The Golden City

by Cheney, J. Kathleen

  In the corner a woman sang about the old days when the Portuguese had conquered the world, accompanied by a man strumming a guitar. Erdano could find this sort of establishment as if he sensed them with his whiskers: crowded and a little run-down, excellent fish soup, salted cod served on platters of questionable cleanliness, plenty of beer, and appealing girls. Vastly different from the café Duilio had visited with Joaquim that morning.

  Duilio glanced at the waitress his half brother watched so avidly, a petite but buxom girl with dark hair and eyes that tilted upward. She wended her way gracefully through the crowded room with a tray perched on one hand. Erdano didn’t seem to prefer a specific type of woman; they all interested him. And even dressed in a set of rarely washed clothes and with his long hair uncombed, Erdano attracted them in turn. Women seemed to find him irresistible. Selkie charm, Duilio thought wryly.

  “What are her markings like?” Erdano asked.

  It took a second for Duilio to mentally chase down what Erdano meant. Sereia markings were said to mimic one predatory fish or another—tuna in this part of the world—which hinted that Miss Paredes would have a black or blue dorsal stripe. Duilio sorely wished he’d gotten a look at her backside, but she’d managed to remain facing him. Now his mind burned with curiosity that he suspected wasn’t ever going to be satisfied.

  He tried to sound dismissive. “I didn’t see her dorsal markings.”

  Erdano regarded him with a surprised expression. “You haven’t bedded her yet?”

  Duilio clenched his jaw, holding in his growing irritation. Given her sudden introduction into the household, some of the servants had assumed that motivation on his part as well. According to his valet, Marcellin, picking Alessio’s bedroom for her only fueled that speculation. Fortunately, while they might talk among themselves, the servants would never spread such rumors beyond the house. “She’s in my employ now, Erdano.”

  Erdano craned his neck to get a better view of his waitress. “No, then?”

  His reluctance about discussing Miss Paredes with Joaquim had involved his guilt over walking in on her nude in the bath. He didn’t want to discuss her with Erdano for fear of exciting his half brother’s interest in her. “It’s inappropriate,” he said. “Besides, I don’t know how long she’ll be here.”

  “You should go ahead and bed her now, then,” Erdano said. “No sense waiting.”

  Duilio let out a laugh, amused out of his annoyance. There were times when Erdano’s simplistic view of life had its advantages. “That’s why you’re going to end up with a kitchen knife in your back someday, Erdano.”

  His half brother laughed. “No woman would ever hurt me.”

  To be truthful, Erdano did have a talent for finding women who didn’t seem to mind sharing him. “Her husband, then,” Duilio said. “I’ll keep my distance from Miss Paredes.”

  “Your loss.” Erdano grinned at the waitress, who returned a saucy wink. “She hasn’t come back. Are you bedding her?”

  Duilio stared across the table at him, trying to follow that logic. “Who?”

  Erdano blinked at him, head tilting to one side. “Aga. Tigana gave her to you, and she hasn’t come back. That’s why I wanted to see you.”

  Duilio had qualms about Erdano’s casual way of referring to members of his harem like they were possessions, but as he didn’t live in Erdano’s world, he chose not to comment. “Aga didn’t stay with me. Do you want me to look for her?”

  Erdano shrugged. “She has to leave the harem eventually, but . . .”

  “Wait . . . why does she have to leave?”

  “She’s one of my father’s get,” Erdano said, as if that were patently obvious.

  Duilio wished his mother were more aware of things about her, so he could ply her with questions about the rules inside a selkie harem. Evidently there were more than he knew. He’d never considered before what happened to all of Erdano’s half sisters once their father died. “I’ll see if I can find out what happened to her.”

  Erdano nodded briskly. “Thanks.”

  Erdano rarely came to him with a problem, so Duilio didn’t mind pursuing the inquiry. Besides, he had a good idea where to start. Aga was likely at João’s small apartment on the quay near the Ferreira boats. If Erdano had thought to ask João directly, Duilio probably could have just stayed home and talked with Miss Paredes all evening. Duilio dropped a handful of coins on the table to cover the tab, slid off the bench, and clapped his half brother’s shoulder. “Come on back to the house.”

