar of crowds upon Candle Plaza swelled. There was a path marked by wooden barricades, splitting the crowd in two, and this was her runway from life to death.
With the storm of screams and bellows in her ears, she believed for a while that they were all here to watch her die. But through the tangle of noise, she noticed something else.
"Queen of the rebels!" someone cried. There was a flash of colour, red petals scattering in a burst across their path. The guards on the perimeter barked at each other, and she saw the offender being dragged away.
But it had been there, and everyone had seen it. The crowd roared and surged in answer, like a fire fed oil.
"Your death will not go unanswered!" "The kings have made their last mistake!"
With one valiant sputter of rage, Ruthenia lifted her head and yelled, "We will bite back!" And the crowd swelled, held back by buckling wood. In retaliation, the head of the escort yanked on the chain so she choked while their gun barrels flashed towards the crowd.
Step by momentous step, they marched her to the heart of the historic plaza. There, four gunmen waiting patiently with glittering rifles, heads masked in black, eyes following her.
She set her jaw and raised her head to glare at them, the way her mother and her father had six years ago.
"Down!" With the order, she felt a kick connect with her back, and lights flashed through her vision as her manacled arms swung to break her fall. Before she could steady her breathing, hands had grabbed her shoulders to straighten her into a kneel.
Her eyes met the gun barrels, those tunnels of death. A rush of blood pulse threw sparks in her eyes. Panic finally engulfed her bodily. The fact and reality. The despair and the smell of her end.
Still, she didn't cry. The crowd's noise surged in answer, hisses and jeers and curses at the kings' names.
Her skin bloomed cold with sweat as the guards lined up their barrels. Today was the day of six years ago. Time folded back on itself. The stones beneath her knees were stained red—red as rose petals, red as the Arcane King's cloak.
"Ihir, please," she breathed, "hear me."
"Ihir won’t save a treacherous heretic like you," growled the head of the escort against the roar of the audience. "Any last words?"
She steeled her face while the rifles clicked in a chorus.
Here before the barrels of four guns, she was at the end of her tenacity, her life, her selfhood.
But if there was one thing to which she would always hold true, it was that she wouldn't lie down and take it. Always and forever.
Lifting her head one last time, she cried, “Ihir! Save me!”
*
And she was answered.
A dozen lightning bolts leapt out of the sky. Thunder rolled like a gun salute.
The longest second in the universe followed. She heard the entire world rush through her ears. She tasted the sea splitting the skin on her lips. She smelt the rain. She felt her eyes fly wide open. She watched a blinding spear of lightning shoot out of the sky and connect with her.
Gunpowder boomed, but the bullets exploded in midair. The air hummed, like the tuning of strings before a concert—and all about her, there were thousands of feathers—white and brown, eagle’s feathers, swan's feathers—swirling and fluttering in a whirlwind.
A sweltering gale lifted her to her feet, and a furnace lit up inside her belly, the flames licking at her throat, roaring to be released.
With a blazing lurch, she spoke that fire to life.
This I tell you! she bellowed in twenty voices. Before her, executioners, escorts and crowds bent fearfully away. Her mind was her own but her throat no longer was, and she could not help but to keep speaking. Once, in ancient days, I called it sin to trust a power not of my making. But time dashes these powers against each other; they dance, weave, and the thorns turn to verdure.
Now you have taken my old law to the letter, in ways I never asked for, and now you have committed homicide in my name, and now I see they cannot hold. They cannot stand. They should have been torn down a century ago. And so I give you a new one. It is not sin to change! It is not sin to welcome all that will lead my nation to life and prosperity!
Let it be yours. Let it raise you. And let it be your flight!
As sudden as it had come, the blazing heat deserted her, and she felt herself fall back to the cobblestones with a thud that knocked all the breath from her lungs. She lay there for a minute, heat and pain banging on her skull, as the lights swam and swirled and slowly began to make sense.
Then the sky itself exploded upon Candle Plaza. With another boom of lightning, rain began to gush down upon the stones, upon heads and shirts and cloaks, washing everything cold and clean.
A tug at the ring on her neck startled a yelp out of her. "Up! We're not done, convict," snapped the head guard as she ascended on her knees. "We don't know what strange kinds of Weaving you've got in you, but this is not rewriting your death warrant—"
"It is."
The interruption made the head guard drop the chain. Simultaneously, the entire party turned, as did Ruthenia.
It was the Archbishop who had stepped into their midst, white robes greyed by the downpour.
"Miss Cendina’s death sentence must be revoked," he repeated, walking serenely into the midst of the firing squad, any of whom could have shot him to death. But Archbishop Tiel lifted his hand, and they bowed their heads meekly. He turned to Ruthenia, who knelt trembling, struggling to stay upright. "My child…I cannot fail you again. I shall have you transferred to the cathedral house."
Only the head guard did not back down. "Good afternoon, Your Holy Grace." He offered the courtesy of a bow. "I am the official in charge of this execution. I mean no disrespect, but who grants you the authority to decide what is to be done with the convict?"
"I do," said a voice from behind him. Again they turned. King Hazen had entered their midst, grave as he'd always been, but with a hint of a reassuring glance at Ruthenia. The Ordinary King came to a halt, eyes going cold. "Ihir has spoken. This is an unprecedented circumstance. I, too, ask for Miss Cendina to be held at the cathedral house, lest we incur His wrath."
"I—if you so command, Your Majesty," muttered the man, dissent melted to nothing. "Men, unchain her."
Ruthenia breathed deeply, counting the seconds. She counted steadily and faithfully, hoping that the methodical and endless chore would somehow reinstate some semblance of order to her mind.
Still sitting listlessly on the stones, she felt the wardens removing the chains and bolts. A period of dazed staring and being-stared-at later, a carriage of the cloister arrived on the square in a smooth clatter, and she found herself being escorted aboard by a woman in the grey-and-white cathedral service garb.
Her speechlessness persisted as the carriage lifted away from the plaza. She slumped in the seat. To her right, the Archbishop’s turned.
"Good afternoon, Miss Cendina," said Tiel, once Centrelight had sunk out of the windows. "I hope you are well, in spite of all that has transpired."
His voice was muffled and faint. She'd been staring at her lap, studying the rough weave of the pants.
"Miss Cendina, are you able to speak?"
This time the question came with a dash of concern, and she finally opened her mouth.
"I am," she answered, no drop of life to her words. "Your Holy Grace."
“Are you aware that Ihir just spoke through you?”
"I am," she answered. “I am relieved He finally saved me. After promising He would.”
The surprise emerged upon Tiel's face, and the widening of his eyes was followed by her own. She pulled her shoulders back against her seat.
"He did speak through me," she murmured.
"Proving it will be trivial, I imagine, considering the number of witnesses," he said. “As Saint Somnia’s successor, I believe I should offer you my mantle.”