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

by Susie Mander

  “So promise me. Swear it.”

  There was not a sound. I imagined him pausing over the armour as he considered how best to remove himself from this situation. He appeared in the doorway. “It is a serious thing you ask of me.”

  “There is no need to swear now,” I said, retreating. “You can think it over. Or do not swear at all. I had hoped that you would provide me the support you have given my mother, but I understand if it is too much to ask. It is a long way to come to Tibuta if you have a new life and a new family.”

  “No, no.” He took a deep breath. “Only, you must understand. I have done this for none since my first wife. I went back for her and she had aged. Our son was older than I was and I watched them both die.”

  “Then do not swear it, not if it causes you pain.”

  “No. I will swear it. I have sworn to dedicate my life to serving you. It should make no difference if I dedicate my next life to you or someone else.”

  “Do not swear because it makes no difference who you serve. Swear because you mean it, because you want to come back and help me, or do not swear at all. I will not take your promise on a whim.” My voice rose and fell with my turbulent emotions.

  Drayk took my hand in his and kissed my ring. “Little miss, it is my duty as an immortal to see the rulers of this world do their best, and I want nothing more than to see you prosper. I will make it my life’s purpose to see you succeed, to help you grow and to protect Tibuta. I promise that in this life I will be loyal and in my next I will come back to find you.”

  “You have to swear by something otherwise it does not count.”

  “I swear by the tides.”

  “Not the tides. The tides change daily,” I said, snatching my hand away.

  “But they are predictable. They are governed by our ancestors in the sky.”

  “Not the inconsistent tides.”

  “What then?”

  “Swear on yourself. On your atrama. Or better still, swear on your serpent stone, on your very life.”

  “Very well.” He took my hand again. I was nervous he might feel the fire in my fingers. “I swear on my stone that I will come back for you.”

  “And promise me that you will always be honest as I will always be honest with you.”

  “I swear on my atrama, my stone, my very life, that I will serve you as I have served your mother, that I will always be honest and give good counsel.”

  “Even if you think it will upset me.”

  “Especially if I think it will upset you.”

  “Good,” I said, taking my hand back.

  He laughed at my burning cheeks, my intense sincerity. Still, despite knowing he made that promise as a teacher to a child, I am sure he did not make it in jest.

  I wish I could skip this part. I wish I could say I behaved admirably but I did not. I tried to win Drayk’s attention by mimicking the older women at court. I threw back my shoulders, jutted out my hips and kept my arms almost completely still when I walked. I rouged my lips, though I wasn’t particularly good at colouring in the lines, and I had new clothes made for me which were completely impractical, like flowing ball gowns, that I nonetheless wore to training. I must have looked like a mummer’s doll. How I cringe when I think of it. Of being unable to keep away, of pestering, yes pestering Drayk, as though I were some sort of feral cat that needed a home.

  I am embarrassed to admit I pranced down to the barracks with any excuse to speak to him, watched him train new recruits in the arena almost every day, followed him as he walked back and forth to the storeroom and, when an errand took him away from the palace, pined for him. Tides, I wrote him poetry. I gave him things—polished rocks, flowers, an old coin—that I said reminded me of him.

  I couldn’t help myself. Though I had promised myself to stay aloof, though I had tried to ignore and hide my feelings for Drayk, his promise led me to believe that I had a chance. It gave me false hope.

  He was too kind to rebut me—or too cruel, depending on your perspective—and he endured my childish advances with feigned ignorance. I have no doubt he pitied me: a silly little girl with a cruel mother and no friends. A silly little girl with a silly little crush on her teacher.

  Thankfully my relentless awkwardness came to an abrupt end not six moons after this had all begun, when I saw him with another woman. I was on the barracks balcony, in his territory, having gone there with yet another excuse to drag him away from the other men to talk to me while we strolled through the palace grounds. The light was dim—it was that most romantic time of day when the shadows are long—and the palace was strangely quiet, as if everyone was enjoying the bizarre warmth. I was tiptoeing along when I heard a woman’s voice. I hung over the balcony and saw them. Then quickly slipped behind a vertical beam like a guilty thief. I wanted to die.

