Page 44 of The Court of Venus

And the code was in Prospero’s hand.

I carried the book to Charles’s desk, and Roland flung himself into a chair beside me. Placing the book before him under candlelight, I leaned over his shoulder. My hands shook.

Roland glanced down at them. “Very excitable, aren’t you?”

“Do you recognize this cipher?” A tap for emphasis.

“I— Hmm. I’m not sure.”

Frowning, he paged back to the beginning, to a Venus prayer for beauty meant to be recited at dawn, and there it was again: the handwriting in the margins of the book sinking into the page, then reappearing, as if taking breaths. The glyphs rearranged themselves in different combinations each time they emerged.

It wasn’t any script I knew. Prospero would have sought out a Mercury to create this code for him. For him and Eleanor, to speak in secret. A language all their own.

Roland flipped back and forth, and about midway through the book he found a folded sheet of parchment, tucked inside the pages. A star chart. Yet unlike the cipher scattered throughout the Book of Hours, the chart wasn’t drawn in Prospero’s hand, and it remained still.

He peered down, nose almost touching the parchment. A strand of hair swung across his cheekbone. Eyes suddenly wild, he spat into the ink pot, swirled a quill through it, then shuffled through the stacks of parchment on the desk, searching for a blank sheet. I reached for Prospero’s armillary sphere and placed it before him too. We rotated the brass rings until the metal sky mirrored the real one outside.

He drew a new chart beside the one we’d found. Today’s sky. When he’d finished, the two were almost exact, but not quite. In Prospero’s chart, the Moon had moved through a number of signs. The Sun, Mercury, and Venus were all nudged slightly to the left.

We compared the two side by side. “If this is today,” he said, “then the chart we just found is for—sixteen days from now? Fifteen? No, sixteen, I think.” He did a quick mental calculation. “The Moon exits Aquarius today and is entering Virgo here.”

The chart breached the surface of the page once again. “But this was drawn long ago. What is going to happen sixteen days from now?”

“Could be a birth,” Roland offered. “Or an heir’s conception?”

“Why hide it away, then?”

Roland had no answer to that, his hope dimming.

What were Eleanor and Prospero preparing for? Both of us had magic, yes, but not enough to stop this: the planets transiting through the sky, time always failing to hold them back. I held the candle closer to the paper, dripping hot wax onto my hand, flinching at the sting. “Perhaps this chart is somehow the key to the cipher?”

Our attention returned to the Book of Hours, but when Prospero’s code rose up in the margins, it was indecipherable, a shifting, random amalgamation of symbols. Roland wrote down the fragments he could glean in his careful hand, but it was useless.

Only a Mercury could make sense of it.

Roland turned to a new page. I leaned over his shoulder, our breaths quick and excited. We waited for the symbols to rise up from the depths of the book, heads bent close, cheeks nearly brushing. His eyes flicked to me, then away.

Legible words finally bobbed to the surface.

In case you look too closely, Uncle.

I shall await your ghost.

Eleanor

The script flashed silver.

Suddenly, a dark wave broke inside of me. My heartbeat slowed, my throat constricting until I couldn’t draw breath.

“Roland,” I gasped.

He glanced up, brows knitted together, just as my body refused to hold me upright anymore. Catching me in his lap, he cursed at the heat gathering in my cheeks, my bulging eyes. I was struggling to form words, but I didn’t need them. He knew precisely what I wanted: Prospero, help, The Celestial Bodies. He laid my head down gently and tore Charles’s library apart, books splitting at their seams as they crashed to the ground. Charles had to have a stolen copy. He must. Roland doubled over, then. A violent cough sprayed his white shirt crimson.

On his hands and knees, his breaths hard-fought, a glint on a spine caught his eye. Prospero the All-Knowing. He shoved the book toward me.

I whipped through pages with none of the careful delicacy I’d insisted upon earlier. I was gasping for air as Roland sank to the floor, panting against my shoulder. I felt each convulsion of his body against mine.

My eyes darted. At birth, a Mercury can speak and understand all tongues known and unknown, including those of animals and some varieties of plant … hold perfect pitch … distinguish between what is said and what is truly intended … useful in the negotiations of contracts and treaties, kings have long utilized …