The Shores of Spain

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  Portuguese. She was singing to him in Portuguese. This was one of the women from the islands. Her call had stopped, he realized then, but the guard slept on. In her hand she now held the guard’s gun, but pointed it past Joaquim—at Leandra.

  Leandra had reached the top step by herself and stood leaning against the wall. “Aline, let him go.”

  “What’s happening here?” the sereia asked.

  “The Vilaró is loose. He’s helping us escape.”

  The sereia’s chin lifted. “And once you’re gone, what becomes of us?”

  “I would suggest abandoning the prisons altogether,” Leandra said wearily. “You’ll never be safe from the Vilaró here. Even if he doesn’t kill you, he won’t forget what was done to him, and he’ll live a very long time.”

  “And if I let you out?” the sereia asked. “Would you take me back to the islands?”

  “I’m willing to try,” Joaquim offered.

  “Make up your mind, Aline,” Leandra said. “Which side are you on?”

  The sereia gazed at Leandra, tears glistening in her eyes. “I want to go home.”

  Leandra nodded once, and Joaquim followed her lead. She knew this woman; he didn’t. But somehow the woman’s statement rang false in his ears. Not that he had a Truthsayer’s talent; he’d simply had too many people lie to him in his work for the police. He’d seen faked tears before.

  “He has the keys,” she said to Joaquim, motioning toward the guard slumped over the desk, now snoring lightly. Slipping his gun back into his waistband, Joaquim went around the desk and tugged a ring of keys loose from the guard’s belt. But when he rose, he saw that Aline now held Leandra’s arm twisted behind her, her gun held to Leandra’s side. He considered the tableau, weighing the odds.

  Leandra wasn’t afraid of death; he had no doubt of that. Her eyes were flatly unconcerned.

  Would the other woman actually shoot Leandra? He felt sure that Aline didn’t want to. But if he went for his gun, she could easily kill Leandra before he got off a shot. Instead he threw the keys directly at Aline’s face.

  She flinched, dropping her grip on Leandra at the same time. Leandra didn’t hesitate. She elbowed the woman in the side of the neck, directly on her gill slits. The woman fell to her knees and clutched at her neck. Then Leandra brought her knee up, catching the other in the face.

  It wasn’t pretty, but it was effective. The woman on the floor began to moan, a call woven into it, sending spasms of familiar discomfort flickering down Joaquim’s spine. That was pain, and he’d heard a sereia calling in pain before. Even the protection Marina had given him didn’t block that completely.

  “Give me the keys,” Joaquim managed through gritted teeth.

  Leandra leaned over, having to rest against the wall to do so, but fished the keys out from under the other woman’s skirts. She kicked Aline’s gun away, and it slid under the desk. She handed the ring to Joaquim as he came to help her to the door.

  “Will there be a guard on the other side of that door?”

  “I don’t know,” Leandra admitted.

  Joaquim glanced at the iron door’s lock and selected one of the five keys. He tried the first key, his fingers fumbling as Aline’s keening grew louder. It didn’t work. How soon before the guard woke and came to Aline’s rescue?

  Joaquim stuck the second key in the lock.

  * * *

  A flurry of activity alerted Marina to the approach of the mayor as he bustled down the stairwell to greet the marquesa. It appeared that in addition to a pair of guards, he’d brought along a couple of assistants. When the man saw the marquesa enthroned in the middle of the hall, he rushed over toward her, trailing attendants.

  The paer en cap was an older man with slicked-back hair and spectacles, the sort one would expect to be an accountant, with a too-tight collar. He looked distressed before he reached the fuming marquesa’s side. Marina had met enough of this sort of person while working for her father, a man trying hard to do the right thing while caught between too many expectations. The mayor bowed to the marquesa and launched into a formal introduction of his two assistants.

  The marquesa waved that away with one hand. “There is a prison below this hall,” she snapped. “My great-grandson is being held in it. I want him brought up to me immediately.”

