The Seat of Magic

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  Duilio woke to a painful stab of light from the curtains in his bedroom being thrown open. For a second he rubbed his temples, and then rolled off the bed and got to his feet. His mother stood at the window, wearing the same dress she’d worn the night before. “I told you to bathe, Duilinho.”

  He sniffed and caught a whiff of his stale clothes and self. Then he shook his head to clear it. “Is she . . .”

  “She’s asleep,” his mother said.

  Feeling a wave of relief, Duilio sat down again. Joaquim must have dumped him on his bed, and he hadn’t managed to get under the coverlet. Salt and sand sprinkled the brown silk. “Thank God,” he finally managed, crossing himself. “Do you think she’ll be all right?”

  The window’s light cast his mother into silhouette, so her expression was hidden from him. “She woke for a moment, but fell asleep again. I can’t be certain she’s seeing normally. I’ve made her as comfortable as I can. For now she needs sleep, water, and time.”

  “I’ll go watch her for a while, Mother.”

  She laid one hand on his shoulder. “I left Felis sitting with her. Get cleaned up, and get something to eat. Miss Paredes isn’t going anywhere for now.”

  Duilio gazed down at his bare feet—he had no idea where his shoes were—and nodded. He needed to send a message to Lady Pereira de Santos, so he pushed himself up from the bed.

  Once bathed, he had to admit he felt better. It was nearly eleven by then, so he dressed casually in trousers and an open-necked shirt and made his way to the dining room. His mother wasn’t there. Given the time, that made sense, although he’d hoped to question her further. But he could smell food in the warming trays, the staff working hard to accommodate the unraveling of his normal schedule. Duilio spotted Cardenas in the hallway and, when asked, the butler confirmed that Lady Ferreira had retired to her own bed.

  Duilio rubbed his temples. “Is Joaquim still here?”

  Joaquim had tried to discuss last night’s events with him, but Duilio had been so worried over Oriana that he hadn’t paid much attention. The brandy hadn’t helped. While stowing the sails Joaquim had found a bullet hole in the mainsail; the crew of the mysterious ship had been sincere in their threats. That raised questions to which neither of them had answers.

  “Mr. Joaquim has left, sir,” Cardenas said.

  “Thank you, Cardenas.” The butler bowed and went on his way. Duilio sighed, resigned to eating alone, and went to select his breakfast.

  Once he’d written and dispatched his note to the Pereira de Santos home, Duilio headed back to Alessio’s old bedroom. He found Felis sitting primly in a straight-backed chair, half in and half out of the bathroom. She effectively blocked his entry, so he couldn’t even see the tub, much less whether Oriana was still in it. The elderly maid busied herself plying a needle through a hooped section of linen, embroidering a subtle pattern of flowers around the neckline of a garment. She believed the devil had use for idle hands.

  Duilio tried to look past her. “Felis, do you need better light for that?”

  “I am not an old woman yet, Duilinho,” she lied tartly. She had been his mother’s maid his entire life, so the familiarity was expected. She pointed her needle at him. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  He felt his brows draw together. Ah, because Oriana isn’t clothed. “I brought her back here, Felis,” he said, vexation creeping into his voice. “I only want to see her.”

  “It isn’t proper,” the woman groused.

  This from the same woman who’d read the cards dozens of times for him. She’d predicted his attachment to Oriana that way. Duilio pressed his hands together. “Please, Felis. You know how important she is to me.”

  And since she’d chided him about letting Oriana leave, she gave in . . . partially. She moved the wooden chair out of the doorway and then surprised Duilio by going back into the bathroom and shutting the door on him. He was about to knock when the door opened again, and she emerged, thin nose held in the air. “You can go in now.”

  Duilio stepped into the bathroom and almost laughed out loud. Felis had taken several of the towels from the shelves on the other side of the room and draped them across the tub, allowing him only a view of Oriana’s head and neck.

