Bird of Chaos: Book One of the Harpy's Curse (42 page)

“And I am thankful you did. The barracks were a far better place for me than your tendra.”

“And yet you wept,” the queen says, so cruelly. “Because you longed to be my daroon.”

“That is not true,” he turns to me, “Verne, you know me. You know I am not motivated by power.”

“Do I?” I whisper.

“Verne, surely you realise he was using you? I thought he loved you, I really did. I saw how happy he made you and I thought,
Why not give her something if she cannot have the throne?
But I underestimated him. Though he is an immortal he is not immune to greed. He thirsts for power. All men do.”

“No,” Drayk says, pushing against the war-wit that holds him down. “Lies!”

“Is it true? Have you been using me to become daroon?” I say.

“Of course not. I love you.”

“Don’t believe him. He has wanted to be daroon ever since I denied him that right—”

“Don’t be absurd!”

And there it is, her words spoken through his mouth.

“I love you, Verne.”

“You love my daughter?” The queen’s laughter is cold, cruel. “What about
our
daughter?”

Their silence is drowned out by the roaring in my ears as blood flows too quickly around my body.

“Adelpha has nothing to do with this,” Drayk says. His words are a knife cutting through my spine. I feel a chasm opening up in front of me and in it I see…only madness.

“I think you will find I have
everything
to do with this,” Adelpha says, kneeling in front of Drayk. She takes his face in her hands and peers into his eyes. I strain to hear what she says.

“It was so much easier before I arrived, wasn’t it,
Father
? You knew you could seduce Verne and your appointment as daroon was guaranteed.” She lets go of his face. “She loved you. She would have done anything for you. But you were impatient and when I arrived you saw your chances diminishing further. And you could not marry me, no no—” she laughs “—so you encouraged Verne to revolt.”

Her argument reeks of truth. But no, I see nothing in our past to suggest he would betray me.

“It was not like that. Verne, you know I love you.”

I grip his serpent stone. It is hot and beating fast.

My mother whispers, “You seduced my daughter and used her in an attempt to take the throne. You, her friend and confidant, her life’s companion.” The soft sound is more potent than the loudest scream. “The head of my Queen’s Guard. Our family’s most loyal servant. You turned my daughter against me—”

“No.”

“He is lying!” Adelpha says, pointing at Drayk, “You plotted with Verne, didn’t you? The attack on the palace? Petra defecting? All your idea.”

Drayk fights her voice in his head. “No!”

“It was you who planted the seed for revolt. If not, then it was you who cultivated it.”

“No!”

“You spiteful little dog!” Adelpha makes a motion as though she were slapping his face. Though she does not touch him, his head jerks to the side. A red mark appears on his cheek in the shape of her dainty little hand.

“I only wanted to stop the Tempest,” he whispers.

The queen sighs. “The Tempest, the Tempest, the Tempest. You seem like such an intelligent man, Drayk. Such wisdom in those eyes and yet you are false. Like the rest of them.” She addresses me. “Verne, is there anything more you would like to say before we take him away?”

My stomach is a mill grinding rocks to dust. It is possible to be so hurt, so angry you become mute. But I am determined to speak. I lick my lips. “I will not have you use him as a scapegoat.”

“What?” My mother’s voice is staccato.

I no longer want to be a part of this world. To me, Tibuta is dead.

“I do not believe your accusations against him. You intend to use him and I will not be a part of it. I will take responsibility for my actions. I turned against you because I knew you were taking my gift.”

Anger makes my mother’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall. “So be it,” she says in a deep, threatening voice. “I offered him as sacrifice so you could go free but if you insist…” She turns to the war-wits. “This
man
has acted with the assumption of his impunity. True, I cannot kill him, but no enemy of Tibuta,
no one
who defies his queen or threatens the stability of this nation will go unpunished. I will execute him and when he regenerates I will execute him again. Drayk, give me your serpent stone.”

Drayk does not respond. Instead, he looks at me and then, pointedly, at the stone around my neck.

The queen holds out her hand. “Drayk.”

Drayk shakes the war-wit off him, “Let go of me and I will get it.”

The queen nods. “Let him go.”

The war-wit momentarily releases him. He lunges at my mother. “Now, Verne. Go!”

I bring my head up to smash into the war-wit’s face. He howls, gripping his bloody nose. I plough into my sister, throwing her down. Then I run.

The dark and the wind are my allies and yet my dream has not prepare me for escape. I consider the corpses as I vault over them. Each is a tribute to my failure. Two orca bar my route to the water. They have their faces buried in flesh. They look up as I come closer, mouths grinning with blood. I freeze, hold out my hands to calm them, and retreat without taking my eyes off their fangs. Sensing I am no threat they return to their feast. I run in the opposite direction.

