“Stop,” she ordered in a voice of authority. “You’ll tear the wound.”
He went still. “Why would they . . . ?”
She unbuttoned her white sleeve and showed him her right forearm. An old scar marked her arm just above the wrist, pale against her dark skin—a B. “So that all know my sin,” she said. “Bruja.”
That was close enough to the Portuguese word that he recognized it. They had marked him as a witch? He wished Marina was here to help him with his execrable Spanish, and then unwished it. He didn’t want her here. “How do they know I’m a witch?”
“Alejandro is a witch, so you must be.”
He nearly choked again—oh yes, they’d assumed Alejandro was his son. “I’ve never even seen his mother.”
She gazed at him levelly. “Yes, I know. But there’s an incredible likeness between you and the boy, especially around the eyes. And you were defending him from the Mossos. What else were they to assume? Don’t rub,” the woman said. “You’ll disturb the poultice and tear the skin.”
He realized he’d set his fingers over the aching spot on his wrist. He jerked them away. “Thank you for reminding me, Miss Prieto.”
“You are leverage,” she said in answer to his question. “As they do not have Alejandro to force Leandra’s obedience, they will use you.”
He hadn’t quite caught all those words, but inferred their meaning from context. It didn’t bode well for him. Being used as leverage couldn’t be pleasant. “Is Leandra here? In this prison?”
“Yes. I’m not sure if she will leave it alive this time, but you will. You’re here for a purpose.”
“A purpose?”
She nodded. “When they discover that Leandra truly doesn’t know you, they’ll take you to the main prison. You’ll receive more instructions there.”
“Instructions?” He heard footsteps on the stone of the dark hallway outside. “What does that mean?”
She leaned closer and whispered, “Please forgive us, but we are desperate.”
“Prieto!” A guard dressed in a gray uniform stood outside the bars. “Piedad’s waiting on you.”
The healer rose and gazed down at Joaquim. “One of the guards will unchain you so you can use the chamber pot,” she said loudly enough to be heard in the hallway. “Don’t make a mess of my infirmary.”
With that she left, locking the door behind her. Joaquim regarded those iron bars, mind whirling. What was happening here? If he was to receive instructions, then surely they had a plan for him. That meant they’d known he would be captured in Alejandro’s place.
He stared up at the stone ceiling. What had become of Alejandro? And Adler? What was Marina doing? Was she safe? Joaquim closed his eyes to fight back bitter tears. He was cowardly, being more concerned for his own fate than his wife’s. How could he not have thought of her first?
He covered his face with his hand and prayed that God would protect her through this trial. He felt better afterward, that first flush of anguish eased.
He hoped she would think to send a telegram to Lady Ferreira. His foster mother would, no doubt, swoop down and retrieve Marina from Barcelona. Or the American consulate general could help her. He doubted they could get him out of a Spanish prison, but they could instruct Marina in how to get home safely. Even the Portuguese consulate could do that for her.
Marina was resourceful, even if she doubted her courage. She had found a way to escape the islands and find her father in Portugal. She’d made a new life for herself. Even the day he’d met her, she’d been fighting the man who’d attacked her. She would figure out what to do.
And he would figure out a way out of this place.
Or perhaps, sooner or later, justice would prevail.
He nearly laughed at that thought. It so often does not.
A burly guard appeared at the door, unlocked it, and set his lamp inside. He looked at Joaquim and hefted a set of keys. “I’m going to unlock your manacle so you can piss. You try anything, I’ll shoot you. Understand?”
* * *
Marina had spent a mostly sleepless night. She had tried to sleep. She wasn’t doing Joaquim any good by tossing and turning. But sleep had eluded her, so she’d tugged and pulled at the maze of problems that surrounded her.
She’d dismissed the idea of going to the police. The Portuguese consulate wouldn’t be any more help than the Americans, she suspected. They would urge her to return to the Golden City. Mr. Adler was in the hospital and wasn’t in any shape to be helpful either. And while Pinter did have guards out collecting information, she wasn’t going to wait for results.
