Eagles and Swans
Chapter 7: Spring Tide
A downpour began that lasted through the night, the pitter-patter lulling Ruthenia gently to sleep. By the next morning, the rain had cleared, leaving a fresh mist on the fields below. The clouds parted to reveal a clear blue dawn. Out on the patio, shimmering puddles caught the sun. The wind carried the scent of storm’s end, of grass ruffled by the rain, petals and twigs.
On the dining table she found a note from Tanio, in his favourite eye-catching yellow: Pick up fish from Baytown. She scrunched it under her fist. After downing her breakfast of bread and jam, Ruthenia snatched the straw fish basket off the coat rack and looped it around her arm, going back for her umbrella.
On her patio, she shut her squeaky wooden double doors behind her, and pulled her umbrella open over the rail. Today, the Threads took it more easily than usual, and her heart leapt when they caught. She tumbled into the canopy and soared away with a kick at the balustrade, staring upward between the white clouds as the sky turned a deeper shade of blue around her.
Ruthenia flew westward through the airborne suburbs. The River Colura passed beneath her as she followed its glittering current, lowering her course to shout and wave at the children swimming in it. She flew for twenty minutes southwest, till the fields became sand and the river fanned out in a broad estuary flowing into the sea.
The buildings of the Bollard District hung around her like paper ornaments, white and weightless, all poles and canvas. Out in the bay, the bells of trawlers chimed as they raised their nets to the calls of gulls. The steam vessels rode the swells of the tide, billows of condensed steam blooming from their chimneys. The shimmering expanse rippled on to the edge of visibility.
Down to the bay Ruthenia flew. She landed on the grey rock pier in front of a fish stall that overlooked the bay, the stench of fish hitting her before the sight of a dozen full bins, the fishes' silver flanks still writhing inside. She leaned to pick out fish and drop them into the basket inside her overturned umbrella, floating beside her.
Beside her, the shopkeeper was engrossed in a conversation. “Been like this a week or so,” said a scraggly man, beard brushing his tarnished uniform buttons. “Whirlpools and glitter on the waves, all that damned glitter. It clings to our hulls. The Argenta Sea's off limits now, but taking the long way 'round is costing us!”
“Oh, its driving the fish mad, too,” answered the keeper. “Plenty of fish in our nets, plenty of silver scum too.”
“The world's gone mad. I saw a boat get pulled in with my own eyes,” the sailor answered. “Dragged bow-first into the sea, I could hear their screams from a mile out, poor souls.”
“Ihir help them.”
“I say the whirlpools are Ihir's will, it is hebis loricoda anew.”
The captain and the stall owner launched into a debate on theology and scripture, and that was when Ruthenia knew it was time for her to buy and make her departure. “Just the lot,” she said, showing the keeper the basket.
“Twelve argents,” he answered, counting off the fish in a glance. She paid as asked, then pushed her floating umbrella just off the edge of the pier, before leaping in after the fish basket.
*
Ruthenia dropped off the basket on Tanio's porch, then crossed to her patio, whose wooden boards were now dry and warm against her soles. She returned her umbrella to the rack and dropped into her desk chair, where her messenger's glass was glowing.
Thank you most kindly. A courier will arrive at ten o’clock today.
“Er, what was this a reply to again?” she thought aloud.
It occurred to her then that it was Sunday, and Hollia meant to be visiting to complete the Flight Physics task they had been assigned. If she had sent a message about it, it was too bad about the timing, as the Arcane Priss' message would have replaced it.
But either way, Hollia would not be here till the afternoon. Picking up the book on her desk, she found her way to her hammock and, for the next hour or so, absorbed herself in the inner workings of clockwork devices.
There was a flutter of wings, and at the knock on her door, she leapt from the hammock.
There was a brown-haired woman lurking by her open door. “Come in,” she shouted.
She watched as the stranger pushed the door open and entered haltingly, as if afraid the shed might devour her. She was pale-skinned with her long mouse-brown hair in a braid, hanging to the woven silver chain belt girding her waist. A messenger bag hung upon her shoulder, the edges trimmed in gold.
“Good morning, Miss Cendina,” she said with a practiced smile. “I was sent by His Highness, the Arcane Prince, to—”
“Oh, yes, I know,” answered Ruthenia, racing to pick up the heavy black box. Once it was in her hands, her steps slowed. She handed it to the visitor.
“Thank you,” she replied, gripping the box tightly enough to dent it. Flipping the cover of her woven bag open, she fished out a brown parcel tied up in a red ribbon, and offered it to Ruthenia.
“What’s this?” she said, hands sinking with its unexpected weight. She put it on her tabletop with a telltale clink, and tugged the ribbon loose.
“Payment, and your security,” the courier replied.
Sure enough, as soon as the wrapping came undone, she found herself gaping at a wooden case of stacked aur coins—more than enough to pay off her expenses for the next three months. She spent the next five minutes shuffling the coins around, and then began to unload them from the box into the drawer.
It was midway through slurping up her beef noodle lunch that a knock resounded from Tanio's landing platform. The man himself shouted down the stairwell. “Ruthenia, I think you have a visitor.”
