Bird of Chaos: Book One of the Harpy's Curse Read Free Page B

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 knock 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,