But there were still the front windows. The fire had already reached the couch in front of them, but hadn’t yet touched the curtains. He could get out that way. He had to, or else the fire would trap him in the narrow bedroom.
Duilio ran back to the bed and stripped off the blanket, then returned to beat at the flames on the couch. Bits of charred paper flew up with the vigor of his actions, glowing on the edges. He took a deep breath, tasted ash, and started coughing. The flames roared, loud enough to drown out the sound of his harsh breathing. He cursed under his breath.
Calm down.
Covering his mouth with one sleeve, Duilio doggedly beat out the flames on the couch. He grabbed the top edge of the couch and flipped the whole thing over, sending more sparks into the air. But the backside of the couch wasn’t afire yet. He got behind it and shoved it over, away from the window. He grabbed the curtains and drapes and yanked them down, all in one heave, and tossed them over onto the upturned couch.
He wiped ash and sweat from his face, then pressed close to the dust-clouded window to peer out. There were a dozen or more people in the street below, pointing and crying out. They weren’t looking at him.
A huge groan came from the floor below his feet, and he knew.
The woodworker’s shop on the first floor was ablaze as well—a place likely filled with stains and resins and other chemicals that would burn hot. For a second his breath stilled. A cold sweat broke out all over his body.
Someone intended to bake him alive.
CHAPTER 17
Duilio looked out the window. It couldn’t be more than fifteen feet to the cobbles.
He grappled with the latch and finally got it open, the windowpane swinging out and banging against the stop. That caused another round of cries as glass sprinkled down to the cobbles below. Smoke began to billow over his shoulder, and Duilio glanced back to see that the flames had almost reached his feet. He had no time left.
He climbed over the sill and a second later dangled by his hands from the window’s frame. Voices urged him to drop, so he did so. He landed on his feet, but felt that jolt through his very teeth. People were still crying out, and there seemed to be chaos about him in the street.
Then water splashed all over him from behind, startling him out of his numbness. “What in Hades’ name are you doing?”
The man holding the bucket clapped Duilio’s shoulder. “Back of your coat was on fire.”
Duilio instinctively craned his neck, trying to look at the back of his coat. “Thank you,” he mumbled as the man strode away.
Something exploded in the shop then, scattering the pedestrians. Duilio backed away with the rest of the crowd. Another barrel or keg blew, this time shattering the front windows, and black smoke began to roil out of them, joining the stream that came from the upper floor. The Corps of Public Safety fought most of the fires in the city, but Duilio didn’t think they would get there in time to save any part of the building.
I should not be here when they arrive, he thought with sudden clarity. His sodden and apparently burned jacket would place him as having been in the apartment. He didn’t want to try to explain his presence there to them. Pulling up the collar of his coat, he eased away through the crowd, heading in the direction of the church at the end of the street. He felt again the sense of being watched, but was too tired to care at the moment.
Duilio settled on the stone steps before the church. His coat was ruined, so he tugged it off, rolled it up, and tucked it under his arm. His shirt and waistcoat were ruined as well, but weren’t as bad. He didn’t care, save that Marcellin was going to have a fit of apoplexy over this. A weak laugh worked its way out of his chest, then turned into a cough.
“You need someone to watch your back,” a man said in a voice that suggested they’d been chatting for a couple of hours. “That time he almost got you.”
Duilio looked to his right. Leaning against the stone wall that surrounded the church’s grounds was the man who’d thrown water on him when he’d hit the ground. The man’s dark skin and short-cropped black hair hinted he might be from one of the old African colonies. His eyes were an odd shade of smoky green, hard to mistake should he turn up again. His suit looked to be well made, although of a foreign cut. Oddly, Duilio’s gift had given him no warning about this man’s approach, as if he wasn’t there at all.
Duilio rose, keeping the coat under his arm. He didn’t want to lose it—or the journal in one of the pockets. “Who almost got me?”
“Donato Mata,” the man said. “Do you know him?”
