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

by Susie Mander

  “But your Majesty—” the caretaker started.

  “No, no,” my mother said, raising her hand. “I would know a serpent when I saw one. That…that is a lizard. A water dragon. Nothing more.” She struggled to hide her frustration. She thanked the caretaker in a stiff, formal tone. The war-wits sheathed their weapons and looked disparagingly at the old man who could only shrug. Yanking me towards the path, my mother did her best to hide her frustration. But despite her attempts, I could sense it seething beneath the surface. “Drayk was right,” she mumbled under her breath. “They are extinct.”

  We never spoke of the serpent again. To do so would imply she was capable of folly and I learnt early on that it was far better to exist in denial, in an alternative reality, than it was to draw attention to her faults. Rather, we went about our business as if the incident had never occurred, as if she were perfect, choosing to immerse ourselves in the mundane, never speaking of the wonderful opportunity of eternity or the prospect of a collective conscience, never speaking of her disappointment.

  You see, in the beginning my mother was not a cruel woman but simply a tightly coiled spring. They said it was the result of taking the throne so young. She was sixteen and still living on the island when Queen Ligeia died at forty, leaving Tibuta to her. Some said she was unprepared for her elevation. Others said it made her more determined. Others blamed Kratos.

  The queen’s younger brother Kratos was thrown from a ship on his return from Caspius after Gregaria invaded our ally in 2978 AB. It was a war that brought an end to the Third Age and almost a thousand years of peace in Longfield. It was my mother’s eighth year on the throne, four years before I was born. She was young and inexperienced.

  During his recovery Kratos spoke of how he had survived at sea though the waves had been like a heaving blanket with white pill, how he had fought off a bull shark and seen faces in the storm. He warned my mother that Typhon’s last tempest was coming and urged her to build an army. But she would not listen. She believed he was a vulture intent on tearing down her eyrie.

  Rather than put him to death she sent him to a sanatorium on a minor island to have his “mental impurities” removed. He survived his treatment though the healers drilled into his skull and many of the queen’s subjects heralded his triumph as the work of the gods. Support for him grew.

  Around the time of my birth the gerousia caught wind that people were migrating to the island they now called Kratos’s Haven to listen to my uncle preach. Fearing social breakdown, the elder women encouraged my mother to invite her brother back to the palace and into the council to negotiate peace, which she did despite her foreboding. For a time there was calm. My uncle appeared to be compliant. Not a breath of wind shook my mother’s nest and she was happy. And then everything changed.

  My skin was like blotting paper. Sentences ran backwards across my under-thighs from sitting on the edge of my mother’s desk sucking the edge of my peplos while she wrote with quill and ink. I knew better than to interrupt her. She bit her bottom lip in concentration and occasionally looked up long enough to bless me with a smile. “Not long now, my darling.”

  My mother taught me things like the proper way to write a letter. If she was writing to an equal like my uncle the king of Caspius she would use sepia, or cuttlefish ink, which was brown and far more expensive. If she was writing to an inferior like the district leaders Thera and Gelesia she would use the cheaper black ink made from soot and glue. It sent a subtle but clear message. The letter’s recipient was acutely aware of where they stood in the social hierarchy. “But if you need to ingratiate yourself with an inferior you might use sepia,” she explained. “Or if you are furious with an equal you might show this by using black ink. For an enemy, you might write in blood.”

  We spent hours poring over maps and examining land and sea borders, listing monarchs and plotting their names and titles in order of rank on a chart pinned to the wall. But perhaps my favourite game of all was masks.

  My mother gathered up her bundle of parchment, tapped it to make a neat pile and put it to the side before turning to me. “What would you like to learn today?”

  I looked around the room. The step leading into the study was worn smooth into a gentle dip like an offering bowl. A high ceiling soared overhead. The marble floor shone from thousands of soft feet gently polishing it over the centuries. “Umm…Let’s play masks.”

