It was all vanity. He was the last scion of a family to whom appearances had mattered, and so they mattered to John, even though ostentation was not a feature inherent to his character. Primarily, Urania was a place to keep his instruments. He maintained them meticulously, tucked beneath weathertight mechanical domes of his own design. This was indeed a battle, a philosophical one for him and a physical one for Mizar, for the domes were not ever completely fast despite their combined efforts, and at last John had been forced to admit he was no engineer. Now he cursed the rust grinding in the dome gears each time he cranked one open; he cursed the broad speckling of salt-ruin on the deteriorating instruments. They’d become the easiest place upon which to fixate his self-loathing. His disappointment in himself, which like a desolate satellite circled the mass of his being, pulled up tides of shame regularly. When he looked at his courtyard of once splendid instruments, which he still loved for their mathematics and precision, he cursed himself for being as unlike them as seemed possible. So fickle he was, incapable of discerning truth.
The news about the women’s bleeding arrived in a flurry of hoofbeats on the gravel at Urania’s gate, more quickly than John had anticipated. It was borne not by his own rider but by a tall and thin young man wearing an ill-fitting guard’s uniform. Spotting him through the streaked glass of his office window, John fairly fell over himself to get outside, all thoughts of past failures washed away now by the hope that the prisoner had indeed made a real prediction. As John threw a coat over his bedclothes, he shouted to Mizar to fetch the prisoner from his room.
The young guard’s mount was an exceptionally fine roan-colored horse. The guard was reaching forward to swing the gate open himself when John called, “Ho! Not so fast! It’s locked!” But the gate opened anyway, leaving John to sputter impotent protest to no one in particular.
The guard stood in the open gateway holding his horse’s reins, a smile on his lips. “Lord Astronomer?” He made a small bow.
John cleared his throat. “Who are you? Where is my rider?” He narrowed his eyes. “Is that one of the Hierophant’s horses?”
“I was sent by His Majesty Marvel Parsons to collect the prisoner you’re interviewing.” The man’s accent was thick and hard to place.
“I hardly think so,” John huffed. “Where is my man? I sent him with a specific question and I require a specific answer. I cannot release the prisoner to you until I have it, it’s impossible.”
“Well, the Hierophant outranks you,” he replied blithely. “Sir.”
“That’s preposterous.” Like most courtiers of his status, John had discovered that the best way to communicate with the lower classes was with a certain blustering indignation—it relieved them all of the apprehension that friendliness might be possible. “What is your name?”
“Juniper.”
“That’s a woman’s name.”
Another sanguine smile. “I’ve never heard that before. Where is the prisoner Tygo?”
“He’s here,” came Mizar’s chirp from behind John. He scuffed toward them across the scrubby courtyard, around the reflecting pond with John’s expensive fish, leading the prisoner by a short chain. The prisoner—Tygo—by now had been shorn of his leg-cuffs, given new clothes, and chained again at the hands with a set of much more functional manacles. The clothes seemed to greatly displease him (they were Mizar’s and therefore ugly, being brown and far too long and also too tight in the upper arms and legs). Mizar handed John the prisoner’s short chain and hurried over to open the gate wider.
Tygo nodded his head upward at the young guard. The other man did the same.
“If the Hierophant outranks me, it’s only because of tradition. Michael has privileged my work for twenty years and more.” John sniffed. “You would be too young to know that.” John did not add that, in his view, Marvel Parsons was the upstart poisoner with the delicate hand who, thirty-two years before, during the reign of Michael’s father Leander, had murdered John’s own parents along with their entire retinue of dinner guests. They had numbered fourteen that dreadful evening, all dead before dessert. John had been good that day, and so was permitted to eat with Mizar in the kitchen with the servants, which had been a treat until it wasn’t, when he realized how undignified it was. There was never proof of the Hierophant’s hand in the affair, of course. Only the most cursory of inquiries had followed the deaths. No one was ever formally accused. But ever since John had been of an age to reason, he had suspected Marvel Whiteside Parsons. There was an air of menace around that man, a kind of radical but rational willingness to play the game to its logical end. In fact John somewhat admired the derring-do such drastic action had required. He’d never been overfond of his family anyway. “You can’t take him now,” he repeated.
“But I must.”
“Does the Hierophant not look up?” John was flabbergasted. He pointed to the sky. “What traitor’s interrogation could be worth more than discovering what that is? I have removed Tygo for the very immediate reason that he claims to be a visionary who predicted this light. You go straight back and tell your master that I simply refuse. He can come here himself if he disagrees.”
Despite scrying with his magic bowls and all the evenings spent in rapt meditation, willing his body to open like a night-flower to the celestial plan, despite locating himself at the navel of the world that connected the earth magically to the heavens, despite how endlessly he gave of himself, there had always been something broken about John’s faith. Some enormous failure of will. Something faltering about his belief. He did not know if that was the cause of his failure but he suspected it. How could he release a man who
