Bird of Chaos: Book One of the Harpy's Curse (7 page)

“And so it should. What were you doing out of bed anyway?”

I shrugged. “I heard the people in black and I had to see for myself.”

“And did you like what you saw?’

I shook my head.

“Good.”

We walked on for some time. Then, picking up as if no time had passed at all, the woman with the missing tooth said, “Why not? It’s the Tibutan way.”

“It’s not right to harm a soldier if you expect him to fight for you. He should love and trust you. He’ll face enough hurt on the battlefield.”

None of the adults said anything and for a moment I thought I had spoken out of turn. My cheeks burned. We walked on.

“She has a point,” said the skinny man to my right.

“Perhaps. But you can’t go around changing things willy nilly,” said the woman.

“Why not?” I said.

“You just can’t. People won’t like it.”

“But what if it’s good for them?” I was acutely aware of Drayk watching me, preparing to interrupt. He held his tongue.

“Who knows what’s good for a person? How can you tell?” said the woman.

“You should ask them.”

She nodded slowly, considering what I had said. Grey hair fell in her face. “Yes,” she said very slowly. “You probably should.”

“When you are queen, you can change all this. But for now you must do as you are told and stay in bed,” Drayk said.

“When I am queen, no one will have their hearts cut out and our soldiers will be proud not fearful.”

He chuckled, perhaps because he did not believe it possible that I could change the Tibutan way or perhaps because I mistakenly thought the boy’s heart had been cut out. “In that case, I will happily serve you.”

“And I,” said the round bald man walking ahead.

“Me too,” said his skinny companion with the moustache.

The woman thought for a moment. “Yes, you are going to make a good queen one day.”

No one spoke again until we reached the West Gate. Each of us felt we had carried a great weight a long distance and were pleased to lay it down outside the palace Wall. The woman knelt down so she was at eye level. “Highness, it was a pleasure serving you.” When I did not offer my ring, she groped for my hand. Though they were watching attentively, neither Drayk nor Bolt made a move to stop her. She kissed the golden snake.

I curtsied, which seemed to please her.

“Highness,” said the man over his wine barrel gut, nodding in acknowledgement. The man with the moustache took my tiny hand in both of his.

“Good luck.”

“Thank you,” I said, grinning. Drayk thanked each of them in turn, pressing a gold coin into their palms which they accepted despite their insistence that it was not necessary. Then with a hand on each of my shoulders the immortal lead me through a wicket in the gate while Bolt trailed sheepishly behind. I waved at my makeshift guards. Returning the gesture, they called good luck and goodbye.

Outside my bedroom Drayk turned me around and knelt before me. “I’m very disappointed.”

I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t have run away like that. Will you promise to be good?”

I put my arms around his neck and hugged him. “Yes. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” I unwrapped myself, took the immortal’s hand and looked deep into his eyes. “And I promise to be a good queen. I
will
make Tibuta better.”

He stood in the doorway while I crawled into bed. “If anyone can do it, you can.”

It was the people who made me fall in love with Tibuta. Sure, the city was like a familiar tune: easy to hum, difficult to get out of your head. And it was
my
tune. But take away the people who filled it, the instruments who provided the bass and the treble, the melodies and harmonies, and I was left with nothing but noise. If it hadn’t been for Hero I probably would have sought out a superior song much sooner.

Hero was the simplest kind of friend. The sort who assumed little and forgave a lot. One whose criticism was so tactful it often left me scratching my head, wondering what he had meant. One who rarely spoke out against others but would happily listen to you complain for hours.

I don’t remember meeting Hero as such—he was always there, coming and going with my other cousins like the seasons—but my fondest memory of him was when the polemarch of Veraura and Minesend, Gelesia Golding, invited my mother and I to her palace to celebrate the arrival of her son’s gift. Chase was nine, the same age as me. Hero was seven.

The palace was in the south of the city on the border between Veraura and Minesend. It was perched high on the top of a hill between the districts, and the only way to get up there was a zigzag road lined with fig trees. It was summer and the deep purple fruit were ripe and splitting. The heat buzzed.