  With a dramatic sigh, Erdano joined him and headed toward the door. “I’ll have to come back for Eva later, I guess.”

  Eva must be the petite waitress. “Mother would like to see you,” Duilio reminded him.

  He waited on the threshold as Erdano mouthed something at the pretty girl, to which she nodded. And then a twinge hit him, a brief instant of premonition.

  His blood roaring in his ears, Duilio sprang forward. He shoved Erdano over as a gunshot rang through the crowded room. Fragments of wood sprayed in all directions when a bullet hit the doorpost where he’d stood.

  Amid the screams of the patrons, Duilio landed atop Erdano on the tavern floor. Everything seemed to move more slowly about him as he pushed away from his brother. He heard a second click, but nothing happened. Had the gun jammed? He couldn’t pinpoint the direction the sound had come from. His own breath sounded harsh in his ears now.

  He was an easy target there on the floor. That realization sent cold rushing through his body. He rolled to one side to get back to his feet.

  He’d barely risen to his knees when another body slammed into his from behind, sending him back to the ground. Searing pain burned through the back of his left shoulder—a knife. Duilio hissed in a tight breath. Gritting his teeth, he rolled away, drawing his revolver as he moved.

  The sight of that was enough to forestall his assailant, a burly, dark-haired man in a checked suit. After a split second of indecision, the man bolted out the tavern door and into the night. Duilio groaned and lay back on the floor, wondering how long it would take his heart to stop racing. Damnation, that was close.

  There were people bustling past, stepping over him, belatedly trying to escape from danger that had already fled. Fortunately, no one stepped on him.

  “You’re bleeding,” Erdano said helpfully from above. He offered Duilio a hand up.

  Duilio took Erdano’s hand, grunting when Erdano practically jerked him off the floor. Erdano sometimes forgot how strong he was. Once Duilio was on his feet, Erdano started looking about for his waitress, unconcerned by the aforementioned blood.

  Duilio holstered his gun and raised his other hand to his stinging shoulder. It did come away bloody, but he doubted the wound was severe. Had the attack been linked to his recent discussion with Augustus Smithson, tied to his search for the missing pelt? Perhaps he’d gotten too close, as Alessio had at the end.

  Then he saw the dagger lying on the floor at his feet. He retrieved it, noting both his blood on the edge of the blade and the sigil stamped on the hilt—the open hand of the Special Police. Not good. He slid it into a pocket.

  What had changed that had caused the Special Police to come after him? He doubted it was his selkie blood. They had no way to prove he wasn’t completely human. No, this had to be something else.

  They patrolled the area around The City Under the Sea. Could his attacker be involved in that somehow? And if this attack was about that, why now? How did they know he’d made enough progress in the case to become a threat? And if that was it, would they come after Miss Paredes too? He wasn’t sure what to make of the timing. He turned to Erdano. “I suspect you shouldn’t go back to the house with me after all. I’ll send word when it’s safe.”

  Which apparently suited Erdano’s plans for the night anyway. He shrugged and wandered off to find his Eva.

  • • �
�

  After a nearly silent dinner, Felis had helped get Lady Ferreira settled in bed. Oriana spent the remainder of the evening in her bedroom, stewing over the day’s happenings as she affixed the new ruffle to the blue silk dress. She was baffled by Heriberto’s actions toward her father. What did it mean that her father had paid Heriberto money? And the woman who’d watched Heriberto and then Oriana herself? That was another mystery that she was going to be picking at for some time. At least tomorrow night she might get answers about Isabel’s death from Nela’s mysterious Lady. That would be a leap forward.

  And now that the household was mostly quiet, she could take a stab at unraveling the mystery of her employer’s family. In the silence, Oriana walked downstairs and entered a room that had been left off her tour, off-limits to the servants, according to Cardenas. The library had the same elegance as the rest of the house and smelled of ambergris cologne, a hint of lingering muskiness. Well-dusted bookshelves lined the walls. A liquor cabinet held an assortment of bottles, and between the sets of shelves was a niche with a kneeler for prayer.