Ruthenia abandoned the last dregs of noodles on the table and leapt from her seat, sprinting up the uneven stairs while she straightened her soup-drenched shirt. Skidding to a stop on the narrow sunlit landing, Ruthenia spotted Hollia’s head through the colourful semicircle of glass. She leapt over the squeaky floorboard and called out her name, throwing the door open.
Hollia flew in with the biggest smile. "Ruthenia!" She wore a sleeveless blouse and loose grey dress that billowed in the breeze
"Thanks for coming," Ruthenia answered, dodging a hug. She glimpsed Phore filling half the balcony outside, feathers fluffed up in the sun.
When they returned to the stairs, they found Tanio standing at the landing with a grin. “Good to see you again!” he declared. “I was worried for a bit that Ruth had fallen out with you.”
Ruthenia began steering Hollia towards the stairs. “Mister Calied, thanks for having me over,” answered Hollia nevertheless. “How's work treating you?”
Tanio beamed. “Oh, busy as always, I'm just in such high demand. So many messages and letters, I can barely get through them fast enough.”
“Hollia, we have work to do!” she growled, tugging on her elbow.
They crossed the plank bridge in the beating sun, then were relieved by the shelter of Ruthenia's shed. She kicked the door shut behind them and appraised her room. Something about the sight of Hollia in here was always just a little jarring, the poorly-sawed shelves and homemade desk stool not worthy of her guest. But her friend's eyes in wonder only widened at all the parts on haphazard display across the floor.
Ruthenia leaned over her desk and threw her window open. She pulled a stack of paper, a pair of scissors and some industrial grade liquid adhesives from her drawer, and laid them out on her workbench. Beside them she placed her sketch. “Let’s get this over with.”
Through the long, lazy hours of the afternoon, the air was idle, and the motes of sawdust caught the light from the window. Ruthenia paused to lift her face to the window every time a soft breeze blew through. Ruthenia quickly came to the conclusion, upon a close reading of the assessment details, that there was nothing preventing them from folding the sheet of paper into any structure they pleased, as long as they were able to do it during the performance itself.
On this front, Hollia had the perfect knowledge to contribute—that is, the knowledge of how to fold paper into a glider. While they worked together on the design and calculations, they chattered: about the class, and their classmates. When Hollia began about her social life, there was no end to what she could say.
“Just last week, I went out with Telis and Lora in Candelabra Town and took tea together in this really cute teashop that Lora likes. I didn't even know it was there!”
“They seem like be better company than me.” Ruthenia murmured, then added a laugh as an afterthought.
“Huh? No, Ruth, of course not. They have their heads all in the clouds, and it's nice to be part of their caprices. But you're proper company. I can always trust you to be honest, and that means a lot.”
“That's nice of you to say,” she murmured, heart unclenching. “But how’s work treating you?”
“Just as well as always,” Hollia said. “Every time migration season comes round, I can’t stop wondering if I should just open the doors and set them free.”
“But they’ll die if you do, won't they?”
Hollia nodded, her voice clouded. “Some of them are the last families of their kind. Like the mourning doves. I can’t risk it.” Her brow was furrowed with a frown that looked wrong on her face. “Does it ever bother you? That the work you’re doing might be wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean...” She put the glue bottle down. “Believing that your work needs to be done is why you strive to do it the best you can, right? But what if that’s not true? If what you’re doing isn’t...right?”
“I doubt Arcanes indulge in their business-making because they think it’s morally right.”
“But I keep thinking about the birds, wondering if they don’t need to be cared for.”
“You don’t think it’s right?”
“I think—I sometimes feel like I’m just hurting them. Maybe we aren’t meant to keep them caged. Maybe we’ve been wrong...I don’t know. It keeps me awake at night, when I can hear them biting at the wires.” Hollia was gazing past Ruthenia, at the clouds in the window.
“I don’t think what you're doing is wrong. Some humans put them in a cage a hundred years ago. And now they can't live in the wild anymore, so someone has to take care of them.” She sighed. “As for me...I don’t know if any of what you said applies exactly.” She realised then that she was no longer working. “I’m in the trade because it was all I heard about from the moment I was born. I’ve never thought of becoming anything else. And these days it feels like I'm just honouring my parents' memory.”
“That's noble of you.”
“It’s like I never actually got to decide. I don’t know if that counts as being noble.”
Sitting in a corner of her shed, soaking in the afternoon warmth, the paper glider took twice as long to finish as it should have. It was not until the sky turned orange in the windows that Ruthenia picked up pace, apologising for having kept Hollia so long. Hollia tied the Threads quickly and exactly as instructed. Ruthenia gave it a toss across the room. It shot off through the shadows, path undulating as it soared from the desk to the front door, bobbing up and down like a grasshopper across a field. Then it struck the door with a thud, and collapsed to the planks of the floor. Ruthenia punched the air, and Hollia clapped.
“And we’re done,” announced Ruthenia, dusting her hands together. “That’s as much work as I want to do today, anyway. Let’s finish the report some other time.”
“Thank you,” Hollia murmured. The sun glowed hot vermilion, and the fields were stained orange all the way to the horizon, a few lone houses swaying back and forth on invisible tethers. She lifted her head to whistle a three-note tune, and was answered by a flutter of wings from Tanio's rooftop. Ruthenia waved as she clambered onto Phore and lifted into the red.