Page 55 of The Court of Venus

“Fine. Get on with it.” He removed his signet ring and set it on the table. “I swear that what is spoken or exchanged between us tonight will not be repeated or pass into the hands of others.”

Oliver swore. So did I. Silver glyphs scattered in the air, our tongues scalded as Oliver sealed the oath.

“Good,” said Oliver. “Now for payment.”

Roland offered to tell him what a lover truly felt about him, to straighten his teeth or erase a scar, but he closed his mouth as Oliver’s attention wandered to me.

“Not an option,” said Roland. “But I’m in a generous mood. I’ll give you anything else.”

“Don’t be so careless with your words, Lord Chancellor. I might bind you to them.” Oliver leaned back in his seat. “Bianca,” he said softly. “Bianca, Bianca, Bianca.”

“I said—” Roland cut in, but Oliver held up a hand. Roland pressed on anyway. “Whose memory are you after?”

With his chin, Oliver pointed at me. “Hers. Then I’ll decipher your little book for you. There’s no harm intended, Lord Chancellor. I swear it.”

Roland and I shared a glance. I want to do this for him, I insisted. Oliver had saved us. We were in his debt, and I would have handed over more than a memory in order to repay it. Roland eventually sighed, staring at Oliver down his nose. Their gazes, whipped-out blades.

“Come now, that wasn’t difficult, was it?” Oliver reached over the table, clapped Roland’s shoulder, then turned to me. “Ready, love?”

A low scoff from Roland.

“What would you like to see?” I asked Oliver.

“The moment of Ambrose’s death. Pay particular attention to the music, please.”

I swept him into my memory. The wooden turrets and the swans. The pluck of Fulke’s lute as Roland and I danced. His fingers tightening around my waist— When Oliver smirked, I shifted my focus. The music, so discordant with the sudden crash of Ambrose’s body to the ground.

The scene lurched suddenly, as if someone had tugged on it like cloth. Oliver wanted to show me something in his own mind now.

He was composing music in a chapel, wiping loose charcoal onto his brow.

Then, a chill morning. A bed. Somebody lay beside him, flipped onto their stomach. He mumbled something in his sleep. Oliver hesitated, then shook him. The man yawned, kissing Oliver’s hand, muttering, “What time is it?” Eyes the color of the twilight sky, tresses sapphire blue. Jasper, Fulke Roet’s magician. He blinked at the sun and swore, leaping from bed and gathering up his clothes.

“Don’t forget,” called Oliver. He gestured to a sheet of parchment resting in the corner of the room, pinned beneath a glass bottle. A strand of music notes, rendered in a careful hand.

Jasper snatched the parchment and shot Oliver a crooked smile. “Until next time, Mercury.”

“It was your cipher that killed Ambrose,” I breathed.

“I didn’t know,” Oliver said. “Not until you mentioned Fulke was playing music when Ambrose died. I sold that composition many years ago to Jasper and Fulke. It was a way for them to communicate in crowded rooms. When Fulke played it, Jasper knew he was to assassinate Fulke’s enemies. He will have expanded one of Ambrose’s organs until it burst—his spleen, his heart, who knows. A horrible, painful death.”

“And Jasper was your lover.”

Roland swept a crumb off the table. “Keep up, Bianca. Ambrose was, too. You know, I heard that when Alice Seton, the king’s mistress, was locked in the Archimago Tomb for treason, her family used a similar way to communicate with her. A man would stand in the woods just outside the Tomb’s boundary and sing. It sounded nonsensical to most listeners. But when she heard it in her cell, it meant the king might still change his mind. On the day she was executed, the man was silent, and she knew she would die. You were the composer?”

Oliver admitted he was.

“Well, it’s all terribly morbid.” Roland crossed his arms over his chest. “Your former lover killed your new one using your own cipher.”

They smiled at each other, yet tension pulled taut between the two of them. “Yes, we are all walking wounds and tragedies, aren’t we?” murmured Oliver.

“Ambrose died because he knew something,” I said. “He knew Fulke was plotting.”

Oliver nodded. “Fulke has committed treason in every definition of the word, in every language. He’s tried to push lovers in front of Cecily Guildford, or ignite rumors of lovers, so the king will grow paranoid and rid himself of her. That boy that was killed last night? Your supposed traitor?” He nodded to me. “Fulke started that gossip. He will do anything to stop the king from having a son, Roland. Your salvation is his end.”

In response, Roland shoved Eleanor’s book across the table.

“Ah. Your salvation.” Oliver studied the embossed calligraphy, turning the book from side to side. “This was Eleanor Guildford’s, you said?” He smoothed the pages down, sniffed them, rubbed at ink with his elbow to see if it would disappear. “Let’s go somewhere even more private. My room?”