The palace was a relatively recent addition to the landscape. With only one storey, it had been built quickly and cheaply to keep up with the expanding city. The brick walls were made from mine tailings covered in a thin cracked marble veneer. The rest was mostly recycled timber and cheap limestone. There was barely a garden to speak of, only a gravelly courtyard. The fountains were dry since the aqueduct across the valley had clogged up and no one had bothered to clear it.

Gelesia and her son Chase greeted us at the bottom of a sooty grey stairway that led to a timber double door. There were no war-wits, only a kylon lying at their feet, her swollen teats pink against her dark fur.

Gelesia looked like she had been blasted by a strong wind. Her hair was a tangle of tight curls and her peplos was twisted and tangled. Her gift, the storm, was said to be a reflection of her troubled atrama. The poor woman had lived alone since sacrificing her daroon and they said his absence had hastened her mental deterioration. Some speculated she blamed Chase for the death of the daughters who would have succeeded her though in truth one died of an ague, the other in infancy.

Gelesia’s smile was uneasy and she looked up or away, unwilling to maintain eye contact. “Kiss her ring,” she said to the boy, who hid behind her skirt, half of his face in shadow.

Chase was a stern, contemplative child who rarely smiled. But what really set him apart was his complexion. While most of the Golding family were dark haired and olive skinned he was blond and fair. He would grow up to be the most handsome and aloof of the lot of us.

My mother nudged me and I stumbled forwards, remembering to curtsey—low enough to show my respect but not so low that I implied he was my superior. Chase blushed and buried his head in his mother’s peplos.

“Ashaylah,” a woman called and waved from the top of the stairs. It was Thera Brunt of Lete and Bidwell Heights, a district leader and my mother’s cousin. She was tall and beautiful in a sharp, spindly sort of way—a woman whose bitterness, I assumed, was the result of having two sons. She floated gracefully down the stairs, holding her peplos out from her feet.

Her sons Odell and Hero followed her. Odell was eleven and the oldest of our group. He was a tall, lanky, awkward boy with a rodent face and cold eyes. His hair was straight and spiked. His lips were fixed in a permanent smirk.

Herodotus, or Hero for short, was the youngest. He looked out of place among his family. He was a good foot shorter than Odell, and had dark curls and a thick squat body. Of my cousins, he would become my favourite. He ran ahead of his mother and came up short just in front of me. “Verne! Can we play?”

I looked him up and down and finding no reason to deny him I nodded. “But only if we don’t have to do kids’ stuff.”

That evening the celebration was to take part in the grand ballroom of Veraura palace. Hero and I had been crawling into the spaces between the walls and were covered in cobwebs. We followed the smell of roast dolphin to the ballroom, where a single, shabby looking war-wit stood guard outside a large timber door. Music and laughter came to us from inside. Just as I placed my hand on the bronze doorknob, the door flung open. Hero’s mother, Thera, stood blocking our way. “What do you think you are doing?”

I shrugged. “Getting dinner.” I glanced at Hero and smiled. “This
is
Chase’s Gift Day, isn’t it?”

We could barely control our laughter.

“Gift Day celebrations are for Talents only. As neither of you have received your gift you are to eat in the dining room with the rest of the children.” She pointed down the hall with her chin. I hesitated. Now that the ballroom was closed to us, there was nowhere I would rather be.

“Please. We will be on our bestest behaviour,” I said, trying to see past her. All I could make out was the warm glow of a thousand candles.

“Absolutely not. Now go on, get.” She spun us around and pushed us towards the dining room.

We trudged down the hall. I didn’t want to dine with the other children. I wanted to see Chase’s initiation. My curiosity was eating me from the inside out.

