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

by Susie Mander

  “Bar the doors,” I say when the last soldier is entombed within the sanctuary. They question me with bovine eyes and I pity them. I can see fear on their faces. There is always fear. War is fear. Life is fear. Death is fear. For their sake I must bury my fear.

  The inevitability of my destruction crawls over my flesh, making me quiver.

  Haggard red priestesses, who have black circles under their eyes and stains on their tunics, tend the wounds of those who slump against the walls. Drayk leads a group of women who have discarded their whalebone helmets to drag furniture across the floor and stack it against the oak door. Alexis’s waif-like countenance hints at internal destitution, an atrama like a cemetery: cold and full of grief’s shadows. Carmyl is dead. She lies face down behind the barricade with a bronze-tipped spear in the crease of her chest plate, her glassy eyes eternally frozen in an expression of adoration as she reaches for her retreating friends.

  I can tell Drayk struggles with his grief, casting it aside until he has a chance to examine it properly. I fight the temptation to go to him.

  Like Alexis and Drayk, Petra looks haunted. Her chiliarch Hydra has also taken her last breath. She is sprawled on the temple steps only a few feet from the door.

  It is impossible to tell whether Maud mourns for her fallen priestesses. If she does, she hides it well. Her face is blank as she leans on her linden staff, moving with the concentration of one who carries something large and fragile. Occasionally she glances at Ried, as if checking she is still alive.

  “Is the temple secure?” I ask.

  Drayk’s eyes are hollow, his lips pressed together in a grim line. He nods.

  “Take Alexis. Secure and guard the rear entrance. Petra and I will remain here.”

  Drayk calls to his friend and they disappear through the gloom to the back of the temple.

  Crouching near the door, where there are beds, chests and chairs piled high, I listen for the enemies’ approach. I fear I have thrust my sword into the pulse of the world and destroyed everything.

  There is a pounding on the door. My mother’s voice, as familiar as my own, reaches me through the few inches of timber. “Verne, I know you are in there.”

  Two hands seem to twist my spine. I pull a chair aside and kneel in front of the door, pressing my ear against it. I imagine my cheek is pressed against hers.

  “Mother?” I say in a blissful moment of despair, a lone tear streaking down my filthy face.

  “If you come out now it will all be over. We will spare the others.”

  Temptation, that seducer, draws me towards her. But I am determined to know the strength of my desire, to feel its full force and to deny myself the bliss of yielding.

  “She will execute every one of us,” Petra whispers. The high priestess nods in agreement.

  “I am not leaving, Mother. I do not trust you.”

  “Then you will die,” she says. There is the sound of her retreating feet then silence.

  Our breath drips off the walls. The soldiers pace up and down, impatient for the inevitable. They remind me of the condemned preparing themselves for execution. Few talk. Those who do mutter quietly behind their hands. They strap and re-strap their armour, polish and re-polish their swords. And we wait.

  I mourn my mother.

  I find Drayk with Alexis and other former-Queen’s Guards at the end of a long corridor that leads to the rear exit. Alexis’s eyes do not waver from Drayk’s handsome face and yet I feel no jealousy. I do not doubt his love. Her adoration is only proof of his quality as a man.

  My immortal looks up and catches me watching him. His smile is sad—there is no place for joy when his friend is dead—and he advances on heavy feet. I notice a nick on his face, stubble encrusted with sweat, a rip in his black tunic. Pressed against his chest I smell the mustiness of him. “Am I making a mistake?”

  “Do not think such a thing.”

  “But is it not unnatural for a daughter to turn against her mother?” I whisper, looking up at him through my eyelashes.

  “Verne, you cannot rely on the absolutes of law. It is true, in most cases it is aberrant for a child to turn on her mother—or vice versa. You know your mother. She turned on you long ago. You have judged her and you have found her wanting. Your defiance is in fact necessary and therefore natural.”

  I think of the strangler fig that destroys its host in order to live. “And yet I have often wondered whether, if it was the madness that made my grandmother kill Tansy and Evada and it was the madness that made my mother try to kill Adelpha, perhaps it is the madness that makes me want to kill my mother? I have inherited a legacy of bloodlust.”

