The Golden City

by Cheney, J. Kathleen

  Oriana prayed that would be enough. She set her teeth back to the rope. It gave suddenly, and she yanked it with her mouth. It had been wrapped around several times, so she had to pull each loop loose. Chilly water touched the back of her head. Cold fingers of water spread along the back of her housemaid’s costume, grasped her shoulders, climbed up her garments.

  It reached her mouth, and she took it in. Her gills opened involuntarily and her throat closed, stealing her voice. She breathed in the familiar water of the Douro River as she dragged her arm free of the loops of rope.

  No! The rope holding her other arm hadn’t loosened at all. They were separate ropes. She would have to chew through each one individually. She tore at her shirtsleeve, but her wrist was tied too tightly to get her dagger loose, not until she could get that hand free.

  There was no time. Oriana didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  Across from her in the darkness, Isabel’s eyes were stricken in the pale oval of her face. The water had nearly reached her waist. Oriana didn’t know how long Isabel had been holding her breath, waiting to be rescued.

  If she could just reach Isabel, she could breathe for her. Oriana jerked against the rope trapping her left arm, but it didn’t give an inch. She tried to shove the ropes binding her chest down to her waist, but they tangled in the fabric of her apron.

  Isabel’s bow-shaped lips opened. A flood of bubbles streamed from her mouth, the last of her breath. Her body jerked convulsively against the ropes that bound her to the chair. Her eyes were wide with terror.

  Unable to reach her, Oriana pounded her free hand on the surface of the table, setting off painful vibrations through her webbing. She wanted to scream. She wanted to beg Isabel’s forgiveness. But her voice was gone underwater. She reached out her throbbing hand and laid it over Isabel’s fingers. What could she do?

  She couldn’t sing underwater, but she could hum. Oriana wove a call into the tune to comfort Isabel, using her memories of an old lullaby her father had sung to shape the sound. It was all she had to give.

  Isabel’s expression eased, the fear in her eyes fading.

  Then she was still.

  Oriana’s song faltered to a stop, and soundless sobs shook her body. The water had stolen her ability to cry. She could taste Isabel’s death in the water, the sudden tang of a voided bladder—loss of control along with the loss of life. Oriana tugged the silk mitt off her hand with her teeth and spread her fingers wide, stretching the webbing between them. She could feel the vibration of her own heartbeat.

  From Isabel there was nothing.

  And then a glow crept across the surface of the table between them, almost like blood flowing from a wound. Letters imprinted on the surface gave off a pallid light, forming words that made no sense to Oriana’s eyes. A ring of words circled the table’s edge. Inside that was another ring of nonsense symbols, shapes she didn’t recognize, and in the center a third ring held a collection of straight lines. The glow crept to the center of the small table and then stopped as if it had hit a wall.

  The table had come alive in response to Isabel’s death.

  Oriana looked back at her friend. She tried to touch Isabel’s face. Her fingers fell short, so she grasped Isabel’s hand again, as if Isabel could still feel her there. Isabel’s head began to sway loosely with the motion of the water, a single strand of hair floating past her open mouth and snagging against her lips.

  Oriana squeezed her eyes shut, unable to look any longer.

  She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, trembling against the ropes that bound her. The water continued to rise about her. It swallowed her legs. The cold seeped into her tight-laced shoes.

  Then the last of the air slipped out of the room and the whole thing began sinking quickly, some anchor drawing it down. The pressure of the water made the wood groan. Then it came to a stop, far gentler than that first slam into the surface of the water. Now that the room was flooded, they should sink to the bottom of the river, but for some reason they continued to float.

  Oriana opened her eyes. At a deeper depth it was even darker, but the table’s surface continued to glow, lighting Isabel’s motionless features. Oriana stared at that tabletop for a long time, those meaningless words and lines burning into her mind.

  She felt wrung out and dull, like a chemise whose dye had all seeped away into the wash water. She needed to escape this place, but there was no longer any need to hurry. She had all the time in the world now—now that Isabel was gone.

