Bird of Chaos: Book One of the Harpy's Curse

by Susie Mander

  A shiver runs down my spine. Humanity has a propensity for extreme violence, I realise, and a taste for blood. We profess a desire to rehabilitate the marginalised but in truth we have a thirst for vengeance, as if utterly destroying a person might cleanse us of our own vulnerability.

  “Look!” a man yells from the crowd. I cannot help myself. Like everyone else I look where he points. The corpse is stirring. “She’s not dead!”

  From beneath her linen casing there comes a gurgling scream. Then the corpse explodes like an overfull water bladder. Droplets of clear liquid fly through the air. A puddle forms on the ground beneath the trapdoor. Nothing but a wad of sodden, dripping rags hangs from the tree.

  For a time there is no sound as we contemplate this phenomenon. Then a woman screams and points at the sopping rage: “Behold.” Her voice is like the many tympanum of a holy rite. “The queen has destroyed our only proof of the Tempest.” Soldiers drop their swords and simply stare. “The queen has killed the prophet.”

  The crowd erupts into a dissonance and surges towards us. The row of soldiers push against the crowd. It is then that I realise I am still holding Drayk’s hand. He pulls me towards him, shielding me with his body as debris flies through the air. My face pressed into his warm chest, he rushes me to a palanquin yelling, “Go! Go!” The litter is off the ground and moving before I am even properly inside.

  “Highness,” Alexis says, panting. Though I cannot see her face I know her voice. I poke my head between the palanquin curtains. She and Carmyl run beside Drayk, keeping pace with the palanquin. They have their swords drawn to part the crowd. “We are almost at the gate.” She adjusts her whale-rib cuirass with hands wrapped in leather strips fitted with blades that protrude from her knuckles. The bone breast- and backplate are all that protect her from the projectiles flung by the mob.

  The bells are ringing. I can hear distant shouting.

  The porters on the West Gate usher us in, calling, “Hurry! Hurry!” The minute we are through, the chains rattle and the first portcullis clangs shut. The ground seems to shake from the ferocity of the group that rattle the iron bars.

  Stepping down from the palanquins, I watch Drayk and the other soldiers run across the grass, up the battlement stairs and along the Wall. The beating of the drums resounds in my chest. I prepare myself for blood.

  I climb the battlement. The wind whips around my head. Archers acknowledge barked orders from their commanders and fire at our countrymen below. Drayk is further along but I will not disturb him. I find Petra instead.

  The calm strategos crouches through a crenel like a cat readying to pounce. This close I can see the tufts of short black hair protruding from the side of her helmet. “Wait for the command and aim for the heart. You must account for the wind,” she says to a nearby chiliarch, who relays the order. Petra pulls an arrow from her quiver. It is almost blown from her hand. She nocks the arrow, draws back slowly then peers over the Wall.

  “Hold your fire,” she calls and waits for a lull in the wind. “Fire!” Arrows shoot through the air around me—wiz, wiz, wiz—and all of them hit the people’s makeshift shields—thud, thud, thud. She resets. A soldier tips a barrel of burning coals over the edge onto the unsuspecting mob below. I peer over the side to watch the embers fall.

  “Highness, get back from the Wall.” Petra pulls me back by the scruff of my neck just as an arrow hurtles through the air where my head would have been.

  “We must not fire on our own people,” I say.

  She looks at me from beneath her helmet. “It’s the queen’s orders.”

  “Yes, but we must not have a repeat of the incident at Minesend. Enough Tibutans have died. The gate is shut. They can do us no more harm.”

  The strategos hesitates, weighs the decision in her mind and eventually nods. She turns and calls to her soldiers, “Cease fire.”

  Her commanders echo the cry: “Cease fire!”

  I hear my mother below, “Make way. Make way.” I scrabble to the bottom of the stairs to watch her approaching. Beside her march Thera and Odell. Thera reaches the gate first and with outstretched hands she pushes her gift out towards the rioters. It burns in a red line that we all feel, hot and excruciating, a migraine that starts at the back of the eyes and eats through the skull. A rebel writhes on the floor, blind. Thera fires again. Her victim claws at his bleeding eyes.

