The Golden City

by Cheney, J. Kathleen

  Silva gave the library door a gentle push, not obvious enough to alert the girl she was closed in. It would be scandalous if the girl was caught here alone with Silva, even if the man was old enough to be her grandfather.

  Miss Carvalho pointed at one of the shelves, fortunately not too near where Duilio stood, Miss Paredes still as stone beside him. It was clear that whatever the Lady was doing worked. Miss Carvalho showed no sign of seeing them there. How fascinating.

  “I think the book is on that shelf,” the girl said brightly, pointing. “Father keeps the keys with him, though.”

  “I only wanted to see the cover, my girl.” Silva started in their direction.

  Duilio heard a soft intake of breath from Miss Paredes. He grabbed her hand to reassure her. Silva didn’t pose a true threat to them right now. Even if the man saw them in the library, his presence here was no less questionable than theirs. And Duilio wanted to know what the man was up to. The Lady moved silently to stand directly between them and Silva.

  Silva peered into one of the bookshelves with locked glass doors. Duilio doubted Miss Carvalho could see Silva’s right hand fiddling with the lock. Apparently skill with a skeleton key ran in the family. A muted click sounded, and Silva pronounced, “Oh, look. Your father’s left it unlocked, my girl.” He opened the door and extracted one leather-bound volume. “It is lovely.”

  “Father never leaves the doors unlocked,” Miss Carvalho protested, sounding panicked.

  Duilio felt sorry for the girl. She wasn’t the brightest of the Carvalho daughters to begin with. Newly out in society and exuberant over her birthday ball, she must have made an easy target. The girl wrung her hands together, then raised one as if beseeching Silva to return to her side. “I said I would show it to you, but you can’t look inside. Father would be livid.”

  “Your father’s a friend of mine,” Silva told her. “He won’t mind.”

  Miss Carvalho chewed at her lower lip. She cast a glance back at the door, her eyes widening as she apparently realized for the first time it was closed. She knew she was in trouble. “Please . . .” she began, her voice fading to a whisper.

  It was actually clever of Silva, Duilio thought. Cruel, but clever. For any young, unmarried girl to be caught alone with a man would be scandalous. Silva could have crept into the library on his own, but this way, if he got caught he could hold the girl’s reputation hostage in order to get away unscathed. Surely Carvalho would protect his daughter before his books.

  The Lady turned slowly to face them. She pointed at Duilio and indicated the chair farther from where Silva stood flipping through his confiscated book, then gestured for Miss Paredes to approach her. Duilio understood—his mere presence would protect young Miss Carvalho’s reputation. He glanced at Miss Paredes and nodded. She let go of his hand and walked a few steps until she stood right at the Lady’s side.

  Duilio walked softly around the back of the couch to the chair the Lady had pointed out. The fabric made a soft whoosh when he sat, not loud enough to alert Silva, though. The man continued to flip through the book’s pages.

  Duilio waited. The Lady must be keeping him in reserve.

  The library door opened a second time. Duilio turned his head and saw it was the eldest of the daughters, Genoveva—the one Carvalho wanted to palm off on him. Lovely in an elegant cream-colored gown, she seemed more mature than her twenty-one years. Her brown eyes flicked between her sister and Silva, and she regally extended one hand. “Come here, Constancia.”

  The younger sister darted over to her, but Silva didn’t look up from the book. “Miss Carvalho, how will you explain where your young sister has been for the past quarter hour?”

  The elder Miss Carvalho lifted her chin. “No one need know she was here, Mr. Silva.”

  “She disappeared from her birthday ball with a man,” he said. “I, for one, would consider that a sign of overeagerness.”

  Genoveva strode over to where he stood, leaving the younger girl cowering by the library door. “You will not slander my sister,” she hissed.

  Silva’s eyes rose to meet hers, and then he made a show of giving her a thorough appraisal. “I will do whatever I want, Miss Carvalho. Are you offering yourself in her place?”

