Eagles and Swans
Chapter 2: The Pride and Folly of Swans
Preface 01: The Story of Lilin, Goddess of the Horizon, author unknown.
Ihir has many sons and daughters. They were born of His love for the land and the sea, but this love is not of the form to which humanity is familiar. They are to Him as subordinates, and love, as in the eyes of all gods, was obligation.
Of all his sons and daughters, Lilin was the first to learn the rules. Whenever the palace was quiet and the sky still, she peered through the gaps of heaven’s floorboards, and saw the humans on their fields below. She watched them race through the stalks and join hands on the barren land, lighting flames and laughing in circles.
Laughing. Lilin wondered at this odd sound. Why did she never laugh? She thought, perhaps, that heaven did not know what laughter was, not Father Ihir and not the gods of old.
So she made a promise to see this world for herself, and when Kala and Hela of the Gates were looking the other way, she slipped down the marble stairway, and soared away upon her wings to the land below.
It didn’t take long for her absence to be discovered. In His horror, Ihir sent His guards out to search for her—and when they reported that they had seen her flying in the world of mortals, He was furious.
After her He flew himself—catching her in midair in His merciless beak. She screamed to be released, but He did not relent.
“I gave you a home, and a world—and yet you would deceive me to flee it!” bellowed He. “Since you love this world so much, you shall never leave it again! Creature of the ocean, I chain you to the sea forever—and may these chains never release you for the rest of eternity!”
He did not consider a more merciful sentence, not even for His daughter, and she did not think of pleading for one.
And so chained she was, to a rock in the sea. And Lilin cried but a single tear, for she did not understand the word “forever”. She only knew the humans, who were temporary, who rose and fell like spring and winter. She believed that there would be an end to it, because there was always an end.
The sun rays began to slant, and the clock-tower clanged out everyone’s favourite melody, welcoming the most anticipated period of the day: tea break.
Ruthenia woke from her Literature nap just in time to see the last of Mr. Caldero’s grey coattails vanish through the door. She blinked the haze of sleep from her eyes as a rumble of wooden chairs began on cue, a thunderstorm of voices thickening around her.
It was five minutes before the classroom emptied out. Only then did she sweep her crumpled notes onto Alacero’s desk and unearth Tanio’s sandwich from beneath them, now squashed beyond recognition.
She glanced about the classroom: not much of interest was taking place, particularly in the absence of half the class, except on the right side of the classroom where the Arcanes sat. That side of the room was awash with polite chatter while a single person amid it—a person whom she saw to be the Arcane Prince—shielded himself from the attention with a book.
Ruthenia laughed out loud. “You certainly seek fun in the filthiest of places, Your Highness!” A surge of laughter answered, most from her side of the classroom.
She strolled breezily to the desk by the door as the laughter died down behind her. She could only see the back of Hollia’s head from here, her silken blonde hair draped over one shoulder.
She found the girl poring over a particularly thick stack of notes, so engrossed that she did not clock the newcomer’s presence until Ruthenia smacked the tabletop with her palm, startling her out of her reading.
“Ruth!” she gasped, before her face brightened. “I thought Miss Ariera would write you a slip for sure!”
“You know that won’t happen.” Ruthenia fired her a grin, but lost it when she realised that Hollia was not smiling back. “What, do you think she will?”
“Aren't you scared it'll come back to bite you?” said Hollia, weaving her fingers together with a self-conscious glance to the side.
Ruthenia frowned. “Oh, come on. She's just a teacher. She exists to make our lives hard.” Hollia did not answer. Ruthenia drew back, frowning. “How’s the aviary?”
The girl’s gaze grew distant. “It’s spring migration soon.”
“I...hope this one goes better than last year’s.” Ruthenia attempted an earnest smile. Hollia could only purse her lips and nod mutely. She felt a lump grow in her throat. “Well, um, take care, I'll see you around.”
Before she could make things any worse, Ruthenia exited the classroom, heaving a sigh. As she strolled down the length of the corridor, she wove between other students, staring absently over their heads at the curling relief patterns in the ceiling. The sun glowed through the arching windows, setting flecks in the granite aflame.
