Wonderblood

by Julia Whicker

  He rang a bell for a servant, turned around in his chair, and opened his shades. There were the outlaws, camped down by the shore, not beside the compound wall where they usually set up camp when they brought their yearly tributes. In fact, the outlaws were very close to the first watchtower in the defense line, which was barely visible from Marvel’s window. This was intentional, he supposed; the earthworks were long neglected. Why should the outlaws fear an unmanned defense line?

  They had no intent to surprise, obviously.

  The servant knocked. Marvel’s knees cracked when he stood. He pulled open the slot on his chamber door. A middle-aged man with yellow hair whose name Marvel could never recall looked at him nervously. “You called, Majesty.”

  “I need a man to ride out to that carnival on the plain and discover their business. They shouldn’t be here.” He spoke as though no one should be worried.

  “That has already been ordered by the king. The riders will be back shortly. But I have more news for you.”

  “Proceed, then.”

  “A guard has returned with the Chief Orbital Doctor. And a captive in chains. They wait for you in the Receiving Room.”

  “I didn’t send for Sousa. I don’t want to see him now.”

  “He would not not be seen, sir.”

  “Tell him to go away.”

  The servant bowed. “I would very much like to, but he’s in a bad temper and he says he has something very important to tell you about the … comet, he’s calling it.”

  It would not do to insult John Sousa. He was unfortunately one of King Michael’s favorites. The Sousas had been at Cape Canaveral a thousand years. John had harbored an especial loathing for him since Marvel had registered distaste at the expense of Urania, John’s gaudy manor castle. Had the astronomer truly needed his own observatory, a castle in miniature, with all the contraptions and instruments his heart desired? Marvel hadn’t thought so. By that time, the extravagance of the Cape had worn him down, and he was rejecting plans for improvement everywhere. But Michael had been happy enough to override Marvel’s judgment, with the caveat that the Astronomer should feed and house any and all of the numerous foreign Orbital Doctors who might come to cast yet more horoscopes and make yet more detailed predictions of the Return Date; it was, after all, His Majesty’s passion to know the exact Day and Time.

  “I will see them,” Marvel mumbled, and slid shut the viewing slot.

  He wanted to pray. He had, in past times of confusion, prayed before any decision. But today he felt empty of magic.

  His rooms were paneled in stained wood, because the rooms in Huldah’s Black Tower in Kansas had been made of volcanic rock and were very dark and close. Since he was a boy, work meant a dim room. Daylight was time off, a game, a ride on a horse. But Marvel’s eye was drawn now to a gray trapezoid of light that had fallen on the floor when he pulled up the shades, and he went to it and knelt. His hands on the bare floor looked suddenly old to him, and he closed his eyes.

  At the moment of his un-kingly birth in the Black Watchtower, his mother the nun had been nearing thirty-four years of age and had been attempting to have a child for seven years. Marvel had learned her age from a compendium of royal personages he found in the Tower library. She had been born of a family who claimed never to have lost a single person to Bent Head, and had become a nun of her own volition when she was only twelve years old. Later, the Mystagogue had her thrown from the Black Tower. The volume stressed her piety, her beauty—she was called the most beautiful woman in Kansas. A striking drawing of her accompanied her biography in the compendium, which showed her to have wide-set eyes and a square face. Straight dark hair plaited like a farm-girl’s, with the half-moon fringe that all the nuns at the Black Watchtower wore in those days. Beneath the drawing was written her name: Nasa Whiteside.

  He had since observed a very good likeness of that face upon the visage of his own daughter Alyson, King Michael’s second wife. Alyson was a woman very much like the record described Nasa: libidinous, gorgeous, querulous, athletic. Above all else and in most situations easily bored. Marvel was as proud of her beauty as he was ashamed of her shallowness. She drank palm wine to excess with her handmaids and had bred a line of small dogs since she was nine years old, improving their appearance markedly in each generation. Other courtiers bought them from her now, so a parade of small black dogs with ribbons tied behind their ears was a feature at any court gathering.

  Alyson had caught the king’s eye (if such a thing can be said, for it was questionable that any woman or man anywhere had ever truly distracted Michael from his spiritual quest) after the unfortunate death of his first queen, Rachel Moonstorm. Rachel had been allowed to “fall from a tower” since she had not conceived a child in ten years of marriage and she came from a noble family too powerful to risk angering with a divorce. It had been Marvel’s idea. Michael, reluctant because he actually loved her, had seemed unhappier since then, but it was not a matter that could be rectified by anything but time.

