Page 95 of The Court of Venus

“And you will suffer more.” Balthasar slid through the air again, landing mere feet away. “Look to Saturn,” he explained, glancing up, as if he could see through wood and through stone, to the celestial bodies above. “This will be a time of great change. We are standing here, just before the future opens wide.”

“You speak cryptically.”

He chuckled under his breath. “I do not know any other way to speak.”

I felt the crumpled paper against my breast. Prospero’s star chart.

“Perhaps I’ve come to see you, Your Grace.” I reached into my bodice and handed the torn parchment over to him.

As he unfolded it, recognition sparked in his eyes. And then his face paled. “Where did you get this?”

“I found it.”

Eyes narrowing in disbelief, he measured me. Holding the parchment far away from himself, between two fingers, as if it were scalding. “This is drawn in my master’s hand.”

Now I was circling him in turn; we drew ellipses around each other. “Who was your master?”

“His name was Faustus.”

Faustus. Author of The Legend of Oberon and The Far Planet. Prospero’s secret correspondent. “Saturnborn?”

He bowed his head yes. “Prospero was his apprentice before me, you know.”

“I did not.” I knew so little about Prospero’s youth. Only that he had been fostered as a boy with King Richard.

“Interesting. Hmm. Prospero spent years under his tutelage. Together, they sought to open a university for magical and astronomical study, but every king was too frightened of the idea. Magicians, serving their courts? Very well. But gathered together, expanding their knowledge as one?” His dark eyes glittered. “A frightening nexus of power.”

Roland’s idealism rose within me. “Imagine us,” he would say, “existing for ourselves, not for our kings and their petty squabbles. Not bound by oaths.”

A university. What might I discover—beyond exaltation, beyond the known limits of magic—if I had the means to put my mind to it? But would I even be able to study at such a place as a woman? Would the magicians lean over their armillary spheres and their astrolabes and their tomes, while I waited outside, crouched at the door?

“What happened to Faustus?” I asked.

“He died,” Balthasar said, his tone patronizing, as though it should be obvious.

“How?”

“How do most powerful sorcerers die, Bianca Mortlake? They are executed as soon as they become a threat.”

“Aren’t you afraid for yourself, then?”

He chuckled under his breath. “Oh, no. The emperor is well sated. He relies on me utterly. Faustus, on the other hand, served no one. He predicted the age of kings would end. He wrote pamphlets, dangerous texts. All burned, of course. I saw his body burn, too. I heard his screams. Beheading him was considered too painless.”

I nodded toward the star chart in his hands. “So, what does it foretell?”

Balthasar’s smile widened. “It is called a Final Breath. It shows the planets’ alignment at the moment of a spirit’s passing from this world to the realm of the dead. Faustus calculated someone would die in roughly four days’ time.”

The world shifted, nearly cracked. All I saw was Roland’s face. “Who?”

“I have no idea.” He took a step, and the air trembled. He’d sliced through it again, emerging on his throne.

“How is the prediction made?”

“The secrets of Saturn are well protected for a reason. When I lay eyes on a person for the first time, I know when they will die, just as you sense emotions. It requires only a single glance. Now, for example, I see the date of your death.” He crumpled the paper in his fist. “But Faustus was the one who met this poor soul, not me.”

His grin was too wide, unnatural on his sharp face. I couldn’t fathom the horror of such a power—to look into someone’s eyes and know when they would close forever.

He leaned forward, gloating. “Would you like me to tell you?”