“Ruthenia!”
She straightened and blinked the glare of the far window out of her eyes, turning to find four figures behind her. The one at the front of the group, red hair blazing, she instantly recognised.
“Hello, Orrem,” she said.
He beamed as he approached, the way racers did at the stands before the start of the flight. “Good job,” he said, his voice like the sun, and his friends nodded and grinned in assent. “How’d you get so good at math?”
“I traded my flight skills for it,” Ruthenia replied with a small smirk.
A laugh passed among his entourage. “Care to join us for the break, genius?” called the brunet beside Orrem, shooting her a smile she registered as wanting something more.
“Not really, no.”
“Why not?” The brazen boy's grin retreated into a dazed stare.
Just then, the tower swayed. She felt the floor swing beneath her. Around her, classmates stumbled and yelped, grabbing at pillars and window sills for balance; a couple were bowled over and cried out as they fell to their knees. Ruthenia crouched low and watched Orrem do the same, waiting for the tremor to pass.
It did, half a minute later, and as it subsided they began glancing at each other. “Earthquakes don’t do that, do they?” she heard one mutter, hand to his chest.
No, earthquakes didn't shake airborne buildings. Other things did, however.
There were unsettled looks all around, and then the clique lost interest in Ruthenia, resuming conversations about recreational flight and their weekend plans as they departed, disquieted by the interruption. Orrem was last to leave; he took one last look at her, before shrugging and joining the rest of his crew.
Soaring through orange sky, Ruthenia swerved clumsily into a landing at the platform before the milkshake stand, skidding a few feet and ramming into the counter. The stand-keeper smiled patiently, sweet as spring, brown curls fluttering in the wind.
“You’re getting better,” she laughed.
Ruthenia made an exaggerated pout. “Don’t tease me,” she said, frown giving way to a grin.
“Honey milkshake?” asked the lady, already arranging the ingredients on her table before she had nodded. “How were your classes?”
“Dull,” she answered, folding her arms on the countertop. “I was half an hour late. Ariera was snarly as a naga about it. Then she asked me about my parents.”
The woman placed a full glass of milkshake on the countertop. “That’s rough.”
While Ruthenia gulped the honey milkshake down, the stand-keeper capped her bottle of syrup and slid it into its compartment in the storage chest. She cast a glance at the setting sun. “Slow day,” she said. “I almost lost this bottle when the tremor hit.”
At this, Ruthenia’s head perked up, the rim of her glass encircling her nose and upper lip. “You felt it too?” she said, voice echoing inside the near-empty glass.
The woman nodded as she tossed the remaining water inside her jug out over the fence behind her, onto the field below. “The whole stand swung,” she replied. “Things rattled. Good thing I’ve made sure to tie it down tight.”
Ruthenia put the empty glass on the counter and approached the island’s edge, opening her umbrella and overturning it for a makeshift boat. The meadows below shimmered with golden sun as she climbed into it.
With a sigh she made off. She sailed across the brilliant sky, which glowed bright as a pool, the bellies of the clouds the bright orange of carps. Her eyelids drooped in the balmy air as she caught the gentle breeze, drifting over an ocean of grass.
She stopped by the news stand for a copy of the Helika Afternoon Herald, paying her three cupres and snatching one off the rack while moor birds squawked behind her. Once she had rejoined the lazy aboveground traffic, she flipped it open. Sure enough, there it was, in a tall, thin article on the front page.
Meteorological Disturbance Detected: an impending catastrophe?
Ruthenia frowned. If the Afternoon Herald already knew about the problem then the scientists must have detected it at least a day ago.
[...] The Central Circle Library was among the worst-affected by the phenomenon. An assistant sustained head injury from a falling encyclopedia. Thousands of books fell from their shelves and several important books were damaged.
Theologists have confirmed that the source of the disturbance is a large gust propagated through ether, affecting only the Threads. Discussions are already being conducted with Bel experts.
This event follows several reports of inexplicable sounds in the Deeps, from which these ethereal gusts originated. The sounds are said to resemble the bowing of a large, untuned chordophone.
Over the past week, at least three ships have been reported to have vanished in the same area.
