by Susie Mander
I stare with mouth wide. “Easy as that?”
He smiles. “Easy as that.”
I can hardly believe my luck. The words I had planned to use to convince him dissolve on my tongue. I can’t keep the smile from my face. “I’ll start then, shall I?”
“Please do,” Cook says, making a flourish with one hand.
“Wait a moment. What do you mean a revolution?” Hero says. There is silence and behind it, the ocean. Harryet shifts in her seat. Drayk clears his throat. Everyone turns to me for an explanation.
“We don’t intent to revolt exactly…” I start, realising it was a mistake to invite my cousin.
“At least not yet,” Cook mutters under his breath.
“…however, there are those of us who agree that the queen has lost her way.”
“What then? What are you going to do?” There is an edge of panic in Hero’s voice.
“I…” I falter. I don’t know if I trust Hero. Not with this. I think back to every discussion we have ever had about my mother and realise he has never criticised her. He listens to me complain but he never joins in. As a matter of fact, on a number of occasions he has echoed his mother’s sentiment saying things like, “Yes but we owe her for our position in Bidwell Heights,” and, “We have to be careful. We are her loyal servants.”
I remember the time my mother confiscated his needlework when she caught him doing embroidery at the dinner table. She threatened to cut off his thumbs if he kept up, “such nonsense”. Even then he had said nothing. Only when I told him I would steal his embroidery back did he become animated. He jumped to his feet, waved his hand and said, “No, no. That won’t be necessary. I don’t want to upset her. My mother would…Please, Verne, you mustn’t.”
I take a deep breath. “Hero, all I want to do is gain the people’s support so when I take the throne they love me as much as they love my mother.”
Cook smirks. Drayk looks concerned. Harryet cocks her head. I ignore them and plough ahead. “I have asked you here tonight because as you have probably heard, the woman from Taveni Island is being executed the day after tomorrow—”
“A travesty,” Cook says.
“Exactly. Many people consider this woman holy since she has been touched by the Tempest and survived. Killing her will only incite more anger against my mother. And if the people think I am in favour of the execution I will lose their support. It is important that I maintain their trust until I can…until my mother offers me the throne.” The lie tastes bitter in my mouth.
“What do you propose we do?” Drayk says fixing me with slate eyes.
I have to look away. “I must ask a favour of each of you. Tomorrow, during the execution, I want you to spread the word that I oppose it. Tell every freewomen and helot, shop owner and beggar. This information must be disseminated as quickly as possible. The people must know I stand on the side of justice.”
They nod slowly, digesting this information. All except Hero. “I don’t know…” he says, drawing the words out. “I mean, if either of our mothers were to find out…Verne, have you really considered all your options?”
Trust Hero to criticise me, I think. Not overtly. He would never accuse me of being rash or hasty. Rather, he would question me, make suggestions.
“It is important for the people to know where I stand.”
“Yes but—”
“I want them to know I am nothing like my mother.”
“There are a few attendants who will spread your rumour. They’re not quite dumb enough to tell the queen where they heard it,” Cook interjects.
“I’ll tell Carmyl and Alexis. They’ll help,” Drayk says.
“If I mention it to Arkantha the whole of Tibuta will know before the executioner has even donned his gloves.”
“Be careful, Harry. You don’t want it coming back to you.”
“Arkantha won’t tell the queen. Gossip is too valuable for her to start revealing her sources.”
I nod. We all look at Hero who sits on his hands. “I’m…I’m sorry. It just seems like an unreasonable risk. Anyway, there is no one I know well enough to trust in the palace and in Bidwell Heights…well, I don’t know who’s in my mother’s purse.”
“That’s fine,” I say before anyone can object. “Hero, you don’t need to do anything. You’re right: the risk is too great. But you must swear to keep quiet.”
He looks offended. “I would never say anything.”
“Good, then. That’s settled.” I feel their eyes on me, waiting expectantly. “We should leave separately. Hero, go first. If anyone is waiting they’ll most likely follow you. Don’t worry. As long as you go straight to your room you shouldn’t have a problem. If anyone asks say you were sharing a meal with me in the kitchen. We talked about Edric’s new argutan stallion. It is pure black and untrained, completely wild. Its water is worth a fortune.”
