“That’s mine!”
“Why did you have this? This is my finest piece of scholarship. It’s everything I have ever learned about our history collected and retold for the ages.”
“That’s mine,” the girl said again, this time coldly. She folded her arms over her chest.
Orchid hefted the book up and flipped to a certain page as though she’d known all along where she would find what she’d been looking for. The pinch between her eyes deepened. “Here. It reads just as I remembered, of course it does. ‘She is thunder, the perfect mind who rings in a brilliant age. A young sigil dressed all in white shall appear when at last the rockets have returned to earth, and this sigil shall sit enthroned during all the Days of Heaven.’ This is the passage David is using to justify your existence. But he is wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.”
As the minutes passed and Orchid read and took furious notes, as the girl stood quietly while the crones sewed her dress, she couldn’t help but feel sad for Orchid. This empathy was her downfall, she was beginning to recognize it, for it had happened with Mr. Capulatio as well; she had begun to love him. Overnight Orchid’s whole world had changed—the girl could imagine it all too well.
But Orchid also frightened her: the particular violence of being a violent woman in the violent world. What was it like to cut off heads? She looked at Orchid and shuddered.
Then the girl felt sorry for herself more than anyone. Orchid appeared to be the only companion she would have in Mr. Capulatio’s world.
Orchid turned back to her suddenly, and after a visible struggle, attempted to smile. She came over to the girl and put a gentle hand on her hair. “I suppose I cannot be angry at you for not knowing our religion. For never having read anything I’ve written. That would be very poor character on my part. David has already explained the difference between you and me: you are mentioned in scripture, but I am not. To put it simply, David believes you are more important than I am. So you are supposed to be his queen.”
“But—”
She nodded. “And I will be a minor queen. A glorified concubine. But since in this case David is wrong, it occurs to me that something I have recorded for him is likewise wrong. Over the years I have misled him, though I did not mean to. I shoulder the entire responsibility for this error.” She blinked her water-clear eyes. “My task now is to edit the offending text. If you will excuse me.”
She turned back to the desk, but the crone with the tallest hair, who seemed in charge, gingerly steered Orchid to another stool and began dressing her as well, in a slightly less beautiful dress but one that was lovely all the same. Orchid scrunched her nose as they flocked around her. “I suppose it doesn’t matter if I formulate my reinterpretation of the passage now, or after this ‘wedding’ or whatever he wants to call this rude display of bigamy that we are about to embark upon. He has always listened to reason and this time will be no different.”
The girl lifted her arm so a crone could stitch under it. She understood why Orchid hated her. How sad it must be to give up everything, your power, your influence, your husband, and then be forced to serve the person to whom you gave it.
Orchid’s dress slipped off her shoulders while they began pinning. She looked beautiful, the girl thought without wanting to, so unsettlingly angry and lovely. “I will tolerate you,” Orchid said, again nearly reading the girl’s mind. “For now.”
The girl scowled. Mr. Capulatio had made his choice. Orchid was the loser. In spite of her pity, the girl felt grateful to be the one in the more beautiful dress. Even if she was not more beautiful and accomplished herself. Orchid gazed back at her for a while as though she understood those thoughts too, until finally she looked away.
CHAPTER 8
THE RIDER
John, the Chief Orbital Doctor, reconsidered his options, and sought Mizar to dispatch a rider to the palace compound. The carnival was far enough away, and the rider would be fast enough, he reasoned, that they would have their answer about the women’s bleeding in several short hours. John pondered, if the odd little prisoner proved correct in his prediction, what did it mean?
Mizar, always sensitive to the plights of servants, insisted that the rider would be dangerously exposed on the plain.
“We do not even know yet if the outlaw carnival is a threat,” John growled.
Mizar stared at him as though his master were eight years old once again, all flapping arms and ill-advised schemes. “Of course they are a threat, sir. What reason could they have to break the Law and return here out of season? The question is, would they attack a rider on the way from an insignificant country house?”
At that, John bristled. “I would hardly call Urania ‘insignificant.’ I have more scrying instruments here than probably anyone in the world and I would assume, given the circumstances”—and here he gestured to the light above—“that they would find my manor house most interesting. But why am I arguing against my own position?” he demanded, to which his servant merely smiled. Mizar had a manipulative streak. At last John sent him to prepare a hot drink and went to his office to wait.
John begrudged Mizar his little insult. It dampened his excitement. He was sensitive about Urania Castle, even though he was the only Orbital Doctor to have his own separate quarters. Even the Hierophant himself, the king’s High Priest and advisor, lived inside the compound. But then let us be honest, John thought, gripping the windowsill in his office and looking into the courtyard. Urania was hardly a castle at all,
