The Seat of Magic

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  “I don’t want to hand this case over to the Special Police,” he protested weakly.

  “Just a consultation,” Duilio said. “I’ll talk to Brother Manoel and see if they can put off preparing the body until afterward.”

  And with that, Duilio left the cell, leaving Joaquim alone with the doctor. Joaquim turned back to Dr. Teixeira. “Do you know any healers in the area who might have done this?”

  “Well”—the doctor cleared his throat—“science tends not to get along with magic, Inspector. We doctors rarely meet up with healers, and I have to admit there’s a growing tendency in the field to think of them as . . . charlatans.”

  There were dozens of healers to be found in the Golden City, and Joaquim suspected half of them had no talent at all. Then again, not all doctors were as competent as Dr. Teixeira, either. “If you do think of anything else,” he said, “please let me know.”

  The doctor nodded his head vaguely. “I’ll go ahead and close her up,” he said, “and the brothers can decide what to do from there.”

  So Joaquim thanked the man again, reminded him to send his bill to Duilio’s man of business, and took one last look down at Lena Sousa’s still features. He wished he could have prevented this, but the doctor believed she’d been dead even before her friend reported her missing. If the Lady could help them pinpoint Lena’s killer, then he would go along with it.

  Joaquim nodded one last time to Dr. Teixeira and let himself out into the cool hallway. He retrieved his hat from the low table near the entry door, where Brother Manoel waited on the hard wooden bench, and made his way outside into the crisp fall air.

  Duilio lounged against the monastery wall, gazing out over the cemetery, the Prado do Repouso, in the late-afternoon sunshine, top hat pulled low to shade his eyes. The Ferreira family had a mausoleum there among the collection of stern granite and gleaming whitewashed edifices. Duilio’s brother Alessio and their father were interred there in appropriate splendor. Joaquim’s own mother lay in this cemetery as well, in one of the less ostentatious sections. He needed to visit her grave; it had been months. But today he had to get back to the station out in Massarelos Parish and see what could be done about finding a killer.

  “Do you want to stop and get something to eat?” Duilio asked him, as if they’d just visited the market instead of viewing an autopsy.

  Joaquim considered his roiling stomach. It might actually feel better if he put something in it. “Where do you suggest?”

  Duilio smoothed his hair and resettled his top hat on his head. “That new place on Santa Catarina Street?”

  Joaquim guessed he could find something appropriately bland there. He fell into step beside Duilio as he headed up toward Heroismo Street. From where they walked they could see the cathedral with its subdued gray walls standing high over the river, and beyond that the elegant white Bishop’s Palace, which now housed many of the government’s ministries. Representing the other major power in the Golden City, the fanciful royal palace rose atop a hill farther inland from the river. An imitation of a palace built by the royal family of Southern Portugal, it had crenellated walls painted in gold and red. The hill on which it stood had been built up to assure that the clock tower of the royal palace rose higher than the Torre dos Clérigos, exerting the claim of the throne over the city.

  Joaquim wasn’t sure either power, Church or State, was watching over the commoners who bustled along the Golden City’s cobbled streets, rode its trams, and sailed the river. There were too many beggars on the streets, and too many children with neither schooling nor trade. Having lived much of his early life in the Ferreira household, he knew what wealth was like, but as a police inspector he saw a great deal of poverty.

  On Heroismo Street, they walked toward the older parts of the city, the road lined by houses of three and four floors, their whitewashed facades gleaming in the sun. Pedestrians strolled the street, men and women in their Sunday finery, children dashing around and through their elders. A gold-painted tram rattled past, heading out toward the train station on the far eastern edge of the city. Joaquim glanced up in time to spot a lovely young woman out on her small balcony, leaning on the wrought iron railing not far over their heads, a basket of laundry at her feet. Her dark eyes caught his and she smiled at him. He tipped his hat to her, but walked on.

  “Not even going to ask her name?” Duilio asked with a laugh in his tone. “She’s pretty.”

