The Golden City

by Cheney, J. Kathleen

  “Don’t argue over me.” Not wanting to further discuss Erdano’s heavy-handed attempt at seduction, Oriana pointed to the bundle. “What is that?”

  Duilio inclined his head as if to acknowledge her ability to take care of herself. He set a rolled chart atop the boat’s engine housing and shook out the dusty bundle he held—a pelt. Oriana reached out to touch the soft fur, glancing up at Duilio’s face.

  His expression was hesitant—hopeful. “Erdano, is this what I think it is?”

  Oriana stepped back, not wanting to intrude.

  Erdano leaned down and sniffed the pelt almost reverently. “It’s Mother’s.” Then he slapped Duilio hard on the shoulder. “You found it!”

  Duilio rocked forward from the force of the blow but didn’t protest. He embraced his brother, laughing. Erdano let out a whoop. Oriana feared he would alert anyone listening to their presence, but Duilio pulled away and grabbed Erdano’s shoulder to get his attention. He lifted one section of the pelt for Erdano to see it more clearly. “There are nail holes in it.”

  “They’ll heal,” Erdano said, sobering. He stroked the recovered item and then tugged it from Duilio’s grip to embrace it like it was his mother herself. “They’ll be painful,” he said, “but in time they’ll heal.”

  Any damage to the pelt must translate into damage to the wearer, Oriana realized with a pang. She hated the idea of gentle Lady Ferreira suffering such pain. It was bittersweet, but still a victory for Duilio. One good thing to come out of all this horror.

  “My father’s stolen strongbox was also there,” Duilio told her. “Filled with ashes. Silva’s destined to disappointment, it seems.” He frowned and added, “I was expecting more than just the yacht.”

  Erdano pointed toward the beach that would be on the other side of the yacht. “There’s a big building in a space inland. I saw it when I came here last night, all lit up. People moving around.”

  That had to be the workshop where the houses were being built. After a quick conference, they rowed the boat to the shore where a large boulder gave it cover, although not much. They had to hope that would hide it from casual observers. Duilio pointed toward the pelt his brother grasped. “Can you take that out into the water and wait for our return? I don’t want Maraval recapturing it.”

  Erdano didn’t argue. Still clothed, he slipped into the water and a second later was gone from Oriana’s view. She climbed from the boat and stood barefoot on the sand next to Duilio. “Getting rid of him?”

  He cast a glance after his brother. “I don’t want to lose that pelt. But, yes, he’s not a quick thinker, even when he’s being shot at. It would be better if he’s not around to run into any of Maraval’s Open Hand.”

  She should be pleased he considered her a quick thinker. “This could be a trap.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it is,” Duilio said with a short laugh. After donning his coat, he drew his revolver and checked to be sure it was loaded. “Maraval would expect us to come here. It’s just a matter of how well we anticipate him.”

  Oriana grimly drew her knife. “Let’s find him, then.”

  A wide pathway led inland from the center of the beach and the pier where the yacht waited. After a brief consultation, they decided that it would be safer to approach the workshop obliquely, so they would skirt the cliffs instead and climb up to where the scrub gave way to cultivation. The crescent moon had risen, granting them just enough light to guide their steps without making them visible to watchers. No one appeared on the sands in response to their presence. It looked like the gods were granting them luck.

  After a moment they reached a fall of rocks that looked scalable. Low scrub grew there, not lending much cover, but only a stone’s throw inland stood high trellises for grapevines. The landowner must produce Vinho Verde by squeezing trellises into every spare inch of his land.

  Duilio reached a hand back to help Oriana up a steeper stretch. “Will this hurt your feet?” he whispered.

  “No, they’re very hard.” That was one advantage of growing up rarely wearing shoes: her feet could handle rough terrain. They hurried to the cover offered by the tall trellises. Oriana let loose a breath of relief when they got there. A few brown leaves lay scattered across the ground, but she could see that the grapes hadn’t been harvested yet. Did the grower know of the workshop built on his land? Was he staying away because of it?

