The Golden City (7 page)

His gift told him that Lady Isabel Amaral was not to marry Mr. Efisio. That she was never to marry Mr. Efisio. That she was never to marry at all.
She was already dead.

Duilio opened his eyes, the sense of urgency in him rising. From the beginning there had been something wrong with those damned houses in the river—they
st
ayed afloat long after they filled with water. There were buoyancy charms carved on each house, but after Duilio and Joaquim had begun inve
st
igating the houses, Cri
st
iano had told them that such charms were next to useless. That revelation had led them to the di
st
urbing conclusion that the missing servants were being
sacrificed
to keep the houses floating, that the ta
st
e of rot the selkies found so obje
ct
ionable came from slowly decaying bodies hidden inside those houses. What if they’d been wrong?

What if a new house had been added to the artwork while he’d slept fitfully? That house might have held Lady Isabel and her companion. What if one of the two had been
alive
at the time? Or both had?

He had wondered why Miss Paredes was seen out by the houses at midnight. His mind had spun out several different scenarios, mo
st
involving her people’s government inve
st
igating the artwork. Now he felt certain that wasn’t the case at all. He quickly searched the newspaper’s front page, hunting for any mention of a new house being added to
The City Under the Sea,
but didn’t find any. It usually took a couple of days for the news to trickle out. And if Aga had witnessed that happening la
st
night, she hadn’t mentioned it. Perhaps she’d simply arrived too late.

Will I learn that Oriana Paredes escaped from inside one of those houses?
he asked himself. The answer his mind gave him sickened him.
Yes
.

Jaw clenched, Duilio folded up the newspaper and tucked it under his arm. He headed on out of the square, settled in his intention to hunt down the my
st
erious Miss Paredes, who was
not
on her way to France, no matter what the paper had to say.

A
short while later, Duilio
st
ood before the threshold of the small apartment Joaquim Tavares rented on Re
st
auração Street. The tall, narrow house was well maintained by grace of the elderly widow who owned the building and kept a hawklike eye on all her tenants.

Duilio knocked on the door and heard a reque
st
called back to wait a moment. Only a second or two passed before the door swung open, revealing a half-dressed Joaquim,
st
ill buttoning his shirt cuffs. He wore a matching wai
st
coat and trousers in a beige check—a casual suit. He seemed surprised to find Duilio waiting in the narrow hall. “What are you doing here?”

Although a cousin, Joaquim was closer to Duilio than either Alessio or Erdano in both temperament and appearance. They had the same height and build, and their faces bore the
st
amps of the Ferreira family: square jaws and wide brows. But what made for pleasant features on Duilio’s face translated to handsome in Joaquim’s case, possibly because he had inherited his Spanish mother’s darker coloration. Duilio smiled ruefully at Joaquim’s apparent annoyance. “Who were you expe
ct
ing?”

“Mrs. Domingues, bringing a pa
st
ry for my breakfa
st
.”

Duilio rolled his eyes at the idea of such a skimpy morning meal. “Are you going to invite me in or not?”

Joaquim grabbed Duilio’s shoulder to draw him inside. “Yes, but I’m about to leave for the
st
ation.”

“I’ll walk with you.” Duilio closed the door while Joaquim went to fetch his suit coat. The apartment was furnished in items ca
st
off from other houses, either the Tavares or the Ferreira home. Two worn armchairs, one uphol
st
ered and one covered in leather, waited near the single window in the front room. The leather one had been in Joaquim’s room in the Ferreira house as a child.

Duilio felt as much at home here as he did in his own library. He turned to peruse the mismatched bookshelves that lined the wall next to the door. Joaquim had always had an intere
st
in hi
st
ory and philosophy, which showed in the sele
ct
ion of books neatly lining those shelves. After laying his folded newspaper on one shelf, Duilio ran a finger along the rows, hunting for the requisite volume of Camões that mu
st
lurk there.

“A woman was seen out near the houses la
st
night,” Duilio called in the dire
ct
ion of the bedroom. “I need to find her.” Joaquim had a talent for finding lo
st
people, one of the many skills for which the police valued him.

“Which houses?” Joaquim returned.

“The City Under the Sea.”
Duilio located the book he was looking for, the epic poem
st
udied by every Portuguese schoolboy wherein the author detailed the voyages of Vasco da Gama.

Joaquim came back into the room, tugging on his loose suit coat. “Doing what?”

