A knock at her door heralded Teresa’s entrance. The maid waited until Oriana had emerged from the dressing room. “There’s a woman in the sitting room who wishes to speak with you,” she said. “A Mrs. Melo.”
Oriana felt like the world shook. She gripped the edge of the door. “Is she alone?”
“Yes, miss,” Teresa said.
She took a deep breath. “I’ll go down directly,” she said. “Could you advise Mr. Ferreira as well?”
Teresa headed off to find one of the footmen to talk to Mr. Ferreira, who must still be changing clothes. Oriana stripped off her mitts in case she had to get at her knife quickly and headed downstairs to the front parlor. When she pushed the sitting room door wide open, she found the woman from the church sitting comfortably on the couch.
Oriana stopped at the threshold. Should she go in? Would that put her in a more vulnerable position than standing in the doorway? But surely remaining outside would tell this woman she was afraid. She leveled her shoulders and stepped inside. “Mrs. Melo, I believe it is?”
The woman had been watching her, dark eyes hard as stone. She was an attractive woman, but not striking enough to draw attention. Her brows were thick, which lent her a look of intensity that Oriana had noted before. “You’ve done well so far, Oriana.” The woman surveyed the contents of the sitting room with an appraising eye. “I have to say, I’m impressed that you managed to land in a wealthy household following the incident with the Amaral family.”
The incident with the Amaral family? Is that how she saw Isabel’s death? An incident? Oriana forced her fists to unclench. “What do you want?”
“I want to know if Silva spilled everything I told him,” the woman said as she rose. “Did he tell you that we’ll be putting out the new house tonight?”
Oriana suspected her reaction—or lack of one—gave away the answer to that. “Yes.”
“And will Anjos and his collection of freaks move to rescue the girl?”
Collection of freaks? What an odd thing to say. “I’m sure they’ll try.”
“You’ll have to leave here,” the woman said, her eyes fixing on Oriana’s. “You know that, don’t you? Once the press gets wind of Isabel Amaral’s death, they’ll want you hauled in and questioned. You’ll be exposed for certain, and the Special Police—well, most of them—haven’t given up their persecution of our kind. I don’t want to see someone who’s done so much for the cause hanged.”
Done so much for the cause. “You let them kill Isabel. You were there and didn’t stop it.”
“Oriana,” the woman said softly, almost gently. “If you hadn’t been there, the Open Hand might have succeeded with this insane idea. Yes, your employer died, but sacrifices have to be made.”
Oriana couldn’t look at her any longer. “She was my friend.”
“Making you carry her handbag and read to her? I think not. One of the first rules of this occupation, Oriana, is never get too close to anyone. Never become attached to anyone. You haven’t been in this game very long, so I understand your making that mistake. But there are some things you have to give up for your cause. People like us don’t have friends or family. We can’t afford them.”
Oriana wanted to close her eyes, but didn’t dare put that much trust in this woman. She felt ill, a minute away from casting up her lunch on the fine rug.
“I’ll make arrangements,” the woman continued, “for your extraction. I’ll leave word for you here as soon as those arrangements are made. I expect them to be followed explicitly. Do you understand?”
She didn’t have an answer. She wasn’t ready for this. She didn’t want to leave.
“And if you don’t go,” the woman continued in a reasonable tone, “I’ll make certain that the press turns up enough evidence to prove that your father . . . well, let’s say that it will make his life most uncomfortable.”
Oriana looked up. “Leave my father out of this.”
“Remember, Oriana, family is a liability in this occupation. You came to us with a built-in failsafe. I’ve always known that. Now . . . Heriberto, he’s soft. All he wants is to gather enough gold to run away to Brazil, the impetus behind all his petty crime. I promise you, I am not soft. I will do whatever’s needed.”
No, Oriana had no doubt of that. Maria Melo must have witnessed, even participated in, the deaths of dozens of innocents in the last year. She’d handpicked the people who’d died. She’d chosen Isabel. If Oriana had been discovered by the Open Hand, this woman would have stood silently by and watched them kill her too . . . or done it herself. “I understand.”
The woman inclined her head. “I’ll send word.” She walked around the sofa and paused while Oriana stepped aside to let her out of the sitting room. “You do have your mother’s look about you,” she said. “Unfortunately she didn’t understand the rules of the game either.”
And with that parting shot, she walked past a stunned Oriana and down the hallway. Cardenas opened the door, and Maria Melo strode down the steps as if she were queen of the world.
* * *
Duilio only caught the last few seconds of that conversation. He’d been half-dressed and still eating his dinner when Gustavo came in to tell him of Miss Paredes’ unexpected visitor. He’d thrown on a jacket, bolted down the mouthful he was chewing, and run down the stairs to see that Miss Paredes was safe.
He’d been about to enter on the pretext that his mother wished to speak to Miss Paredes when he’d realized the visitor was emerging. He ducked into the library instead. Miss Paredes didn’t need him to interfere, but he wished he knew what had happened. When he came out of the library, she seemed shaken by whatever her visitor had to say.
“Miss Paredes?”
She jerked to attention, her jaw clenched tightly. “Sir?”