He moves slowly, reluctantly, knowing he will be the topic of conversation the moment he leaves. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“Tomorrow. Sleep well.”
The door shuts. We wait until his footsteps fade. I exhale.
“What was all that about?” Drayk says.
“I don’t think he’s up to it. He would never do anything to harm me and I can promise he won’t tell my mother. He is as loyal a friend as anyone can hope for. But he’s weak. I should have realised. While he will happily listen to me gripe, he is too comfortable in Bidwell Heights to pick up a sword.”
Drayk nods. “I hope you’re right. If he tells anyone…”
I get up from the bench. “He won’t.”
Late the following morning I am on the verge of waking when Bolt bangs his spear thrice against the floor. Harryet’s voice reaches me from her room. “I’ll see who it is.” She returns moments later, still in her nightgown, her hair a tangled mess of blond curls. “It’s Piebald. Your mother wants you in the Chamber of Petitions right now.”
We lock eyes. “I’m sure it’s nothing. He wouldn’t have…”
As I walk through the gardens, paranoia sits heavy in my gut. The earth’s balding head is cracked and flaky and the patchy grass crackles underfoot. At the base of the pyramid Bolt finds the nearest spot of molten shade and stands with his head hanging over his toes so sweat drips from his nose. Piebald and I continue up the stairs. My chest is tight.
The courtyard drowns in sunlight. The bonsai garden is wilted. Not that long ago my mother would retire to the Chamber of Petitions with her gerousia. Now she prefers the ostentatious Throne Room. As such, I am surprised to see her exiting the former building with an official-looking gentleman wearing the sky blue of our western neighbour from the mainland, Whyte. My mother clasps the gentleman’s hands in a warm gesture and laughs with true mirth, which is at odds with her usual coldness. I wait until the man withdraws before approaching. I can sense Piebald just behind me and his presence makes me uneasy.
A hot wind drifts freely through the lofty spot like the voices of the departed speaking to me from beyond the grave. For an instant I have a terrible vision of my mother turning to me to reveal a ghoulish, demonic face dripping like melting wax. My chest fills with panic. I blink and the vision is gone.
“Who was that man?” I say, hoping to postpone the inevitable.
“An emissary from Whyte. We have had word from our neighbours—But that is not why I have summoned you.” My mother looks at me with sunken, red-rimmed eyes, “Piebald seems to think you oppose the execution.”
Hero, I think with dismay. “Not true.” I glance at the little man, who rocks on his heels with smug self-satisfaction. The heat is so intense I can almost hear the sweat dripping down my spine. It crawls over my skin and down the inside of my legs, making my feet slip in my sandals. I scrunch my toes.
For some time neither of us speak; we wait for the other to make the next move in this familiar duel. It is so quiet I can hear the koi fish coming to the surface and mouthing it in search of morsels of food. The silence makes me shift
with discomfort. Don’t speak, I urge myself. You must not speak.
“If you disagree with me, tell me, what would you do in my position?” she says, testing me. She will use my response to gather evidence of my shortcomings. I will be weighed, measured, and compared to the “me” she has constructed in her mind. But this time is different. This time I do not care for right or wrong. I intend to mislead her for my purpose. I wonder if she can sense this change. When she discovers my betrayal she will remember this conversation, the very moment when she asked for my advice and I deceived her.
“I would do as you are doing. I would put a stop to the islander spreading blasphemous lies. She incites fear and panic.”
She nods, satisfied. “You will accompany me to the execution tomorrow. To prove your support.”
“Of course. I do support you. I don’t know where you heard otherwise. Whoever it was has been fed lies.” My mouth tastes foul.
“Unlikely,” Piebald says but my mother ignores him. She lingers on my face.
“Perhaps.”
“I will see you tomorrow,” I say, turning. Before I reach the stairs she calls after me.
“Verne, my darling, thank you. You are being most cooperative.”
My cooperation is as fraudulent as her love.
