Wonderblood

by Julia Whicker

  Not too many months before, a woman had lunged at Marvel through her cell’s bars. She’d starved herself until she fit between them and had thrown herself onto him like a cat of the jungle leaping from a tree, tearing the sleeve of his cassock from shoulder to wrist. Her face a firepit of insanity. Marvel was exhausted of ordering executions—instead of killing her, he’d had her forcibly fed and freed the next day. From his own apartments on top of Endeavour Tower, one of the other spires, he’d watched the jailer cast her into the sunlight wearing nothing but the rags she’d arrived in months before. He couldn’t see her face, but she turned in a slow circle, blind to the commotion of the courtyard market. After a few moments, a servant woman brought her a brown dress, laced it up right over her rags, and held out a pair of shoes for her to take. The woman threw the shoes to the ground and kicked dirt over them. After the servant left, the woman returned to the shoes, dusted them off, and slid her feet into them.

  Marvel did not often free traitors. He let that woman go because she was too insane even to question the circumstances that had set her free. Marvel had grown tired of exercising his power—even acts of mercy wearied him. He had watched the woman’s expulsion from the jail from the safety of his balcony, uncertain of what he hoped to observe. Their eyes had not locked. She hadn’t gulped the fresh air like a person thirsty to live. She simply went out through the nearest gate and drifted away.

  “What’s your name?” Marvel asked the young guard as they walked down the hallway, over the whoops and wails of traitors. The jailer clanged his pike on the bars, screaming at the prisoners for silence.

  The young guard winced at the racket, as though sprayed with cold water. “Juniper, sir.”

  “That’s a woman’s name.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “No one’s ever mentioned that to me before.”

  Marvel snorted. “I couldn’t care less what you’re called. But why would a spy choose a woman’s name?”

  “Because I’m not a spy.”

  “Ah.” Marvel folded his arms behind his back. The man’s knife was still in his belt. “Forgive me.”

  “If I were a spy, you’d lock me in here with the loonies, right? Or worse?”

  Marvel shrugged. “You may have caught me in a season of tolerance.” He pushed a thumbnail into the tough skin around his forefinger, watching the thick callus spring back after he’d pressed it. Suddenly he was imagining that wide land between Florida and Kansas again, those endless spoiled fields grown over now with grasses and trees but just as deadly as in centuries past. The precarious passage over the saferoads: he dreamt of walking the spindles through the wilderness, obscurely marked by scratches on tree trunks placed there by the Walking Doctors. Which reminded him to unfold the paper with the prisoner’s name on it again. William Tygo II, Walking Doctor. He closed the paper and said to the guard. “You’re not from a carnival, I can tell. You’re too educated. So.” He nodded to himself. “You’ve been lying.”

  “I went to the carnival once I was already grown. I wasn’t raised there.”

  Marvel smiled and shrugged again and rubbed his own unshaven face thoughtfully. Still the jailer walked onward and they followed. The hall was long. Diffuse afternoon light poured through lozenge-shaped ventilation slits that lined the cells’ upper walls; the dungeon was in fact only one level underground and received significant natural light. Finally the jailer stopped, gesturing to the very last cell with the sharp point of his pike. “Good luck with that one, yeah? He’s the genuine article, an old-fashioned fanatic if ever I met one.” He didn’t even bother to glance in at the prisoner before he turned and left. No one shouted at him as he ambled back to his post.

  The prisoner sat on the white floor of his cell, his back to them. He wore a suit of what must have once been a brilliant blue, a long jacket, quite expensive probably. Now the whole get-up was covered in filth, although it was so dirty Marvel could hardly believe all that grime could have come from the prison. He guessed the man had been picked up in fairly dire condition. Jail may even have been a mercy. So it was for many. Marvel leaned closer to the bars in order to see the side of the prisoner’s face, since he had not yet turned around. The man’s hair was tucked into his collar, obscuring the view. Marvel glanced over his shoulder at Juniper, who looked back blankly.

  Marvel coughed. “So, I’m here at last. This is your hearing, prisoner, you’d better turn around for it.”

