The handmaid nodded.
“I’m not trying to move you,” Marvel growled. “The man I thought I killed. I have reason to believe he isn’t dead.”
“How unfortunate. But why haven’t you asked for a pardon for that killing? Or, intended killing, as it seems?”
“Because it was justified.”
“How so?”
Marvel grimaced. “I thought he deserved to die because he didn’t recognize the truth of my vision. And other reasons. Back then I was certain my vision was from the heavens. And that he was stymying me wrongfully.” Marvel held his breath for a time. “But not just for those reasons. He deserved to die for … other reasons. He himself has killed many.”
The Pardoness was now nodding, the iridescent fabric sliding back and forth over her shoulders. “But now you think your vision was merely the fantasy of a fervently religious boy?”
Marvel swallowed. “In a sense.”
“And?”
“Well,” Marvel took a breath. “I have come to suspect that this same man, this very important man, is still alive. That I didn’t kill him after all.”
“Praise the shuttles,” replied the Pardoness. “You must be grateful.”
“You don’t understand. Because I must kill him this time. He will never allow me to return to my homeland. He would never accept me back.” Marvel did not say that he still harbored a cold fury toward the Mystagogue, that it had not dimmed after these many years.
“Why go back at all? Why not stay here, where you have ruled mostly wisely and mostly justly?” Her eyes sparkled. “Where you are mostly respected instead of reviled?”
Marvel’s destiny, his only purpose, was to serve the True King, whoever he turned out to be: he had been sure of this since his earliest cognizance. This True King would appear in Kansas. It had been so all along. Kansas was where the Disease ruined the world, and Kansas was where salvation would spring forth. He tried to catch the Pardoness’s eyes in a meaningful way, but they were shadowed by her veil and hard to see. Her lower face, cut deep with two smile lines, pulled into a frown or a smile, he couldn’t tell.
The truth was that Marvel was not sure if it was right to kill the Mystagogue, but he knew it was necessary. In order for Marvel to end his days peacefully in Kansas, the tyrant must die. “Because. I know now the True King is not here at the Cape. My vision was wrong.”
“You sound sure of yourself. But what of this new light in the sky? Could it not be the shuttles returning?”
“It could be many things.” He said her own words back to her with a smile. This time she smiled back.
“And you are a man very convinced of the rightness of your faith. Even when your convictions shift with the wind. Perhaps especially then.”
Marvel ground his molars together. He had the intrusive thought that he was merely acting out of self-interest, that he’d grown tired of responsibility and the decadence of the courtiers. He had grown tired of his own daughter. Perhaps so tired that he would never be satisfied until he left this place for the solitude of Huldah’s Black Watchtower.
For the burnished memory of his pious youth.
Maybe he remembered the Black Watchtower as a place it had never been. It was a distasteful notion. That his deep righteousness could be nothing more than nostalgia.
“You are not easy to talk to,” was all he said. “I thought I was supposed to confess my sins here.”
The Pardoness continued to gaze at him. “You are having many thoughts. Let me share one of my own.” She motioned to her hidden lower half without removing the coverlet. “I am a woman in pain. Over the years it has become unbearable. My misfortune was to be born to a very unmixed line, one which maximized the purity of my blood at the expense of my worldly body.”
His eyes followed her gesture. Juniper leaned forward as though he could see through the blankets. “Well, what’s wrong with you?” Marvel asked.
“I have tried many remedies. But due to the deformities I cannot bear children. There was never any hope for it, so I never missed it, and that time has passed at any rate. But this means my only heir will be Discovery, and she is not of the correct lineage. She will never be accepted as a new Pardoness.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be. All things must end. But I ask you this: if my line, for centuries unbroken, will now be snuffed out with no legitimate heir, couldn’t it be that this is truly the Return? That the True King will or has already appeared?”
A buzzing anger rose in Marvel’s throat. Yes, of course that could be, he thought. And yet I still don’t believe it. “Anything is possible. But you have no idea where he might be.”
The Pardoness folded her shockingly thin hands on her lap. “This is as good a place as any,” she murmured.
“What is your ailment?”
“It has no name in the medical books. Surely it is the result of inbreeding.” She moved aside one of the blankets momentarily. Discovery dropped her fan and rushed to the Pardoness’s side. “Grace, don’t.” She clapped her hand over her mouth, as though the exposure of her Mistress would cause her physical pain.
But the Pardoness pulled off a portion of the coverlet to reveal the most hideous mass of tissue Marvel had ever beheld. Her legs, both as grotesquely swollen as skin bags filled with water, were six or seven times the size of a normal limb. The skin was dry, discolored in spots, pink toward the knee but blue and even purple by the toes. It looked dead or dying. The feet as large and
