She was happier now. She was sure of it. Mr. Capulatio smiled all the time, he slept with his cheek pressed to the pillow so handsomely, his breath easy, in and out, and inviting. She liked lying close beside him and had become accustomed to sidling up next to him, pressing into the curve of his body. She felt that they were two caterpillars, knitted together into a cocoon.
Mr. Capulatio was watching her tenderly. “You really don’t have to cry.”
But she could not stop. So he took her by the shoulders and held her face up to his own like a mirror. “Today is also the day I became the True King. Aren’t you happy for me? For us? Aren’t you excited that the shuttles are returning?”
“I was thinking of my brother.”
He nodded grimly. “Yes. I’ve been thinking of him too.” He extricated her from his arms. He grabbed her by the leg and thrust her dress up past her hips. She gasped, surprised. Had he gotten the idea from Orchid’s display at the wedding? His hands were prodding the burn mark Argento had given her two years before, when her mother abandoned her to his carnival.
“This,” said Mr. Capulatio. His fingers mushed at the skin, puckering it and smoothing it out again. The lines, inward-falling, boundless symmetry. As above, so below. “This is not fit for my wife. This is another denomination’s sigil, the mark of a foreign cosmology and the personal brand of an indigent rapist. Highly, highly unfavorable for our magic. Very disturbing. I’ve been very kind. I overlooked it this long because I hate to cause you pain. But now is a time of change. For us all. That idiot cannot ride with us into the Cape when we take the palace. Not him, not his brand.”
She covered the mark with her hand.
“I’m a kind man. I was just born with mercy, I can’t help it. I’ve let you keep that marking longer than I should. But I’m sure you understand that no one can ever see it. So we will be removing it tonight. Right now.” He said it like a taunt. He pulled a short knife from the waistband of his pants.
She backed away from him like a crab, terrified, until her shoulder hit a low-hanging lantern and sent a carousel of red and black shadows around the tent. She yanked the wedding dress down over her thigh.
“No!”
“We have no choice.”
She stumbled to her feet and dashed to the far side of the tent, where she hid behind her cage. “You promised you would never hurt me.”
“It won’t hurt. Not much, anyway. Don’t be a coward.”
In the months since Mr. Capulatio had taken her, she’d become less and less accustomed to the awfulness that before had regularly consumed her life. She was rarely cold now, and never hungry, and when they collided together at night in the bed it had felt like lovemaking and never like whatever she’d had before, the pain of which she could stand but which slowly had chipped away at something inside her, leaving a formless emotion that she could not name. Her skin was softer now, her body was healthier, and her breasts had become larger. She realized she’d thought she was almost safe.
“Orchid was right, Queenie. We should make sacrifices for the Great Work. She should. You should. I should.”
“What is the Great Work?” she shrieked. “Please tell me!”
He tossed his dark hair. “I’m not that easily distracted. Little manipulator. You’re already learning from her, I see. But it will be a long time before you’re smarter than me.” He considered. “Longer still before you’re smarter than her. What a fine play she made out there on the beach. The affront burns me up. But by heaven she’s a woman of many intriguing talents. I don’t think anyone could criticize my choice of brides, first or second.” He paused. “Tell me, did you think our wedding was enough? Be honest. I think I heard people complaining of the food.”
She blinked in bewilderment.
He flashed one hand at her dismissively. “O, what do you know, you’re just a child.” He turned the little knife over and around in his hands.
She wasn’t sure where he was headed. He would never be so cold that he could cut out her brand while she thrashed and screamed beneath him. But she had seen him behead her own brother—had Argento deserved it? She didn’t know. All the things she didn’t know! Perhaps Mr. Capulatio really did know better than her. Slowly she peeked out from behind the cage. He was still talking. Often he talked to himself in the same voice he used when he was talking to her.
“People are so ungrateful,” he was muttering. “I try to overlook it. I’m trying to overlook your ungratefulness right this second. What are you doing, hiding from me? I’m your husband. I queened you. You are the most important thing in all the land, maybe even more important than me. And you’re hiding! Unbelievable! We came to the Cape to save people, Aurora. How can you save people if you’re afraid to do this small thing? What if they see that brand and think you’re a blasphemer? Your brother’s carnival had an archaic view of the Return! Have you not read any of the books I gave you?” he demanded. “Of course you haven’t.” He smiled meanly.
“I was reading. I am reading. I haven’t had any time!”
He laughed at that, a deep whirling laugh. “You do what I tell you to do. I told you to read the books.”
“I will. I’ll read them.”
He smiled. “That’s the first time you’ve admitted you can read.”
“Well, I can.”
He scooted on his hands and knees around the cage until he was sitting close to her again. She could smell a tinge of the spicy-sweet scent he’d worn for the wedding. This near, even with him holding the knife, she did not feel entirely afraid of him and she didn’t know why. “You said I was important,” she whispered. “You told everyone I was.”
He took her by the shoulders. “You are. Very.”
“Then you should ask me what I want.”
“All right. What do you want?”
“I want to know what everything means.”
He scowled. “How should I know?”
“Because you’re the king.”