  He shakes his head. “You have acted for the sake of Tibuta’s survival.”

  It seems selfish to dwell on my doubt when the dead are sprawled in the precinct grounds. “You’re right.”

  “This is war,” he says.

  I nod and let him return to his comrades.

  At my spot by the front entrance, Petra motions for me to hurry. “I thought I heard movements outside.”

  I hear a rumbling then a cracking. I draw my twin blades. There is an explosion like an amphora of fermented mead bursting. Splintered furniture flies through the air. Rocks scatter and I fall on my back, my head slamming against the floor. Eunike, the blade of victory, is jolted out of my hand and skims across the ground, coming to a stop at Ried’s feet. She picks it up.

  Adamon and Nike step tentatively over the rubble. Adamon has his Isbian tube to his lips but he does not blow. Nike has drawn his harpe and the sun of the Salt Kingdom gleams on the curved blade but he makes no move. One of our arrows shoots through the air and lodges itself in the centre of Adamon’s shield and the war-wit stops, searches the enemy for a friendly face.

  “Hold your fire!” I yell. The war-wits see me and sheaf their weapons. “Let them through.” I motion for my soldiers to lower their weapons and embrace Adamon and Nike. I can see the apology and the relief in their big brown eyes. Our soldiers reluctantly welcome them into their ranks and the war-wits cower with the rest of them in a line behind their shields.

  And then there is another long silence followed by a shout from outside, “Damned traitors!” It is my cousin, Odell. Moments later he stands where the door used to be and ribbons of ice blast through the hole. They hit the far wall and shatter into a thousand crystals. Like lightning more shoot through the gloomy sanctuary, striking again and again. He steps into our cave flanked by a row of soldiers.

  “Attack!” I yell and the inevitable battle closes around me like an angry fist.

  Adamon blows his tube, firing poison darts that whiz through the air and stick in the fleshy parts of the Tri-Nation army. Nike’s mouth is pulled back in a sinister snarl, making the tattoos around his lips crease. He springs forwards to harvest soldiers, dropping his shoulder to lob them off at the knees. Our hoplites swing wildly with their swords but the weight of the advancing Tri-Nation is too much and we fall back.

  I can feel Adelpha’s mind probing for me from outside. I hear Maud’s words: Find rayta. Calm yourself and push against her. I take a deep breath, envision my sister as a dark spot on my mind and drive her out. With only a single blade I dance around my enemy, slicing here, thrusting there, blocking and reposting. Blood is sticky between my toes: mine or someone else’s, I can’t be sure.

  There is a surge of energy from the hoplites outside. More soldiers enter the fray. One of my mother’s war-wits clobbers our soldiers with an iron-spiked club. They fall like building blocks.

  I smell burning flesh. A Tibutan soldier holds a red priestess by her shoulders over Shea’s Fire. Her scream is a horrendous gurgle. Maud draws back her staff and slams it into the Tibutan’s skull, making the soldier drop the red priestess, who tumbles into the icy black pool.

  Ice discharges from Odell’s fingers into the confined crowd. “We have to bring him down,” I scream to no one in particular. Drayk’s protégée, Alexis, has run in from the rear of the temple. She has
discarded her helmet—most of us have; it is almost impossible to see with them on in the gloom—and her short red hair is stuck to her face.

  “There is fighting at the rear door. There is no way out,” she calls above the din. She motions for the war-wits to form a phalanx and they interlock their shields and duck behind them. Adamon fires poison darts at Odell, forcing him to defend his front. This gives Alexis a chance to launch at Odell’s back and take one of his hands. He writhes against his captor, ejaculating his gift into the air. Adamon swipes his shield in a horizontal arc that takes Odell in the neck. As the boy stumbles Alexis kicks him in the back sending him to the ground. She holds him down with her knee while Nike cleaves the second offending appendage with his harpe.

  The Tri-Nation army pushes us further into the sanctuary. Petra, Alexis and Drayk defend our rear. But there is no way out.

  A shofar sounds three times far off in the distance, beyond the crumbling precinct walls. There is a moment of peace and I use it to fight my way to Maud.

