The Golden City (4 page)

The boards gave enough for her to squeeze through.

After one la
st
glance at Isabel’s lifeless form, Oriana wriggled through that space. Her skirt caught on a nail, and she had to rip it to get loose.

She was free.

She let herself float there for a moment. Her skirts were heavy, but her natural buoyancy kept her from sinking too quickly.

The river’s surface above her was dark. Before her Oriana saw shapes floating in the water, more traps like the one she’d ju
st
escaped. They were twenty feet or so under the surface, trying to float but prevented from rising any higher by thick chains that tethered them to the river’s murky bed below. Why didn’t they sink to the bottom? Oriana kicked away from her prison, trying to grasp the bigger pi
ct
ure of what she was seeing. In the nighttime waters she could make out two neat rows,
st
retching on for some di
st
ance. There mu
st
be more than twenty of these prisons under the river’s surface.

It was
The City Under the Sea
.

Oriana had read of the great work of art being assembled beneath the surface of the Douro. The newspapers often opined about it, ever since the pieces began appearing in the water almo
st
a year ago. Each was a replica of one of the great houses that lined the Street of Flowers, the
st
reet of the ari
st
ocrats. Shrunk down in scale to no larger than a coach, the replicas were con
st
ru
ct
ed in wood. They were all upside down, enspelled so that they would float, yet chained to the riverbed so they could never escape. They swayed in the grasp of the river’s outbound current, all moving in eerie unison.

Oriana looked back at the house in which she’d been imprisoned. It was a replica of the Amaral mansion, Isabel’s home. To one side was the copy of the Rocha mansion, and on the other the elegant Pereira de Santos house.

Had Isabel been killed merely for the sake of this . . . artwork? Had others awakened in the darkness only to realize, like Isabel, that their death was seeping in about them?

Oriana gasped, drawing in water, and corruption touched her gills. The water ta
st
ed foul, reminding her of a shipwreck, bodies left behind in the water for the fish and other creatures to pick clean. Nausea sent a flush of heat through her body. She slapped a hand over her mouth and nose, as if that could prote
ct
her from breathing in the death that was all about her. Oriana kicked hard, fighting the weight of her garments. She had to get to the surface, away from this graveyard.

She swam toward a spot of light that mu
st
be the moon’s refle
ct
ion on the water. But when she broke the surface, her head banged again
st
the hull of a small boat, hard enough to disorient her. She in
st
in
ct
ively shoved away. The
st
ars spun. In the di
st
ance she saw the lights of a city, although she couldn’t tell which one. She let herself slip back under the water, the only safe place. She spread her fingers wide so she would feel in her webbing when the boat moved away.

In
st
ead she sensed someone diving into the water. Oriana kicked back down toward the depths, but her pursuer kept after her. She drew her dagger again, but before she could turn about, a large hand clamped down on her hand. She had no leverage to jerk away, and it took only a second before the man attached to that hand managed to pry the blade loose from her fingers. It spun away down through the water, quickly obscured. The tang of blood floated in the water; the dagger had cut her hand when he’d wre
st
led it away. The man wrapped an arm about her che
st
and dragged her back up toward the surface.

When she broke the surface again, a second man dug his hands into her sodden dress while the man in the water pushed her up and over the edge of the boat. She tumbled into the bilge.

For a second Oriana huddled there, hands balled into fi
st
s, trying to catch her breath. Her head throbbed and her hand did as well. Blood leaked from the palm of her right hand, but she didn’t dare look. If she opened her hand to check the wound, her captors would surely see the webbing. Who were these men out on the water in the dark?

The boat rocked as the man who’d pursued her into the river climbed back aboard. She had to face them eventually. Oriana took a deep breath and
st
ruggled to right herself between the planks of the rowboat. A moment later she was seated on a bench, wet skirts tangled about her legs, facing an older gentleman. Her pursuer settled behind her. The man before her was sixty or so,
st
ill handsome, with gray hair and a
st
ern, square jaw. She recognized his face but couldn’t place it. Where had she seen him before?

“Are you well, miss?” The older man had a blanket in his hands. Oriana flinched back as he leaned forward. He persi
st
ed, wrapping the blanket about her shoulders.

