“And yet your Camões is still heralded as a great poet. Did any of those sailors bring their so-called sereia brides back to Portugal? Did they attempt to right the wrong perpetrated against those women?” Her dark eyes turned toward the dress in her lap. She fiddled with the fabric, giving him an occasional glimpse of the webbing between her long fingers. “We have our own history of that incident—The Rape of Amado, it’s called.”
“I am not surprised,” he admitted. “What happened afterward is shrouded in mystery. What do your people say?”
“Amado became a prison of sorts,” she told him. “It had once been a game reserve, just for hunting, but along with the dozen or so human men who’d stayed behind, all the sereia who were caught up in that incident were sequestered there by their own people. They weren’t allowed to return to their home islands, as if they were contaminated. For long afterward, any humans who ended up on the islands, whether by shipwreck or capture—or those missionaries your Church kept sending—were transported to Amado and not allowed to leave.”
Duilio sat back in his chair. “That seems very harsh. Is it still sequestered?”
She shook her head. “No. After about two hundred years our rulers lifted the ban on travel. Amado is often called the Portuguese island, though. Its people have the most human blood, their culture is the most like that of Portugal, and a percentage of them are even Christian, which never did spread to the other islands. And thus Amadeans are looked down on by the inhabitants of the other islands who claim pure sereia blood, no matter how untrue that is.”
Her tone had grown sharper as she spoke. She must be Amadean herself, given her irritation. “Miss Paredes, I’ll promise never to speak fondly of Camões again, if you’ll accept my apology for what happened to your ancestors.”
She seemed surprised. “Your prince is the one who should apologize.”
“Unfortunately, that will never happen, Miss Paredes. And I thought we were making such progress. I was hoping to see those islands before I die.”
That statement caused her brows to furrow. She picked one of the pins from her pincushion, possibly planning to stab him with it. “Why?”
“I like different places,” he said quite truthfully. “I’m curious. I like to travel, see how different people live.”
She regarded him warily. “Why our people? There are plenty of others.”
He argued with himself over whether to tell her the truth or not, and then shrugged. “When I was a boy, my father brought home a book about your islands. It was in French, I recall, and made many unlikely claims, among them the report that your people wear no clothing, or very little. That prompted my initial curiosity.”
* * *
Oriana stared at Mr. Ferreira, wondering what type of impression he intended to make with that bald statement. “That alone piqued your interest?”
He flushed, a hint of red creeping cross his cheeks. “I had no intention of offending you, Miss Paredes. I was twelve, I believe. Boys that age, I’m afraid, find nothing more fascinating than the possibility of glimpsing a woman in her natural state. I hope that doesn’t negate my earlier apology. I am somewhat more mature now than I was at twelve.”
Her tone must have been sharper than she’d intended. “I’ll not take it amiss, then, sir. I should tell you, though, that we do wear clothing, although admittedly less than your own people. Our women especially don’t have to put up with this excessive number of layers.” She gestured at her own skirts, hidden under the blue dress.
He inclined his head, as if in acknowledgment of a gift. “I’ll have to look for that book. You might find it amusing.”
She could only imagine how inaccurate a human-written book about the islands would be. His dark brows drew together, and for a moment he didn’t speak. “Mr. Ferreira?” she prompted, uncertain where his thoughts had strayed.
“May I ask a personal question?”
She folded her hands atop the fabric. What could possibly give him pause after admitting having been an imaginative twelve-year-old male at one point? “Of course, sir.”
He gestured toward her hands. “The webbing between your fingers seems very delicate. I wondered if you often injure it. You said you’ve done so when sewing.”
She felt the urge to smile at his hesitation. “It’s tougher than it looks and heals very quickly. I do prick it on occasion, which jars me to my teeth, but it doesn’t hurt that much.”
“Jars you?”
She licked her lips, working out the words to explain. “Our webbing is what allows us to sense movement in the water—waves or fish or boats. When I injure it, it’s like . . . a loud thunderclap, but not in my ears. In my head.”
“Like a seal’s whiskers,” he said with a slow nod. “How sensitive is it?”
She hadn’t realized the purpose a seal’s whiskers served, but if anyone would know, he would. She held up her hand and spread her fingers wide, which allowed her to sense him. “At this distance I can feel your breathing, your heartbeat. It’s indistinct, but in water it would be far clearer.”
That apparently gave him something to think about, as he sat with his lips pressed together, unmoving.
Oriana suspected she knew what he wanted. Isabel was the only other human who’d ever known her well enough to dare ask. She moved to the front of the couch, hands still in her lap. “Would you like to look at them?”
He regarded her cautiously. “Would you find that offensive?”
She didn’t recall exactly when, but he’d switched to informal address, speaking to her like a friend, tu, rather than just an acquaintance. She did the same. “Will you show me yours in return?”
“It would be a terrible sacrifice,” he said with a sly smile, “but I suppose I could.”
Then he recognized it for a foolish request. She’d seen plenty of human hands in the past two years. But it was a trade she was willing to make. This wasn’t vulgar curiosity or sensationalism on his part. He simply liked to understand.
