Wonderblood

by Julia Whicker

  He had not progressed much further along the path before he noticed another of his staff’s failures. A sleepy guard stood a fair distance away, one of the many posted to oversee the daily courtyard market. Merchants from beyond the walls came with their wares and sold them in booths. Magicked Heads, jewelry, leather. People pushed carts with wood for fires. Women carried water, men yanked horses through the mud, magicians shook their girdles of talismans. Still more carried fish and flesh and fabrics and pieces of found metal, balanced in gigantic baskets upon their heads. Courtiers, the families of the Cape who had lived here a thousand years, mingled in their finery and blew each other five kisses, the greeting their station demanded. Ochre robes, moonstone collars, blue glass rings on every finger in homage to the heavenly bodies. They were arrayed in splendor while their finely dressed children scrapped with each other and chased dogs.

  But Marvel’s eyes were drawn to the young-looking guard. He stood beneath the eve of a booth. His uniform was all wrong. It might not even have been palace issue. He seemed almost comatose, but as Marvel watched, he snatched an orange from a passing cart. Without offering payment, he peeled it and began to eat.

  The whole fruit was gone in a few bites, the peel tossed underfoot. The guard ground it into the mud. Marvel stopped. Frowned.

  The man would need to be reprimanded. There was no one to do it but Marvel. He realized abruptly that he hated to be in charge—when had that changed? At one time he had enjoyed it, craved it. Now he wished he could leave the guard to his stupid fruit. Should a man not have the dignity of sorting out those ethics on his own? But it was not possible. Others had seen Marvel crossing the courtyard: what if they had also seen the guard steal the fruit? What if someone had seen Marvel see the guard steal and do nothing? He clenched his jaw.

  He took a weary step off the path, but at that moment a trumpet sounded the public prayer. It was led not by Marvel, but by the Royal Pardoness, Green Butterfly. Marvel turned from the guard, grateful but then at once reluctant for the distraction. The Pardoness emerged, shrouded. None of her skin was visible, only clouds of weightless fabric topped by a crown of polished green rocks. Like tombstones, or teeth. Her face entirely covered by pale diaphanous silk. Drops of water pitted the fabric here and there.

  She revealed herself upon her balcony for a few moments every day in order to assure the people there still existed a link between themselves and the divine. Green Butterfly stretched her slender hands over them all each morning, in sunshine and rain. She was a direct descendant of a man who had walked on the moon. A feeling of peace did emanate from the act, if one had a mind to feel it: often, Marvel did not. There were people who said Green Butterfly lived in a room paneled entirely in opals. That she kept the finger-bones from every soul she pardoned. He was sure those things weren’t true, but the people liked her nonetheless. Though she was now so frail her voice was nearly impossible to hear, though no one had seen her face in years, though she rarely granted pardons, still, she represented goodness. Kindness. Even love.

  The spitting weather drowned her voice. The people in the courtyard stared at her anyway. Most of them. They knew what she would say, as did Marvel—she said the same thing every day. More important was to be seen looking at her. He supposed many of them admired her clothing, her headpiece, for he had authorized those, and knew how much they cost. Others were simply glad to stop working for a few moments. A few might even have wanted to feel her warmth, though from this distance it flickered like a candle across a bedroom. Marvel stopped along with them, splashes of rain on their faces together while they strained to listen.

  She opened her arms, silks streaming off them.

  A few murmurs, nothing discernible. Marvel knew the words because he’d written them. He found his mouth saying them, though he could not see her lips. One of his first acts as Hierophant had been to change all the traditional prayers. He had been young and passionate then.

  He could remember many things, but could hardly remember himself. Who had he been in those days?

  Then a trumpet blast barreled from another tower, signifying the end of the prayer. The Pardoness bowed to them all. She disappeared back into her chamber, and for a moment no one moved. The rain fell, and an indifferent silence filled by the sound of shoes shifting in mud, a mule shaking its mane. At last a woman sneezed, and the racket of the courtyard trading booths began once again.