  What was initially a heartfelt riot has become a real battle with casualties. The mob pulls back.

  Odell is upon them. He raises his hands and with his face contorted pushes out with his gift. A blast of icy cold air shoots through the gate and hits a freewoman in the face. She stumbles back, falling to the ground. She quickly recovers and, rubbing the ice burn, gets to her feet. Before she can escape, Odell takes a deep breath, his chest rising. He closes his eyes and focuses his attention. He shoots again. This time the blast is shorter but far more intense. A stream of ice shoots from his hands, through the gate and straight through the woman’s chest. The arrow dissolves with her blood.

  “No! They are retreating. Stop! Stop attacking them. They are turning back,” I yell but none of my cousins are listening. Odell fires again. “No!” I say, trying to pull him away. There are tears in my eyes. He easily pushes me off and fires again.

  “Close the gate,” my mother roars and the inner portcullis is closed. It is like a lid being shut. The sound dims. For a long time the tempest thrashes around us with nothing but cold wind. Dark clouds block out the stars. Firebolts light the sky. We wait for rain that does not come. Then as suddenly as the storm arrived it departs, and the earth seems to breathe a sigh of relief. The clouds clear and the moon shines on the battlefield, illuminating the fallen Tibutans—and Callirhoe, who circles over the carrion.

  Chapter eleven

  It is long after midnight when Drayk comes knocking on my door. The hallway is empty except for Bolt and the palace is quiet save for the creaking of cooling timber beams in the roof. Drayk has sheathed his sword but still wears his armour. His eyes are weary, his face covered in thick stubble. “I just wanted to check you are all right,” he says, hovering in my doorway.

  “Thanks to you,” I say and usher him in. He has caught me in my nightgown again and I excuse myself to find a peplos, which I wrap around my near-nude body before sinking to the floor in front of him. He sits on the leather kline, unsettled, like a bird ready to take flight.

  “It was just as you expected,” he says, picking at a patch of dry blood on his forearm.

  “Worse.”

  “Your mother has made herself the enemy,” he continues.

  “If she wasn’t already.”

  We fall into a thousand thoughtful silences. Eventually I clear my throat and look up at him. “Drayk, I am going to have to ask you for another favour.” He raises his eyebrows, so I continue, “I need the names of all the dead.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m going to write to their families.”

  He slowly acknowledges my proposal, getting to his feet. “Good idea. I’ll have a list to you as soon as I can.”

  I thank him and show him to the door. He hesitates on the landing as if he is about to say something. I want him to say it, whatever it is, but he shakes his head. “No. It is not the Tibutan way,” he mutters to himself. He smiles sadly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” I say then watch him walk along the hallway and disappear around the corner. I am surprised by his sudden appearance and by his equally sudden departure. He reminds me of a lost boy.

  While the immortal tracks down the names of all who were killed in the riot, I write my notes. I practise a few times before making the first stroke.

  I am writing to express my sorrow at your loss. Know that I do not take it lightly. Please accept this as a show of my gratitude for your ongoing support and as an acknowledgement of your pain.

  When I am happy with how it sounds, I pick up my quill. I use a thick parchment and sepia ink. I write slowly, giving
each note the care it deserves. When I am finished, I sign with my full name.

  Drayk returns at midday with the list. He sits on a stool in the corner of my study and watches as I address each letter. It is a small room compared to my solar and bedroom. The floor is covered in thick carpets. There are no windows and a candle burns on the desk. We are alone together and I find him a distraction.

  I light a black candle, drip the wax over the fold and then press my ring into it. I blow on the seal until it cools. When I am finished, I hand the bundle to Drayk. There are over twenty letters. As he reaches the door I want to call him back. Instead I say, “Be careful.”

  Because Drayk has been running my errands, I have opted to train with an exclusive sub-unit of the army open only to royalty. I am fifty metres below the surface carrying a boulder across the ocean floor. This is an exercise to make me stronger, increase my lung capacity and improve my ability to hold my breath under water. It is also a race.