Marina picked the smallest of their bags and in it placed only two outfits and as few toiletries as possible, as well as Alejandro’s spare clothing. She moved all but a handful of the paper money to her luggage and, after a moment’s consideration, Alejandro’s book as well. It might add weight, but it pleased Alejandro.
“Where are we going?” Alejandro asked from the doorway to the bathroom.
“We’re going back to Terrassa,” she said.
He didn’t argue. He came and sat on the bed while she finished packing.
“Will she help us?” Marina asked. “The marquesa?”
Alejandro’s eyes took on a faraway look that reminded her of Joaquim when he was trying to find someone. “Maybe. Not sure.”
Well, that meant the woman might. Marina had to figure out the right way to get the marquesa to do her bidding. She could touch the old woman, but her call didn’t work as well on females, and thus might only annoy the marquesa. No, she had to find some other way to persuade the woman to help Joaquim. “We’ll stop and get some breakfast at the station,” she said to Alejandro. “Will that be soon enough?”
He nodded, so she put her mother’s journal on top of the bag’s contents and closed it up. Then she and Alejandro left the hotel room, locking the door firmly behind them. The room was paid up for a couple of weeks, so it should still be theirs when they returned. She closed her eyes and said a quick prayer that it wouldn’t take that long.
The telegraph office was close to the hotel, so they walked there first. She sent a short message to Lady Ferreira stating that Joaquim was in trouble and that she would send more information later. She hoped that by the time later came, she’d have more to say. Then they headed back toward the line of cabs waiting patiently at the edge of the Plaça de Catalunya. One of the drivers caught her eye and she drew Alejandro in that direction, but a hand on her arm stopped her.
Startled, Marina jerked away, putting Alejandro behind her.
The woman who’d touched her stood with hands held wide now. “I mean no harm, Miss Arenias.”
The woman might not be wearing that same shirtwaist Marina had admired before, but she recognized the woman’s narrow face now. It was the woman she’d seen earlier, both in Barcelona and at the train station at Madrid. But she hadn’t used the name Arenias in either of those places. A prickle of fear spread down Marina’s spine. “What do you want?”
“I was hired by Jovita Paredes to watch over your safety. I’ve been following you since you left the islands.”
Marina reached behind her blindly and Alejandro’s hand slid into hers. “Why?”
“I’m here to collect evidence, not to interfere with you, but when I saw your mate was taken, I knew I had to offer my aid. I can’t help find him—that’s beyond my assignment—but if you need to get anything back to the islands, I can see that it reaches there safely.”
Marina thought of the journal in her bag with its encrypted message. She hadn’t worked out the whole cipher yet, and wanted to finish it herself. On the other hand, if she handed it over, she could concentrate her whole effort on finding her husband.
But she didn’t know if she could trust anyone her aunt had hired. “I’ll consider it.”
The woman seemed disappointed, b
ut didn’t argue. “I’m at the Gran Hotel on the Rambla del Centro,” she said, “if you need my help, come there.”
Marina regarded her silently for a moment, fixing that face in her memory. “I may do that,” she said, and quickly drew Alejandro to the waiting cab. Once they’d settled, she glanced back, but the woman had already gone on her way.
Unnerved, Marina kept Alejandro’s hand in hers until they were safely seated on the train. He warily eyed the other passengers in the car, and then settled back with his arms across his chest. There weren’t any others sitting close enough to them to overhear, so Marina decided to pry more information out of the boy. “Will you tell me about the Vilaró?”
Alejandro’s mouth pursed. “He was nice to me. I gave him my bread.”
“Why?”
“You’re supposed to give him bread.”
Perhaps the Canaries weren’t feeding him, and Alejandro had been slipping him food. “Why is he in the prison? Is he a witch?”
As the train lurched into motion, Alejandro shook his head. “He’s a fairy.”
He’d delivered that in a perfectly serious tone. About all she knew of fairies was that they were rare now, and kept their distance from humans. Beyond that? In stories, they granted wishes to sailors who pulled stones out of fishes’ bellies or made princesses out of scullery maids. To be honest, she’d never given them much thought, as she’d never expected to meet one.