  Someone had put them here to die, but it hadn’t been the Special Police. They would have known a sereia could breathe as easily underwater as above it. No, this was a trap meant for humans. Someone had wanted Isabel to die terrified and helpless.

  But that someone had made one mistake.

  They hadn’t weighed Oriana Paredes into their equations, no doubt thinking her simply another housemaid. They’d tried to drown a sereia. And she was going to make them pay.

  Not for herself. During the year she’d trained to be a spy, she’d been taught that her own life might be forfeit. She’d accepted that possibility. No, she would make someone pay for doing this to Isabel, who had started the day with such great hopes and ended it with terror. She would hunt the murderer down and, one way or another, they would see justice.

  • • •

  It seemed a long time later that Oriana bowed her head and began to chew at the other rope. Once she got that hand free, she was able to draw her dagger and cut the remaining ropes that bound her to the chair. She pushed herself out of it, lightheaded when her body righted itself.

  In the darkness, she touched Isabel’s face, a final farewell. Isabel’s ebony hair had held to its coiffure, save for that one loose lock. It streamed upward now, almost reaching Isabel’s lap, a streak of darkness against her white maid’s apron. Lit by the table’s eerie glow, Isabel was lovely even in death, her face at peace. Tiny bubbles of air worked loose from the shadowy wooden structure about them, glistening in the darkness.

  Oriana’s throat ached, but she couldn’t cry. She clasped the unmoving fingers one more time, and then swam to the top of the little room.

  She wedged herself next to the fixed chairs, crowding Isabel’s bound feet. She hammered against that floor or ceiling with one hand. Each impact sent uncomfortable vibrations through her webbing, so she wrapped one arm about the base of the table and used her feet to kick at one of the corners instead. After a few good kicks, she felt it give. Nails tore loose from the wood. She slid her hands into that narrow opening and pushed with all her strength.

  The boards gave enough for her to squeeze through.

  After one last glance at Isabel’s lifeless form, Oriana wriggled through that space. Her skirt caught on a nail, and she had to rip it to get loose.

  She was free.

  She let herself float there for a moment. Her skirts were heavy, but her natural buoyancy kept her from sinking too quickly.

  The river’s surface above her was dark. Before her Oriana saw shapes floating in the water, more traps like the one she’d just escaped. They were twenty feet or so under the surface, trying to float but prevented from rising any higher by thick chains that tethered them to the river’s murky bed below. Why didn’t they sink to the bottom? Oriana kicked away from her prison, trying to grasp the bigger picture of what she was seeing. In the nighttime waters she could make out two neat rows, stretching on for some distance. There must be more than twenty of these prisons under the river’s surface.

  It was The City Under the Sea.

  Oriana had read of the great work of art being assembled beneath the surface of the Douro. The newspapers often opined about it, ever since the pieces began appearing in the water almost a year ago. Each was a replica of one of the great houses that lined the Street of Flowers, the street of the aristocrats. Shrunk down in scale to no larger tha
n a coach, the replicas were constructed in wood. They were all upside down, enspelled so that they would float, yet chained to the riverbed so they could never escape. They swayed in the grasp of the river’s outbound current, all moving in eerie unison.

  Oriana looked back at the house in which she’d been imprisoned. It was a replica of the Amaral mansion, Isabel’s home. To one side was the copy of the Rocha mansion, and on the other the elegant Pereira de Santos house.

  Had Isabel been killed merely for the sake of this . . . artwork? Had others awakened in the darkness only to realize, like Isabel, that their death was seeping in about them?

  Oriana gasped, drawing in water, and corruption touched her gills. The water tasted foul, reminding her of a shipwreck, bodies left behind in the water for the fish and other creatures to pick clean. Nausea sent a flush of heat through her body. She slapped a hand over her mouth and nose, as if that could protect her from breathing in the death that was all about her. Oriana kicked hard, fighting the weight of her garments. She had to get to the surface, away from this graveyard.