  He wasn’t going to court women met while hanging their laundry. Joaquim changed the topic. “Have you heard anything from Miss Paredes?”

  Duilio’s eyes drifted to the cobbles, his shoulders hunched as he walked along, an uncharacteristically resigned posture. “No, still nothing.”

  Upon meeting the sereia woman, it hadn’t taken long for Joaquim to see that Duilio was smitten with her. And although she wasn’t to his taste, he thought she suited his cousin well. Unfortunately, she’d been forced to leave by her superiors, and Joaquim wasn’t sure she would ever come back. He wasn’t going to say that to Duilio, though. “And how is your mother?”

  That got a smile out of him. “Very well. She wants to try to swim tomorrow, so we’ll sail out to Braga Bay in the morning. We should be back by early afternoon. I can ask if the Lady will meet me at the monastery at, perhaps, three? Would you be able to come then?”

  Joaquim chewed on his lower lip. He could avoid the meeting altogether, but that would be awkward since it was his investigation. Duilio was merely helping out. “I’ll try to be there.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Rodriguez lived in the back of her shop near the Ribeira. Duilio had come down the steep streets to the quay in hopes of talking with the old Spanish woman, and she was happy to sit with him for a few moments. Since he’d come to her a dozen times over the last year with this or that minor injury, she knew he would pay her well for her time.

  The shop wasn’t on the quay itself, but on one of the narrow twisted streets that led away from the quay, Fonte Taurina Street. Her store was wedged between a tavern and a pastry shop, the first hosting a number of men drinking at their counter and the second, several customers picking up pastries to enjoy in the fall sunshine on the stone quay itself. Mrs. Rodriguez limped over to draw the white linen curtains at the front of the building, granting them a modicum of privacy. “Now how can I help you today, Mr. Ferreira?”

  “I’ve come to ask a few questions about healers,” he told her. “Is that acceptable?”

  She made her way over to the high counter from behind which she sold her herbs and infusions, and eased onto the tall stool so her eyes were nearly level with his own. “Certainly, Mr. Ferreira, although I can only answer for myself.”

  He’d always liked Mrs. Rodriguez, so he chose his words carefully, hoping not to offend. “Is it possible for a healer to hurt someone? Not you, but healers in general?”

  She shook her head. “Without a doubt. Take on a task too big and you’re assuring your client’s death.”

  That didn’t sound to him like what had happened to the dead girl in the monastery. “What kind of task?”

  “Well, if I were to try to heal over a deep cut, it might go septic,” she said. “So I send anyone with a deep wound on to the hospital. If they’re infected inside, it’s always better to send them on. That manner of problem.”

  He nodded slowly, his lips twisting as he worked through that idea. He knew healers couldn’t mend certain types of injuries, witnessed by the fact that Mrs. Rodriguez used a cane. As a girl she’d endured a savage beating from the villagers in the Spanish town from which she came. Her broken leg had never healed properly. But that sort of lapse wasn’t what he was after. “What if a healer intended to harm someone? Could they do so?”

  Her dark eyes slitted and she drew her black shawl closer about her shoulders. “That’s not the way God meant us to work, Mr. Ferreira.”

  Duilio had an uneasy re
lationship with God on the best of days. He doubted God had anything to do with this situation. “If one decided they wished to harm others,” he persisted, “could they use their gift to do so?”

  She shifted uncomfortably on her stool, eyes on the counter. Then she took a deep breath and answered. “It’s possible. A healer can, if they’re particularly strong, stop their patient’s blood in its tracks. They could stop the heart that way. Or they could steal the patient’s energies, which would do much the same.”

  Energies. That could be what had happened to the dead girl. “Why would someone do that?”

  “Kill?” The old woman shook her head. “I don’t know myself, but people seem to do so with frightening regularity, and they don’t need a healer’s power to do it.”

  She did have a point there. Why had the killer chosen to kill in this manner? Why not a knife or a gun? It does keep the hands clean, but . . .

