J. Cheney - The Golden City

“I’ll do that,” she said brightly, then her brows drew together. “Do I leave now?”

“Can you think of anything else to tell me about the woman in the water?”

Aga took a deep breath and appeared to be thinking hard, her lips pinched together. She finally pronounced, “She had webbed hands.”

Like a thunderclap inside his brain, Duilio knew .

That was the fact he’d been fishing for. His gift confirmed it.

A woman with webbed hands . Duilio set his own hand under the girl’s elbow and drew her back toward his bedroom door. When he opened it he found a very flustered-looking João right outside. The young man must have been listening at the keyhole.

“Sir,” João said quickly, “you asked me to wait.”

Seeing the young man’s flushed features, Duilio held in a laugh. “Yes, João, I did. Can you escort Miss Aga to Mr. Erdano’s room at the far end on the left? Or back to the yacht, if she wishes.”

João’s eyes slid toward the girl. “Yes, sir.”

Recalling the girl’s request, Duilio slipped off his dressing gown, bundled it up, and handed it to her. “In trade for the information, Aga.”

She petted the bundle of velvet like a pup. “Pretty.”

She didn’t even look back, but happily followed the boatman away, the light of his lamp fading as they went down the hallway. Duilio shut his door, content to leave his little problem in João’s capable hands. He returned to the hearth, settled into the leather armchair, and stretched out his legs.

A woman had been out in the water, near the submerged houses. That woman had webbed hands: a sereia , not a human. Unlike selkies, who were called selkies all over Europe, the sereia bore different names in other countries. The French called them sirènes , the English mermaids, and the Germans knew them as Lorelei . No matter how they were named, they weren’t allowed in the Golden City.

Selkies weren’t either, but the ban hadn’t ever kept his mother or Erdano—or him, for that matter—out. For all Duilio knew, there could be dozens of selkies living in the Golden City. Unlike the sereia, once they’d shed their pelts they were almost indistinguishable from humans. Without a selkie’s pelt, one couldn’t prove that they weren’t human. The sereia’s webbed hands, their gills, and the scale patterning of their skin were all elements of their nature that they couldn’t put aside.

Duilio laced his fingers together and propped his chin atop them. He could recall seeing sereia walking the streets of the city when he was young, in the days before the prince’s ban. Although they kept their distance from human society, a few had owned houses in the city or in Vila Nova de Gaia across the river. They had traded with the locals, but not any longer.

When Prince Fabricio came into power following his father’s demise, he had issued a proclamation banning all sea folk from the Golden City on pain of death. He’d been told by his seers he would one day be killed by one of the sea folk. Duilio had his doubts. He found it hard to believe a seer could reliably predict anything far into the future, and it had been almost two decades since then. Too many factors had changed in the interim.

Whatever the impetus behind the prince’s order, for the first few years following its issuance the Special Police—whose explicit mandate was to carry out the orders of the prince, whether or not those orders served the best interests of the people—had obediently rounded up every sereia or selkie they could find, along with many of those who protected them. Sympathizers had been jailed and their property seized. The sea folk themselves had been executed. Otterfolk rarely came into the city, and most selkies slipped in and out, interested in little beyond a night’s pleasure, so the majority of those executed had been sereia. And although Duilio hadn’t heard of an execution in the past few years, most citizens believed the Special Police still carried them out, just not publicly. There was actually an ambassador from the Ilhas das Sereias—the islands of the sereia—at the prince’s court, but the man lived under house arrest at the palace. And while Duilio had long suspected there might be sereia hiding in the city, he hadn’t been sure until he met Miss Paredes.

He closed his eyes, remembering that day. It had been a brief encounter, back in the spring. Everyone else had watched the stunning Lady Isabel Amaral. Duilio’s attention had been captured instead by the lady’s companion, a woman somewhere near his age, modestly dressed and attractive, although he wouldn’t have called her beautiful. Pretty, perhaps, but nothing special. Well, she had exceptionally nice lips, lips made to kiss. He recalled admiring her tiny waist and rounded hips, although that might simply be her corset. Her flat-brimmed straw hat had cast a shadow across her face, but as she shifted the parasol she carried to better shade her mistress’ alabaster skin, he’d noticed her dark eyes.

His breath had gone still. He had known , in that way his gift worked, that she was more than just a hired companion. She was special. That had been enough to make Duilio look again.

And for the six months since that brief meeting, his gift had kept telling him the woman was important. He didn’t know how, exactly, but he didn’t take the feeling lightly. He’d watched her from a distance. He bribed a servant in the Amaral household to discover her given name, Oriana. He’d investigated her background. Before becoming a lady’s companion, she’d worked in a dressmaker’s shop. He discovered little else. It was as if she hadn’t existed before then.

He’d often attended the same social events as Lady Isabel and her companion, even if he didn’t travel in the Amarals’ elevated stratum of society. They were old aristocracy, while the Ferreiras were newly moneyed and not worthy of their conversation. Duilio had watched Miss Paredes carefully, though. She often kept her hands in her lap. She wore silk mitts rather than gloves, an old lady’s affectation. She always chose high-necked shirts, even at formal occasions, carrying her modesty to an unfashionable extreme, although he’d heard a rumor from one of the servants that she had spots . . . or something catching on her hands.

Taken individually, none of those things had given her away. But the longer he thought about it, the surer he became that all of those foibles combined were signs of a sereia hiding her true nature. Duilio opened his eyes and stared at his cold hearth. He had no proof that Miss Paredes was a sereia, but his gift assured him it was true.

Just as there might be dozens of selkies hiding in the city, he was willing to accept that sereia might be living here as well. But it was more dangerous for them. Their nature was harder to hide. The most reasonable explanation that he could come up with was that she was a spy, although what she could learn in the Amaral household mystified him. While the Amaral family had impressive social ties, their political ties were limited.

And if she were a spy, what had she been doing out by The City Under the Sea ? Did her people find the taste of death in the water as objectionable as did the local selkies? Or could she have had some other reason for being there? A vague frisson of worry snaked out of the back corner of his mind, his gift trying to give him another clue to unlock the bundle of questions.

Black and white. Aga had said the mysterious woman with webbed hands wore black and white. That had been important. Duilio closed his eyes and concentrated, hoping to force a direct answer out of his gift. He took several slow breaths. Was it Oriana Paredes out on the river near The City Under the Sea ?