  “Demostrate has arrived,” she calls above the din, swinging her staff over her head to block a blow from behind.

  “Tell her to keep the army back long enough for our hoplites to retreat.”

  “Protect me,” Maud says, handing me her staff. She is panting. Her ancient arms look heavy, brittle. I fight to keep the enemy at bay.

  Maud sits cross-legged in the corner of the sanctuary and closes her eyes. Wrinkles and sunspots move across her skin. Her face goes blank as she leaves her body and she bends like the willow. Moments later her features reappear and life returns to her limbs. “It is done.” I throw her the staff as she stands and she catches it above her head then brings it down in a sweeping arc against a soldier’s skull. I clamber to the top of the fire pit.

  “The Shark’s Teeth have come. To Ayfra’s Inlet. Go! Maud and I will hold them back. The rest, through there!” I point past the golden statue of the First Mother to the rear of the sanctuary. The cheering is brief. Alexis, Ried, Petra, Adamon, Nike and the rest of our miscellany of soldiers, priestesses, consorts and rebels fight their way through the winding corridors. Drayk and the others tear through the furniture blockade and fling the door open to escape down the rear stairs and into the blinding sunlight.

  As I fight, my mind soars over the battlefield outside. I see a swirling dust devil: Gelesia ripping through the queen’s men as her inner madness is released and her gift consumes her. The outnumbered Shark’s Teeth taunt the Tri-Nation army. When the army attacks, the rebels run. When the army withdraws, Demostrate spurs the rebels forwards.

  I hear a Whyte chiliarch call to her soldiers: “We mustn’t be trapped here. Pull back!” Most obey. Some remain to fight, including Berenice.

  I block an attack from my opponent then strike low, miss and spin to get out of the way.

  Maud whips Shea’s Fire into a burning inferno and sends a lash of flame across the room, taking out a line of soldiers. She strikes again but Berenice ducks and turns her attention to the pool around Shea’s Fire. It is empty. “Cover me,” Berenice says and two obedient soldiers kneel with their shields in front of them to defend her. She summons her gift, straining as she sends it out over the Holy Precinct, over the tops of the trees and down the Holy Way. Berenice whispers to the water, pulling it in, sweat dripping down her brow. I return to the bird when we hear a sound outside like the ocean. Leaves whisk into the air. Ripples form on the canal that runs along the Holy Way. Then waves. The water in the canal rises slowly, reluctantly.

  A deathly silence blankets the battlefield as every soldier stops to watch the ribbon of water peep over the broken temple wall then wind through the sanctuary grounds, up the stairs and through the shattered sanctuary door. Water fills the roof cavity until a sea rages above us.

  Berenice lowers her hands. The water falls. There is a hiss as steam fills the air, and then darkness. We stand with hair plastered to our faces. Water pours out the door, down the stairs and into the sanctuary grounds, where it douses the burning grass and seeps into the scarred earth. Shea’s Fire has been extinguished.

  Chapter twenty-two

  Maud falls to the ground, her staff clattering beside her.

  “What have you done?” I scream, but there is no response. There is a pain in my chest as if someone has sealed their lips over my mouth to blow into my lungs. The gods help me, I can’t breathe. There is too much damn air. I clutch at my chest. “Please,” I sob without tears. “No.”

  The shofar sounds again and the Tri-Nation soldiers glance anxiously at the door. One breaks away, unwilling to be trapped in the temple by the advancing rebels. Another follows and this is enough for the rest to act like a pack of wolves. They scurry away with their tails between their legs. Berenice is last to leave. She glances back at me, pity and resentment doing their best to disturb her disinterest.

  Maud’s body is tiny and frail within the mound of sopping rags. I refuse to hold onto the thought that the one woman who loved me, the one woman who believed in me is…dead. Not dead. No, not that. I will not accept that she is dead. Please gods no.

  I bring her hand to my face to smell her life and go to shut her eyes but where her features should be there is only skin. Her face is missing, leaving the canvas permanently blank.

  “Her atrama has escaped,” Drayk says. His touch wakes me from my nightmare. He lifts me to my feet.

  “She’s not dead?”