  My love for him—if you could call it love, perhaps it is better called obsession—was an awkward, closeted thing that made me excruciatingly aware of my over-sized hands and feet, my clumsiness and my complete inexperience with men. I peered out from behind the beam and hoped, prayed, he had not seen me.

  The woman was beautiful, I’ll admit. Hers was not the fleeting beauty of youth but a divine, aged handsomeness. The sort of beauty that can laugh at itself. She reminded me of a snake that had shed its chafing skin. She moved like she was gliding through long grass. Her fine red silks, which suggested she was from Caspius where only citizens can wear colour, rustled. She was poised to strike.

  Oh she was beautiful and her laughter was like a sweet melody that made me cringe. And she was definitely someone special. There would be no big reveal, no twist where I discovered she was actually Drayk’s sister or aunt. He stared longingly into her eyes. Occasionally he leant down to kiss her and each kiss inflicted a fresh wound in my stomach. I could not staunch the bleeding and yet I could not turn away. They held hands, swinging their arms in unison as if each was the extension of the other.

  As he led the woman along the side of the Barracks Drayk’s face was intent, like he was preparing for a dual. She followed with the finality of someone who has committed to a deed but is unsure how best to attempt it. When he held the door open so she could pass into the gloomy interior neither of them spoke.

  My anxiety was directionless, erratic, like autumn leaves spinning in the wind. How could I explain myself should they find me? Voyeur, they would say and they’d be right.

  Curiosity and repulsion brawled on Drayk’s balcony until curiosity won. I darted up a drainpipe and crouched at the point where the two roofs met. The slate was hard against my posterior. Out of the sun, the cold seeped into my collar.

  I had a view of Drayk’s room through a small circular window. The room was all timber: a scarred timber floor, a sloping timber roof, and a low timber door. A double timber bed with a single pillow took up most of the space. There was a timber chest of drawers pushed against the opposite wall and above it, a series of pegs where Drayk hung a pair of woollen socks, a spare uniform, and a towel. It was a place of functional simplicity. A room used for little more than sleeping.

  When Drayk slammed the door behind them, the walls shook. The woman circled the room and it took on an entirely new quality, like an empty cup filling with warm tea. I wondered if Drayk saw what I saw: that she was like a vase of red tulips decorating his drab space. I wonder if he knew what I knew: that the minute she left the room would seem empty.

  Jealousy left a bitter taste in my mouth. I longed to see the interior of Drayk’s room through the woman’s eyes. I wanted to feel his floor against my bare feet, to smell the scent of him in the dirty pile of clothes in the corner, to see my reflection in the tiny mirror above the washbasin.

  The woman gave a shriek as Drayk charged at her, jumping over the bed and pinning her against the wall. He kissed her, pulled away and kissed her again. His desire was palpable. He reminded me of a ravenous beast. She laughed hysterically, snorting occasionally as he devoured her neck.

  The woman put her hands
around his waist but Drayk removed them and pinned them above her head like he was preparing to flog her. She laughed, delighted as he buried his head in her dark curls. He moved along her cheek bone and down her neck. He released her so he could pull down her dress in one violent movement like an artist revealing his masterpiece then stepped away to admire his handiwork, giving me a view of her perfect body. It was like he was offering her to me. The gods she was beautiful.

  My eyes followed the line of her shoulder blades to her large breasts and the dark pigment around her swollen nipples. Her stomach was soft and dimpled. Her thighs were white, the tangle of hair between her legs dark and thick. Yes, she was beautiful. Unashamedly so.

  I despised her. I wanted her. I wanted to be her.

  With his back to me, Drayk—my Drayk—undid his belt and stepped out of his breeches. The muscles in his buttocks flexed as he pushed inside her.

  Repulsed and aching with desire, I departed. I clambered down the steps that ran along the outside of the building and bolted up the Walk. As I ran, the wind whistling cruelly in my ears, my impractical long peplos tangling between my legs, I imagined a thousand fingers pointing at me, the pointers calling me stupid and immature. My small self was back, demanding why: Why would he love you when he has her? Why? Tears came. Sobs shuddered through my body.

