A Flight of Broken Wings, page 33
part #1 of The Aeriel Chronicles Series
Hiya shook her head, looking confounded. Then she looked up, peeking through the leaves of the shami tree at the overcast sky above. The moon was all but obscured, a few stars glimmering weakly here and there as the clouds passed over them. “Really?” she said again, her tone incredulous.
“Uh-huh,” replied Ashwin, with a confidence born of centuries of unrelenting self-assurance. “When someone dies, they become a star. They live in the sky, shining for everyone they left behind on earth, and watching over them.”
“So he’s there?” Hiya exclaimed, something like hope colouring her voice for the first time in days. Ruban’s heart clenched in his chest and he turned away, blinking back tears he couldn’t afford to shed at the moment. “Baba is looking down at me right now?!”
“Of course,” the Aeriel assured her. “And if he sees you so sad, he’d be sad too, wouldn’t he?”
Hiya nodded, determination setting into her features. “You’re right. I won’t cry anymore. I won’t. Baba was a hero. Everyone says so. What would he think if he saw me crying?”
“He’d think you loved him. Love him, dearly.” Ashwin smiled, patting her on the head in a way that would have gotten Ruban’s hand bitten off, had he ever displayed the temerity to try it. Coming from Ashwin, though, it just generated a sniffle and a tentative little smile. “But he loves you too. So he wouldn’t want you to be sad, would he? Not even for him.”
Hiya nodded fervently, running the hem of her frock over her tear-and-snot stained face; leaving splotch-marks on the expensive fabric that would probably cost a small fortune to remove.
Ruban had never been more grateful in his life.
Simani hugged him the moment she saw him. Then she proceeded to hug Ashwin, who seemed bemused by this turn of events. Nevertheless, he wrapped his arms – rather awkwardly – around her shoulders and gave her a friendly pat, which made Simani giggle. Bizarrely, Ruban imagined Shwaan’s wings enfold his partner as she embraced him, warm and protective.
By the time they disengaged, Vikram held a chuckling Hiya in his arms, tickling the girl into a fit as their ten-year-old son, Srikan, trailed his parents. Hiya and Sri knew each other, of course. Had known each other for almost as long as either of them could remember.
But Sri had been busy with school this past year and the two hadn’t seen each other for some months. Ruban supposed half a year seemed like a long time when you were barely out of the single digits in age, and the two children hid behind the pant-legs of their respective adults, until Vikram produced a couple of fluorescent lollipops from the mysterious depths of his back-pocket. This set off a raucous array of thrilled noises that momentarily overpowered the solemn tranquillity of the funeral ceremony, until both children were bundled off to an adjacent garden by the exasperated Vikram, ordered to amuse themselves away from the vicinity of any cameras or important-looking humans.
Simani, Ruban thought, looked beautiful in a plain white tunic tucked into an ankle-length skirt. Vikram wore a simple button-down paired with trousers in a similar palette. He put a gentle arm around his wife’s shoulder, and Ruban noticed for the first time that his partner’s eyes were red-rimmed. She had been crying.
“I’m so sorry, Ruban,” she said, her voice unsteady, reaching to take one of his hands into her own. He knew then, that her tears were not for his uncle, much as she had liked and admired him as a mentor and superior. Her tears were for him. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when all of this happened; when it all went to hell.” A corner of her mouth lifted in a wry little smile. “Not much use as a partner these days, am I?”
Ruban glared at her. “You’re the best partner I could ever want, and far better than I deserve,” he said fiercely. Honestly.
Ruban wasn’t an easy man to work with at the best of times. And these last few months had been anything but the best. Anyone other than Simani would have reported him for flouting investigative protocol a long time ago. Just because he didn’t say it often enough didn’t mean he didn’t know how lucky he was to have her.
Simani smiled, some of the tension leaving her shoulders as she leaned into Vikram for a long moment. “Well, I better get going, then. Have a speech to prepare for and all that.” Extricating herself with some reluctance from her husband’s embrace, she turned back towards the centre of the venue, which to Ruban looked more like some bizarre, all-white wedding than a funeral. “You done with yours?”