  “She’s been in the ladies' retiring room,” Miss Genoveva said coolly. “She and I were returning to the ballroom when we looked in the library and saw you pawing through my father’s books.” She held out one hand, clearly expecting him to place the book in it.

  Silva didn’t. “Two guests saw her come in here with me, Miss Carvalho. I made sure of that. So what will you give me to keep my mouth shut?”

  Her nostrils flared. For the first time Duilio thought that if she hadn’t fallen in love with Alessio long ago, an arranged marriage between them might have worked out after all. Genoveva Carvalho had nerve. Duilio glanced over at the Lady and nodded . . . and the Lady and Miss Paredes both disappeared from his view, as quick as the blink of an eye. He hadn’t expected that.

  Duilio heard a quickly stifled squeak from near the door. Evidently Miss Constancia had seen him, even if the other two inhabitants of the room hadn’t yet. In as light a tone as he could manage in his current irritated state, Duilio said, “None of this is necessary, you know.”

  Miss Genoveva shrieked and spun about to stare at him wide-eyed. She pressed one gloved hand to her bosom. Silva chose not to acknowledge Duilio at all.

  Duilio put on his blandest smile. “I’ve been here the entire time, Miss Genoveva. I sent my mother home from the dancing, you know, and I was going to meet with Pimental to chat later, only I came in here to find the newspaper and I must have fallen asleep. I guess I blend into the chair.” He laughed as if he found himself amusing, then rose. “Whatever is that book you’re reading, old man? It must be fascinating.”

  Silva snapped the book shut and set it back on the shelf. “I doubt that, in your drink-addled state, you would understand a word of it, pup. Likely not if you were sober either.”

  Ah, those rare chances to speak with Silva face-to-face. Duilio ignored the insult and turned to Miss Genoveva. “Isn’t Miss Constancia missing her own ball? Nice of her to show him the library, but I expect she wants to get back to the dancing and”—he waved one hand in a vague circle—“whatever things, I suppose, that girls do.”

  Miss Genoveva gazed at him for a moment, her eyes uncertain. Then she seemed to snap back to attention. “Yes, of course.”

  Without a further word, she strode across the room, grabbed her younger sister’s hand, and dragged the girl out of the library.

  “You are inconvenient,” Silva said acidly, dropping his pretense of civility. “Where were you hiding, pup? Under the couch?”

  Duilio kept his eyes on Silva, praying he couldn’t see either of the two female occupants of the room. Not that he thought Miss Paredes couldn’t deal with Silva. He would simply rather avoid that confrontation. “I was there the whole time,” he said. “Are your eyes going bad?”

  Silva crossed his arms over his chest, lips pressed together in an angry line. “I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve here, pup, but forget it.”

  “You know what I want,” Duilio reminded him. The pelt was all he’d ever wanted from this man.

  “And I’ve told you I don’t have it,” Silva said. “I’ve never laid a finger on the thing.”

  That was what Silva always said. The one thing that made Duilio think there might be truth in those words was that the man had never asked him for a ransom. “Tell me about Mata,” Duilio suggested. “What’s he after this time?”

  Silva laughed aloud. “Mata? You think I’m giving him orders? You don’t understand what’s going on at all, do you? Playing policeman again—I should have known. What a waste! If all that money had come to me instead, as it should have, I wouldn’t be spending my time hunting for missing servants.”

 
Duilio gazed at Silva wide-eyed, trying very hard to look stupid. The man clearly knew something about Mata. There was no telling what else he knew. “Missing servants?”

  Silva tilted his head. “How did you find Miss Paredes first? I planned to have her in my quiver of arrows, so to speak. But, alas, now she’s warming your bed, when I would have been using her as bait.”

  He hoped Miss Paredes wouldn’t be offended, but he didn’t intend to argue with Silva about that insult to her. “Bait?”

  Silva patted him on the shoulder in a fatherly fashion. Duilio was hard-pressed not to sweep the man’s hand aside. He did his best to ignore it.

