Wonderblood

by Julia Whicker

  This. Perhaps. Perhaps this man, small and roguish though he may be, was the very thing John had felt approaching without being able to name. And the king, how thrilled he would be if John could finally make an accurate prediction of the Return. That was the entire reason for the favoritism King Michael showed John, for his continued monetary generosity, why John alone of all the nine Orbital Doctors had his own castle, and the blessing of exemption from the royal court.

  The king wanted that date.

  John peered at the small man in the peacock blue, who appeared now to be on the verge of tears. “I—” The man began to talk again.

  John stood abruptly. “Enough, my god. Mizar, find out if what this man tells us is in any way true. And please discover these notes to which he keeps alluding, if they in fact exist. And you.” He paused, turning back to the prisoner. “What’s your name?”

  The man stared. “We don’t just tell our names. Not out on the land.”

  “Then make one up, I don’t give a damn. You’re not on the land, you’re here, about to be de-headed apparently. What does it matter if you tell your name?” He watched as the prisoner’s face fell. “Now, now, you won’t die yet, good man. At least not if what you tell me is true. We may be able to help each other.” He snapped around to order Mizar to unchain the man, and was surprised to remember that he’d already ordered him away. John sulkily stepped to the exit, motioning to the prisoner. “Yes, come on then, you will hobble along after me. We will see how you fare at my mirrors, yes? Maybe your angel voices will return. There’s no time like the present.”

  At the door, the guard leaned over gingerly and whispered to him through his lion-shaped mask. John could hardly understand him through the thick resin, so he gestured for the man to pull it aside. “Go on, what?”

  “We’ve just had word that a new carnival has set up outside the palace walls,” said the guard. He had a black mustache with particles of food clinging to the corners. “They are flying a black flag. They appear to be…” He frowned. “Outlaws. They’re here in the wrong season. And more than that, there are many more than a normal carnival. It may be dangerous to send a messenger on the road to the palace compound.”

  John felt not alarmed, but strangely disappointed by this news, and fought the desire to return to bed. A moment before, he’d had a strategy—now he felt the old shapeless anxiety gnawing at him once again, for this new trouble surely portended something as bad or worse than the comet or the vision-having prisoner. “Yes,” he mumbled, as the guard replaced his faceplate. “I see. Well, at least take this man to a room and have Mizar dress him in something other than these filthy clothes. We will check on the ladies when the threat has passed.”

  John watched as the prisoner was led away down the narrow steps, then returned to his window. And it was there, in the distance, under the curious blaze of the new comet: settled in the scrubby awfulness of the coastal expanse was a dense thicket of tents and booths and stages. This new encampment extended all the way to the sea—a great yawn of humanity, all bustling like ants under a huge, iridescent black flag. John gripped the ledge with fingers he could not quite feel. The earthworks and the line of flimsy watchtowers that served the Cape were dilapidated and had further deteriorated after a minor hurricane. But that had been years ago, now. King Michael was not a man who valued his military. John peered over the plain, his heart in his throat, before he turned his eyes back to the sky and had the absurd thought that it would be far better to be struck dead by a heavenly body than by a living one.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE THIRD QUEEN OF CAPE CANAVERAL

  That evening, the girl was released from her cage. Three old women attendants came to Mr. Capulatio’s tent. They said he had sent them. The girl stood on a padded footstool as they fussed with her gown. She watched as though from afar, like her body in this new dress was an experiment that could go horribly wrong. The oldest woman remarked: “How can an aged person like me keep straight all the queens at Cape Canaveral now? Now we have three—three queens!” She bleated laughter, her eyes catching the girl’s mischievously. A woman who had seen so many things she no longer took anything seriously. Her laugh trailed off into a gasping chuckle that caught in the back of her throat. Without thinking, the girl drew back, afraid as ever of any kind of sickness. The crone shook her head slightly after wiping her mouth, as if to say It’s nothing, and went back to pinning the dress with sharpened sticks.