“Kind of,” said Ruban noncommittally, as Simani and Vikram set off for the central dais hand-in-hand.
Ruban pulled at his collar. “Gods, I hate these clothes. Why couldn’t they just let us attend in uniform? Wouldn’t that be more appropriate? The man literally died Hunting.”
“Appropriate, perhaps,” Ashwin agreed, resting his back against the tree, hands tucked into his pockets. “But not spectacular enough for the press, I suspect. Besides, this is a once in a generation opportunity. Not every day a country gets to claim the slayer of the Aeriel Queen herself as one of its national martyrs. You can’t begrudge them the pleasure of advertising it.”
Ruban shook his head, a hint of a smirk on his lips. “You know more about this stuff than I do, and I’m actually paid by the government of this country. Should I be concerned?”
“Indeed you should. But not about me. Not at the moment, anyway.” He nodded at the dais, upon which a mic had been set up, surrounded by bouquets of white lilies. “It’s about to begin. Have you thought about what you’ll say?”
Ruban chuckled. It came out more bitter than he had intended. Not that there was any real point trying to hide these things from the Aeriel now. Ruban half suspected Ashwin could read his mind. It certainly would explain a lot. “Not really, no. I’m not good at these sorts of things.”
The Aeriel’s lips quirked. “I noticed.”
The speeches began. Neither of them said anything for a few minutes, the silence stretching out long enough for the much applauded conclusion of two dragging monologues.
Finally, it was Ruban who broke the spell. “How did you know about the stars?”
“Hmm?” Ashwin lifted an eyebrow, which Ruban felt more than saw, his eyes still fixed on the dais.
“The story. About people becoming stars when they died. It’s from an old legend or something. I only know because it was one of Baba’s favourites. The man was up to his temples in the classics. He used to tell it to me whenever I asked about Mummy. For an embarrassingly long time, I actually believed my mother was a star. A real one. I’d scan the skies every night to see if I could find her.”
“And did you?”
Ruban shrugged, turning sharp eyes on his companion. “You’re avoiding the question.”
Ashwin sighed. When he spoke, there was a tinge of something in his voice that Ruban couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t sadness, exactly. It didn’t have the freshness of sorrow. It was too old – an ancient scar scabbed over to the point of invisibility. “It was a popular myth with the humans, back when I was…” Ashwin trailed off. Shaking his head, he allowed a small smile to soften his features. “Back before the Rebellion. I think after, it fell out of fashion because there weren’t enough stars to account for all the dead.”
Turning slightly to face Ruban, he continued, a faraway look in his eyes. “We’d found a pup just outside the palace gates, my sister and I. She lay abandoned in one of the garbage heaps by the main road. She was starved, dehydrated, barely breathing. Perhaps her mother had died, I don’t remember now. Anyway, we took her in, brought her home with us.
“Maya…she was what you might call our governess, I suppose. She fed the pup, washed her and tucked her in with us at night to keep her warm. We were chivalrous children, but we didn’t know much about the practicalities of nursing mortal beings near death.
“It worked. For a while, at least. Piku lasted almost a whole year. We loved her, everyone did. The servants were all to bits over her. But her lungs were a mess. The cold, those first few nights after she was born, before we’d found her; it had done her in. In the end, there was nothing we could do but wait for the inevitable.
“I wouldn’t stop howling, when she finally died. I was a snotty kid. Pampered. And it was my first real encounter with the concept of mortality. I didn’t much understand what had happened. I just wanted her back. And I wasn’t used to being told I couldn’t have something I wanted.
“Maya…” he closed his eyes, breathed out. When he opened them again, they were resolutely fixed on the blinking stars above. “Maya told me she was in the sky. That Piku was a star now, and that from now on she’d be watching me from above to make sure I went to bed on time.” He chuckled, “We didn’t need to sleep, of course. But it pleased Maya to get us to bed on time. That, and to feed us. Made her feel she had earned her pay.
“At the time I’d had no doubt in my mind that she was telling the truth. That Piku really was a star now. I believed her enough to fly off one day to meet Piku in her new empyrean abode.”
