J. Cheney - The Golden City

“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, casting Silva’s features in light, then shadow. “How terrible! Shall I take you to a hospital, then, miss? Or the police station?”

Neither one of those options would end well for her. “No,” she said quickly. “I must get home to my mother. She must 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 actually believe she’d been thrown off a bridge? Perhaps he suspected 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 least?” 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 suspect our meeting must be propitious. I know we shall meet again.”

Not if I can help it .

They had neared the tree-lined avenue of Massarelos—almost a mile from where they’d found her—far sooner than Oriana expected. The oarsman used a hook to drag the boat over to one of the stone ramps leading up to the street 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 stone. Once out of reach of either man, she felt far safer. She started to unwrap the blanket from about her shoulders.

“No, you must keep it,” the seer insisted. “You must 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 streetlamps, 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 taste 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 first she had to tell Lady Amaral that Isabel was gone. Somewhere in the bottom of her heart she would have to find the strength 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, staring 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 past 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 investigate 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 artist, Gabriel Espinoza, had taken into his mind to re-create the grand houses that lined the Street of Flowers. He’d anchored the first replica in the water a year ago, yet only recently had the Security Police—the regulars—begun to investigate those houses, suspecting that something more sinister than art might be driving the creation. They had immediately been ordered to close their investigation, although it was unclear from how high in the government that order had come. That had only served to pique Duilio’s interest. As a private citizen, he could still ask all the questions 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 nightstand and held it ready as he turned to face the intruder. A shape stood unmoving in the doorway, startled by his sudden action. Someone else waited in the hallway with a lamp, casting 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 nightstand. 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 started 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 most 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 nearest harem, to the north of the mouth of the Douro River at Braga Bay. Erdano was her child by that harem’s master. He often visited the Ferreira household, but tonight he’d sent one of his women instead.

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 cast 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 stepped 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 waist—reeked of musk. Duilio resisted 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.