  The crones were dressed in elaborate drapings of otter pelts sewn in random places to dresses of thick brown fabric, with their gray hair wrapped around forms to keep it high and stiff. The girl wished Mr. Capulatio had given her younger attendants—girls her own age, who would make her laugh and tell her gossip. Like the illegal dancers in his carnival. Where had they gone? Were they here? Why hadn’t he given her those girls?

  She looked across the tent at Orchid, who sat reading at Mr. Capulatio’s writing desk, ignoring the preparations. The crones kept creeping toward her in an attempt to dress her, too, but each time she waved them away brusquely. She was scouring stacks of papers and books, copying words occasionally into a slim book of her own. Every now and again, she stretched her hands over her head, exasperated, pulling her fingers through her hair and shaking it back down over the front of her pinched face.

  The crones rustled with the girl’s dress for a long time. It was sewn from material that looked very much like Mr. Capulatio’s flag. In fact the girl thought it must be exactly the same. It took her some time to realize they weren’t simply pinning it so they could work on it later: they were sewing her into it. They stitched two panels tightly up the center of her back, pulling mercilessly until she could hardly breathe. To distract herself, finally she gasped, “What are you looking for, Orchid?”

  Orchid spun around on her chair and glared. “They were brought in for you. I am not your nursemaid.”

  “I thought you were supposed to teach me things.”

  A sneer crept across her lips. “You want to learn from me how to be his wife? I’m sure you’re quite good at it already. I can only imagine what has gone on in my absence.” She turned back to the desk, muttering, “O yes, I’m imagining it, have no doubt. If I were not so indebted to the cause I would not stand for this chicanery.”

  “Who are the other two queens? She said there were three now.”

  Orchid sighed elaborately. “What does he see in you? Your talk. Your face. Your body. You might as well be a yapping dog. I haven’t got time for this.”

  Orchid’s every reply made the girl more determined to engage her, although not for any reason beyond bothering her. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Orchid rose unexpectedly. Her slender body was very beautiful, the girl could not help but notice. The strong thighs, her hips, which flared like a carved instrument. “Well, since you insist on being infantile, let us teach you, then. Let us count the queens. First, there’s me: I’ve been his queen-to-be since we were sixteen. That was after my mother, our Prophetess Lois, had … passed from this realm. But I guess he hasn’t told you that story, either, has he?” Orchid looked away, her face betraying nothing. A crone poked the girl and entreated her to remain very still while she finished stitching the back of the dress. “Then there’s the queen inside the palace,” said Orchid. “She’s the second queen, King Michael’s wife, Alyson. She is the daughter of Marvel Parsons, the Hierophant. Terribly spoiled, so they say. I wouldn’t know, personally. We’ve never met.” She said this as though the girl should know there was no chance they ever would have met. “Alyson is the one you will usurp once our uprising begins. You’ll probably have to de-head her yourself. That’s what I’d do. It would make a decent show of authority.”

  She came nearer to the girl on her footstool with widened eyes. “But then…” She trailed off and leaned forward, speaking more quietly. “There is another. She’s not a queen, exactly. The Pardoness.” The word hung in the air, changing the room. The crones stopping sewing. The
y seemed to hold their breath.

  “Who is the Pardoness?” the girl asked finally.

  “Who is that! She asks who is that!” The old women bubbled with nervous laughter.

  At this, the girl felt a frenetic darkening begin inside her, little shadows flitting past at a preposterous speed, but she kept her voice light. “How should I know who she is? I’ve never been here before,” she said carefully. “My mother is a Walking Doctor who abandoned me. She told me only mad people live at the Cape. I don’t know anything about anyone here.”

  Orchid nodded. “Poor girl, abandoned by everyone who’s had charge of you. It cannot be your fault they all left you, can it?”

  The girl flinched.

