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  Praise for the Novels of the Golden City

  THE SEAT OF MAGIC

  “[A] killer sequel . . . intriguing and fun, the mystery unfolds like a socially conscious tour through a cabinet of curiosities.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Mesmerizing.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Those who enjoy alternate history—Edwardian- or Victorian-era historical fiction with a touch of magic and mythology—will be delighted with this story.”

  —Booklist

  “This second entry in the Golden City series is even better than its predecessor. Readers will be completely enthralled with the characters and the organic development of their relationship . . . a sheer delight.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  THE GOLDEN CITY

  “Cheney’s alternate Portugal . . . provides a lush backdrop for an intricate mystery of murder, spies, selkies, and very dark magic. A most enjoyable debut.”

  —Carol Berg, author of the Novels of the Collegia Magica

  “[A] masterpiece of historical fantasy. . . . The fascinating mannerisms of the age and the extreme formality of two people growing fonder of each other add a charmingly fresh appeal that will cross over to romance fans as well as to period fantasy readers.”

  —Library Journal

  “Pulls readers in right off the bat. . . . Oriana’s ‘extra’ abilities are thoroughly intriguing and readers will love the crackling banter and working relationship between Oriana and Duilio.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “An ambitious debut from Cheney: part fantasy, part romance, part police procedural, and part love letter to Lisbon in the early 1900s. . . . [The author] does a lovely job connecting magical, historical, and romantic elements.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Books by J. Kathleen Cheney

  THE GOLDEN CITY

  THE SEAT OF MAGIC

  THE SHORES OF SPAIN

  ROC

  Published by New American Library,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of New American Library.

  Copyright © Jeannette Kathleen Cheney, 2016

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Roc and the Roc colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information about Penguin Random House, visit penguin.com.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-69818-310-0

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Names: Cheney, J. Kathleen.

  Title: Dreaming death: a palace of dreams novel / J. Kathleen Cheney.

  Description: New York City: New American Library, 2016. | Series: Palace of dreams; 1

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015036283 | ISBN 9780451472939 (softcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Psychic ability—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy / General. | FICTION / Fantasy / Historical. | FICTION / Romance / Suspense. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3603.H4574 D74 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/EJGvBqc2Ln5aCR

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise for the Novels of the Golden City

  Books by J. Kathleen Cheney

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Excerpt from The Golden City

  About the Author

  For my mom, who likes this book best

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank all the people who’ve read and commented on various versions of this book throughout the years. Thanks especially to the participants and teachers of the Speculative Fiction Writers Workshop at the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, including James Gunn and Kij Johnson, who read the first bits of this. Also the members of Critters, several of whom touched one chapter or another. Thanks to the members of Codex who pored over specific words, especially Melissa Mead, Beth Cato, and Megan E. O’Keefe, along with Laurel Amberdine, who patiently reads everything. And finally, thanks to the editors who’ve touched this book: Jessica Wade, Isabel Farhi, and Danielle Stockley, who made this a much better book. You are all amazing!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Liran Prifata’s dove gray uniform jacket lay to one side, his shirt tangled with it, pale blotches on the bare dirt. The rain pelted down, and the wind in the picked-over field tore at him. He was chilled to the bone, too numb to fight any longer.

  Two of the men grasped his arms, pinning him on his knees like an animal to be slaughtered. The rain softened the ground into a muddy quagmire. Blood mixed with the water dripping from his chest, staining his trousers, all color leached out in the dark. A third man in a dark jacket leaned over him, light glinting off a curved knife as he sliced and cut again. Liran felt no pain, but the numbness scared him more than being captive. He wanted to scream, cry out for help. His throat wouldn’t answer. His lungs could hardly find the air to breathe, much less cry out.

  What are they doing to me?

  The man in the dark jacket spoke as he worked, words that meant nothing in Liran’s ears. He’d heard no names, seen nothing unusual about their clothes, no marks on the coach that would help his fellow police identify
these men. The men didn’t even hide their faces from him, but they had neither marks nor scars to distinguish them in his mind.

  This had to be blood magic. He’d never seen it before, but there was no other name for what they were doing, letting his blood fall onto the earth. The Pedraisi did this in their fields, some ancient fertility rite. It was illegal, and forbidden by the temple. God won’t permit this, he told himself. Not here in Noikinos. He will send someone to save me.

