Serenissima by Orazia Moritmer

SFINCS

Would you risk knowing the future? Venice, 1470. The city is filled with rumours of a Turkish fleet sailing the Mediterranean. Isabetta Zorzi, who walks the fine line of being a respectable courtesan, worries about the for-now distant threat. That threat seems even more distant to her twin, Catarina, living a quiet scholar's life in a convent. But a chance encounter with a sailor changes that. They now possess a magic glass gem that Catarina can use to see the future. It's a future no one wants to see: a future where Venice's colonies fall to Ottoman armies, while the Venetian fleet does nothing. The women can't tell anyone what they know, though, because they would be denounce for witchcraft. They need a man, but the only one who knows about the glass gem is a runaway slave from an enemy city. Can a courtesan, a nun, and a (former?) slave save Venice?