“If I knew what everything meant, I wouldn’t be in this drafty tent getting ready to cut a brand off a little girl, would I?” he snapped.
“What’s the Great Work? Orchid told me about it. What is the Star Sapphire ritual?” She kept her eyes on one of the hanging mobiles of glass and chalk he’d hung from the eaves of his wagon. It did not turn; there was no wind inside the tent.
Mr. Capulatio lost his frown. “A good question. You’re bright! So bright, a sigil of knowledge. I’m still so happy I took you away from that idiot carnival full of raving idiots. Did you know I grew up in a place like that? A carnival just like your brother’s, with those backwards convoluted rites that went on for two weeks straight. And all of it was just sex magic, you know that? And it was lurid, it was repugnant. I left, that’s all you need to know. When I was fifteen. I came to the Prophetess Lois and I met Orchid. And that is a story for another time.”
“I wish you would tell me now.”
“The Great Work is the work we’ve done since Lois became the Prophetess. To reform the texts, the cosmology, everything. I’ve spent my life at this work. Lois designed the Star Sapphire ritual. She was my spiritual mother, the first one who divined that I was the True King. It’s a ceremony of power, where a woman may become one with Heaven. And only by performing this rite will you be truly fit to be the queen of Cape Canaveral.”
“What do I have to do?”
“The Prophetess passed from this earth eleven years ago. She named me as her successor over her own natural-born son. She was an aged woman of seventy-nine when she died. She took me in when no one would—I was raised by degenerates in circumstances not unlike your own. But,” he said. “The ritual is beautiful. Violently beautiful. Her ritual. She gave it to us because she knew I was the True King.” His eyes were far away; the clear brown of that first inch of seawater. “You know, I didn’t want to be the king at first.” Then he shrugged. “We all must make sacrifices.”
He moved toward her with the knife, and his voice was sad. “Queeni
e. Give me your leg. I must do it.” He paused. “You know I don’t want to.”
She cried, “I can do it myself!” Her head now felt strangely hot and cold, a flush of fear rising through up the web of her veins and pulsing into her cheeks. A thought intruded: this is the world. This is the world. She took his wrist in her own hand with such strength it surprised even her.
“I will burn it off. It was burned on, we’ll burn it off.”
Mr. Capulatio eyed her intently. “Burn it? I suppose we could burn it. Blood is better, though. It is only by our collective blood-rinse that the world will renew itself. That is Wonderblood. You know it well.”
But possessed by an inner vision, as if by dictating the terms of her pain she could control it, the girl recalled when her brother Argento had burnt the hexagram onto her thigh. How on her first day in his camp she was weeping angrily at Gimbal, her mother, heaving tears of pure, polished anger. Even after walking with her mother so many weeks overland through the wildness of the country, the rolling world a joyful sensual experience despite every ancient calamity that had befallen it, and even though her mother cursed it and called it contagious—even after anticipating her abandonment for the entirety of the journey, the girl had still failed to comprehend the scale of the betrayal. Only when she at last sat alone with her brother in his tent did she understand how alone she really was. Argento towered over her, this man she did not remember.
Her anguish had been enough to drown out even the sizzling of the hot iron on skin.
“But it’s the Return,” she said. “The shuttles are back. The Eon of Pain is over. I thought there should be no more blood spilled if the shuttles are back.”
He set down the knife, wiped his hand on the ends of his shirt. “It could be. I hadn’t thought of that.” And he looked at her with new respect. “You are a thinker. I’ll have to check the texts. But you may be right.”
In the end they agreed to the burning—the brand would be obscured by a hot welt that would over time become a pulpy scar that would over time become a skin-colored raisin. A blemish, a nothing. By then, she felt unafraid. She felt full of magic.
When he cut off her wedding dress and she held the heated iron—this iron was her husband’s own sigil, a rocketship, the brand that marked the bodies of his horses and goats, that was carved into the wagons and painted on all his canvas tents—he looked at her so lovingly, her pale naked body that was still not quite a woman’s body. When she held the iron above her skin for a long moment, he was quick to show her a place on his body she had not seen before. On the back of his left thigh, under a whorl of dark hair, he bore the same mark. When she did it, she imagined Cosmas the Uncrusher, with his diamond-studded face, her protector. She imagined he was undoing her pain. It must have worked, because she was able to hold the brand steady. The heated iron on her thigh felt ice-cold. Afterward he splashed water on her face and made a poultice, bound the leg in a bandage. He kissed her.
It was more than Argento had done.
CHAPTER 15
FRIENDSHIP
Marvel Parsons spoke to King Michael late that night. He continued to have difficulty devising a believable reason for sending a convict Surgeon to attend the Royal Pardoness, so he decided not to mention it. Who else would tell Michael anything about the earless man, besides John Sousa, who was—as always—preoccupied to a fault with his divinations. The comets, whatever they were, had granted Marvel a fine enough distraction.
Yet he still keenly felt his duty to the king. Though he tried his best to ignore it, he could not help thinking of their friendship. Michael had been good to Marvel.
