The Seat of Magic

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  Duilio’s gift presented him with a feeling of ill-fatedness for the missing girl. He shook his head to drive it out. “Did you want me to look for her?”

  Tigana’s brows drew together slightly. “Why else would I tell you?”

  Conversation was not one of her amusements, Duilio remembered. “What can you tell me about her, then? What does she look like?”

  “As a human?” When he nodded, she continued, “Small like Darina. Brown hair, lighter than Guisa’s. Paler than me.”

  He tried to recall either of those females, but failed. “How tall would she be if she stood next to you?”

  Tigana held her hand just above her dark-tipped breasts, which told Duilio the girl fell short of five feet. Short, with brown hair and fair skin, slight build—that described far too many of the young girls of the city to be helpful to him. “Did she have any scars? Marks?”

  Tigana considered for a moment and then shrugged. “I do not recall. I will ask the children if they remember.”

  Duilio hoped she didn’t expect him to provide a miracle. The girl would likely have been nude when she came up on the docks, and that would serve as the only point of distinction for describing her. Without her pelt, she would appear completely human. He would have to start at the quays and track her from there. “Do you know where Erdano went that night?”

  “She works in a tavern. Her name is”—Tigana scowled again, but Duilio suspected that was frustration, not dislike of the other woman involved—“Zenaide.”

  That would help him retrace Erdano’s path, as he knew in which tavern Erdano had met that girl . . . unless there were two tavern girls named Zenaide in Erdano’s life, which seemed unlikely. “That’s helpful. I will try, Tigana, but I do not think I will find her.”

  “You are better to look for her than Erdano. He is too easily distracted.” She rose, bundling her pelt under one arm, her delicate feet white against the black sands. Duilio managed to keep his eyes on those feet. “I will ask the children,” she said, and left him alone on the sand.

  The day felt chillier then as Duilio contemplated the impossibility of hunting a nonhuman girl in the Golden City. Young Gita must be strong-willed if she’d defied Tigana and set off on her own after Erdano, but that didn’t mean she could make her own way in the city, not in the harsher parts of it, and not when revealing her identity would mean her death.

  The city had once welcomed all of the peoples, human and sereia, selkie or otter folk. Duilio was old enough to remember that time. He remembered sereia walking through the streets among humans, with no enmity between. When the prince’s father died, young Prince Fabricio had closed the city to nonhumans after ascending the throne. The Ferreira family had always kept his mother’s bloodlines secret—simple enough to do since she wore human form—but from that day on they had lived with the fear of exposure.

  It was more dangerous for one of the sereia. When Duilio had noticed Oriana back in the spring, though, it had never occurred to him to expose her. He’d noted the reddish cast of her curling brown hair, her large and dark eyes, her hands always hidden in silk mitts rather than gloves. He hadn’t been certain, though, until he saw her in the bathtub. He’d walked in on her there intentionally, citing a need to know the truth. Her skin bared, she could never pass for human. Her belly and thighs had a silvery coloration that mimicked a fish’s scales. Her webbed fingers had been visible as well, the pink-edged gill slits on the side of her neck vibrating as she lay with her eyes closed under the surface of the water, singing to herself. And while the teeth hidden behind her full lips resembled a human’s, he knew them to be much sharper.

  Only when she’d dived into the water that last morning had he gotten a glimpse of her dorsal stripe. She had never turned her back on him before that. A glittering black band several inches wide, it stretched from a point beneath her shoulder blades and tapered down again to her heels, defined by a narrow edging of royal blue. Golden stippling ran down her sides and thighs. A strikingly attractive combination, even though it was merely an imitation of a tuna’s markings. The memory of that morning made him smile . . . and then fret again when he thought of her continued absence.

  Sighing, he leaned back and watched the seals in the bay breaking the surface as they swam. He didn’t know enough of the females to make any sense of what was going on, but it seemed as if they supported one of their number. That had to be his mother, even though he couldn’t see enough of her pelt to be certain. Over at the center of the beach where the pups sunned themselves, he saw one larger female moving among them, her almost-black fur marking her as Tigana. Seagulls flew overhead, enjoying the warm morning.