“No,” Duilio admitted. The name didn’t mean anything to him. “And you are?”
“Inspector Gaspar, Special Police,” the man said.
A frisson of worry slid down Duilio’s spine . . . but it wasn’t his gift warning him. It was simply the normal reaction to speaking with a member of that body. The man spoke in accented Portuguese—from Cabo Verde, if Duilio placed it correctly. The inspector extended a card in one gloved hand. “What exactly were you doing up there? Why is he after you?”
Duilio took the card. It bore the man’s name, Miguel Gaspar, along with his seal and a stated rank of special investigator. It looked impressive, but it wouldn’t be difficult to find a printer to falsify cards. Despite his doubts, Duilio tucked the thing into the damp folds of his coat. The rank put this man above Joaquim. Even above Captain Rios, Duilio suspected. “What did you mean when you said he almost got me this time?”
The man fixed his gaze on Duilio’s face. “He took a shot at you last night in a tavern. I assume your gift warned you in time, although it didn’t do you much good today.”
Duilio felt his breath go short again. Did the Special Police know he was a seer? That couldn’t be good.
“Then again,” the man added, “setting a fire isn’t acting directly against you, which would allow your gift to miss it. Probably why he chose that method rather than a direct confrontation this time.”
“My gift?” Duilio asked.
Gaspar’s smoky green eyes narrowed. “You’re a seer, although not a particularly strong one. I suspect your selkie blood limits your gift somehow.”
His instinctive desire to take a swing at the man and run seemed a good idea now. Why was his gift not helping him? If Gaspar knew that Duilio was part selkie, then he had every right to drag Duilio down to the station and throw him in jail. But he hadn’t done so. And how did he know? The number of people who were aware of both those things was limited. “I imagine your superiors wouldn’t approve of your conversing with me if that were true.”
Gaspar smiled mildly. “There are Special Police, and then there are Special Police. And then, Mr. Ferreira,” he added, “there are special Special Police.”
While that answer didn’t precisely make sense, Duilio understood. Within any police body there were divisions. He’d not heard any rumor of such, but merely because the regular police hadn’t heard of this didn’t mean the Special Police weren’t at one another’s throats. “And what makes you think those things are true about me?”
It was a dangerous question to ask, but at this point why not chance it?
“I see it, Mr. Ferreira,” Gaspar said. “I look at people . . . and I know.”
Duilio gazed at the man leaning against the stone wall. Did he correctly understand what Gaspar had just intimated?
He’d met different kinds of witches throughout the past several years—not just seers, but healers who could still a man’s blood in his veins, witches who could lay a curse that lasted for decades. There were Truthsayers who could weigh a man’s words, and Finders who could locate things gone missing. There were a myriad of little talents, and skills benign enough that they didn’t have names. But this was something different, a rarity that supposedly appeared only once a generation. “You’re a Meter?”
The inspector didn’t flinch. “Yes, Mr. Ferreira.”
Meters were the stuff of legends. A Meter was a witch who could see what others were. Duilio
wasn’t sure how far that talent extended, what Gaspar saw in him, but if Gaspar truly was a Meter, the Spanish Church would love to have him in their clutches. They still hunted witches in Spain, and Gaspar could simply point out each one on the street. “So, what are you doing here?” Duilio asked him. “Were you following me?”
“What were you doing in that building?”
Admittedly, Gaspar had revealed something of himself—clearly hoping to gain Duilio’s trust—but he was a member of the Special Police. Duilio couldn’t be sure where the man stood on anything, least of all investigation of The City Under the Sea. For all he knew, Gaspar had set that fire himself or was in league with the man who’d attacked him at the tavern. After all, his attacker had probably been a member of the Special Police. Duilio didn’t answer.
Gaspar pushed away from the wall. “It would be helpful to me if I knew why Mata is hunting you, Mr. Ferreira. I understand your hesitation. I’m sure you understand mine.”
Yes, he did. It was always a game of trying to figure out whom to trust.
