“You will do what I tell you to do. I think that’s what annoys me so much about you these days.” He wiped his bloody hand on the sleeve of the girl’s dress.
Orchid closed and opened her eyes the way a person does when they are trying to wake up. The crowd had turned silent.
He pushed on her shoulder now, almost playfully. The girl could tell he was enraged, his chest was hot through his clothes. “Say your lines.” He paused. “Loudly, please.”
From some pocket in her dress she produced a folded square of paper and after the girl and Mr. Capulatio had taken their positions facing each other, and after the crowd had clapped for what felt like an age, Orchid began to read the words, haltingly at first and then with less apprehension, until she sounded not just normal but entirely convicted, and the magical words moved between the girl and Mr. Capulatio and snaked past them, out into the waiting host of people, each one of them a believer, each one filled with the wonder of ritual.
After a moment Orchid took from between her small breasts a vial of blood and continued. “This is the daughter of Fortitude, the fawn of the Battlefield,” she called. “Behold, she is Understanding, and science dwells within her and the heavens covet her. She is ringed by the Circle of Stars and covered with the morning clouds. She is ravished every hour by Glory. She is deflowered, yet a virgin; she sanctifies but has yet to be sanctified herself. Happy is he who embraces her, for in the days she is sweet and in the nights full of pleasure. Her company forms a harmony of many symbols. So purge your streets, sons of men, and wash your lands clean with blood for this Eon. Make yourselves Holy and put on righteousness. She will in time bring forth children and these will be the Sons of Comfort in the coming age, the age of the True King, the Age of Times. Glorify.”
And it went on this way, a chant, for many minutes until at last Orchid opened the vial of blood and poured it over their joined hands and kissed them both on the cheek, her mouth drawn closed over her teeth, and the girl felt the cool blood go over their skin. Whose blood was it? But it was Orchid’s, of course, she knew without asking. Then Mr. Capulatio kissed her for a very long time and pressed his body against her. Startled, she felt his hardness and was confused. She had thought he was angry.
She let herself be led wordlessly onto the sand again. In the flickering light, her hand looked black with drying blood.
Orchid marched ahead of them on the beach and stood in front of everyone for a moment, appearing dizzy, like she had just awoken from a nap. Then she whirled around and knelt in the sand before Mr. Capulatio.
He looked at her, unmoved. Her body in her blue dress as she spread out on the ground was beautiful even to the girl. She chastised herself for her own jealousy.
Orchid thrust her face up. “I have misread the scriptures in relation to this wedding! When he returned with the lucky sigil, I admit my heart complained. I could not see his larger plan for our Great Work. I did not interpret the scriptures correctly. Our master has reprimanded me. We made our peace at once. He shows us daily what perfect love is. And witness: I am still his wife. Wife of his first heart. I am his first wife. He has not cast me out!”
But this was no apology: even the girl recognized Orchid was trying to force his hand. Mr. Capulatio watched with a placid expression. He bent next to Orchid and spoke a few words in her ear. Then he straightened and smiled brilliantly at his people. They stood all around, stunned. There would be no undoing this fiasco. Faces pressing inward upon them. He brushed sand from his knees. He offered a hand to Orchid, who did not take it. “Someone escort my Radiance to the cages—not my tent. This is my wedding night.” He was still smiling. “And she has nearly ruined it. Do it now,” he repeated, as two men picked up Orchid and pulled her bodily to her feet.
Though she rose calmly, there was something wracked and demeaned about the way she tensed her shoulders, with multiplicities of anger squeezing her like a vice, making her smaller and harder yet, her solid small arms and their muscles clenching and unclenching like breaths.
Mr. Capulatio turned his back on her. He called out for everyone to hear. “Now, we’ll dance! And drink. And prepare. Come and greet your queen, the Third Queen of Cape Canaveral. She is the true queen for the Age of Times. Look to the sky, at the returning shuttles, and rejoice! From this day we enter a new Age!”
Everyone gazed at the shooting stars in the sky, now numbering two. There were definitely two, even if the second was faint. But the girl watched the two men pull Orchid away through the crowd. She watched the way the crowd closed up behind her like soft tissue after a puncture wound. The crowd swelled into the processional aisle and there was suddenly music again, and someone knocked over a torch and a man caught his cloak on fire and ran laughing and screaming into the sea.
CHAPTER 13
TELLOCHVOVIN
After his humiliating audience with Alyson, John Sousa, Chief Orbital Doctor, took Tygo back to Urania at a gallop, so Marvel Parsons would not have time to intervene. John had a set of gigantic stone spheres among his predictive devices that could be moments away from achieving their purpose, and