  His tormenter stepped back and held up a lantern to survey his handiwork. Another man, the fourth one Liran had seen in the coach, came closer. Liran tried to focus on that face, to sear it into his memory, but he couldn’t make out the man’s features, hidden beneath the hat the man wore to stave off the cold rain. A fifth man huddled in the distance, face turned away as if he was ashamed.

  Now that he’d bled for them, for their magic, surely they would let him go. They would leave him there, and someone would find him. The farmer would come to find out who had desecrated his wheat field to appease a false god.

  The fourth man gestured sharply, and the man with the knife came close again. He made a single sharp movement, the blade slashing across this time, a flash in the darkness.

  That hurt. Enough to reach through the numbness, enough to tell Liran it was no shallow cut like the others. He gasped feebly, and then he was falling. He landed on his side in the shorn remains of the field’s wheat. Feet squelched away in the muck.

  Darkness gathered at the edges of Liran’s vision. Why me?

  Warmth gathered in his soul, belying the dark and cold. He had the sense of a presence like hands resting on his shoulders. An angel had come to take him to the promised heavens.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Shironne stood on the balcony outside her room, wishing the wind could sweep the night’s tattered images from her mind. The dream haunted her. Down in the city, someone had died.

  She clutched her heavy robe about her, grateful for its warmth. Winter had come early to Noikinos. The chilly wind carried up with it the damp and earthy scent of the mews behind the house, the smells of horse and hay and manure.

  Dry leaves rattled and sighed in the crisp breeze. The trees planted along the side of the house would cling to them until spring, when the softer whisper of new leaves would replace the rusty winter sound. When she’d been able to see, she’d thought the brown leaves unattractive. Now that she was blind, she listened to them instead, their rustle providing a clear demarcation of the edge of her family’s property. Somewhere nearby pennants snapped and chimes tinkled, although she couldn’t tell which neighbor had brought those from the temple to safeguard his home.

  The cook spoke with a tradesman in the back courtyard, the clink of metal and glass underlying their voices and echoing off the yard’s stone walls. Likely the milkman, Shironne decided. The distant noise of carriages and horses spoke of morning traffic—sounds of normalcy.

  No one knows yet—no one but me and him. It had been one of those dreams.

  At first, she hadn’t known they weren’t her own.

  There was a man up at the palace who dreamed of death, deaths that were really happening. He involuntarily spun out those dreams, sharing the victims’ fear and pain with the world. For most who could sense his dreams, that meant little more than a vague sense of fear and an occasional headache.

  As in everything else, I have to be the one who’s different.

  Colonel Cerradine knew who the dreamer was, this man who inflicted his nightmares on her. The colonel had always refused to tell her anything about him, though, not even his name. Lacking any better label for him, Shironne had settled on the Angel of Death, a nickname the colonel’s personnel seemed to find both apt . . . and ridiculous.

  She rubbed one hand with the other, her left thumb smoothing along the scar that ran across her right palm. The souvenir of a foolish childhood accident, it served as a constant reminder that she too often let curiosity get the better of her.

  But every time she woke from one of these dreams, she wondered about him. Who is he? Why does he do this?

  The colonel had warned her that pushing to find that answer too soon could be dangerous for her. What he hadn’t told her was why. What harm could there be in meeting someone whose dreams she already shared? After all, those shared dreams, however unpleasant, had given rise to her unusual vocation.

  The angel’s dreams gave her a purpose beyond simply finding a husband . . . or joining the priesthood, as was expected of Larossans who developed powers. When her powers had abruptly manifested when she was twelve, the chance of finding a husband had disappeared. Shironne had to consider other paths, but the priesthood didn’t seem appealing either; selling charms and prayers in the temple wouldn’t suit her temperament at all, she’d insisted. That infuriated her father and shocked the priests who more than once had come to talk to her mother about it. After all, they asked, what else is a girl child to do with her life?

  Shironne was terribly grateful that her mother supported her decision to find another path, and that those dreams had shown her one. Those dreams always meant there was death, and she could do something about that. She could help find murderers.

  Thus had begun her strange career with the army.