  Marvel’s eyes fell at once on the offending guard again. He slumped against a pole. His chin nodded toward his chest. Marvel sighed again and went toward him, nearly knocked over in his haste by a handcart full of citrus greenery, likely meant for a courtier’s bedroom. He weaved away from the cart and swore under his breath as the wheel splashed mud on his cassock. He was not angry, but it felt right to act as though he were.

  He poked the guard in the stomach when he reached him. The man gasped and doubled over. On the ground lay the orange peel. The guard stood up angrily and glared at Marvel, not a shred of recognition in his eyes. “What the hell’s wrong with you, eh?”

  Marvel folded his arms. “Why have you stolen from your countryman?”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “More importantly, why have you not addressed me honorably?”

  The guard seemed confused. His face was unshaven; patches of wheat-colored hair growing out of tanned skin. Something about him off. That uniform, up close, looked years out of date. He shook his head slightly.

  “Don’t play stupid. I saw you,” Marvel barked.

  “Sir, I—”

  “‘Sir’? I’m no one’s ‘sir.’” Marvel paused. The man looked even more baffled. Marvel said, “Do you know who I am?” He had a deep voice, almost croaking, and knew he sounded intimidating. He was also tall, somewhat hulking, and only just a bit overweight. In his cassock he looked regal, though the garment was plain. Anyone should know who he was, Marvel thought, annoyed. His image was circulated.

  “You’re—” The guard’s eyes darted left, then right. His head sat upon his neck like a goblet-bowl. “Obviously someone important.” He tried to smile and mostly succeeded. He was a head shorter than Marvel, soft-skinned and loosely jointed. “I’m new to the job, please forgive me.”

  His accent was foreign—he might indeed be new. Marvel didn’t concern himself with hiring guards, he had men for that. But this man could be a spy. Something about him bothered Marvel, apart from the stealing and the sleeping. Was it his clothing after all? With the thought came an unwelcome tremor. Who would send a spy wearing out-of-date clothing? Marvel could think of one place.

  Kansas.

  But how could the monks at the Black Watchtower have learned of his plans to return when he had told no one? Impossible. He leaned back on his heels and smirked, as he often did when he wasn’t sure what to do. His presence was large; usually this was enough to cow his adversaries.

  “Where is your firearm?” Marvel asked after a moment.

  “My what?”

  “Your gun. You’re an elite guard. That’s the uniform you’re wearing, even if it’s old. Or did you not know?”

  “They didn’t give me one. A gun, I mean,” the man replied.

  “Who is ‘they’?”

  The guard shrugged. “Whosoever’s in charge of handing out weapons. Like I said, I’m new.” The younger man looked at him buoyantly. Something striking about his eyes. It may have been cockiness; he didn’t know who Marvel was, after all. How long since anyone had looked at Marvel that way? That sent another tremor through him. The man turned his head when he realized Marvel was still staring: the moment had stretched on inappropriately. “I just came here a few days ago.” The guard shrugged. “I asked for a job and they gave me one. I didn’t ask for a weapon. Should I have?”

  “I see you have a knife right there.” Marvel pointed to the guard’s belt.

  “That was mine. From before.” The man’s eyes were green. His hair was pale brown, cut poorly. Marvel rubbed his own chin. He hadn’t shaved that da
y, or the day before. Suddenly he stepped back, aware of the gray in his beard, the other man’s proximity. “Who hired you, again?”

  “O, I don’t remember his name. He was middle height?” the guard said. Then, more eagerly, “I used to go with the carnivals. If that’s why you’re staring at me like that.” He gestured to his clothes. “I know I look bad.”

  “Carnival men can be … difficult to reason with. We don’t often hire them as guards.” Marvel raised his eyebrow. “You really don’t know who I am, do you?”

  Another cart jostled them as it passed. A palm frond fell from its overloaded basket and lay beside the orange peel. The guard’s smile turned sheepish. He shook his head.

  Surely a spy would know who he was, unless of course it was all an act. He crossed his arms. “Which carnival did you come from, I asked.”

