Before he could finish, one of the dark-haired brothers signaled to the other one, and with a floating motion, like the descent of a hummingbird, the one on the left reached into his cloak and threw a wet and heavy thing onto the table. The guards jolted forward, but stopped when they saw the object was only a sack, and that it lay on the table inert.
Mr. Capulatio’s face was impassive. “In there,” he said.
Michael eyed the Hierophant. Marvel turned to John. Horrified, he nudged it toward Tygo, who rubbed his hands together as though they were cold, but upended the bag on the table.
How he felt when the contents of the bag were spilt: drawn forward, pulled as if by a spell to look and look, eyes all over the bloodied and hacked disfigurement resting there, after rolling lazily for one half-turn and spattering blood on the table, before them all. And then, while his mind worked out what this object could be, revulsion exploded like a grease fire in his gut. He had seen his fair share of severed limbs—they all had, since childhood. The parapets around the east wall of the palace were always strung with dead bodies, headless trophies atrophying and putrefying in the moldy Cape air. But out had tumbled a delicate and beautiful forearm and hand; feminine, almost childlike. Gray as a winter day, except for the blue tips of the fingers and where the ovular bone had been cut through. This itself gave way to red along the ragged edges of the skin, and in the gory cross-section, the thin bone, white, impossibly fragile, surrounded by as many colors of dark red as he could imagine existed under the sun. Mr. Capulatio was not smiling now. He looked very near tears. “How many fingers do you count there?” he asked them.
Marvel, the Hierophant, had puffed up to his full roundness. “Get this abomination away from us. Guards.”
The guards stepped forward, but Mr. Capulatio raised his voice. “How many fingers?”
“Five,” said Tygo.
“O! You are the brightest star in the room, that is clear! What a servant! They are lucky to have you. I would make you my advisor, angel-talker. Yes,” he said at length. “There are five. This, gentlemen of the court, is my wife’s hand. A powerful magic took it from her: the Law of Mercy.” He held up the woman’s arm and her sleeve fell down to reveal a bandaged stump. Her eyes were closed. “Orchid, my scribe, has given her writing hand for my cause.” He closed his eyes, seemed to whisper a nonsense word, a prayer. He spoke it five times under his breath, then faced them once again. He was, it seemed, in an ecstasy. “So our two factions will clash here at the mouth of the sea. How fitting! For so like the sea is the sky, from which those metal luminaries will descend to take us into the ionosphere, the Age of Times, the Days of Heaven. Glorify!”
Michael gazed at the hand as though it were a dying baby. “He is entirely mad,” he whispered.
“The hand signifies the five carnivals we have outside the gate, five armies waiting for my indication that they should once more do what they have done for this last terrifying and holy Eon of Pain—to fight. To battle for their last field. It may be the Age of Mercy but we cannot grant mercy to everyone. We cannot grant it to you if you will not receive it.” He frowned. “I have a great fear that you don’t know what we’re capable of. I’m sorry for it. But there’s nothing to be done. You had a choice and you chose wrong.”
Marvel picked up the hand and flung it across the great room. It smacked the far wall with an animate thud. “This is beyond abhorrent. You, my unfortunate zealots, must die now, every one of you. And your people at the gates will be executed upon our black stage for months and years to come. We will kill every one of them we catch; their blood will run into the earth and cleanse it of your sin.”
He reached for the unction, but before he could grasp it, Tygo leaned over the table and clasped Mr. Capulatio’s hands between his own. Like a lover. John had already pushed his chair slightly away from the table in case things became violent, but he stopped now, fascinated with horror. Tygo said, “The angels told me the name of the True King. I heard it in Kansas and followed that word all the way across the land, to this moment. Is your name David?”
Mr. Capulatio seemed confused. His attention had flown with the hand as it sailed across the room. He seemed to want to fetch it, to go comfort it. “What?” he asked in a soft voice. Mr. Capulatio’s eyes went from each of their faces to the next, and finally at last to Tygo’s, to whom he nodded with grim pride. “My name is David. Though how you could know it must be a deep magic indeed. Who are you?”
“No magic,” whispered Tygo. “I saw it. I heard it.”
One of Mr. Capulatio’s men had drawn a dagger and John saw it in an instant. He leapt up and back from the table, just as the man with the dagger, the blond stocky one, pulled Mr. Capulatio back and behind him, brandishing the weapon in front. The other three men surrounded him as they began backing from the room. The woman did not move.
The guards surged forward with pikes pointed viciously, but they’d waited too long. Afterward, John would think often about this mystery—why had they waited? Perhaps they were afraid of the four men conjuring more magical weapons from the folds of their robes. Or perhaps they’d hesitated because of some feral strength in Mr. Capulatio’s voice when he said, simply, “Be still.”