A day later. Hero and I have not spoken. Dawn streams through my window followed by Callirhoe, who lands in a mad display of flapping wings and shaky legs. I offer her a crust of bread and while she devours it on the windowsill I lie on the floor where I can melt into the cool marble. I try to focus on the bird. “Who are you? Why are you here?” I whisper. For a moment I think I see comprehension in her tiny black eyes.
Our minds fuse and I fly over Tibuta. Past Minesend the earth is lacerated and bleeding. Men, bare from the waist up, and women and children in rags line the pits. They chisel with their hands. They chisel with picks and crude shovels. They chisel with rocks that they clasp in their filthy fists. Down the dreary march, down into the depths of the mines. They are dead, their lives snuffed out like insignificant flames, replaced by phantoms that walk in their place.
Meanwhile Callirhoe and I circle overhead, our wings outstretched.
Look there at the woman who drives them on. Surely she is a horrid demon lashing its fiery tail, I think. Or is it the bird thinking these things?
“Verne?” A voice reaches me from the real world but I ignore it.
Each of Callirhoe’s pitiful cries is a curse: Damn those who wish to destroy Tibuta. Damn those who allow it to persist.
A blast of the shofar and the workers begin their slow march around the edge of the mine past the white marble face. They breach the top like a snake slithering out of its hole and shuffle in formation on the flat.
A dark spot appears on the azure horizon. The white-tailed eagle with its two-metre wingspan soars closer, its pale brown body catching the sun, its black flight feathers like fingers grasping at the air. It uncurls its yellow talons and sweeps in for the kill. I feel the shearwater’s fear. I scream. My voice is a bird’s screech.
“Verne? What is it?”
The eagle ignores me and swoops down over the mines. I wonder what carrion it feeds on when the earth is denuded. Then it occurs to me. It hunts my people, those rotting pieces of flotsam with their arms like twigs ready to snap, their bellies swollen with hunger and their eyes too big for their sunken faces. We, the people, have become food for the beasts.
“Verne!”
I wake with a start. Callirhoe has flown away. Drayk stands over me: I lie in a nightgown, my short hair splayed around my head. I am bitterly conscious of my bare legs, my bare arms and my bare feet. His low, rumbling chuckle draws me from my thoughts. “If anyone saw you thus they would think you were as mad as your grandmother,” he says.
I look at him through one eye. He looks like one of the marble statues from along the Holy Way. His jaw is hard and his body smooth. He carries the weight of history.
“I was imagining flying over the mines. At least I think I was imagining it. Maybe it’s my gift. It is hard to know. I wish I could train.” Most Golding children receive instruction the moment their gift arrives. A child must grow into their gift slowly, with guidance. Without training they may never learn to control it and it could get the better of them.
“Your mother went to Minesend last night to inspect the damage. It’s possible her grasp on you wavered.” He offers me his hand and pulls me to my feet. I am surprised by the heat in his touch. “Once she is out of the way we can start your education.”
I cock my head, wondering at his choice of words. I find it interesting that he assumes I would train with him. “Drayk, what are you doing here?” I say because, though I am pleased he has come, it is a little odd. We don’t have training since it is the day of the execution. And I am in my nightgown.
The immortal shrugs. “I thought I would accompany you to the execution. We better hurry or we’ll miss it.”
“She really is taking my security seriously,” I say, referring to my mother. Usually Bolt would accompany me or maybe one of the other war-wits, but not the chiliarch of the Queen’s Guard.
Drayk’s face turns a light shade of pink. “I came of my own accord.”
I am speechless. Drayk has never done anything “of his own accord”. Not when it comes to me.
He will not look at me. I mutter something about having to get changed and escape to my room. I listen to the creak of leather as Drayk eases himself into a kline.
Suddenly a-dither, I rummage through the clothes until I find a reasonably clean peplos. I pull the short nightgown over my head and wrap the billowing sheet around my body, securing it at both shoulders. I tie a woven leather belt around my waist and slip into a pair of sandals. I check my appearance in the mirror and smooth down my unruly hair. That will have to do, I think and join the immortal in my solar.