  She nodded. She was patient back then, happy to indulge my whims. As repetitive as they were. “It is important for a leader to have the utmost control of her features to convey a desired emotion, to protect herself from misinterpretation. Watch this.” My mother smiled the most perfect smile then ran her hand up her face to hide it. When she removed her hand her face showed an expression of feigned sadness so convincing I made words to comfort her. She laughed and ran her hand across her face again, this time to show mock disbelief. I giggled. “Now you try.”

  This was her diplomacy. Her face was her mask.

  “Even anger must be an act,” she said. “It is no good losing your temper. Rather, anger should be premeditated. Controlled.” She revealed a terrifying expression, her face twisted like an old oak tree. I pulled back in fear. She kept her rage so securely in place that it was only when my bottom lip began to tremble that she wiped it away and grinned.

  Though my mother was a gifted performer she let her disguise slip when she heard of Kratos leaving Tibuta. We were in the Chamber of Petitions. Back then a round table dominated the room. My mother sat facing the double doors. The gerousia flocked around her, preened their feathers, clucked and bobbed their heads.

  Of the gerousia only one woman ever spoke to me. She was aged and paper thin. Her long white hair fell in limp tendrils around a sun-spotted face and eyes were watery blue. She gathered her black peplos in her hands and knelt down, making her knees crack. “And you must be Verne.”

  I curtsied, which seemed to delight her. “Do you know who I am, child?”

  I shook my head, making my pigtails swoosh across my face.

  “I am Maud Lias.”

  I looked at her blankly.

  “High priestess of Tibuta.”

  There was still no recognition on my part but the woman simply laughed. “I am someone of moderate importance. It would be right to kiss my ring.” She held out her hand to me. Blushing, I placed my lips against the shining black sapphire.

  “And should I write to you in black ink or sepia?” I asked.

  The woman laughed. “Whichever you choose, my dear. It makes no difference to me.” After a moment she added, “I hope to be your tutor one day. All monarchs should be well versed in the words of Shea and Ayfra. Would you like that?”

  Though the woman was clearly powerful there was something reassuring about her demeanour, a slight upturn to the corners of her mouth and the presence of wrinkles around her eyes that suggested she was more likely to smile than frown. I nodded.

  “Good,” she said.

  I sat in a chair that was too big for me on my mother’s right and listened while the conversation bounced around the gerousia like a hot piece of coal no one wanted to hold. They discussed many things, taxes in particular, though at such a young age “taxes” meant nothing to me.

  And then my mother paused and looked up. “Where is my brother?” She directed her question at the high priestess.

  “I believe he has left Tibuta,” she said in the tone of a true bureaucrat who avoids committing to anything.

  “What for?”

  “Your majesty I am sorry but I don’t know.”

  “For how long?”

  The holy woman shrugged. “He did not say.”

  They held each other’s gaze for a long time, caught in a silent battle that made the rest of us squirm in our seats. Eventually, my mother shook her head and turned her attention to one of the other women. “Alice, about the latest reports coming from Kratos’s Haven…”

  The conversation continued, back and forth until there was a kno
ck on the door. All eyes rested on my mother. “Come in,” she said and we turned to face the intruder.

  Piebald put his head around the door and smiled apologetically. “Excuse the interruption, your royal majesty. Ladies.”

  He was younger then—he had hair on his head—but had already begun his metamorphosis from enthusiastic staffer to mean lackey. He crossed the room and bent between us to whisper, “I am terribly sorry, your majesty, your highness,” he glanced at me, “but there has been an incident with a group calling themselves the Shark’s Teeth.”

  My mother’s eyes went immediately to the high priestess. “Oh yes?”

  I saw it then. I saw the crack. My mother’s lips were pursed. Her nose flared ever so slightly. She gripped her quill so tight it snapped. Embarrassed, she wiped the spilled ink with her flowing peplos. She took a deep breath then waved the little man away. “Thank you, Piebald. We will discuss it later.” She was impassive once again.

  That was the last time my mother invited me to council.