An inspe
ct
or’s pay didn’t afford him the same quality of garb he’d had as a child in the Ferreira household, but Duilio knew better than to comment on the coat’s poor fit. He could afford a fancy valet like Marcellin to turn him out in fine frock coats and silk wai
st
coats. In fa
ct
, he could easily afford to pay for a valet for Joaquim, but his cousin was prickly about money matters, so Duilio didn’t interfere. He pulled out the book he’d located in
st
ead. “She was in the water. . . .” he answered.

Reaching for the tweed hat on the shelf neare
st
the door, Joaquim paused. “Swimming?”

“Yes. That’s not what’s important. I think she was in one of the houses.”

Joaquim ca
st
a perplexed look in his dire
ct
ion.

“She was meant to be a vi
ct
im, Joaquim. I think she
escaped
from it.”

Joaquim went
st
ill as he worked out the ramifications of that. They’d assumed the vi
ct
ims were sacrificed to keep the houses floating, but such a use of necromancy would have to be ena
ct
ed before the houses were placed in the river. The possibility that the vi
ct
ims had been put into those houses
while
st
ill alive
had never occurred to them. “If that’s true, we need to find her. How did
you
find out?”

“Aga saw her and told me.”

Joaquim rubbed a hand over his face, a sign of fru
st
ration. “Aga?”

Starting at the beginning would take too long. “One of Erdano’s girls. The thing is . . . I think I know the woman she described to me. It’s Miss Paredes, who’s companion to Lady Isabel Amaral.” Duilio slid the folded newspaper off the bookshelf and pointed to the que
st
ionable item on the social page. “Rumor says Lady Isabel eloped la
st
night, in that same companion’s company, with Marianus Efisio.”

Joaquim perused the notice, a doubtful expression crossing his features. He set the paper back on the shelf. “If she eloped, how would the gossips already know?”

Duilio shook his head. That wasn’t the point. “Lady Amaral mu
st
have spread the rumor la
st
night herself. To
st
ave off her creditors, I’d expe
ct
.”

Joaquim rolled his dark eyes. “Oh yes. I recall the woman now.”

Duilio resi
st
ed repeating anything he’d heard of the impecunious noblewoman.

“So, what makes you think this companion was in one of the houses,” Joaquim asked, “if she’s supposedly off eloping with two other people?”

Duilio dropped into the uphol
st
ered chair, the one he usually took when visiting, and continued flipping through the book. “She wasn’t eloping with them. He went ahead. The companion was probably going along as a chaperone until the wedding.”

Joaquim settled in the other chair. “Get to the point, Duilio.”

“If I’m corre
ct
,” Duilio said, “the Amaral house was added to the artwork sometime la
st
night, and we’ll find out that Miss Paredes wasn’t the only one who didn’t get on that train.”

“You’re sugge
st
ing that Isabel Amaral was in that house as well.” Joaquim’s fingers tapped loudly on the leather arm of his chair. “We knew we were about due for a new house to show up.”

New houses had been appearing in the artwork at roughly two-week intervals. Duilio found the passage he was looking for,
st
uck a finger in the book to mark the place, and closed it so he could focus on Joaquim. “My gift tells me that Isabel Amaral is dead, no matter what the newspapers claim.”

Joaquim closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross. Duilio’s gift had been passed to all males of the Ferreira line. A cousin on the
di
st
aff
side of the Ferreira family, Joaquim didn’t have the gift, but having grown up around Duilio and Alessio, he knew very well how it worked.

Duilio went on. “The only thing that makes sense of her companion’s appearance in the water at midnight is that neither of them reached the train
st
ation. To find out exa
ct
ly what happened, I have to find Miss Paredes.”

“Won’t she return to the Amaral household?”

As soon as Joaquim asked, Duilio shook his head. “No. I don’t think Lady Amaral would take Miss Paredes back once she told her what happened. That woman needs people to believe her daughter alive to keep her creditors at bay. She would be more likely to hide the truth.”

Joaquim nodded slowly. Apparently, he too believed the woman would put concern about her creditors over concern for her daughter’s fate, a sad commentary on the woman’s priorities. “Then the police,” Joaquim said. “Surely your Miss Paredes would have taken her
st
ory to the police if her employer was killed.”