  Duilio pointed toward a light visible through rows of vines. “That’s got to be it there.”

  She crept under the trellis and they skirted the rows of vines. As they got closer they could see the light came from a new-looking building. Wholly utilitarian, it had no embellishment, simply plain wooden walls with wide-opening doors, more like a warehouse than anything else. Holding his revolver ready, Duilio gave her a quick nod. He edged around the side of the building toward the large open door on the nearer side. Oriana stayed back out of the way until he peered around the corner and then straightened and waved her closer.

  “I don’t see any movement,” he told her. “Come on.”

  The workshop was indeed empty. Lamps blazed inside, casting a flickering glow over the wooden rooftops. Duilio stepped over the threshold into the big main room, where six completed replicas waited. With the house dropped into the river the previous night, that would make thirty-three houses constructed. Duilio had said something about thirty-two being a likely total, but she supposed one could have been built as a failsafe. He walked around them, glancing between them to see if anyone hid within. Nothing moved.

  “It looks abandoned,” Oriana said, which didn’t explain why all the lamps were burning.

  Duilio nodded, his eyes still roving the room. Oriana slid her knife back into its sheath. He walked on toward the far wall of the workshop’s main room, so Oriana followed. He leaned closer to examine the roof of one of the houses—the Cordes manor house, Oriana guessed—inspecting the metal framework extending from the roof that would be attached to the chain.

  She walked on toward the far wall of the building. There it smelled of sawdust. A dozen tables and benches arranged into working areas held neat collections: saws, hammers, and nails, as well as dozens of tools for which she had no names. She stopped cold a few feet from the outside wall.

  Several small casks were stacked at the base of the beam that stretched up to and across the ceiling, rags stuffed between the casks. Each of the major support beams had a similar adornment. Oriana’s stomach fluttered with anxiety. “Duilio,” she called over her shoulder. “You need to look at this.”

  He jogged over to her side. “Oh. That can’t be good.”

  A concise assessment.

  • • •

  Duilio picked at one of the yellowed labels. It was a cask of turpentine. A slender cord emerged from the top cask and led up the wall. Fuses wrapped the entire ceiling, he realized, connecting all the weight-bearing beams. “I’d definitely call this getting rid of evidence.”

  Oriana pointed. “There are a couple of rooms at the back. We should check to make sure there aren’t any hostages back there.”

  He could make out the two doors to which she gestured. One was an office, with windows that would allow the occupants to look out over the workroom floor, much like those at the Tavares boatyard. The other was windowless, perhaps a storeroom. Oriana went ahead of him, her bare feet making no sound on the clean-swept floors. When they reached the windowless door, she gestured for him to wait.

  “Be still,” she whispered. She laid one hand against the door, her fingers spread wide, showing the webbing. “I don’t sense any movement inside.”

  She’d told him before that her senses didn’t work as well through the air as in water. “Are you sure?” he whispered back.

  She stepped to one side of the door. “I didn’t feel movement. That doesn’t mean they’re not very still.”

  Duilio raised his revolver as she turn
ed the latch. He shoved the door inward and quickly stepped over the threshold. No bullets greeted his entry into what appeared to be a tidy bedroom. Lining one wall were piles of foolscap, a practice he recognized. “This looks like the apartment that burned.”

  Oriana hadn’t entered the room with him, he realized then. Worry streaked through him and he stepped back into the main room, but she stood only a few feet away, peering into one of the office windows.

  “I believe I’ve found Espinoza,” she said sadly.

  Duilio joined her, holding up one hand to cut the glare from a flickering kerosene lamp overhead. A lean, white-haired man lay facedown on the floor amid a dark pool of blood. His feet were cuffed, joined by a couple of feet of chain. Poor fellow. Duilio sighed, wondering if Maraval had kept Espinoza prisoner here since January. Clearly the man hadn’t been a willing participant in his plans. “I’ll go see if he’s alive.”

  “I don’t think he is,” Oriana said. “I don’t see him breathing.”