  The younger man shrugged. Pale light filled the guard’s eyes from the side, and with a jolt Marvel realized he had not looked at anyone for a long time, not really. He was thoroughly enjoying the experience.

  His gaze fell on a tiny sack just peeking from the folds of the man’s tunic. It hung from a cord tied to his belt, no bigger than a money-purse. The guard brushed it with his hand but that was all. A long moment passed. “I got work in the carnivals, that was all,” the guard said finally. “It’s better than nothing, eh? This was the only Head I ever made.”

  “The life of a guard will suit you better, then?”

  “I think so.”

  A silence opened between them. It occurred to Marvel that this man might have spent all his life outside. His cheeks were roughened and red. Even if he was not from a carnival—which Marvel suspected—he had most likely walked long miles to get here. It was a hard way across the continent. Marvel had traveled it. When at last the other man began to fidget, Marvel said, “I’m Marvel Parsons.”

  “O.”

  The man knew the name. He cleared his throat. “O,” he said again. “Many apologies. It wasn’t … I didn’t think you would be dressed so—”

  He waved his hand. “You know, I think you’re a spy. I’m almost sure. I might have you thrown in prison.”

  The man smiled again, while shaking his head. Perhaps he enjoyed being ridiculed. Marvel had met other men who did.

  “But,” Marvel went on. “I like you. If you’ve crossed the continent lately, I could see my way to a compromise.” He shrugged. “Are you a spy?”

  “Never.”

  “Did you cross the deathscapes to get here?”

  Young and audacious and beautiful in the way that impudence can render a young man beautiful, the guard stood a bit taller and replied, “On my own. Without so much as a mule. No sickness, no death.” He bowed at last. “Your Majesty.”

  Marvel found himself nodding. There would be time to discover who had sent him and why. But before then Marvel would hear about the deathscapes.

  He had dealt with many smarter men than this. In these, his final days at the Cape, when his desperation to return to Kansas had all but transformed him from statesman back into a sort of cautious zealot, Marvel had begun once more to dream. He thrust out his hand, opened it, and waited until the guard placed his knife in his palm. Marvel clapped him on the back. The rain had stopped falling, but when? He hadn’t noticed. He must become better about noticing the weather.

  “Walk with me, young man. We have a few things in common,” Marvel said, sticking the knife into his own belt and steering the guard toward Canaveral Tower, toward the jail. He would show him an interrogation, he would show him the jail in all its white horror, and then, perhaps, he would ask him again if he were a spy.

  Or perhaps not. Marvel could simply kill him after he learned how the man had crossed the deathscapes. If, say, he was in possession of a map.

  He had done worse things.

  * * *

  When Marvel was born in Kansas, his mother the nun laid him in a black stone cradle. She presented him with a swaddling blanket fit for a king, a sheer black cloth inscribed with gold thread that spelled out his name in stars. Later he was told the heavens themselves would have mirrored it, had he proven worthy.

  Alas, Marvel had been an unkingly boy from his first breath, which emerged reluctantly from clogged airways—Marvel had been born dead. He came to life when at last a midwife held him up to declare him lifeless. As though he had considered her offer and rejected it. His mother cried with relief, but those tears turned quickly to despair. The Mystagogue at the Watchtower, highest priest of the Kansas sect, declared Marvel deficient the instant he saw him limply breathing in the cold birthing room. Barely squirming in that starry blanket. He turned the baby around so Marvel was no longer facing him and handed him back to the midwife, who handed him to his mother, who stared up at the Mystagogue in awe of his cruelty. By rights, said the Mystagogue, Marvel should be thrown from the tower, but his mother was a nun, after all, and more importantly a descendent of Huldah the Prophetess. Which made Marvel also a descendent of Huldah. Marvel would be educated as a monk, no more and no less, and Nasa Whiteside should be grateful for that small mercy.

  He became ordinary in those first instants of his life, and his stricken mother became a failure. Nevertheless the account of his birth cheered him in a strange way. Even as an infant, he had been a complicated person, one capable of bearing tremendous weight as well as casting it off. Defying expectation was in his blood.

  That was his destiny. He had faith in that.

