A Flight of Broken Wings, page 6
part #1 of The Aeriel Chronicles Series
And to think she hadn’t even done anything that spectacular yet. Casia bit her lip to keep herself from grinning like an idiot. She couldn’t help feeling a little smug about it all. The news of her interview series with Ashwin – aired twice every week during her ‘Hour of Truth’ segments – about what had quickly come to be known as the ‘SifCo Conspiracy’, had spread like wildfire throughout the capital.
As Jiniya had predicted, their ratings had skyrocketed overnight, not that they were anything to scoff at before. Jiniya had decided to tease the audience with little titbits of information during the first few segments, whetting their appetites. This was meant to work up to the big reveal, in a much hyped two-hour long ‘grand finale’ on the night of Emancipation Day; which of course happened to be today. Who said hard news couldn’t be entertaining?
As it was, the little they had revealed had already caused quite a stir in the establishment, by the looks of it. The day after their third segment was aired, the Supreme Court formally directed the IAW to launch an investigation into the reports of Aeriel activity near SifCo, taking suo motu cognizance of the case. Rumour had it that the Prime Minister himself had called up the Senior Secretary of Defence to enquire about the reasons behind the delay. They hadn’t even mentioned anything about the supposedly game-changing new sifblade formula yet, and the entire city seemed to be in a flux. She couldn’t wait to see what would happen when they finally flung that particular piece of information out into the open tonight.
The message was significant in itself, and it didn’t hurt that the viewers seemed to love the exotic, doe-eyed messenger. Ashwin had been a hit since day one, also just as Jiniya had predicted. The audiences seemed willing to eat up anything that came out of his innocently boyish – if slightly stuttering – mouth.
They were surrounded by reporters. Shwaan sighed internally. The profession had its uses, as he had come to know rather intimately in the past few weeks. He had known that attracting the media’s attention to the happenings at SifCo would be a good way of stalling the plans for the theft, at least temporarily; but even he hadn’t expected it to work quite as quickly, and spectacularly as it had. Nevertheless, Shwaan felt that there should be a legally imposed limit on the number of reporters one was made to deal with during any given period of time. They were exhausting creatures.
“But that is so not fair Cas!” whined the one named Rajesh, whom Casia had introduced as the editor of something called the Life‘n’Style, though what that was supposed to be, Shwaan had little clue. The man was eyeing him rather like a cat noticing a bowl of fresh milk just slightly out of its reach.
“Back off Raj. He’s mine!” Casia growled, with a little more vehemence than Shwaan considered strictly necessary. Not that he was complaining. Her random bouts of territorial aggression came in rather handy at times like these.
He looked around, scanning the grounds for an escape route. Six hundred years ago, he could have pointed out half a dozen underground tunnels opening around the palace premises with a blindfold over his eyes. But things had changed – more than he had imagined possible, really – since the time he had called this compound home. He was suddenly overcome by a strange sense of loss, for a home he had never particularly liked in the first place.
“Come, let me show you around the grounds some more,” said one of the younger members of the group surrounding them, smiling brightly at Shwaan, pulling him out of his reverie. “It really is quite an amazing place; the pride of our city!”
“Oh yes, it is a fantastic place,” agreed Shwaan with genuine fondness, his gaze still scanning his childhood playground for some vestiges of the past, something that hadn’t been swept away by time and humanity.
Suddenly, his gaze alighted on a patch of grassless land, the earth broken by cracked pieces of marble half buried in the dirt. He smiled. “There used to be a statue there,” he said unprompted. Images of Maya yelling at him to ‘get down from there’ – even as his little feet dangled between Zeifaa’s humongous shoulder blades – flashed before his eyes. “I used to climb onto it whenever I was bored. Really had the most marvellous view!”
Wary brown eyes watched him curiously from the spot where the statue had once stood.
Chapter 3: An Aeriel Hunt
“Are you out of your mind?” Ruban demanded, glaring at his uncle. They were alone in Subhas’s office, Simani having lured Ashwin off to the library to introduce him to her husband and ‘show him the treasures of one of the most important monuments in Ragah’. The young nobleman had followed her eagerly enough. “I can’t afford to babysit that spoilt little pipsqueak while working this case. He’s only going to get in the way and slow us down.”
