The Seat of Magic

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  “Iria Serpa,” Silva said.

  Well, they’d known “Maria Melo” was a false identity. “Can you tell us how to find her?” Oriana asked.

  Silva sighed dramatically. “They live somewhere on Almada Street, although he generally remains up at the palace. He’s been given rooms in the new building there, so he can be available for His Highness at all times.”

  “He?” Duilio asked cautiously.

  “Her husband,” Silva said, waving one hand dismissively, “although from what I’ve observed, there’s not much love lost between the two.”

  “Dr. Serpa?” Duilio asked, eyes wide.

  “Of course, him,” Silva said.

  The name meant nothing to Oriana, but she could see it did to Duilio. “Who is he?”

  Duilio turned back to her, mouth pressed in a grim line. “Prince Fabricio’s personal physician.”

  “Always whispering in his ear,” Silva said contemptuously. “Serpa’s a quack. He’s only concerned with making a name for himself, but His Highness wouldn’t listen to me when I said the man was trouble because Maraval vouched for him.”

  Oriana noted that Silva didn’t seem concerned about his former employer’s situation.

  Duilio had closed his eyes, concentrating. What is he asking himself?

  “It’s already too late,” Duilio said. “The prince has already made the wrong decision. He’s going to die.”

  Silva’s face hardened at Duilio’s words. “I warned him. Well, I suppose I shall visit my tailor and order my black armbands.”

  Oriana swallowed. She should feel something, a hint of triumph perhaps. If the prince died, the infante would lift the ban on her people. Her father and her sister would be safe. Then again, if Maria Melo—or Iria Serpa—succeeded, the sereia and the Portuguese might end up at war. She had to stop that. She didn’t have time to mourn Silva’s prince.

  “Damnation!” Duilio pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s it! The chaplain at the palace. The infante said his name was Salazar.”

  Oriana blinked, trying to follow where his mind had gone. Wasn’t Salazar also the name of Miss Carvalho’s true father, the priest?

  “Yes, the new one,” Silva said, dismissing the man’s importance with a sweep of his hand. “Maraval brought him in, which is a mark against him in my reckoning. He creeps about in the shadows. If I’m not mistaken, he knew Serpa back in Spain.”

  “Serpa came from Spain?” Joaquim asked.

  Silva shook his head ruefully. “Aren’t you supposed to be the detective, Inspector? Yes, Serpa might be Portuguese, but he lived in Spain long enough to pick up a lisp.”

  Oriana drew in a startled breath. What if I’ve misunderstood all along. What if Maria Melo isn’t a sereia at all?

  * * *

  The afternoon sunlight as they stepped outside the doors of Silva’s fine house seemed terribly out of place. Traffic moved along the street normally. No one knew that things had already gone terribly wrong. There was an assassin with access to the prince, a doctor who might have strange ideas, and a healer who was killing girls in the city.

  Duilio shook his head, trying to parse out what had to be done first. They needed to get to Anjos and warn him of their new information; it tied together the two cases they’d been working on, and Oriana’s assassin. It still didn’t tell them what the trio was trying to do.

  “Let’s see if we can find Anjos,” Duilio said as they climbed into the carriage again. He closed the carriage door and rapped on the wall to get the driver started.

  The carriage began to roll, and Oriana sat back. “What kind of decision could the prince have made already? Something that will kill him?”

  “I don’t know the right question to ask,” Duilio said. “We would have to think like the prince to understand what he’s decided. I’ve only glimpsed him twice at the palace, but he doesn’t look sane, so there’s no telling.”

  “If we can’t stop it,” Joaquim asked, “what’s the point?”

  Duilio shook his head. “Rafael said we’re needed to stop the . . . chaos that would follow, whatever that is.”

  “War between my people and yours?” Oriana suggested. “Could Spain benefit from that somehow?”

  Duilio felt his brow furrow. “I suppose they could offer to defend your people’s islands, but given their recent losses to the American navy, I doubt they could stretch themselves that far.”