Such activity has not been charted for thirty years. Authorities warn that a disaster might be forthcoming, and that all should prepare to enter precautionary flight until the situation improves.
Ruthenia could barely ignore the trembling of her hands. Threads weren’t usually affected by natural phenomena. It was what made the country so safe.
She flipped through a few more pages, before flinging the papers into the canopy of her umbrella and steering homewards.
“Ruth! You’re late!”
Tanio's greetIng to Ruthenia was to wave a hissing gas lamp at her face. “Stop that!” she yelled, swinging her arms at the blinding light.
“Well, why so late?” her boss repeated, extinguishing the lamp so the only light in the vicinity was the faint glow of the first level windows. “I don’t fancy my only assistant crashing into an unmarked island and losing use of her arms. Especially considering she’s such a terrible flier—”
Leaping out of her umbrella, Ruthenia shoved him aside with a hand. She unlocked her work shed and found the lever switch on the inner wall with her fingers, slamming it down with a fist. A stream of light blazed across her patio planks.
The shed’s red wood walls glowed cosily in the light of the single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Her desk stood beneath the right-hand window, and her messenger lay on it, glowing dim blue to indicate an absence of new messages. On the left was a cluttering of storage shelves and stacked boxes, the other window obscured behind them.
She tossed her bag onto the rack and kicked her shoes off, before heading to her wardrobe to excavate a good set of clothes. Unfortunately for her, the only shower on the premises was on the second floor of Tanio’s home.
The inventor’s house was everything one might expect an inventor’s house to be. It was top-heavy, the second floor overhanging the first in a physical feat made possible by Thread. The shingled slopes of the roof culminated in a gigantic turbine that creaked back and forth on the windiest days.
The bathroom was a terrifying place, full of rattling pipes and hissing joints, with a drain that gurgled like a sea monster every time it was fed. The centrepiece was the shower tank: a converted engine boiler fixed to the wall by means of metal strips, beneath it a furnace and a bag of coal behind a pair of hatches. And naturally, temperature calibration was a nightmare.
On occasion, showering became a barbaric torture routine involving nakedness and near-boiling water. Tonight was one of those nights.
After her bath, Ruthenia dressed up in the bathroom and stepped out in a cloud of steam, standing at the top of the stairs with her towel about her neck, hair cooling in the air. The dining room was empty and the lone lightbulb glowed down on a single roll on a plate.
She soon found Tanio out on the porch with a roll in hand, legs dangling over the edge of the platform where it plunged into the darkness, one arm curled around a railing baluster. He sat hunched, face hidden from view. The back of his cotton shirt was lit by the glow from his living room window.
Ruthenia joined him at the porch’s edge, beef-and-lettuce roll in a plate on her lap. They gazed out at the world beyond, lost in the night breeze, inky black save for the thin golden light of Helika City on the horizon. The roar of the river below the house was the only audible sound.
She took a bite out of her roll, staring on at the dim reflection of Tanio’s porch light on the river’s surface. “Get a cookbook,” she muttered, before spitting a chunk of charred tendon out over the rails. “Charcoal isn’t exactly delicious.”
Her boss laughed. “Only idiots need cookbooks,” he replied. “I’ll perfect the recipe soon enough.”
Ruthenia groaned. “Could you perfect it faster? You’re gonna kill me someday.”
“You’re not dead.”
“Give it a month, and we’ll see.”
Tanio’s laugh was claimed by the gales. They resigned themselves to the silence, briefly.
“Heard the news?” he said then.
“About the Deeps? It all sounds mighty strange. What’s happening out there?” Ruthenia glanced towards the east, but the eastern coast was too far to be seen from Beacon Way.
“I feel the cause is something living.”
Ruthenia raised an eyebrow. “There’s not much living out there,” she murmured.
For another fifteen minutes or so, they sat there eating, exchanging casual conversation on the topic of work, then of her poor conduct in school. Tanio left soon after; he claimed to have a design to finish—most certainly the meat grinder he’d been rambling on about at the dinner table all week.
The girl was left watching Helika’s blinking lights alone. She prayed he knew what he was doing. She would be the first to find out.