Duilio wondered what it would take to get her to call him by his name. “Why don’t you join me in the library? You look like you could use a brandy.”
“I could, actually.” She followed him meekly down the hall. He grabbed the decanter out of the liquor cabinet, and she settled in the chair while he poured. “Can you tell . . .” she began. “Do you know if someone will die tonight? If I can’t save them?”
Duilio closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to call his gift into order. He posed a question to his mind, but his gift only had a tentative answer for him, as if there were too many variables that could change. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Ah,” she said, sobering.
“It’s not just your responsibility, Oriana,” he said. “There will be several of us out there, all working on it.” She didn’t object to his using her name. Perhaps she hadn’t even noticed.
“She fed Silva all that information. She wanted to be sure he’d repeat it to us.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “If she’s the saboteur, then she wants them to be brought down. She just doesn’t want to be brought down with them, or have anyone know that she brought them down.”
Miss Paredes nodded shakily. “She said that once the press gets hold of Isabel Amaral’s death, I’ll be exposed as a sereia.”
He’d expected that, but had already planned to pay off anyone necessary to keep her name out of the press. “That can be worked around. I can assure you that your name, and possibly Isabel’s, won’t appear in the papers.”
She shook her head wearily. “She’s making arrangements for my extraction. If I don’t go, there will be repercussions.”
Duilio felt all the threads he’d pulled together slipping loose out of his hands. Why had his gift not warned him? He’d known she had a life beyond this household, but he hadn’t seen her walking away so soon. “When?”
“I’m not certain,” she said softly. “She’ll send word.”
Duilio reached across and touched her chin, trying to get her to meet his eyes, but she seemed determined to avoid his gaze. Leaning that close to her, he felt a sudden, wild desire to press his lips to her jaw. He need only lean forward
a few more inches. He wanted to smell her skin, tangle his hands in that tightly braided hair. He firmly reminded himself that he was a gentleman in whom she’d placed a great deal of trust. She wasn’t one of the demimonde to be pawed, or one of Erdano’s girls looking for a night’s entertainment. Oriana Paredes was as much a lady as his own mother. So he sat back, putting some distance between himself and temptation. Heaven knew they had other things to do tonight than entertain his currently hotheaded desires.
“What sort of repercussions?” he asked. “Can I help?”
“No.” She gazed down at her hands. “I’ve been used as a tool, nothing more.”
That had to sting. “It happens to all of us at one point or another, Oriana. There are always people out there using other people to get their way.”
“She let Isabel die,” she said. “She made the choice. I don’t think I could ever do that.”
Ah, now he had an idea what was whirling around in her head. “Spies put their ideology ahead of everything else. One reason I’m not a spy. I don’t think I could do it either.”
She smiled then. “No, you would have tried to save Isabel.”
He’d never been good at keeping up a subterfuge when it violated his principles. “Speaking of saving others, we should probably head down to the quay.”
She picked up her brandy and tossed back the whole glass in one gulp. “I’m ready.”
They left the library. On the table in the hallway lay the two overcoats that he’d asked Marcellin to bring down. Duilio pulled one on, picked up the second, and held it so she could step into it. “Too big, I think, but it will keep you warm. It’ll be cold out on the water.”
“I’m going to be in the water,” she pointed out.
“The whole time? With whom will I talk?” he asked, allowing a plaintive edge to creep into his voice.
She rolled her eyes but let him help her into the coat. He hoped that look of exasperation meant he’d been forgiven any inappropriate ardor she might have perceived. “I can’t promise to make conversation, sir,” she said. “It’s not one of my skills.”
He couldn’t resist the temptation to tease her, even though he knew he should. “That only makes me curious to know what your skills are.”
* * *
At the quay where the lovely yacht waited, Mr. Ferreira inspected the bolt cutters that João had collected for him. They had a brief discussion and picked two out of the batch. The sun set while they prepared the rowboat to cast off. It actually served as the yacht’s lifeboat, so they had to lower it down by winch to the water before Mr. Ferreira pulled it around for Oriana to join him in it. With João’s help, she stepped from the floating marina’s planks into the rowboat and swiftly sat. There was a shuttered lantern at her feet, so she made certain to keep her skirts away from it.
“Where is your brother, do you think?” she asked delicately. She’d half expected to find a dozen selkies waiting for them. She was disappointed when they weren’t there.
“He’ll be here,” Mr. Ferreira said, using one oar to push away from the marina. “May be late, but he’ll show up.” He handled the oars easily, as if he’d done a lot of rowing in the past, and they were quickly away from the other boats clustered near the quay as darkness fell over the water.
The city proper was more than two miles inland, and The City Under the Sea had been constructed on the southern side of the river, between the large bend in the river’s path and the breakwater that shielded that area from the sea. Mr. Ferreira rowed patiently, taking them along the river’s northern bank and then heading across the lanes of river traffic at a southwesterly angle that would take them to where the houses floated. By the time they got close to the right spot, it was full dark.
Oriana disrobed quickly and slid into the water. She submerged long enough to identify the vibrations of another vessel—the commandeered patrol boat—moving slowly toward the breakwater. She fixed the direction in her mind and then returned to the rowboat. Mr. Ferreira helped her over the side and wrapped the overcoat back around her. With her directions, they soon located the patrol boat. A few minutes later the rowboat was tied behind it, sparing his arms.