  A few years before, an American ship had blown up in a Cuban harbor. There had been speculation that one of the Canaries serving with the Spanish navy had planted an “infernal device” on the American ship’s hull, although that had never been substantiated. That incident, however, had provoked a backlash by the Americans that the Spanish hadn’t expected, leading to the loss of some of their colonies and much of their navy as well. It had been a terrible blow to the country.

  Oriana touched a finger to her temple, the sign that she needed a moment to think. Then she said, “But this plot is old, Duilio. At least fourteen years old—that’s when my mother was murdered. Was Spain still formidable enough to be a threat fourteen years ago?”

  “Yes,” he guessed. “But what would Spain possibly gain from it? Your father told me they already trade with your people.”

  “I don’t know,” Oriana whispered.

  Duilio closed his eyes, asking his gift whether this was all a plot of the Spanish throne, but it gave him no answer. That must not be the right question.

  The carriage shuddered to a stop unexpectedly, and Duilio leaned forward to look outside. The traffic moved past them unusually quickly, but he couldn’t make out why.

  “What’s going on?” Joaquim asked. “We can’t be there yet.”

  “No idea.” Duilio opened the carriage door and jumped down to talk to the driver. The horses stood unmoving, refusing to take a step farther. They shook in their traces, their heads tossing. The driver had no idea what was wrong either, but several other drivers seemed to share that problem. A mule-drawn wagon had stopped ahead of them. Duilio gazed down the street between the stalled carriages and carts, but couldn’t see any reason for the disruption. When he turned back, Joaquim was helping Oriana down from the carriage.

  “It’s a sereia,” Oriana said quietly. “In pain, or she wouldn’t sound like that.”

  Duilio told the driver to turn the carriage around and go home. “Let’s get out of the road.” He guided Oriana to the edge of the cobbles. “You can hear her?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “My ears are more attuned to it than yours.”

  “Could that be what’s upsetting the horses?”

  “They probably hear better than you.”

  Duilio was willing to accept that explanation. Their driver got the horses to back up and then began a wide turn in the middle of the street. Fortunately he managed to complete it before a tram approached.

  “We’d better find out what that is,” Joaquim said.

  Oriana wrapped her arms about herself and nodded.

  Duilio did a quick search of his pockets, but had nothing to stuff in his ears. “Will I be able to resist her?”

  Oriana shook her head. “She’s not calling you. She’s. . . . screaming, for lack of a better term. She’s inflicting her pain on everyone else. You’ll have trouble getting close, rather than the opposite.”

  And it would probably be worse for Joaquim. He didn’t possess a selkie’s natural resistance to the call. “Well, we have to go anyway. Any advice?”

  “Try not to listen?” she suggested.

  Duilio puffed out his cheeks and started walking. As he neared, he could tell the disturbance was originating on the cross street—Almada Street.

  “Isn’t this the street that the doctor lives on?” Oriana asked, pointing at the street sign on one house’s wall.

  “Yes.” This couldn’t be good. He turn
ed up Almada Street, a street narrow enough that two carriages couldn’t pass easily. He hadn’t gotten far when the edge of the sereia’s sphere of influence became evident. A cluster of pedestrians, some with their hands over their ears, stood gathered in front of a pastry shop. An old woman broke away from the group and came toward them, waving the ends of her shawl to tell them to leave.

  Joaquim intercepted her, saying that he was a police officer, but the woman didn’t stop. She kept going down the street, hands waving in agitation.

  Duilio made his way to where the gaggle of pedestrians stood in front of the shop. Surprisingly, he recognized one of them. Mr. Bastos, whom he’d met on his first visit to the palace, stood in the center of the small crowd. The elderly man’s white hair was disordered and he seemed shaken, clutching at the arm of a young man wearing an apron. Duilio peered at him. “Mr. Bastos, do you remember me?”

  “Mr. Ferreira. Please, I am not a madman. I have been to the police station already today, but they won’t listen to me. I cannot go home.” The old man reached up frail hands and tugged at his white hair. “The screaming is too terrible to bear.”

  Duilio patted his shoulder. “What has happened, sir?”

