J. Cheney - The Golden City

Joaquim cast a perplexed look in his direction.

“She was meant to be a victim, Joaquim. I think she escaped from it.”

Joaquim went still as he worked out the ramifications of that. They’d assumed the victims were sacrificed to keep the houses floating, but such a use of necromancy would have to be enacted before the houses were placed in the river. The possibility that the victims had been put into those houses while still alive had never occurred to them. “If that’s true, we need to find her. How did you find out?”

“Aga saw her and told me.”

Joaquim rubbed a hand over his face, a sign of frustration. “Aga?”

Starting at the beginning would take too long. “One of Erdano’s girls. The thing is . . . I think I know the woman she described to me. It’s Miss Paredes, who’s companion to Lady Isabel Amaral.” Duilio slid the folded newspaper off the bookshelf and pointed to the questionable item on the social page. “Rumor says Lady Isabel eloped last night, in that same companion’s company, with Marianus Efisio.”

Joaquim perused the notice, a doubtful expression crossing his features. He set the paper back on the shelf. “If she eloped, how would the gossips already know?”

Duilio shook his head. That wasn’t the point. “Lady Amaral must have spread the rumor last night herself. To stave off her creditors, I’d expect.”

Joaquim rolled his dark eyes. “Oh yes. I recall the woman now.”

Duilio resisted repeating anything he’d heard of the impecunious noblewoman.

“So, what makes you think this companion was in one of the houses,” Joaquim asked, “if she’s supposedly off eloping with two other people?”

Duilio dropped into the upholstered chair, the one he usually took when visiting, and continued flipping through the book. “She wasn’t eloping with them. He went ahead. The companion was probably going along as a chaperone until the wedding.”

Joaquim settled in the other chair. “Get to the point, Duilio.”

“If I’m correct,” Duilio said, “the Amaral house was added to the artwork sometime last night, and we’ll find out that Miss Paredes wasn’t the only one who didn’t get on that train.”

“You’re suggesting that Isabel Amaral was in that house as well.” Joaquim’s fingers tapped loudly on the leather arm of his chair. “We knew we were about due for a new house to show up.”

New houses had been appearing in the artwork at roughly two-week intervals. Duilio found the passage he was looking for, stuck a finger in the book to mark the place, and closed it so he could focus on Joaquim. “My gift tells me that Isabel Amaral is dead, no matter what the newspapers claim.”

Joaquim closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross. Duilio’s gift had been passed to all males of the Ferreira line. A cousin on the distaff side of the Ferreira family, Joaquim didn’t have the gift, but having grown up around Duilio and Alessio, he knew very well how it worked.

Duilio went on. “The only thing that makes sense of her companion’s appearance in the water at midnight is that neither of them reached the train station. To find out exactly what happened, I have to find Miss Paredes.”

“Won’t she return to the Amaral household?”

As soon as Joaquim asked, Duilio shook his head. “No. I don’t think Lady Amaral would take Miss Paredes back once she told her what happened. That woman needs people to believe her daughter alive to keep her creditors at bay. She would be more likely to hide the truth.”

Joaquim nodded slowly. Apparently, he too believed the woman would put concern about her creditors over concern for her daughter’s fate, a sad commentary on the woman’s priorities. “Then the police,” Joaquim said. “Surely your Miss Paredes would have taken her story to the police if her employer was killed.”

No, that was one place she wouldn’t go. They would ask how she could have survived if Isabel hadn’t, and Miss Paredes couldn’t reveal that. “She will not go to the police,” Duilio said firmly. “We’re going to have to hunt her down.”

Joaquim frowned. “Is that your gift speaking, too?”

How could he answer that without lying to Joaquim? He wasn’t ready to hand over all the truth yet, not until he was sure she was a sereia. “I have reason to believe she won’t go to the police.”

Joaquim’s expression showed he recognized that evasion for what it was. “I’m not supposed to be investigating this any longer.”

That had never stopped Joaquim before.

“I’ll go talk to the submersible captains,” Duilio told him, “and ask if they’ve seen a new house in the water.” A handful of entrepreneurial captains had invested in submersible crafts that could be attached to their ships, pumping air down into vessels that would allow their passengers to go underwater and view the artwork. Despite the cost of maintaining what were essentially oversized diving bells, the investment had reportedly paid off. Their tours of the artwork were filled by the idle wealthy and the curious. Duilio had even gone down in one of the vessels a couple of times himself. He tapped his fingers on the chair’s arm, weighing what he most needed from Joaquim. “Could you put together a list of places an upper servant might go if left on her own? Between positions, perhaps. Not a lot of money. A hotel or apartment?”

“More likely a rented room.” Joaquim fell silent, probably mulling over what needed to be done. “I’ll stay late tonight,” he said after a moment. “I’ll put together a list and drop it off by the house.”

Duilio hid a smile. While Joaquim might not be allowed to expend further police time and resources on the investigation, Duilio hadn’t had any doubt that he would help on his own time. Joaquim had a revolutionary streak in his soul. He counted every one of those missing servants the equal of Lady Isabel Amaral, and kept their names in neat files in his cabinet at the station.

Once they’d made a connection between the missing servants and the work of art, it hadn’t taken too long to confirm that each of the servants, all of whom worked in great houses along the Street of Flowers, had disappeared within a few days of the appearance of their masters’ homes in the artwork. Most of those servants had claimed they’d been offered positions elsewhere. Others said they were going home to visit family in the country. It had taken time to determine that those events hadn’t ever happened. It had taken a good deal more effort to determine that every household represented in the artwork had lost two servants. Most hadn’t bothered to report their servants’ absence, assuming their employees had indeed moved on to other positions.

Even so, they couldn’t concretely tie the missing servants to the houses. When the police had made inquiries about opening one of the houses, an order had come back almost immediately to shut down the investigation.

Joaquim’s hands had been tied after that, but he had still helped Duilio in his efforts to track down the artist, Gabriel Espinoza. Unfortunately the man had disappeared from the city completely, but he couldn’t be doing the work alone. There had to be a number of coconspirators to create an artwork of this size, not only builders and watermen to get the artwork into the river, but someone had to be funding all of that as well. They had researched how the houses were built and how they were chained to huge weights on the river’s bed. They had tried tracking down some of the building materials, from shipments of wood to the proper grade of chain. Unfortunately, so far all their leads had gone nowhere. Duilio hoped that finding Miss Paredes would breathe some new life into the investigation.