Oriana began to shiver. Her garments and shoes were soaked through. She lifted one hand to push her hair from her face, remembering to fold her fingers to hide the webbing. Where she’d banged her forehead again
st
the side of the boat, it was already tender.

Had they seen her hands? When they’d pulled her into the boat, had she had her fingers spread? She buried them in the blanket. Perhaps they’d been so busy they hadn’t noticed.
Please, gods, let that be the case.

The man repeated his que
st
ion. He sounded kindly. He sounded concerned.

He thinks he’s rescuing me.
Oriana nearly laughed at the thought. She cleared her throat in
st
ead. Her breath
st
ill came shallow, and too fa
st
. “Yes,” she mumbled. “I’m . . . well enough.”

“That’s good,” he said. “We were worried when we saw you in the water.”

Her hands balled into fi
st
s again under the cover of the blanket. She needed to think fa
st
er, smarter. Why was this man out on the river? The Special Police patrolled the waters of the Douro every night, and she thought they had extra patrols over
The City Under the Sea
, but this little rowboat wasn’t one of theirs. Had these men slipped pa
st
their patrols? The moon hadn't risen yet, and the only light came from a shuttered lantern set on a hook at the fore of the little boat, so it was possible they might not have been seen. The boat began to move, the large man behind her handling the oars, smelling of river water and musk.

The gentleman laid a gloved hand on her sodden knee. “Now, miss. How did you get out here?”

Oriana tried to gather her wits. She shook her head jerkily.

“I had a vision,” he said then, “that there would be a girl in the water. I came here
st
raightaway to see you safe, miss.”

Vision?
With a sinking in her
st
omach, Oriana suddenly placed his face. The man before her was Paolo Silva, one of Prince Fabricio’s favored seers. She had seen the man before, although at a di
st
ance, at more than one of the balls she’d gone to with Isabel. She hadn’t wanted to attra
ct
his attention then, and she didn’t want it now. Her lips trembled. The shivering was worse now, and not ju
st
from the cold.

This man was close to the prince who so hated her people. If Silva knew what she was, he would surely turn her in. She could try to dive back into the water, but she wasn’t sure she could get into the river before the oarsman grabbed her. Her twi
st
ed skirts and the blanket would make that easy for him. And attempting escape would confirm that she had something to hide. She swallowed hard. There was
st
ill a chance they hadn’t realized her true nature.

Oriana tried to keep her voice from shaking. “Thank you, sir,” she managed.

“Good,” Silva said. “You’ve found your voice. Now, do you recall how you got out here, miss? I’m amazed you managed to keep your head above water.”

Her head
hadn’t
been above water. If she told this man she’d been trapped in the houses below, he would know for certain she wasn’t human.

“I was dumped off one of the bridges, I think,” she lied quickly. “I was drugged, but I remember falling.” She sounded pathetic enough to lend it plausibility.

The small lamp swayed with the motion of the boat, ca
st
ing Silva’s features in light, then shadow. “How terrible! Shall I take you to a hospital, then, miss? Or the police
st
ation?”

Neither one of those options would end well for her. “No,” she said quickly. “I mu
st
get home to my mother. She mu
st
be terribly worried. She lives right on the quay.”

“Of course, miss,” Silva said solicitously. “I’ll escort you to your door myself, if you wish.”

Oriana caught her lower lip between her teeth. Did he a
ct
ually believe she’d been thrown off a bridge? Perhaps he suspe
ct
ed she’d thrown herself from one of the bridges. In the dim light of the swinging lantern, his face was unreadable. “No,” she told him firmly. “No. If you’ll take me to the quay, I can get home from there.”

“I feel responsible for you now, miss,” he said gently.

She didn’t want to be around this man any longer than necessary, no matter how kindhearted he seemed. “Please, sir,” she said, “you’ve done enough.”

“May I know your name, at lea
st
?” he asked.

When people realized that Isabel was missing, her own name would surely be mentioned in the gossip. Silva might remember having seen her in Isabel’s company, so lying would only draw suspicion. “Paredes,” she said. “Oriana Paredes.”