  Marvel—gently—suggested that Alyson might make a lovely bride for him. Michael never asked why Marvel himself had sired only one child; perhaps he sensed Marvel’s attentions ran in another direction. Children were a distraction to a religious man, anyway. And yet Marvel loved his daughter. He tried not allow himself to think of what might happen to her if she, too, failed to conceive for Michael. She had only been queen a few years. There would always be Michael’s inattention to blame it on. He was forever at his meditative walking. Or having his horoscope made. Impractical and kind. The king’s nature irked Marvel as much as it inspired him. He had controlled things for Michael for the better part of twenty-five years.

  If Marvel left, however, Alyson would have to fend for herself.

  He would write her something that explained why. He did not know what to say yet. But when he did, he would write. He might even invite her to join him, though he knew she would not.

  Standing, Marvel dusted off his knees. So many hands holding back the pieces of his heart. So many people he would betray if he left. So many dangers he would face, alone or with Juniper as his guide. But truly, he had already made the choice. He felt an urgency now, a gift from the heavens to move him forward.

  He went to his desk to mix poisons.

  * * *

  The Receiving Room was in Endeavour Tower, several levels below Marvel’s private quarters. The chamber required formality to achieve its purpose, which was to intimidate and impress, so Marvel had kept all the fine chairs, the woven carpets, the embroidered hangings recording the Cape’s history. Some of them were centuries old. The king’s chair sat on a raised dais alongside another, smaller chair and Marvel sat there unself-consciously. Someone had to. Michael never used this room.

  Finding his company waiting for him, he strode straight past the chair and only faced them once he had arranged himself. There stood three men of vastly different ranks: Juniper, still dressed in his shabby guard’s uniform and now covered in dust from riding; Tygo, earless, wearing new clothes that didn’t fit; and John Sousa, who looked as he always did—like a man who was so far from knowing he was good-looking as to persuade everyone that he wasn’t. It rankled Marvel, that obliviousness. John’s dress was, as ever, impeccable and fussy, though Marvel suspected this was entirely due to his overcapable manservant. Sousa was more than convinced of his own brilliance, however, and as soon as Marvel had seated himself in the grand chair, John said, “Do you have any idea what a nuisance you’ve caused me? What danger you’ve put us in to travel here? When there is an outlaw carnival camped just minutes away? Damn you. I have tolerated you forever, seemingly forever. I won’t anymore. And that is all I have to say.”

  “You came a long way to say it, then,” Marvel replied in a dry voice.

  “Indeed I damn well did come. Because your man compelled me. The prisoner and I are at work on…” He sputtered, began to pace. “On a thing that could be everything. Do you understand? The light in the sky? Have you seen
it?”

  Marvel looked on with an icy stiffness.

  “I want to talk to Michael,” Sousa said at last.

  “I don’t think so. He is at his meditations. Tell me what this is about, because I have urgent need of this prisoner at the moment and will send you away.”

  Tygo paled, but mastered it so quickly that no one but Marvel noticed. Marvel leaned forward to get a better view of those ear-holes. Tygo shook his hair over them on purpose. Juniper was gaping at the wall-hangings, the floors, which were made of polished limestone and inlaid with mosaics of the shuttles, and the ornately carved chairs. A bench at one side of the room was covered in dark green silk that Marvel had always liked. Juniper looked at it. He might be from Kansas indeed if this ornamentation appalled him. Or he could be from anywhere else in the world. Marvel’s head had begun to hurt.

  “I have need of Tygo as well,” Sousa was protesting. “More so, I say, than you. He’s told me that he predicted this comet, he has writings that prove it. I was skeptical. It seems a ploy to save himself. But as further proof, he’s offered another prediction, one that I am at pains to discover the truth of. That is the most important matter at hand.”

  “I would say discovering the nature of the outlaw carnival is the most important matter at hand.”

  “And you would be mistaken, as you usually are.” Sousa flashed his teeth in what Marvel supposed was meant as a smile, but which came off nothing like one. “These occurrences are connected. Have no doubt. If this convict has predicted the comet’s arrival, then there is a chance we can ascertain the Return Date. Do you understand? We will know once and for all. We could know.”