  The prisoner tugged his ratty hair down over his ears. It was long, after the fashion of the carnival executioners, and black, loose on the sides and wrapped tightly in back with string so it formed a pigtail of sorts. “I refuse to speak,” he said sharply. “You’re all idiots here, raving at the goddamn sky. This is the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened to me. You have no right to hold me in this jail. None of you do.” The prisoner’s voice was unaccented. To Marvel’s ear, he sounded local. Only a Walking Doctor. No terrible threat, just a routine dissident.

  Marvel examined his nail beds once again. “Do you know who I am?”

  “I can guess.” The prisoner still did not turn. “You’ve come to torture me, I suppose. Nothing I say matters, but I’ll still say it: I don’t have anything to answer for. Not to you.”

  “I’m not here to torture you.” Marvel inspected his knuckles. “But I do enjoy a show.” Beside him, Juniper remained quiet. Marvel tapped on the bars. “I’m here to establish your guilt.”

  “So this is my trial?”

  He chuckled. “Trials don’t exist except in books, my friend. You should have received a letter requesting you desist practicing contramagical surgeries. You got the letter? Then if you still refuse—and I gather you’ve refused—a warrant for your execution is issued, you are captured, I establish your guilt. That’s the part of the process we’re completing today. You’re lucky because I am a fair man.” He paused. “At least today I will be.”

  A snort. “So after this I’ll be executed?”

  “It’s the responsibility of my office to punish traitors.”

  “And what is your office? Who are you?”

  “Marvel Parsons.”

  Marvel’s words seemed to hang oddly in the air. It took a moment for them to float into the cell and land on the prisoner. The prisoner stood and turned around. He was much shorter than Marvel. He couldn’t have been five and a half feet tall. “Marvel Parsons, the Hierophant?”

  Marvel began a reflexive nod, but as the prisoner moved, his hair fell away from his ears—or the place where his ears had been. At once the warmth drained from Marvel as from a limb held above the head. “Your ears,” he demanded. “What happened to them?”

  The prisoner drifted nearer the bars of the cell, tugging loose strands back over the holes. Under that large, very blue coat, and dirty low-cut undergarment, his collarbones threatened to pierce the skin. And yet Marvel took in the wholeness of his appearance with just a glance, because he could hardly tear his eyes from those ear-holes. The prisoner twisted his lips to the side. “That? O. That was a punishment. I got on with my life.” He seemed to speak from another dimension. Marvel could not stop staring.

  The prisoner made a sad grimace. “I can still hear. It’s not as bad as it looks, for the love of god. I’d like to think you’ve seen much worse.”

  Marvel realized he was not breathing. He had been sure he’d never see that particular punishment again.

  The prisoner tilted his head, still fiddling with his hair. He stared intently at Marvel. “What’s the problem? I thought you were going to execute me? A bit of disfigurement is that appalling to you? Or?” He lifted his eyebrows. “Or else you’re from Kansas?”

  “Of course I’m not.” Marvel forced himself to speak at a normal volume. It was a fact that no one from the Cape actually knew where Marvel Whiteside Parsons had come from originally. The two kingdoms were rivals in both politics and piety, but centuries ago the Cape had become the capital. When, at fourteen, Marvel ran away, he had gone to the Cape because he belie
ved that Leander, King Michael’s father, was the True King. With all his heart he had believed that.

  Only the mad monks at the Black Watchtower still thought the king would come to Kansas. But Kansas was the seat of the Disease. Where the Eon of bloodshed and pain had started in the cows and soil. Why should the king who would save them all be born in the place that had ruined the world? The endless reading and study the Mystagogue required had convinced Marvel that his entire denomination, all the monks and nuns and ascetics at Huldah’s stronghold, the Black Watchtower, were pursuing a folly. The True King would not appear in Kansas, ever. Waiting for him there was pure vanity. The True King would reign at the Cape, where the shuttles had existed so many years ago.

  What a fool Marvel had been in his youth.

  He tried to wrench his gaze from the prisoner’s missing ears. They were sure proof that this man had been a monk in Kansas. And yet, no one had used that punishment in Kansas in generations, except of course the Mystagogue himself, and only upon his personal retinue of zealous and dangerous monks.

  But everyone knew the Mystagogue was dead. That he had been dead for a very long time.

