Free Bird of Chaos: Book One of the Harpy's Curse by Susie Mander Page A

Each of us felt we had carried a great weight a long distance and were pleased to lay it down outside the palace Wall. The woman knelt down so she was at eye level. “Highness, it was a pleasure serving you.” When I did not offer my ring, she groped for my hand. Though they were watching attentively, neither Drayk nor Bolt made a move to stop her. She kissed the golden snake.
    I curtsied, which seemed to please her.
    “Highness,” said the man over his wine barrel gut, nodding in acknowledgement. The man with the moustache took my tiny hand in both of his.
    “Good luck.”
    “Thank you,” I said, grinning. Drayk thanked each of them in turn, pressing a gold coin into their palms which they accepted despite their insistence that it was not necessary. Then with a hand on each of my shoulders the immortal lead me through a wicket in the gate while Bolt trailed sheepishly behind. I waved at my makeshift guards. Returning the gesture, they called good luck and goodbye.
    Outside my bedroom Drayk turned me around and knelt before me. “I’m very disappointed.”
    I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
    “You shouldn’t have run away like that. Will you promise to be good?”
    I put my arms around his neck and hugged him. “Yes. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” I unwrapped myself, took the immortal’s hand and looked deep into his eyes. “And I promise to be a good queen. I will make Tibuta better.”
    He stood in the doorway while I crawled into bed. “If anyone can do it, you can.”
     
    It was the people who made me fall in love with Tibuta. Sure, the city was like a familiar tune: easy to hum, difficult to get out of your head. And it was my tune. But take away the people who filled it, the instruments who provided the bass and the treble, the melodies and harmonies, and I was left with nothing but noise. If it hadn’t been for Hero I probably would have sought out a superior song much sooner.
    Hero was the simplest kind of friend. The sort who assumed little and forgave a lot. One whose criticism was so tactful it often left me scratching my head, wondering what he had meant. One who rarely spoke out against others but would happily listen to you complain for hours.
    I don’t remember meeting Hero as such—he was always there, coming and going with my other cousins like the seasons—but my fondest memory of him was when the polemarch of Veraura and Minesend, Gelesia Golding, invited my mother and I to her palace to celebrate the arrival of her son’s gift. Chase was nine, the same age as me. Hero was seven.
    The palace was in the south of the city on the border between Veraura and Minesend. It was perched high on the top of a hill between the districts, and the only way to get up there was a zigzag road lined with fig trees. It was summer and the deep purple fruit were ripe and splitting. The heat buzzed.
    The palace was a relatively recent addition to the landscape. With only one storey, it had been built quickly and cheaply to keep up with the expanding city. The brick walls were made from mine tailings covered in a thin cracked marble veneer. The rest was mostly recycled timber and cheap limestone. There was barely a garden to speak of, only a gravelly courtyard. The fountains were dry since the aqueduct across the valley had clogged up and no one had bothered to clear it.
    Gelesia and her son Chase greeted us at the bottom of a sooty grey stairway that led to a timber double door. There were no war-wits, only a kylon lying at their feet, her swollen teats pink against her dark fur.
    Gelesia looked like she had been blasted by a strong wind. Her hair was a tangle of tight curls and her peplos was twisted and tangled. Her gift, the storm, was said to be a reflection of her troubled atrama. The poor woman had lived alone since sacrificing her daroon and they said his absence had hastened her mental deterioration. Some speculated she blamed Chase for the death of the daughters who would have succeeded her