Wonderblood

by Julia Whicker

  The Hierophant still wore his plain caftan. He energetically glared at the large metal door, as if willing the other party to appear, his fingers absently tugging one of the hems on his sleeve. John wished the other group would never arrive—his own palms were dampening. He wiped them on his chair cushion.

  Michael spoke in a low tone to Marvel. “They stated only that they had a proposition concerning the stella novae. I’m more than certain they’re here to request revisions in the Law now that the shuttles are returning. As rightly they should! I’m willing to make changes to the Law when the world itself changes. I am not my father. I will show them that.”

  The Hierophant narrowed his eyes. “That this is the Return is quite an assumption. And how did these outlaws know when they would appear? How did they arrive at the perfect time? We had no idea ourselves. No warning.” He shot a pointed look at John. “By the looks of their crowd, they intend to assemble here for quite some time. Our scouts say they are armed.”

  “Of course they’re armed, they’re carnivals.”

  And they continued this way. John, stinging from Marvel’s passive denigration, could tell Tygo was listening as well, but felt himself pulled out of the conversation again and again by some formless anxiety, a threat of especial doom that had fallen just now upon him like a band of shadow. He was, he supposed, given to hysterics but this was different, not just a minor churning of the gut. John stared at the great ceremonial door at the bottom of Columbia Tower. He felt guided quite firmly toward the inescapable conclusion that something was about to go very wrong.

  The group of five carnival men were escorted in by the lion-masked guards. Two guards took their places by the door, crossing their pikes to bar any exit. To John’s surprise, the retinue included a woman. She was nearing thirty years of age. Her dress had sleeves that covered her hands. Her face was incredibly difficult to look at, but whether this was because she was very beautiful or very ugly he could not tell. The eyebrows were pale and heavy. The mouth, childlike. The eyes, ravaging, painful to behold, like wounds in her head. Her hair had been fixed into a high hair-form, which was the style in the carnivals, though women at the Cape had long since given it up.

  The entire cadre was an unpleasantly rough-looking sort, even though they were no doubt combed and powdered to present their best faces. There was no hiding the dirt of their world—John saw it in the corners of their eyes, under their fingernails, even from this far away. What lives they must lead, out there on the continent. He realized he’d never thought about people beyond the Cape, except when the carnivals returned once a year to make their offerings to the crown. Even then he was hard pressed to leave the comforts of his own offices unless it was absolutely necessary. Carnival people seemed simple. Cut off some heads, spill some blood, hope for a miracle that never occurred. Where was the exactitude? The tedious devotion? John had not the boisterousness for their kind of faith, nor the bloodlust.

  Each of the ruffians exhibited different colors on their persons. Surely they represented different carnivals. Try as he might, John could not recall the names of even the more famous carnivals in history, even though he’d learnt a rhyme as a school-boy that listed them all.

  They all sat down opposite them at the long table. This close, they seemed no less foreign—faces uniformly hardened, sun-speckled from the past summer’s adventures. Two of them were darker, obviously brothers. One was a stocky pale-beard, the other tall and dark-skinned. The last was the youngest, who wore his oiled hair in a center part and plaited down his back in some ghastly outlaw style. He sat upon the cushioned chair with a dreamy aplomb, taking in the great hall and all the beautiful wall hangings and carpets and seemed singularly delighted by all of it. His face was the face of an innocent dreaming.

  The Hierophant had several folders ready, large vellum envelopes he shuffled pointedly as the five men arranged themselves at the table. The innocent-looking man laughed softly. “Well, gentlemen, I won’t beat around the bush,” he said. “That would be undignified, wouldn’t it?”

  The Hierophant cleared his throat pointedly. “It is customary that introductions are made before any business is discussed. And then it will be the king who speaks first.”

  The man grinned. “Is that so? I have so much to learn about decorum. By all means, let us introduct, then!” He swept his arms out. “I am Mr. Capulatio, chief executioner of the Atlantis carnival, my carnival, which if you will recall was once the carnival of the Prophetess Lois, whose son I did wrest control of it from some years ago. This radiant star is my first wife, my scribe. As you can see, she is a breathtaking personage. A power beyond powers. These men are my Adepts, my Orbiters, my constituent brothers—”

  The Hierophant held up a small bottle. “Before introductions even—if you had given me a moment to speak—I must insist that we bless this meeting with an unction I have prepared.”

  The four other men exchanged concerned glances, finally turning to Mr. Capulatio. He continued to smile. “Ah, but we don’t share your religion, Priest. That is the very crux of our problem.” He spread his hands. “We don’t wish to offend, never that. But we won’t be blessed by any unction concocted by the priest of a man whom we know to be a false king.”

  Michael barely raised an eyebrow. “Am I a false king?” He looked to Marvel, John, Tygo, the guards, his expression one of pure enchantment. “I had no idea.”

  Mr. Capulatio continued to grin, the corners of the mouth drawn up unflappably. He met each of their eyes in turn, including John’s. “Yes. A false king. I am the True King, you see. I can’t blame you for not knowing. There’s probably no way you could’ve known.”