“You should go home, Mr. Ferreira,” Gaspar added, giving him a friendly pat on his shoulder. “You look a wreck.”
Duilio shook his head ruefully. Yes, I certainly do.
* * *
Oriana needed to return the fabric scissors she’d borrowed from Felis, so she headed down to the servants’ workroom. Halfway down the back stairs, she almost collided with Mr. Ferreira coming up.
She should have been warned by the smell. He carried the acrid scent of burned paper about him like a cloud. His coat was tucked under his arm, and she could see dried blood staining his shirtsleeve where he’d been injured the previous evening. His charcoal-gray waistcoat was liberally streaked with soot and ash. Even his shoes looked ruined. “Do you come home every evening like this, sir?” she asked, horrified.
He laughed, apparently not as perturbed as he should have been.
Is this normal? “What happened?” she demanded. “Are you hurt?”
Mr. Ferreira leaned against the newel post. “Someone walked into a room behind me and set it ablaze,” he said, sobering. “And the floor below that. I suspect it was the same gentleman from last night.”
Who seemed likely to have been a member of the Special Police. “They certainly don’t want you proceeding with this investigation, do they?”
He shrugged and then winced. “I’m beginning to have questions about that, Miss Paredes. I suspect my understanding of the Special Police might be insufficient to grasp what’s going on now.”
What does that mean? “Are you hurt?” she asked again.
“Oh, I’m fine,” he said dismissively, as if an attempt to burn him to death didn’t warrant concern. He began to search the pockets of his coat. “I went to investigate the place because we thought Espinoza might live there.”
“Did he?”
Mr. Ferreira tugged a leather-bound book out of one of the pockets. “Evidence suggests that he did but hasn’t been there for some time.”
When he held out the book, Oriana took it. It was damp, the edges of the pages already beginning to curl. “And this is?”
“A journal, likely his.”
He certainly disliked stating absolutes. He qualified everything he said. She peered down at the leather-bound book more closely. It didn’t seem to have been damaged by the fire, but she was going to have to let it dry. “May I look through this?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid it got wet. Someone dumped a bucket of water on me. I thought you might be able to determine if there’s anything useful inside. Perhaps some hint where the man is holed up. It would be helpful if he names any of his compatriots, particularly in the Special Police. Or who’s paying for his work. That would be nice to know.”
He could have given this to his cousin in the police instead, but he’d handed it over to her. It was a gesture of trust. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Were you injured again? Or is that the other wound reopened?”
“The old one,” he said, glancing back at his blood-smudged shirt. “Nothing that requires an application of brandy, Miss Paredes, I assure you. I’ll get my man to bandage it after I get cleaned off. If you see Marcellin downstairs, could you mention to him that I’m here? I need to get cleaned up before dinner.”
A vast understatement. “I’ll do so, sir. Will we still go to the ball?”
“Absolutely, Miss Paredes. If there’s one thing we could use more of, it’s information. Especially if it helps make sense out of all the other information we have.”
* * *
Oriana did her best to salvage the journal. Some pages were wetter than others, so she took a towel and carefully dabbed at them, trying hard not to smear any ink. The book had been tightly wedged into Mr. Ferreira’s pocket, so the water hadn’t crept too far into the pages. He’d been lucky.
She skimmed a couple of pages, most describing building one house or another, along with a few others that contained arcane mathematical calculations. Deciding that she could read it the next day, she laid the journal atop the chest of drawers in the dressing room. She weighed down each side of the cover with what appeared to be unused snuffboxes, trinkets that must have belonged to Alessio, and the pages fanned open. She hoped they would dry by the morning.
They were to leave the house at ten, so Oriana stewed in her room for a couple of hours. If Nela’s Lady did show up in the Carvalho’s library, what should she ask? Unfortunately she understood what Mr. Ferreira had meant when he’d given her the journal. They had a great deal of information already. They simply didn’t know how it tied together. Too many aspects of this didn’t make sense. If only she could ask the right question tonight and get the right answer, perhaps everything would become clear.
