The Seat of Magic

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  It was his first real look at her face. Her features startled him; Miss Vladimirova was only a girl, and a frightened one at that.

  She tugged on Anjos’ coat, trying to get him onto his left side. Joaquim leaned past her and dragged Anjos over. Anjos then began coughing in earnest. He didn’t seem to be aware, though, and a second later Joaquim was grateful because the inspector started coughing up hideous phlegm, black and tarry. Joaquim knelt behind the man, supporting his back with his knee. “What is this?” he asked the girl. “Is this normal?”

  “The consumption. It is coming out,” she whispered. “Don’t touch it.”

  Joaquim swallowed, eyeing the pile of sputum next to Anjos. Oh, Lord, no, I am not going to touch that. They’d better take up that whole section of the carpet and bury it at sea, or burn it, or whatever would keep that from passing to a new victim. “Will it hurt him?”

  The young woman—no more than eighteen or nineteen, Joaquim guessed—sat back on her heels. Her forehead glistened with sweat. “No, he’s cured now.”

  She’d cured him? Consumption was one of the illnesses he was sure healers couldn’t handle. This was what she’d intended when she told Joaquim not to “waste” Salazar.

  How many had the priest killed? His accomplice, the first police officer and a second, one of the palace guards, perhaps more. Joaquim shuddered. He’d lost count.

  Miss Vladimirova lay down on her side, heedless of the blood. One of her hands stretched out to catch the tips of Anjos’ fingers. Then she seemed to slip into sleep.

  She’d used the accumulated deaths to save Anjos’ life, the thing she hadn’t been able to do before . . . because she refused to kill. The Church wouldn’t agree with her methods, but she’d worked a miracle.

  CHAPTER 35

  Oriana’s coat sleeve had been hiding the worst of the bleeding. The cut on her arm was shallow and not terribly dangerous, though, so Duilio cleaned and bound the gash himself while she gazed at him sheepishly. He would drag her out to see Mrs. Rodriguez later and see if the old woman could help speed the healing along, but he suspected a few nights of unbroken sleep might be the best remedy. That was regrettable in its own way. He would far rather spend those nights with her.

  Once he’d gotten her back down the ladder and the spiral staircase, a second contingent of guards showed up to help them sort things out. Apparently Maria Melo had seduced them all into the private gymnasium in the basement—and then locked them in. But Bastião had let them out, and they were now getting things under control. Joaquim had been sent with a contingent of guards to retrieve Dr. Esteves from the house on Almada Street, since the doctor was already familiar with what had happened to the prince.

  It was a matter of time, though. That knowledge showed in the demeanor of the guards; they turned to the infante for orders. They knew their prince was as good as dead.

  Since the ballroom was already ruined, the guards used it as their staging area, bringing all the bodies there for accounting. On one side of the room lay the sheet-covered bodies of Dr. Serpa, the driver Heliodoro, and the body of the healer, Salazar, which had been rather gruesomely beheaded. Apparently Gaspar had thought it the best way to be certain the man stayed dead. Duilio didn’t want to think too hard about that logic. In addition there were three officers of the Special Police dead, as well as four guards, the prince’s valet, and Ambassador Alvaro. They had found the ambassador’s remains in the basement, waiting by the furnace. Like Felipa Reyna, his throat had been stolen.

  Duilio accompanied Oriana when she went to cover her uncle’s body. She seemed steady enough on her feet, but he didn’t want her to be alone for this. The guards in charge of the bodies allowed her to touch his face one final time, and promised that his body would be returned to the sereia government with proper ceremony. Duilio then drew her back out of the guards’ way.

  “Poor Uncle Braz,” she whispered as they moved back. “I was never close to him, but he was kind to me.”

  “Perhaps you should try to sleep now,” Duilio suggested.

  “Not until I see her,” Oriana said firmly. “I need to see her.”