He reached over and patted her blanket-covered shoulder in a grandfatherly way. “I’m glad I followed the promptings of my gift tonight, Miss Paredes. I suspe
ct
our meeting mu
st
be propitious. I know we shall meet again.”

Not if I can help it
.

They had neared the tree-lined avenue of Massarelos—almo
st
a mile from where they’d found her—far sooner than Oriana expe
ct
ed. The oarsman used a hook to drag the boat over to one of the
st
one ramps leading up to the
st
reet level. Oriana rose carefully. Hand folded to conceal the webbing, she grabbed for the rail and managed to wrangle her wet skirts about to get her footing on the
st
one. Once out of reach of either man, she felt far safer. She
st
arted to unwrap the blanket from about her shoulders.

“No, you mu
st
keep it,” the seer insi
st
ed. “You mu
st
go home immediately and change into warm clothes, miss.”

“Thank you, sir,” Oriana repeated dully.

She walked up the ramp and glanced back to see the oarsman shoving the small boat away with an oar. Beyond the feeble glow of the
st
reetlamps, the boat’s inhabitants were quickly rendered invisible.

Now that she’d escaped her unwanted savior, Oriana desperately wanted to curl up somewhere and cry. She wanted warm clothes. And dry shoes. And a bath to get the foul ta
st
e of the water near
The City Under the Sea
out of her gills. She wanted to sleep. Perhaps she would wake to find that it was all a dream.

But fir
st
she had to tell Lady Amaral that Isabel was gone. Somewhere in the bottom of her heart she would have to find the
st
rength to do that.

FRIDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 1902

A
vague sense of foreboding kept Duilio Ferreira from sleeping. An idea fluttered about in his mind, refusing to be caught. Something was wrong; he simply had no idea what.

He lay in his warm, draped bed,
st
aring up into the darkness. He toyed with the idea of rising, turning up the lights, and attempting to read, but hadn’t quite given up on sleeping. His limited seer’s gift had something it wanted him to know. He simply wasn’t sure whether he wanted to spend his night trying to figure it out. He would rather be sleeping. The clock on his mantel, barely visible across the murky dark of his bedroom, ticked pa
st
three.

He groaned and tried turning onto his side. It was something about
water.
Something had happened or was going to happen in the river.

He was helping the police inve
st
igate the work of art being slowly assembled near the river’s mouth,
The City Under the Sea
. Surely his edginess was related to that. The arti
st
, Gabriel Espinoza, had taken into his mind to re-create the grand houses that lined the Street of Flowers. He’d anchored the fir
st
replica in the water a year ago, yet only recently had the Security Police—the regulars—begun to inve
st
igate those houses, suspe
ct
ing that something more sini
st
er than art might be driving the creation. They had immediately been ordered to close their inve
st
igation, although it was unclear from how high in the government that order had come. That had only served to pique Duilio’s intere
st
. As a private citizen, he could
st
ill ask all the que
st
ions he wanted.

The latch of his bedroom door turned with a faint click.

Reflex more than anything else got him onto his feet before the door opened halfway. He didn’t feel the twinge of warning that usually alerted him to danger, but he snatched up the revolver that lay on his night
st
and and held it ready as he turned to face the intruder. A shape
st
ood unmoving in the doorway,
st
artled by his sudden a
ct
ion. Someone else waited in the hallway with a lamp, ca
st
ing the intruder into silhouette.

His visitor was female, even though she clearly wore trousers. That didn’t mean she was harmless; a woman could be as dangerous as any man. But Duilio felt sure there was no reason to fear this visitor. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “What do you want?”

“You’re him, aren’t you?” a feminine voice asked, confirming her gender. “Erdano’s brother.”

Well, any woman who knew
that
wasn’t likely to be a threat. Duilio lowered the revolver and set it back on the night
st
and. His visitor had to be one of Erdano’s women—part of his brother’s harem.

Duilio buttoned the top button of his nightshirt and
st
arted hunting for his felt slippers. “Give me a moment, please.”