There were people who didn’t believe sereia existed. Given, her people’s islands were the last free colony of sereia known, but there were the Canaries, and stories about other sereia throughout the world. Unfortunately, most of the smaller groups of sereia hadn’t had enough males to breed true and eventually died off. Their children by human mates had, over the generations, become more and more human until the very traits that made them sereia bred out. That was one reason the oligarchy on Quitos was so adamantly against allowing humans on the island. Quitos was seen as pure.
“Alejandro, how many Canaries are at the prison?”
He gave her a strange look.
Marina wished she could shake answers out of him. Either it was a question he wasn’t supposed to answer, or . . . she’d asked the wrong question.
She opened the bag of meat pies she’d purchased outside the train station. They weren’t the kind she was accustomed to, more like a circle of soft bread folded in half over the stuffing. They smelled tasty anyway. She handed one wrapped in paper to Alejandro, and he immediately stuffed half into his mouth.
Once he’d eaten two of the pies, she tried again. “The women who run the prison. How many are there?”
He shrugged. “Twenty?”
The prison, especially one that held other prisoners, couldn’t be large enough to hold a whole population, but the Canaries were spread across Spain now, if the American ambassador’s information was correct. Even so, twenty was negligible. “Does that include your mother?” When he shook his head, she asked, “And the other women like your mother? The ones who spoke Portuguese. How many of them?”
His eyes closed as he calculated. “Eight? Not sure.”
Had there been twenty-four at one point? She doubted Alejandro knew the answer to that. “Why are you not sure?”
“Some want to stay there. My mother doesn’t count them.”
Marina sat back, rubbing one hand with the other. If there had been twenty-four, some must have defected to support the Canaries. That seemed to put Leandra in the minority. “Alejandro, do you know how your mother got to Barcelona? Back before you were born, I mean.”
He took another bite of his meat pie. “The Vilaró said she escaped. She took Liliana and ran away when Liliana was just a baby. Capitan Captaire helped her. Or she helped him. I’m not sure.”
So Leandra had been trying to escape for years, but many of the others didn’t feel that way. After all, had the islands done anything to save them? They must feel abandoned and betrayed. And if she guessed correctly, they had children to protect, children who might be hurt if they did try to escape. She glanced over at Alejandro again. What would she do if someone threatened him?
CHAPTER 34
LLEIDA
Joaquim didn’t know how long he’d waited in that cell before footsteps on the stone outside warned him of more visitors. This time it was two guards. Either was large enough to take him on his own, so when they stepped into his cell, he didn’t bother to try to fight. Better to save my energy.
One of the guards unchained him from the bed, and the other stepped behind him and dropped a hood over his head.
“Let’s go meet a new friend,” he said, and shoved Joaquim in the direction of the door.
Joaquim walked, unable to see, but guided by the grasp of the first guard on his left arm. The mask was unnecessary—once he’d been somewhere he could always find it again. But they thought he was a seer, not a finder. Once out of the cell, they pushed him along a stone hallway, turned down another, and then another after a moment.
The guard dragged Joaquim to a stop, keeping a tight grasp on his arm. He yanked off the hood, and Joaquim blinked a moment in the lamplight until his eyes adjusted.
Inside a cell stood two women, elegantly garbed—a young one all in white, and the other, a graying matron, in a charcoal suit with black accents. A third woman sat in a chair, her arms bound behind her. That was Leandra Rocha, without a doubt. Joaquim recognized her narrow face and tired eyes. She didn’t seem frightened, though, as she had in that photograph. Instead her eyes stared off into an empty corner of the cell, the very image of exhaustion.
She still wore the garb she’d had on in the photograph. Her shirtwaist was spattered with blood, mostly dried to a sickly brown, and one eye was swollen almost shut. Her white shirt collar had been pulled down to expose a neck that looked as if it had been savaged by a wild dog in the past. It took Joaquim a moment to realize that her gills had been cut out, leaving hideous scars. The neck clap she’d worn on the islands had hidden that. He swallowed, his stomach turning. That had to have been Dr. Serpa’s work. What did they do to her?