He laughed. “Safaa was furious. Scared, really, but she’d never admit that. I don’t think it had occurred to Maya that I would actually try to verify her assertion. She hadn’t really considered the practical implications of telling stories about the sky to a kid with wings.
“After that, it was all about the underground gardens and palaces for departed pets. Didn’t have quite the same ring to them, though. Didn’t feel quite real.”
“You loved her,” Ruban said simply, his eyes fixed on the Aeriel’s profile, watching for the slightest shift in expression.
Ashwin closed his eyes, turning away from the overcast sky. “She was the closest thing to a mother I ever had.”
A few minutes passed. More speeches, more lamentations intertwined with adulation for the departed, followed. Subhas’s achievements – both professional and otherwise – were listed, repeated and exaggerated in every permutation and combination conceivable, multiple times over. The Minister of Urban Development announced a statue in Subhas’s honour on the premises of the IAW headquarters. The Minister of Education, not to be outdone, announced the addition of a chapter on the life of Subhas Kinoh in the high school history curriculum.
Ruban almost smiled, but he couldn’t bring himself to do the expression any justice. This sycophantic fawning would have made Subhas laugh, had he been here to see it. But he wasn’t. Because Ruban had watched him die in his arms less than four days ago. Try as he might, he could not bring himself to forget that.
“Why didn’t you tell them?” asked Ashwin after a while, his eyes on the dais. He might have been talking about a new recipe he had learned, for all the emotion his tone betrayed.
Ruban thought he knew what was coming, but he made himself ask anyway. “Tell them what?”
“About Subhas. About what he did. What he really did. About the letter from your father. In the villa itself, you’d have found evidence enough to support your claims – your accusations – if you’d made them.” There was no judgement in his tone one way or another, only idle curiosity. Ruban didn’t think Ashwin really cared if he answered him or not.
Which, strangely, was exactly what made him want to tell him everything; more in an attempt to justify his decisions to himself than to the Aeriel. There were times when hiding the truth felt like a betrayal of his own father, of Miki. And yet, in a way, it was better to betray the dead than the living. He sighed.
“And what would it have achieved? He was a traitor, yes. And a murderer – in intent, if not in deed. Had he been alive…” Ruban shook his head, trying to bring some order to his thoughts. “But he’s not, is he? He’s dead. Dead men don’t care if people call them a hero or a villain. It wouldn’t matter to him, not anymore. The only person it would affect is Hiya. The public would want revenge, the media a scapegoat. And they wouldn’t have him. Who do you think they would go for instead?
“Perhaps it might have been me, if they didn’t think I was the one who killed Tauheen. But they do. So who’s left?
“Oh, they’d pretend to pity her, to absolve her of her father’s crimes. Say she was as much a victim as anybody else. That would’ve been the official line anyway. But it wouldn’t be real. Wouldn’t be true. Not in the public opinion, at least.
“She’d be branded as the traitor’s daughter. Grow up being told that her father betrayed the country, that he sold himself to the Aeriels and killed his own brother. She’d carry that stigma with her for the rest of her life.
“Hiya deserves better than that. Her father loved her. And she loved him. Whatever he did, she deserves to have those memories untarnished. She deserves to grow up with her innocence intact; not shunned and stigmatised by society, betrayed by her own family. Punished for crimes she never committed. I would rather make my uncle a hero than his daughter an outcast.
“Besides, whatever he did, he was manipulated, lied to and misled at every turn by Tauheen. She used his dead wife’s memory to control him, and then when that didn’t work, threatened his only daughter to reinforce that control. I can never forgive him for what he did, but neither can I be absolutely sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing under those circumstances. Eight years ago, back when Baba and Miki died…” he looked down at his feet, fists clenched in his pockets. “If Tauheen had come to me; told me she knew who had done this. Told me she could help me get revenge. I wish I could tell you I wouldn’t have been tempted. That I would have known she was lying. But the fact is, I don’t know.