  She swam toward a spot of light that must be the moon’s reflection on the water. But when she broke the surface, her head banged against the hull of a small boat, hard enough to disorient her. She instinctively shoved away. The stars spun. In the distance she saw the lights of a city, although she couldn’t tell which one. She let herself slip back under the water, the only safe place. She spread her fingers wide so she would feel in her webbing when the boat moved away.

  Instead she sensed someone diving into the water. Oriana kicked back down toward the depths, but her pursuer kept after her. She drew her dagger again, but before she could turn about, a large hand clamped down on her hand. She had no leverage to jerk away, and it took only a second before the man attached to that hand managed to pry the blade loose from her fingers. It spun away down through the water, quickly obscured. The tang of blood floated in the water; the dagger had cut her hand when he’d wrestled it away. The man wrapped an arm about her chest and dragged her back up toward the surface.

  When she broke the surface again, a second man dug his hands into her sodden dress while the man in the water pushed her up and over the edge of the boat. She tumbled into the bilge.

  For a second Oriana huddled there, hands balled into fists, trying to catch her breath. Her head throbbed and her hand did as well. Blood leaked from the palm of her right hand, but she didn’t dare look. If she opened her hand to check the wound, her captors would surely see the webbing. Who were these men out on the water in the dark?

  The boat rocked as the man who’d pursued her into the river climbed back aboard. She had to face them eventually. Oriana took a deep breath and struggled to right herself between the planks of the rowboat. A moment later she was seated on a bench, wet skirts tangled about her legs, facing an older gentleman. Her pursuer settled behind her. The man before her was sixty or so, still handsome, with gray hair and a stern, square jaw. She recognized his face but couldn’t place it. Where had she seen him before?

  “Are you well, miss?” The older man had a blanket in his hands. Oriana flinched back as he leaned forward. He persisted, wrapping the blanket about her shoulders.

  Oriana began to shiver. Her garments and shoes were soaked through. She lifted one hand to push her hair from her face, remembering to fold her fingers to hide the webbing. Where she’d banged her forehead against the side of the boat, it was already tender.

  Had they seen her hands? When they’d pulled her into the boat, had she had her fingers spread? She buried them in the blanket. Perhaps they’d been so busy they hadn’t noticed. Please, gods, let that be the case.

  The man repeated his question. He sounded kindly. He sounded concerned.

  He thinks he’s rescuing me. Oriana nearly laughed at the thought. She cleared her throat instead. Her breath still came shallow, and too fast. “Yes,” she mumbled. “I’m . . . well enough.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “We were worried when we saw you in the water.”

  Her hands balled into fists again under the cover of the blanket. She needed to think faster, smarter. Why was this man out on the river? The Special Police patrolled the waters of the Douro every night, and she thought they had extra patrols over The City Under the Sea, but this little rowboat wasn’t one of theirs. Had these men slipped past their patrols? The moon hadn't risen yet, and the only light came from a shuttered lantern set on a hook at the fore of the little boat, so it was possible they might not have been seen. The boat began to move, the large man behind her handling the oars, smelling of river water and musk.

  The gentleman laid a gloved hand on her sodden knee. “Now, miss. How did you get out here?”

  Oriana tried to gather her wits. She shook her head jerkily.

  “I had a vision,” he said then, “that there would be a girl in the water. I came here straightaway to see you safe, miss.”

  Vision? With a sinking in her stomach, Oriana suddenly placed his face. The man before her was Paolo Silva, one of Prince Fabricio’s favored seers. She had seen the man before, although at a distance, at more than one of the balls she’d gone to with Isabel. She hadn’t wanted to attract his attention then, and she didn’t want it now. Her lips trembled. The shivering was worse now, and not just from the cold.