  He still needed to check. It was the proper thing to do. Duilio made his way to the office door. He turned the latch, pushed open the door . . . and the room exploded about him.

  CHAPTER 34

  Oriana instinctively dove for the floor. She’d been far enough from the door that she wasn’t thrown by the blast itself. The window nearest her was unbroken but shattered a moment later with the building heat in that office, raining glass onto the floor. With a yelp, she scrambled away backward on her bare hands and feet like a crab.

  She managed to get off the floor then, and scanned the room wildly. The office was completely afire, but the rest of the workshop was still intact. Where is he? “Duilio?”

  A groan reached her ears, and she ran that way. He was alive, at least. She dropped to her knees next to him. The explosion had knocked him backward over one of the houses, sending him sprawling onto the far side, a drop of several feet. His white shirt was darkened with soot. He seemed dazed, but his wide eyes focused on her when she yanked on his good arm. “We have to go,” she yelled at him, her pulse racing. “Now!”

  He blinked up at her, dazed. “What happened?”

  Oriana grabbed his braces and hauled him to a sitting position. “Come on!”

  He got to his feet, stumbling against her. She set one arm about his waist and steered him toward that distant open door, wishing he would go faster. They had to get out.

  “The fuses,” Duilio mumbled.

  And then his urgency matched hers. He grabbed her wrist and bolted along the center aisle of the workshop in the direction of the water. Fleeter of foot, he dragged her along then. They had almost reached the end of the rows of houses when the first incendiary pile went with a boom louder than the first.

  Letting him guide her, Oriana looked over her shoulder. The beam nearest the office fell, dragging the ceiling of the workshop with it. It crashed down right where Duilio had lain dazed after the initial explosion.

  “Come on!” He pulled her toward the open door, drawing her out into the night air just as another explosion sounded.

  They ran down a rutted pathway that led all the way to the pier. When they stopped, Oriana leaned against one of the posts, her breath embarrassingly ragged. They were alive. She closed her burning eyes for a moment. Now that they’d escaped, she was shaking all over. She clung to the post.

  Another explosion shook the air, less terrifying now that they were some distance from the building. They could see another portion of the roof cave in. The contents of the building were starting to burn now, a roar building.

  Duilio came to her side and laid one hand on her back. “Are you hurt?”

  Oriana turned to face him, shaking her head. Her lungs felt ready to burst and her gills had begun to sting from the smoke drifting their way. “No. I’m fine. You?”

  He was breathing hard. The scab on his cheek had begun to bleed again, and his clothes were ruined. She suspected he would be horribly bruised by morning. “I’m well enough,” he said, though, wrapping his hand about her own. “Thanks to you.”

  His eyes on hers, he opened his mouth to say something else, but the words seemed to be caught in his throat. Oriana waited, desperate to know what he meant to say. It was as if they were alone in that darkness. The roar of the fire retreated, all sounds fading as if the world waited for those stalled words.

  Then a voice forestalled whatever he meant to say. “Well, Ferreira, a thorn in my side until the last. I had hoped that you would be caught in the explosion, but alas it seems the fuses were too long.”

  Duilio turned back toward the flames. Maraval strode down the rutted pathway toward them, a gun in one hand and a portmanteau dangling from the other. Oriana’s hands clenched into fists. Maria Melo might have chosen Isabel to die in The City Under the Sea, but he was the one whose mania had started this nightmare in the first place.

  Four Special Police officers flanked him, cutting off any chance of retreat into the vineyard. Duilio gave her a gentle push toward the water. She didn’t know if Maraval had seen her standing behind him. Was there enough light coming from the fire? The man must see her skirts, if nothing else.

  Maraval came closer, apparently undaunted by the revolver in Duilio’s hand. When he stood a few feet away, he said, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Ferreira? If you’d let the case alone, as ordered, Portugal would once again be the empire it was meant to be. Now I’ll have to start over. Brazil awaits, with as many loyal servants of the empire as this tired old city, perhaps more.”

