The Golden City (38 page)

O
riana in
st
in
ct
ively dove for the floor. She’d been far enough from the door that she wasn’t thrown by the bla
st
itself. The window neare
st
her was unbroken but shattered a moment later with the building heat in that office, raining glass onto the floor. With a yelp, she scrambled away backward on her bare hands and feet like a crab.

She managed to get off the floor then, and scanned the room wildly. The office was completely afire, but the re
st
of the workshop was
st
ill inta
ct
.
Where is he?
“Duilio?”

A groan reached her ears, and she ran that way. He was alive, at lea
st
. She dropped to her knees next to him. The explosion had knocked him backward over one of the houses, sending him sprawling onto the far side, a drop of several feet. His white shirt was darkened with soot. He seemed dazed, but his wide eyes focused on her when she yanked on his good arm. “We have to go,” she yelled at him, her pulse racing. “Now!”

He blinked up at her, dazed. “What happened?”

Oriana grabbed his braces and hauled him to a sitting position. “Come on!”

He got to his feet,
st
umbling again
st
her. She set one arm about his wai
st
and
st
eered him toward that di
st
ant open door, wishing he would go fa
st
er. They had to get out.

“The fuses,” Duilio mumbled.

And then his urgency matched hers. He grabbed her wri
st
and bolted along the center aisle of the workshop in the dire
ct
ion of the water. Fleeter of foot, he dragged her along then. They had almo
st
reached the end of the rows of houses when the fir
st
incendiary pile went with a boom louder than the fir
st
.

Letting him guide her, Oriana looked over her shoulder. The beam neare
st
the office fell, dragging the ceiling of the workshop with it. It crashed down right where Duilio had lain dazed after the initial explosion.

“Come on!” He pulled her toward the open door, drawing her out into the night air ju
st
as another explosion sounded.

They ran down a rutted pathway that led all the way to the pier. When they
st
opped, Oriana leaned again
st
one of the po
st
s, her breath embarrassingly ragged. They were alive. She closed her burning eyes for a moment. Now that they’d escaped, she was shaking all over. She clung to the po
st
.

Another explosion shook the air, less terrifying now that they were some di
st
ance from the building. They could see another portion of the roof cave in. The contents of the building were
st
arting to burn now, a roar building.

Duilio came to her side and laid one hand on her back. “Are you hurt?”

Oriana turned to face him, shaking her head. Her lungs felt ready to bur
st
and her gills had begun to
st
ing from the smoke drifting their way. “No. I’m fine. You?”

He was breathing hard. The scab on his cheek had begun to bleed again, and his clothes were ruined. She suspe
ct
ed he would be horribly bruised by morning. “I’m well enough,” he said, though, wrapping his hand about her own. “Thanks to you.”

His eyes on hers, he opened his mouth to say something else, but the words seemed to be caught in his throat. Oriana waited, desperate to know what he meant to say. It was as if they were alone in that darkness. The roar of the fire retreated, all sounds fading as if the world waited for those
st
alled words.

Then a voice fore
st
alled whatever he meant to say. “Well, Ferreira, a thorn in my side until the la
st
. I had hoped that you would be caught in the explosion, but alas it seems the fuses were too long.”

Duilio turned back toward the flames. Maraval
st
rode down the rutted pathway toward them, a gun in one hand and a portmanteau dangling from the other. Oriana’s hands clenched into fi
st
s. Maria Melo might have chosen Isabel to die in
The City Under the Sea
, but he was the one whose mania had
st
arted this nightmare in the fir
st
place.

Four Special Police officers flanked him, cutting off any chance of retreat into the vineyard. Duilio gave her a gentle push toward the water. She didn’t know if Maraval had seen her
st
anding behind him. Was there enough light coming from the fire? The man mu
st
see her skirts, if nothing else.

Maraval came closer, apparently undaunted by the revolver in Duilio’s hand. When he
st
ood a few feet away, he said, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Ferreira? If you’d let the case alone, as ordered, Portugal would once again be the empire it was meant to be. Now I’ll have to
st
art over. Brazil awaits, with as many loyal servants of the empire as this tired old city, perhaps more.”

Start over?
Oriana shuddered. Did the man think he was simply going to walk away?

“There’s no point, Maraval. You can’t turn back the clock,” Duilio said.

“Are you going to say next that it’s God’s will?” Maraval asked with a snort. “We have grown beyond letting God decide hi
st
ory for us.”

“And so you decide who lives and who dies?”

“Sacrifices have to be made,” Maraval said with a blasé shrug.

Oriana swallowed, fury rising in her gut. It was
exa
ct
ly
what Maria Melo had said about choosing Isabel. Was a spy no different from this man, playing at being one of the gods? Perhaps Maria Melo was different in her espoused cause, but both valued their goals above innocent lives.

She laid one hand on Duilio’s back so he would know she was behind him. Keeping her eyes on the four police officers, she backed away. She was in the water then, up to her knees. She turned and dove into the shallows, pushing away toward the edge of the cove.

