Page 73 of The Court of Venus

“What of Queen Cecily’s coronation at the abbey?” asked Wyatt, taken aback that all his careful planning could be so easily brushed aside. “What of the final round of the tournament?”

“I will return the night before,” Roland told Wyatt. “I trust you to see to all remaining preparations.”

I didn’t understand. Cecily’s coronation was days away. How could we travel to Lionesse and back in such a short time? But the councilors didn’t seem to question it—they were grumbling about Lionessian ambition, Lionessian pride.

“Why not let Ambassador Hoo spearhead these negotiations?” asked Fulke Roet. A fair point.

Roland smiled. “And trust a matter as important as this to someone else? No. The king would like me to go myself, as his envoy. Our new master of spheres will accompany me, as I’d like insight into the moods of Philippe and his court.”

Roland’s ear was drawn toward Tom Guildford. It was settled—we would go to Lionesse, and Roland would leave the court in the hands of those who would steal it out from under him.

When the councilors bowed to Roland, picked up their papers, and began filtering out the door, I was cornered.

It was a fair-haired man with gaunt, spindly face.

Fulke Roet.

His mind was as much of a horror as the king’s, though a different terrain entirely. If the king’s was a mountain range of emotion, Fulke’s was flat, a lake of apathy. Both unsettled me.

Fulke wiped his wet nose with his sleeve. His eyes, as always, were rimmed with red. Roland had told me once that Fulke refused his services to improve his looks. He was not vain like the king; he understood that if he was powerful enough, he would be flattered regardless.

“Master of Spheres, wasn’t it?” he said. “A word?”

“Yes, all right.”

He tugged me by the elbow into a twisting stairwell strung with lancet windows. “So, you do still speak. My spies say they haven’t heard you.”

“I speak if I have something to say, Your Grace.”

“More women could use that trait,” he muttered.

Beneath my sleeves, I clenched my fists. My knuckles white. Yet I smiled sweetly. “You are here to ask if there are cracks in my loyalty to Roland.”

“You are newly returned to court, so I shall forgive your naïveté on the current state of affairs. But the lord chancellor is a self-important fairy tyrant who shits like the rest of us, despite what he’d have the king believe. A cell awaits him in the Archimago Tomb. Soon this will be my court, and he will have no place in it.”

“There is a reason Hal and Roland never wanted to be your friend, you know.”

“I don’t recall them wanting you around either. You think I cared to be Hal’s playmate? You think I cared for Roland’s friendship? No, Master of Spheres.” A smile slowly spread across his face. “I want enemies. For enemies prove we deserve to be feared.”

“By that logic,” I countered, “friends prove we deserve to be loved. But love is not a trove. Neither is fear. We don’t collect it only so we can flaunt our wealth.”

He cocked his head. “Fear or love. How to wield power. That is the question. Age-old. I say neither suffice. When your pretty ship sinks, I won’t hoist you onto mine. There are already holes in the hull, and the water is rising fast. You just can’t see it yet.”

When his argument didn’t move me, he clicked his tongue in disappointment. “I had thought you clever, mind-leech. Now I see you’re as silly and addled as the rest of his acolytes. He will drown you.”

There was a split in the channel, Roland explained, cut by a Saturn magician. A ship could sail through it and emerge near the Lionessian coast in a single breath. The passage had conditions sewn into the magic, like the doors in Redhall: The ship and cargo could cause no harm to the people of Lionesse, or else they would wreck during the crossing.

While Roland descended belowdecks, I rested my head against the railing, staring at the chop and the silver wake we carved. I watched and watched Alvion disappear, felt the tremble in the air as we passed through the boundary. The channel smoothed out, turned a brighter, cheerier blue. Seagulls wheeled above white cliffs. The air was thick and muggy, and soon I was sweating. I returned to my cabin to change gowns, and in the belly of the ship, the floor tipped from side to side. As the ship challenged a surging wave, I was thrown backward, flung into a bulkhead. I was still struggling into my thin shift when someone knocked on my door.

Roland peeked his head in. His gaze slipped down my body like a dropped stone. Though he quickly averted his eyes, his cheeks held one of the easy flushes I remembered from childhood. “We’re docking within the hour.”

I snatched my coverlet from the unused bed and wrapped it around my body. “I’ll join you in a moment.”

His head disappeared, then reappeared, this time with a grin. “Unless you’d like to wear that? It’s quite warm up there.”

“Out, Roland.”

I felt the flicker of his amusement as he closed the door.