He stepped forward. “I was saying this: although it’s well known to most Walking Doctors that women, when boarding together, will often begin to cycle together, we don’t know why. There doesn’t seem to be any accepted explanation, but a guess recorded in the books has been that the lead woman—the most fertile woman, that is, in the group—somehow changes the bodies of the subordinate women to bring menstruation in line with her own cycle.”
She smirked but said nothing.
Tygo said, “But obviously this is not what happened here, as you have all been living together for a long time. So whatever has caused the bleeding could only be something impressively out of order, a thing of the most extreme magnitude.” He held up a finger. “I’m sure you and your ladies have noticed the stella nova?”
Keenly, she nodded. “We saw it earlier and now they are saying there is another.”
John heard this but could make nothing of it. Another one? A deep distress began to crash within him, knocking his worries together like cylinders on a wind chime. Another comet? Tygo too appeared confused, but quickly blustered through it with a nod. They had just been outside, had they not? In the widening luminous evening they had just ridden through, cut as it was by gray-purple clouds stacked atop one another, they had seen no trace of another comet. Had they? Even as John uneasily recalled the landscape from their carriage ride, he knew he had been distracted and not at all in a state of mind to properly notice anything, least of all some new, miraculous manifestation that was most likely hidden by clouds. He hadn’t really looked up, he who should always be looking.
He had read nothing in his books about a double comet, not during this century. O god, when had he last read up on comets? Would Mizar know? John looked about without realizing it, so used was he to Mizar clicking behind him in some spirit of helpfulness; Mizar had memorized almost as many of the charts as John. But his servant was nowhere to be seen, probably down taking a luxurious look at the exposed bodies on the east wall of the palace, holding his nose and cackling with some guard or another.
“Yes, another one,” said Tygo. “And I’m sure you’ve already figured out what they must be.”
Alyson answered, a slight pursing of her lip betraying her puzzlement. “Of course it must be the shuttles returning. Right? You’re saying that’s what’s caused our bleeding.”
Tygo began pacing in front of her. He hunched over just so, to indicate deep consideration, even a little confusion. John bristled in silence.
“Yes, it may be the Return.” Tygo nodded slightly. “When I predicted the bleeding, I was hoping to prove myself of immediate usefulness to the Lord Astronomer—I confess that it wasn’t so much a prediction as it was a guess. An educated one. I was hoping he’d take me in, let me help him sort all this out, since he doesn’t seem able to make heads or tails of the physical aspects of what’s happening to you all. And—” Tygo held up his hand. “I admit, I wanted to save my own skin. I don’t want to die, your Majesty, just because I know a thing or two about the human body. Just because I’ve done some surgeries in my day. Anyway, I figured such an extreme celestial event was bound to be affecting you ladies bodily. I even feel it in myself,” he said, lowering his voice and moving his chained wrists near his waist. “I’d tell you where, but…” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to offend your dignities. I’m sure the Lord Astronomer concurs.” He looked over at John, eyebrows high, and then Tygo flashed one lid up and then down; another wink, this time at John, and Alyson could not have seen it for Tygo was turned at that moment entirely toward John himself. “Would you agree, John?” he asked. “May I call you that, Lord Astronomer? John?” He leaned back toward the queen and said in a low conspiratorial tone, “We haven’t even had time to discuss the formalities of our professional collaboration yet. But I think Lord Astronomer would agree that I’ve already made myself more than useful.”
Agitated, John ran his dehydrated hands through his hair, which flopped back unworkably onto his forehead. Tygo was lying to her—he no more believed in the return of the shuttles than he believed in the efficacy of any magic, as he’d made plain on the carriage ride. He’d been cast into a jail cell precisely because of his heretical beliefs. Why would he tell her it was the shuttles? John felt he was losing track of some important thread, that he was watching it slip past him into the open world, and afterward that he would never see it again—the thread was his singular agency, that he would never draw back. Tygo even now was spinning out some story that made only the dimmest sense to John. To save his life. To impress the queen. And why not? It was a performance. It struck him that Tygo was an actor more than anything else.
He didn’t understand anyone or anything around him. He found himself numbly agreeing with Tygo, even heard himself talking as if from a far-off prominence: “Yes. It must be the Return, I have every evidence of it. The charts indicate … well, there is much to suggest that we should … In fact, your Beauteousness, I was just about to insist that you bring the king thusly or else we should go to him; this is the moment. We should begin making a … a … a plan of some kind.”
Her face, inexpressive still. “A plan for what?”
Tygo stepped between them. “We don’t know, is what the Lord Astronomer is trying to say. What we’re trying to say—both of us—is that please, please don’t be distressed
