Page 56 of The Court of Venus

We followed him up the thin, creaking stairwell, down a passageway the size of a woman’s hips. Roland’s shoulders were so broad he was forced to shuffle sideways. Oliver twisted a rusted key into his door and swung it open, revealing a room that barely fit a bed and a desk. Musical compositions were scattered across the floor, along with half-eaten bowls of food and tipped-over goblets.

Roland grimaced at the sight.

Oliver lit a candle and held it high over Eleanor’s book. The light traced over the strange glyphs rising and sinking in the margins, as if the book itself were alive. “This is an Ellisian code.”

We both stared at him blankly.

“A Mercury named Ellis was known for ciphers like this,” he explained. “He’s dead now, or else I’d try and find him, and this might be an imitator’s work besides.” He pointed to the breathing cipher. “He is a fundamental part of a Mercury’s education. Ellis was influenced by ancient languages and pictographs. He also was a rather wily fellow, or so I’m told. He enjoyed trickery. These symbols correspond to the opposite of what they look like at first glance. For example, this circle represents perfection. So to Ellis, it usually meant someone flawed. A sinner, or criminal.” Oliver muttered something to himself, casting around for a new sheet of parchment.

“Can’t you decipher it?” Roland asked.

“Of course. But I need the words to remain still first.” He’d noticed the confusion drawn on our faces. “Some ciphers have conditions, just like Saturn boundaries. This one may only emerge if it’s brought to a certain place. Or only for a reader with a certain name. You see?”

Roland rolled his eyes and picked at nonexistent dirt beneath his nails. “I expected him to be quicker about it,” he whispered to me.

I shushed him.

“Clever,” Oliver said after several minutes. “This is rather clever.”

He strode over to the window, to the slant of moonlight on the floor, and held the book beneath it. Under the silvered light, the glyphs settled in place. We were beckoned over.

“Oh, I wish I had thought of this,” Oliver said. “This Book of Hours is only meant to be used during the day. The final entries are for prayers to Venus at dusk. And so, this cipher can only be read at night, by moonlight. It’s brilliant, really.”

My pulse sped. Moonlight was the key. Were Prospero and Eleanor somehow speaking to me, telling me to find this, to continue on?

Oliver set to work, translating onto a loose sheet of parchment. He tore out a small section for Roland and me to decipher if we could, but I knew it was just to keep us busy. We struggled to navigate even a single sentence.

Roland wrote war beneath a glyph.

“Eternity,” I corrected.

His eyes leapt to mine. “How so?”

“It’s a straight line. It has a clear beginning and end. The opposite of that is eternity.”

“Not conflict? If a straight line represents stasis, or peace?”

I swiped the quill from his hand and scribbled Eternity.

Roland shook his head. Reached for the pen. Conflict.

I crossed that out, certain it was wrong.

He flicked ink onto my nose. When we passed our translation over to Oliver, and he agreed that eternity was his own reading, Roland scowled.

“I despise Mercury magic,” he grumbled as he lay on Oliver’s bed, an arm thrown over his eyes. “These ciphers are impossible.”

“Not only ciphers,” I said under my breath. But when I made to wipe the ink off the bridge of my nose, it was already gone.

Many hours later, dawn spread outside the windows. Roland had long drifted to sleep, but I stayed up watching the light gather.

“Is there some disguised meaning here?” I removed the chart tucked inside Eleanor’s book and showed it to him. After only a quick study of it, Oliver shook his head. Just a common star chart.

He handed me the stack of papers, tied neatly with a ribbon, eager to be rid of it. “Mercuries see a great many things not intended for our eyes. Whose handwriting was this?” he asked, his face grim.

“Prospero’s,” I admitted.

Roland didn’t feel his terror. But I did, and I knew whatever Oliver had learned in these pages was the very thing he feared.