  Michael’s own smile did not falter. “I had thought I was king. I live here. I’ve lived here all my life. That’s because my father was king and his father before that and so on. I had supposed that made me the king also.” He began to laugh, then looked to John and Tygo as if to say, Is this truly happening? “So you and your band of men have traveled all this way in an illegal season to tell me—quite politely, might I add—that I am not the king after all?” He pushed up his sleeves and revealed his blond arms, where he wore a bracelet of metal forged from the launchsite. He said, “If this is true, I believe I’ve heard enough.” He paused, glancing at John specifically. “Though I would be interested to know what divination you used to reach this conclusion, I doubt I’ll be encouraged to stay and listen.”

  Marvel chuckled. “This man is obviously mad. It seems the zealots can still organize themselves from time to time.” He raised a hand and two of the guards advanced on the table with their pikes drawn.

  The woman shook her head. Her face was so pale that John wondered if she would be sick. Her hair, colorless and wispy as a girl’s, was parted low on her forehead so she appeared to have a very small face—upon which all her features were tight and refined. The hair was shining markedly for having no particular color. He decided he found her beautiful although he did not know if she actually was. “He’s not mad,” she said in a slow voice. “He is the True King.”

  The Hierophant continued to shake his head.

  The woman went on stiffly, “Astrologically speaking, there can be no fault to his claim. We have evidence. Years of scholarly study done by myself and my predecessors led us to this man, at this time, and now that we have arrived at the correct location, the last piece of the puzzle has fallen into place. There are records we could present you here if you want to read them.”

  “O, but what evidence do you need beside the lights in the sky?” Mr. Capulatio pointed to the tall windows. “I’m here. They’re here. I’m sure you don’t know, because how could you know, but we’ve entered a new Age of Mercy. I want so much to do this without violence. I’ve been violent all my life. And I can’t regret it. But I’m tired of it. My men are tired of it. We’ve come to you with open arms to ask that you hear reason. The lights in the sky signify that this is the Return. Right now. If the wrong king is on the throne—that is, if we ha
ve done wrong for all these centuries—we will pay for it when they arrive. Now is your chance to put things right. I am giving you that chance.” He smiled again, emptily. “Because I’m the king.”

  The Hierophant opened one of his folders. “Do you suppose we will just give you the Cape? The whole compound? The king’s clothes and books? His precious metals?” Marvel’s face betrayed nothing. “Should we give you the king’s wife, as well?” He threw a long piece of paper onto the table—a map of the Cape and its surrounding marshes, with areas darkened and crossed out. “Our scouts have been all over your camp. We know where your men are, even the ones you believe we don’t know about. We have twice as many men as you, but we will kill you right now if that’s the easiest way to put this nonsense down.”

  “You won’t defeat us,” Mr. Capulatio said.

  “We will. We’ve done it before, with others. I shouldn’t have to remind you of the Unrest.” Marvel dusted his map off somewhat primly. “Michael is a descendant of the Astronauts. A direct descendant. If the Return is now, he will greet them gladly and tell them himself.” He met Mr. Capulatio’s eyes. “If this is the Return.”

  All this time, Tygo had been scrutinizing Mr. Capulatio, looking at him in the most peculiar way. “I know what the lights are,” he said softly.

  Everyone turned. John gaped at him. He seemed to John so foreign in that moment, a witless combination of assurance and naïveté—a man willing to climb on a box to speak before a disparaging crowd even after having done it before. “What?” Tygo stared at them. “I do. I know what they are.”

  Mr. Capulatio nodded. “And who are you?”

  “My servant,” John said sadly. “My assistant.”

  Michael was thrilled. He looked back and forth at John and Marvel. “Tell us, then. Johnny, this man is a treasure. I have no idea who he is or why he’s here, but he is an utter treasure.”

  Tygo patted his hair down over his ear-holes. “The lights in the sky are angels. They’re guiding the shuttles back to the earth. I know because I was in Kansas, and in Kansas I had a vision, and that vision revealed this to me.” He stared again at all of them. “It sounds insane, I know. But the truth is stranger than anything anyone can make up. Ask Lord Astronomer. He’s the one who freed me so I could help him ascertain the Return Date.”

  John remained silent for a long moment. “I don’t know why I freed him. He is a madman.”

  “The Return Date is now,” said Mr. Capulatio. He looked annoyed. “Angels? That’s some fairytale. It’s not got anything to do with our religion.”

  “It does. That’s what they called themselves when they spoke to me—angels. And why not? They bring messages from above. And they speak their own language…” Here he trailed off helplessly, unable to explain. He blinked at John, nodding slightly. “I can’t understand much of it. But some words come through, maybe by the very force of their will that I should understand. They told me the word tellochvovin. Which I understood.” He turned about in his seat. “Which means ‘falling death.’”

  The Hierophant fingered the unction in the bottle. He kept his eyes on the bulb of the small glass stopper. For the first time John wondered what he had intended to do with it. The liquid in the glass was very dark, almost black, but when the light hit it just so, it shone gold, but with weight, like mercury.

