Tygo coughed at his side. “Are we … going somewhere? Or should we begin another game with them?”
Marvel chuckled. “I’m sure you’d like that.”
“She is a beautiful woman.”
“Lonely,” said Marvel suddenly.
“Aren’t we all?”
He glanced down at Tygo. This close, he could see the ear-holes, the scarring around them like puckered, waterlogged skin. “Very profound. In Kansas you were a priest, I take it?”
“Who said anything about Kansas?”
“Do you know who I am?” Marvel asked suddenly.
“Marvel Parsons.”
Was Tygo sent to bring word to the Mystagogue that Marvel was High Priest of the opposing sect? To learn whatever secrets the Cape knew of the cosmos that Kansas did not? Was this why he’d ingratiated himself to John Sousa? Or had he come simply to kill Marvel and be done with it? “No. Do you know who I am, really?” Born to be the True King. A failure.
Tygo’s hands, still shackled, did not shake. He took a long breath. As though he were tired of talking about it. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Ah,” Marvel leaned back. So he did know. Or was pretending to, for some reason. “Tell me, then. You know I can have you tortured. Why are you here?” He paused. “Why are you here?”
Tygo tugged his hair down over his ear-holes. When at last he spoke, his voice was soft, almost helpless. A droplet of rain landed on his eyebrows and he brushed it away. “Because I’m a visionary.”
“What did you see?”
“The truth,” Tygo said.
“We all receive portions of truth, I think.”
He faced Marvel head on and said, “I saw the end of this world.”
Marvel began to laugh. “O. Only that?”
They went to Canaveral Tower, where Juniper was waiting for them. He had run ahead to warn the Pardoness of their arrival. He was a good servant, Marvel decided, after all. He would like to keep him.
* * *
The pardon was all he needed. Or rather, wanted. Then he would leave.
The Pardoness received Marvel this time in a loose golden robe. She sat in her bed again, her gigantic legs lost somewhere in the folds of blankets. Her hair and face were uncovered now. Her cheekbones pressed against her skin. All that she consumed feeding those enormous legs and nothing else. The ledges of her clavicles made Marvel want to touch his own to make sure they had not broken through his skin.
There were no servants attending her at this hour. To her right was a very tall bookshelf containing old books, so many that some were stuck into the shelves two or three layers deep, overflowing even to her bedside, where there was yet another stack. A small collapsible wooden table sat at her elbow. She was bent over it, writing. She glanced up as Marvel entered, placing the pen in its inkpot. She said, “Puzzles. There is a man in the palace who makes them for me. That is his entire purpose.” She pointed to Tygo and Juniper, who had been waiting by the doorway. “Well, here we all are. At last.” She nodded skeptically at Tygo. “He is quite small, now that I see him. How will he manage to remove my legs?”
“What?” Tygo paled.
“My legs. How will you remove them?”
His mouth seemed to have gone dry. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
Marvel took Tygo by his chained arms and dragged him into the center of the chamber. “Surgeon. Whose patients live, almost always. Take off her diseased legs.”
Tygo cursed under his breath. He swept back his black hair and it stayed just where he left it, in a swirl above his right ear-hole.
“You can do it, can’t you?” asked the Pardoness. “I can see by your face that you think you can’t.”
Tygo flushed. There was none of the medicinal smoke filling the chamber this time, but the smell was still peculiar, like no one had aired out the room in the longest time. Marvel noticed there was only one large airway, a closed door that led to the balcony. “What’s wrong with your legs?” Tygo croaked at last. She pushed the folds of fabric away and heaved the appendages toward the front of the bed, each leg a hundred pounds—more. When Tygo saw them he gave no reaction. Juniper crept forward to get a better view. Marvel yanked him back again.
“My name is Green Butterfly,” she said to Tygo. “If you did not know already.” Marvel took pleasure in her voice, which was unusual and beautiful, even though he realized now that she had some speech impediment, or had never learnt to speak correctly in the first place. The thought made him sad. “I wish to be like my namesake and fly away. Please remove my legs if you can, so I can leave this place.”
“I—” Tygo began to shake his head. “No. These are … what disease is this?”
“You’re the Doctor, you tell us,” Marvel barked. But darkness had begun forming again inside him at Tygo’s obvious confusion. Of course he was no Surgeon. What a fool Marvel had been to even think it. That a Walking Doctor had come from Kansas to the Cape? Who had even ever heard of such a thing?
“Walking Doctors take an oath to do no harm,” Tygo muttered. “Primum non nocere. If I took it upon myself to operate, I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t die—”
“Escape is my aim,” she said, leaning forward and meeting his eyes. Her own were dark brown, almost black. “Whatever the means, at this point.”
Marvel rested his eyes on Tygo. “If you are not a Surgeon, what are you?”
The Pardoness joined him in staring at Tygo, her eyes disappearing into her face, dark circles acute with comprehension. “Then have you come to confess? If you are not a Doctor?”
“I did some healing in Kansas, some simple things I learned from my mother, and the rest I…” He seemed to slump. “I was just getting by. I never thought I’d get picked up for it. Much less asked to use it on someone so”—he swallowed—“important.”
In a flash of impotent rage,