Soldiers tear the heads from the statues and roll them along the ground like boulders. They rip off their limbs and piss at their feet. They are oblivious of me.

The remnants of war wages in the wasteland beyond the bridge. All but the most determined Shark’s Teeth have disappeared within the darker alleys of Minesend and Veraura or taken refuge in the abandoned mine pits.

Lightning in the west illuminates an unnaturally violent storm growing in vertical towers in the dark. It slowly consumes the accusatory stars as it creeps across the sky, drawing air from the ground, fuelling its rage. A distant screech tells me Callirhoe is overhead.

An argutan wanders aimlessly through the charcoal, sniffing at the corpses in search of its master, its reins dragging along the ground. I mount him and kick him into a canter. Its powerful body moves beneath me as we race over the blood-sodden earth, jumping the trench and clattering through the gate. I glance back. The marquee is a mere spot of light in the dark. The war-wit is searching for a mount.

I race along the Holy Way weaving in and out of the dead, all the way to the water’s edge in Elea Bay. I keep wide of the palace at Bidwell Heights and head into Gelesia’s territory. Here, I let my argutan slow to a walk. Heat radiates from its skin.

The houses in Veraura are unplanned, their roofs uneven, and their doors askew. The ground is unpaved and littered with waste. A filthy tributary has formed on people’s very doorsteps. People are escaping the queen’s inevitable retaliation. A boy wearing nothing but a loincloth jumps nimbly across stepping stones and joins his mother where she waits by the side of the road, their possessions in piles around her. His eyes are empty, his gaze disturbing. His gut is swollen. Hunger whispers in his ear. Hunger is on the faces of the people who overtake me. I have failed them. There is nowhere else for them to go except beyond the Seawall and across the sea to the lesser islands or even the mainland.

I avert my eyes and mouth a silent apology. I think of Drayk. Is it possible he seduced me with his spells, with his traitorous wit, with false promises? His words
were
like rich chocolate…
Did you disguise your thorny heart, your garden of rotting weeds?

Surely no one else has felt this pain, right here in the chest? Surly none have felt this panic?
They have, I realise. So much so that to describe it is banal.

Ahead the caravan of refugees condenses: women with baskets on their heads push to get ahead of men dragging overladen carts and children carrying babies on their hips. A gentle icy wind blows through the streets. I try to pretend those poor wretches aren’t scrutinising my argutan, contemplating whether or not to steal it and ride it to the Seawall. A movement catches my eye and I glance up to see a boy scuttle behind a barrow.

The first raindrop falls heavy. The sky opens. I wipe the water from my eyes. It is mixed with my tears.
Spectres of my mother and lover appear. There she is propped up among her silk pillows, her breasts bare, calling for him. There he is coming to her. She runs her hands over his thigh. And does he enjoy it? He must. A man cannot help himself. And does he love her? He does. The way a slave comes to love his master.

But worse than the visions is the gangrenous growing doubt. Did Drayk set me up? He told my mother nothing directly—she didn’t know anything for sure about my betrayal—but was he driving me towards a coup while doing things to subtly undermine me? When he was supposed to ensure the gate was open at the funeral did he double-cross me? The gate
was
shut. Did he pretend to love me because he wants to sit beside me on the throne?

“No, he loves me,” I whisper, remembering his concern for me as a child, the hours spent training during my teenage years, his promise to return to me after his rebirth, the tournament, the stone, all of it. At no point did I ever think…There was never any indication that he wanted to be daroon; he just wanted to be mine.

“Drayk,” I say, my voice cracking. “I don’t want to doubt you but I do.”

A clamour behind me makes me turn. The evacuees scream, sweeping their children into their arms and racing forwards to get out of the way.
Five soldiers thunder towards us on argutans. As they pass me they strike with their single-edged swords. I avoid them but in doing so hit an argutan’s flank, rebound and am tossed like tumbleweed through the mud. The argutans come to a stop just short of the fleeing crowd. I push myself onto hands and knees and stand in time to see the soldiers dismounting.
One breaks away from the others and runs forwards. “Highness, quick,” she says, throwing me
Eunike, the blade of victory.
The grip fits neatly into my hands, the pommel is cool against my wrists and yet the xiphos seems heavier than I remember. I am tired.

“Ried, is that really you?”

“Both of us,” the woman says with Maud’s voice. The red priestess beheads a Whyte soldier and spins around to face another. A Tibutan hoplite lunges at me and I block. Everything is a blur. I blink to clear my eyes of rainwater and tears. I see the hoplite’s sword now, long and pointy. She strikes again. I am used to fighting with two swords and I hold my left hand up instinctively. The tip of her blade slices through my palm. There is no time to acknowledge the pain. I move swiftly, defending myself high, coming low, ducking beneath her blade, jumping another and then slicing from left to right. The rain drums on the ground. I stare deep into the soldier’s eyes, lunge and misstep, giving her the chance to grab my left arm and pull me towards her. She turns me around and brings her sword to my throat.

