The girl had severed one of her hands.
All the men yelled together in a panic. Orchid continued screaming, blood pouring forth into the basin, and she flopped to the ground where more blood soaked the earth as she rolled around clutching the stump. Her hand lay dead on the block.
Mr. Capulatio was by Orchid’s side at once. He picked her up, pulling half her body from the wet earth and roared at the girl, “My god, what have you done? You’ve ruined the spell! Everything we’ve worked for!”
She spoke coldly. “I’ve given you a new spell.”
“What?” he yelled. Orchid’s blood soaked the front of his clothes. She still wailed. He looked as though he wanted to throw Orchid down and strangle the girl, and also like he wished he could pull his first wife to his chest to stop her pain.
“I told you last night,” the girl said. “But you didn’t listen. The Eon of Pain has ended. The shuttles are back. Hers is the last blood to be spilled, but not for magic’s sake. This a punishment. She tried to kill me.”
They fell silent. Orchid opened her eyes. A weak laugh came from her. “A Law of Mercy,” she gasped.
“What?” he demanded.
“She gives you a new Law of Mercy.”
Mr. Capulatio stroked Orchid’s face. He pulled off his cloak and wrapped it tightly around her bleeding arm. “What are you talking about, my Radiance?”
“The texts say new Ages shall be rung in like thunder, by a perfect mind. Remember? Here is your Thunder, your Perfect Mind. Listen as she gives you a new Law, David.”
He paled. “What creature better than a woman to stay our hands at the executioner’s block?” he whispered. “To stop our swords at the very moment when bloodshed becomes a sin again?”
But Orchid had stopped listening. She was gazing out over the soggy field in the direction of the compound. Then she fainted. Mr. Capulatio gathered her into his arms and held her body to his with such familiarity that all at once the girl felt like a stranger watching them make love. She stepped back, her heart thudding.
Just then he looked up at her with blazing eyes. “It is always a woman whom the heavens come to. It was a woman who gave us the doctrine of Wonderblood.”
“Killing is wrong,” the girl said.
He stared at her from the ground, then stood up, holding Orchid as though she weighed nothing. “Let me tell you, there is no right or wrong in magic. Magic is. Magic exists apart from your belief.”
“I believe in magic,” she said coldly. “But killing is still wrong.”
Mr. Capulatio conferred with his Orbiters. The seconds stretched on, and the girl felt them draw out like the long blade of his knife. Might Orchid die from her wound? She was strong, the girl doubted she would die. With their backs to her, the girl could see only the chin-length jagged remains of Orchid’s light hair. One of her arms—the one with a hand—hung slack along Mr. Capulatio’s leg. After a time the Orbiters were nodding together, agreeing with each other. They had accepted her Law of Mercy: Mr. Capulatio had saved face and won them back.
They all returned to the carnival then. The men went away—where, she had no idea. Mr. Capulatio carried Orchid. He gave the girl the severed hand to carry. A pale heavy lump. It was like a living being still, she could almost feel Orchid’s fingers moving among her own. In the tent he took it away from her and placed it in a canvas sack. He summoned the crones to care for Orchid. He bent to his first wife’s face, smoothed her mussed eyebrows, and kissed her as deeply as if she were awake.
Then he strode past the girl without looking at her. She had the feeling that by doing what she had known to be right, she had done her husband a gruesome wrong. The subjectivity of truth, for the first time, kindling within her a confusion she could not ignore. O, lucidity, she thought. Leave me.
CHAPTER 20
THE WATCHTOWER OF THE UNIVERSE
Marvel Parsons watched the king and John Sousa leave the golf course to make their silly horoscope. He stood there a long moment beside Tygo, watching his daughter begin another round with one of her handmaids. She looked happy, but he could tell she wasn’t. He hadn’t missed her flirtatiously gazing at the earless convict—how baffling, women’s hearts. Who would want such a man?
A woman who had everything, he supposed. Who was very bored.
His mood blackened as he considered his failings as a father. He had not raised Alyson—he’d left that to nurses and servants. Her mother, a courtesan, had died a few days after Alyson’s birth. Marvel had not cared for the woman, really, beyond her pedigree as a daughter of a fine family of the Cape. A few pangs of guilt when she died. He’d prayed over it. Women died in childbirth. It was sad. He had needed a child. He had gotten a child. Glorify.
At times, Marvel felt as though he didn’t care what happened to anyone. And just as often, he felt the weight of his guilt like armor, impeding his every attempt to free himself. Why had he not left last night, after speaking with Michael?
Alyson looked at him from across the golf course. A few drops of rain fell from the bright gray sky. The sunlight had been swallowed by the clouds and now the comets, the stella novae, whatever they were, were hidden. Alyson’s round face broke into a tentative smile as she motioned for them to join them again, waving her club in the air. Marvel shook his head darkly. He sighed. This was what he truly needed a pardon for.
Abandoning his