  The man blinked a couple of times, as if no one had ever mentioned a prison to him before. “But the Morra was closed up, Marquesa,” he said firmly. “Ages ago. No one goes in or out.”

  The marquesa’s jaw hardened. She glanced over at Father Escarrá, who nodded, and turned back to the mayor. “Even in Terrassa we’ve heard rumors that the Morra is in use, that prisoners are brought here from the prison, never to return. I assure you, my great-grandson is down there. As I have heard no charges against him, I want him released now.”

  Marina held her breath. The marquesa was the source of Joaquim’s gift of finding, so she must know where he was. Perhaps she had a sense of him below. Marina barely restrained herself from looking down at the floor.

  “Do you pretend you don’t know?” the marquesa went on. “Or is it more convenient to let those fish girls run your prison for you and close one eye to their other actions?”

  The mayor blinked rapidly. “I have not been told of this.”

  Father Escarrá nodded when the marquesa glanced his way.

  “I have sent a message to the king with my protest,” she announced. “You would do well to satisfy my demands before I speak to my cousin in person.”

  “The king?” the man asked, paling.

  “I sent him a telegram myself. This place may have suited the world of the nineteenth century, but this is a new century.” She turned to the priest, who stood at her side. “Father Escarrá, go fetch Bishop Meseguer for me. He’ll want to know what’s been going on under his nose.”

  The paer en cap whispered something to one of his adjuncts, who dashed back up the stairs. “There’s no need, Marquesa,” he said. “We’ll get to the truth of this immediately. I’ve sent for the keeper of the keys. If the underground is being used, we’ll find out now.”

  Marina glanced down at Alejandro, whose lips were pursed. Getting them out didn’t guarantee they would stay free.

  A man in a different uniform, a plain gray one, came jogging into the hall, breathing hard as if he’d run a long way. He began speaking to the mayor in urgent, low tones.

  “He says the wall about the main prison has fallen down,” Father Escarrá whispered to Marina. “Like the walls of Jericho, it simply fell. The prisoners who were in the courtyard fled in all directions, and the guards cannot chase them all down.” He paused, listening. “He says the bad prisoners—he means the violent ones, I think—the hall they’re in is intact, but the nationalists are escaping.”

  The man continued to talk to the mayor, and the priest’s head cocked as he listened. Then he whispered to Marina again, “The mayor asked why the sirenas who run the prison haven’t called the escaping men back, and the guard said they’re busy with something else.”

  The adjunct who’d gone upstairs returned with a barrel-chested man in the fancy livery of the city guard. The mayor, still talking with the guard from the prison, waved for him to go on. The large man paraded past them toward a walnut railing under one of the arcades. He opened out an iron gate and then disappeared down a flight of steps.

  * * *

  His nerves rattled, Joaquim tried the next key. Aline pushed herself back up to her knees, only one hand to her throat now. Her pained call had shifted to the call he’d heard before: come, come. It was yearning, pure and simple, trying to drag him away from the door.

  The guard who’d been asleep at the desk shook his head blearily. He gaped at the calling sereia, only a few feet from him, then rose and helped her to her feet, gazing at her worshipfully.

  Leandra tugged the key ring out
of Joaquim’s hands, freeing him to draw his gun again, and pushed the next key into the hole. This one turned in the lock, clicking as it went around. Joaquim kept his gun trained on Aline and the guard.

  The sereia woman saw the gun under the desk then and bade the guard to retrieve it. He dove under the desk.

  “I’ve got it!” Leandra tried to shove the door open, and Joaquim reached past her, pushing the iron door ponderously outward.

  Aline grabbed the gun away from the guard and shot wildly, but the bullet found its mark, searing its way into Joaquim’s calf. He cried out, his right knee buckling. He hurtled forward and landed atop Leandra. They both fell onto another stone landing.

  A muscular man in a different uniform—not the prison guard’s gray—stood a few feet away on the landing above them, his mouth gaping. Joaquim rolled away from Leandra, lifting his borrowed pistol. He turned it on the sereia. Aline was already coming after them. She lifted her pistol again, her second bullet firing wide. It hit the low wall near the unknown guard’s feet. He cursed vehemently.