  I reached my solar gasping for breath. There was no fire burning in the pit in the centre of the room though it was mid-winter. The long heavy curtains were pulled back to let in a mild breeze. Harryet looked up from the hat she was making. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s nothing. I’m fine,” I snapped and then instantly regretted it. It wasn’t her fault.

  Harryet—stoic, blessed Harryet—was unruffled by my brusqueness. “It’s a boy, isn’t it?”

  “No,” I said too quickly. I tried to remain angry to hide my pain but it was impossible when she obviously knew. She had witnessed my erratic behaviour. She had been decent enough not to say anything. “All right. It might be a boy but there’s nothing you can do about it. He’s in love with someone else.” I slumped on the couch beside her and cried silently.

  She accepted this admission with a simple nod. “At least let me try to cheer you up.”

  I was reluctant—“No, Harry, I don’t know. I think I’d rather stay here.”—but allowed her to drag me out of my chair. She took me down to the bathhouse, where we indulged in an hour-long salt scrub and honey treatment. She did not speak when I cried into the steaming bath water. No, she permitted me some dignity.

  Afterwards, we sat drinking hot chocolate in the kitchen while Cook tended his fire. Staring into the swirling cocoa and cream, I admitted that I had been foolish. “He’s much older than me. I was stupid to think he would ever see me as a grown up.”

  “There will be others,” she said, never judging, never criticising.

  “And more attractive ones, I’ll warrant,” Cook added.

  “Trust that Drove knows what’s best.”

  My smile didn’t reach my eyes; I was still too hurt. Yet I knew they were right. In time the pain would recede and I would be able to look at the immortal without cringing. I would be able to talk to him without wanting to run and hide. I would lose that peculiar tunnel vision that had made me blind to other boys, boys a more suitable age. Either that or I would do what so many Tibutan women do and hire a consort. Whatever the case, Drayk would not be my only love.

  Later that night when my hand strayed between my legs it was the woman I thought of: her eyes shut, her chin tilted towards the ceiling to catch the light and her lips pursed in concentration. I imagined I was Drayk and I was taking my pleasure from her. I focused my mind on the idea of her perfect body and I whipped her again and again.

  This was my pleasure. It was my punishment.

  Three boys made me give up on love. The first may or may not have had a last name; I knew him only as Elef.

  I came to feel at home among the urchins and beggars—rats, my mother called them—on the street. While at first they were put off by my title and the way I spoke they eventually came to accept me because of the food I could offer and the stories I could tell about the queen and her attendants. And because I could fight as well as the best of them.

  It was towards the end of cheimon when the days were finally getting longer and eiar was taunting us from just around the corner. Because of the civil unrest, my mother had banned us from speaking to any commoner so we snuck out.

  Harryet and Bolt sat by the fountain, close enough that they could feel each other’s warmth; not so close it would seem inappropriate. They were oblivious to the sound of bare feet slapping on cold cobblestones or the shouts—“Bread! Bread!”—bouncing off the walls. Bolt was teaching my lady-in-waiting the language of the war-wits. Their hands moved steadily through a silent conversation.

  Hero and I gave out loaves of Cook’s steaming warm sourdough and glanced anxiously up the alleys for signs of trouble.

  The older children snatched the bread from us with filthy hands before running back into the shadows. The younger, less wary children ignored Harryet and the albino—they had seen them there before—and perched on the edge of the fountain swinging their legs. Though they appeared relaxed, one ear was always cocked for the arrival of the city guard or a clash between rebels and soldiers that might spew into our quiet oasis at any moment.

  They ripped off pieces of bread then spoke with mouths full, their breath hanging in white clouds. “Winter’s getting colder, eh?” said a boy with mud up to his knees.

  “And summer hotter too,” Hero said.

  “Except the other day when it was boiling hot in the middle’a winter.”

  “That was Typhon’s last Tempest, I reckon,” Hero said.

