Oh, dear. They had reached her chair, and Oriana nodded to him and sank down into her previous spot. She wasn’t surprised when Maraval sat next to her. “I didn’t know that, sir.”
Maraval settled his gloved hands on his knees. “Amaral has been ill, and can’t travel here at the moment, but he believes his wife is hiding the truth from him.” He sighed heavily, his features lined with worry. “I’m afraid that rumors are beginning to circulate concerning Isabel’s absence. That Mr. Efisio jilted his betrothed is shocking enough in itself, but that Isabel may have, in turn, jilted him for someone else is far more sensational. I have managed to suppress any further mention of her name in the papers so far, but if she doesn’t reappear soon, the talk might be irreversibly damaging to her reputation.”
Ah, Maraval believed she knew where Isabel was. She did, but she wasn’t going to tell this man that. Oriana closed her eyes briefly. “I haven’t seen Lady Isabel since Thursday night, sir. If she was involved with another man, I know nothing of it.”
“If you can think of anything that will help me find her, I would appreciate your help.” Maraval dug a card out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. It gave the address of the Ministry of Culture in the old Bishop’s Palace. “Please come to my office if you remember anything. Her father is very worried.”
Oriana slid the card into her handbag. At least Isabel’s father was showing concern over his daughter’s absence. “I will, sir.”
“Miss Paredes?” Duilio Ferreira spoke at her shoulder, startling her.
Oriana craned her neck to glance up at him. “Yes, sir?”
“I must apologize for stealing you away from your conversation,” Mr. Ferreira said, “but I’m afraid my mother has decided she’d like to go home. She’s waiting in the carriage.”
Oriana picked up Lady Ferreira’s shawl and thanked Maraval, who rose along with her. Mr. Ferreira nodded to him, and then led Oriana from the ballroom.
When they were on the stairwell that led down to the ground floor, Oriana quietly asked, “Is your mother on her way home?”
“Yes,” he said. “Gustavo and Tomas will get her there safely. What did Maraval want?”
“He rescued me from Silva,” she admitted, “but he did want to know if I could tell him where Isabel is. He’s a friend of her father’s. Are we late?”
“We have a couple of minutes to spare,” he said, showing her his watch as they reached the bottom of the stairwell. “Shall we?”
Oriana laid her fingers on his sleeve. She hadn’t thought to ask before how he knew where to find the library in this house. Perhaps he’d broken in to it at some point. The very thought made her smile.
They walked down the hallway, and he opened the door onto a library far larger than his own. The walls held bookshelves with glass doors—some locked—but otherwise there was no resemblance to the Ferreira library. This room was tastelessly decorated with garishly overdone floral wallpaper in pinks and reds. Burgundy couches and chairs surrounded a huge Persian rug in the same shades as the loud wallpaper. Oriana stepped over the threshold into the room, relieved to see it was unoccupied. Fortunately, the gaslights were turned up.
“This will look improper if we’re caught here,” Mr. Ferreira said, closing the door behind them. He stalked across the room to check behind the couches, perhaps expecting small children there. “Especially after I had to quash some gossip that you’re my mistress. So we’d best not get caught.”
Oriana felt heat rising through her body. “Who said that?”
“Pimental,” Mr. Ferreira said without hesitation. “I have something on him, though, which will keep him from spreading lies about you.”
Good news, although she would rather people not talk about her at all. Especially in a way that might harm the Ferreira family. “What do you have on him?”
“Are you encouraging me to gossip, Miss Paredes?” He looked offended when he said those words, but his eyes laughed.
“It would be best to save the gossip for later.”
Oriana spun about at that voice. She pressed a hand against her chest to quell the pounding of her heart.
A woman stood in the far corner of the room.
She wasn’t hidden. Mr. Ferreira could not have missed her standing there. For that matter, Oriana had looked too. Right in that spot. How was that possible?
