The Golden City Read online

  It was a safe guess that the book could be found in most libraries in Northern Portugal, but if Joaquim said there should be one in the Ferreira library, there was. “I don’t have it with me,” Duilio pointed out.

  Joaquim rolled his eyes and rose. “Fine.”

  “So, will you come for dinner tonight, then?” Duilio asked, rising and slipping the book under his arm. He retrieved his newspaper as well. “Mother would like to see you.”

  Suddenly somber, Joaquim rubbed a hand over his face. “How is she?”

  “The same as yesterday.” Duilio pressed his lips together, but then added, “I know how painful this is for you, but for her sake, please. It helps her to see us.”

  “I know.” Joaquim sounded guilty. “I’ll come.”

  That was a relief. “Thank you. Now shall we go?”

  Joaquim collected his hat and paused with one hand on the door latch. “How do you know your Miss Paredes hasn’t fled the city?”

  Another good question. Duilio just couldn’t believe he’d seen the last of her.

  CHAPTER 6

  SUNDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER 1902

  Oriana had spent several hours Saturday in the back rooms of the Porto Gazette, trying to locate every last article they’d printed covering The City Under the Sea. They had stacks of old papers carefully shelved, but no one could tell her in which days’ newspapers to look, so she’d hunted through them issue by issue, taking down every scrap of information she could find on the artwork and its creator. No one seemed to be aware that the water around the artwork tasted of death, that Isabel could not have been the first to die there. Who those other victims might be Oriana didn’t yet know. And the only hint of magic mentioned was the presence of buoyancy charms inscribed atop each house meant to keep them afloat, the sort boatbuilders used. What she needed was an ally who knew far more about human magic than she did. Fortunately, she knew where to find one.

  Nela wasn’t precisely a scholar, but the old woman had studied human lore with Oriana’s grandmother prior to being exiled from the islands for sedition. When Oriana first recognized the old woman walking along the street almost two years before, Nela had nodded at her once. Nothing more passed between them. But that bare instant of recognition had given Oriana the courage to contact the woman, no matter that it was a clear violation of the ministry’s directive not to interact with the exiles. Nela had consented to meet with her, although it hadn’t come for free, and Oriana’s supply of coins was dwindling quickly. Nevertheless, she was relieved she’d found someone willing to aid her, so she’d gladly said she would wait until Sunday afternoon to visit.

  Nela’s druggist’s shop on the first floor was closed that afternoon, but Oriana and its owner were in the tiny apartment above. The woman handed Oriana a cup of tea and settled across from her in a chair upholstered in a faded blue floral. A white cloth with fringe about the edging covered a small square table, and atop that lay the sketch Oriana had drawn that first morning after settling into her rented room.

  Oriana turned it so that Nela could read the letters. “Does this mean anything?”

  Her drawing showed the half circle of the tabletop that had lit following Isabel’s death. Oriana had remembered the four words that circled the perimeter of the table. There had been another ring of figures inside that, but those hadn’t been familiar to her at all and had faded from her memory before she’d had access to paper to record them. The center of the table—the half she had been able to make out—was occupied by a large T with a dash under one arm and a line above it. That meant nothing to her either.

  Nela’s scarred fingers traced the words in the outer ring. Oriana watched the old woman’s hands, wondering who had done the surgery to remove her webbing. It had been poorly done, leaving her with ugly scars on the sides of each finger. Perhaps Nela had done it herself. But she was able to wear gloves, which meant the woman was far safer than Oriana in this city.

  “Ego autem et domus,” Nela read musingly. “That’s Latin, I believe, but I’m not very familiar with the language. I don’t know what it means.”

  Oriana didn’t either. “I see.”

  “Where did this come from?” Nela asked.

  “I don’t think I should say.”

  The old woman regarded her doubtfully. “Child, don’t waste my time.”

  Oriana swallowed. She would have to trust someone if she was going to find out who had created this monstrosity. With her gray-shot hair, this woman reminded Oriana of her own grandmother, her father’s mother back on the island of Amado. Her grandmother had been a woman one could trust. “It’s from The City Under the Sea.”