  “With the drought there’s no scrounging even in the markets,” said the boy.

  “What’s a drought?” a little girl asked, scratching her scabrous head.

  I missed the rest of their conversation. I was distracted by a young man about my own age who was sitting on the kerb at the end of a slate-coloured alley under the eve of an abandoned candleshop. I nudged Hero and whispered, “Have you seen him before?”

  Hero shook his head narrowing dark eyes at the boy.

  “I wonder why he doesn’t come and get something to eat. He’s just sitting there.” I dropped my sack of bread. “Come on.”

  Hearing us approach, the boy lifted his head and fixed me with the bluest of blue eyes. Raven eyes. Like ice. Like the sky. Like…You get the picture. His were the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. He was handsome but in a rough, unkempt way. His feet were bare. His face was…well it was magnificent. Beneath the dirt.

  “Do you mind if I sit?” I said, lowering myself beside him. I was distracted by those eyes so I forced myself to look away and focus instead on Hero, who stood in front of us, his arms crossed, a concerned expression clouding his usually cheerful face. I gave my cousin what I hoped was a reassuring smile. He was always wary of someone new. He said that while it was true we ought to show the children our generosity and sympathy, there was no reason to trust them. We could not assume they were good. Not in the way we understood the word “good”. They lived on the streets, after all. Their notion of good was defined by survival rather than courtesy, and we could not understand it without having ever felt hunger. Not the sort that makes you beg. And steal. Any one of them could be a revolutionary, he said.

  He had a point and yet my inclination was to trust them.

  The boy looked at a spot beyond my shoulder. His arms and legs were bare: the cold was coming on quickly as night nipped at day’s heels. I removed my wool cloak and offered it to him. He did not take it. In fact his eyes did not move from the spot beyond my shoulder. I looked up at Hero, but he only shrugged.

  “Here,” I said, shaking the garment.

  The boy raised his eyebrows. “Can I help you?”

  He was blind.

  I placed my himation around his shoulders and he snuggled into t
he warmth of it. “Thank you.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Elef,” he said puffing up his chest like the god of freedom had particularly chosen him as his namesake.

  “I’m Verne. This is Hero,” I said, self-consciously tucking a strand of hair beneath my ear though the boy could not see the gesture.

  The boy turned his face towards my cousin but his eyes wandered to the rickety doorway behind him. “I have heard that you come into the slums. They call you the princess of the people. But I have never seen you before”—he chuckled at his own joke—“though I see many things.”

  “Like what?” I said, glancing between Elef and Hero. Hero looked back towards the fountain, where a mob of children were rummaging through my sack of bread.

  “Come on, Verne,” he said.

  I held up a finger to request his patience.

  “I see all sorts of things. I see the way the city smells at night. I see the sounds of places.”

  Hero and I exchanged a puzzled look. “What do you mean?” I said.

  “I mean what I say. My eyes might be useless but I have other ways of appreciating this city.”

  Hero looked utterly perplexed.

  “Will you show me?” I said.

  A kylon barked in an adjacent ally. The girl with the scabrous head screamed. Harryet called my name. I looked up but I did not move.

  “Tides, Verne. It’s probably the Shark’s Teeth. We’ll be trapped down here,” Hero said. He was poised for flight, a part of him already moving towards the sunlight, the other waiting out of duty.

  We could hear the patter of soft leather boots and the clatter of makeshift armour.

  “I can’t leave him,” I said, nodding at Elef. “Go. I’ll be all right. I’ll double back by the library and meet you at the gate. Make sure the children get away.”

  Hero hesitated. A thousand arguments flickered across his face but he simply nodded and darted away.

  Elef got to his feet. “I don’t need your help.” With one hand outstretched he felt his way along the ally. Reaching the end, he groped for a handhold and lifted himself effortlessly off the ground. The whole time he spoke: “Left hand to brick, right foot to window ledge, right hand to awning, left foot to pipe.” Within an instant he was out of sight. His voice reached me from somewhere high above. “If you want me to show you the city, come back tomorrow.”