“What will you have me do, Ruban?” his uncle asked, spreading his palms out before him. “We can’t allow him to wander around the city unsupervised. You think Washi is done with him? She’ll try to lure him back to that damned studio first chance she gets; and if not her, then someone else. The media is practically salivating after him right now. And he knows even more about this mess now than he did an hour ago. We can’t possibly risk him talking to anybody else. That boy has the self-control of an impulsive rabbit.”
“Well then, why don’t you just deport him back to Zaini and get this whole mess over with?”
“Deport him?” Subhas sighed, rather melodramatically, in his nephew’s opinion. “And this is why you will never make it in politics, my boy. Whatever your personal opinions of that ‘spoilt little pipsqueak’, Ashwin Kwan is a high-ranking Zainian delegate to this country, sent here on official business by his government. To top it all, he is a fucking Zainian aristocrat, however insignificant. To deport him would not only be a direct insult to his family – which in itself would be bad enough – but also an unforgiveable slight to his country. We have extensive trade links with the House of Kwan which I cannot afford to jeopardise.
“The Zainians are angry enough already about us keeping the formula secret for so many years. Not to mention, lest it has escaped your notice, dear boy, that the Zainians are the only reason we know about any of this in the first place. We can’t afford to antagonise them now and compromise one of the most important sources of intelligence we have permanently,” he took a deep breath, as if steadying himself for what was to come next. “Kwan will stay here for as long as he bloody well pleases. And we’ll just have to suck it up and make sure he doesn’t blow everything up while enjoying our hospitality.”
After a few more seconds of glaring defiantly at his uncle, Ruban deflated, sagging back into his chair as if somebody had punched the air out of him. “I can’t believe this is actually happening to me.”
“Oh stop being such a grumbler, Ruban, it is unbecoming,” Subhas said, with an amount of cheer in his voice that struck the other man as entirely unwarranted, considering the situation. “It’s not going to be that bad. He’s a cute kid.”
Ruban still did not know how he had managed to keep himself from growling at that moment; he could distinctly remember wanting to, rather desperately. Still, it wasn’t usually a superlative idea to growl at one’s boss, even when they weren’t simultaneously one’s uncle. So he contented himself with throwing the man the dirtiest glare he could muster, before hauling himself to his feet with more aggression than was strictly necessary and making his way to the door with a mumbled goodbye.
“Ruban,” his uncle called, just as he was about to slip out of the chamber. He turned, looking questioningly at Subhas. “I mean it, my boy.” All traces of humour were gone from his voice, leaving behind a stern seriousness that inspired obeisance. “Keep an eye on that young man at all times. As long as he’s here, do not let him out of your sight for longer than necessary. He is a foreigner, and you must never forget it. He might be harmless, but not all his associates are. No information should cross the border that we don’t want to send across. Is that clear?”
Ruban dipped his head in a short, decisive nod before the door slid shut behind him and he strode out into the corridor.
The library of the IAW really was awe-inspiring, Shwaan would gladly grant them that. Like in the rest of the building, the chambers were old and cavernous, the walls scarred, dented and chipping at the edges from age and the vendettas of centuries past. Shwaan supposed it was fitting that the humans had turned his mother’s old armoury into an archive of Aeriel atrocities on mankind, past and present. Because really, to a great extent that was what the library was; its walls covered with shelves reaching the high ceiling, filled with stack upon stack of old leather-bound volumes, treatises and documents. And they all recounted, in painstaking detail, the unending tyrannies and atrocities visited upon humankind by Aeriels over the past centuries, reaching back over a thousand years or more.
Now of course, Shwaan would have no problem with an accurate portrayal of history, however unflattering to his own race. And he was pretty sure that over the last six hundred years or so, the records were fairly accurate, albeit a little exaggerated. But the thing was, Shwaan remembered his grandmother. She had been around for quite a few years after he was born – the good years. Then she had winged it to some faraway island to take up with a strapping young sailor she’d encountered on one of her journeys, leaving her vankrai daughter to manage the throne and casually throwing the world into utter chaos.