“Don’t,” I whisper feeling the knife cut into my flesh. “Please.”

“Drop your weapon,” she says but I shake my head. She digs the blade in deeper. Blood trickles down my neck. I do as I am told and
Eunike
falls into the mud.

“Let her go,” Ried says from behind the soldier. She holds the tip of her sword against the hoplite’s back.

The soldier holds her hand out to the left and looks as if she is going to do as Ried says. I run out of her grip but the soldier snatches up her blade and turns on the red priestess. “Highness, run!” Ried yells.

I hesitate.

“Now!”

I pick up Eunike in a fistful of mud and without looking back I run for the second time that night. I run because I have no choice. I run because I want to be far from Tibuta.

The Seawall swims in my vision. I am dismayed to see thousands of people trying to leave. However, as I am engulfed by a mass of people with their possessions in sacks slung over their shoulders or resting on their heads, I realise they are a blessing; I am invisible amongst them. They absorb me, swaying gently from side to side and shuffling towards the cages every few minutes. The top of the Seawall is hidden in dark cloud.

“What happened to you?” says a woman with a missing tooth and a ring in her nose. Her clothes are a mismatch of coloured rags: red for her skirt and brown and yellow on top. Her hair is wound up in a floral blue scarf. “Your hand. What happened?”

“Nothing,” I say, then look away.

“Was you in that battle at the temple?” she says but I ignore her. We take a few steps towards the Seawall. Her bare, filthy feet scuff the ground as if she is too tired or lazy to lift them.

I close my eyes and try to slow my breathing. “I am sorry. Yes, I was caught in the battle. A soldier slashed my hand,” I say, opening my eyes.

“Where will you go?”

“Away. Anywhere but here. Caspius, probably. I have a friend there. I want a simpler life, you know? Maybe a garden.”

“No such thing,” she says, laughing.
“Myself, I plan to go to the Spice Isles. Got family there. No point staying here and watching the place tear itself apart.”

I hold my left hand in my right. The wound is worse than I first thought and blood pools in my palm. The cut on my throat is much shallower but it hurts even worse.

“Let me see that,” the woman says and unravels a layer of cloth from her headscarf. She tears it with her teeth, wraps it around my hand and ties it in a knot. All the while I watch her face. When she smiles it reaches her beautiful grey eyes.

“Thank you.”

“Us Tibutans gotta watch out for each other. No one else will,” she says, chuckling.

We move again, one excruciatingly small inch forwards. At last I can see the big topless slaves who work the pulleys. Their bulging muscles glisten in the torchlight. I am jostled forwards and eventually it is my turn. “Good luck,” the woman calls as she waves.

A cage appears from the dark and bumps to the ground. I am caught in a surge that drags me in. There are people on every side. I can feel them against my back, my shoulders, and my front. I want to crouch beneath them, to crawl under them. I want to hide. Jerky spurts lift us off the ground and I whisper my goodbyes: to Drayk, to Adamon and Nike, to Alexis and to Ried. I pray they are all still alive. Most of all I pray for my father.

At the top of the Seawall I can see the fires in Bidwell Heights reflecting off the clouds that hang low over the city. My people are burning and I can’t find it in myself to care.
I step across the gap from the wall to the cage. A gust of wind makes the cage sway and for a moment I am suspended with only air between my legs. I could simply step off, I realise. To all who saw it would be an accident.
I picture myself falling through the air then splatting on the ground below like watermelon.

But now is not my time, I realise; I still have too much to do. You see, men on the mainland have their stories. Typhon has his storm, Ballus has his water, Rai is the king of the gods. And in Tibuta we have stories of Shea and Ayfra. Now it is my turn to write my story.

I step to safety and allow myself to be jostled to the back of the cage. We descend. At the base of the Seawall t
he ocean crashes
against the rocks like an armada smashing to pieces, white sails billowing.
People fling themselves into the churning sea like rats. I stagger to the edge. Lightning explodes overhead. I have abandoned my post. I have turned my back on my people.

In that instant I envisage Adelpha on the throne. The thought does not upset me. In fact, I find it reassuring. Tibuta will get the leader she deserves.

I glance up and see Callirhoe circling overhead and I know she rides ahead of more devastation. The Tempest is coming. I can feel it in the crackling air, in the water that lashes against my face.
The waves are bigger than usual, unruly.
And there is something about the water’s oily surface that makes it seem unnatural, alive.

I don’t care.

I dive into the water beside the other freemen. The second set of eyelids closes over my eyes and I swim down into the abyss to new beginnings.