  That niche held her quarry, the Ferreira family’s Bible. Oriana flipped through the first few pages and found the information she sought. Among the births and deaths, there were only two sons listed under Lady Giana Ferreira’s name: Duilio, who would be twenty-nine, and Alessio, who had died before his thirtieth birthday. No Erdano at all. No previous husband. So although this Erdano must exist, he wasn’t recognized by the Church.

  Oriana rubbed the back of her neck. Where could she look next?

  Then she heard footsteps in the hall. With a startled gasp, she quickly ducked into the shadows on one side of the liquor cabinet, hoping not to be noticed.

  Mr. Ferreira strode into the library. He closed the door, trapping her there with him, but she was certain he hadn’t noticed her. He leaned on the table for a moment, one hand on its polished surface. Then he sighed, withdrew a holstered revolver from the waist of his trousers, and laid it on the table. He shrugged off his frock coat, revealing a bloodied shirtsleeve. Oriana clapped one hand over her mouth. He tossed the coat over one of the chairs, then removed a small gun from an ankle holster. Apparently thinking he was alone, he pulled down his braces and unbuttoned his shirt, tugged it off, and laid it atop the coat.

  He was a well-made man, athletic and lean. Oriana found herself staring at his back, weighing whether the lack of a dorsal stripe detracted from its attractiveness. No, it doesn’t. There was something fascinating about that span of monochromatic skin.

  Her eyes were drawn then to a narrow cut crossing the side and back of his left shoulder. It was still oozing, no doubt the source of the bloodied sleeve. Mr. Ferreira tried to inspect the wound, pulling his arm forward and craning his neck around to do so. Then he turned toward the liquor cabinet and spotted her there. He started and cursed under his breath.

  Oriana quickly hid her smile behind her hand. While it hadn’t embarrassed her to be caught nude, as it would have a human woman, it had embarrassed her to be caught at all. Now she had the upper hand. “A knife wound?”

  His cool manner restored, he attempted to survey the slash again. “Yes, but not deep.”

  As she couldn’t go to a hospital herself, she’d been trained to handle minor injuries. She opened the liquor cabinet, selected the brandy decanter, and carried it over to the table. She picked up his bloodied shirt and, once she’d poured some brandy on it, lifted it to his shoulder. “Who did this?”

  He hissed when the fabric touched his skin, but otherwise he didn’t flinch from her familiarity. “I’m not sure.”

  “You didn’t see your assailant?”

  He gazed at her, his expression calculating. “I did, but I didn’t recognize him.”

  She pulled the shirt away. The blade must have scraped along the skin, leaving a shallow cut rather than a puncture, so the wound wouldn’t need stitching. “Do you have something to bind this?”

  “I was going to use the shirt,” he said with a short laugh. “And I was planning on drinking the brandy.”

  Oriana handed him the sodden garment. “You must have gauze somewhere. Iodine?”

  “Open the bottom drawer of the cabinet.”

  Oriana returned to the liquor cabinet and, from the bottom drawer, extracted a bottle of iodine in a paperboard box that also held a few rolls of gauze and a pair of sharp-looking scissors. The handles were small, but she could probably use the very tips of her fingers to control them. She took a pair of glasses from an upper shelf and returned to the table.

  “Who is Erdano?” she asked as she set everything down.

  He picked up the brandy decanter, poured two glasses, and slid one over toward her hand. “What did my mother tell you?”

  Oriana ignored the glass for the moment and peered at his wound again. There was a bit of skin that would need to be cut away, but it looked clean otherwise. She removed her mitts and laid them aside. “I gather he’s your half brother. She said he lives at Braga Bay, but only selkies live there.”

  He was facing away from her at the moment, so she couldn’t see his expression. “And your deduction is?”

  “That Erdano is a selkie,” she said as she negotiated the small handles of the scissors onto her fingertips. “And that your mother must be, as well.”

  “Yes,” he said, his head bowing. “If my mother were handed over to the Special Police, it would mean her life.”