  Nela sat back, her dark eyes narrowing. “You didn’t go down there, did you, child? The Special Police patrol that part of the river well.”

  “I know,” Oriana said. The newspapers had noted the frequency of police patrols in that area, particularly at night.

  “Someone saw this there and told you about it?” Nela shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Oriana took a deep breath. “It’s not important where it was. Is this a spell? A charm?”

  Nela tapped her nose with one finger. “Spells, I think, since they’re combined. A charm has to be kept simple. We have two languages represented: Latin and whatever the next ring is written in. Choice of language is purely stylistic in human witchcraft, so the two disparate languages imply two different spells. The symbol in the center means nothing to me, especially given that I’m only looking at half of it. Why do you have only half?”

  How could she answer that without telling Nela everything? The addition of the Amaral house to the work of art hadn’t been mentioned in the city’s newspapers until Saturday morning, and Oriana hadn’t seen anything yet about Isabel’s absence. Lady Amaral apparently hadn’t told anyone, which meant the police probably weren’t even looking for Isabel. Nothing had been heard from Mr. Efisio either. Perhaps the man was still waiting in Paris for Isabel’s arrival.

  “It was dark. A girl was seated at the table, with her hands tied to it. She died, and”—Oriana’s stomach twisted, but she forced herself to go on—“and when she did, her half of the table lit. This was inscribed on the surface of the table.”

  Nela picked up her tea and took a slow sip, eyeing Oriana over the rim. After a moment, she set the cup aside. “Lit how?”

  “The symbols themselves glowed. I think they were metal set into the wood.”

  Nela’s dark eyes were wary now. “That sounds like necromancy, needing death to feed it. What have you gotten yourself involved in, child?”

  “It was not by choice,” Oriana said with a quick shake of her head. “I need to find the person who made this spell. I need to stop him before he does it again.”

  Nela gazed at her appraisingly and gave one sharp nod. “You need to talk to the Lady.”

  “Which lady?” Oriana asked, baffled.

  The old woman leaned over and set a hand on Oriana’s arm. “The Lady. She doesn’t have a name. She’s an expert on human magics. She would be able to tell you what this is.”

  That sounded promising. “Where can I find her?”

  “You can’t,” Nela said. “No one finds her.”

  Now it didn’t sound promising. “But . . .”

  “I’ll tell a few well-placed people that you’re looking for the Lady. If she wants to, she’ll find you. Can you give me your direction?”

  Oriana hesitated. She didn’t want to give Nela the address of the boarding house on Escura Street. Not just because she was afraid of being tracked there, but she already knew she would have to find somewhere else to stay. She was running out of funds and had no intention of paying for her room in the fashion Carlos had in mind. “I’m not sure where I’ll be.”

  “Then come by here in a few days, and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.” The old woman rose, rubbing her hands together as if they ached.

  Oriana realized that meant their interview was over. She set down her cup, folded
up the sketch, and tucked it into her notebook as she got up. She opened her handbag to dig out her payment. “We agreed . . .”

  Nela laid a wrinkled hand atop Oriana’s mitt-covered ones. “Don’t bother. Consider it a favor, for your grandmother’s sake. You look like you need it more than I do.”

  “Thank you,” Oriana mumbled. She took in the shabby apartment one more time. “If there’s anything I can do for you . . .”

  The old woman pushed her gently out the door. “Go on, child. If there’s a necromancer out there, he needs finding and killing.”

  Oriana nodded helplessly as she went down the stairs to the building’s front door. She paused at the landing, her stomach churning. Was that what she was doing? Hunting a necromancer?

  If so, she had wandered into a shiver of sharks.

  * * *

  On the southern shore of the Douro River, Duilio waited on a low wall in the shade of an old olive tree next to one of the wineries that crowded Vila Nova de Gaia. The vintner had sold him a case of brandy, giving him ample reason to sit in the shade and sample a leisurely glass. He gazed across the river at the Golden City, tapping one foot against the wall.