  Water rushed up toward the spot where Duilio sat, warning him a second before Erdano threw himself up on the beach, bearing a wave of seal musk with him that offended Duilio’s nose; he’d never liked the scent of other males. The bull seal waddled onto the sands and rose up out of seal form, slipping off his pelt once more. With a grin, Erdano came and settled nearby. He reclined propped up on an elbow, his pose reminding Duilio of an odalisque, as if he was displaying himself for his harem’s enjoyment. Duilio resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

  “She come back yet?” Erdano asked. “Oriana?”

  “No, she hasn’t returned,” Duilio admitted. Erdano had more than once hinted he wouldn’t mind seducing Oriana. Duilio didn’t think she’d give in, but women did seem to find Erdano irresistible, part of his selkie charm.

  “Too bad.” Erdano smiled past him. “Mother is in pain, but swimming strong. That’s good. She will stay at the house if the other one comes back, won’t she?”

  How could he answer that? “There isn’t any understanding between myself and Oriana.”

  Erdano rolled his eyes dramatically and snorted. “I’m not that stupid, little brother.”

  She’d agreed she would try to come back, no more. Somehow Duilio doubted Erdano would believe him. “Of course, Mother would stay,” he said. “It never occurred to me that she would leave.”

  “Good. She doesn’t fit in here anymore. Been among humans too long.” Erdano nodded his head, watching the seals in the water now. “Did Tigana tell you one of the young ones is missing?”

  So much for Erdano not noticing. “She mentioned it to me.”

  “Can you find her?”

  Duilio pressed his lips together. “I can try, Erdano, but I have a bad feeling about her.”

  Erdano fixed him with a worried gaze. “Is she dead?”

  Birds chattered in the rocks above them. The sun went behind the clouds for a moment, taking the glare off the surface of the water, and Duilio could see the seals swimming calmly in the midst of the shallow bay—a peaceful scene. “I believe so.”

  “Then find out who killed her,” Erdano ordered.

  CHAPTER 4

  Duilio’s mother, exhausted and in pain, huddled on the boat’s deck all the way back, swathed in a blanket and dozing lightly. On each hand an area of raw and reddened flesh marked the tips of her fingers, with matching injuries on her feet. She managed a pair of his felt slippers for as long as it took to get her into a cab on the quay, but Duilio was grateful when they reached the alley behind the house. He carried his mother to the servant’s entrance and along the halls up to her room, trailed by their butler.

  “Duilinho, put me down,” she protested. She craned her neck around to catch the butler’s attention. “Cardenas, could you send for Felis for me?”

  The butler leaned toward the hallway and beckoned over a footman while Duilio set his mother on the delicate wooden-backed settee at the foot of her ivory-draped bed. She’d held her fingers tucked into the sleeves of her blouse, hiding the worst of the injuries, and he cringed when he saw the raw flesh. But she’d prepared salve and bandages, expecting this.

  He still worried. “Can you do that yourself, Mother?”

  “Felis will take care of me,” s
he insisted, naming her maid of many years. “Aren’t you to go back to the monastery today, Duilinho?”

  Duilio ran a hand through his salt-spiked hair. It was almost two, and he needed to bathe and dress before meeting with Joaquim and the Lady. So he gave in, leaving his mother and her pelt in the hands of her maid.

  Not an hour later he was bathed and striding up the Street of Flowers toward the monastery. His valet Marcellin had rigged him out in a three-piece suit in dark gray. The man had been arguing that since his mother had left off her mourning, Duilio should do the same. The truth was that Duilio simply didn’t care to wear color. Gray and black suited him fine. But saying so to Marcellin would have given the elderly Frenchman a fit of apoplexy, so he’d vaguely promised to consider purchasing a few waistcoats and neckties in brighter colors. Poor Marcellin.

