“Thank you, Sergeant,” the ambassador said to the standing woman, and then shooed Duilio and Oriana back into the hallway. Once the door was shut, she asked, “Are you familiar with the concept of automatic writing? Where a writer jots down words that come into her mind from elsewhere?”
“I heard of it in England,” Duilio said.
“Pseudoscience,” the ambassador returned. “However, when the concept became popular a couple of decades ago, our army’s signal corps decided to develop their own, more scientific, version. It’s quite useful when a mission is in an area that has no telegraph or on a ship at sea. I suspect radio wave technology will soon make this obsolete.”
Lowering the risk of admitting to the Portuguese that they’d developed it, Duilio guessed. “Where does the message go from here?”
“Fort Myers, in Virginia,” the ambassador answered. “The receiver is an identical device, manned by another of the writers there.”
No doubt the devices, like most magical devices he’d seen before, were fueled by blood. “Can anyone use those?”
The ambassador smiled. “On this end, yes. Not on the other end. The receivers—the soldiers at Fort Myers who man the other end around the clock—must have natural receptivity, something the signal corps hasn’t yet been able to quantify. Simple witchery, if you ask me. But each distant office reaches out to them on a schedule so we’re not overrunning each other’s messages. That turns into a mess and no one’s information gets through.”
“So there’s only one receiver?”
“At any moment, yes.” The ambassador led them back to her temporary chancery. “Fort Myers will forward the information to Barcelona for us. While it’s not instantaneous, it’s far faster than a pigeon.”
“And not vulnerable to hawks,” Duilio agreed, mulling over the constraints of having only one receiver. “Can you receive messages this way?”
“Unfortunately not,” she said, “which is why my information is a day old. For us to get messages from Barcelona, we have to wait on the damned pigeons.”
CHAPTER 32
BARCELONA
Marina went through their baggage while Alejandro finished the last of his lunch. She wasn’t certain whether she could access the Ferreira family’s funds at the bank. The letter of credit for the Bank of Barcelona had Joaquim’s name on it, not hers. But Joaquim had hidden some of his cash in the inner pocket of his bag. There, tucked between the bills, she found the playing card she’d given him. She peered at it, her throat tight. She wasn’t superstitious enough to believe he’d been taken because he’d not had it with him.
Not quite, but it crossed her mind anyway.
Shaking her head at her foolishness, she slipped the card into her passport to ensure that she didn’t lose it. She would just have to find Joaquim and give him the card again. She took the remaining money and divided it between her luggage and her handbag.
Then she settled at the table across from Alejandro and watched him as he consumed a second coca, a small piece of bread with meat and tomato sauce on it. Even as late as they were for lunch, she didn’t think she could eat anything. The boy eyed her warily.
Whom else can I ask? She knew she shouldn’t force a child to deal with her problems, but she didn’t know where else to turn. If Alejandro was a seer at all, he might give her some guidance. She took a breath. “Will my husband come back?”
He glanced up at her, then shook his head no.
Marina laid her hand over her mouth, holding in the sobs that threatened to well out. She calmed herself and folded her hands together in her lap, where Alejandro couldn’t see her rubbing at the missing webbing. “You know things, don’t you? Things you’re not supposed to tell me, right?”
Alejandro regarded her with his brows drawn together dramatically, but didn’t answer.
She leaned closer. “Alejandro, did you know they were going to take Joaquim?”
The boy shifted on his chair, but still didn’t answer, eyes fixed on a corner of a table.
She wasn’t going to threaten him. It sounded as if his whole life had been one threat after another. But she could use anything he knew to better build her plan to find Joaquim, and she wanted the best plan she could construct before . . .
She could not be the first person to realize that. His mother surely knew he had a seer’s gift. “Alejandro,” she asked gently, “is there a plan?”
His lips pursed then, as if he wasn’t sure how he should answer.
“You don’t need to tell me what the plan is,” she said. “I only need to know if there is one.”
He nodded slowly.
“Your mother’s plan?” When he shook his head, she pressed further. “Whose, then?”
“The Vilaró’s,” he said.
The prisoner who lived at the bottom of the prison who’d taught him Portuguese? “Was Joaquim being taken to the prison part of his plan?”
“He’s supposed to find the key. I didn’t know the Mossos would take him.”
How else would Joaquim end up in a prison? Marina felt a stab of anger, but shook her head to drive it away. Alejandro was only a child. “The key?”
“The key for the Vilaró’s chains. No one knows where it is.”
And they need a finder to locate it. Marina slumped in the chair, but sat up straight again when she realized she was setting a bad example. “The key’s in the prison, though, right? Will the Vilaró free him if he finds the key? And your mother?”
“All of them,” the boy said. “The Vilaró’s going to break the prison.”
* * *
Joaquim woke with a horrendous headache and a throbbing in his right arm. He opened his eyes, but the world around him was dim. When he tried to push up onto his elbows to get a better look, a stab of pain from his arm made him flinch. Nausea surged through him and he set his left hand atop his stomach to get the sensation under control. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a moment.
