After the War: A Novella of the Golden City (9 page)

“Lille,” Markovich was saying, addressing Gaspar this time. “We were sent into Lille.” Markovich retold the tale much as they already knew it from Alejandro’s writings. They went through the steps of the theft and the team’s quick flight afterward from Lille to Armentières.

“How did you get through the German line?” Gaspar asked to fill in one of the gaps.

“That was Phillips’ job,” Markovich explained. “Did I not say? He says he’s part
fairy,
if you’ll believe that sort of twaddle. Claims he used a glamour to hide us all from sight and we just walked out.”

The Lady held up one hand to forestall her husband’s comment. “You didn’t believe him?”

“He’s Irish,” Markovich said with half a shrug. “They believe in fairy tales, you know.”

One of the Lady’s slender black brows quirked upward, but she didn’t respond.

Alejandro shook his head. “Then how
do
you think Phillips accomplished his part?”

“He bribed the German outpost guards,” Markovich said with a shrug. “Do you want me to believe he didn’t pocket a single one of those diamonds before he came to meet us?”

That was always a possibility. Phillips and Lighter
had
been the ones to go into the German officer’s quarters.

“And why haven’t you tried to turn
him
inside out?” Alejandro asked.

Markovich shook his head. “That wily bastard won’t meet with me, and everything I’ve tried from a distance doesn’t affect him.”

“You’re limited to line of sight,” the Lady observed with a tilt of her head.

“Yes, although it’s better if I can make physical contact,” Markovich said, turning back to her. “Else I would have cursed some German generals and gone home to England a lot sooner.”

The Lady nodded slowly and, at a discreet gesture from her, Gaspar stepped forward to touch Markovich’s arm. “They want to talk without you present,” he said bluntly. “Come join me in the courtyard.”

Markovich cast a glance in Alejandro’s direction but rose and followed Gaspar out of the room. The Lady immediately turned to Rafael Pinheiro. “If he tries this, will it work?”

Rafael closed his eyes for a moment, talking with his gift. “Yes.”

Alejandro hadn’t believed until that moment. But Rafael was a seer, one who actually had his gift intact. This could work. He could regain his memories and his seer’s gift with them.

“You understand that this borders on witchcraft?” the Lady asked.

“You’re saying it will damn my soul?”

“No.” Her head tilted toward the doorway out which Markovich had gone. “His might be in peril, though.”

She was asking him to consider the man’s soul. After he’d admitted to turning people inside out. “Do you think that’s worth our concern?”

She shook her head in a worried fashion. “His gift makes him extremely dangerous, and I suspect he has few friends. He’s a threat to them, always. One angry thought, a few words, and he can ruin someone . . .”

Like he did me.

“. . . but you were clearly friends,” she finished. “And that should matter to you.”

He wanted so much to fit in with his family, his old life. His wife. Should he not try to reconnect with his old friends, even if they were like Markovich
—
pushy Englishmen? He thought again of his cousin Miguel, whom he’d not even managed to see yet.

He wanted his old life back, didn’t he? But what would it cost Markovich?
And what might it cost me?
“I’ll give it some thought.”

The Lady rose gracefully. “Do so, Alejandro. I’ll watch him make the removal talisman myself, but you’re the one who will have to decide whether or not to use it.”

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Dinner that evening was solemn, as Alejandro explained to Joaquim and Marina their plan for the next day. He didn’t need to ask where either of them stood on this issue. They didn’t like the risk, but understood his desire to have his memories back.

Serafina kept her thoughts to herself. She spent much of the evening playing with the children. And later that night, once they were alone in their room, she distracted him from his questions in the way she usually did.

Afterward, Alejandro tried to catch his breath. Enough light came in through the window from a streetlight outside that he could see her features clearly. She laughed softly, and Alejandro felt his chest tighten. He stroked Serafina’s curls back from her forehead. “I love you.”

Her laughter fled. She turned her face away, toward the window.

His stomach went cold. No woman hated being told that, he would have thought. Not by her husband, at least. “Serafina, what is it?”

She sniffled. “You’ve never said that before.”

He shifted on the bed and sat up halfway so he could see her face. “Never?”

She shook her head, still looking away from him. “All it took was your forgetting everything you knew about me.”

“I would never have married you if I didn’t love you, Serafina.”

“You didn’t have much choice, Jandro. I know that.”

Was this why she’d been so uncertain about their relationship? Had she actually trapped him in some way, as Markovich had said?

“Serafina, look at me.” He waited until she turned her head to gaze up at him, tears shining in her eyes. “Why would I marry you if I didn’t want to do so?”

“After we lay together, you didn’t have any choice.” With a catch in her voice, she added, “And you didn’t have much choice about that, to be honest.”

Alejandro felt his brows rise. No choice about whether to lie with a beautiful young woman who was clearly in love with him?
Did she use her
call
on me?
Would that even work, since he was only half-human? “Why would you say that?”

She turned her head toward the window again. “When I came to the house that morning, I wanted to prove to you that I’d grown up, so . . .”