  Duilio walked up the steep street, amazed they’d had two sunny days in a row. He reached the Monastery of São Bento de Avé Maria, its white-painted and granite walls bright in the sunshine. The square before the monastery was full of traffic, mule carts vying for space with fine carriages. Near the heart of the old city, this intersection held a collection of granite buildings, most in the neoclassical or baroque style. Businessmen strode by at a purposeful clip, for this was the city of business. Several moved with the same intent as he—to catch the tram at the intersection. Duilio had to jog the last bit but managed to jump on in time. The tram trundled away from the square, carrying them on to Batalha Square with its old palace and theater, and then turning out in the direction of the cemetery.

  Duilio jumped off in front of the cemetery and walked down toward the Monastery of the Brothers of Mercy. When he reached it, he spotted Inspector Gaspar waiting for him outside the cells. A mestiço—part Portuguese and part African—Gaspar was hard to miss in conservative Northern Portugal. And while his darker skin surely made him stand out, his specialized abilities would have earned him a place in any police force in the world. Gaspar was a meter, able to measure others’ powers with a single glance. Supposedly the meter was the rarest form of witch known to history, perhaps one born per generation in the whole world. Duilio had initially found the man’s direct gaze unsettling, but he’d quickly grown to like him.

  Gaspar gestured for Duilio to accompany him inside. “Good to see you, Ferreira. I suppose you’ve heard about Maraval’s death?”

  The hallway was cold, making him jealous of Gaspar’s tweed overcoat. Gaspar always dressed particularly well, his dark suit revealing an excellent tailor’s touch. Duilio tilted his head to one side, wondering why Gaspar had waited outside in the hallway. The man certainly wasn’t squeamish, as Joaquim sometimes was. “Yes, although belatedly.”

  Gaspar stroked his chin thoughtfully, his green eyes narrowing. “A setback there. He took a great deal of information with him to the grave that we would rather have had.”

  They’d had the man in custody for two weeks, so that was surprising. “I thought Inspector Anjos and Miss Vladimirova could get anything out of him.”

  “Anjos needed to rest,” Gaspar said with a shrug. “His illness has good days and bad days.”

  Duilio suspected he was staring blankly. He’d noted before that the Brazilian inspector often looked tired, but he’d put that down to overwork. “Illness?”

  “Tuberculosis,” Gaspar said. “He’s been better for the last couple of days, but he was pretty weak for several before that.”

  Tuberculosis was an indiscriminate illness, often inflicting differing symptoms on its victims. While Duilio had noted that Anjos coughed at times, the man also smoked more cigarettes than could be healthy. He’d ascribed the coughing to that. He tried to recall whether he’d ever been in direct contact with the inspector, but in their previous interactions, Anjos had always kept his distance. Duilio had thought him aloof. Perhaps the man had been trying not to pass his illness to anyone else. “What do his doctors say?”

  Gaspar set his hat on the long table next to the outside door. “He doesn’t see a doctor.”

  What could doctors do anyway? They would simply stick the inspector in a sanatorium, and Duilio doubted Anjos wanted that. “Why are you waiting out here?”

  “I’m sure Tavares would prefer I keep my distance.” Gaspar smiled wryly. “Shall we?”

  Duilio waited while Brother Manoel opened the door and then followed Gaspar inside the stone cell. The smell was worse than the previous day, although not nearly as bad as it should be. Duilio made do with pressing a gloved finger under his nose. The body on the stone table was still covered with a sheet. Joaquim stood to one side, speaking urgently with the Lady, a striking woman with black hair, pale blue eyes, and a very fine wardrobe. Today she wore a fashionable suit in dark blue, the hem of her box-pleated skirt brushing along the granite floor.

  She cast her pale eyes over Duilio and nodded regally to him. Then she turned toward Gaspar. “Miguel, I think you need to look at her.”

  The inspector crossed to her side and carefully drew back the sheet. The doctor had neatly sewn up the Y-incision on the girl’s chest, but Gaspar’s eyes immediately fixed on the girl’s left breast. The pallid skin over her heart showed no sign of the damage the doctor had mentioned. Gaspar stretched his hand over the girl’s heart, an inch above her skin.