  Oriana still lay on her side, facing away from where he stood. Water dribbled into the tub, the spigot left running slightly so she wouldn’t suffocate in still water. Under the illumination of the skylight, he saw that her hair had been cleaned, the water bringing out the burgundy highlights among the brown strands. Her eyes were closed, but the faint motion of the gill slits on the side of her neck told him she was breathing. The sunburned side of her face seemed less red now, and Duilio let loose a sigh of relief. He sat down on the rug, close enough to gaze over the lip of the tub. He reached into the water and gently stroked her cheek, but she didn’t respond. “Has she roused at all?”

  “No, Duilinho.” The maid set a gnarled hand on his shoulder. “Your mother says to let the girl sleep.”

  “I’ll stay here,” he said. “In case she does wake.”

  He felt her hand slip from his shoulder, and then he was alone. For a time he simply gazed down at Oriana’s face. He saw that the back of her neck was bruised, as if someone had grabbed her that way. He had to wonder if there were other marks, if she had been tortured before being left to die. The light had been poor when he’d carried her to this room, and his mother had sent him away before he’d had the chance to see the answer to that himself.

  Oriana hadn’t committed any crime, had she? She didn’t deserve treatment like this.

  The ambassador had said this was done as a warning not to talk. Duilio hadn’t asked about what; he’d been too agitated at the time to think it through. Alvaro claimed he’d been notified too late, an intentional oversight. Yet it had been clear that the ambassador had someone specific in mind when he asked Duilio to carry a message out of the palace. That meant someone in the city might have gone to Oriana’s aid. Unfortunately, Duilio had no way of knowing who that was. He didn’t know whom he could trust on her behalf.

  He set his shoulder against the side of the tub and stretched out his legs, preparing to wait until Oriana woke. He had no commitment pressing enough to make him leave, so he let his thoughts chase the problem around in his mind, a futile exercise. The sound of falling water and the smell of sea salt comforted him, wrapping him in familiarity.

  It was only when Felis shook his shoulder that he realized he must have dozed off, leaning there against the tub.

  The maid stood over him, a stern figure in her black dress. She shook him again. “Wake up, Duilinho.”

  “I’m awake.” He pushed himself up off the rug and cast a glance back to see if Oriana still breathed. Once reassured, he turned to his mother’s maid. “What did you need, Felis?”

  “There’s a gentleman asking to see you,” she said, casting a disapproving eye over his casual garb. “He’s in the front sitting room.”

  Three visitors in four days—a crowd by their standards. He was going to have to start having Cardenas turn away callers. “Will you stay here until I can come back?”

  “Yes.” She pushed at him with one hand. “Go on, boy.”

  After one last glance at the towel-shrouded tub, Duilio walked out into the hallway and down the stairs toward the front of the house. He wasn’t dressed properly to receive visitors, but he didn’t care. He would just get rid of this guest as quickly as possible and head back upstairs.

  Instead of Lady Pereira de Santos, her paramour—or husband, according to her own confession—waited for him. Adriano Monteiro paced behind the couch, rubbing one gloved hand with the other as if he’d been writing too much. A handsome man with dark hair and a lean build, he was elegantly dressed in a black frock coat and striped trousers, gray waistcoat, and black tie. A touch of silver at each temple lent him an air of distinction. Although he wasn’
t a gentleman, he certainly had the demeanor of one. He and Lady Pereira de Santos would make an attractive couple if ever they were seen in public together.

  This man had to be the “friend” who begged Lady Pereira de Santos to seek him out in the first place. Duilio wanted to know why. “Mr. Monteiro, what has brought you to our door?”

  The man inclined his head, his expression grim. “I came to speak to you.”

  “That’s obvious. What did you want?” Duilio asked, irritation making him snap.

  The man’s nostrils flared, betraying a hot temper, but he said nothing.

  Duilio sighed and, in a more civil tone, tried again. “I apologize for not being more formally dressed, but I hadn’t planned on entertaining today. How can I help you?”

  Monteiro didn’t seem interested in his cordiality either. “I want to know how she’s faring.”

  Duilio leaned against the mantelpiece. He wasn’t going to quibble with the man over whom he meant by she. “Who put her there?”