  In those days my father Jammeson hummed as he walked. His strides were long and optimistic; his face was tilted to catch the sun. He lived in a constant state of disarray. His rooms were a mess of scrolls and maps meaning he could never find anything. His was the joy of a devoted newlywed, a man who found meaning in family.

  Born on Lizard Island, he was my mother’s neighbour, the son of a goat farmer and a man of lowly blood. His convictions were weak: he neither believed nor disbelieved in the Tempest and was indifferent to world affairs, his only true care being my mother. Still, beneath his apathy he hid a secret desire to return to Lizard Island and the old ways. Living in the palace was, and would always be, a sacrifice.

  In the evenings he would find me climbing the apricot tree in the orchard and would whistle to me like I was a kylon. I would come loping obediently across the manicured lawn to rest at his heels. “There’s Daddy’s little girl,” he would say and embrace me, his waist-length hair cascading around his face. He would tell me a joke, take my hand and say, “Let’s go and find the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  We would sit on a low stone wall by the bonsai garden listening to the sound of running water, waiting for my mother outside the Chamber of Petitions at the top of the limestone pyramidal Throne Room in a marble courtyard. At the centre of the garden was a startling purple bougainvillea. I stared into a pool of water alive with the colour of koi—yellow, orange and white—swimming beneath the surface. While we waited Jammeson taught me to ignore the chatter of workmen in the distance, the shuffling of the war-wits’ feet—they stood in a line outside the Chamber of Petitions—and focus my attention on my Gods’ Eye, the spot at the centre of my forehead where, with my eyes shut, I could, in theory, make a connection with the gods. It was he who taught me to slow my breathing and find rayta, an inner calm so profound one could exist in two places at once. It was rayta, he said, that gave someone true freedom.

  He told me of the time he had sat cross-legged in a cell at the bottom of a neighbour’s manse and survived without food and water for ten days by existing in the tranquillity of his mind. He was imprisoned unjustly, he told me, for trying to escape an unfavourable betrothal to a woman who meant only to use him to water her seed then have him sacrificed. “But you must not tell your mother I was promised to another. Our little secret,” he said and winked at me.

  My mother and the gerousia exited the Chamber of Petitions like doves escaping an opened cage. She shook each of the elder women’s hands, nodding in thanks and waving as they descended the steep pyramid stairs, their tail feathers dragging behind them. They called to her in thanks and praised her for her wisdom.

  Once the last of the pigeons had gone, she turned to us with a warm smile. “My darlings,” she said, arms open to receive me as I ran across the courtyard. Hers was the happiness of a woman in love. She kissed the top of my head and took my hand. “When you are older you can sit with us again in council. Things are”—she looked around for inspiration—“a little tense at the moment.”

  My father stood, stretched his long limbs and said to my mother, “There’s my favourite girl in the world.”

  I clung to my parents’ legs and watched their embrace block out the sun.

  Hand in hand we descended the pyramid for our daily constitutional along the Walk, an imposing wide marble road that splays out from the Throne Room to the West. “Again,” I said and my mother and father swung me between them. Their conversation washed over me, their words a blur, meaningless, unimportant. Their body language was what mattered to me. I noted the way my father glanced at the queen, checking for her approval. I noticed my mother’s absent-mindedness. She did most of the talking. My father was attentive. He carried his silence like a rucksack slung over his shoulder.

  “Again!” I would say and they would swing me through the air.

  I existed in a childish euphoria, aware only of my parents and our blissful routine.

  There was no place for fear. There was no place for jealousy. At least not until later. Like most transitions, it happened slowly. My mother become overwhelmed by the stress and anxiety of running the palace. Then she let doubt get the better of her. Soon, jealousy was her constant companion. But by the time we were aware of the change it had overtaken us.