  “We are all just people, though we may be queens. Me, Alyson, you. The Pardoness is different. She is descended from a man who once visited space. Do you understand that? What that means? She is a living relic. She lives in the palace compound, as has every one of her forebears since before there even was a palace. Kept mercifully apart from the world’s hideousness. Michael houses her high above us all in a tower.” Orchid nodded. “From which she dispenses Cosmic Justice.”

  Orchid went to the door of the tent and drew back the flaps. She pointed across Mr. Capulatio’s vast carnival to the tallest and brightest minaret in the palace compound. “In Canaveral Tower. She has lived there since she was a child. We do not dispute her authority as a beacon of justice. David does not intend to dethrone her.” She turned back and spoke flatly. “What we were talking about? O, the queens. And then there’s you, apparently. The third queen. You will be the third queen, after tonight.”

  “Why do you accept the Pardoness’s judgments if you don’t like anything else about the Cape?”

  Orchid let the tent flap close. “I don’t know why. ‘Why’ is a question most are not fit to ask.” She flung her eyes to the crones like a person tossing a stick for a dog, hoping they might give chase. They all laughed. Orchid said, “Not even me. I don’t even know why you are to be David’s queen.”

  “You mean instead of you?”

  Orchid met her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Can’t we both be queens?”

  “O, would you shut up? I’m trying to read, Your Majesty. Perhaps you should be reading about the religion you are so blindly entering as a leader,” she muttered, casting her eyes at the girl’s pile of books. At once her face changed, and the girl knew she’d seen the book Argento had given her, The True King. Orchid leapt to her feet and went into the cage, which stood open now, and snatched out the hardbound volume and held it up with one hand. “This!” she cried. “You’ve had it the whole time!”

  “That’s mine!”

  “Why did you have this? This is my finest piece of scholarship. It’s everything I have ever learned about our history collected and retold for the ages.”

  “That’s mine,” the girl said again, this time coldly. She folded her arms over her chest.

  Orchid hefted the book up and flipped to a certain page as though she’d known all along where she would find what she’d been looking for. The pinch between her eyes deepened. “Here. It reads just as I remembered, of course it does. ‘She is thunder, the perfect mind who rings in a brilliant age. A young sigil dressed all in white shall appear when at last the rockets have returned to earth, and this sigil shall sit enthroned during all the Days of Heaven.’ This is the passage David is using to justify your existence. But he is wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.”

  As the minutes passed and Orchid read and took furious notes, as the girl stood quietly while the crones sewed her dress, she couldn’t help but feel sad for Orchid. This empathy was her downfall, she was beginning to recognize it, for it had happened with Mr. Capulatio as well; she had begun to love him. Overnight Orchid’s whole world had changed—the girl could imagine it all too well.

  But Orchid also frightened her: the particular violence of being a violent woman in the violent world. What was it like to cut off heads? She looked at Orchid and shuddered.

  Then the girl felt sorry for herself more than anyone. Orchid appeared to be the only companion she would have in Mr. Capulatio’s world.

  Orchid turned back to her suddenly, and after a visible struggle, attempted to smile. She came over to the girl and put a gentle hand on her hair. “I suppose I cannot be angry at you for not knowing our religion. For never having read anything I’ve written. That would be very poor character on my part. David has already explained the difference between you and me: you are mentioned in scripture, but I am not. To put it simply, David believes you are more important than I am. So you are supposed to be his queen.”

  “But—”

  She nodded. “And I will be a minor queen. A glorified concubine. But since in this case David is wrong, it occurs to me that something I have recorded for him is likewise wrong. Over the years I have misled him, though I did not mean to. I shoulder the entire responsibility for this error.” She blinked her water-clear eyes. “My task now is to edit the offending text. If you will excuse me.”