  Marvel’s certainty that the Return—if it happened at all—would happen in Kansas was firm, but he couldn’t say it aloud. “The day that you could tell me anything I don’t already know has not yet dawned, Astronomer. Michael may be in your thrall, but that’s why I’m here, to make sense of the preposterous. You’ve calculated for twenty years, yet we’ve never had the Date from you. Why would you suddenly know it now?”

  Sousa pointed to the heavens and then flung his hands to his sides. “I’d say there’s your reason. Things are a bit different now.”

  Marvel snapped, “What is the prediction you’re trying to prove?”

  “There are two, I said. Weren’t you listening? The prisoner claims he recorded this … comet, this stella nova, whatever it is, in his journals. They were confiscated when he entered the prison.”

  “Well, then, they are gone.” Marvel shrugged. “Our common practice is to destroy the belongings of the condemned.”

  Tygo closed his eyes like he was in pain.

  “Of all the idiotic excuses,” Sousa exclaimed. “I simply disbelieve it. You expect me to believe that all prisoners’ effects are burned with the trash?”

  “I don’t expect you to believe anything. This prisoner is only a Walking Doctor, why should we keep his filth around? He is to be executed forthwith.”

  Sousa, growing ever more annoyed, looked from Tygo to Juniper, who seemed somewhat bewildered, then came forward alone and spoke in a low voice. “Very well. I should have known you would have some bureaucratic reason for doing what you do. The prisoner’s second prediction is more sensitive, and I’ve already sent someone to find out if it’s true.” Now he whispered. “The prisoner has informed me that all the ladies in the compound are bleeding in the feminine way.”

  Marvel knitted his brow. “What?”

  “They are bleeding. In the feminine way.”

  Marvel stared at Tygo. Tygo met his gaze evenly. Those ears were the Mystagogue’s work, or at the very least an apostle of his. Which meant Tygo’s presence could not be accidental. The Mystagogue’s priests did not simply run away. There was no escape from that place.

  It was indeed strange that three monumental things had occurred at once—the comet, the outlaw carnival, and now this man who claimed he could heal people and predict things. Marvel’s blood turned. He must secure his pardon. There was absolutely no going without it. He was too superstitious now, in his old age, to risk his salvation. He said, “Your name is William Tygo, do I have that right?”

  “A name I have is William Tygo.”

  “You’re a Surgeon?”

  Tygo looked at Sousa before he looked at Marvel again, a fact that did not escape him. “The very best. My mother was Gimbal. The Witch, they called her. She crossed the continent in her youth. You won’t have heard of her, you being religious lunatics. But others will have.” He glanced at Juniper hopefully, but the young guard stared directly ahead.

  “You can perform Surgery?”

  “With my eyes closed.”

  He nodded. “I have a task for you, then. A very important person in this palace is in need of a complicated surgery. You will do it. Perhaps in the process you will save your own life.”

  “No, no,” interrupted Sousa. “I doubt he is a Surgeon, but I’m beginning not to doubt that he’s a visionary, and I must have my proof. Today. I want an answer about the bleeding.”

  Marvel chuckled. “You are very much in demand, William Tygo. It couldn’t be that you say what you need to say in order to please whatever person you’re trying to win over. Never that, eh?”

  Tygo smiled. “Of course it’s that.”

  “So you admit you are not a Surgeon?” Marvel raised his eyebrow.

  “This is incredible,” Sousa said. “The time we are wasting! I will go to Michael myself this instant if you do not release Tygo into my custody. You know I’ll do it. And you know Michael will take my side.”

  He was right, of course. Michael was obsessed with the horoscopes Sousa drew for him on a near daily basis, no matter how Marvel had tried to dissuade him from the practice. In Marvel’s experience, horoscopes relied nearly entirely on their interpreter: this was why the Mystagogue had hated them. When John Sousa interpreted them, they contained all the deleterious possibilities the heavens could dream up. Marvel frowned at the disagreeableness of the situation. Then he frowned at Tygo, the hard nubs of his eyes boring into the smaller man like parasites. It was better not to involve Michael at all right now—Michael’s gullibility would make things harder for Marvel. The king would ask, simply, why it was so important that Marvel send an illegal doctor to the Pardoness. And Marvel would have no answer.

  In a black mood, he dismissed them, but not before Sousa’s messenger burst in with the news that the ladies of the palace were bleeding, each one, profusely. At his words, Sousa turned somewhat dazedly to Tygo, who had gone motionless. Sousa winced. “Ah. It is true, then. I … actually, I don’t know if I had expected it to be true. Well.” He laughed softly.