“So you’re awake,” a feminine voice said. “Best lie still until the effects of the chloroform wear off. You’ve been under for several hours.”
He opened his eyes to see a shadowy form standing over him. Not close enough for him to touch her. “Where am I?”
“Prison,” the woman said. “In my infirmary.”
“In Lleida? I’m at the Unnaturals Prison?”
The woman chuckled. “You are in Lleida, but you’re not at the main prison. You’re in the Morra.”
His head was spinning again. “The what?”
But whatever the woman had to say was lost as he slid back into unconsciousness.
* * *
Marina had spent part of the afternoon reading to Alejandro from the book he’d claimed as his own. The story followed a man in Africa as he and a group of other men sought out a gold mine, guided by a map left behind by an old Portuguese explorer. Not having read the first half of the novel, Marina could make little sense of it, but she read anyway, desperate to have something to distract her from the waiting. And Alejandro liked the book better than the one she’d read to him before.
When a knock came at the sitting room door, she jumped up and ran to answer. Mr. Pinter waited outside, his tired hat clutched in his hands. “Mrs. Tavares, I don’t have much news, but I wanted to let you know that Mr. Adler is safely in the hospital.”
“Will he live?”
“He might,” Pinter said. “The stab wound caused his lung to collapse. We’ll have a better idea in the morning whether he’ll make it.”
Marina crossed herself and said a quick prayer of thanks. Even if she didn’t like Adler, she didn’t want him dead. “Have you heard anything from the guards looking for my husband?”
“No, Mrs. Tavares. The Mossos claim there were no orders to apprehend the boy. Someone must have paid the officers to look for him. Paid them on the side, if you know what I mean.�
�
Well, they’d been warned that the Canaries had probably suborned men all over the country. “Thank you for checking, Mr. Pinter.”
“I’d advise you to wait here until your husband returns so we can keep you in touch with your people back on the islands.” Pinter withdrew a sealed envelope. “This was sent to your husband, but I feel safe handing it over to you.”
Marina took the envelope and thanked him. “Can you send word to them, and tell them my husband has been taken prisoner?”
“I can,” he said, “although any message will take a day at a minimum to reach them.”
“Could you please do so anyway?”
“I’ll do so as soon as possible, Mrs. Tavares. If Adler pulls through, he’ll owe his life to you for going to his aid.” Mr. Pinter tilted his head in a mock bow, donned his hat, and headed off down the hallway.
Marina locked the door. She’d listened to his advice to stay at the hotel without protest, but she wouldn’t follow it. She couldn’t simply wait here and do nothing, even if she had Alejandro’s assurance that this unknown prisoner would free her husband. She couldn’t afford to rely on the man’s plan.
Alejandro wasn’t in the sitting area any longer, so Marina crossed to the bedroom and peered inside. Alejandro had curled up atop the bed, and seeing him there, she wondered whether she was growing too attached to him. She’d always wanted to have children. And she wouldn’t mind taking care of them, despite her people’s belief that it was males’ work. She didn’t know why Alejandro had called her his new mother, but it was going to break her heart when Leandra came to take him back.
Sighing, she drew the bedroom door mostly closed and returned to the table to open the envelope that Mr. Pinter had given her. The words were taken from a telegram, she guessed, and translated into Spanish here in Barcelona. LR one of twenty-four.
Marina rubbed her temples, suddenly grasping what the message meant. They’d already figured out there were others beyond Leandra, other sereia stolen from the islands. Alejandro had verified that. But twenty-four?
She couldn’t sit here and do nothing. And there was one thing she could do tonight to help solve this puzzle. Marina dug her mother’s journal out of her handbag and passed the time looking through it. Not reading the words, but studying the capitalization as Duilio had suggested. Apparently, Leandra had worked on that as well, following the same clues. She’d circled each of the capitalized letters and, farther back in the unused pages of the journal, painstakingly recorded each one, four entire pages of letters that meant nothing.
Outside, the sky had grown dusky, red where the sun was setting. If it was a cipher, all Marina had to do was determine what each letter stood for. If she counted how many times each letter was used, then the one that appeared most often could usually be exchanged for A. The second would be E, and then O, S, and R should follow in turn. If she could figure those out, the rest might fall into place. So she sat and counted letters, making lists on the hotel stationery. Once she had those, she copied out the first half page on a piece of stationery with ample space around the letters. Then she wrote her first guesses under the corresponding letters.
After staring at those jumbled letters for a time, she pinched her nose. She wasn’t focusing well. She got up and went to stare out the window into the darkness, out over the plaza where people hurried past. On the edge of the city in the direction of the sea, she could see the mountain. Montjuic, Joaquim had called it, where the remains of an old castle stood. A storm was creeping over the ridge toward the city, gray and gloomy skies that suited her mood. Lightning flashed in a spectacular display.
“Are you watching the people?” Alejandro had come up behind her. Shoeless, the boy hadn’t made a sound.
“I’m watching the storm come in,” she said honestly.