  Duilio felt his jaw clenching as another idea formed in his mind. “You said steal. Do you mean the healer could take another person’s energy . . . and keep it?”

  “I have never done that,” she said firmly. “It is the worst sin for a healer, a corruption of one’s gift.”

  That had been a yes. “What could they do with that energy?”

  “I do not know. I heard stories from my mother, of healers who stole from others, but . . .” She made the sign of the cross, muttering a prayer under her breath. “Those are demons if it’s true, Mr. Ferreira.”

  CHAPTER 3

  MONDAY, 20 OCTOBER 1902

  Duilio guided the boat north, along the rocky coastline. He’d received a note that morning informing him the Lady would meet him at the monastery as requested at three that afternoon, which gave them several hours to get up the coast and back. The paddleboat had a shallow draught, making it a good choice for hugging the shore so long as the sea remained calm. Fortunately, since the storm on the day of Oriana’s departure, mild weather had ruled.

  His mother’s pelt lay at her feet in the small boat. Like all selkies, she was tied to her pelt. A little over three years before, a footman had found it in the house and stolen it. Duilio’s father had immediately blamed his bastard half brother, Paolo Silva, the prince’s favored seer. The footman had been hired by Silva, it turned out, but he’d sold the pelt instead to a collector of magical items, none other than the Marquis of Maraval. Duilio had found the pelt on the man’s yacht two weeks ago, nailed to the wall of the captain’s cabin.

  Now that she had it back, his mother would be able to take seal form for the first time in years . . . but at a price. Since there were nail holes in the fur, when his mother donned her pelt again, she would have open wounds there. They would heal in time, Erdano insisted, but in the interim they would bleed and seep—an unpleasant prospect in either seal or human form. Nevertheless, his mother was determined to go back to the water, and Duilio would never deny her that.

  Even aware of the pain she would have to endure, she smiled up at the brown-winged gulls peppering the rocky headlands and trailed a hand in the calm water. Duilio hadn’t seen her this happy in years.

  As they approached the opening of the secluded bay, seals slid by the boat, dark shapes in the water. Erdano’s harem had come out to welcome them. One thumped the side of the boat with her tail. Duilio opened the valve and let the engine die, then slipped out a pair of oars to take them the rest of the way into the bay—a safer approach for the sake of the bay’s inhabitants. While the adults knew to keep a safe distance from the boat’s paddles, Erdano had several children too young to be wary.

  Duilio had once attempted to count them. He’d estimated between twenty-five and thirty females in the bay, although his mother had told him a handful of those were true seals, living within the selkie harem for safety. He hadn’t inquired further into that. As much as he liked his half brother, he truly did not understand the way Erdano’s mind worked when it came to females.

  Duilio rowed the boat into the bay and shipped the oars. Rocky cliffs as high as a three-story house surrounded the circle of beach—a narrow strip of pale sands. The bay itself was shallow, so Duilio slipped off his rubber-soled shoes and jumped over the side to drag the boat onto the beach. Several pups sunning themselves there cried in dismay at the sight of a human until a pair of females came up onto the sand to comfort them.

  Duilio helped his mother off the boat. Her bare feet still in the water, she stopped to watch as, in the center of the beach, a bull seal heaved his bulk awkwardly onto the sands—Erdano. He rose on his hind flippers and stripped off his pelt, dropping it there where a couple of the females could watch over it. Unabashed as always, he strode naked along the beach toward where their mother waited.

  Try as he might, Duilio had never gotten used to their complete lack of concern over nudity. He’d spent too many of his childhood years clothed. He had, however, become adept at pretending it didn’t bother him. As they also spent much of their lives in the water, Oriana’s people shared the seal folk’s nonchalance about nudity. Duilio had succeeded in hiding his blushes around her, mainly due to his olive skin.

  A roaring voice brought his attention back to the present. “Mother! Little brother!”