  He led her back into the area of the ballroom where the representatives of the Special Police had been sequestered, foreigners inside the walls of the palace. Anjos lay on one side, a sheet folded up for his pillow. Despite not responding to anything around him, he looked . . . healthier to Duilio’s eyes. Laid out next to him was a young woman, not even twenty, he’d guess, a thick golden braid streaming over one shoulder. Blood stained one side of her face and her hair. She had troubled dreams, expressions of fear flitting across her pale features. If she hadn’t been wearing the same heavy black dress he’d seen earlier, Duilio would never have believed that this girl was the terrifying Miss Vladimirova. The sense of dread he’d always felt when she neared was absent. And now he knew why she’d always gone veiled. No one would have been frightened if they’d seen her true face.

  Gaspar sat stiffly in a nearby chair, a torn sheet wrapped tightly as a bandage around his chest. The Lady sat by his side, her worried eyes moving between him, Anjos, and the sleeping girl. She glanced up at Duilio and Oriana as they settled in their chairs.

  “The ambassador?” Gaspar rasped, placing one hand on his ribs.

  “Yes,” Duilio told him.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Paredes,” Gaspar said with a pained grimace.

  “I knew it would be him,” she said softly.

  They all looked up as Joaquim entered, Dr. Esteves with him. The pair crossed immediately to where the Special Police officers waited. The doctor’s eyes were shadowed, as if the night’s work had worn him down. Duilio was impressed by the man’s dedication.

  “The girl didn’t make it more than a few hours,” Esteves said when he reached them. He surveyed the various officers. “Who needs attention most?”

  Gaspar pointed to the officer with the burned throat lying on the floor near Anjos, the one Salazar had left dazed. Esteves knelt at the man’s side and opened out his bag.

  Oriana rose again, and Duilio saw the guards were bringing in another body wrapped in bloodstained sheets. He followed her over to that side of the room. Once the guards laid the sheet on the damaged rug, they opened it at Oriana’s insistence. Inside lay the broken body of Maria Melo.

  * * *

  Oriana gazed down at the body of her nemesis, fists clenched.

  Mrs. Melo had landed on her back, and the guards had lain her out as she’d fallen, so her body didn’t seem overly broken. But the staining of the sheets showed that her back wasn’t intact.

  Anger warmed Oriana, despite her light-headedness. This woman had caused so much harm. Never with her own hands. Instead she’d stayed behind the scenes and manipulated and threatened others into doing evil for her. And she hadn’t seemed to care who stood in her way.

  “I need to see her thighs,” Oriana told the two guards laying out the body.

  They glanced at each other as if trying to decide whether or not to comply with such a shocking request, but one eventually knelt down and began to neatly fold back the woman’s skirt and underskirt, exposing bare skin above her stockings. Striped skin. Three blurred lines of black ran diagonally across each thigh, identifying the woman’s bloodlines without doubt. “She’s a Canary. I was right.”

  Duilio shook his head.

  “A bird?” the guard asked.

  “No, a sereia whose ancestors came from the Canary Islands. Her people serve the Spanish navy. She’s an agent of Spain.”

  “You can tell that from those stripes?” the guard asked.

  “Yes. The Canaries have markings like a skipjack tuna. I’ve never heard of anyone on our islands having those markings.” Oriana knelt down by the body. “They also usually have a dorsal fin that starts between the shoulder blades. I would bet she had it cut away, though, like the webbing between her fingers.”

&n
bsp; The guard nodded and pulled the dead woman’s skirts back down. “When we get a photographer in here,” he said, “we’ll make certain he catches those details, miss.”

  Oriana licked her lips. “I don’t know exactly how the Spanish would benefit from a war between the islands and the Portuguese,” she said, “but I have no doubt someone in Spain is trying to start one.”

  “I agree,” the infante said from behind them, his face grim. “Miss Paredes, I’ll do my best to make sure the information about this woman’s origin is passed on to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

  Oriana noted that he didn’t promise. Either he was hedging his word . . . or he understood politics. “Thank you, sir.”

  He nodded. “I no more want war with your people than you do, I suspect. I’d like to speak with you further on the matter in a couple of days, if you’re willing.”