  “You see, pup,” Silva said, “I don’t know exactly what the Open Hand is doing out there, but when she escaped them, your fishling lover changed the balance of prophecy. The prophecy that Fabricio is destined to die at the hands of the sea folk? Every day that prophecy is growing stronger and stronger.” Silva smiled with false affection, his hand heavy on Duilio’s shoulder. “So, keep in mind that while she’s powdering your sainted mother’s cheeks and handing her fans, your little fishling is planning to kill your lawful ruler. That makes you treasonous just for harboring her in your house.”

  Silva dropped his intrusive grasp and strolled past him toward the door.

  The Open Hand? Duilio hoped nothing showed on his face. He clenched his hands behind his back. Silva had just spilled far more information than he’d expected, which meant at best it was poisoned. It was more likely all false.

  “By the by, I wasn’t going to seduce the little one,” Silva said as he went. “Too bland for my tastes. But the older girl might prove interesting. A bit of fire in that one.” He paused at the door to see if Duilio was attending, then added, “Or perhaps I’ll wait until after you marry her.” With dramatic grace worthy of the theater, Silva swept out of the library.

  Duilio closed his eyes. He could not begin to express how much he hated talking to that man. He took a couple of calming breaths, afraid that if he spoke to anyone too soon he would bark at them. Then he turned back to look for the two women who’d heard every word of that exchange. They still stood next to the couch, less than ten feet away.

  Miss Paredes regarded him with wide, haunted eyes. “It’s not true,” she said softly.

  “I know,” he said, although he didn’t know anything of the sort. She could be an assassin. It was possible, but the very fact that Silva asserted it made Duilio think it unlikely. If she’d posed a direct threat to his prince, Silva would never have let her go. “I take everything he says with a great deal of skepticism.”

  Miss Paredes looked relieved, her shoulders losing their tightness.

  “Well, I found that informative,” the Lady said, apparently unfazed by all the distractions of Silva’s conversation. “Let’s have a look at that book.”

  Duilio located the book Silva had set back on the shelf. It stuck out from the others just enough that he could readily spot it. He pulled it out, noting that no title appeared on the spine.

  “Please hand it to me,” the Lady said. “Carvalho may have given me permission to use his library, but he didn’t extend that to you, Mr. Ferreira.”

  He had no way to verify that, so he didn’t see any point in arguing. Duilio handed it over.

  She opened it out and flipped through a few pages in the center. Then she shook her head. “I wonder how many times Silva’s managed to get into this house. I suspect he’s stealing most of his better prophecies. I don’t know if you’re aware, but Silva isn’t a particularly strong seer. Stronger than you, Mr. Ferreira, but nothing like Abreu or Gardineiro.” She turned the book so that Duilio could see the handwritten pages. “Whose prophecies are written in this volume. This belongs to the city’s Freemasons and is not for public consumption—the reason Carvalho keeps it locked away. I will suggest a more secure arrangement for the future.”

  Miss Paredes had come closer, simply listening. Duilio hoped she was keeping track. It would give him the luxury of having someone with whom to discuss this bewildering evening. He turned back to the Lady. “Are you a member of the Freemasons?”

  The Freemasons sought enlightenment in all things, and someone who studied the practice of witchcraft in the abstract might fit well into their ranks. But they didn’t have female members here, even if they did in France and in the Americas.

  “No,” she said. “Carvalho is my contact, should I need information from them, but I am not a part of any of their organizations.”

  That was a nicely unequivocal statement. “What about the Open Hand? Who are they?”

  “A secret society?” the Lady said musingly. “So far we’ve identified five officers within the Special Police who seem to be members of this Open Hand, Mata among them. There have to be others outside the Special Police, but we don’t know yet who they are. At this point, we don’t know exactly what their goal is, either.”

  Not very helpful. All Special Police officers bore the sigil of an open hand on their caps, a symbol modeled after a stone carving on the gate of the palace itself. It seemed only logical that this group might be found within their ranks.

  “I find it interesting that your uncle handed that name to you on a platter,” she added.

  Ah, the Lady was aware of his relationship with the man. Duilio suspected she’d chosen those words to inform him of that. It increased the likelihood that she actually had known Alessio. “I did too,” he said. “I’ve never heard that name before tonight.”

