Chapter Twelve
Twelve
A magician’s life is thought to be in sevens. Seven planets, seven years in a cycle. By seven, magic will emerge. By fourteen, a magician should be apprenticed. By twenty-one, their training completed, a magician may make their oath.
—PROSPERO THE ALL-KNOWING, THE CELESTIAL BODIES
Another note arrived, slipped beneath my door the way we used to goad snakes. Roland’s script was full of pretty flourishes and embellishments, his ts crossed with intricate swords.
Mouse—The docks when the bells ring at eight. Bring the book. R.
I tossed the note in the fire, and when the bells chimed, fetched Eleanor’s Book of Hours from its hiding place deep within my trunk. It was so small and thin I decided to tuck it inside my bodice.
Pulling on a thick wool cloak, I shuffled through the palace silently, tracing my fingers along Hal’s notch when I passed by.
Roland stood by the river, face tipped to the sky. He turned when he heard my soft tread on the grass. “You’re late. Do you have it?”
I nodded.
He waited expectantly. “Well then, where is it?”
“I’m sure you’d like to know.”
“Mmm. Now I’m very curious,” he said. “Quick. Into the barge. Your maid might be following you to see if we’re pressed up together against a tree.”
I batted his arm. “I would never have anyone against a tree.”
“No? What are your preferred locations?”
“I’m not entertaining this conversation, Roland.”
“Roland,” he mocked. He led us into a hidden copse, the leaves on sparse trees rustling in the wind.
The royal barge was tied to the dock, swaying on an angry tide.
The river rough against the banks, fog swirling around our knees as we stepped inside.
I wondered how often Roland secretly escaped from court. Often enough to have this prepared.
Together, we rowed into the current, floating toward a westward stench—even now, miles away, I could smell the city.
The stars overhead reflected on the dark water, allowing my vision to adjust slightly.
Though it was near summer, the night was crisp, and I fought against the urge to tuck closer to Roland.
I felt a weight on my chest then—a fur blanket. “Thank you.”
He turned, staring across the riverbank, into the town houses kept by lawyers and merchants, and the occasional nobleman. “We have only eleven days left until the Virgo Moon. Less than a fortnight.”
I’d made the same calculation. While he was recovering, I was painfully aware of it.
“We’ll find out what this chart predicts before it comes to pass,” Roland said. “Why it was drawn, and whether fate can be changed.”
“Do you believe it can?”
“No,” he admitted. “I think everything has already been decided.” He pointed up at the sky, but there was a gray sweep of clouds covering it now. “We are but its servants.”
“But you don’t want to serve anyone, do you?”
He set his oar down so it dragged beside the boat. “Why should it be him? I’m his regent when he’s ill, his chief advisor, his lord chancellor, and still, I am at his whim. What makes a man deserving of a crown, Bianca? Tell me.”
“Birthright. According to everyone.”
“Birthright.” He scoffed. “Both of us come from over there.” He pointed to the haze of chimney smoke, the deep gutter of the city.
“My mother worked at a brothel. She was a whore. Did you know that? I’m sure I never told you.
I was raised right there—” He jutted his chin.
“—in the slums. When I was a boy, my magic was very useful. I’d tell my mother what men wanted most, and I saw how much power she built because of it—power to lay a king down, even, and make him grovel.
Who should rule this kingdom, Bianca? Is it the old, silly king who lies rotting in bed and executes traitors to entertain his subjects?
Or should it be us? Those who are special enough to rise out of such a place? ”
I sucked in a breath. I’d never known about his past or where he came from. Maybe I assumed, because of his manner and grace, that he had been a lord’s third or fourth son. “How did Prospero find you?”
“I would stand at the doorway and bring clients to my mother.” He glanced at me quickly.
I tried to imagine it, a boy with Venus-pink hair standing unabashedly in the doorway.
So different from the way I’d hid myself, tucking my strange features away.
“I’d use my magic to pick them out, to determine whether they were safe to approach and what their intentions were, see.
And because of me, my mother knew exactly how to please the clients, knew what they wanted most. She was vain—I told you that already.
She liked the beauty and power I gave her.
It made her feel important. And one day—” He broke off, a frustrated sound tearing through his lips. “May I show you? I’d rather show you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’d like to,” he said calmly. “I want you to understand.”
