Page 30 of The Court of Venus

Mars of malice. Venus of veneration.

Jupiter of jewels and Mercury of mouths.

Saturn of specters, the dead out of bounds.

—A CHILDREN’S RHYME

A gray day, as most days in Alvion were. Gray morning and grayer afternoon.

A flushed Edward woke me for an audience with the king. I was to dress at once, he said. He set a kirtle and gown on a chair and scampered from the rooms. In Roland’s mirror, I gaped at my reflection. I could hardly move without grunting, but there were no remaining scars to prove my pain was real.

Petitioners had already lined up through the gallery. I was to wait. It was an hour before I was finally ushered into the audience chamber and laid eyes on the king. The complaints hardly seemed to keep his interest; he looked past all those who spoke to him. Charles Guildford stood hissing in his ear. I heard “empty coffers.” Something about Roland’s overspending. No Jupiter in power now to multiply the treasury’s heaps of coin. They were scraping together all that was left, and couldn’t His Majesty see it was Roland’s fault?

The king wore a magnificent burgundy box coat that was intended to create an imposing shape but only emphasized how thin he was. And there was a crazed gleam in his eyes, a desperation he didn’t have years before. Gray eyes—Hal’s eyes. Alvion’s mists and rains.

Charles Guildford raised his head from the king’s ear, lips pursed with distaste. My heart pounded as I curtseyed.

The king lit with sudden interest. “Did you see her, Charles?” he said. “Did you see her turn into that beast?” He clapped a hand against the breast of his doublet, to the dragon sewn in blue stitching. “You wanted to honor me, did you not, sweet?”

Instead of swallowing my fear, I trusted where it led. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

He ran his tongue over his teeth. “You have always been a pearl, haven’t you?” Stepping off the dais, he forced me to meet his eyes, lifting my chin. “I am surrounded by such beauty, it is as if I sup at a table of honey cakes and sweets, my fingers always glistening.”

Charles laughed reliably at the innuendo. When I was a girl, the king’s mind had not been so twisted. Hal’s death had corroded him, wrecked him beyond all recognition. Did a man always have the potential to rot? Or did it require such a tragedy?

“Who taught you to do such wondrous tricks?” the king asked then.

“My tutor.”

“We are grateful to him. Where is he now?”

His memory was layered strangely, as if folded over itself many times over. Did he not remember? “Dead.”

“Pity. I look forward to your performance in the next round of the tourney. Oh, the courtiers insist that Roland will be champion, but I’ll bet on my pearl. Our secret.” His grip tightened on my chin. “Roland is my arm, you see. I have three arms—two on my body, and one in Roland. Yet I am the brain that makes him reach. I am the muscle that makes him grasp. If he touches you, I am touching you.” He smiled to himself and released me. “Do you … think of him touching you?”

I knew what the correct answer was. What Cecily Guildford would say. Only if his hand was truly yours.

“I do not think the lord chancellor would look twice at me, Your Majesty.” The truth. I hoped he’d find the answer dull, and I was relieved when the curiosity dimmed in his eyes.

I was quickly waved away so the Bastian ambassador, dressed in all black, could bow and present himself. This bored the king even further; he sank deeper into his seat and threw agonized glances at Charles. Until a single name was mentioned. Balthasar. The king sat up, then clenched his armrests. Dread crept through the audience chamber.

I walked slowly, carefully, down the hall. “Tell your magician we are aware of his plotting with my nephew,” the king hissed.

“Your Majesty,” the ambassador said, “Balthasar has no desire to see Fulke on the throne. He offers Your Majesty an hour with your dead, as a token of his friendship.”

“We do not play with ghosts in Alvion,” spat Charles Guildford. “It is unnatural. Perverse.”

After an usher shut the door behind me, I slumped against the wall, hand against my chest, until my heartbeat slowed. I had to slip through Redhall to ask my questions, I had to lengthen and compress like a shadow. But I’d stood out to the king, and being too memorable in this court was a costly mistake. I wouldn’t make it again.

You’ll never learn anything worth knowing, Roland had said. Not as a mouse. He was right: If I wanted to know what happened to Hal, I’d have to ask the Guildfords directly, and they would only tell the truth to one of their own.

That night, Edward Guildford had been neglected outside Roland’s rooms, just as I hoped. He leaned beside a brazier, shining his unsullied sword and humming a tune.

When I turned the corner, his song died in his throat. I curtseyed low so he could see the roundness of my breasts. “Is the lord chancellor inside?” I asked sweetly, blinking up at him the way Cecily looked at Roland.

“No,” Edward said cautiously.

I glanced around in mock confusion. “Perhaps I mistook the time we were supposed to meet.” A swift, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, Edward.”