  He wished his contact would hurry. If this appointment hadn’t been set the previous week, he would have put it off. He had a woman to find. Despite having a couple of friends in common with Marianus Efisio, it had taken Duilio the better part of the day Friday to find someone who knew what hotel the man was fixed at in Paris. He’d sent a telegram to Mr. Efisio, explaining briefly that Lady Isabel was missing. He hadn’t revealed what he suspected, not wanting to cause the man grief until he had proof. He hoped he would find Mr. Efisio’s response waiting when he got back to the house. He’d spent much of Saturday hunting down every boarding house on Joaquim’s list, scouring the old town for the elusive Miss Paredes, to no avail.

  On the opposite side of the river, the painted walls of the Ribeira rose above the quay, a jumble of reds and yellows, creams and grays in the afternoon sun. Houses had been crammed into every inch of space, sometimes at odd angles, on the ancient riverbank. The red-tiled rooftops rose layer after layer up the hills. From his vantage point, Duilio could see the Clérigos tower crowning one hill and the fanciful palace topping another. The tower had been the higher—as had been the power of the Church—until the current prince’s grandfather, Sebastião II, built the ornate palace. To ensure his structure would be the taller, the second Sebastião had the hillside built up, an effort to put the Church in its place, no doubt.

  Duilio had always loved the city. It had changed since he was a child, but not as much as it should have. Part of that was the stultifying influence of the Absolutists so powerful in the north, but even normal progress had ground to a stop here.

  Prince Fabricio had halted all his father’s and grandfather’s plans for modernization. Many projects started in the 1880s had simply been abandoned or had idled for the two decades since he ascended the throne. The new port north of the city at Leixões was left half-built, accessible to the navy but not practical for shipping. The funicular at the base of the Dom Sebastião III Bridge had never been finished. The trams that climbed the city’s steep streets had been electrified only through private funding.

  Prince Fabricio’s refusal to change had left Northern Portugal and the Golden City behind its contemporaries, with Liberal-led Southern Portugal becoming more powerful every day. The current prince of Southern Portugal—Dinis II—had made many improvements there, and Lisboa had become a destination for vacationers. Just in June, the city had announced that all Lisboa now had electricity. In the north, the Golden City’s infrastructure had begun to fall into disrepair. Duilio had never taken much interest in the politics of the country, but he found he sided more with the Liberals and their desire for progress than he did with the Absolutists, who wanted everything to stay as it was.

  He turned his eyes toward the Dom Sebastião III Bridge, an elegant creation of iron that stretched between the Golden City and Vila Nova de Gaia. Two levels of traffic moved over the river there, one atop the grand iron arch coming from the heights of the city to the mount on the far shore. The other traveled across at the level of the quay. And from that direction, a tall and gangly Englishman approached Duilio’s perch on the low wall, striding up the lane under the shade of the olive trees.

  Duilio held out the bottle when he got closer. “Would you like a taste?”

  The Englishman, one Augustus Smithson, took it and downed a healthy drink before he folded himself onto the wall. “I’ve made inquiries, Mr. Ferreira,” he said in English, “but I can’t find any information on your footman, Martim Romero.”

  Smithson was the fourth investigator Duilio had hired in the past year, hoping an Englishman might be able to bring fresh connections to the search for his mother’s pelt. Duilio answered the man in his own tongue. “Any idea who hired him?”

  “None,” Smithson rumbled, shifting as if the stone wall was digging into his bony backside. “There are people who collect magical artifacts. Most of them are secretive about it. They don’t want the others to know what they have.”

  Duilio didn’t actually believe that his mother’s pelt was in the hands of a collector, but it was a possibility he had to consider. “Do you have any names or not? I’ll pay what you want.”

  Smithson’s shoulders hunched as he leaned closer. “What I have is a neatly worded note, Mr. Ferreira, left on my desk in my own sitting room, informing me I was to drop the matter. Whoever left it easily entered my home without leaving any trace behind.” He glanced about nervously. “A witch. It had to be. That means I might wake up dead one morning.”