And while flighty and impulsive she had definitely been – like most Aeriels – she had most certainly not been anybody’s idea of a tyrant. Unless spacing out during court meetings was your idea of tyranny. Neither, so far as he could remember, had he or his sister ever indulged in any village-plundering, farm-burning activities during their time on earth, as asserted by quite a few of the volumes. Not to brag or anything, of course, but Shwaan could distinctly remember that the humans of his time had considered him a singularly cute child. The maids certainly never tired of trying to pull his cheeks and ruffle his wings, much to his youthful indignation.
“My lord.” The Hunter named Simani walked up behind him, with a rather lost-looking, bespectacled man with unruly reddish-brown hair in tow. “This is my husband, Vikram,” she said, indicating her companion. “Vik, this is Lord Ashwin Kwan from Zaini.”
“Just Ashwin, please,” Shwaan said automatically, noticing that the newcomer was clutching a large tome entitled ‘Aeriel Influences in Pre-Rebellion Architecture’ to his chest.
“Hello Ashwin,” said the other man, smiling with more genuine friendliness than Shwaan had seen on anyone that day. “Sorry I kept you waiting. I…uh…got a little engrossed.” Holding up his book, he gave an embarrassed little laugh.
“A little indeed,” said Simani fondly, rolling her eyes.
“Oh no,” said Ashwin, reassuringly. “Don’t be sorry. Personally, I think roofless galleries were a nifty idea, if a little ahead of their time. They should’ve waited for water-proofing to get invented before implementing it wholesale in the capital.”
Vikram’s eyes lit up like a boy whose birthday had come early. “I know right? And the sun-soaking roofs were basically the ancient version of modern solar panels. If only we can recover the lost Aeriel technology, half of our energy issues will be solved overnight! Not that they’d ever grant funds for the research, but I always wondered how they connected the energy absorbents to the interior panelling of the chambers…”
Shwaan was sure he would have said more, if the library doors had not flown open at that moment to admit a very flustered-looking Ruban Kinoh, who marched through the dim, draughty chambers of the library, his coat flaring out behind him, until he reached the trio standing in one of the inner sections. He looked at Simani and the two Hunters seemed to have some kind of unspoken communication between them, Simani’s eyes flicking momentarily to Shwaan before she sighed, shaking her head. Ruban was more demonstrative of his displeasure, and threw a glare his way that could have rivalled Safaa’s on a good day. “We have to go,” he growled, still glowering at Shwaan.
Shwaan had heard of Ruban before he met him, of course. It was impossible not to hear of him if one was spending any time in Vandram, but even more so in Ragah. The Parliament attack – another ridiculous and over-the-top venture orchestrated by his mother – had made the Hunter a household name. From what Shwaan could tell, though, Ruban had been well-known in military and enforcement circles long before any of that, if not so much in civilian ones.
The best Aeriel Hunter in the country, they called him, and if his record was anything to go by, Shwaan knew that the epithet was well deserved. He could feel his wings twitching with something that bordered on anxiety, and tamped down brutally on the urge to stretch them. The human had no way of knowing who he really was, and as long as he didn’t, he had no reason to want him dead, no matter how much Ashwin Kwan annoyed him.
Besides, Ruban was a Hunter, and by all reports, an exceptionally good one. It couldn’t hurt to get to observe one from such close quarters, just in case he ever needed the experience; though he did of course plan to avoid any conflict with humans so far as possible. Safaa would have his head if he got into any unnecessary squabbles on earth and ruined their reputation even more than their mother already had. Not that Tauheen had left much for him to do in that direction, so far as he could see.
“We need to go,” Ruban repeated, jerking his head at the door, a distinct snappishness to his tone.
“You go ahead with Ashwin, Ruban,” Simani said with a smile, putting a friendly hand on the other Hunter’s shoulder. “Vik and I need to go to the school to pick Sri up. I’ll see you at the office in an hour.”