He yawned widely. “I don’t like storms.”
“Most of the time they’re harmless,” she said.
The boy shrugged. Marina had decided that was his standard response when he had nothing more to say. She rubbed her aching back. “How often did you get to see your mother at the prison?”
“Once a month.” He puffed out his cheeks. “Then they sent us to the islands, so I got to spend whole days with her.” He sounded wistful.
“Was that nice?”
His head tilted. “She was tired a lot. She’s sick.”
He hadn’t said yes. “Bad?”
“She’s going to go away,” the boy said in a matter-of-fact voice. “She said so.”
Does he understand what he just said? Marina swallowed. Given that he’d been raised in a prison, people had probably left his life before, never to return. “I’m sure she doesn’t want to.”
“My mother loves me,” he said defiantly.
She wasn’t quite sure why he’d said that. “What is your sister’s name?”
“Liliana,” he said in a sulky tone. “She’s mean.”
Marina had only one sister, who’d been very protective of her, but the same couldn’t be said of her older cousins. They’d been as mean as crabs. “Does she look like you?”
His lips pursed. “No. She’s blond and all pale. She always calls me webless.”
Liliana must take after Adler in appearance. “She does sound mean. I used to be called webless all the time, and I hated it.”
He looked up at her then. “You’re not webless.”
“No. They used to call me that because I’m small. And I blush.”
“I’m small too,” he said.
“Well, you’ll get taller eventually,” she said firmly. “Neither of your brothers is short.”
“Brothers?” Alejandro asked, his expression wary.
Of course, he only knows about Joaquim. “When you took the book from the house on the island,” she added, “do you remember there was a man sleeping in that room? That was Duilio, your other brother, Joaquim’s brother.”
His brow rumpled. “I didn’t want to steal from him. I had to.”
“He knows that.” Marina set her hands on the boy’s shoulders. “They want to help you and your mother, and they know you’ve both had to do things you didn’t want.”
He nodded, his eyes downcast.
She suspected she’d just made a huge understatement. “Tomorrow morning, I’d like to take a train again. Will that hurt the plan?”
“We have to go.”
Interesting. She reached out to brush a lock of hair back from Alejandro’s forehead, but he flinched away. She tried again, more slowly, and brushed the hair from the boy’s forehead, then laid her hand against his cheek. “I’m not going to hit you. Not ever.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
Was that something he foreknew? Or was he just giving her the answer he thought she wanted? In a way she was relieved he was here. If she didn’t have him to look after, she would be out of her mind with worry over Joaquim. Alejandro served as an excellent distraction.
CHAPTER 33
THURSDAY, 30 APRIL 1903; LLEIDA
Joaquim woke again, rising out of dreams of confused images. He lay on a hard bed, narrow and smelling of musty old stone. His head ached, his right arm felt tight and confined, and there was something about his left wrist. He lifted his left arm to look at it, only to have it jerk to a stop after only a few inches.
His left hand was cuffed to the iron frame of the bed.
“Shit,” he said under his breath.
He wasn’t given to cussing. Not aloud, at least. So he lifted his free arm to cross himself contritely and saw a bandage wrapped about his right wrist. He stared at it dully, wondering where it had come from. He didn’t recall injuring that arm, but it felt tight and achy. “Marina?”
A dark form came closer to him, a woman bearing a lamp—definitely not his wife. She dragged a chair closer and set her lamp on a table beyond his reach. She turned the lamp
up, and for the first time Joaquim got a good view of his location.
The ceiling above him was stone. The walls were stone. The room had only a trio of narrow beds and the single small table. Joaquim turned his head to one side to take in his captor. A woman of middle years with dark hair going gray, she wore the garb of a nurse, a tidy white apron and cap over a somber black dress. She regarded him with curiosity in her hazel eyes. “How are you feeling, Mr. Ferreira?”
Joaquim chuckled, but that quickly turned into a cough. The woman helped him sit up and held a tin cup to his lips. The water soothed his throat. He hadn’t realized it was so dry. He took the cup in his free hand and quickly downed the remaining water. “I’m not Alexandre Ferreira.”
She smiled gently. “Of course not, but they don’t know that. What is your name?”
Her accent sounded Andalusian, not Castilian. “Joaquim Tavares. Where am I?”
“I suspect you don’t recall much. You’re in Lleida, in the Morra.”
Lleida was the town with the prison, but that last word sounded suspiciously like death. “What’s the Morra?”
She sighed. “It’s a separate prison, an old one built in the cellars of the town hall itself. The sirenas keep special prisoners here.”
Special? He looked at his companion more closely. The hair pulled back from her face had a wiry curl to it, and her wide cheekbones gave her an exotic look. He would put her age between forty and fifty. “Are you a prisoner as well?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “I’m called Prieto. I’m the healer here.”
He glanced down at his bandaged wrist. “What happened to me?”
“They branded you, I’m afraid,” she said, “while you were drugged. That’s why you can’t remember.”
Branded? He tugged at the bandage with his cuffed hand, setting off another wave of pain.
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