Page 60 of The Teras Trials

Leo says, “No.”

“Okay,” I say again, less calmly. His eyes are fixed on the harpy and its meal, as if he has a duty to watch the girl be consumed; as if by living, it is now his burden to bear the dead.

Well, good luck to him: I have no such convictions. If my last reaction is anything to go by, I have processed my brother’s death not at all. Not one bit. And I can’t afford to lose my mind right now, because when I scan the greenhouse and spot Fred and Silas whispering to one another, and Victoria and Bellamy with their hands over their ears, I wonder if anyone else has a plan.

I rack my brain for harpies. Any goddamn mention of harpies. Hesiod wrote about them. Apollonius, too. And Ovid. I know what they look like. I know they’re tormentors—they played with King Phineus, stole his food, made his life hell.

“Pretty sure the texts say nothing more than what you lived. The bastards love to torment,” I tell Leo. “And they’re fast. Faster than the wind, by some accounts.”

“Yeah, I know that much,” he murmurs back. “How are they beaten?”

I swallow at that. “In the texts? The gods intervened. I don’t know. They’re just ravenous. Do you have any food?”

He looks at me like I’m mad. “Oh. Slipped my mind at breakfast, Mr Jones. Usually I ferret half a loaf away. No, I don’t have any bloody food.”

Snarky little—I don’t like this side of Leo Shaw. It’s profoundly upsetting to learn, after giving your body to someone, that they can be a right ass in a situation that requires calm.

He does not apologise. “Well, then, the hemlock?”

“No. It needs to be ingested, first of all. And ‘harpy’ wasn’t on that list. Cover me,” I whisper to Leo, and I offer him Thad’s gun. It is like giving part of myself away. Surely Leo must know that; anxiety and disgust and fear all swell in me, and it seems disproportionate to the act. I hand over the gun. Leo takes it. Thaddeus screams in my brain that I’m a fool, that Leo won’t give it back, that I am weapon-less save for the single shot in the flintlock gun. Leo looks at me, brows furrowed, and I wonder if he can see something in my eyes to make him worried.

“What are you doing? Take it back. There’s only one shot in that gun.”

“I know.” I swallow; I have the urge to tell him I’m not stupid. “I’d prefer you have more shots to save me when things go south.”

“When,” Leo repeats, without intonation. He doesn’t try to stop me. Do I have a right to be irked by that? I am so close to leaning in, to feeling the sweat of his brow against mine, the firm press of his lips to mine. I can all but feel the warmth of him as his leg touches me, hip to knee, impossibly intimate. I want comfort. And then I hear the happy sounds of a monster devouring flesh, of a sternum cracking from the weight of the harpy, and the wafting acrid scent of blood, metallic in the air.

I don’t know what comes over me. Suddenly I am creeping out of the shrubbery, flintlock gun raised. I have exactly one chance, and that knowledge is a burr in my gut.

Somehow, over the sounds of bone cracking and flesh tearing, it hears me. The twisted face spins towards me. Its lips, which are sunken and flat, are peeled away from its sharp, blood-covered teeth. They drip with gore, and the depth in its eyes gives me pause. I aim, I ready myself to fire, and then—

The harpy speaks.

18

LESSON EIGHTEEN

“Horresco olfaciens tuum putridum odorem, qui sicut sanginem alterium putet.”

I freeze. I do not shoot. The harpy is looking at me, mouth open, tongue wagging—speaking to me. I try to take a deep breath and I fail and splutter, and I wait for it to launch itself from the body. I step back. It steps forward. A heavy taloned foot slaps onto the ground, slick with blood.

Desperately, I translate. Horresco. First person singular. I shudder. Olfaciens, present participle; smelling, to smell.

Tuum putridum odorem, the reason the harpy shudders.

I shudder to smell your putrid odour.

Qui sicut sanguinem alterium putet.

Which stinks like the blood of another.

I swallow hard. I killed a boy last night. I put a bullet in his brain. And like Orestes, I am polluted by that sin.

Euripides, in my ear: “For there is no escape from miasma, no hiding from the gods, no avoiding the judgement that is deserved.”

The harpy takes another step. Up close, its body is foul with sweat and blood and gore, rotting from its mouth. Its feet slap through a pool of blood at its feet towards me. Hastily, I translate, to rid myself of the pollution that interests it.

I don’t know why I just don’t shoot. But now that it’s spoken, I have to speak back. Call me stupid—I don’t care. I say, rather poorly, “Mandatum datum a meo superiore secutus sum.”

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