The woman walked toward them, her fine dress rustling with the movement. She had inky hair and fair skin that would have rivaled Isabel’s, although she was much older, perhaps in her forties. Her eyes were a clear, pale gray or blue, striking with her dark lashes and brows. “You’ve come to see me, Miss Paredes,” the woman said, “but who is your companion?”
Oriana shot a glance at Mr. Ferreira, who nodded. She turned back to the elegant woman. Was this Nela’s mysterious Lady? How could she determine that? “Mr. Ferreira is my employer. I am his mother’s companion. How did you get in here?”
The woman turned her attention on Mr. Ferreira. “Duilio Ferreira? I met Alessio back in Coimbra, years and years ago.”
Apparently her question was going to go unanswered.
“I was not,” the woman added, “one of his lovers.”
Mr. Ferreira hid a smile behind one hand. Oriana couldn’t see his mouth, but his eyes were laughing again. He managed a polite nod, but didn’t respond to the woman’s announcement otherwise.
The woman settled on one of the wine-colored couches, apparently unconcerned about rumpling her skirts. Her dress seemed to fade into the couch itself. “Mr. Ferreira, you spoke with one of my associates this afternoon, Inspector Gaspar. I am also curious to know why Mata is after you.”
He ran one white-gloved hand casually along the top of the couch. “So, you’re with the Special Police as well?”
Oriana held her breath. What sort of trap had she led him into?
“Let me be clear, Mr. Ferreira,” the Lady said. “My team is here to investigate the Special Police, both abuses of authority by some officers and misuse of them by . . . well, that’s one of the things we’re trying to uncover. Someone other than the prince has been using members of the Special Police to his own ends. That must be stopped.”
Oriana cast a quick glance at Mr. Ferreira. He didn’t seem too surprised by those claims.
“Mata is, essentially, an assassin,” she went on, “working within the ranks of the Special Police. We want to determine who’s pulling his strings. For what it’s worth, we have evidence that he was paid to kill your brother.”
Mr. Ferreira’s jaw clenched, but his face didn’t relay any emotion. “Why would you think someone assassinated my brother? He died during a duel.”
The woman shook her head with a sigh and turned back to Oriana. “Miss Paredes, will you come sit across from me? I don’t think he’s going to sit until you do, and I’m tired of looking up at him.”
A valid point. Oriana settled in a chair across from the Lady, her handbag in her lap. With a quick scowl, Mr. Ferreira sat in the chair next to hers.
“It took him three tries to kill your brother,” the Lady said, smoothing her wine-colored skirts. “We confiscated letters from Mata to a counterpart in Southern Portugal, detailing his difficulties with Alessio Ferreira. I suspect his seer’s blood allowed Alessio to escape the first two attempts unharmed, just as yours allowed you to escape last night.”
Oriana licked her lips and dared to look over at Mr. Ferreira. He shrugged apologetically, and without words she knew the Lady was right. Duilio Ferreira was a seer. Like his uncle Paolo Silva and his brother Alessio.
Oh, dear. She’d been rather insulting about seers, hadn’t she? Now she wished she could take her words back. Had she offended him? Her eyes fell to the handbag in her lap.
“Why kill Alessio?” Mr. Ferreira asked.
“We don’t know who wanted him out of the way, and unfortunately, Mata didn
’t reveal that in his letters. If we can catch him, we have a team who specializes in extracting information, who could get out of him whatever he does know.”
Mr. Ferreira’s face hardened. “Torture?”
The Lady laughed. “Not at all. They wouldn’t lay a hand on him. But he will answer their questions.”
Oriana leaned closer to him. “I could do that,” she whispered. “I could coax answers out of a human if I had to.”
His brows rose but he said nothing.
“So, what did you do, Mr. Ferreira,” the Lady asked, “that would cause this group such dismay that they would send their assassin after you?”
He gestured toward Oriana’s bag. “This might be a good time to show her the sketch.”
He didn’t look too upset, at least. Oriana opened her handbag, withdrew the sketch of the table, and unfolded it. She handed it to the Lady, who took it with careful fingers. “Are you a witch?”