  The day was like any other: the sun was shining, the fish were swirling beneath the surface of the pond in the courtyard. My father had just taught me to blow bubbles. Only this time Queen Ashaylah exited the Chamber of Petitions beneath a dark cloud. The gerousia clung to her, pecking at her feet, clawing at her sleeves and cooing nervously. She managed to shoo them away long enough to approach and say, “I’m sorry. I am too busy today. Tomorrow. We will walk tomorrow. I have to deal with this. There has been a…an incident.”

  “Is everything all right?” my father said, his face creased with concern.

  “It’s this group of rebels calling themselves the Shark’s Teeth. I think Kratos— I’ll explain later.”

  My father nodded and tried not to look too disappointed. “Verne and I can go.” Then, as an afterthought, “I love you.”

  My mother was too distracted to return the declaration. “Tomorrow you can take her to the lake. The ephors are meeting throughout the day. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  So while my mother was locked inside the cool interior of the Chamber of Petitions with the magistrates we went to the lake. We stepped into the black-and-gold palanquin and sat on a bench beneath a silk canopy. Six four-armed fleets, those human-like creatures with their big black eyes, carried the litter on their shoulders. Fleets are bought for their strength but to me they seemed too brittle to carry such a heavy load and I imagined them crumbling underneath it. They marched out, their painted white skin already sweating in the oppressive sun. Bolt walked beside them, his spear in one hand, his shield in the other and his throwing knives concealed at his ankles. The porters held the gate open and we passed beneath the great archway and into the streets of Elea Bay heading towards Lake Singelli.

  On the way my father encouraged me to hand out gold pieces to the beggars. He said the only thing that distinguished us from the poor was a title. Even then I knew my mother would not agree—she would say our blood set us apart—but I accepted what he said because I wanted to be friends with the little girls who came calling at our window. I envied their freedom.

  As we reached the outskirts of the richest part of the city, we came to an impasse. An old double-storied building had finally given way to the weight of its cantilevers extensions and had toppled across the street forming mountains of what looked like white marble waste.

  The fleets tried to turn back but their path was blocked by a cart piled high with hay bales. It was quickly joined by a cart carrying ironware. My father stepped down from the palanquin and told me to, “Stay here.” Ignoring his warning, I waited until he was around the other side, jumped down from our palanquin and approached a group of children who were picking over the piles of rubble.


  “What are you doing?” I said to a girl with a long dark plait tied with string. She was wearing little more than a hessian sack and her face was smeared with dirt. It was impossible to tell her age—life on the street had worn her down—but her self-assuredness made me assume she was older than me. She had the air of a leader. The other children looked to her for guidance, adding their spoils to her pile which she would presumably divvy up between them.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Can I play?”

  “We’re not playing,” she said, looking over my clean clothes and soft leather shoes. “You going to arrest us?”

  “No.”

  She hesitated and nodded at the palanquin. “What about him?”

  I glanced back at my father. Oblivious to the flea-bitten children rummaging through the refuse, he was politely encouraging the ragged ironmonger—who was having none of it—to turn around so we could all go back. “My father wouldn’t arrest someone for slapping him.”

  The girl accepted this without comment and pointed at a pile of rubble. “You’re looking for any bits of metal that can be melted down, wire, copper, you name it. Food of course. Anything that looks useful. And kid, don’t try and pocket it. Put it over there.”

  I struggled to scale the mountains of debris. My hands were quickly covered in dirt and I soon had bloody knees. “What do you do with all this junk?” I asked, nodding towards a growing pile of broken pottery, bronze nails and bits of timber.

  “Sell it,” said the girl.

  “Why?”

  She looked at me as if I were mad. “Are you serious?”

  I shrugged, embarrassed by my ignorance.

  “For money. To buy food. You have bought food before, haven’t you?”

  My face turned red. “Of course.” It was a lie. I had never handled money except to give it to the poor and even then it was like handing out peanuts. I had no concept of its value.

  After a while, when I had contributed a fair amount of what I hoped was useful rubbish to the children’s pile, the girl spoke again. “Who are you anyway? A noble’s kid?”