Very few humans had any inkling the Ferreira family possessed selkie blood, and those who did were polite enough not to let themselves into his bedroom in the middle of the night. It was, of course, an open secret among their employees that Duilio’s mother was a selkie. While mo
st
selkies spent their lives in seal form, every moment in the sea or on a beach, she’d been raised among humans. But for a time she
had
lived as a seal among the neare
st
harem, to the north of the mouth of the Douro River at Braga Bay. Erdano was her child by that harem’s ma
st
er. He often visited the Ferreira household, but tonight he’d sent one of his women in
st
ead.

Duilio cursed under his breath. His valet had hidden his comfortable-but-worn slippers again, an unsubtle reminder that the man wanted Duilio to replace them. He gave up on finding them, crossed to the mantel, and lit the gaslight there. It wasn’t likely that bare feet would offend this woman anyway. He turned up the light enough to ca
st
a feeble circle of illumination about the armchair and table waiting before the hearth, then looked back at the unknown woman. “Do you have a message from Erdano?”

“Yes.” She
st
epped into the light, revealing pointed features set in a heart-shaped face. Light brown hair fell sleekly over her shoulders. She was a lovely girl, but as soon as Duilio caught the scent of her, any thought of getting to know her better fled. Evidently before she walked barefoot into the city to find him, she’d simply borrowed some of Erdano’s garments. The clothes—a man’s trousers and shirt cinched tight by a wide belt at her wai
st
—reeked of musk. Duilio resi
st
ed the urge to pinch his nose closed. Even though he was only half selkie himself, he had never much liked the scent of other males.

“Sir?” a voice asked from the hallway, dragging Duilio’s attention away from the girl. João, the young boatman who
st
ayed down on the quay with the family’s boats,
st
ood there, his sheepish expression evident in the light of the lamp he carried. “She came onto the yacht looking for you, sir. I thought it be
st
to bring her here to the house. I . . . I thought she would knock, but . . .”

“It’s fine, João.” Duilio knew better than to expe
ct
polite behavior from this girl. Selkies didn’t have the same manners as humans. She
st
ood gazing up at the gaslight di
st
ru
st
fully. “Give me a few minutes,” Duilio said, “and then you can escort her back.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man nodded quickly and withdrew into the hallway, pulling the bedroom door shut as he went.

Duilio wished João hadn’t closed the door. The girl wouldn’t be concerned for her reputation, but Duilio would prefer that the servants not get the wrong idea. He plucked his velvet dressing gown off the end of his bed, drew it on over his nightshirt, and belted it. Then he returned to the girl’s side, leaning closer to get her attention. “What did you need to see me about?”

“Oh. There was a woman in the water,” she said, watching the flickering gaslight as if concerned the flames might suddenly jump out of the fixture.

A woman in the water?
That had to be what his gift had been yammering on about. “Where?”

The girl glanced at him for the fir
st
time. Her eyes slid toward his velvet dressing gown, her brows drawing together. “What is that?”

She’d probably spent mo
st
of her life in the sea and would have little familiarity with human luxuries. Duilio held out his arm so the girl could touch his sleeve. “It’s called velvet.”

She laid a tentative hand on his arm. The corners of her lips lifted as she ran her hand over the fabric’s nap. Her warm brown eyes were, in the gaslight’s glow, quite lovely. “Pretty. Can I have it?”

In addition to their ability to change form, mo
st
selkies purportedly had magical abilities in the area of sedu
ct
ion—selkie charm, it was often called. Duilio doubted this selkie was more than eighteen; young in human terms, but likely experienced in many things human girls of that age would not be. He patted her hand in his be
st
fatherly manner. “What is your name?”

“Aga.” Her eyes flicked toward the bed and then up to meet his. “Tigana said I could
st
ay with you. You could give me the velvet.”

God help me.
Duilio pressed his lips together, weighing his response. Tigana, the queen of Erdano’s harem, had control of the harem’s many females. It wasn’t the fir
st
time she’d sent him a girl, apparently believing he mu
st
be in dire need of a woman. Duilio had never been sure of the rules of harem politics and, not wanting to cause fri
ct
ion between Erdano and his queen, he’d always refused the gift. Well, save for the fir
st
time. Since then he’d tried to handle it diplomatically.