  Exactly as long as Marvel had been gone, in fact.

  If the Mystagogue were not dead, Marvel could not go back to Kansas. Not after what he had done. Though the Mystagogue had deserved it.

  He narrowed his eyes at the prisoner. “Who did that to you?”

  Now the prisoner was as interested in Marvel as Marvel was in him. His eyes flashed. “Who do you think?”

  Marvel would not say the Mystagogue’s name or title aloud and give himself away. He tilted his face back and smirked again. Juniper looked at both of them and asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Yes, what is going on? Your paper says you are a Walking Doctor.”

  The prisoner drew himself up into his too-large jacket. “I am. My patients live. Almost always. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? For doing surgeries.” His black eyebrows knitted together and his irises shifted in such a way that Marvel felt he was being untruthful.

  “There are no Walking Doctors in Kansas.”

  “There are, because I was there.”

  Marvel gestured for Juniper to come closer to the bars. “Does he? Come from Kansas? Do you know him?”

  Juniper spread his hands. His eyes went to his knife, still in Marvel’s belt. “I’m not from Kansas.”

  Marvel laughed suddenly. “O, of course.” He gestured to the prisoner’s earholes. “Your personal misfortune interests me—I would like to know more.”

  The prisoner smiled coldly. “I couldn’t possibly.”

  “I think you should stay right here for now.” Marvel checked his paper again and memorized the prisoner’s name. He felt Juniper at his back in a way he had not, moments before. Were these two in collusion? How could either of them have known Marvel planned to return to Kansas? Or were they here for another reason?

  “But—”

  Marvel was overwhelmed by the desire to be away from them both. “There are larger fortunes at stake here than your own. You will be tortured if you are not forthcoming when I return,” he said. “I would hate to do it.” He paused. “For at least a moment I would hate to do it. But I must know the name of the man who took your ears. And why.” He could not say anything more in front of Juniper.

  The prisoner, Tygo, shook his head, and they left him there, gaping slightly like an askew window pane. Juniper tagged behind Marvel, taking longer steps than befitted a man of his height, but nevertheless keeping nearly apace with Marvel as he stalked down the hallway, through the gauntlet of wretches spitting and screaming. Marvel couldn’t care less about them now. When they passed the jailer who was now nodding off in his chair tilted against the wall, Marvel kicked the leg and barked, “Up! Let us out! I haven’t got time for this!”

  * * *

  In the courtyard again, Marvel tried to breathe calmly of the coming winter’s salty air, but instead he felt a lurch of nausea. He saw his chance for escape diminishing. If the Mystagogue lived—and obviously he did—Marvel would die in this peacockish hellhole, he would live out his remaining years serving the wrong denomination, the wrong king. It would be the closing off of his soul from salvation forever.

  He could not allow it. He had lived fifty and one years serving the wrong cause. No longer. He was a monk. In his heart, he was a priest. Not a king, a Hierophant, a soldier, or a malcontent.

  What he wanted most was to go home.

  Juniper had taken a deep breath of fresh air when they exited the jail, pulling a rag from his tunic to wipe his face. The fabric came away damp. An upswell of panic he tried and failed to hide. The young guard was most definitely a spy. Marvel considered having him thrown in the jail. But he had dealt with spies before. They were often more useful than otherwise, if one knew how to manipulate them. At least Juniper was nice to look at. Marvel, composed again, asked, “What did you think of the prisoner?”

  “Probably not a Walking Doctor.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Or a carnival man.”

  “No,” Marvel said.

  Juniper said, “I’m not from Kansas. I want you to know that.”

  Marvel nodded. “You sound sure of yourself.”

  Juniper turned and stared up at Canaveral Tower behind him, squinting in the gray light of midmorning. “Look, all I can say is the truth.”

  “There are many truths, though.”

  Watching Juniper look up to where the Pardoness lived in her suite of luxury, Marvel had a strange idea. He was beginning to realize he was a desperate man. That earless prisoner had reminded him just how awful the Watchtower had been in those days, and probably so remained. And yet still Marvel longed to return, now more than ever. There was a way, though it would be violent.

  Blood it must be, everywhere, and in everything. Wonderblood, the Primary Law. This time, at least, he would ask forgiveness.