  “I don’t know,” Monteiro said with a quick shake of his head. “The rumor is going about that it was a warning not to talk, but I don’t know what we’re not to talk about.”

  Duilio looked back at the man. Was he a sereia spy? Monteiro wore gloves, but Oriana had said most spies had their webbing cut away to allow them to pass more easily as human. “They knew she would die there.”

  “Of course they did,” Monteiro snapped. “Is she still alive?”

  Duilio doubted he could keep it secret long; the staff knew she was here . . . and he hadn’t asked them not to talk. “Yes.”

  Monteiro’s dark eyes flicked up to the ceiling, and he made the sign of the cross. “Is she blinded?”

  Who exactly is this man? “We don’t know yet. What concern is she of yours?”

  Monteiro gave Duilio a hard look. He tugged off one of his gloves and held up his bared hand for Duilio to see. Scar tissue ran along both sides of his fingers where the webbing between them had been cut away and the edges cauterized. “I’m her father.”

  Duilio gazed at Monteiro’s handsome face. The scars indicated only that he was a sereia, not that he was Oriana’s father. The man didn’t look much like her. Then again, Alessio hadn’t resembled their father either. “Then why weren’t you the one to go get her?”

  Monteiro replaced his glove. “Do you think I wouldn’t have if I’d known where she was? I heard nothing of this until your message reached the Pereira de Santos household this morning. I never thought they would go to that extreme. There’s no reason to hurt Oriana—not in order to intimidate me. I know nothing worth threatening over.”

  It was convoluted logic, but Duilio understood blackmail well enough. “Why didn’t you come to me yourself? Why send Lady Pereira de Santos?”

  “She wished to protect me,” Monteiro said. “We had no way of knowing how you might react to such a request, and you had no reason to see me. I’m not your man of business, after all.”

  Lady Pereira de Santos had refused to name Monteiro, even after Duilio indicated he knew of their relationship. He certainly wouldn’t have turned Monteiro away unheard, but the man had no way to know that. If Monteiro judged gentlemen by the actions of the lady’s aristocratic stepson, he wouldn’t have expected a hearing. “I understand,” Duilio finally said.

  “Can I see her?” Monteiro asked.

  “No,” Duilio answered without hesitation. He folded his arms over his chest. “I only have your word that you’re related. Until she can confirm it, I will not let anyone see her.”

  Monteiro’s nostrils flared again, but he reined in whatever outburst he was considering. “Understandable. I know of a doctor. One who’s willing to see one of our people.”

  Duilio tamped down his pride. “If you’ll give me his name and direction, I’ll send for him if he’s needed.”

  Monteiro drew a slim notebook out of a coat pocket and jotted something down with a pencil. He tore out the page and handed it over. “He’s a good man, discreet.”

  Duilio glanced down at Monteiro’s gloved hand, thinking that the name on the page likely belonged to the man who’d cut those fingers apart. Dr. Esteves. “I pray that he’s not needed.”

  Monteiro crossed himself again, and Duilio copied the motion reflexively. Oriana had told him a small percentage of her people were Christian due to the Church’s persistence in sending them missionaries over the centuries. Had she said that about her father, though?

  “Please send word to Lady Pereira de Santos when Oriana regains consciousness,” Monteiro said. “I do want to see her . . . even if she’s not eager to see me.”

  “I will do nothing against her wishes,” Duilio warned. “I’ll talk to her first, then decide.”

  Monteiro inclined his head. “Fair enough. I’ll be on my way, then.”

  Duilio showed him the door and tried hard not to slam it behind the man. He leaned against it and rubbed a hand over his face, teasing out the ramifications of what he’d just learned . . . if it was true.

  Oriana’s attempted execution had been a warning aimed at her father and the ambassador both, and in which her life was considered insignificant. That indicated a great deal was at stake, made all the more apparent by the fact that someone had attempted to prevent her rescue. Yet neither of them seemed to know what that warning concerned.