“Not at all,” the Lady said. “I study witchcraft but am not a practitioner.” She turned the sketch about to read the Latin inscription. “Where did you find this? Nela wouldn’t tell me, which makes me suspect this is a matter of import to your people.”
How much was she willing to trust this woman? Oriana glanced over at Mr. Ferreira again, wondering how much she should reveal.
“Whatever you think is appropriate,” he said, as if he’d read her thoughts.
He was letting her make the call, then, of whether or not to trust this unknown person. Oriana pressed her lips together, weighing the odds in the silence of the room. “It was in The City Under the Sea,” she finally said. “It was inscribed on a table. My hands were tied to it.”
“The place with the floating houses?” the Lady asked. “Where was this table?”
“Inside the replica of the Amaral house,” Oriana said. She hadn’t thought it would be difficult to talk about it, but it wasn’t much easier this time than it was the last. “Isabel and I were both there, tied to chairs, our hands lying on the table. When the water came in, Isabel drowned.” Oriana swallowed. “Then that side of the table lit up, those words inscribed in it.”
“It’s a scripture,” Mr. Ferreira supplied. “However, as for me and my house we will follow the Lord.” When Oriana cast a quizzical glance at him, he said. “I apologize, Miss Paredes. My cousin recognized it, but I forgot to tell you.”
Oriana didn’t know if that made any difference, as the words still didn’t make sense of what had happened. “I can’t recall what the letters in the inner ring were. They were in a strange script that I didn’t recognize. And I have no idea about the center. Do you know what this is?”
“The side of the table that the other young lady was touching, that side lit up when she died. Do I understand that correctly?”
Oriana nodded.
“I can shine some light on this, Miss Paredes,” the Lady said, “but it doesn’t make much sense.” She laid the sketch on her knees and touched her fingers to the edge, a visual echo of Isabel’s fingers lying on the edge of the table. “I have wondered, although admittedly not much, why someone would waste all that money building a silly collection of houses that would eventually rot away.”
Oriana had to agree. “Is this a spell to keep them afloat?”
“I don’t believe so. The fact that half the inscription lit when this girl died tells me we’re dealing with necromancy. You were meant to die as well, I assume. You said this was a table. What was it made of?”
Well, Nela had been correct about hunting a necromancer. That didn’t make Oriana feel any better. “It was wood,” she answered. “I think the letters were inlaid in some kind of metal.”
“Silver and gold are the most common for this sort of work,” the Lady said. “The best for controlling magic. I suspect we’ll find that the inner ring contained some manner of runic inscription, as necromancers seem to prefer that for their handiwork. This center design is nothing I’ve ever seen, though, and that’s saying something.” She pursed her lips and turned the sketch around again. “The main problem I’m having with this is that there’s no apparent recipient. One of the basic tenets of necromancy requires that the recipient take the victim’s life force at the moment of death. In essence, your tale makes this seem like the recipient is a table. There wouldn’t be much point to that unless the table was actively using that power. Now, there are rare devices that can focus power or carry out a specific action, but this is . . . a table.”
Oriana felt tears stinging at her eyes. “You’re saying that Isabel died for nothing?”
“No,” the Lady said. “I’m saying that I haven’t figured this out yet. No one is going to go to this much trouble, to kill a girl, without a reason.”
“It’s not just one girl,” Mr. Ferreira said, leaning closer to hand Oriana a fine linen handkerchief. She wiped her cheeks with it while he spoke. “We have reason to believe that each replica has a pair of victims in it, not all female. All servants who’d worked at the house replicated. Most were never reported missing. Some had allegedly gone home to the countryside or found other positions, but when the police traced them they found false trails.”
The Lady sat back, her eyes narrowing. “Servants who worked at the corresponding house?” She turned to Oriana. “You and this Isabel worked at that house?”
Oriana nodded mutely. She didn’t see a need to correct the Lady’s misconception.
The Lady closed her eyes for a moment, as if mentally organizing what she knew. “I think what we have here is a mixture of necromancy and imitative magic, a rather unusual combination, but not unheard of.”