“Do you see who we’ve found for you, Leandra?” the white-garbed woman asked in a sweet voice with a Castilian lisp. She was young, no older than Marina, her straight hair pulled back neatly from a lovely face. Her white shirtwaist and skirt made her look pure and innocent. It brought to mind the garb of a religious novice, though, rather than a debutante. “It’s Alejandro’s father,” she added, “come to visit you.”
She gestured sharply, and the guards pushed Joaquim down onto another chair, where he faced Leandra. One jerked his arms behind him and proceeded to tie them, the rope tight across the bandages on Joaquim’s burned forearm. He hissed with renewed pain.
Leandra gazed at him with resignation, and lifted her eyes to face the white-garbed girl. “Piedad, he isn’t Alejandro’s father. I don’t know where you got him, but he’s about thirty years too young.”
Joaquim took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to go well for him. “I’ve seen a photograph of this woman before,” he agreed, “but that’s all.”
The young woman in the white dress—Piedad—walked over to a small table and donned a glove. As she approached him, Joaquim saw it was more of a gauntlet, metal plating the back. She raised her hand and backhanded him across his face, hard enough that his vision went black for a second. Then he realized his eyes were closed. He fought for a moment to get them to open. He blinked rapidly as the pain subsided. He’d been hit harder by Alessio as a boy, but he was moderately sure she’d just broken his nose. And the metal had cut his face in at least one spot. Blood trickled down one side of his jaw and pooled hot on his upper lip. He waited a moment until the blood trickled into his mouth, and then sputtered out a breath, splattering Piedad’s white garb with red.
Her chilly metal-encased fingers stroked the side of his face. Then she wiped her hand down the front of her sh
irtwaist, leaving streaks of his blood behind. “You’re the Portuguese who’s come looking for Leandra. If you’re not the boy’s father, then why?”
Does it matter what I tell her? “I was sent for the book, not her. I hoped the boy could lead me to it.”
Leandra gazed at him, a guarded expression on her tired face.
Piedad laid her hand under his chin. “And what have you done with the book?”
“I don’t have it,” Joaquim said. “The boy didn’t know where it was.”
She leaned closer and smiled for the first time, revealing teeth that had been filed down to points. The sight sent a chill down Joaquim’s spine. “Try again,” she said.
“The boy didn’t know where it was,” Joaquim repeated. He swallowed, tasting blood. The journal is fourteen years old. Why do they need it so badly?
Piedad abruptly turned back to Leandra. “So, tell me, Leandra, where’s the book?”
Leandra gazed across at him but didn’t answer.
After a moment of silence, Piedad turned back and struck Joaquim across the face again. Better prepared this time, he swayed with the motion, but still felt his teeth rattle.
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me?” Piedad asked, hand poised to strike Joaquim again.
When Leandra didn’t answer, another blow fell, and then another. Joaquim spat out blood. His collar felt wet with blood now, warm and sticky.
“She hasn’t flinched,” the woman in gray said from behind him. “She doesn’t know him. Don’t ruin his pretty face for nothing.”
Feeling dizzy, Joaquim figured his pretty face was probably already ruined.
“I want answers,” his tormentor insisted.
“Try something else,” the unseen woman said firmly.
“Yes, Reyna,” Piedad said. She turned to look over Joaquim’s shoulder, toward the guards in the cell’s doorway. “Bring her in.”
Joaquim heard the guards moving out of the cell. They weren’t gone long before he heard them returning, a high-pitched voice protesting. That voice belonged to a pretty young girl with curling flaxen hair, a girl not much older than Alejandro, but taller and better fed. One of the guards had his hand wrapped about her upper arm as he dragged her to stand between Joaquim and Leandra. The girl took in the scene with frightened disdain.
The Shores of Spain Page 29