We could hear the babble from within the dining room. I knew what was inside: the expectation of good table manners and tedious small talk—“Please pass me the caviar. Why thank you; isn’t this
divine.
”

“I have an idea,” I said and followed an attendant as he exited the dining room carrying an empty tray over his head. Hero’s face was anxious but he fell in line behind me all the same. We followed the attendant down a long corridor, turned, and turned again. The smell of roast turtle and sweet crab got stronger and stronger. The attendant spun, placed his rear against a small swinging door and pushed, entering the kitchen backwards. “Wait here,” I said to Hero then, as an afterthought: “Yell if anyone comes.”

He took hold of my sleeve, “Do you think this is a good idea? If Gelesia catches us it will shame our mothers.”

I shrugged. “We won’t get caught.” I eased the door open and crept inside. The walls of the small kitchen were crumbling and dripping with grease. The air was filled with smoke. A large rump protruded from a jet-black woodfire oven. The rump was singing in a deep disharmonious voice.

Young boys assembled plates of food at the benches running along the wall. Without thinking, I grabbed a whole queen crab from the nearest tray and escaped out the door before anyone had even noticed. At least I thought they hadn’t noticed. A moment later a voice bellowed, “You little chimera. Come back here!”

“Come on!” I said, grabbing Hero’s arm and pulling him away. Hero’s breath came in short gasps. His eyes were wild. The cook’s feet were a heavy thumping behind us. I held the crab by one claw and as we skidded around a corner it swung, hitting the wall and leaving crab juice smeared over the marble veneer. I grimaced. “Oops.” We continued up the hall. I slowed to peer up at the ceiling. “I remember seeing a trapdoor,” I said. “Tides, where is it?”

“There,” Hero said, pointing.

“Quick,” I said as Hero looked around for something to open it. A pole was secured to the wall. He wrestled it out of the bracket and poked at the ceiling with the hook at one end. He missed the latch the first go his hands were trembling so badly.

Cook rounded the corner and I saw her face for the first time. She had pig-eyes and a bulbous nose complete with blue cobwebbed veins. She was carrying a rolling pin. She stopped to run her finger through the smear of crab on the wall, sniffed her finger and furrowed her brow.

“Quick!” I yelled. Hero got the latch the second go and pulled. A ladder clattered to the ground making us jump back in fright.

“You!” The cook had spotted us.

Hero was first up. I put the crab’s claw between my teeth to free my hands and followed him up. When he got halfway, his foot slipped and struck me in the face. “I’m fine. Just go,” I mumbled with a mouth full of crab. The cook was getting closer. I could hear her striking her palm with the rolling pin:
Thwak! Thwak! Thwak!

I looked down and realised the pole was lying on the ground. We were doomed if she got her hands on it. She would simply pull the trapdoor open and come after us.

The beast of a woman was only a few feet away. I clambered back down the ladder and snatched up the pole. I removed the crab from my mouth long enough to yell, “Hero. Catch.” I threw up the pole and Hero caught it in one hand. Thankfully.

I scrambled after my new friend with my crab in my mouth. I reached the top rung. A hand closed around my ankle. “Got you, you little thief.” I glanced down and saw the woman’s leering face. I tried to shake her off but her grip was firm. I bent my knee and kicked with all my might, connecting with her bulbous nose. Too startled to scream, the woman let go of the ladder to bring her hands to her bloody face. She lost her balance. Hands grasped for something to hold onto but found only air. She fell backwards. In slow motion. There was a loud thud. Then a deafening howl.

“My mother is going to kill us.”

“I don’t care,” I said, closing the trapdoor to seal us in. It was not the last time I would be trapped like a rabbit in a hole. “Follow me.”

We tried to ignore the pounding from below—someone had fetched a broom and was banging it against the ceiling—and explored the roof cavity. Beams of light shone through the timber at our feet. A warm draught whispered through the cracks in the roof shingles. I held the crab in one hand and pointed with the other. “This way.”

We retraced our steps, occasionally kneeling and pressing our ears to the ground until I was certain we were above the ballroom. I tossed the crab to the ground and got down on hands and knees. I ran my palm over the rough floorboards, searching. Hero stood watching me with a concerned look on his face. “What are you doing?”