“I haven’t rowed in a while,” Mr. Ferreira whispered ruefully, rubbing at his left arm.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked.
“We wait,” he said.
CHAPTER 30
In the darkness, the patrol boat floated along without lights, the rowboat drifting behind it on a towline. The moon hadn't risen yet. They were nearer the breakwaters now that sheltered the river from the open sea, well over a mile from the city itself. They could see the lights of the city still, but were closer to the dark Gaia shore with its high cliffs. Two lighthouses on the breakwaters marked the edge of the open sea.
The crew on the patrol boat had cut their engine, so the silence wrapped about them. They had been sitting there for a couple of hours now in the darkness but hadn’t yet seen a single Special Police patrol—or anything else. There were no gulls out here, no seabirds at all, as if they knew what was under the surface of the water. The absence of their cries was eerie. In the darkness it was as if the two boats had fallen off the edge of the earth.
Oriana kept one hand in the water, feeling the currents in her webbing. Her clothes lay in a neat pile near the prow of the rowboat. She hadn’t seen the need to don them again, since the borrowed overcoat kept her warm enough and hid the paleness of her skin.
The selkies Aga had gone to fetch never arrived, which meant that the freeing of the house was Oriana’s task alone. She could do it. She wouldn’t let herself think otherwise.
She could barely make out Mr. Ferreira’s face a few feet away. He’d kept the lantern shuttered to prevent anyone from seeing them, and true to his earlier words, he’d talked with her. Mostly trivial things, such as what books she liked, her favorite food, whether or not she cared for Mozart or Alfredo Keil. Had she read Eça de Queirós? Castelo Branco? Dickens?
He was trying to set her at ease, a kindness since she was so tense. “Is it my turn or yours?” she asked.
He laughed softly and whispered, “It was your turn, but you wasted it by asking that, so now it’s my turn again. What happened to your father, Oriana? You told me he was exiled.”
He’d taken to addressing her by name. It was a step further than simply using the familiar person, more intimate. She liked that. She took a deep breath and considered his question. Then she answered honestly, no matter how terrible it must sound. “He lives in Portugal now.”
She opened her mouth to explain, but paused.
She sensed movement in her webbing. It was large—a ship, its screws churning the water. With the pitch-blackness about them, she couldn’t see the approaching ship, but could feel its motion and hear the ripple of its wake. A shiver ran down her spine. She touched his hand to get his attention; he could see even less in the darkness than she. “It’s in that direction. No lights.”
He lifted one shade of the lantern, letting off a pair of brief flashes, the signal agreed upon with Gaspar. A single flash showed in response. They’d gotten the message.
The yacht continued on past them in the darkness as he cast off the towline. There were only a couple of faint lights on the yacht’s deck, but Oriana could make out the arm of a crane affixed to the deck. A large, boxy shape hung from the crane, a house all ready to drop into the river. A chain draped from the underside of the hanging house to the deck of the yacht. It would have a weight attached—she knew that from the journal—even if she couldn’t see it yet. When they got to the right spot, they would drop the chain, then lower the house into the water from the crane. The weight would drag it downward, and their diver—Silva’s selkie—would guide the weighted chain to the right spot and attach it to an anchor set on the silt-clouded riverbed before the first house had been put in place.
It was eerie to see the instrument of Isabel’s death.
They waited in silence a while as the ship found th
e right position, apparently being directed by the selkie, much as she’d led Mr. Ferreira to the patrol boat. Mr. Ferreira rowed quietly, moving them closer to the yacht.
Then Oriana heard the rattling of chains. The sound sent a cold wash of remembered fear into her stomach. She dropped the coat she wore and slid into the water, naked save for the knife strapped to her wrist. She reached over the edge of the rowboat to grab the bolt cutters from the bench.
“Be careful,” Duilio told her.
She submerged in time to feel the house hit the water, its chain dragging it down. As she got closer, the water was full of death. Oriana breathed it in, felt it in her gills and tasted it in her mouth, the flesh of dozens of innocents rotting away in this slow eddy of the river. The taste of corruption in the water sent the terror and pain of that night surging back into her mind. Isabel was among those whose bodies were slowly decaying in this watery graveyard.
Isabel had died in this place, but she hadn’t. Oriana was going to make use of that.
She forced herself on, swimming awkwardly with the heavy tool in her hands. Her large eyes took in more light than a human’s, but in the moonless dark, distorted by the water’s movement, the house was little more than a blur.
Oriana reached the floating house and immediately swam downward to locate the chain. She brushed against columns, a triangular pediment—definitely the Carvalho house. She couldn’t hear voices within, so the captives might not even have woken yet. Perhaps they would be spared the worst of the terror.
She located the chain. It was taut, which told her the selkie must already be pulling it downward to affix the chain to the weight on the riverbed. Oriana wrapped one leg about the chain for leverage and worked the bolt cutters into position. She pulled on the long handles as hard as she could, but couldn’t get them to bite through the chain.
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