The memory bobbed along the current of his mind, and all I had to do was reach out with my own and grasp it. “Come now,” he teased. “You aren’t a little bit curious to see where I come from? What made me who I am?”
I took a breath and tentatively, softly, touched his memory.
I was on a narrow street lined with crooked buildings, washing hung overhead.
A young Roland fiddled with a ball on a stoop, tossing it up and catching it to amuse himself.
The door behind him opened. The woman standing in the frame was breathtakingly beautiful, but her features were blurry—Roland could not recall them. He only remembered her as an ideal.
She was Elizabeth Daymour. His mother.
“Come, my love,” she said, and he followed her inside. The apartments were cramped, but every surface was covered in fine red velvet. Women luxuriating on cushions rubbed flower petals and oils over their skin.
She pulled her son close, kissed his head. When she was with clients, he would wait up for her, so afterward she could run her hands along his face and sing to him. Otherwise, he couldn’t sleep.
“Darling boy, I need you to help me one more time.”
And so he did for her what he hated doing above all else—what she asked him to do almost every night now.
He pulled a thread of attraction between her and the man she pointed to, a well-dressed courtier who sat quietly on a chair.
He had a gray beard and smelled of horses.
This man already wanted his mother, but she relied on Roland to feel the same, even if it was false, because then she wouldn’t detest the next few hours quite so much.
This arrangement had replaced the dependency on ale, had replaced simply shutting her eyes and enduring it.
Until Roland severed their ties, she would find this man the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most kind, even if he was ugly and rotten, and Roland did this for her because he loved her.
Even as he shook with unease and terror, he wanted to make her happy.
When Roland was finished, when the magic was stretched taut between them, Elizabeth’s eyes glazed over, and she took the stranger’s hands in her own, guiding him up the stairs, laughing girlishly and whispering into his ear.
Roland watched them disappear around the corner, then took his ball and returned to the stoop to draw in more customers.
Shame burned in him, but he didn’t understand it.
His mother called him magic. Her magical, irresistible boy.
She said his gift made him special, raised him above everyone in this alleyway, and because of his cleverness they’d have enough money to move to a nicer building soon.
Maybe she could become madame herself one day.
A few men passed by his stoop, but they all had such violent desires he let them continue on.
Shadows sank, and so did the city’s teeth.
Roland was so busy chasing his ball that he didn’t notice a man striding down the alley, leaping over puddles of lingering rainwater and waste.
He wore a feathered cap and a golden coat, the fabric so expensive it would’ve cost Roland and his mother a month to afford an inch of it.
His eyes were a shock of blue, the hottest part of a flame.
He had no lust to satiate; instead, he was looking for a boy who lived in this corner of the slums, rumored to read desire and embellish beauty. And he had found him.
Roland threw his ball against the wall once more, and the stranger’s hand darted out, caught it in midair. Roland frowned. “Who are you?”
The stranger returned his ball with an amused expression. “I am Prospero, Lord Chancellor to His Majesty the King.”
“What do you want here?”
“You already know that, don’t you, boy?”
Roland eyed him warily, unsure.
“Whoever you want to make pretty, I’ll do it for ten pennies or—” He thought for a moment. “Eight pennies, if that’s too much.” A flush swept across his face.
This Prospero had a world-weary look about him, though he was young. He reached into his pocket and flicked a coin into the air. As it flipped over and over, the coin multiplied, two to three to four, then a shower of gold coins rained down around Roland’s feet.
Roland plucked one from the mud. The king’s stark profile was stamped on it. He made a face. “Is it him you need me to make pretty?”
The stranger laughed at that, peering into the brothel beyond the stoop. “No, not him. Is your mother here?”
“She’ll be a while. Maybe hours. You’ll have to wait.”
“Hmm. I see.” A cart rolled by, flinging up mud, so the stranger sat beside Roland on the stoop. “How do you help your mother, Roland?”
Roland didn’t register that he had never told the man his name. He shrugged, but his eyes lit up. “I make her like the men that come here. I tell her when they’re thinking good thoughts. When they pass by, I know who will make a good client and bring them to her.”
The stranger smiled. “Can you tell if the men are married, or devoted to someone?”