“Imitative magic?” Mr. Ferreira leaned closer. “Is that like voodoo?”
The Lady looked up. “Have you run across voodoo before, Mr. Ferreira?”
“In Paris, I’m afraid.”
“I see. We’ll have to chat about that one day,” she said. “In the instance that one item is used to represent another related item, yes. In this case, I suspect the houses and the people in them represent the will of that family. That’s why the victims were chosen from among servants who worked in those houses—it gives them a spiritual tie to that house and that family. As they’re using aristocratic households, I would suspect this installment, The City Under the Sea, is a symbolic representation of the entire aristocracy. Why they’re claiming they serve the Lord, I can’t fathom.”
Oriana covered her face with her hands. She’d heard enough of this academic discussion of Isabel’s death. She didn’t care how they were doing this or why. She just wanted to know how to stop them.
Mr. Ferreira’s hand touched Oriana’s elbow, a scrap of reassurance. Oriana dropped her hands to her lap again, resolved to be calm.
“Are you insinuating that the Church is involved?” he asked the Lady.
She shook her head, earrings glittering with the movement. “Not at all, Mr. Ferreira. It’s not their style, despite the use of a scripture. It’s easy to appropriate words.” She laid her arm across the back of the couch again. “And before you ask, it’s not the Freemasons either. Neither group is forgiving about necromancy.”
Oriana lifted her head and took a deep breath. “Then who? Who’s doing this?”
The Lady continued to gaze at Mr. Ferreira, her intense regard belying her casual posture. “Is this what you’re investigating? These houses? Miguel said you wouldn’t tell him.”
“I’m not sure whom to trust,” Mr. Ferreira said stiffly.
“Miguel has been following Mata for days,” the Lady said in patient tones. “This afternoon he let Mata get away because he was concerned you might not get out of that apartment alive. He was about to go up after you when you jumped from the window.”
He jumped from a window? Oriana glanced at Mr. Ferreira’s face. He was tense, frustrated. She could see that in the set of his shoulders. She didn’t know which of the two of them
had heard more unsettling news tonight.
“Yes, this is what we’re looking into,” Mr. Ferreira finally said, pointing to the sketch. “The regular police started investigating a few weeks ago. When they asked for permission to pull up one of the houses and open it, they were told to shut down the investigation.”
“By whom?” the Lady asked.
“We don’t know what level it came from. Captain Santiago directed the request to the Ministry of Culture, but there’s no telling how many eyes saw that request before the order was handed down.”
The Lady nodded slowly. “And if I went to Maraval and asked, he would probably say the paper had never gotten as far as his desk.” Oriana had no idea how many people worked in the Ministry of Culture, but any one of them could have alerted the killers to the request. “I’ll ask anyway. I studied with him when I was younger,” the Lady added. “He’s familiar with this type of magic. If nothing else he can tell me who in the city might be able to put together a set of spells of this intricacy.”
“Do you not know?” Oriana asked.
“I’ve been abroad for much of the past three years, Miss Paredes. Witches come and go, particularly where the . . .”
The latch on the library door clicked and began to turn.
“Go stand against the wall,” the Lady ordered, pointing. “Stay behind me.”
Mr. Ferreira grabbed Oriana’s hand and hauled her out of her chair before she could protest. She barely managed to grab the sketch off the table with her free hand before he dragged her back toward the wall with him. The Lady went to stand behind the couch, one hand lying on its back, as the library door swung open, and a silver-haired man walked in, a young girl clutching his arm.
It was Paolo Silva.
CHAPTER 20
Duilio’s whole body tensed when he saw young Constancia Carvalho being squired about on Silva’s arm. He wanted to storm over there and plant the man a facer. The old lecher had a reputation for seducing young women that had never quite made sense to Duilio. Silva simply wasn’t that handsome, and while he might be influential, it was usually older women who found power attractive, not girls of barely seventeen, like the one on his arm now.
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