  She turned back to the desk, but the crone with the tallest hair, who seemed in charge, gingerly steered Orchid to another stool and began dressing her as well, in a slightly less beautiful dress but one that was lovely all the same. Orchid scrunched her nose as they flocked around her. “I suppose it doesn’t matter if I formulate my reinterpretation of the passage now, or after this ‘wedding’ or whatever he wants to call this rude display of bigamy that we are about to embark upon. He has always listened to reason and this time will be no different.”

  The girl lifted her arm so a crone could stitch under it. She understood why Orchid hated her. How sad it must be to give up everything, your power, your influence, your husband, and then be forced to serve the person to whom you gave it.

  Orchid’s dress slipped off her shoulders while they began pinning. She looked beautiful, the girl thought without wanting to, so unsettlingly angry and lovely. “I will tolerate you,” Orchid said, again nearly reading the girl’s mind. “For now.”

  The girl scowled. Mr. Capulatio had made his choice. Orchid was the loser. In spite of her pity, the girl felt grateful to be the one in the more beautiful dress. Even if she was not more beautiful and accomplished herself. Orchid gazed back at her for a while as though she understood those thoughts too, until finally she looked away.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE RIDER

  John, the Chief Orbital Doctor, reconsidered his options, and sought Mizar to dispatch a rider to the palace compound. The carnival was far enough away, and the rider would be fast enough, he reasoned, that they would have their answer about the women’s bleeding in several short hours. John pondered, if the odd little prisoner proved correct in his prediction, what did it mean?

  Mizar, always sensitive to the plights of servants, insisted that the rider would be dangerously exposed on the plain.

  “We do not even know yet if the outlaw carnival is a threat,” John growled.

  Mizar stared at him as though his master were eight years old once again, all flapping arms and ill-advised schemes. “Of course they are a threat, sir. What reason could they have to break the Law and return here out of season? The question is, would they attack a rider on the way from an insignificant country house?”

  At that, John bristled. “I would hardly call Urania ‘insignificant.’ I have more scrying instruments here than probably anyone in the world and I would assume, given the circumstances”—and here he gestured to the light above—“that they would find my manor house most interesting. But why am I arguing against my own position?” he demanded, to which his servant merely smiled. Mizar had a manipulative streak. At last John sent him to prepare a hot drink and went to his office to wait.

  John begrudged Mizar his little insult. It dampened his excitement. He was sensitive about Urania Castle, even though he was the only Orbital Doctor to have his own separate quarters. Even the Hierophant himself, the king’s High Priest and advisor, lived inside the compound.
But then let us be honest, John thought, gripping the windowsill in his office and looking into the courtyard. Urania was hardly a castle at all, though he had taken pains to make it appear as such.

  It was all vanity. He was the last scion of a family to whom appearances had mattered, and so they mattered to John, even though ostentation was not a feature inherent to his character. Primarily, Urania was a place to keep his instruments. He maintained them meticulously, tucked beneath weathertight mechanical domes of his own design. This was indeed a battle, a philosophical one for him and a physical one for Mizar, for the domes were not ever completely fast despite their combined efforts, and at last John had been forced to admit he was no engineer. Now he cursed the rust grinding in the dome gears each time he cranked one open; he cursed the broad speckling of salt-ruin on the deteriorating instruments. They’d become the easiest place upon which to fixate his self-loathing. His disappointment in himself, which like a desolate satellite circled the mass of his being, pulled up tides of shame regularly. When he looked at his courtyard of once splendid instruments, which he still loved for their mathematics and precision, he cursed himself for being as unlike them as seemed possible. So fickle he was, incapable of discerning truth.

  The news about the women’s bleeding arrived in a flurry of hoofbeats on the gravel at Urania’s gate, more quickly than John had anticipated. It was borne not by his own rider but by a tall and thin young man wearing an ill-fitting guard’s uniform. Spotting him through the streaked glass of his office window, John fairly fell over himself to get outside, all thoughts of past failures washed away now by the hope that the prisoner had indeed made a real prediction. As John threw a coat over his bedclothes, he shouted to Mizar to fetch the prisoner from his room.