  He still had that swaddling blanket somewhere, shoved into a wooden crate and stored away. From time to time, Marvel enjoyed imagining himself from the vantage point of history, which stretches onward until the morality of events is winnowed until it appears to be fate—one action begetting the next and so on. Progress. This was the place where treachery and failure transformed themselves. What once seemed terrible could become courageous if given enough time. Marvel imagined that one day his sins might be tallied as virtues, that time could render him honorable, as he knew himself to be.

  He would leave the Cape. He would leave them all, even his own daughter the queen, to their empty frivolities, their misguided readings of holy texts, to their gentle, ineffectual king who was not the True King.

  He would go back to Kansas, he would start again, where he’d started in the first place. It was the only way he knew how to save himself.

  * * *

  Above the jail that housed all dissidents, Canaveral Tower spun sharply upward. The heartclot of the palace compound, of such terrific height and magnificence that even the macabre collection of corpses exposed on the eastern parapet could not detract from its excellence, the tower shone with a sunsharpened triumph both terrifying and cheerful. Together with its five flanking minarets, it represented the shuttles and their glorious passages off the world, and waited in bannered anticipation for their return.

  Marvel and the young guard entered the jail through a plain door in the side of the tower. The jail was not wet or cold, which was itself an achievement of engineering given the high water table at the Cape. But all through it ran a smell of despair and death and rotting corpses from the bodies exposed on the compound’s high parapets. The jail’s walls and floor and even all the washstands in the cells were painted white—Marvel’s idea. He had conceived of it as a maddening reminder of the light and air outside, but additionally it served to give the prisoners an endless amount of menial work, for the cells were required to remain spotless and the prisoners given only a few soft rags with which to clean them. Any visitor’s feet left smudgy imprints on the floor.

  He went with the young guard straight down a set of steps. Metal-white, perforated with many coin-sized elliptical holes, descending in wider spirals until the staircase ended at a metal doorway. There they stood in awkward silence, until Marvel used the knocker to rap five times. The door opened and that smell washed over them. Fecal and rotting. Each cell had a drain, and each drain was a horror. Marvel had grown used to it; the guard looked on the verge of fainting. Marv
el smiled, shrugged. The jailer’s face, when it appeared, was like a tree trunk, the bulbous nose and knotty lips eruptions on the rough skin. He was neither old nor young but struck Marvel as both bored and uncruel, qualities he supposed were desirable in a jailer.

  “Here for a prisoner.” Marvel withdrew a small bit of paper from his pocket and unrolled it. He and the guard stepped into the anteroom where the jailer had a three-legged stool set up in a corner, and next to it a bucket of oysters, some shells on the floor. “William Tygo II.”

  “Right,” said the jailer. He held a brain-pink liquid in a thick, dirty glass mug. “I put him in the last cell. A real stick up his ass, that one.” His eyes like wild malarial marbles. How could one bear this stench all day? The jailer seemed to have long ago lost some essential function of his brain—Marvel wondered how anyone could spend a lifetime sitting feet away from ranting lunatics. Yet apparently the jailer found his posting unobjectionable: he had performed his duties competently for many years.

  Marvel and the guard followed him through the anteroom into the winding circular hallway that housed the cells. This was the most intense displeasure of visiting the jail. The incarcerated men and women called out to Marvel before the jailer shushed them with a poke from the back end of his pike. They screamed their innocence, threatened to have Marvel’s daughter killed, insulted every feature upon his own body and hers. He didn’t listen. The vulgarities had bothered him, until they had stopped bothering him, and he thought now that there was nothing the prisoners could say that could hurt him. Their words and spit misted him, but it was only a hygienic nuisance.

  The young guard swayed uncertainly when the prisoners began their chorus. He had a boy’s way about him, a boy’s eagerness to please. It was not irritating, though in others this quality could seem calculated. He attempted to cover his alarm with a look of nonchalance until Marvel rapped him again on the shoulders encouragingly. “We’re in this together now.” He pushed the man in front of him. After hesitating a moment, the guard walked ahead.