  With her? “I have no . . . sanction to speak for my people, sir. I am an exile now.”

  “Yes. I’d like to discuss that, too.” The infante inclined his head to her, and Oriana felt the strangest impulse to curtsy to the man. With a nod to Duilio, he left them, gathering more of his guards as he went.

  Duilio’s lips pursed, his eyes caught by movement across the room. The palace guards were preparing to carry Anjos to a carriage drawn up onto the palace’s patio. Apparently they were ready to usher the Special Police out of their territory.

  Oriana took one last look down at the body of Maria Melo. “I wonder what they’ll do with her.”

  “I suspect the Spanish ambassador might be brought in to take a look at her.”

  “He’ll deny everything,” she said.

  “Of course he will,” Duilio said. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  Oriana glanced at the place where her uncle’s wrapped body lay and wished his spirit a speedy return home. Then she set her hand on Duilio’s arm and let him lead her away.

  Joaquim had carried out the sleeping Miss Vladimirova and set her in the carriage next to Anjos. He joined Duilio and Oriana as they stood waiting for the next carriage to take them down into the city. “I’m going to stop back by Almada Street,” he said. “Dr. Serpa intended for a copy of his journals to be sent to the Medical-Surgical School, and the original book was back at his flat. Dr. Esteves and I discussed it during our journey up to the palace.”

  He was talking about The Seat of Magic, the book that had fueled the idea for all this death. “It’s evidence now,” Oriana said. “Isn’t it?”

  Joaquim’s lips pressed in a tight line. “We’ll see.”

  Duilio turned to her. “Given that you’ve lost some blood,” he said, “you need to get some sleep.”

  “I’m fine,” she protested.

  “Humor me,” he said. “I’ll take you back to the house, then go back and join him. We have things to take care of.”

  CHAPTER 36

  THURSDAY, 30 OCTOBER 1902

  Oriana woke in her own bed with midmorning light slanting in from the skylight in the bathroom. Her arm ached and the bandage’s constriction annoyed her, but she’d had worse. For a time she lay there, her mind rambling over the things that she’d seen. She wished the entire previous day and night could be dismissed as a bad dream, but she knew better. She sighed heavily.

  “Are you going to get out of bed?” Duilio asked.

  She lifted her head and spotted him sitting across the room on her leather chaise, a book in his hands. He was neatly dressed in a dark coat and trousers. “What time is it?”

  “Almost ten.” He rose and came to stand by her bed. “See, I’ve left the door open to keep the servants happy.”

  “To keep Felis happy,” Oriana said. “You’re afraid of her.” She sat up in bed, trying to decide whether her appetite or any other urges were particularly pressing. She could wait. “What are you reading?”

  “The French book,” Duilio said. He held Monsieur Matelot’s flawed volume on sereia culture. “Mother’s right. There needs to be a more accurate book on your people’s customs.”

  If they could return to her people’s islands, he could easily write that book. But there was still someone within her people’s government who’d been willing to sacrifice her, someone who’d funded Serpa’s obscene plans and the murders of her uncle and Felipa Reyna. She didn’t know if she would ever feel safe there, but she needed to find out who’d been involved. “Perhaps someday,” she equivocated.

  “We’ve heard from Lady Pereira de Santos, by the way,” he said. “The warrant for your father’s arrest has been canceled, so you can rest easy on his account.”

  She laid her hands over her face. “Thank the gods.” Then she recalled their other unfinished business. “Have we heard from Dr. Esteves?”

  Duilio came and sat down on the edge of the bed facing her. “Yes, he believes he found a copy of Serpa’s journal at the medical school’s offices. He should be over in a couple of hours. Will you want to join us in the library when he arrives?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And what until then?”

  His smile grew. “Did you have anything particular in mind?”

  Oriana cast a glance at the bathroom door where she could see sunshine streaming down through the skylight. “Do you still want to get a look at my dorsal stripe in the daylight?”

  “Is that a possibility?”

  “It is,” she admitted. “Although I suggest locking the bedroom door first, in interest of being discreet.”