  He shakes his head. “But not quite living either. She will need a body to share.”

  Together we run from the sopping sanctuary and into the night. I am sure there are more stars in the sky than there were the night before, more souls trapped on the dark canopy. One for each of the dead that litter the precinct grounds. One for each of the dead floating in Ayfra’s Inlet. I can see their twinkling accusations.

  I watch the last of my allies overpower the few Tri-Nation soldiers on this side. They scamper down the temple steps, climb over the barricade, slalom between the black mounds—carcasses—and skip across the grisly earth. They dive into the water’s liberating embrace, careful to avoid the loose tripwires and spiny caltrops, and disappear in a stream of bubbles. They will swim as far as they can down Ayfra’s Inlet towards the ocean, and surface near the watergate.

  We follow them, our breath grating and our feet pounding against the earth. I stop, my feet barely touching the water. “I have to go back.” I know from my dream that my sister and mother are in the commander’s tent with Petra’s replacement.

  That beautiful, worried line forms between the immortal’s brows. “This might be our only opportunity to escape.”

  “I have to find my mother.”

  His is only the slightest hesitation. “I’ll go with you.”

  It is right that he should come. In the dream he accompanies me to kill my mother and together we are victorious.

  It is dark and a cooperative wind masks the sound of our feet crunching in the rubble. Just as it should, for a murder. No one can hear our heavy breathing as we skirt around the parameter of the temple. No one can see us as we move stealthily from shadow to shadow, a princess and her immortal weaving through fallen tents and smouldering flames. The dead are lattice work on the precinct ground. The stench of liquid fire stings the back of our throats and we navigate the palisade to climb a gentle slope. The queen has set up her command post in a graveyard of olive trees.

  Two war-wits stand guard outside, their thoughts trapped within their speechless bodies. Their thick scaly skin, like crocodile’s armour, catches the moonlight. They are nothing compared to Slay’s five orca, who stand on the other side of the tent, inhaling slowly, picking up mixed scents—decomposition and anxious perspiration—tossed about by the draught.

  Beyond the tent Whyte sentries patrol a dehydrated landscape: mounds of upheaved soil, the winking onyx sky above and the promise of marble below. The earth is scarred. Frogs throb, oblivious to the blood that runs through the soil, the stiffening limbs, the lifeless eyes just
there, within reach.

  “She’s in there, discussing whether or not to send troops into Veraura and Minesend,” I say, crouching behind a bush where we have a perfect view of the tent’s opening. “In a moment the new strategos will exit and ask to speak to the war-wits. She will point towards the battlefield and for a moment, just a moment, they will step away from their posts. That’s our opportunity.”

  “What then?”

  “I kill my mother and you kill the prince.”

  As he nods a stocky woman in uniform exits the tent and disappears into the night. Drayk looks at me with doubt written on his face. “Wait,” I say with confidence. “Draw your weapon.”

  A moment later the strategos returns, her helmet tucked under her arm. She motions to the war-wits. They move a few feet from the tent’s entrance and turn their back on the door to peer down the hill to where the fighting continues just beyond the wall. “Be aware of breakaway units from there, there and there,” she says, pointing. “The last thing we want is another ambush like this morning. These devils fight dirty and it wouldn’t surprise me if they send an assassin around from the rear.”

  “Now!”

  We cross the short distance to the tent, feeling exposed. I pull back the curtain. I enter with Paideuo the disciplinarian over my head. The sword catches the flickering light from the whalebone lanterns that hang from the tent’s canopy. Everyone freezes. Only a second passes but in that short time I see my mother’s bladed staff resting against the leather walls in the corner. Slay Satah sits at a silver table in front of a map held down by smooth pebbles from Ayfra’s Inlet. His sword hangs limp by his side. I see the dark slug of a moustache over his top lip and his thin, pointed beard. There is something about his eyes. They are too dark, too eager and I wonder if it is from lack of sleep, lack of character or a poppy addiction.

  Adelpha is displayed on a wrought-iron kline to the side. War has not ruffled her plumage; she is as beautiful as ever. Her long dark hair is held back by a gold band; her slender wrists are wrapped with leather thongs, blades extending from each knuckle.