  Mr. Capulatio, impatient, watched Marvel’s hands on the bottle as well. “I could be wrong, but my ears aren’t hearing an overwhelming agreement to our righteous proposition. Which is a shame. You have every opportunity to do the right thing. You haven’t even reviewed our scholarship. I would have thought you would at least do that, or have your man here”—he gestured to the Marvel—“do it. Where’s your curiosity? In your minds is there not a chance, even a slender chance, that Michael may just be a man, like any other, and that I might be the True King who will reign over the Age of Times?”

  Michael’s smile had faltered slightly. He turned to the Hierophant, who gripped the unction tightly. “There is no chance.” Marvel spoke calmly.

  “I am the True King. It has been me for all time. But it was only recently, in cosmological time, that I became aware of it.” He laughed again. His laughter was full of fearful anger. “I act out my Destiny. I can do nothing else in my life.”

  His men were nodding. The two brothers and the blond stout one were fidgeting; John supposed glumly that they’d concealed weapons somewhere on their persons, and that now he would probably die. They would be mad to come unarmed like they’d promised. For the first time he wished he had a dagger of his own—not that he would have known how to use it, but having one seemed suddenly so obvious. He was such a fool. The guards stood with their pikes behind them all, but they would protect Michael first, then the Hierophant.

  Tygo beside him had straightened. His voice was unafraid. “The angels told me something else.”

  “Really, Sousa. Quiet your servant. He’s making this worse,” Marvel snapped.

  John looked away.

  “The True King was part of my vision. The whole reason I came here to begin with, before they picked me up for treason and threw me into the jails. The angels told me the name of the king. They—”

  Before he could finish, one of the dark-haired brothers signaled to the other one, and with a floating motion, like the descent of a hummingbird, the one on the left reached into his cloak and threw a wet and heavy thing onto the table. The guards jolted forward, but stopped when they saw the object was only a sack, and that it lay on the table inert.

  Mr. Capulatio’s face was impassive. “In there,” he said.

  Michael eyed the Hierophant. Marvel turned to John. Horrified, he nudged it toward Tygo, who rubbed his hands together as though they were cold, but upended the bag on the table.

  How he felt when the contents of the bag were spilt: drawn forward, pulled as if by a spell to look and look, eyes all over the bloodied and hacked disfigurement resting there, after rolling lazily for one half-turn and spattering blood on the table, before them all. And then, while his mind worked out what this object could be, revulsion exploded like a grease fire in his gut. He had seen his fair share of severed limbs—they all had, since childhood. The parapets around the east wall of the palace were always strung with dead bodies, headless trophies atrophying and putrefying in the moldy Cape air. But out had tumbled a delicate and beautiful forearm and hand; feminine, almost childlike. Gray as a winter day, except for the blue tips of the fingers and where the ovular bone had been cut through. This itself gave way to red along the ragged edges of the skin, and in the gory cross-section, the thin bone, white, impossibly fragile, surrounded by as many colors of dark red as he could imagine existed under the sun. Mr. Capulatio was not smiling now. He looked very near tears. “How many fingers do you count there?” he asked them.

  Marvel, the Hierophant, had puffed up to his full roundness. “Get this abomination away from us. Guards.”

  The guards stepped forward, but Mr. Capulatio raised his voice. “How many fingers?”

  “Five,” said Tygo.

  “O! You are the brightest star in the room, that is clear! What a servant! They are lucky to have you. I would make you my advisor, angel-talker. Yes,” he said at length. “There are five. This, gentlemen of the court, is my wife’s hand. A powerful magic took it from her: the Law of Mercy.” He held up the woman’s arm and her sleeve fell down to reveal a bandaged stump. Her eyes were closed. “Orchid, my scribe, has given her writing hand for my cause.” He closed his eyes, seemed to whisper a nonsense word, a prayer. He spoke it five times under his breath, then faced them once again. He was, it seemed, in an ecstasy. “So our two factions will clash here at the mouth of the sea. How fitting! For so like the sea is the sky, from which those metal luminaries will descend to take us into the ionosphere, the Age of Times, the Days of Heaven. Glorify!”

  Michael gazed at the hand as though it were a dying baby. “He is entirely mad,” he whispered.

  “The hand signifie
s the five carnivals we have outside the gate, five armies waiting for my indication that they should once more do what they have done for this last terrifying and holy Eon of Pain—to fight. To battle for their last field. It may be the Age of Mercy but we cannot grant mercy to everyone. We cannot grant it to you if you will not receive it.” He frowned. “I have a great fear that you don’t know what we’re capable of. I’m sorry for it. But there’s nothing to be done. You had a choice and you chose wrong.”

  Marvel picked up the hand and flung it across the great room. It smacked the far wall with an animate thud. “This is beyond abhorrent. You, my unfortunate zealots, must die now, every one of you. And your people at the gates will be executed upon our black stage for months and years to come. We will kill every one of them we catch; their blood will run into the earth and cleanse it of your sin.”

  He reached for the unction, but before he could grasp it, Tygo leaned over the table and clasped Mr. Capulatio’s hands between his own. Like a lover. John had already pushed his chair slightly away from the table in case things became violent, but he stopped now, fascinated with horror. Tygo said, “The angels told me the name of the True King. I heard it in Kansas and followed that word all the way across the land, to this moment. Is your name David?”