She leaned forward and held out her left hand—the one without a cut across the palm. The webbing ran up to the last joint on each finger. Their conjoined nature didn’t allow her the dexterousness of a human hand, but she found most tasks doable.
“May I touch your hand?” he asked.
Given his walking into her bath unannounced only a few days before, it was an ironic question. He’d already touched her bare hand, once when he passed her the bathroom keys and then the previous night in the library. This was different, though. She just wasn’t certain how. “Of course,” she managed.
His left hand, ungloved, touched hers. His fingers were warm, sliding under her hand to support it. His thumb rubbed across her palm, distracting her. She spread her fingers wider and let him turn her hand slightly to catch the light on the webbing. The silhouette of his fingers showed through the translucent skin. His heartbeat reverberated through her senses.
He was holding her hand because . . . he wanted to do so.
She swallowed. The sensation of Mr. Ferreira’s skin against hers was surprisingly affecting, making her body warm and her heart beat faster. She wasn’t accustomed to such familiarity; that had to be the source of her reaction.
His eyes met hers. “You have lovely hands.”
She jerked her fingers free of his light grasp, then wished she hadn’t. He’d done nothing wrong. “Thank you,” she mumbled. “I’m surprised that a . . .”
One of his eyebrows crept upward.
She should stop including Duilio Ferreira in her generalizations about humans . . . and about men. “I have large hands,” she said. “I’m given to understand that human men prefer delicate ones.”
“I am not entirely human,” he reminded her. He held out his own hand, leaning close to let her view it. She could smell him clearly now, that light musky scent she’d originally mistaken for ambergris cologne.
“Can you become a seal?” she asked.
“No,” he said with a shrug. “Too human for that, it
seems.”
Oriana gazed down at the hand displayed before her. Larger than hers, with blunt-tipped fingers and neatly trimmed nails. His knuckles looked calloused. She turned his hand over. “What does a palmist make of your hands?”
“I’ve never been to one,” he said. “Have you?”
A man of science, then? “No. You don’t trust seers either?”
“Well, I do listen to Felis. She reads the cards,” he added in a conspiratorial tone. “I’m not sure if she’s a true witch or not, but other than her, I don’t listen to fortune-tellers.”
She wasn’t certain whether he was joking about Felis. “You don’t believe their predictions, then? Not even Silva’s?”
His warm eyes seemed to focus inward for a moment. “I think we make our own paths in life. As for my uncle, I’ve no knowledge how profound his powers truly are.”
That comment struck a chord in her memory, but she couldn’t place it. “I suspect he’s no more than a good guesser.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth. Duilio Ferreira was easy to talk to, a dangerous temptation. She felt as if he understood her far better than . . . well, anyone. She could mention the strange meeting between Heriberto and her father to him. It would be nice to have someone else’s opinion of the entire matter. But it was a sereia problem and had nothing at all to do with Isabel’s death, so she kept her query to herself.
When she said nothing further, he rose, leaving his coffee cup on the tray. “Well, as I need to go break into a building, I should leave. Thank you for the company and for the interesting conversation.”
He’d switched back to more formal address with that last comment, so she must have hit upon a raw nerve. “You’re most welcome, sir.”
He made his way out of the sitting room, but paused at the threshold and glanced back. “And my shoulder feels much better, Miss Paredes,” he said, answering her original question. “Thank you for asking.”
He pulled the door shut behind him before she could think of a fitting response.
She couldn’t recall when she’d had that long of an exchange with any male since coming to the city, her master Heriberto included. She would not mind doing so again.
CHAPTER 16
Duilio watched the building on Bonfim Street for a time. His gift insisted that the place was important, but now also seemed to think it was dangerous. Duilio wasn’t sure which warning carried the greater significance. On top of that, he had the feeling he was being watched, an odd itch between his shoulder blades. He could just put this off, but they needed results soon.
The apartment was in a narrow building above a small store that had once sold fabric, its red-painted walls faded to a dry rose in the sun. Buildings pressed close on either side, one facade tiled in white and blue and the other built of plain gold-brown stone. It did appear that the fabric store had been converted into a woodworker’s shop. A mechanical saw mounted on a large table dominated one side of a room. Another side held a treadle-driven lathe. Wood was neatly stacked against one wall, along with shelves that held wooden kegs of various sizes. Nothing moved within.
Duilio rubbed his aching shoulder as he walked past the store. On reaching the building’s narrow entry he walked briskly up the steps. A quick turn of his skeleton key opened the door, and he stepped inside. The white-painted hallway held nothing more than a closed door that led to the fabric-cum-woodworker’s shop and a narrow stairwell. Duilio headed up that to the apartment above. After a brief moment of fiddling with the lock, Duilio slipped inside and closed the door behind him.