  If the Mystagogue lived, then he must be killed.

  Marvel Parsons, a killer from the age of fourteen, would see to that unpleasant task once again.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE EXECUTIONATRIX

  They had come finally through the drear of autumn and burst onto the whitish plain of Florida with its weedscrap and bloodsmell, and even as they crossed into the tropics, the girl knew she was home. Now she did not think anymore of running away, but sat quietly on Mr. Capulatio’s bed in his red wagon as it bumped without rest along the saferoad on wooden wheels, and she listened to the jingle-jangle of his hanging charms. The sound soothed her. Nights, as they camped, she would watch him at his desk, writing and writing. In the warm red light from the lantern she could see he was troubled—his lips angled downward and formed a wrinkle just above the square of his chinbone. But when he turned to her and smiled all his worry seemed to dissolve. It was a smile that contained trust, and within his trust there was also safety, and inside that safety the girl felt growing the beginnings of her own power over him.

  Sometimes she remembered to be afraid. If they were caught returning to the Cape out of season, it would mean more deaths in a world that was already overflowing with death. But she didn’t desire anymore to escape Mr. Capulatio, who had rescued her from certain death—she saw that now. He had scooped her up before she’d been killed in battle or wandered lost into the country and contracted the Disease and died a shivering chattering husk. Had she run off alone, she might have walked across one of a hundred thousand fields still harboring the blood-sickness. Her mother had said the Disease was a “predictable consequence” of the derelict society that produced it a thousand years before. Everyone called it the Bent Head Death, and no one wanted to die of it.

  The girl had once gone with her mother to the bedside of a dying woman. The woman, dark-skinned and old, had wild eyes and thudded her head in an endless rhythm against her driftwood headboard, thump-thump-thump, the teeth in her mouth clacking almost angrily. The girl’s mother could do nothing because there was no me
dicine on earth that could reverse the progressive spongifying of the brain due to the consumption of contaminated meat, which was what Bent Head was. Her mother believed that she and a few other Walking Doctors were the only people left alive who knew what actually caused Bent Head. As far as they were concerned, there never had been a cure, ever. They could find no mention or hint of one in their books. The best her mother could do was euthanize the woman and remove the brain for study. Bent Head was dreadful way to die—victims were transformed into angular, famished horrors. They could not be buried, as the fluid seepage contaminated the land for an Eon. The girl did not understand science or magic, or even if they were different from each other. But she knew it was Bent Head that had somehow brought Wonderblood into the world, and Wonderblood was the law on which all the other laws were based. It decreed that this purge was inevitable and sacred, and that until all lands were “rinsed at the cosmic basin in clean and virtuous blood,” there would be no end to suffering.

  Her mother scoffed: the religions had it all backward, she said—more blood on the land just kept contaminating it, and so they were now locked in an endless cycle of blood and sickness. But when the girl told that to Mr. Capulatio, he called her mother a faithless wretch who placed her trust in surgery instead of religion. Who could surgery save? A single person? In a lifetime, how many? A few thousand? Wonderblood, the executions, could save them all, eventually. Her mother’s impatience was a great sin. Didn’t she see that? Didn’t the girl see that what they were doing was for everyone’s good? And the girl could not at these times keep herself from marveling at the force of his belief. He spoke with such magnetism that she yearned to listen to him, even when she did not understand.

  He answered questions she had not even known she was asking.

  At last they made their camp outside the Cape compound’s walls. Mr. Capulatio’s carnival was already the mightiest in the land and functioned with a frightening efficiency. His men could raise it entirely in under nine hours. His own giant tent was so large it contained his wagon wholly; he and the girl used the wagon as their bedchamber. Outside, men laid planks for walkways, the merchants and charm-makers pitched their booths, and just as soon as they finished tying down the last tent pegs of Mr. Capulatio’s new, great flag was hoisted over the encampment. This was a flag of conquering, he mused to her as he watched it unfurl. His chest rose and fell as they stood together in the tent’s doorway. They looked out upon the carnival, and farther away they could see the metal spires of the castle beginning to whirl the morning light back to them and all around the land was low and flat, and the air heavy, and beyond that began the pink-blue crescent of the sea.