  This man was close to the prince who so hated her people. If Silva knew what she was, he would surely turn her in. She could try to dive back into the water, but she wasn’t sure she could get into the river before the oarsman grabbed her. Her twisted skirts and the blanket would make that easy for him. And attempting escape would confirm that she had something to hide. She swallowed hard. There was still a chance they hadn’t realized her true nature.

  Oriana tried to keep her voice from shaking. “Thank you, sir,” she managed.

  “Good,” Silva said. “You’ve found your voice. Now, do you recall how you got out here, miss? I’m amazed you managed to keep your head above water.”

  Her head hadn’t been above water. If she told this man she’d been trapped in the houses below, he would know for certain she wasn’t human.

  “I was dumped off one of the bridges, I think,” she lied quickly. “I was drugged, but I remember falling.” She sounded pathetic enough to lend it plausibility.

  The small lamp swayed with the motion of the boat, casting Silva’s features in light, then shadow. “How terrible! Shall I take you to a hospital, then, miss? Or the police station?”

  Neither one of those options would end well for her. “No,” she said quickly. “I must get home to my mother. She must be terribly worried. She lives right on the quay.”

  “Of course, miss,” Silva said solicitously. “I’ll escort you to your door myself, if you wish.”

  Oriana caught her lower lip between her teeth. Did he actually believe she’d been thrown off a bridge? Perhaps he suspected she’d thrown herself from one of the bridges. In the dim light of the swinging lantern, his face was unreadable. “No,” she told him firmly. “No. If you’ll take me to the quay, I can get home from there.”

  “I feel responsible for you now, miss,” he said gently.

  She didn’t want to be around this man any longer than necessary, no matter how kindhearted he seemed. “Please, sir,” she said, “you’ve done enough.”

  “May I know your name, at least?” he asked.

  When people realized that Isabel was missing, her own name would surely be mentioned in the gossip. Silva might remember having seen her in Isabel’s company, so lying would only draw suspicion. “Paredes,” she said. “Oriana Paredes.”

  He reached over and patted her blanket-covered shoulder in a grandfatherly way. “I’m glad I followed the promptings of my gift tonight, Miss Paredes. I suspect our meeting must be propitious. I know we shall meet again.”

  Not if I can help it.

  They had neared the tree-lined avenue
of Massarelos—almost a mile from where they’d found her—far sooner than Oriana expected. The oarsman used a hook to drag the boat over to one of the stone ramps leading up to the street level. Oriana rose carefully. Hand folded to conceal the webbing, she grabbed for the rail and managed to wrangle her wet skirts about to get her footing on the stone. Once out of reach of either man, she felt far safer. She started to unwrap the blanket from about her shoulders.

  “No, you must keep it,” the seer insisted. “You must go home immediately and change into warm clothes, miss.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Oriana repeated dully.

  She walked up the ramp and glanced back to see the oarsman shoving the small boat away with an oar. Beyond the feeble glow of the streetlamps, the boat’s inhabitants were quickly rendered invisible.

  Now that she’d escaped her unwanted savior, Oriana desperately wanted to curl up somewhere and cry. She wanted warm clothes. And dry shoes. And a bath to get the foul taste of the water near The City Under the Sea out of her gills. She wanted to sleep. Perhaps she would wake to find that it was all a dream.

  But first she had to tell Lady Amaral that Isabel was gone. Somewhere in the bottom of her heart she would have to find the strength to do that.

  CHAPTER 3

  FRIDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 1902

  A vague sense of foreboding kept Duilio Ferreira from sleeping. An idea fluttered about in his mind, refusing to be caught. Something was wrong; he simply had no idea what.

  He lay in his warm, draped bed, staring up into the darkness. He toyed with the idea of rising, turning up the lights, and attempting to read, but hadn’t quite given up on sleeping. His limited seer’s gift had something it wanted him to know. He simply wasn’t sure whether he wanted to spend his night trying to figure it out. He would rather be sleeping. The clock on his mantel, barely visible across the murky dark of his bedroom, ticked past three.