  The old man gazed up at Duilio with watery eyes. “The flats above mine. I do not know the man who lives there or his wife. They do not talk to me. Last night I thought I heard crying coming from their flat. It crept into my dreams and woke me over and over, calling me to help. This morning it became screaming, pushing at me until I had to leave my own home. I covered my ears but it did no good.”

  No, Duilio didn’t expect it would. “Which house is yours, sir?”

  Bastos pointed down the street. “Number 339.”

  Some ways down, the pedestrians huddled past that house, clinging together on the far side of the street. Duilio wondered if they even realized they were doing it. There was an odd feel in the air, as if fear had taken a tangible form.

  “You work for the police, don’t you, Mr. Ferreira?” Bastos asked, glancing back and forth between him and Oriana. “Can you not find out what is wrong there?”

  Evidently Mr. Bastos read the Gazette, too. Duilio cast an apologetic glance at Joaquim, who merely rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Yes, sir,” Joaquim said. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  Duilio turned to the young man in the apron. “Do you have any cotton? Lint or bandages? I may need it to get closer.”

  The young man dashed into his shop and emerged a moment later with cotton bandages. Duilio thanked him and handed one roll to Joaquim before he pulled out some of the cotton and forced a small wad into each ear. He pocketed the remainder and tossed a couple of milreis to the young man, who tucked them into his apron. Duilio could still hear a bit, but it was as if his head were underwater.

  With one last nod to Mr. Bastos, Duilio pointed toward the opposite sidewalk, and the three of them headed in that direction, Oriana in the lead. She wended her way between a pair of carriages slowed to a standstill. Duilio followed.

  Several houses farther down, number 339 was a building of three stories, very similar to the others that lined the street, built onto each other in one long row, granite or color-washed plaster in white and cream and yellow with red-tiled roofs. Duilio approached the threshold of the building and stopped, almost paralyzed with apprehension.

  He could hear it now, even through the cotton plugs—the screaming.

  Oriana touched his face with her fingers, drawing his attention back. She gestured with her other hand, asking him to look at her. He kept his eyes on her face as she led him into that malaise of fear. Sweat trickled down his spine.

  If his selkie blood lowered his susceptibility to a sereia’s voice, then he could only imagine how difficult this must be for Joaquim, who didn’t have that protection. Beads of sweat shone on Joaquim’s forehead. Duilio gestured for him to stay outside the house.

  He used Bastos’ key to open the front door and it swung open, revealing a hallway with a narrow stairwell that led to the upper floors. On the other side of the hallway was a door to Bastos’ ground-floor apartment. Oriana led Duilio up the stairs, forcing him to climb on while his skin continued to crawl. She paused at the second-floor door but signed for them to go up, so they moved on to the next floor. When they reached the top landing, she tried the door but couldn’t get it to open.

  Duilio gestured for her to move aside and kicked the door in. As the door crashed back, the fear intensified, hitting him like a wave. His stomach turned, and he leaned his head against the wall in the hallway, intent on keeping his latest meal inside, where it belonged. The worst of it passed after a moment. Oriana’s hand touched his face again, her lips moving, and he realized she was singing to him, interference to that other voice. She took his hand and drew him into the apartment, throwing glances behind her every few steps.

  Heavy draperies cut the light to a minimum, but there were no furnishings in the room. The smell reminded Duilio of the morgue, all antiseptics and stale blood and urine.

  Oriana tugged his hand again, her eyes on his, and he forced his feet to follow. They passed through another empty room, and then into a wide room where the wood floors were lit by sunlight flooding down from a large hole cut in the ceiling . . . a makeshift skylight. A bed frame with no bedding or mattress stood on their left, and on the right another bed was set against the wall.

  A girl lay in that bed, her eyes wide with terror.

  Oriana dragged him the last distance to the bed, grabbed his hand and firmly set it over the girl’s open mouth. Her breath almost steamed against his palm. The sound of her screaming continued, muffled, issuing from her vibrating gills. Duilio stared down into the girl’s terrified face, the eyes red-stained but her face dry. Red inflamed lines crossed her skin, like fingers radiating up from her swollen throat.