  And it was curious to Duilio that Oriana had never mentioned that her father lived in the Golden City. She’d said he lived in Portugal, but not that he was a businessman secretly married to Lady Pereira de Santos. The Amaral household, in which Oriana had been employed for a year, stood next to the home of Lady Pereira de Santos, where Monteiro would have come and gone on a regular basis. Yet when Isabel Amaral was murdered, Oriana hadn’t gone to him for help. Surely they were estranged—but not enough that the man didn’t care what happened to her. There was, without doubt, a great deal Duilio didn’t understand about her family.

  He hadn’t been there for the last few years of Alessio’s life, but Duilio had known of the increasing rift between his father and brother, both from his mother’s letters and Joaquim’s. He hated to think of any family fractured like that. Sighing, he started back toward the stairs, but hadn’t quite reached them when he spotted Joaquim striding up from the kitchens in his direction.

  Joaquim paused when he saw Duilio, and then headed toward him with a resolute step. “I’ve got something I need you to come see. We think we might have found her, Duilio. Your missing girl.”

  Gita? He hated to ask, but did anyway. “Is she alive?”

  Joaquim’s jaw clenched. “A girl’s body was dumped last night in an alleyway behind the Dried Cod,” he said, naming a brothel in the northern part of the city. “We think her foot had been previously injured, which is what made me believe it might be your girl.”

  “You think her foot had been injured?” Duilio repeated. How could they not know?

  “It’s complicated.” Joaquim took a breath and said, “She was skinned.”

  * * *

  The police headquarters sat beyond the cathedral, to the north of the two-level iron bridge that crossed the Douro River. Although Joaquim usually operated out of the station that sat between Massarelos and the half-completed hospital, he often visited the headquarters. There the police kept their own morgue, a small detached building with whitewashed walls and a red-tiled roof, whose windows remained shuttered even on the sunniest of days.

  The only body the police currently found curious enough to hold was that of a girl, but they knew little more. What remained of her didn’t tell them hair color or skin tone, and although she’d once had warm brown eyes, they were clouded over in death.

  “They found her early in the morning,” Joaquim said, covering a yawn. “The police chief has ordered us not to discuss it, in the hope that it won’t get into the newspapers.”

  Duilio felt a
flare of worry—not his gift, but his native cynicism. There would be no stilling the talk once it did get out; the newspapers loved anything sensational. “How do they think she died?”

  “By losing her skin,” Joaquim said.

  Which meant she was alive when that happened. Duilio stifled a shudder. “When?”

  “Likely Monday, midday.”

  On Monday morning, Tigana had been asking him to find the girl. Gita had come into the city on Saturday night, meaning that an entire day had passed between her arrival in the city and her death. “Will they turn the body over to the Church?”

  “Clearly not a suicide,” Joaquim said as he pushed open the door to the back room, “so it’s likely.”

  Erdano wouldn’t like that. His people had their own ways of dealing with their dead. Duilio couldn’t think of any way he could interfere, and Erdano could hardly come into the city and claim the girl as one of his own.

  “I’ll talk to Brother Manoel,” Joaquim volunteered, “but I can’t promise anything.”

  Brother Manoel received all the bodies at the monastery, but might help, given the girl’s identity. There was little chance she was a Christian. “Thank you.”

  They opened the door and stepped into the anteroom where visitors to the morgue were greeted, a deceptively cheerful room with blue-and-white-painted tiles ringing the lower half of the walls. A young police officer sat at a desk with a pair of chairs in front of it, his curling hair tumbled and his lean face set in an expression of concentration as he sketched on a pad of paper. He glanced up when they entered. “Back to look at her again, Inspector Tavares?”

  Joaquim nodded. “Just the feet, Gonzalo.”

  “It might help if I see her eyes,” Duilio offered. Selkies generally had the same color eyes, much like his own.

  Joaquim set a hand on Duilio’s sleeve. “You don’t want to.”

  Duilio didn’t argue. “Very well. Just the feet.”

  The young officer rose and led them back toward an inner room where bodies were held prior to turning them over to family or the Church. As soon as he opened the door, Duilio pressed a finger under his nose, his stomach turned by a smell terribly similar to rotting meat. Only one of the tables set around the perimeter of the square room held a body.