“Can you tell me what you saw, Aga?” he asked, reminding the girl of the reason she’d come. “Where was the woman?”

The girl’s mouth drew down in a moue. “Over the rotting houses.”

The rotting houses were what the selkies called
The City Under the Sea.
The houses themselves were all new, even the olde
st
not showing much wear from being underwater yet. All the same, the selkies had noticed a scent of rot in the water about them—a detail that Duilio feared was linked to several reports of missing servants. They had only made a conne
ct
ion between those missing servants and the work of art a few weeks ago, when Lady Pereira de Santos had reported two of her maids missing only a day after the replica of her house had been mentioned in the newspapers. They’d wondered if their bodies might be hidden within those houses. Aga’s sighting firmly linked Duilio’s sense of foreboding to
The City Under the Sea
, but he was
st
ill missing some vital clue. “Was she swimming?”

Aga shrugged fluidly. “Yes, but then she was in the boat.”

Duilio felt his brows drawing together. When had a boat entered the conversation? “How late was this, Aga? Had the sun set?”

She sighed as if vexed by all his que
st
ions. “Only a little while ago. I swam to the mouth and then to the big boat . . .”

The “big boat” would be the Ferreira family’s yacht, moored out pa
st
the Bicalho Quay. “I see.”

“. . . and then I walked here with the man.”

Duilio chewed his lower lip as he calculated. Aga had swum out to the mouth of the Douro, almo
st
three miles again
st
the current, back to the yacht, and then she’d walked nearly a mile up the
st
eep
st
reets of the Golden City. How long had that taken her? Perhaps two hours? Three? “So, was it before the moon rose?”

“Yes.” Her tone sugge
st
ed he might be dense.

Women did not swim in the river in the middle of the night. Mo
st
human women never learned to swim at all. “Did you see the woman, Aga? What did she look like?”

The girl
st
epped closer and laid graceful hands on his velvet-covered che
st
. She didn’t quite reach his chin. “She wore black. And white.”

His gift told him that this conversation was
important
, that he needed to know something this girl was telling him . . . or not telling him. He wasn’t sure what que
st
ions he needed to ask. “Were you close?” he pressed. “Did you see her face?”

Aga rubbed her cheek again
st
his che
st
. “No. Wrong way.”

He wished Tigana hadn’t been in a mood to be generous. He didn’t need this sort of di
st
ra
ct
ion now. Duilio set his hands on the girl’s shoulders,
st
epped back, and tried again. “This is important, Aga. Can you tell me anything else? Did she fall out of the boat?”

“No, it was waiting when she came up,” Aga said, her shoulders slumping.

Came up? From the houses? Why would someone come
up
from the houses? If they wanted a better look at them, they could ride out to the site on one of the submersible boats that sold tickets to curious folk who wished to see the work of art. He’d even gone to look at them himself. And at night it was too dark to see them anyway.

“You don’t want me?” Aga’s hands began to roam his che
st
, drawing Duilio’s wandering mind very firmly back to the present.

Oh, what a vexing que
st
ion.
His body had clearly noted the girl’s lithe form. Heaven knew she was attra
ct
ive enough, and once he got her out of Erdano’s garments, the di
st
urbing scent of male selkie would be greatly diminished. But she was part of Erdano’s harem . . . and there was a servant outside in the hall, waiting. Both fa
ct
ors dampened any ardor she aroused in him. “He’s my brother,” he told her. “I want to keep on his good side.”

“Why?” She sighed again, sounding petulant. “Tigana said . . .”

He held her at a di
st
ance. “All the same.”

“They said you were nice,” she added plaintively.

Oh, good Lord
. The only time he’d gotten involved with any of the women from Erdano’s harem had been when he was fifteen. That was half a lifetime ago, and evidently they
st
ill talked about him being “nice.” Well, it could be worse. “I’m sorry, Aga, but I need to sleep.”

That only made him sound like an old man.

Her lower lip thru
st
out in a pout. “What do I do?”

“There’s a room down the hall where Erdano sleeps when he’s here. You can
st
ay there for the re
st
of the night or go back to the boat if you wish.”