  Oriana sorted through the contents of a small cart at the foot of the bed. A moment later she returned to his side, a dark bottle in her hand. She picked up the sheet that covered the girl’s body and poured some of the liquid onto the corner of it. Then she jerked his hand away and replaced it with her sheet-covered one.

  And slowly the screaming eased . . . and then ceased altogether.

  Duilio could feel it throughout his body. He hadn’t realized how strong the reaction of fear had been until it was gone. He was chilled, his clothes drenched with sweat.

  Oriana lifted her hand away from the girl’s face, but the girl didn’t move.

  Duilio dared to pull the cotton from his ears. He could hear the distant sounds of the traffic moving again on the street below, but silence reigned in the barren room now. “What did you do?”

  Oriana showed him the dark bottle. “Chloroform. I figured there must be something of the sort on that cart there.”

  His breathing was returning to normal. He smelled again the chemical scent of a hospital ward, with the smell of decay and urine mixed in. His eyes watered.

  The young woman on the bed lay with a sheet covering her body, but she wore nothing more than that. Her dark hair had been cropped short. He could see more clearly now the red lines of infection that caressed her face, rising from a swollen seam that ran underneath her chin, down beneath her gills, and across above her collarbone. A blossom of bluish red under the skin showed on one shoulder. Duilio suspected that if they pulled the sheet back, they would find more of that. He could feel the fever rising from her. That was sepsis spreading throughout her body.

  “Have you got it under control?” Joaquim called from the front room.

  “Yes.”

  Joaquim came closer, peering at the girl’s swollen neck with its inflamed gills. “I don’t understand. I thought your father warned the exiles. . . .”

  “She’s human,” Oriana inserted softly. “Look at her teeth.”

  Duilio leaned over and pulled back the girl’s upper lip, feeling again the heat of her b
reath. The teeth revealed were blunt like his own. He stepped back and surveyed the inflamed rectangular seam in the girl’s throat, his stomach turning. “That’s not possible.”

  Oriana shook her head. Tears glistened in her eyes.

  “Marta Duarte,” Joaquim said abruptly, crossing himself. “Check her right arm. There should be a large birthmark just above her elbow. She disappeared from the same brothel as the otter girl, Erdeg.”

  Duilio tugged the sheet down a few inches to reveal a port-wine stain on the girl’s arm, verifying her identity. He drew the sheet back up. “The gills were spliced in. Grafted in? Felipa Reyna’s throat was removed and put in place of this girl’s.”

  Joaquim turned pale. “Poor girl.”

  “We need to get her to a doctor,” Oriana said.

  “No, let’s bring a doctor here,” Duilio said. “Do you think Dr. Esteves would come?”

  Joaquim nodded grimly.

  “We’ll stay here and keep her drugged,” Duilio said.

  Joaquim was out the door in an instant.

  “What is the point of this?” Oriana asked.

  “I don’t know.” Duilio looked about the room, spotlessly clean, barren save for the two beds and cart, then up at the hole cut in the roof. “This took planning,” he said. “They did all this for some reason. It doesn’t add up.”

  Oriana took a breath and then laid her free hand over her mouth. The smell was stifling. “What can we do for her?”

  “Water?” Duilio went back through the flat and located the washroom. He had nothing to carry water in, though, so he returned to the back room and, after sorting through the bottles on the cart, located one that held gauze. He handed the contents to Oriana and went to fill the bottle. When he returned, Oriana was dampening a section of gauze with chloroform. The girl had started to move, coming back to consciousness. He dribbled some water into the girl’s mouth, and she swallowed reflexively, her spliced-in gills flaring.

  Then Oriana held the gauze over her mouth again. “I don’t know how long chloroform lasts.”

  Unfortunately, he didn’t either. He found some of the remaining gauze, folded it into a pad, and wet it. He laid that on the girl’s burning forehead. Then he tidied the sheet, drawing it up about her arms. She’d soiled the bedding at some point, but surely she wasn’t aware of it. He hoped not. He didn’t think he could bring himself to do anything about it. He met Oriana’s eyes. “I don’t know what else to do.”