  “But he has,” she pointed out. “Silva is like a spider, Mr. Ferreira, and his web touches on everything. He has friends everywhere, if you can call them friends. I suspect most of them tolerate him because he’s pulling their strings; no more.”

  That was Silva’s special talent: twisting people’s words and intentions, provoking them to distrust one another. Getting them to dance to his tune. It was gratifying to hear someone else say it aloud. “So he wanted to assure the police heard that name, through me,” Duilio surmised. “Why would he use Miss Paredes as bait?”

  The Lady’s pale eyes flicked toward her. “Most practitioners of witchcraft are very superstitious, Mr. Ferreira. A spell of this complexity—and I suspect there’s much more of it than what appears on the surface of that table—it does not require a specific victim, save for the apparent fact that they lived in that house. However, if the witch involved wants to go back and fix this spell, fix the fact that one of the intended victims escaped, they will prefer strongly to recover the original victim.”

  Miss Paredes’ eyes lowered to the carpet.

  “So this Open Hand will be looking for her,” Duilio said, “to try again.”

  “It’s very likely.” The Lady turned to Miss Paredes. “I would keep my distance from the Special Police, Miss Paredes, or you might be rejoining the other maid you mentioned in that house. I want you to appreciate the danger you stand in.”

  Miss Paredes’ hands were shaking now. “Not a maid, Lady. It was Isabel Amaral, my mistress. She died there.”

  For the first time, the Lady appeared disconcerted. “I thought you said they were servants.”

  “Until last Thursday night,” Duilio said, sparing Miss Paredes from repeating it. “Lady Isabel was planning on eloping, and decided that she and Miss Paredes should dress as housemaids to escape notice.”

  “Whose idea was that?” the Lady asked.

  “She seemed to have come up with it on her own,” Miss Paredes offered hesitantly.

  “I don’t trust anything that convenient,” the Lady said. “If I understand correctly, they’ve chosen dozens of victims already, and managed to cover their tracks well enough that the police didn’t catch on. Miss Paredes, you were the one person in the Amaral household not likely to die if put in the water, yet they chose you, a sereia? Does that not strike you as an unlikely twist of fate? It makes me suspect you were there intentionally.”
/>
  Miss Paredes looked as haunted as she had when Silva implied she was an assassin. “I am not in league with them.”

  The Lady laid a gloved hand on Miss Paredes’ arm. “I do not imply that. But you and your mistress may have been chosen because someone within the organization wants to sabotage whatever the Open Hand is trying to achieve.”

  “My knife,” Miss Paredes whispered, her eyes lifting to his. “They didn’t take my knife. I had it with me, but whoever tied me to that chair didn’t take it.”

  Duilio recalled her mentioning the knife, but before this moment he’d assumed it was a hurried oversight. He could tell she’d already worked her way to the conclusion: if she’d been put there to sabotage the spell, then Isabel had been selected intentionally merely to put Oriana Paredes in the desired situation. He set a hand under her elbow to support her. “We don’t know what’s true at this point, Miss Paredes.”

  She nodded jerkily. He hadn’t driven that demon out of her mind, he could tell.

  The Lady glanced across the library, and Duilio turned to see Inspector Gaspar standing in the doorway. Duilio nodded to the man but didn’t bother with introductions.

  “Are you ready to go?” the inspector asked the Lady.

  “Actually,” she said, “I need to stay a while longer and speak to Carvalho about his security. Could you see these two home safely and then return for me?”

  The inspector nodded and stepped inside the library to wait.

  Miss Paredes handed the sketch to the Lady. “Perhaps it will help.”

  “We’ll talk again,” the Lady said, tucking the folded paper into a handbag Duilio hadn’t noted before. “I think we’ve all learned enough for one night.”

  Duilio mentally agreed to that. If they weren’t running short on time, he would like to mull this over for a week or two. Possibly three.

  Still looking shaken, Miss Paredes took his mother’s shawl and settled it around her own shoulders. “I’m ready.”