  The man who had the dreams often couldn’t remember much about them. She could. That had seemed odd at first. Then she’d grasped that his dreams were like paintings laid before her in her sleep, but the Angel of Death didn’t see them that way. Instead, his mind was the canvas on which they were painted.

  She stepped back inside her bedroom, closed the door after her, and drew the curtain shut. Not certain how long she’d stood on the balcony savoring the breeze, she crossed to the mantel and carefully felt the delicate hands of the clock. Her mother had removed the glass, making it possible for Shironne to read the time with her fingers. It was almost eight.

  Her bedroom door opened, and Melanna pelted into the room, bare feet slapping against the wooden floor. Melanna’s steps came toward her, her bracelet tinkling, and then her arms clasped about Shironne’s waist in a fierce hug. The top of Melanna’s head almost reached Shironne’s shoulder. Her youngest sister was on her way to being as tall as their mother one day, if not taller.

  “I had bad dreams,” Melanna complained, quickly turning her loose.

  Shironne set a bare hand atop her sister’s coarse hair—a trait certainly not inherited from their mother. Whenever she touched another person, she could feel more than their emotions. She could actually feel the thoughts buzzing around in their heads like swarms of bees, sometimes formed into words she could catch, other times not. She found only a vague sense of Melanna’s nightmare, but the girl rarely remembered anything specific from the angel’s dreams. Their mother didn’t either.

  Even Shironne’s memories of the dreams were unclear, as if she’d seen everything through a heavy veil. She knew she’d witnessed a murder. It was always murder, even if it didn’t seem that way at first. The faceless victim hadn’t been able to fight back, and his captors—there had been more than one; of that Shironne was sure—had cut his skin. Then they’d let him die. It had been cold and raining, somewhere near the river. A field, perhaps, although she wasn’t sure why she’d drawn that conclusion. But each detail might help the army find a murderer, or murderers in this case, so she needed to report them.

  “I have to find my gloves,” she told her sister. “Then we can go down for breakfast.”

  “Can we read first?” Melanna asked.

  Her youngest sister had acquired a lurid novel from a lending library that was their secret. It wasn’t one her governess, Verinne, would find acceptable. The book was full of Pedraisi witchcraft. It had witches who made stables go up in flames and others who could call birds from the air. Larossans possessed a variety of powers, but those were pure nonsense. Even so, they made for an entertaining tale. The story also had an unlikel
y romance between the heroine and a handsome young Larossan man who worked in her father’s stables, whom Shironne strongly suspected would turn out to be the missing son of a lord or wealthy landowner.

  Melanna did most of the reading but would spell out the longer words so that Shironne could tell her how to pronounce them. “Not now,” Shironne said. “When Verinne takes her nap you can come to my room.”

  Melanna huffed out a dramatic sigh and slipped away from Shironne’s grasp. A second later, Shironne heard her sister bound onto her mattress. Shironne returned to her bed and sat, locating her gloves on the table next to her bed, just where she’d left them. While Shironne tugged on the gloves, Melanna continued to jump on the bed, one particularly large bounce telling Shironne her sister had flopped onto her back.

  Shironne reached out to the table again and found her focus. Pure quartz: she could trace along the perfect lines within the stone, even through her gloves. She’d used this stone as a focus for some time now and was as familiar with it as she was with her worn clothes. It was still endlessly fascinating. When she concentrated on it, all the other sensations that assailed her faded away: the feel of fabric against her skin, the hints of smoke on the air that brushed her face, the lingering traces of the last item she’d touched. She could shut out the constant barrage of others’ emotions and simply follow the emotionless lines of the stone, clearing the clutter from her mind.

  She concentrated on it a moment longer, chasing away the dragging grip of last night’s dream. Then she pulled her attention back. “Are you ready to go down?” she asked her sister.

  Melanna promptly clambered off the bed, and together they headed downstairs to the kitchen. It wasn’t proper for them to eat in the kitchen, but they did so anyway, since Cook was nearly a part of the family, having come from their mother’s childhood home with her.

  Pausing at the base of the kitchen stairs, Shironne heard the customary oofing sound Cook made when Melanna ran to hug her. Then came the scrape of the bench when Melanna sat down at the table. The room smelled of baking flatbread and spices. Shironne went to join her sister pulled out the chair at the head of the table, and settled there.