Page 57 of The Court of Venus

On the barge back to the palace, Roland turned to me. The wind stirred his hair. “Do you truly find me—what was it—needlessly emotional and quick to anger?”

“No. And I do not see the worst in you.”

He nodded, peering down at the water below. Both him and the river, still and calm this morning. His features the same color as the faint sunrise reflected upon it. “I didn’t know you could do that. Recall certain details in a memory. Raise them to the surface.” For a long while he thought. And then very softly said, “When this is all over, and if I live, will you help me remember my mother’s face?”

Thirteen

What makes a magician change? Is it time of year? Is it age? Is it some other natural phenomenon?

—PROSPERO THE ALL-KNOWING TO ELEANOR GUILDFORD

I felt Prospero beside me. “Concentrate, Bianca,” he would say, blue eyes shining. “What does the sky suggest?”

“Mercury and the Sun are nearly touching. I might discover something new today, something miraculous.”

I could have sworn his smirk shimmered in the air, but it was just sunlight cast through the window.

Roland slid Oliver’s translations across his desk, then pulled over two chairs. Before we untied the ribbon, we exchanged a heavy glance.

Roland knew him well, but it was my first time truly meeting this Prospero. He would shapeshift before my eyes—from the Prospero I remembered, assured in his power, to the broken man who had written this cipher, grasping at any means to live.

As we read, we shared eager breath.

I have received word from my contact. He says King Philippe of Lionesse was born in the same year as his mother, on the very same day. If she were alive, she would be broaching one hundred and seven. Philippe was born under the two fishes, in March—and so this year will make one hundred and eight. Common knowledge says eighty-five. This bodes well for our cause.

Roland and I surfaced at different times. He watched my eyes dart across the page, waiting for me to finish. “So,” he said. “They must have been passing her Book of Hours back and forth in secret. She would leave it behind for him to pick up. He’d write to her in code, and hand it back to her. This was how he updated her on his progress.”

I nodded, but didn’t look up. The next translation began, I have corresponded with Faustus.

I tested the name on my tongue. Faustus. I knew it from somewhere.

He tells me such capabilities of Venus have never been recorded in any book of magic. However, he himself developed a new ability later in his life. He was never sure how he had managed it, what change may have possessed him—but suddenly, he said, he would sit for hours reading, or spend long nights attending to his paperwork, only to emerge and find only seconds had passed in the next room. He never learned control over the ability, and it would only occur when he wanted to work undisturbed.

I shall look more into Venus, but I find it a vain and useless planet.

Roland frowned at the parchment. “A vain and useless planet?”

I only gestured to the next translation.

My spies have intercepted a missive between Philippe and his mistress, here enclosed:

Darling, you are too far for my liking. My eyes are drooping, my legs are too heavy to carry me out of bed, and I have spots all over my hands and neck. Hair falling out. Return at once—I need my remedy.

Is this not our proof?

“That note was from King Philippe to Marguerite,” breathed Roland.

“Marguerite?”

“The king of Lionesse’s mistress,” Roland explained hastily. “Venusborn.”

What are a magician’s limits? What are his boundaries, and when can they be pushed? Somehow, Marguerite of Lionesse has made her king immortal.

Our Richard, in his vanity, has decided immortality is preferable to a new son. For sons die. They die easily, without any cause. He knows this intimately now. He has ordered me to master immortality by fall equinox. He rages about King Philippe having something he does not. He rages that in our years of friendship I have not yet given him this, his heart’s truest desire. For who would want a dynasty when they could instead live eternal?

I know you are frightened after last month’s loss. I know it feels as if Richard has abandoned you entirely. We are so close to appeasing him forever.

Venus is the key. Yet I still cannot say how it is accomplished. Roland shows no signs of such miraculous abilities. He is as he always was.