Santángel sensed when Antonio Pérez entered the room. It was like standing in the sea and feeling the tide shift, pulling at your ankles, the

sand sliding away as the ocean breathed. Everybody turned as he made his way around the room, acknowledging some, ignoring others.

Beside him Víctor stiffened as Pérez passed without a nod in his direction. The slight pleased Santángel at the same time that it intrigued him. He still didn’t fully understand the limits of his own influence. But he did know Pérez had best hope to regain the king’s ear. The insult was not

one Víctor would soon forgive.

Even in disgrace, Pérez showed no sign of doubt or worry. He was a tidy little man, precise in his gestures, his clothing as lavish as his home, each fold and bit of padding impeccably tailored, as if he were a finely made marionette. He was a man who took pleasure in attention the way only the fearless could.

He raised his glass and the room fell silent.

“There is no greater empire than this one and no greater king than ours. It is Spain that must see to the soul of the world, and this heavy burden rests upon our blessed ruler’s shoulders, placed there by God Himself. As the

brave Don Juan bested the barbarians at Lepanto, so we take up musket and cross to subdue the Flemish traitors and the heretic wretch Elizabeth. If then our mighty king would have miracles, I will provide them. There is no holier man, no holier country, no holier cause.”

The musicians struck a dramatic chord, as if they really were at the theater and someone were about to begin a song.

“Bold to invoke Don Juan’s name,” murmured Víctor. “Why?” Luzia whispered.

When Santángel lowered his lips to her ear, the sweet green scent of

orange blossoms overwhelmed him. Did she have a lover? And why did the

thought make him want to find this mysterious suitor and bury a knife in his heart?

“Bold because the hero of Lepanto was no match for the Dutch,” he whispered back to her. “He was trounced and forced to retreat. And Pérez had the man’s secretary murdered. It’s why he lost the king’s favor. You must stop wearing scent if you are to play La Hermanita. No nun is importing perfume from Paris.”

Luzia frowned. “I don’t wear scent.”

He wasn’t going to argue the point. “Go take your place in the wings.

You will follow the Beauty.”

She nodded, jaw set. He almost expected her to roll up her sleeves as if she were about to attack a stubborn stain.

“Why must she march off that way?” grumbled Víctor. “Where has all her training gone?”

“There’s a certain charm to it,” the widow protested. “Perhaps her determination will distinguish her.”

Pérez placed himself at the exact center of the room, where a few chairs had been set. He had no need for a throne or dais. The crowd had opened a path before him, so that his sightline would not be obscured.

Gracia de Valera floated up the stairs and onto the stage, her heavily ornamented gown glittering like a night sky.

“Exquisite,” said Víctor sourly. “Have we miscalculated?”

“The dress is not what matters here.” And such ornament didn’t suit Luzia. Her power would shine more brightly than any bauble or jewel. Though Santángel was beginning to believe her will was the greater gift. She was stubborn as a well-built wall, as decided in her course as an avalanche.

He wondered why the Beauty had chosen to walk to the stage instead of appearing from behind the curtain. She curtsied deeply, as if to the king himself, her movement slow and perfectly controlled, then lifted one

delicate hand. The curtain rose, revealing a tower of glass goblets.

Luzia’s glasses.

Víctor released a grunt, as if he’d been struck. The widow pressed a hand to her mouth. Marius just looked flummoxed, and Valentina’s head bobbed on her neck, up and down, left and right, as if she could adjust the angle on this situation and somehow make it less of a debacle.

Now Santángel understood why Gracia de Valera had asked to perform first.

He searched the crowd for Luzia, but she had already gone. Was she seeing this now from her place in the wings? What would she do? There might be time to fetch candles, but he didn’t like the idea of the fire trick. Not so soon, not when they were trying to avoid even a hint of the diabolical. Perhaps the grapevines? He looked around the room, but he could see no arrangements of flowers. He watched in growing fear as

Gracia smashed the goblets. She did it coyly, elegantly, drifting past the table and extending a single slender finger to tip each glass off the edge, sharing a shy smile with the audience as she did so.

“Oh, she’s very good,” said the widow.

She was. Her glance was demure and at the same time mischievous, her walk graceful without seeming practiced. When the goblets lay in a sparkling heap of shards she stepped behind the table, made the sign of the cross, and extended her arms. Her sleeves had been cleverly beaded so that they looked like angel’s wings, and she tilted her face upward, the light catching her perfect features.

“Is she experiencing a vision?” asked the woman beside him. “A visitation?” queried her companion.

“Something certainly,” murmured the widow when Gracia released a moan.

