Orchid turned her face toward the fires and the far-off glint of the towers. She shook her head. “I should have been king. I was Lois’s heir. Why not me?”
The girl nodded, hesitant. “My mother was a Walking Doctor. Maybe I can make something for your—hand. So you don’t become fevered.”
“You’d poison me just as soon as to look at me,” Orchid snorted.
“I didn’t kill you before, did I?”
“That’s because you’re weak.”
“You haven’t killed me yet. Are you weak?”
To her astonishment, Orchid wiped her face with her good hand. Was she crying? The girl was much too frightened to touch her.
“My books. My texts. My carnival, which I took from my wretch of a brother by my own force. Gone. Every good thing I ever did in my life. Ruined. Or else it belongs to him now.” Her eyes roared at the girl. “I would have burnt it myself to keep him from getting it if I’d known it would turn out like this.” Her face closed all at once, as though on a drawstring. She cradled her stump.
“I’m sorry.” The girl did not know why she said it, but it was true.
They sat a long time in the wet forest, listening to the distant clamor of battle. The sounds grew dimmer and dimmer and the coolness swelled around them until they were both shivering in the fall air.
Then after a while the girl woke up. How could she have fallen asleep right next to that woman? But when she rubbed her eyes, she saw Orchid was sleeping too, her neck bent unnaturally and her face pinched as though she were having a nightmare.
Frantically, the girl searched for the key to the metal collar. It had been around Orchid’s neck, but now it was nowhere. She didn’t dare move more than a few inches, for fear that the chain connecting them would rattle. It was difficult to see in the dark. The only thing to do would be to hit her with a rock. Several small pebbles were within her grasp—big enough to stun her, if the girl hit her very hard.
She grew more agitated as the seconds passed. This might be her only chance. But still the girl could not pick up a rock.
At last she sat very still and let the breath go in and out of her body. She imagined she was a wind chime, air passing through her, transforming into beautiful sounds. She knew she would not kill Orchid. She’d had the chance before, and she had not taken it. She would not take it now. The Eon of Pain was over. The girl did not know why it was true but she had felt the truth of those words as soon as she had spoken them aloud, and so had everyone else. They had power. It was the Law of Mercy.
She knew something else, too. Orchid would not kill her.
She closed her eyes and slept.
When she awoke again it was still dark. Orchid’s face was inches from her own. The woman’s clear eyes, in the shine of the two comets as bright green as glass, for the moon had sunk below the tree line and the girl’s body was covered in chills, still blazed at her, but this time Orchid appraised her with more nuance, for finally she said, “You did not kill me.”
“I could have killed him every one of a hundred nights too,” she retorted. “But I didn’t do that, either.”
Orchid nodded. “Though one of us should have.”
“Is he the True King?”
“Yes.” Orchid sat back. Her thighs were muddy. Her hand. She wiped it on her dress but it did no good. “Of that I am most sure.”
“Will we die if we stay here?” The girl thought of the strange man from inside the palace who had told them the lights were meteors. She recalled her mother saying that word, meteor, but she did not know what a meteor was.
“I care not what happens to us,” Orchid sighed. “My texts are lost. My life’s work. Lois’s work. It’s all gone. How could I even begin to interpret what’s happened here? How will anyone know what to believe?”
“Are there more texts?”
“In there.” Orchid pointed toward the compound with her good hand, the finger dirty. “And in Kansas. But those are guarded by insane sorcerers who are ruled by a despot. The Black Watchtower. No one goes to Kansas.”
“We could.”
Orchid’s laugh was hard. “O yes, the two of us, a handless executionatrix who cannot kill and the concubine who maimed her. We shall save the world.”
“I only want to save myself.”
Then, oddly, Orchid smiled, as though some private thought had cheered her. “The Walking Doctors have their maps, don’t they. For the saferoads. You know these?”
She shook her head. The maps she remembered from her childhood were as long gone as her mother’s comfort, swallowed up by the immensity of her circumstances. She hesitated, though. Finally, she murmured, “But there are markings on the trees.”
“I learnt a few once, from an old book.” Orchid nodded. “But—most foolishly—I entrusted navigation to others in my carnival, as did David. One can only perform so many duties.” She shook her head. “Do you know them? The markings?”
The girl shrugged. The chain clanked. “Probably some.” Then she stared. “Could we really get all the way to Kansas?”
“Others have. Why not us?”
“You just said no one goes there.”
“No one with anything to lose.” Orchid’s eyes glittered darkly. “I have always wanted to see a Kansas Cow. Perhaps those priests on the deathscape could do with such a learned scribe as myself. Perhaps they might see value where others have so callously discarded it.” She flung a rock toward the compound.
“What about me?”
“What about you? You are my hostage. You are my ransom. You are,” she breathed, “an
