The Seat of Magic (37 page)

He didn't know
how
he was supposed to do that, but he had to try.

Joaquim clenched his jaw, closed his eyes, and forced himself to concentrate. This wasn't like finding Duilio whom he knew as well
as himself. He didn't know Salazar at all. His name meant nothing, and all Joaquim could do was string together what few facts he had and his brief glimpses of the man.
Priest but defrocked, illicit. Torturer, despite being called to heal. A man with no respect for women.
That thought brought out a flash of fury and, for an instant, he could almost
see
Salazar as a faint light traveling away from him. He pointed in that direction before his sense of the man faded.

Gaspar nodded and pushed past, whispering, “Well done.”

Joaquim followed, jaw set. This wasn't going to be pleasant. Gaspar meant to kill the man, but Salazar had killed two men in the last few minutes, which surely made him formidable enough even for Gaspar. Anjos and Miss Vladimirova followed more slowly.

When they reached the end of the hallway, Gaspar pulled the door open. They'd clearly ended up in the original palace, with a hallway heading both left and right, and to one side a spiral staircase led up to the next floor. Gaspar glanced back at Joaquim. “Well?”

Joaquim focused on Salazar again, gaining a sense of the man more easily this time. “Up.”

“That's a strange choice,” Gaspar whispered. Anjos hadn't quite reached them, so Gaspar made a gesture to tell him they were taking the stairwell. Gaspar started up, hugging the outer edge of the spiral. When they reached the top, they stepped out into the hallway and Gaspar gestured for Joaquim to be still.

“What are you doing here?” he asked the empty hallway.

Joaquim wondered if Gaspar had lost his mind.

The Lady abruptly appeared, her back pressed against the opposite wall several feet farther down the hall. She looked unusually pale and her eyes were wide and frightened. “He chased me up here,” she whispered. “Thank God he couldn't find me.”

Gaspar didn't spend time consoling her. “Where are the officers who were guarding you?”

She pointed toward a doorway. “Giving chase. They followed
him in there.” She grabbed Gaspar's arm and gestured toward the wall a few feet away. “He touched that.”

A handprint showed on the wall, where the plaster was scorched. Gaspar reached out and touched it. “Still warm. Stay with us,” he told the Lady. “Tavares, guard her with your life.”

Joaquim opened his mouth to argue, but didn't have any logical protest to make.

Gaspar opened the door and entered, stepping over the slumped body of a man in police uniform that lay next to the door. Joaquim followed, keeping the Lady behind him.

The room was some sort of waiting area with chairs lining two long walls. A red runner led up the center to a desk on a dais, and near that Salazar waited for them. A second police officer stood in his clutch, unresisting like a rag doll. It seemed to take no effort on Salazar's part to hold him up. Was that strength stolen from his victims?

“Come any closer and I will kill him,” Salazar said, angry eyes on Gaspar.

Gaspar gestured and Joaquim obediently split away, crossing the aisle and pressing against the far wall. Then Gaspar raised his pistol and calmly took a shot at Salazar's head. The priest's head snapped back, a small hole appearing in his forehead. But before their eyes, he shook his head and the bullet hole disappeared. The police officer slumped to the floor instead.

What just happened?
Joaquim gaped at the officer now lying on the red runner. A small hole showed on his forehead.

Gaspar tossed his gun to the floor and charged at the priest instead. Salazar held his arms wide, waiting for Gaspar to tackle him. Joaquim cast a quick glance at the Lady, then moved closer as Gaspar barreled into the priest, shoulder first. Salazar staggered back, but kept his feet. He slapped a hand against Gaspar's cheek.

And then he snatched it away as if
he'd
been burned.

Roaring in a guttural voice, he shoved at Gaspar instead, actually throwing the inspector back through the air. Gaspar slammed into the far wall with a loud grunt. He slid down and caught himself on a chair, surprise flickering across his features as he gripped his right side with his left hand. His jaw clenched in pain.

The Lady moved toward her husband, but Joaquim blocked her path. “Stay back. Please, Lady.”

At the far end of the hall, Joaquim saw Inspector Anjos enter, the black-draped woman with him. Four palace guards in their old-fashioned uniforms followed them. One of them ran past Anjos, ignoring the inspector's order to stop. The guard tried to catch Salazar's arm, but the priest grabbed him instead, laying one bare hand to the man's throat. Joaquim smelled burning flesh.

Then Salazar saw Miss Vladimirova and his eyes went wide with terror. The man backed up against the wall, dragging the guard with him. Anjos stayed at her side, his gun ready. The other three guards spread out, cutting between Joaquim and the priest.

“This is simple,” the woman said in her oddly flat voice. “You will come with us, or I will make you regret it.”

Anjos dared a quick look down at the dead police officer just as the captive guard began to struggle in Salazar's grasp. The priest's eyes seemed fixed on the woman like the point of a compass, though. He didn't move either way. She raised one gloved hand. “Come now.”

“I'd listen to her,” Anjos said. “We have you surrounded.”

Salazar's eyes snapped toward Anjos. “I can keep your prince alive. I can control the infection. So long as I'm with him, he won't die.”

Was that his plan all along?
To keep the prince tied to his questionable mercy?

“Yes, you can,” Miss Vladimirova said. “Killing every day to keep him on his feet. But I could, too. We don't need
you
for that.”