  Duilio had never seen evidence that a witch existed who could transport himself into a locked room—it was the stuff of fantasy. However, he’d met plenty of thieves who could get in and out without leaving a sign. Either way, though, Smithson wasn’t going to be any more help to him. Duilio sighed and pushed himself off the wall. “Please send your bill to my man of business, Mr. Smithson.”

  Smithson rose and shook his hand, his expression sheepish, likely embarrassed by having been frightened off. Duilio headed back to where his driver waited with the carriage in the vintner’s front court. He climbed into the carriage and settled back against the leather seat. The ride across the bridge and up the steep streets to his own home gave him time to think.

  It was interesting that the man was so determined to keep the pelt that he chose to interfere with the investigators Duilio hired . . . and to do it in such a dramatic way. He could have bought off the investigators rather than writing cryptic notes. That spoke of an obsession with secrecy . . . or a childish streak of melodrama.

  Duilio hadn’t been able to prove who’d hired Martim Romero, the fake footman, but he had a good idea. There was one man who’d disliked Duilio’s father enough to strike at him by hurting his wife: Paolo Silva. It wasn’t for anything Duilio’s father had done, but because Duilio’s father had been the legitimate son, whereas Paolo Silva was merely his bastard brother, gotten on a housemaid. Silva had spent his first ten years in the house that Duilio now owned, kept out of sight of the Ferreira family. Then his mother had died of a fever and young Paolo had been shunted off to a distant relative out in the countryside. Alexandre Ferreira, only seven at the time, hadn’t even known that the boy who lived in the servants’ areas was his half brother.

  But Silva had never forgotten his expulsion. He had disappeared for years, only to return to the Golden City just as Prince Fabricio ascended the throne. Silva quickly wormed his way into the young prince’s favor. He’d become the prince’s favorite seer, displacing Alexandre Ferreira as an adviser. While always polite in public, Silva had privately told Duilio’s father that it was his intent to ruin the whole Ferreira family for their treatment of him.

  If only his grandfather had been a little kinder—or faithful to his wife—Duilio suspected he wouldn’t be hunting for his mother’s pelt in his spare moments.

  CHAPT
ER 7

  In the slanting light of late afternoon, Oriana walked along Escura Street, clutching her notebook to her chest as she headed back to the boarding house. Her feet ached. Her shoes had been too small before, but the soaking they’d gotten in the river meant they were tighter now.

  She had hoped that the sketch would tell her something definite, but Nela’s words had only left her with more questions. Her time searching the newspapers suggested that the creator of The City Under the Sea had fled the Golden City. How was she supposed to hunt him down if he was miles and miles away?

  None of the newspaper articles had mentioned that Gabriel Espinoza was a necromancer, but that didn’t surprise her. The Portuguese Church forbade this type of magic, so if he studied necromancy he certainly wouldn’t tell anyone. But it was far more likely he wasn’t working alone. There had to be workers to build the houses, others to lower them into the river at night, and someone to dive down to affix the chains to the weights on the river’s floor. Surely she could find one person among those willing to talk. Surely one of them found this monstrous.

  But she was nearing the end of her rope.

  She couldn’t go to the police. She’d considered posting an anonymous letter to them, but no matter how she imagined that playing out, every possibility led back to them asking her why she had lived when Isabel had died. The truth would land her first in the Special Police’s holding cells and then on the gallows.

  There were other possibilities. Her father lived in the Golden City . . . but she wouldn’t go to him. Not unless she became truly desperate. Not having made such a mull of her life. Not after Marina’s death. She didn’t know if she could ever face him, having failed to keep her sister safe. And he had a new life here, a fresh start, where he was allowed to pursue his own goals and dreams without the government’s disapproval of a male getting out of his place. Her father was a businessman now. Oriana was proud of him for his enterprise . . . and was equally furious that he had replaced her dead mother with a human lover, one of his employers, Lady Pereira de Santos. Oriana had heard it whispered in the Amaral house—one over from the home of the lady in question—and it stung.