She went over to Mr. Capulatio’s desk and opened the book again, though she did not know why. The first page said:
THE TRUE KING
By An Executionatrix
New ages shall be rung in like thunder, by a perfect mind.
She flipped through the pages, the words spilling across them perfectly formed—the girl could read, but she could write nothing but the inane sigils her brother had forced her to learn, curses and charms. What could that verse mean? Where had it come from? What did any of it mean? Why had he had a wife already and not told her? She was jealous again.
She closed the book.
Soon, all around her came the low singing of the men and the sounds of cooking and eating as the carnivalers enjoyed their evening meals. But there was more: among the tents and booths there were other wagons, heavier ones, pulled by big horses that now stood hobbled here and there between campsites, with bags of feces swaying heavily at their backsides, and these wagons were loaded with clubs and maces and guns, and the girl knew (but O, hadn’t she known since the beginning?) that Mr. Capulatio’s carnival was here to make war, and that other carnivals had come to join him in the war, and all at once she felt a certainty that the war would begin tonight. It would begin with the marriage, because he had been waiting for proof of his own divinity and he believed she was that proof.
Maybe if she did not marry him, there would be no war. Maybe he would give up and return to wherever he came from. A hut on a beach, maybe. He might slink off in the night and live out his life as an ordinary Executioner. Maybe she and Orchid wanted the same thing, for her not to be the queen. She tugged at her dress again. It was so tight and hot.
Then a restless breath seemed to pour across the carnival at once, like a birdflock rising in a single heaving motion. The people were drawn like puppets from their fire-rings to the center aisle, and the girl squinted into the darkness and saw that it was Mr. Capulatio himself at whom they were staring, striding across the camp toward his tent. He seemed to wave when he caught sight of her silhouette in the doorway. She glanced over her shoulder to be sure he was not addressing someone else. But of course he was waving at her, she was about to marry him. When he came closer, she could see he was smiling.
She thought she could number every tooth in his smile—they had touched their faces together so many times already in the early half-lit mornings, when he would rest his head under her chin and hold her very tightly. She felt she knew every place on him by heart. He was dressed for the wedding, in clothes she couldn’t have imagined before this moment.
When he reached her, he took her hands in his. “Do you like my clothes, Queenie?” She couldn’t stop staring at them. He did a little turn for her and then bowed. “These are real sharkskin from a real marsh shark,” he said, pointing to the pants. They were smooth and dove-gray and so soft-looking. She nodded.
He laughed quietly. “Do you like your dress?”
She said nothing. He smiled wider. “That’s why I love you, my almost wife! You don’t need to talk to make your point. At first I was confused by it, but now I see this is precisely why we are a match made in heaven. It makes me gladder than you can know.” He hugged her close and she wrapped her arms around his body, which was strong and warm. She could feel the smoothness of their fabrics rubbing together. He gathered up a handful of the dress and shook it at her. “Silk,” he said, as though the word itself were magic, and who knew, perhaps it was? “Come, my bride. Let us be married.”
They clasped hands again and he led her across the carnival, picking his way through tent poles and staked Heads and all the grotesqueries that accompanied the making of Heads, the basins of herbed water, the sand pits where they dried, and also they walked past ropes hung with curing meat, past herds of tiny goats, past a teenage boy with a bow and arrow who gazed at the girl with undisguised lust. She had just met eyes with him when Mr. Capulatio pulled her along more roughly.
They passed many faces—hopeful, skeptical, kind, hungry. The insistent attention began to make her even more nervous, so she kept her face down, watching the flamelight and the shadows twisting together on the ground while they walked, and she concentrated on lifting her skirt high enough to keep from tripping. Onlookers soon began to follow them as they proceeded out of the camp. Suddenly, bewilderingly, a sizable group had fallen in behind them, following them toward the ocean. The people in these carnivals were wilder than the ones in Argento’s, with tangled hair and faces painted like stars. Some of them wore hardly any clothes, others were dressed in full robes and crystal crowns. They even seemed to walk with more purpose than the people in her brother’s carnival. Like they had something to lose.
A crowd surrounded them now. Many of them kept looking from her to the sky, and when she too looked up she saw, almost directly above her head, a bend of light arcing toward the earth. A returning rocket, just as Mr. Capulatio had said? It was brighter than she’d imagined. Or a comet? She had never seen one, but she had not imagined it would look like this, purple-white and motionless. Like a held breath. She kept her hand loose in Mr. Capulatio’s as they walked. The soft mumbling of the crowd passed from her attention, as did all things except that light,