Perhaps this would be the last time they would meet. Marvel had mixed his poisons and made his bag ready. He could never have explained to Michael his decision to leave without notice. To disappear, to give up all agency. All responsibility. He probably could not have explained it to anyone.
The king lived in a simple three-room house far below the sweeping vistas and dizzying heights of his six beautiful spires. He had been eating a late dinner at his plain wooden table when Marvel arrived. “We have had an exciting day, haven’t we?” Michael spooned soup into his mouth, his blond beard glistening. “The comets. An outlaw carnival.”
“Very strange indeed.”
“I think surely these comets must signal the Return.” Michael laid his spoon on the rough wood and wiped his lips. “Sousa must draw up a horoscope. I wonder what planet is ascendant? If this is a favorable day?” He took a drink. His cup was wood, inside it only water, ever. “What a time to be alive, eh? You must admit it’s exciting.”
“Surely the outlaw carnival is more concerning.” He sighed. “You know, I think one of my new guards may be a spy.” He spoke offhandedly, but he’d already decided Juniper would go with him when he fled the Cape. The only way to ensure his loyalty was to remain friendly with him, to pay him as he’d promised, and to convince him, through the subtle art of manipulation, that it was Juniper’s own idea to bring Marvel back to Kansas with him. Marvel didn’t think it would be difficult; Juniper was an attractive man and Marvel liked him for more than his knowledge of the deathscapes. Trust would happen, if he gave it time. There was no need to torture him.
Michael waved a hand and spoke aloud what Marvel had already known he would say. “We have spies all the time. Have him executed if you think so. I don’t like to hear of it. Take some soup, Priest.”
So Marvel sat. “Michael, we are friends.”
“Of course so.”
“I have always thought you a fine king. Better than your father.”
Michael nodded. “I’ve tried.”
It was true that Michael was the best king the Cape had seen in generations. He was slow to judgment, kindly indifferent to women, he deeply trusted men more knowledgeable than himself, yet was not blind to poor character. He had executed many a false courtier upon the great execution stage, and ordered Marvel to take care of others more discreetly: unctions, potions, salves, tinctures, preparations. All that he had learned at the Black Watchtower, from the monks. And Michael had always trusted him to do what needed to be done.
Marvel ladled some soup from the pot that sat on the table. Michael ate the blandest gruel. It was part of his devotionals. “Sousa has a new assistant with him now—he freed him from the jail. He thinks this man is some kind of prophet. A visionary.”
“Is that so?” He took a sip of water. “John Sousa is not one to delegate responsibility. That’s always been my impression.”
“The man is a convict, as I said. A con-man. I think he has befuddled Sousa in order to secure his release from the jail.”
“Why is this a matter for my attention?” Michael said. Like a good king, he was rarely emotionally bound to the concerns of his advisors, even his most trusted confidant, Marvel Whiteside Parsons.
“Well. That your Chief Orbital Doctor may be under the sway of a convict. I thought you should know.”
“What has this got to do with our friendship?” He set his spoon on the table top.
“Nothing, sire.”
He chuckled again. “Then why did you bring it up?”
A swell of regret lifted Marvel, and as it crested he found he could not say any of the things he wanted—he would never have been able to say them anyway. That he was leaving as a traitor, soon to slink off like a dog in the night. That to set his own life back to rights, he must turn away from a good man, to leave him to his own fortune.
He regretted whatever might happen to Michael after he left. That was what he wanted to say but did not say.
He noticed Michael looking intently at him, his eyes overcast with worry. “I wonder,” Michael said in a slow voice, “why you are more concerned with John Sousa than with the lights in the sky? I would think you would be enraptured even to think this could be the Return. I know I am.”
Marvel smiled, a bit sad. “I have always detested Sousa. Much to your chagrin, I know. The thought of him wasting his time with that charlatan gall
s me. Especially”—he motioned upward, at the sky—“when we have real evidence right in front of us.”
Michael slapped the table. “So you think the lights may be the Return after all? I must have a horoscope about it. You sly dog. You had me going.”
“They may be comets. Or meteors. They may signify death for us all.”
“Surely they would have hit the earth by now if they were meteors,” Michael said, though momentarily he looked worried.
“Perhaps not. You should ask Sousa. He might know.”
“He would have told me if they were dangerous.” Michael leaned his chair back, catching his bare feet on the other side of the table, and folded his thick arms behind his head. He was a strong man from riding and walking everywhere; Marvel had always thought him beautiful in a certain coarse, active way. The son of thirty generations of Astronauts. The king gazed at the ceiling, wistful. “I must say a part of me doesn’t want to know.”
“I’m sure Sousa wouldn’t be able to tell you anyway.”
The king ignored Marvel. “Right now I’m not sure if I should be afraid or joyful. What a strange feeling,” he chuckled again. He looked at the Hierophant, his face a disaster of hope. “What does your instinct tell you, Priest? Give me guidance.”
But Marvel had hardened, already. “I don’t know what they are,” he said. “I don’t think anyone does.”
CHAPTER 16
A HEADACHE
John awoke late in the morning to a vile throbbing in his temples.
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