Ruban frowned, looking genuinely confused. “Sri has school on Emancipation Day?”
“Well, not school school,” Vikram piped up, flailing his hands in a rather futile attempt to explain himself nonverbally. “Like, y’know, the Emancipation Day Parade. It’s compulsory, so all the kids have to attend it.”
“We dropped him off before we got here,” Simani nodded.
Ruban smiled, a faraway look in his eyes. “The Parade,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Miki used to be so good at that.” The next moment, he seemed to realise what he had done, and the colour drained from his face. Simani looked away, her eyes pained and Vikram seemed suddenly to find the fading patterns on the ragged old library carpet profoundly fascinating.
“We need to go,” Ruban snapped for the third time, his voice rough. This time, the command was directed solely at Shwaan. And before he could come up with a response, the Hunter was already halfway across the library, reaching for the door handle. Shwaan ran after him, not wanting to be left behind in the sudden awkwardness of the library.
The Hunter Quarter, South Ragah Division, was a rather unassuming affair, considering all the hype that surrounded it. It consisted mainly of a large, square, red-brick structure surrounded by a small yard, with smaller, if more modern-looking extensions scattered around the main building. A large sign over the main doorway announced the nature and purpose of the establishment along with the street name and address. Apart from that, Shwaan could see nothing that distinguished this particular building from the many others like it that he had seen around the neighbourhood on the way over.
Ruban walked into the building through the open doorway and Shwaan followed at a more leisurely pace. He would be lying if he said that walking into a building reputedly full of some of the best Hunters in the city did not fill him with some amount of trepidation, but with it there was also excitement. Excitement at being so close to the beating heart of the anti-Aeriel establishment of Vandram, the core of her famed Hunter Corps; of walking casually into a building he was sure his mother would have given her left wing to be able to infiltrate. He wondered what she would say, if she could see him now.
“Welcome back, boss,” said a young man from behind one of the six large teakwood desks scattered around the expansive workspace in no discernible order. The man, who looked to be about twenty-five, was dressed in a heavily embroidered white tunic paired with fitting white trousers. Looking around, Shwaan saw that the two other occupants of the room were also similarly attired in elaborate tunics and matching pants. “Took you long enough.” The young man scowled darkly at Ruban. “How come you get to escape those damned speeches when we were stuck trying not to gag on the Transport Minister’s atrociously fake Ibantian accent for two whole hours?”
Ruban’s answering grin was all teeth. “That’d be ’cause I’m the boss and you’re the minion. Got it?”
If the young man ‘got it’, the only indication of his newfound enlightenment was a dismissive clucking noise accompanied by an eye roll. “Where were you anyway?”
“IAW,” said Ruban, moving towards what Shwaan assumed was his own desk in one corner of the room. “Got a call from the Senior Secretary this morning.”
“What for?” asked one of the others, a rotund woman of around fifty, her curly brown hair pulled back into a tight bun. Shwaan squinted to make sure he was seeing right. On one side of her desk sat a large grey alley-cat, reclining on the polished wood with half-lidded eyes. At the sound of the woman’s voice, it turned lazily around to look at her, greeting her with a languorous yawn and a resounding tail-thump.
Ruban ignored the cat. “Something’s come up at SifCo, Hema. Long story. I’ll tell you later.” He spared a swift sideways glance at Shwaan.
“And who’s this, then?” asked the young man who had spoken first, looking Shwaan up and down with open curiosity as if he had just noticed the foreign intruder in their ranks. “Did you swap Simani for a foreigner, boss?” he demanded, feigning shock. “I mean sure, he’s cute, but our Simani wasn’t bad either. Plus you’ve got to give the local kids a chance.”
“If you threw a sifblade with half the enthusiasm you shoot nonsense, Faiz, you might have had a chance at a promotion this year. Simani’s gone to pick Sri up from school. She’ll be here in a bit. As for him,” he said, indicating Shwaan. “He’s Lord Ashwin Kwan from Zaini. He’ll be working with us for a while.”