  “Don’t move, please.” She dabbed at the wound with some of the gauze, and then began to cut away the extra skin. So Mr. Ferreira was half selkie himself. That shed new light on his willingness to harbor a sereia in his household. He could ensure Oriana’s safety here . . . because she could turn the threat of exposure back on him and his mother. “I’m done cutting.” Oriana wiped the scissors on a scrap of gauze. “Your mother’s human in this form,” she pointed out. “They can’t prove she isn’t.”

  He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Someone can. Someone has her pelt, which would be ample evidence should that person choose to expose her.” Oriana touched iodine-soaked gauze to his wound, and he flinched. “Are you enjoying that?”

  “Of course I am,” she said, not entirely sarcastically. She sponged the wound and then the skin around it. “Was her pelt taken from her?”

  He sighed when she laid down the iodine-dampened gauze. “It was stolen three years ago, and since then she’s been trapped in human form. Until we can get it back, she won’t get better.”

  “Is her”—Oriana laid clean gauze over the wound while she tried to find an acceptable term—“distraction due to its absence?”

  Mr. Ferreira took a sip of his brandy and nodded.

  How very sad. No wonder the woman stared out at the water; she couldn’t go back. In human form, Lady Ferreira was as vulnerable to the water as Isabel had been. Oriana had Mr. Ferreira lift his arm so that she could wrap a length of bandage about the shoulder, and then he held that tight while she looked through the box on the table. A moment later the bandage was secured with a safety pin, although if he was a restless sleeper it probably wouldn’t hold.

  Mr. Ferreira drew out one of the chairs, sat, and drank down his remaining brandy in one gulp. Facing her, he looked little different from a sereia male. That thought sent warmth throughout her body that had nothing to do with the brandy. She was glad then that she couldn’t blush. She settled across from him and finally took a sip of her own glass. Brandy burned her throat and gills, but Isabel had taught her to stomach it. “Was it this Paolo she’s so afraid of?”

  He sat with lips pursed for a moment.

  “She said he wants to kill you,” Oriana added. “That he’d taken away your brother and your father. Did he kill them?”

  He rubbed a hand across his face in a weary gesture. “About a year and a half ago, Alessio fought a duel over a lover. Despite the fact that the other man fired into the air, Ale
ssio was shot through the heart.” He regarded his now-empty glass, then poured another. “I was abroad. I’d been traveling across the continent and I hadn’t come home for . . . well, a long time. When my father finally learned I was in Paris and sent a telegram about Alessio, I started home. I had already missed Alessio’s funeral, so I didn’t rush. A few days before I arrived, my father died of pneumonia.”

  Two deaths so close together had to have been hard on him. He’d come home from his travels to find no brother, no father, and a mother sliding toward . . . not madness exactly, but Lady Ferreira wasn’t whole either.

  He rubbed his eyes with one hand as if they stung. Perhaps he was fighting tears. Then he dropped his hand, shook himself, and took another sip of his brandy. “I didn’t know how bad things were. They had all been sparing me the worry, you know. But Alessio and Father fought constantly, about everything. It was just easier for me to be elsewhere. I would give anything to go back and change that.”

  “You didn’t know,” she said. “You never know when your family will be taken away from you.” Her own life had taught her that.

  He gave her a wry look. “I should have known, Miss Paredes. I should have come home. Instead I was far away, playing police officer when I should have been here, helping search for my mother’s pelt.”

  She wished she had some clever words, soothing words, to placate him, but he would likely always blame himself, just as she did over her sister’s death. “So is this Paolo to blame?”

  “My cousin Joaquim—who’s an actual police inspector, unlike me—he and I investigated my mother’s claims thoroughly. We’ve never found any evidence to corroborate the claim.”

  “Then why does she think he’s responsible?”

  Mr. Ferreira sighed heavily. “When the pelt was stolen, the thief also took a strongbox from my father’s desk, a box that contained only my grandfather’s correspondences. You see, Paolo’s my father’s bastard brother. Older than my father, but never acknowledged. My father believed his brother stole the letters to find some evidence of his birth he could use to blackmail us, to obtain a portion of the inheritance he didn’t get. The pelt was taken in case the letters proved useless. But we’ve never found any verification of that. No proof.”