Salazar's eyes skimmed over the officers in the room, Anjos only
a few feet away, Gaspar still hunched on the wooden chairs, Joaquim farther back. Then he shoved his current captive away and jumped toward Anjos, one hand snaking out to grasp the inspector's hand over the gun. Anjos didn't hesitate. He fired. The healer hissed in pain, but didn't release Anjos. “If you have any fondness for your protector, whore,” he said to Miss Vladimirova, “you'll stay away. I'll kill him, inch by inch.”

Anjos began breathing heavily, but didn't move. Blood dripped from his hand, as if all the vessels were rupturing. Anjos tried to raise his other hand to pull back the gun's hammer, but froze in place.

Joaquim watched Anjos struggle. If he shot Salazar, the priest could just transfer the injury to Anjos, couldn't he? That was why Gaspar had tried attacking him bodily. Joaquim stepped forward.

“Get back,” Gaspar hissed at him, teeth clenched. “Don't interfere.”

Joaquim cast him a horrified glance. Salazar was going to kill Anjos. Then he felt the Lady's hand on his arm. “Let
her
do this,” the Lady whispered in his ear. “She's far more powerful than he is.”

“He's killed four people now. How can she beat him?”

“He's got Anjos,” she whispered, eyes fixed on the tableau ahead of them. “There's nothing in the world more important to her. Not even her own self-control. To save him, she might even come back to life.”

He peered at the Lady's avid face, trying to grasp her meaning. She'd said she believed that Miss Vladimirova had stopped her own life, a matter of control. A healer had to have life to heal someone else, though, and Miss Vladimirova didn't. Had they put Anjos forward intentionally, to force the Russian woman's hand? Joaquim kept his gun trained on Salazar, just in case. Blood ran from Anjos' hand now, a steady stream.

“Let him go,” Miss Vladimirova said to Salazar. “Your last warning.”

The other guard jumped onto Salazar's back, breaking his grip
on the inspector. The healer twisted in the guard's grip, wrapped a hand around the man's throat, and that guard went limp.

Released, Anjos fell to his knees, his right arm hanging at his side.

Joaquim stepped forward again. He could shoot, now that Salazar wasn't touching the inspector.

Miss Vladimirova held up one hand. “Don't waste him.”

He spared a glance at her.
Waste him?

Anjos now knelt in a pool of blood, his life bleeding away.

Miss Vladimirova stepped closer to Salazar. “You know what I am, don't you? You can feel it in yourself already. I am your death.”

Salazar leaned toward Anjos, but before he could touch the inspector, Miss Vladimirova stretched her arms toward him.

A wind whipped through the room, and for a split second Joaquim's breath was stolen away. He felt strangled. Then the sensation released him, passing as quickly as it had come upon him. One of the two remaining palace guards ran from the room, bumping into Joaquim as he fled.

Miss Vladimirova stood with her arms outstretched. Salazar arched toward her as if a hook were buried in his stomach and she was reeling him in. Then he collapsed to the floor.

Joaquim felt cold all over. She'd taken Salazar's life without even touching him.

She gasped in a huge breath, sounding like she'd been underwater. Joaquim couldn't see her face, but she threw back her veil and ripped off her hat, revealing a golden braid fiercely pinned back in a bun. She continued to gasp for air, visible waves of heat coming off her body.

Then she spun toward Anjos. She cried out something in her own tongue, brokenly. She fell to her knees in his blood, grasped Anjos' wounded hand in hers, and ripped at his shirt with her free hand. She worked that hand inside his undershirt. Her eyes closed and she went still.

Joaquim had never watched a healer at work.
This seems . . . voyeuristic.

He turned away. Behind him, the Lady knelt at Gaspar's side. The inspector perched halfway between sitting and standing, his right arm clutched close. Joaquim helped her get Gaspar situated on the chair, which earned a pained grimace from the inspector. Broken ribs, without a doubt.

Gaspar waved Joaquim away, so he went and checked on the downed men. The police officer Salazar had held hostage lay dead, a bullet wound to his forehead as if he'd somehow been given the injury in Salazar's place. One of the palace guards was stunned, but alive. His throat was red and burned, but he was breathing. The other hadn't fared so well, neck twisted at an awkward angle. The first police officer, abandoned by the entryway, was dead as well.

That left the healer. Joaquim didn't want to touch Salazar's body. He was putting it off. As if by agreement, he and the remaining guard settled for grabbing Salazar by his feet and dragging him away from Anjos and Miss Vladimirova. They left him near the door, and Joaquim asked the guard to keep an eye on the corpse, just in case.

“Take his head off,” Gaspar hissed from his seat. “To be sure.”

Joaquim cast him a horrified glance.
Is he serious?
The palace guard didn't hesitate, though. He drew his saber and swung it at the healer's throat.

“Little different than a vampire,” Gaspar said. He pointed toward Miss Vladimirova with his chin. “That one's been walking around dead for decades.”

Joaquim swallowed. He didn't have a good grasp of witchery, but it seemed a barbaric step. He was in above his head with these people. He looked back to where Miss Vladimirova still leaned over Anjos, speaking softly in a strange tongue. He could see heat rising from the woman's form, rippling the air about them, but it eased and
then faded away. Joaquim eyed the pool of blood in which Anjos lay, wondering how much a man could lose and still survive.

The woman released Anjos' hand and fell to her hands and knees. Anjos began coughing. Surely that had to be a good sign.

“Help me turn him,” she begged, one hand extended toward Joaquim. “Help me.”

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.

O
riana'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.

*   *   *

O
riana 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.”

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.”