He looks up from his lap and smiles. “Beautiful.”
I can’t help but blush.
It is an imperfect day for an execution. The sun threatens to reduce Elea Bay to rippling heat. There isn’t a breath of fresh air and the mob is sticky and unruly. The royal party stands facing the nine-foot-high gallows in the shade of the Justice Tree. The tree’s leaves are green and silver at the base and red and gold at the top. A single rope is tied to a branch waiting for its victim.
A row of the Queen’s Guards separates us from the crowd. Hero stands a little way away. He has not spoken to me since the incident in the kitchen. I nudge Drayk’s arm. “I think it was Hero who told my mother.”
“Who else?”
“Exactly.”
The crowd fills the square and spills down Justice Lane. People lean from the balconies of the surrounding building, the sun burning the tops of their heads. A woman waddles past calling to her child, “Elef! Come back here!” and my head snaps up as I search for the familiar face. But the child chasing the mangy dog is too young to be the boy I knew. And he is not blind. I look back at my feet and admire the webbing between my toes. Dust cakes my sandals.
Drayk is a reassuring presence beside me.
A blast of the shofar brings an end to the shuffling of impatient feet. Freemen and slaves step out of the way, or are thrown, as an argutan-drawn cart tears up the street. The prisoner grips the bars of her cage but is jostled by every bump in the marble road. Her beauty is stern, her eyes carry sadness and accusation in their depths, and I am drawn to her as if she is something sent from the Elysian Fields. We all are. Some call out to her, naming her Theodora, or Gift from God.
The cart pulls up beside the scaffold and an unsettling silence descends over the congregation. As Theodora steps from the cage she wipes a spot of blood from the corner of her mouth with her tied hands. Our eyes meet and I experience again the unsettling feeling that she knows me and expects me to do something. What? I want to yell. I cannot help you. I must not make a premature enemy of my mother. I am not ready.
The guards lead Theodora to the top of the gallows
. An argutan whinnies and in this moment of distraction Theodora throws her head back, shrieks and knocks one of her guards off the scaffold.
Drayk steps between me and danger, drawing his sword. My mother barks orders to unresponsive guards.
Theodora lunges at another soldier, flinging her bound hands over his head. Her eyes swirl with memories of the Tempest and a storm builds inside her. She gags a torrent of frothing salt water from her belly as if a faucet had been turned inside her. She plants her lips over the soldier’s, forming a seal, and vomits the sea into his mouth. He chokes and splutters. His eyes bulge and he fights but there is no use. The water pumps out of her like a siphon. He goes limp and she kicks him over the edge of the scaffold so he falls to the ground with a thud.
“Impossible!” people say, pointing at the pool of water oozing from his mouth. A tiny pink and yellow diadem anthias squirms uncontrollably on the hard earth, its tiny fins trying to take flight, its little mouth gasping at the air. The fish, so far from home, is slowly suffocating.
“A miracle,” they whisper.
We watch Theodora in awe, expecting the sun to burst through her brow or the moon to appear in her chest.
Finally a soldier stirs. He raises his xiphos and strikes the woman across the face with its hilt, sending her to her knees. Theodora is reptilian. Her tongue lashes out of her mouth to lick her lips. They pull her to her feet.
“Hurry up. Kill her,” my mother says through clenched teeth, aware of the unsettled crowd.
Two of the soldiers hold Theodora while the others wrap her in strips of white muslin, slowly winding her feet, her legs, her torso, her arms and finally her face. Her screams are muffled. She writhes against her constraints.
The executioner places the noose around her neck with the knot under her jaw. Without thinking, I take Drayk’s hand and look away. The crowd gasps when the lever is pulled to open the trapdoor. The rope snaps taut. I squeeze.
When I look back, a corpse like a cocoon of spun silk hangs from the Justice Tree. I will not think of it as a woman, as a once breathing, living being whose only mistake was to wash up on our shores. No, it is a pupa, not dead but merely sleeping. It turns on its silk string. Even now a butterfly is breaking free from the encasement and taking flight.