Teresa had left the blue dress, now freshly sponged and pressed, on the bed. When ten approached, Oriana donned it and tried to make her hair presentable. She usually wore it in the English style with tendrils down about her neck, but Felis had brought her a pair of jet earrings, a reminder that the household was still in half mourning. The dress had a high batiste collar that would hide her gill slits, so Oriana drew all her hair up into a knot at the nape of her neck, better to let the earrings show. It wasn’t elegant, but it was the best she could manage on her own. When a knock came at the door, she expected Teresa to enter with some item she’d forgotten, but it was Ana, the second housemaid, instead. “Miss Paredes?”
Oriana quickly drew on her mitts. “Yes, Ana?”
“Teresa said I could come up and see if you needed help with your hair.” The young woman sounded uncertain, but she went on. “I’m not a proper ladies’ maid, but she’s been letting me help her, and we girls all fix each other’s hair below stairs.”
“I’d be grateful for your help pinning it up,” Oriana told her.
The housemaid came in and, once Oriana handed over the pins, brushed out Oriana’s hair, braided it again, and pinned it into a neat coil at the back of her head. Ana also produced a jar of dusting powder that covered the fading bruise on Oriana’s temple. The girl chattered the whole while, repeating how excited the staff was that Lady Ferreira was going out again. When she’d finished, Oriana had to admire the job the young woman had done. Her hair looked more elegant than any coiffure she’d ever achieved on her own. She thanked Ana, gathered her handbag with the sketch secreted inside it, and went to wait at the side of the house for the carriage.
If she hadn’t known that Mr. Ferreira had been attacked twice in the last two days, she wouldn’t have been able to spot it. He looked dashing in his black evening jacket and gray waistcoat. Yes, dashing was the right word. He carried a satin top hat and a silver-handled cane, which Oriana suspected was more for decoration than for supporting himself. When the carriage rolled up to the side of the house, he helped his mother up first, and then Oriana. It wasn’t even a mile up the Street of Flowers to the Carvalho house, but Oriana didn’t fancy walking that distance, so she settled next to the lady and clutched her small h
andbag close.
In the flickering light of the little lanterns inside the carriage, Lady Ferreira looked stunning in a dress of dark brown that bared much of her shoulders and throat. Although brown, the black trim should allow it to pass as half mourning. It shouldn’t shock the aristocratic matrons overmuch. A jet parure completed the lady’s costume, and Felis had done an excellent job with the lady’s hair, pinning it up in a fashion that made her look youthful yet not daring. Some might interpret her dress and her appearance in society as a sign she’d decided to leave mourning behind, but Lady Ferreira’s persistently grief-stricken demeanor would surely convince everyone otherwise.
Mr. Ferreira joined them in the carriage. Once he’d settled in his seat, he drew a silver case out of an inside pocket—a cigarette case. It had to be an affectation on his part. She’d never once caught a whiff of smoke on him—except for today. He took out a cigarette and then offered the case to Oriana, one brow raised. She shook her head. Isabel might have taught her to drink coffee and brandy, but she drew the line at smoking. Her gills would never forgive her. “You’re not actually going to smoke that, are you?” she asked.
“I don’t allow it,” his mother said softly.
Duilio returned the silver case to his pocket. “Marcellin already complains enough about the scent of others’ smoke in my garments. I don’t want to displease him more than necessary, much less my mother.” He turned to Lady Ferreira. “Are you still feeling up to this, Mother?”
The lady sighed. “Yes. Only I don’t wish to stay too long, Duilinho. I’ve forgotten how to endure late nights.”
“Of course, Mother. A couple of the footmen will meet us at the Carvalho house. They’ll be able to escort you home should you grow tired.” He tapped on the wall of the carriage with his cane, and the vehicle lurched into motion. “Miss Paredes,” he said in a cheerful tone, “your hair is lovely in that style. You must wear it like that more often. Off your neck, I mean.”
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