Page 88 of The Court of Venus

This morning his hair was ruffled, and there were deep grooves under his eyes. He was overly polite and courteous to me, as if we were strangers. When Marguerite’s guards stepped aside and held the doors for us, Roland extended his hand so I’d go first. I made a quizzical face, but he only stared blankly ahead.

Inside her presence chamber, Marguerite sat in a low velvet chair surrounded by her women. They rose in a wave. Diane, the lady-in-waiting who’d caught Roland’s attention last night, flared pink.

“We’d like to see you alone, Marguerite,” Roland said.

“Oh?” She pressed a hand to her chest. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She gestured for her ladies to leave us. Roland’s maid was the only one to glance back. After the doors were shut, Roland cast around to be sure we were indeed alone, then we settled opposite her in two of the vacated chairs. Roland laid the torn parchment on her lap.

“What’s this?” she asked in Lionessian.

“Read it,” snapped Roland. They must have argued last night after I’d left.

She inspected it quickly, with little interest. “Coronation expenditures. Did you steal this?”

“Yes,” I said bluntly. Roland shot me a look.

But Marguerite cocked her head, curious to know more. Not afraid of what we may have uncovered. At least, not yet.

“These records would suggest the king was not yet alive when he was coronated,” I explained. She followed where I pointed. “How can that be?”

“Strange indeed.” She frowned prettily. A single line appeared on her brow. “This must be inaccurate.”

“In the king’s portraits, he doesn’t appear to have aged since you arrived at court twenty-five years ago. Peculiar, is it not?”

She laughed. A bell chiming. “Because kings so enjoy seeing themselves as old men.”

Roland slapped his hand against his armrest. “Enough, Marguerite. What do you know about exaltation?”

It was an Alvionish word. She sounded it out, and I knew she was a stranger to it.

He clicked his tongue. “What can I offer you?”

Marguerite wiped her hands on her gown, her gaze traveling up and down his body before settling on his face. Then she laughed. “Do not flatter yourself.”

“I wasn’t offering myself—”

Marguerite lifted her palm to silence him. “We will have ourselves a trade. What you two want most, for what I want most. Fair is fair.”

Venusborn and their trades. Roland eyed her skeptically, sensing a trick, but she’d provided us with an opening we couldn’t refuse. “Fine.”

“So, you’ve found this proof.” Her small nose wrinkled. “Tell me what you suppose it means.”

“Your abilities changed when you met the king, did they not?” I said. “You found you could do more than just improve his looks. You could stop him from aging altogether. You could suspend his life.”

She shifted in her seat. Ah. There was the fear. But it was not the fear of being caught somewhere you shouldn’t be. It was the fear of impending loss.

“And now your methods are not working as well as they had before,” I guessed. “Philippe is aging. Dying. Perhaps, if we understood why, we could help you. Prospero was searching for something. Did he come here? Question you, at all?”

“Oh, yes, but he was not as direct as you. Prospero went after my ladies, cornered them, tried to bribe them to share my secrets. He planted spies in my household. His Mercuries opened my letters.”

“Exaltation was one of Prospero’s theories,” I explained to her. “He thought the position of the planets might affect our magic in strange ways. When Venus is in Pisces, for example, your powers would expand. You might even be able to grant Philippe immortal life.”

In Alvionish: “He believed this exaltation was how I kept Philippe alive all these years?”

I nodded.

She brushed lint from her gown, switching back to the comfort of Lionessian. For my sake, she spoke slowly. “When I came to court, I was seventeen years old. I was to serve Queen Charlotte and apprentice to an old Venusborn who died soon after my arrival. Exertions in the bedchamber.” She snorted. “As soon as he saw me, old Philippe was infatuated. I held him off for several years, until I was nineteen, but what men want, they have. And Philippe was a king. I came to love him in my way. We understood each other, our capacity for—” She searched for the correct word. “—excess. He has always looked the other way, you must understand. Having me near him has always been enough for the lovesick fool.” She coughed, folding her hands together. “When I was twenty-one years old, he fell in a jousting accident, tore out his eye. He should not have competed at his age, but he wanted to impress me.”