  Joaquim trained his gun on the woman. “I’m a much better shot than you are, Aline. You’d better drop that gun.”

  * * *

  Marina heard the guard’s startled exclamation. “Stay right here,” she told Alejandro.

  She dashed across the hall to the walnut railing and peeked over it. At the bottom of the stairwell, the large guard stood frozen in indecision. A few feet away, Joaquim sprawled half across a woman who must be Leandra Rocha, pinning her to the floor with his weight. Joaquim had a gun trained on someone beyond Marina’s field of vision.

  She grabbed up her skirts and ran down the stairs, halting next to the guard. On the other side of the iron door, a woman in gray walked up the steps, a gun in her hands. Her eyes were fixed on Joaquim.

  “I don’t want to shoot you,” Joaquim was saying.

  “Do you think I can let you get away now?” She raised her gun. “If I fail Reyna . . .”

  Marina didn’t wait to hear what the woman had to say. She laid her hand on the town hall guard’s arm and worked a call into her whispered voice. “Shoot her.”

  The guard drew his gun and fired.

  The woman tumbled back onto a stone landing on the other side of the heavy door. Marina darted past the befuddled guard to kneel at Joaquim’s side.

  He regarded her as if unsure she was real. “Marina?”

  Marina saw blood staining his trouser legs. “Are you injured? Can you move?”

  Before he could answer, she spotted movement farther down the stair, beyond the door. A gray-garbed guard like the one who’d come from the prison had been helping the unknown woman, but he glanced up, his eyes meeting Marina’s. He started toward the steps, patting his holster . . . only to find it empty.

  Marina didn’t wait for him to locate his missing gun. She jumped up and pushed the iron door, groaning when she realized how heavy it was.

  But the town hall guard stepped over Joaquim, caught the edge of the door, and shoved it closed with one hand. Then he locked it, an effective means to cut off the combatants and prevent any more shooting. He glared down at Joaquim and grabbed up the pistol and keys that lay on the steps near him. “What’s going on here?” he barked.

  Joaquim held out one hand to Marina and she did her best to help him up. He hissed when he put his weight on his right leg, though, and ended up stretching one arm over Marina’s shoulders. Once Joaquim’s weight was off her, Leandra rose slowly. She ignored the guard’s hand when he moved to aid her. She’d been beaten, one eye swollen almost all the way closed. One of her hands was heavily bandaged and she moved as if exhausted. Even so, she looked very formidable.

  This is Alejandro’s mother, Marina thought, feeling a sudden pang of loss.

  Her jaw clenching tightly, Marina turned away. She drew Joaquim up the steps to the ground floor of the hall. She wanted to find a place where she could inspect his injured leg or, better yet, get him to a hospital, but she didn’t know whether they were safe or not.

  “What are you doing here?” Joaquim asked.

  Marina touched his swollen cheek. “I’m here to rescue you.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Joaquim surveyed the hall as Marina helped him up the stairs. It was an impressive place of arches and arcades like the construction below, but made of far finer stone than the prison beneath. Seated on the far side in a large wooden chair was his great-grandmother. A bespectacled man argued with a handful of attendants nearby, and a priest waited at her side. Alejandro stood with the priest, his expression unreadable as he looked toward Leandra.

  The man in civic livery had followed them up the stairs, his gun in his hand. He gestured forcefully for Joaquim and Leandra to stay where they were and went to report to the gentleman in spectacles, adding to the confusion.

  “What is happening here?” Joaquim asked.

  “They say the prison’s walls fell down,” Marina whispered as she drew his left arm over her shoulders to help carry his weight. “Like the walls of Jericho, they just fell down.”

  “I saw it,” he admitted. Sounds drifted in from the entryway of the hall, growing louder by the moment. A ruckus was building outside, and Joaquim spotted the shadows of people running past the arcade beyond the outer door. If they knew the prison walls had fallen, the citizens had good reason to flee. The commotion outside built, a low voice now leading the flood.