  Duilio didn’t waste any time.

  * * *

  A worn-looking Dr. Esteves produced a pair of leather journals bound with black ribbons as soon as he entered the library. One was printed, the title on its spine in Spanish—El sede de la magia—verifying that the book had been translated into a human tongue. The second must be Dr. Serpa’s notes, the handwritten pages filled with a tidy, flowing script.

  “Do you think there were more copies?” Duilio asked, looking at the notes.

  “No way to tell,” Esteves said. “I read some of this. Serpa truly did believe he was creating something fantastic.”

  Standing against the bookshelves with her arms folded, Oriana stared at the books as if they were a nest of snakes.

  Joaquim shook his head. “There’s a limit to how far one should go.”

  “Which is why I’m here, son.” The doctor nodded to the two books resting on the polished library table. “Are those the original?”

  One was the copy his father had brought from the islands; the second one, Joaquim had found at the doctor’s house. “Yes,” Duilio admitted. “One of them has been sitting in this library most of my life, unread.”

  “Serpa left his copy on his desk,” Joaquim added, “in plain sight. Waiting for someone to pick it up and admire his cleverness, no doubt.”

  “So what do you plan to do with these?” Esteves asked.

  Joaquim shot a glance over at the library hearth, which one of the maids had lit that morning to battle the chill. The flames had died down to embers, but he picked up the doctor’s journal, walked over to the hearth, and ripped out a few pages. Then he tossed them on the embers. The paper curled, the ink smoking. The edges caught fire. Esteves picked up one of the journals and went to join Joaquim at the hearth. Soon they were both feeding pages slowly into the flame, the smell of burning paper acrid about the room.

  Duilio ran his hand over the last book, the volume his father had owned. “We’re destroying knowledge. What if there’s something important in here?”

  Oriana set her hand over his. “My uncle died because of this. Those girls did, too. Nothing is worth that.”

  “Some things come at too high a price,” Joaquim said.

  “What they did wasn’t a miracle, Mr. Ferreira,” the doctor said, glancing over his shoulder at Duilio. “It wasn’t even a success. It was butchery, and we know enough ways to butcher each other
already.”

  Serpa had killed at least six people in his quest for infamy—although the sixth, Prince Fabricio, wasn’t dead yet. There was no knowing how many Salazar had killed. And all they had created between them was death.

  Duilio picked up the last volume and carried it over to the hearth. He didn’t know if burning the book was the right decision, but it was what he was going to do.

  EPILOGUE

  SATURDAY, 1 NOVEMBER 1902

  The afternoon air was crisp, probably one of the last fine days of autumn. From the patio overlooking the park behind the palace, Duilio could see the northern side of the city, the Street of Flowers stretching in one silver line down toward the river. Above them, the blue-and-white flag of Northern Portugal snapped in the breeze.

  It was All Saints’ Day, the day for honoring the dead. Not a day of mourning, but a day of processionals and celebration. They had even gone to Mass that morning and lit candles at the cemetery. But the infante had asked them back to the palace, a personal visit rather than a state one. The nobility were actively courting the infante’s favors now that he would soon have power after all. Duilio was aware of the honor he’d bestowed on them, bringing a commoner, a former sereia spy, and a mere gentleman to the palace to take up his very valuable time.

  “I would have preferred that the Special Police not expose that one of the conspirators was a sereia,” the infante told them as he strolled along the patio with Joaquim on one side and Oriana and Duilio on the other, “but tomorrow the newspapers will carry the speculation about her being of Spanish origin instead, and remind readers that the Spanish navy has long used sereia from the Canary Islands to hide their ships on the ocean.”

  “Thank you, Your Highness,” Oriana said. “That will help.”

  The infante wore mourning already, his blue-and-red sash the only indicator of his royalty. “And as for the disappearance of the girl’s body,” he said. “I am naturally appalled that evidence has been removed. But as there isn’t going to be a trial for Serpa or Salazar, I suppose it doesn’t make a material difference.”