The apartment smelled musty, as if it hadn’t been aired in months. It wasn’t huge but larger than Joaquim’s and probably far more expensive. Two windows on the front wall looked out over Bonfim Street. They had sheer lace curtains, but the dark drapes over those were half-closed, letting in only a pale bar of light. Duilio didn’t draw back the drapes; that would surely be seen from the street. He glanced at the single kerosene lamp on a table near the door and discarded that idea as well. He didn’t want to alert anyone to his presence.
Those with an artistic mentality were often held to be. . . .messy, and this tenant certainly lived up to that stereotype. Stacks of papers covered every horizontal surface in the front room. A low couch couldn’t be sat upon because of the piles of sketches obscuring it. More sketches on foolscap lined the edges of the walls, many of them torn and tattered about the edges, made into nests for mice. That explained the musty smell that was making his nose twitch. Duilio perused the paper-littered tables and then gingerly lifted a few drawings from the couch. He held one up to the light streaming in through the lace curtains. The charcoal sketch was a rudimentary likeness of the Duarte mansion, the first to be re-created by Espinoza and set upside down in the water.
Duilio laughed softly. Joaquim had finally run the artist to ground.
He didn’t want to stay in the place too long, but he needed to know what it had to tell him. Like most in the old town, the apartment was long and narrow, so Duilio headed for the door that led to the next room. He listened at the door and when he heard nothing, pushed the door open.
The shadowy room was uninhabited. It was a bedroom, but only identifiable as such because a long, narrow bed had been set against the wall in the darkest corner. A pair of drafting tables with tilted tops dominated the room instead, the sort an architect might use. Both were completely immaculate, a stark contrast to the mess in the front room. The blankets on the bed had once been pulled tight, judging by the neat corners that were left.
Duilio stepped back out into the front room, eyes narrowing. The clutter hadn’t been wrought by the missing inhabitant, but by mice. If not for their predations, the stacks would have been neat and organized. He looked at the couch with new eyes; it was a filing system. Apparently the inhabitant simply hadn’t ever planned on having guests.
He turned back to the immaculate bedroom. The must-and-mouse smell carried through from the front room, and he could see evidence that the woolen blanket on the bed had been chewed as well. A small nightstand stood next to the bed. Duilio opened the single drawer, but saw only a dog-eared Bible within. He picked it up and checked for any inscription but found none. When he shook it out, nothing fell from between the pages. Sighing, he slid the book back into the drawer and closed it.
He’d hoped to find some clue where the artist had gone, but his gift didn’t seem eager to attach significance to anything. “I could use some help,” he complained to himself.
Nothing popped into his mind, so he threw his hands up and turned to search the drafting tables. A thorough going-over of the first revealed only the artist’s inks, pens, and pencils. The second had a neat stack of paper atop it, all of which appeared to be blank. Inside the drawer, he found a couple of blades for sharpening pencils, along with cleaning cloths and some wadded-up papers. It was unusual, given the neatness of everything else.
His interest piqued, Duilio began removing the contents of the drawer. As he pulled out the last cloth, his fingers brushed something solid crammed into the very back of the drawer. He tugged on it and it came loose, a leather-bound volume.
Duilio felt gooseflesh prickling along his arms, his gift alerting him. “Aha!”
He flipped the book open and scanned the handwritten pages.
He turned to the front of the volume and saw neatly dated entries, the first more than two years old. They appeared to be calculations of the distances from the riverbed to the ideal depths for the miniature houses. Grinning, Duilio tucked the journal into one of his coat pockets.
With renewed energy, he inspected the two doors on the far wall. One opened onto a very dark dressing room that had definitely fallen prey to mice, judging by the odor. Garments lay strewn about. Pinching his nose closed to mitigate the smell, Duilio shoved open the door as wide as it would go and dug through the scattered garments with one boot. They were plain-looking garb in the dim light, more like a workman’s than the flamboyancy he expected of an artist
. He’d judged the man too readily by his occupation. A basin and pitcher had been knocked from their commode, the pitcher’s handle broken off on the hardwood floor. A struggle?
He cleared most of the clothing to one side and picked up the broken pitcher, then turned it over to view the unglazed base. Something dark discolored the porcelain, as if it had seeped into the porous material. Duilio crouched down. Near where the pitcher had lain, the cracks in the wood were darker as well. He felt sure it was blood, but couldn’t quite tell. Frustrated, he went back to fetch the lamp from the front room.
A twinge of warning alerted his senses before he reached the bedroom door, setting his heart to racing. Duilio sniffed . . . and caught the distinctive odor of kerosene. He heard the sudden whoosh of a fire igniting.
Duilio ran back to the front room and stopped in the doorway, aghast at the sight.
Flames leapt several feet high, blocking the doorway, and for a second he couldn’t breathe, panic freezing him there in that spot. He clutched at the doorjamb. One of the few selkie traits he had inherited was an irrational fear of fire.
Duilio squeezed his eyes shut. Don’t panic. Deal with this.
He opened his eyes again and tried to take stock. Flames already coursed around the edge of the room, feeding off the scattered papers. His eyes flicked around the room, hunting for some escape.
Damnation! How had the fire grown so fast? He couldn’t get near the door. Someone had splashed kerosene all over that wall.
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