“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 believed 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,