  The world at the bottom of the ocean is silent, peaceful. I affect my buoyancy using the pockets of air in my lungs which I fill and empty as required and establish a slow, steady breathing pattern. I am almost deaf because of the skin blocking my ears.

  All I have to do is get the boulder to the Seawall and I have won but the boulder seems to be getting heavier. I strain, muscles bulging. I can feel my power, the beat of my heart against my chest, the veins running up and down my arms pulsing. I take another step. Light dances above: blue, green, ever-changing. My black military uniform wafts around me.

  My cousin Odell pushes past. His face is all chiselled points, the hard almond of his larynx moving beneath his skin as he taunts me. I topple over in slow motion, dropping my boulder with a silent thud. Sand floats in a mushroom cloud. Odell reaches the Seawall first, drops his boulder at its base and pauses to make the sign of the ungifted before ascending in a stream of bubbles and silent laughter.

  I break through the surface gasping for air.

  “It must be hard without a gift,” Odell says.

  “I was distracted.”

  “No doubt you were thinking about Drayk.”

  “And?”

  Odell touches the water with the tip of his finger and concentrates his energy. An icicle grows from his long fingernail and fans out in a disk. He pushes his mind out and a stream of ice shoots along the surface of the water towards me.

  “Stop it,” I say, blocking his attack. The ice strikes my forearm and though it breaks into a thousand tiny pieces that dissolve into the ocean, it stings. In some places it even pierces the skin. I rub the tiny red dots.

  “Odell!” our trainer barks. Bertha is a dugong of a woman who used to be the best hoplite in Tibuta until an orca ripped through her hand leaving nothing but a stump like a seal’s flipper. “If you cannot learn self-control I will send you home.” To me she says, “Well done, your highness, much better, but try to stay focused next time. There is no room for daydreaming in battle.” Her stern encouragement is a far cry from Drayk’s philosophising. She lacks his wisdom and gentle delivery. His words come to me: “In battle a soldier must maintain a steady breathing pattern to calm the atrama. There is no room for error. Strength. Commitment. Inner peace. These are your allies.”

  We swim on the surface to Port Tibuta. Berenice floats on the surface like a beluga whale beside Chase, her second, whose blond hair glistens with drops of water like diamonds.

  “Verne,” Hero says, trying to get my attention. I pretend I have not heard. “Verne?”

  “What is it, Hero?”

  “Are you still angry at me after what happened in the kitchen?”

  I look at him in disbelief. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Save it. You could have got us killed.”

  “But—”

  I raise my hand to silence him and clamber onto steps covered in oysters and fringed in green, careful not to let the waves, which crash against me in a white soup, drag me back out. Bertha ushers us into a cage and five slaves push a wheel that winds in a rope that pulls us over the Seawall. Odell, Chase and the others talk while we ascend. Hero is silent. I am furious with him. Worse than furious: I don’t think I can ever be friends with him again.

  I watch the rumbling storm clouds gathering on the horizon. No doubt the storm will be like the one previous: dramatic, a show of the gods’ fury, but ultimately fruitless. My mind is like the wind that whips at the ground. I want Hero to feel my fury.

  We march through Minesend past the scars of the mines, where swarms of slaves come and go. I can sense Hero watching me but I ignore him. Smelting-houses barf fumes over the district. Women in rags stand in doorways with babes on their hips. Their eyes are accusatory. None cheer unbidden at the soldiers from the royal palace. None cheer at those who are better fed, better dressed and better cared for.

  Usually I would stop and talk to them but I am eager to return to the palace. To be far from my cousin.

  I know we are in Elea Bay when the smell of dead fish and open earth is replaced by that of vineyards, olive trees, and pencil pines. Our company enters Penteli Stadium through the small competitors’ entrance. The other sub-units are spread across the stadium like piles of debris, each one working on a different skill: strategy, weapons, intelligence, hand-to-hand combat or battle awareness.

  “Break into groups and work with your gifts. Verne, Hero, you are with me.”

  “Do I really have to work with Hero?”

