Bird of Chaos: Book One of the Harpy's Curse (41 page)

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.

My mother is caught in a tableau passing the prince a two-handed cup of mulled wine. She has aged since I last saw her—she has clearly had little time for quicksilver—and her face is mapped with the weary lines of someone on the brink of defeat.

Where are her attendants?
I think and in that same moment I know from my mother’s bitterly defiant expression and the way Slay rests his hands on his crotch that the prince has dismissed my mother’s attendants and insisted she serve him herself.

With my sword held over my head as it was in the dream I…I…I…The dream and reality diverge. I am not a monster like my grandmother. “Mother,” I gasp and she turns.

“Verne?”

The prince shrieks.

Adelpha is quick. I feel her probing my brain. I drop the sword. Drayk attacks. Satah calls his guards and draws his own weapon. If Slay fights like the winter storm then Drayk fights like the summer sky. He is a pillar of confidence in comparison to the prince, who is stiff and formal. My mother screams at the Prince, “Don’t you dare hurt him.” She has dropped the cup of wine and runs for her staff.

Adelpha picks up my sword and points it at me. “I’ll kill you.”

I try to take the warrior’s stance but my muscles shudder to a halt. My mind is filled with liquid warmth. I hear a gurgling and thudding in my ears. Pain shoots into my right temple and continues in an irregular throbbing.

Get out!

Without touching me, she forces me to my knees. I can neither raise my head nor move my hands to shield my face. I am lead. She brings the tip of the sword so close I go cross-eyed but I cannot move. This close to death there is nothing I can do but let it wash over me.

“Adelpha, stop!” my mother says and I fall to the ground just as my sister’s blade slices through air. With closed eyes my mother holds out her hands. Pressure builds and blood oozes from her eyes. Veins like gossamer appear on her neck. She pulses her energy at Adelpha again and again, stealing her gift. “Stop now or I will throw you in the Seawall myself.”

Adelpha curses and I feel her leaving my body. I get to my knees and look around for a weapon. Adelpha is still holding Paideuo.

My mother’s voice is gentle, “Stop, Verne. It is over.”

The orca and the war-wits have flung back the curtains at opposite ends of the tent. Drayk and I make a run for it. But the orca stand in our way. “Get them!” the prince calls, pointing at me. They scoop us into their arms.

“Majesty, the Shark’s Teeth are retreating,” a Whyte soldier says, his head poking through the tent flap.

“Round up the defectors for execution and—”

Prince Satah cuts my mother off. “Thank you, Damon. We will leave them for the moment, regroup and attack in daylight. Burn the high priestess’s corpse. She must never returns to it. And tear down the statues. Tear it all down. Destroy every expression of the temple’s power. The people must know there is a new king in Tibuta.”

Adelpha looks chuffed. My mother? A few words come close to an accurate description: abject, conquered, pathetic.

“Deal with these two, will you?” the prince says, and sweeps out between the tent curtains. The orca toss us to the war-wits and follow their master. The war-wits push us to our knees in front of the queen. Our foreheads rest on the dirt floor. There is a long silence filled only by our heavy breathing.

“Verne,” my mother says after a moment’s respite, shaking her head. “Such a failure.”

To say I knew I was destined for failure would be a lie. My arrogance led me to believe there were two types of people in the world: those who dreamt of grandeur and excellence but could not help themselves—they never started down the path towards it so had no choice but to fail—and those who rose above doubt, fought for an ideal, something intangible like success, and, through the simple act of differentiating themselves, won. I had fought. The tides, I had fought. And yet…

And yet here I am. A failure.

I feel as if I have been hurtling towards this moment like an arrow shot by a marksman.

“You stupid girl. What were you thinking?”

“You are stealing my gift.”

My mother laughs. “Who told you that? Maud? Drayk? They were manipulating you.”

“No,” I shake my head. “No I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Drayk says.

I glance up to see Adelpha’s smug smile and her sly, beautiful eyes made more sinister by the dark lines drawn around them in kohl. The madness, I realise, has hold of her too. I say nothing. I am not the volatile, explosive girl that I once was. I keep my emotions in check, building a strong wall to keep out my mother’s accusations.

Her voice rises. “Silly girl. You are no better than Ligeia.” She breathes heavily, wincing as if walking causes her pain. “And you,” she motions to Drayk, “you set her up.”

“Ashaylah, please,” Drayk says and I am surprised to hear him address the queen so informally. He tries to get up but with a dismissive swish of her hand Adelpha pushes him to the ground. He speaks to his groin: “Majesty, it is not too late to make amends. In these times of trouble we must consider the bigger picture. We must stop now before the whole thing unravels.”

I know the signs of my mother’s anger: the tenseness in her back and clenched jaw. “Don’t play games with me, Drayk.”

“Games?” he says.

My stomach is tight. There is something about this interaction—the way they speak so freely—that fills me with trepidation.

“Don’t try to use our past to win my favour.”

“Your past?” I say, unable to help myself.

My mother laughs cruelly. “Yes his past. He was my lover, you foolish girl. In fact, he was my favourite consort until he failed me. I sent him away because he couldn’t control himself and gave me a child. He is Adelpha’s father.”

“I don’t believe you,” I say but the truth thunders at the door of my mind. I remember Drayk’s expression when we spoke of Adelpha at the ball. I remember his attempted confession.

I touch the serpent stone and wonder if my mother once wore it. “Is it true?” I whisper.

His eyes are big and pleading. He nods.

“I see.” His admission does not register on any emotional level. It is both fact and lie, reality and dream.

He reaches out to me. “You have to understand. I was barely a man when your mother took me from the slavers’ pits. I wasn’t the only one. We were forced to do things and we were punished if we couldn’t perform. We weren’t supposed to…I should not have shared my water but I was just a boy. She banished me.” Tears well in his eyes. “It was just once. Once. Please, Verne, I did not love your mother.”

The hurt is so intense there is no space for tears. But worse than the hurt is the fear. “Drayk, did you set me up?”

“Of course not. You must not listen to her poison.”

“Of course he did. He pursued you and turned you against me. I would put him to death if I could.”

“You wouldn’t,” he says, looking up and such certainty scares me.

My mother paces in front of us. “It was never enough to be a soldier, was it? Not for you, no. Not when you felt I owed you something. You have always wanted more: more power, more influence, more of
me
.” She laughs bitterly and speaks to me. “He was such an eager boy. I had to get rid of him.”