  Ignoring the guard’s order to remain where they were, Leandra walked toward that doorway, stumbling against one of the hall’s arches and pausing to catch her breath before continuing on. Since the guard didn’t seem to have noticed, Joaquim steered Marina toward the doorway as well. She held out her free hand toward Alejandro, who jogged to join them and took Marina’s hand as if she were his mother instead of Leandra.

  They emerged from the hall into the sunlight of a small square, with more arcades of arches lining the street. People crowded under those arcades, watching as if they feared attack. Joaquim stopped when they drew abreast of where Leandra stood, heavily leaning against one of the arches.

  “Oh gods, they don’t have her,” Leandra whispered.

  In the center of the square stood a clump of people, mostly women dressed in the gray of the prison and young children. Joaquim was relieved to see Marcos among them, but didn’t see Alejandro’s sister there, or Miss Prieto.

  Standing squarely before the group was the Vilaró, his hand wrapped around the back of Piedad’s neck, his fingers digging into the edges of her gills. From what Joaquim knew of sereia, that would be terribly painful. Piedad remained very still, her angry eyes wide. Her face, already bruising, looked nearly as bad as his must. Joaquim wasn’t sure whether he felt guilty about that or gratified by the symmetry.

  They were waiting, Joaquim realized, to make their case to someone. They had walked from the broken prison to the town hall, so the distance must not be great. But surely this was the only place they could beg for mercy. To whom could they turn other than the town’s authorities?

  “We will speak before the city’s ruler,” the Vilaró said, as if he’d repeated that request before.

  The officious-looking man from inside the building came out into the square, his guards and two of his attendants in tow. He gestured for them to remain under the arcade and then placed himself in front of the Vilaró, his jaw working. “Sir,” he said. “I am the paer en cap. I must insist that you release that woman.”

  “He’s the mayor,” Marina whispered to Joaquim.

  The Vilaró turned toward the mayor. “Do you control the prison?”

  The mayor raised his chin. “I do not. The wardens of the prison work for the Spanish government.”

  Joaquim felt sorry for the mayor. The poor man was an elected official, faced now with a creature he had no hope to control, escaped prisoners, and a mutiny in a prison he didn’t run.

 
The mayor waved one hand toward the gray-suited women grouped protectively around the children. “Are these not the wardens of the prison themselves?”

  “I am not Spanish,” one of the women cried aloud. “I am not one of them. I have been held hostage in that prison for four years, forced to serve them like a slave for fear they would hurt my daughter.”

  Others in that group raised their voices, shouting similar charges. Joaquim saw that Marcos looked pale. Among all of them, he was Spanish.

  Farther down the street, onlookers moved back under the arcades to clear the way for a contingent of prison guards hurrying toward them.

  “Guards coming this way,” Joaquim said aloud, hoping the Vilaró would hear him.

  The Vilaró waved his free hand, and at the edge of the square, the paving stones peeled off the ground like the skin of an orange, sending the nearby onlookers running in all directions. Screams filled the street as that layer of stone rose until it reached twice the height of a man, completely blocking off the square.

  Joaquim held his breath for a second until it was clear that the stones were not going to fall. Dust flew in the breeze, a choking cloud of unsettled dirt and ground-down mule dung and bits of refuse. The Vilaró blew softly into that wind, and the dust instantly dropped to the ground.

  The remaining onlookers—the ones who hadn’t fled in terror—fell silent at that demonstration of power. Even the mayor looked cowed. Had he known what was hidden in his town all these decades?

  Leandra looked over at Alejandro. “Stay with them,” she said, gesturing toward Marina. Then she walked slowly to the Vilaró’s side.

  “Why have you come here?” the mayor asked in a breathy voice. “What is it you want?”

  “The queen of your prison is holding one more child hostage,” the Vilaró said. “I want that child in exchange for this woman I hold, and then these people will leave this place.”

  “I must insist that you return my streets to order,” the mayor said.