  Bertha cocks her head. I have never complained about working with him before. “As a matter of fact you do.”

  “Fine.”

  Hero and I stand opposite one another and take the warrior’s stance.

  “Ready?” Bertha says.

  Hero shrugs and runs his hand over his square jaw.

  “Fight!”

  We circle one another, legs bent. Hero expects me to make the first move. We have fought before and he knows I start aggressively before pulling back. I decide not to disappoint him. I step forwards and sweep at his legs in an arching kick, bringing him to the ground. “Good! Great work, your highness. Manna was made for a woman of your size,” Bertha says. Hero stands looking a little startled.

  Heat rises in my cheeks. I unleash my full force on my opponent, my hand rigid, sweeping low and straight to hit him in the torso. He counters with a slice. I move quickly, seeing each movement before it has happened, as if my atrama can extend out from my body and read the muscles’ cues. Hero strikes but I take his hand, pull him over my shoulder, using his momentum and weight against him and slam him into the ground. He lies on his back, coughing.

  Bertha stands over us, hands on her hips. “Not bad, your highness. Not bad.”

  I turn my back on Hero, walk away and take the warrior’s stance.

  “Again,” Bertha says and leaves to inspect the other warriors. Hero uses this chance to wipe his hands on his black breeches.

  “I’m sorry. I should have offered to help. It was stupid not to but I was…I was afraid.”

  “So you told my mother about my plan? You know she forced me to go to the execution. I was lucky that’s all she made me do.”

  “I told her no such thing,” he says in a voice so high pitched he draws a few funny looks from our cousins.

  “You didn’t?”

  “How could you suggest such a thing? I’m your friend.”

  I frown. “Who then?”

  “Who indeed. But it wasn’t me.”

  I am quiet for a very long time. “This whole time I thought…”

  “I thought you were angry at me because I was unwilling to help,” he says, laughing without humour. “I thought you were being a bit…extreme. Had I known the truth I would have said something earlier.”

  I glance around us. Berenice stands over a bucket of water drawing it out to coil in a ribbon from her fingers. She is like fog that girl: fluid, immaterial, dense. Odell and Chase stand opposite one another. Chase strains. His fists are clenched in front o
f him. For a moment his body shimmers and flickers. He goes transparent. He exhales and takes solid form again.

  “Well done, Chase,” Bertha says.

  “He has never been particularly solid, has he? I imagine his atrama is equally transparent.”

  “Verne, that’s unkind,” Hero says.

  “You are right,” I say without genuine remorse. “Still, you have to admit Chase is hardly a man of substance.” Neither of us is smiling. We are both deeply troubled by what we have learnt: that our friendship is fragile and may not survive revolution.

  Bertha turns back to us with her legs wide and hands on her belt. “Are you going to fight or just stand there?”

  We quickly take the warrior’s stance. I shake my head. “I am so sorry, Hero.”

  “Don’t be. It was a silly misunderstanding.”

  We fight and this time I let Hero win. Bertha watches the next round and after a few sloppy punches on my part, she chastises me, “Come on, highness, you can do better than that.” I try a new combination of moves Drayk showed me and they take Hero by surprise. He falls to the ground. “Much better,” Bertha says, and walks away again.

  “Sorry,” I say, offering Hero my hand.

  “It’s all right. I have never been very good at manna. I just hope that my gift…you know.”

  “Have you had any sign?”

  He shakes his head.

  “I would be happy with the Fire,” I say and take the warrior’s stance.

  “Not me. I would rather no gift at all.” Neither of us will discuss what we are really thinking: that our trust was so short-lived. He mirrors me, his legs split wide apart, one arm raised, the other close to his face.

  “It is bad enough that my brother shoots ice. I know his heart is cold. But imagine if you had the Fire. Surely it would mean your heart is pure evil, your balance is skewed towards hate and self-destruction.”

  The Fire is the rarest gift. It is both a blessing and a curse because any gift is a reflection of your atrama, a manifestation of your mental state, and the Fire signifies an inner imbalance. It is evidence that the demon’s blood runs strong in your veins.