No, that was one place she wouldn’t go. They would ask how she could have survived if Isabel hadn’t, and Miss Paredes couldn’t reveal that. “She will not go to the police,” Duilio said firmly. “We’re going to have to hunt her down.”

Joaquim frowned. “Is that your gift speaking, too?”

How could he answer that without lying to Joaquim? He wasn’t ready to hand over all the truth yet, not until he was
sure
she was a sereia. “I have reason to believe she won’t go to the police.”

Joaquim’s expression showed he recognized that evasion for what it was. “I’m not supposed to be inve
st
igating this any longer.”

That had never
st
opped Joaquim before.

“I’ll go talk to the submersible captains,” Duilio told him, “and ask if they’ve seen a new house in the water.” A handful of entrepreneurial captains had inve
st
ed in submersible crafts that could be attached to their ships, pumping air down into vessels that would allow their passengers to go underwater and view the artwork. Despite the co
st
of maintaining what were essentially oversized diving bells, the inve
st
ment had reportedly paid off. Their tours of the artwork were filled by the idle wealthy and the curious. Duilio had even gone down in one of the vessels a couple of times himself. He tapped his fingers on the chair’s arm, weighing what he mo
st
needed from Joaquim. “Could you put together a li
st
of places an upper servant might go if left on her own? Between positions, perhaps. Not a lot of money. A hotel or apartment?”

“More likely a rented room.” Joaquim fell silent, probably mulling over what needed to be done. “I’ll
st
ay late tonight,” he said after a moment. “I’ll put together a li
st
and drop it off by the house.”

Duilio hid a smile. While Joaquim might not be allowed to expend further police time and resources on the inve
st
igation, Duilio hadn’t had any doubt that he would help on his own time. Joaquim had a revolutionary
st
reak in his soul. He counted every one of those missing servants the equal of Lady Isabel Amaral, and kept their names in neat files in his cabinet at the
st
ation.

Once they’d made a conne
ct
ion between the missing servants and the work of art, it hadn’t taken too long to confirm that each of the servants, all of whom worked in great houses along the Street of Flowers, had disappeared within a few days of the appearance of their ma
st
ers’ homes in the artwork. Mo
st
of those servants had claimed they’d been offered positions elsewhere. Others said they were going home to visit family in the country. It had taken time to determine that those events hadn’t ever happened. It had taken a good deal more effort to determine that
every
household represented in the artwork had lo
st
two servants. Mo
st
hadn’t bothered to report their servants’ absence, assuming their employees had indeed moved on to other positions.

Even so, they couldn’t
concretely
tie the missing servants to the houses. When the police had made inquiries about opening one of the houses, an order had come back almo
st
immediately to shut down the inve
st
igation.

Joaquim’s hands had been tied after that, but he had
st
ill helped Duilio in his efforts to track down the arti
st
, Gabriel Espinoza. Unfortunately the man had disappeared from the city completely, but he couldn’t be doing the work alone. There had to be a number of coconspirators to create an artwork of this size, not only builders and watermen to get the artwork into the river, but someone had to be funding all of that as well. They had researched how the houses were built and how they were chained to huge weights on the river’s bed. They had tried tracking down some of the building materials, from shipments of wood to the proper grade of chain. Unfortunately, so far all their leads had gone nowhere. Duilio hoped that finding Miss Paredes would breathe some new life into the inve
st
igation.

“I can’t help you look today,” Joaquim finally allowed, “but I can ask the officers at the front desk to tell me if they hear anything from the Amaral woman.”

“Thank you,” Duilio said. “I’ll see what I can find out at the Amaral household as well.”

“Don’t talk to the servants, though. I’ll do that on my way by the house tonight.” Joaquim would be better to handle that as he didn’t have a presence in society. The servants would perceive a policeman as closer to their class.

“I’ll see if I can wheedle Lady Amaral into admitting something, then.” Duilio doubted he’d be successful. He lifted the copy of Camões and glanced down at the se
ct
ion where the poet described Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the Ilhas das Sereias in 1499—a violent introdu
ct
ion that had sown di
st
ru
st
between the sereia and the Portuguese for the pa
st
four hundred years. To this day, the islands of the sereia didn’t appear on any map, although it was said the Church knew where they were to be found. The sereia preferred to
st
ay hidden. “Can I borrow this book for a bit?”

“You have a copy,” Joaquim said, sounding bewildered now.

It was a safe guess that the book could be found in mo
st
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.”