•   •   •

D
uilio heard a splash behind him; Oriana had fled to the safety of the ocean.

Good.
She would be safe, and he could count on her and Erdano to get the pelt back to his mother. He wasn’t going to get out of this alive, not facing five armed men. He could take two, possibly three. He took a deep breath, feeling remarkably calm. “I’m not a religious man, Maraval,” he said, “but don’t you worry you’re inviting divine retribution?”

“God doesn’t concern me,” Maraval said blithely. “Now out of my way, Ferreira. We have a tide to catch. Rios, you lo
st
control of him. You finish him off.”

Duilio tore his eyes away from Maraval long enough to see that one of the four officers was indeed Captain Rios. The captain ge
st
ured with his pi
st
ol for Duilio to clear the way to the pier for his ma
st
er. Duilio gazed at the muzzle of the gun, knowing Rios wasn’t going to hesitate. Rios had never liked him.

He was going to die now.

And then a sound made him spin about, eyes drawn toward the sea.

Duilio felt his heart slow as an ethereal song tore his attention away from the fire, from Rios, from Maraval. He tried to quiet his own breathing so he could hear it better. He needed to find the source.

He scanned the dark water with desperate eyes. At the edge of the cove he could see a swimmer, only a dark silhouette of a head above the water. He had to find her. . . .

Then he realized what he was hearing. Wordless, keening, it wasn’t a song after all. Duilio ground his teeth together and jammed fingers into his ears, trying to block it out, trying to concentrate.

His pulse pounded in his shut-off ears and his head buzzed as if a fly were trapped inside. He wanted nothing more than to remove the fingers from his ears and let it out, but if he did he would surely find himself swimming toward that open ocean, unable to help answering Oriana’s
call
.

I
t was
her only weapon again
st
the man who held a gun on Duilio.

Oriana wove the
call
from memories of childhood longing, from every bit of homesickness she’d felt in the la
st
two years, of the yearning to have her family whole again. She didn’t weave a spell of sexual desire, but of comfort and home and love. It was her only magic, her only way to prote
ct
him—to
call
them to her.

He
st
ayed on the shore, hands on either side of his head. He recognized what she was doing and didn’t come to her.
Thank the gods!

But the others did—all of them, the four police officers and Maraval. The marquis resi
st
ed her only for a second before his desire for the comfort of fond memories led him to the edge of the pier. He dropped his bag and leapt into the water. He swam toward her, drawn as
st
raight as an arrow.

Two of the police officers didn’t swim. They were going to drown.

Oriana didn’t let that
st
op her. She couldn’t let them go and
st
ill
call
Maraval. So she sang on, kicking farther away from the beach as she did so. She swam out to sea, the three of them—no, only two now—following her
call
. How far out did she need to draw them?

She submerged, skirts buoying about her, and dropped her
call
to a hum. She spread her hands wide so that her webbing could sense the movement of the two remaining pursuers. There was a di
st
urbance in the water behind her, but with a flash of dismay, she realized one of her pursuers was almo
st
on her. She kicked desperately backward, only to collide with Erdano. Suddenly her arms were full of pelt and he was gone in a flurry of bubbles, the policeman in his grasp. He might not be all that clever on land, but Erdano
was
fa
st
in the water.

Oriana turned her attention back to her lone pursuer: a slower swimmer moving doggedly in pursuit. Clutching the pelt to her che
st
with one arm, she sank lower. Then she
st
arted back to the beach, cutting around her adversary with a dozen feet to spare. It was Maraval.

Was this her chance? She could use her
call
to draw him down in the water, to cause him to follow her deeper to his own death. It would be a proper repayment for what he’d done to Isabel, a death by drowning. She could pull him down and then release her control of him when it was too late for him to make it to the surface but not too late to under
st
and that he was drowning. It would be
ju
st
ice
.

She could almo
st
feel the pleasure that watching the terror on his face would hold. Her free hand curled into a fi
st
, nails digging into her palm.

They needed him. If they were going to find everyone involved in this plot, they needed the head of the serpent. So Oriana swam back toward the beach, coming out of the water at the side of the pier.

But Duilio was no longer alone. A petite woman dressed and veiled in black
st
ood near the water’s edge, easily visible on the pale sands.

Duilio grabbed Oriana’s arm and drew her back away from that dark form. “What happened?” he asked, pointing with his chin toward the sodden pelt clutched under her arm.

Oriana could sense the tension in him. “Erdano gave me this. Maraval’s
st
ill out there.”

The woman turned her black-veiled head in Oriana’s dire
ct
ion and in accented Portuguese said, “Bring him back.”

Her voice was flat, without emotion. Oriana felt a chill not due to the cold air, until Duilio set a hand on her shoulder to
st
eady her. “She’s on our side. She’s with Gaspar.”

Had Gaspar managed to find them with his compass? She spotted him then, walking along the path toward the beach.