  Erdano’s handsome face lit with a smile. He embraced their mother, dwarfing her—selkie females never had the bulk the males did—and then slapped one beefy hand onto Duilio’s shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

  In human form, Erdano was a large man, a hand taller than Duilio and half again as wide. His dark hair hung in damp curls over his shoulders to the middle of his back. There was little resemblance between them, save about the eyes—they had both inherited their mother’s eyes.

  Duilio smiled up at his brother. “Mother asked me to bring her out today to try her pelt.”

  Erdano’s thick brows drew together. “Are you certain, Mother?”

  “Yes,” she said with a brisk nod. “If I’m going to heal, I must start sometime.”

  Erdano looked to Duilio, brown eyes wide. Reading his brother’s expression as a request for verification, Duilio simply nodded. If his mother had made up her mind, he didn’t intend to fight her. Erdano made a barking call then, and several of his harem came swimming over.

  Duilio watched as three of the seals rose out of the water, removing their pelts as they did so. It still baffled his eyes, that moment when one of the seal folk slid a flipper across their chest to draw off their pelt. The shape of their bodies altered as they did so, and they withdrew first human arms and then shoulders from within the sealskin. It was a feat he would never be able to imitate; he had been born human, with no pelt to remove.

  As the women waited in the gently rolling water, Duilio’s mother undressed on the shore, pulled her pelt from the boat, and began to wrap it around herself. Then she shrank down next to the water, a seal again. Duilio hadn’t seen her do that for years. He folded his arms across his chest, worried, even though he’d held his tongue in front of her.

  Dark blood seeped from her flippers onto the sand. She shivered, ripples running along her dull pelt, but shuffled out to the water anyway. She barked when the salt water came up over her wounds, then dove farther in, swimming on her own.

  The other females donned their pelts again, all save one. That one boldly walked over to the sands where Duilio waited—Tigana, Erdano’s queen. She had beauty to equal his, her nearly black hair streaming over slender shoulders. Like Duilio’s mother, she had borne a son, which gave her superior standing among the harem. She settled gracefully on the beach with her pelt laid across her lap and patted the damp sand next to her as an indication that she wanted Duilio to join her there.

  Erdano eyed him sharply, but went back to the center of the beach to retrieve his own pelt. Duilio sat on the sand, carefully picking a spot where he wasn’t looking too directly at Tigana’s nude body. Erdano did have limits to his permissiveness.

  Tigana’
s fingers stroked the dark pelt in her lap. “Erdano has not noticed,” she said in her velvety voice, “but one of the girls is missing—Gita. She followed him into the city two nights ago and didn’t return.”

  Duilio didn’t pretend to understand the dynamics of the harem. Why so many females stayed attached to one man—who was not by his nature faithful to any of them—eluded him. Erdano wasn’t even faithful to his harem as a whole, since he had several human lovers as well. Two of the housemaids were in that group, despite the fact that his mother had previously asked Erdano not to seduce their staff. Yet for some reason Tigana and the others didn’t seem to mind his excesses. “Why would she have gone into the city?”

  “She was following him. Gita thought if she could approach him outside the harem, he would lie with her. Foolish.”

  It had never occurred to Duilio that his brother didn’t mate with all the females of his harem. Erdano had never mentioned that curious fact. “Why would he not?”

  Tigana’s eyes flicked up toward his and her hands stilled. Her rigid posture suggested offense, although her expression didn’t show it. It was often the case with the seal folk that they didn’t display their feelings the same way. “She is too young. She is only thirteen.”

  “Ah,” Duilio said quickly. “I didn’t realize there were females that young in his harem.”

  “She became disoriented in the recent storm and washed up here,” Tigana said with a graceful roll of one shoulder. “It was either kill her or take her in.”

  Duilio wondered if his own mother had ever said such a harsh thing when she lived on these sands, when she’d been the queen of Erdano’s father’s harem. “So she’s new here,” he said. “Does she know anything about the city? About the laws there?”

  “She has been warned,” Tigana said, “but I doubt she listened. Too young.”