  The messenger informed the room that Queen Alyson was very keen to hear the reason for their bleeding. Incredibly, Sousa turned to Marvel, as if for guidance. Tygo appeared to have sprouted a glitter of wetness in his eyes.

  “What are you waiting for?” Marvel growled. “My daughter has summoned you.”

  “I’m hardly ready to see the queen. My clothes—And I must take Tygo back to Urania so we can begin work. The Return—”

  “You are an idiotic man, Sousa. If you’ve gotten what you wanted and yet still refuse to take it, I have absolutely no sympathy for you.” He stood and smoothed his cassock down over his legs. “Leave me.” They did not move. At last he stormed to the door, beckoning Juniper to follow him. “Tygo, you will answer to me after this interview. Mark that. My man will come for you. I will hear your story. I should have heard it in the jail when I first had the chance.” He slammed the door.

  Should have, indeed. Marvel Whiteside Parsons decided in that moment that he hated John Sousa. He hated Michael. All of them. He wanted only to be a good man. To pray in peace at the center of the universe. He wanted to be away from them all, but through some confluence of duty and curiosity and filial love, he had not brought himself to leave.

  When he reached the bottom of the tower and burst onto the world again, it was nearly dark. The sky abo
ve was the color of a rotten lime, striated with thin wintry clouds, and there was the comet, the stella nova, Sousa had called it.

  Juniper looked up too, his face unreadable. “Do you think it could be the shuttles?” he asked. “That’s what folk are saying. Even the outlaws.”

  “How do you know what the outlaws are saying?”

  “I heard some other guards say that. I don’t know if it’s true.”

  Marvel did not reply. For the briefest moment, he entertained the thought that the incredible light was a harbinger of deepest darkness, a comet, a last burn of radiance before a final calamity befell the earth and humankind. It must happen sometime, perhaps now. The thought was black and he liked its blackness, reveled in it for a few precious moments before he shook it off.

  “Take Tygo to the Pardoness whenever Sousa is finished. Send me a message when you are there with him, and I’ll come.”

  Juniper nodded. Marvel went to find Michael. The king would hear what Marvel wanted him to hear before he heard anything from anyone else.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE CARNIVAL

  Upon the advent of darkness, the landscape of the camp was studded with bright diadems, each lonesome fire leaping up and up into the gathering dusk, inviting booth dwellers to gather around them, murmuring and warming themselves as they waited for the ceremony. The girl stared out on them from the warmth of their tent, which was set higher than the others because Mr. Capulatio would be the king. She listened to crones behind her fixing dandelion tea and then sipping it ponderously. Their slurping gave her comfort as she contemplated just how many people were spread out before her in this dimly lit carnival of carnivals. Waiting for her to become queen. She felt the weight of her iridescent black wedding dress, which flowed down her legs and pooled about her feet on the beautiful carpets covering the ground. She had never dreamt of anything so luxurious in her life.

  She had never known things like this fabric could exist. All she’d owned herself had come first from her mother (and that was little enough), then from Argento, who never gave her anything of value except Cosmas the Head, whose forehead was now embroidered with the unicursal hexagram and the Third Eye spell, so she couldn’t even trust him not to tell her secrets. But Mr. Capulatio had given her so many things already: this dress, and jewels, and hats with feathers and even a pair of azure gloves he said were four hundred years old. Do you know how old that is, can you imagine that? he’d asked. And she had answered no, she could not imagine. He told her they were made from a kind of plastic fabric so delicate that she must never wear the gloves or even touch them, for fear they might flake away to nothing. He’d shown them to her one night while the carnival was still on the road; he opened a glass box inlaid with smooth bright blue rocks and displayed the gloves to her with great care. They lay upon a soft pillow. He lifted them ever so gently up, and turned them over and over in his hands, before finally placing them in a different box, this time the one where he kept her other belongings: the black amber brooch, the Head of Cosmas. He locked it and put it high on a shelf where she couldn’t reach it. He said she would wear the gloves only one time, when they ascended into the heavens, so it wouldn’t matter then if they disintegrated because they would disintegrate anyway because of the shining force of the light and beauty that would envelope them and raise them up. The girl thought the words insane, but beautiful when he spoke them.