Juniper instantly was at Tygo’s side, pulling him to his feet. Marvel turned on him as well, his suspicions erupting from him. Suddenly awestruck by his own complacency. “And you!” he yelled to the guard. “You are a spy, I’ve known it since the beginning. You’re not from a carnival, you’re from Kansas, too! You were sent to flatter and trick me.” He shoved Juniper away. Marvel wished he carried a dagger instead of poison. “I’ll have you thrown in the jail if you don’t confess.”
Juniper stumbled backward, the small sack on his belt containing his Head bouncing against his thigh.
The Pardoness only sat in her nest of golden silk, unsmiling, unruffled. “Yes. Confess. Perhaps everyone should confess.”
Marvel whirled toward her, about to scream at her, too, until he felt the Pardoness’s eyes. Gentle. Calm. In the round stuffy room he became at once aware of his own petulance, his own pointless personal agony. Green Butterfly watched them all. Then, at last, she smiled.
She cleared her throat. “My, my. What excitement.” She kneaded her knobby fingers together like she was knitting a garment in her lap. “All because of my poor legs.”
“Pardoness—forgive me,” Marvel said, smoothing his graying hair and arranging his cassock’s belt. He bowed shallowly. “I lost my head.”
“You are forgiven.” She pointed at Tygo and Juniper and spoke in a quiet voice. “I see I am not to be freed by anyone here. But perhaps you men might be. Shall you two receive pardons as well?”
They both stood motionless.
She beckoned to Marvel. Against his better judgment, he went to her. She reached for his hand and cradled it in her own. “What do you want, Marvel Parsons?”
“Forgiveness.”
“For what?”
“For—for leaving when there is a threat at our gates. For wanting to go home. For my nostalgia. For…” For everything. “My daughter will never be able to follow me, if I leave. The king will never know why I’ve gone. The outlaw carnival … For using those two”—he gestured at Juniper and Tygo—“for my own aims.” Then he took a heavy breath. “For all the murders.”
She considered. “You were going to kill the Mystagogue, yes?”
“Do you know of him? Is he alive?”
“He lives, yes.”
“He would never let me live if I return to Kansas.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
He paused, defenseless. “Is it right to kill him? It’s the only way I can be free.”
“All I want is to be free.” She lifted her bony shoulders into a shrug. “We all want the same thing.” She laughed—it was a light laugh, a girl running among flowers. “I cannot make you free if you are bound to do evil.”
“But I’m not,” he whispered. “What I’m doing is right. I’m almost sure of it.”
“How do you know they are not right, also?”
“I—” He slumped a bit. I don’t know what to do.
She held his hand ever so softly. “Marvel. The truth comes unbidden to us—completely without warning. Go to Kansas. Don’t go to Kansas. The truth will find you eventually.” She nodded. “You are forgiven for your past sins. You may forgive yourself for your future ones.”
Marvel remembered suddenly a bright day from his boyhood. The summer sky like a wild flashing fish, his hands in his itchy cloak-pockets as he climbed to the top of a butte and looked with pleasure at all he could see. This land, so beautiful, poisoned ground and all. He stood with his bare feet on the dirt, gazing over the grasses and the fields, and in the distance reaching skyward was the Black Watchtower, its crenelated spire, its monkish austerity, where his own mother Nasa Whiteside had been thrown to her death for finally failing to conceive the True King. He’d struggled, even then, to understand the beauty and horribleness of their condition. How, amid all splendor, they had come to be wretched. Warm breezes had swept the plain, turning the rose-colored grasses this way and that, and Marvel was so moved that he could hardly stand the feeling, and climbed down again.
Wandering away from their settlement alone had been a stupid thing to do, and when he’d returned, his nursemaid demanded to know which saferoad he had taken to climb the hill. When he told her he didn’t know, she fell to crying, certain that he’d contracted Bent Head. But somehow, Marvel had known that he had not. Just as, a few years later, he had known he would not die when he crossed the continent on his journey to the Cape.
He had known then, just as he knew now. But this time he had needed to be told.
He would meet the leaders of the outlaw carnival. He would advise Michael. Then he would leave.
The Pardoness smiled.
Tygo’s face was still red from his fall, but suddenly he came toward the Pardoness with an eager look on his face.
“Tellochvovin,” Tygo said.
“What?” she asked.
“The angels told me that.”
Marvel pushed him away. For a moment all he could think of was holding the Pardoness’s hand as long as possible, the papery skin so soft it could have been silk. He longed for her to smile at him again. But she said, “Let him speak.”
“Tellochvovin. It means falling death.” Tygo stared pointedly at the door to the balcony, then at the Pardoness once again. “I’m sorry. I did lie about my abilities. It’s what I’ve always done. To get by. I had no idea it would lead me to Kansas, and certainly not back here. Or to you now. I meant only…” He glared at Marvel. The ear-holes gaped. Then his face showed only fatigue. “I only wanted to do the right thing. I came here for a man named David. I don’t know where he is. I’ve been trying to keep myself