  “This isn’t good. Someone drew her life force out of her.” His eyes rose to meet the Lady’s. “A healer did this, or a witch with very similar powers. Someone who can drain another’s life away.”

  The Lady’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “What are you saying?”

  “I spoke to a healer last night,” Duilio interposed. “She told me a healer can do that, but it goes against everything they’re taught. That the ones who do this are like demons.”

  Joaquim shot him an annoyed look that accused him of withholding information. Duilio shrugged apologetically. The cathedral bells began to toll the hour, and the Lady discreetly laid her gloved hands over her ears, even though at this distance the sound wasn’t overly loud. Once they’d announced the time, she dropped her hands and shook herself.

  “The question isn’t whether it’s possible for a healer to kill,” Gaspar said quickly. “It is, I assure you. I can see the print of the killer’s hand on her skin. The question is why. Why steal her life?”

  Duilio had a feeling Gaspar was leading them slowly to his point. He nudged Joaquim’s shoulder. “Tell him.”

  Joaquim scowled at him and then turned back to Gaspar. “When you released me from the investigation of The City Under the Sea, I returned to the Massarelos station and picked up working on my list of missing persons again. The officer who does morgue duty usually calls me to look at unidentified bodies. We’ve had three girls turn up dead on the streets like this in the last two weeks. There might have been more we’ve missed.”

  Gaspar stroked his chin. “So we have a predator in the city, one who was probably a healer at one point in their life. One who can kill by touch.”

  The Lady’s eyes flicked toward Gaspar. She rubbed one gloved hand down her dark skirt. “It can’t be,” she protested softly. “We would know if Nadezhda . . .”

  Gaspar held out one hand, almost a gesture to hush her.

  Duilio still wasn’t sure of the hierarchy between the four members of their team. He’d thought Anjos—their Truthsayer—was nominally in charge of Gaspar, and they both seemed to answer to the Lady. Now he wondered if Gaspar was actually at the head of the pack, especially with Anjos being ill.

  If he recalled correctly, though, Nadezhda Vladimirova was the full name of the fourth member of their team—the rusalka. When Rafael Pinheiro had been questioned by Miss Vladimirova during the early days of their attempt to clear undesirables out of the Special Police, he’d been uneasy. He’d called her unnatural. Paolo Silva, Rafael’s father, called the woman undead. That matched with what Duilio had learned about rusalki in the previous two weeks. Various l
egends abounded about them, but a common strain held they were the spirits of young women who’d been murdered or drowned . . . which suggested undead might be the best description.

  The Lady stepped away from the stone table as Gaspar pulled the sheet back over the girl’s body.

  “Why would they be doing this, then?” Duilio asked him. “Why steal others’ lives?”

  Gaspar gave him a level look. “If they’re stealing others’ lives, there are a few possibilities. It could be they crave the illusion of life they feel when they’ve consumed another’s life force. Or they could be passing that life to someone else.”

  “Passing it?”

  The Lady opened her mouth and shut it quickly.

  “Earlier this year Anjos was shot while in the countryside near Lisboa,” Gaspar said. “Miss Vladimirova actually has no life to share, which is a healer’s primary tool. She was able to save his life, though, by killing a bull in a nearby field and using that strength to heal him.”

  Duilio puzzled over that. Using a death sacrifice to enhance her own abilities had to be considered necromancy and forbidden, but did it count if she’d killed an animal? Joaquim’s brows were drawn together with disapproval.

  “She saved his life,” the Lady said to Gaspar, facing him with a level stare. “Don’t forget that.”

  Duilio had the feeling they’d argued this before, and often.

  “I’m not convinced that Nadezhda actually is dead,” she said to Duilio, as if he needed to hear her justification. “I believe her life is paused instead.”

  “My gift tells me she’s dead,” Gaspar told them. “Totally devoid of life. Empty.”

  “A healer, first and foremost, controls her own body,” the Lady argued. “I believe she chose to stop her life rather than die at her husband’s hands.”

  Gaspar regarded her with raised brows. “And how is that any different?”

  “Control,” the Lady said. “She’s of the Vladimirov bloodline, the most powerful family of healers known.”