The Beauty threw her hands skyward as if conducting an invisible orchestra. A sound like a choir singing filled the room, the voices high and heavenly, nearly inhuman in their purity. Clouds appeared at her slippered feet, billowing up and engulfing her and the stage.

The crowd gasped. The mist cleared.

Gracia de Valera appeared with head humbly bowed as if in prayer. The goblets stood in a line, all of them perfect.

“Now, that’s a performance,” said Don Marius.

“Horseshit,” said Santángel, and Doña Valentina gasped.

It was all fakery. Very good fakery, no doubt concocted with some of the best set dressers and players from the Corral de la Cruz. But an illusion nonetheless.

If Gracia de Valera had any kind of magic, she hadn’t chosen to use it tonight.

So now they knew at least one of the competitors trafficked in fraud. But it might not matter. If Luzia embarrassed herself there would be no coming back from it. Santángel wouldn’t be able to spare her Víctor’s wrath.

The curtain dropped and the crowd chattered, marveling at Gracia’s beauty, her poise, the perfection of her gown. She descended into the crowd to applause, her wealthy patron, Don Eduardo Barril, greeting her with a

bow.

Again the musicians struck their chord. Again the curtain rose. The tower of glasses remained and there was Luzia in her plain black dress, La Hermanita, a solemn little penitent with seashells in her tightly braided hair, the rosary Víctor and the widow had gifted her the only sign of ornament.

Santángel couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She stared out at the ballroom and he wondered if she was contemplating cracking the table with the song she used to split firewood or if she could make a fig tree grow from the platters at the sideboards. Her mouth was set in what he could only describe as an angry line.

She eyed the tower of goblets, approaching them with none of Gracia’s ease. She looked like a frustrated captain surveying her disobedient troops and considering their punishment. She seized one and smashed it to the ground defiantly. Then another. And another. The audience stirred, restless. Someone laughed under his breath. Antonio Pérez was slouched back in his seat, his lips pulled down in a scowl.

She can’t be foolish enough to perform the same trick. He felt a sinking disappointment, not that she would be mocked, not even that Víctor would disavow her, but that he had thought better of her, of her wit, of her lively speech that galloped along like a skittish pony, hooves dancing, nothing like the hesitant creature he’d met in the widow’s courtyard, a peasant girl who was not at all what she seemed.

As if she could hear his thoughts, she glanced at him, her brow cocking slightly, the look of a woman amused. Well. Enjoy your smiles now. Víctor would chase her from Madrid for the crime of humiliating him. Santángel supposed he should be glad to see his master made a laughingstock, but he remembered Luzia standing in panic before the stalk of a pomegranate tree, trying to find a song to save him. Endure, endure. They both knew that refrain so well.

She closed her eyes. She must be hearing the words to bring the goblets back together. Once she stomped her foot, twice. As if she were furious, as

if she wore the boot now and all who watched would be crushed beneath it. When she stomped her foot a third time, her voice rose in a high, eerie wail and the shattered bits of glass rose with it, a gently whirring glimmer of dust in the candles’ glow.

The audience went quiet, their attention snared. This was at least different from the mist and artifice of Gracia’s performance.

Luzia lifted her arms gently and the cloud of shattered glass rose high

above her head, then out over the audience. The pieces hung in the air, some larger, some smaller, shifting slowly this way and that.

Pérez’s brow had lowered. He looked perplexed but not pleased. The cloud separated, lines forming, creating points of brightness.

Santángel understood what she was doing a bare breath before the crowd did. They gasped. Pérez’s mouth opened with an audible pop.

The glass had arranged itself into stars, a glittering constellation that hung above Antonio Pérez’s head: the shape was unmistakable, as if a slice of the distant universe had appeared in this ballroom. The Pleiades. The sign under which the king’s secretary had been born, the chart that had pleased him so powerfully, the promise that his fate was bound up with

kings and queens.

The illiterate peasant girl had read his letter. A letter contemplating Pérez’s arrogance, his attachment to this dream of his own greatness. A letter written in Latin.

The crowd burst into thunderous applause, surging toward Pérez, trying to reach up to touch the glass constellation. Pérez himself rose to his feet, his eyes bright and fastened firmly on Luzia.

The scullion had bested Gracia de Valera in stunning fashion. She had taken the Beauty’s insult and turned it theatrically to her benefit. Víctor seized his shoulder. “Brilliant,” he crowed. “What is the matter with you? Why do you look like you’re ready to do murder?”

Santángel mustered a smile. “I am merely thinking of what challenge may come next and how to meet it.”

Assuming the liar Luzia Cotado survived the night.