“I was a mess, jumping at shadows, lashing out at anything and everything in front of me. To be honest, back in those days, I would have been glad to have a real target, an outlet for all that anger, all that frustration. I’d have been glad to be told, in so many words, who my enemy was. Who had done this to me, to my family. And then, to be handed their head on a silver platter. To be told I could get my revenge if only I did as I was told,” he shrugged. “Perhaps I could have resisted it, walked away. Perhaps, but I can never be sure of that. Maybe it’s just a matter of chance that it’s me standing here now, and not him. Maybe the only thing I did right was to not be powerful enough, useful enough for your mother to want me.”
Ruban closed his eyes, fighting back unexpected tears. Awkwardly, Ashwin put a hand on his shoulder. The gesture wasn’t particularly comforting to Ruban, but it was painfully sincere. Well, he supposed it wasn’t Ashwin’s fault he was a centuries old immortal demigod with the emotional capacity of an autistic Chihuahua.
“He died protecting me, Ashwin. Died fighting her. Maybe it’s a weakness, but I can’t forget that. Can’t condemn him as completely as I know I should, even in my own mind.” He groaned. “Dear God, I’m turning into Baba. If only he could see me now. He’d be in fits.”
Stuffing his hand back into his pocket with a grateful sigh, the Aeriel turned solemn eyes on him. It wasn’t often that that word could be used to describe anything about Ashwin, and Ruban raised a brow, curious.
“He’d be proud of you. Your father. If he could see you now, if he was half the man you say he was, he would be proud.”
Ruban felt a half-smile creep onto his face, and lifting his eyes heavenward, he turned away from the Aeriel. “Guess it must be a happy day for the stars then, huh.”
Camera flashes blinded him as he walked up to the dais. Every fibre of his being screaming at him to fight-run-fire-attack, it took everything he had to maintain his composure, the illusion of solemn gravity, when memories mingled with nightmares and all he really wanted to do was to duck under the nearest piece of furniture and curl up into himself.
Adjusting the mic, he cleared his throat, trying to buy himself some time. At his approach, the press corps had gathered around the dais like bees surrounding a pot of honey. They practically buzzed with anticipation, setting up tripods, readying recorders and notepads. Their excitement had stirred the rest of the gathering, and even those few who had not previously known or cared who he was were now whispering and speculating with animation, grabbing their phones to snap pictures over the heads of their peers.
Ruban opened his mouth to speak, but something heavy caught in his throat and he swallowed. Tried again.
An expectant silence descended upon the crowd before him and Ruban felt a vice crushing the air out of his lungs. He didn’t know what he had expected, but somewhere in the back of his mind he had thought – had hoped – that he would have peace after this was all over. After she was dead. After he had had his revenge.
He did not think this was what peace felt like.
“He was a great man, my uncle,” he said at last, fighting the urge to squeeze his eyes shut, to turn his face away from the cameras. “Subhas Kinoh. Perhaps one of the greatest men of his generation, as I am sure everyone gathered here would agree.”
Murmurs of assent went up into the night air and Ruban heard himself continue. “A great Hunter, a visionary administrator and an exemplary patriot; he was good at everything he did, and exceptional at most. He was an inspiration and a role model to all those around him, and a great mentor and friend to all those whom he was charged to guide.”
Ruban swallowed, looking out over the sea of faces before him. At this point, he didn’t even know if he was lying or telling the truth, or perhaps grasping for some tenuous balance between the two. He pressed on: “Perhaps more important than his numerous talents and achievements, however, were his intentions. Gifts are easy. After all, they are given. It is our choices that make us who we are.
“And above all that can be said of Subhas Kinoh – both good and evil – it can be said, with absolute honesty, that he was a loving man. He was, more than anything, a man who loved his family, his country, his daughter. Everything he did in life, right up to his last breath, could be attributed to that fierce, unbending love for those that he considered his own. And to his tireless devotion to that love.”
His vision blurred and something warm trickled down his face, past the corners of his mouth and into the hollow of his neck. Flashes of hazy light went off somewhere in the distance, but what did it matter? It wasn’t like there was much they hadn’t already written about him. For once, he might as well give them something true to write about. Something that mattered.