  Start over? Oriana shuddered. Did the man think he was simply going to walk away?

  “There’s no point, Maraval. You can’t turn back the clock,” Duilio said.

  “Are you going to say next that it’s God’s will?” Maraval asked with a snort. “We have grown beyond letting God decide history for us.”

  “And so you decide who lives and who dies?”

  “Sacrifices have to be made,” Maraval said with a blasé shrug.

  Oriana swallowed, fury rising in her gut. It was exactly what Maria Melo had said about choosing Isabel. Was a spy no different from this man, playing at being one of the gods? Perhaps Maria Melo was different in her espoused cause, but both valued their goals above innocent lives.

  She laid one hand on Duilio’s back so he would know she was behind him. Keeping her eyes on the four police officers, she backed away. She was in the water then, up to her knees. She turned and dove into the shallows, pushing away toward the edge of the cove.

  • • •

  Duilio heard a splash behind him; Oriana had fled to the safety of the ocean.

  Good. She would be safe, and he could count on her and Erdano to get the pelt back to his mother. He wasn’t going to get out of this alive, not facing five armed men. He could take two, possibly three. He took a deep breath, feeling remarkably calm. “I’m not a religious man, Maraval,” he said, “but don’t you worry you’re inviting divine retribution?”

  “God doesn’t concern me,” Maraval said blithely. “Now out of my way, Ferreira. We have a tide to catch. Rios, you lost control of him. You finish him off.”

  Duilio tore his eyes away from Maraval long enough to see that one of the four officers was indeed Captain Rios. The captain gestured with his pistol for Duilio to clear the way to the pier for his master. Duilio gazed at the muzzle of the gun, knowing Rios wasn’t going to hesitate. Rios had never liked him.

  He was going to die now.

  And then a sound made him spin about, eyes drawn toward the sea.

  Duilio felt his heart slow as an ethereal song tore his attention away from the fire, from Rios, from Maraval. He tried to quiet his own breathing so he could hear it better. He needed to find the source.

  He scanned the dark water with desperate eyes. At the edge of the cove he could see a swimmer, only a dark silhouette of a head above the water. He had to find her.
. . .

  Then he realized what he was hearing. Wordless, keening, it wasn’t a song after all. Duilio ground his teeth together and jammed fingers into his ears, trying to block it out, trying to concentrate.

  His pulse pounded in his shut-off ears and his head buzzed as if a fly were trapped inside. He wanted nothing more than to remove the fingers from his ears and let it out, but if he did he would surely find himself swimming toward that open ocean, unable to help answering Oriana’s call.

  CHAPTER 35

  It was her only weapon against the man who held a gun on Duilio.

  Oriana wove the call from memories of childhood longing, from every bit of homesickness she’d felt in the last two years, of the yearning to have her family whole again. She didn’t weave a spell of sexual desire, but of comfort and home and love. It was her only magic, her only way to protect him—to call them to her.

  He stayed on the shore, hands on either side of his head. He recognized what she was doing and didn’t come to her. Thank the gods!

  But the others did—all of them, the four police officers and Maraval. The marquis resisted her only for a second before his desire for the comfort of fond memories led him to the edge of the pier. He dropped his bag and leapt into the water. He swam toward her, drawn as straight as an arrow.

  Two of the police officers didn’t swim. They were going to drown.

  Oriana didn’t let that stop her. She couldn’t let them go and still call Maraval. So she sang on, kicking farther away from the beach as she did so. She swam out to sea, the three of them—no, only two now—following her call. How far out did she need to draw them?

  She submerged, skirts buoying about her, and dropped her call to a hum. She spread her hands wide so that her webbing could sense the movement of the two remaining pursuers. There was a disturbance in the water behind her, but with a flash of dismay, she realized one of her pursuers was almost on her. She kicked desperately backward, only to collide with Erdano. Suddenly her arms were full of pelt and he was gone in a flurry of bubbles, the policeman in his grasp. He might not be all that clever on land, but Erdano was fast in the water.