Reassured, Oriana took a deep breath, turned to face the sea, and
called
again. Duilio turned his head, plugging one ear with his free hand; he held his revolver in the other. Apparently her
call
had
some
effe
ct
on him, but Duilio managed to resi
st
her, keeping his gun trained on the waves lapping at the edge of the beach. Gaspar seemed completely unmoved. After only a few minutes Maraval
st
umbled onto the sands, his fine clothes ruined. Oriana closed her mouth, letting him go.

Duilio kept his gun trained on the man. But upon seeing the woman waiting for him on the shore, Maraval
st
ruggled to his feet. Grimacing, he swung one arm toward her. She merely touched him with one slim hand. Maraval whimpered. She said a word in a foreign language, and he collapsed to the sands. His ragged breathing showed he was
st
ill alive, but the black-veiled woman knelt down, apparently unconcerned by any threat Maraval might pose. “I can take your life away,” she told him, “bit by bit, drag you down into the waters and hold you there till you drown in my arms. But fir
st
you and I have much to talk about.”

Oriana felt ill. Hadn’t she ju
st
thought of doing the same thing?

Gaspar
st
rode dire
ct
ly over to the woman’s side and proceeded to put cuffs on the prone Maraval. As if they’d been waiting, Joaquim and Pinheiro appeared at the end of the path, both tugging wads of cotton or wool from their ears.

“Don’t try anything on me, old man,” Gaspar said as he dragged Maraval to his feet. “It won’t work.”

Oriana suspe
ct
ed Maraval was too worn or too terrified to try anything on anyone. He was clearly frightened of the slender woman in black, who walked away toward the burning building without a backward glance.

Gaspar dragged Maraval to his feet. “Pinheiro, take your team and search the area for any others. We’ll send the regulars out to inve
st
igate further when there’s light. I’ll take this fellow and Miss Vladimirova back to the city. Mr. Ferreira?”

“Yes?” Duilio said.

“There’s a
st
orm coming in. That flat-bottomed thing you came out here in won’t like that. You should probably tie it off and come back for it in a day or two.”

Duilio looked seaward at the dark sky. No
st
ars were visible through that thick cloud cover. “I think you’re right.”

Two more police officers appeared at the end of the pathway as a carriage drew up to the edge of the beach, its dark sides gilded by the fire’s light. A second carriage drew up behind it. “Tavares, why don’t you head to the city with them? Get some re
st
,” Gaspar sugge
st
ed as two of the officers wre
st
led the marquis into the carriage. “Anjos will want you back on the beach tomorrow.”

Inspe
ct
or Tavares looked relieved to be joining them in
st
ead of heading back in that coach with Maraval and the
st
range Miss Vladimirova. He volunteered to help Duilio secure the paddleboat while Pinheiro and his crew boarded the moored yacht to look for evidence. Duilio took off his soot-
st
ained coat and settled it around her shoulders, saying, “You mu
st
be freezing.”

“Thank you,” Oriana managed without her teeth chattering. She
was
cold now that she was out of the water. The pelt she clutched again
st
her che
st
was
st
ill wet. Her clothes were sodden, and if they hadn’t been headed back into the city she’d remove them, but she didn’t want to cause further con
st
ernation.

So Oriana
st
ood on the sand, her skirts dripping onto her bare feet. She ju
st
wanted to leave this place. She didn’t want to be around to watch the bodies of the three police officers she’d lured to their deaths wash in on the tide. It was a cowardly thought, not wanting to face up to what she’d done. But she would do it again if it meant keeping Duilio safe. What sort of person did that make her?

Returning from tying off the paddleboat, Duilio took one of her hands in his. “Let’s get back to the city.”

She had the
st
ronge
st
feeling he knew exa
ct
ly what was bothering her. She nodded wordlessly.

After walking up to the burning workshop, they transferred the wooden box with its blood compass to the carriage. A handful more of Gaspar and Anjos’ officers had arrived to help with the search. Apparently Tavares knew them already and verified their identities. Then they were finally in the carriage, heading back to the city.

How late was it? Ten? Midnight?

Oriana wearily settled next to Duilio while his cousin took the seat facing backward. He took the pelt from her and arranged it on the empty spot on the bench, allowing some of the water to drain off. She li
st
ened while they talked of Anjos’ effort to convince the City Council to allow the floating houses to be pulled up from the river’s grasp. Apparently the inspe
ct
or had been persuasive, and the effort was scheduled to begin as soon as the
st
orm passed. The police suspe
ct
ed few of the bodies would be identifiable, so they were counting on Joaquim, with his knowledge of the case, to give names to the vi
ct
ims and help conta
ct
the families involved. She didn’t envy him that job.

They went on to talk about newspapers and which were sending writers and photographers out to cover it, whether the prince himself would comment on the whole affair, and whether Maraval would be charged or if he would quietly disappear.
Ju
st
as long as he doesn’t go free,
Oriana thought.

And that was the la
st
thought she remembered until Duilio shook her shoulder to wake her.