She would only have been sixteen or so when he left for Angola, while he’d been twenty-one. When he came back from Angola, she would have been eighteen. Grown up, indeed.

“How did you prove it?” He couldn’t see her face, but her throat flushed. Her gills fluttered slightly, a sign of her agitation. He tried again. “What did you do?”

“You’ll hate me for it,” she whispered.

“I’m unlikely to hate you for
anything
, Serafina. I love you. I promise.”

She remained silent for a moment. “I just . . . I waited until I knew your family would be gone to Mass, and I came to the house and to your room and . . . and you were still abed, so I . . . I joined you there.” She finished on a whisper, as if that was too horrible to say aloud.

Alejandro sat back. “Why would I hate you for that, darling?”

She shifted to look at him, her dark brows rumpled. “You told me you weren’t ready to marry. You had responsibilities. You were so angry with me.”

Angry? And he hadn’t recanted that sentiment during the three subsequent days he’d apparently spent in a hotel room with her?

What kind of jackass was I?

He’d told Markovich he’d felt trapped into marrying her.

And he could see now how it must have looked
to her
.

“Mother said you intended to marry me only because you foresaw it,” she added, “not because you loved me.”

He drew her back into his arms. Had he actually thought that?
Surely not
. “Tell me, darling. If I didn’t want to marry you then, why not simply attend Mass with my family? I would have known you were coming to find me, wouldn’t I? I could have locked my bedroom door, or arranged to be elsewhere. Instead I was there waiting for you.”

That wasn’t quite true. It was entirely possible for a seer
not
to know. He wasn’t going to point that out, though. He was thoroughly annoyed with Old Alejandro. That Alejandro had agreed to marry her, but made her feel small and encroaching in the process. Had that been meanness on his part? Or had he simply been angry?

Serafina sniffled again. “I don’t know . . .”

Alejandro took her webbed hand in his and kissed her knuckles. “Then let me be clear about it now. I love you Serafina, and I don’t want you to forget that.”

She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob, but then leaned up to kiss him, and soon they were no longer talking.

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Saturday, 26 June, 1920

Joaquim met Alejandro in the library after breakfast. “I had the feeling you needed to talk.”

Alejandro shut the library door and turned back to face his brother, the voice of sanity in the chaos of his life. “Did I love her? She doesn’t think I did, you know.”

Joaquim rubbed one hand down his face. “How do I answer that?”

“Truthfully, please.”

Joaquim sat down on the couch and stretched out his bad leg. “You always looked after her. When you were younger, you saw her as a responsibility.”

Alejandro leaned back against the library table and folded his arms across his chest. “You said I planned to marry her. Was that because I knew I would?
Only
because I knew I would?”

Joaquim closed his eyes, seeming pained. “When you left for Coimbra, Serafina was only thirteen. Between then and the day you married her, you only saw her for a handful of days out of any year. I don’t know how you could have developed a mature love in that time.”

In other words, Serafina had been right. Or her mother had, in that he’d married her only because he’d said he would. Because he’d predicted it. “That seems unkind of me.”

“Marriages are often arranged with the two parties barely knowing one another,” Joaquim said. “Love can grow from that. Look at Serafina’s father and mother. Marcos and Safira had no choice, but they came to love each other deeply.”

After Safira was imprisoned in Spain, Marcos had been kidnapped by his own grandmother and thrown in a cell with Safira. If that hadn’t happened, Alejandro wouldn’t have Serafina now.

Alejandro pinched the bridge of his nose. In a few hours, he was supposed to meet Markovich at the police station. When he regained his memory, would he be that former self again? Would he become that young man who wasn’t considerate enough to tell his young wife that he loved her . . . even as he was in bed with her? If nothing else, he should have lied to spare Serafina’s feelings. “Apparently Old Alejandro never even bothered to tell his wife he loved her,” he admitted.

Joaquim’s lips pressed closed as he thought through his response. “Did you tell her now?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have a chance to set everything right with her.”

Alejandro pushed himself away from the table. If he’d been a seer before, would he have foreseen that? Would he have seen losing his memory as a way to start over? “Was she in love with someone else?” he asked. “With Miguel?”

Joaquim considered before answering. “My impression has always been that they are friends, brought together by family ties and a love of poetry. Perhaps you should ask one of them.”

It would have been better if Joaquim had said
no. Alejandro sighed. “Was I happy before? I don’t mean about Serafina. I mean . . . in general.”

Joaquim sat back and gazed at him. “I think you always felt responsible for everything. Rafael says seers often feel that way. They want to prevent every bad thing they foresee.”

Joaquim was a seer as well; but, as Alejandro understood it, Joaquim’s gift was very weak, subsumed by his finder’s gift. Rafael was the powerful one. Even so, Rafael seemed content with his life.

“How does
he
deal with that?” Alejandro asked.

“He’s trained not to take more on his shoulders than he can bear. He doesn’t try to save the world. Even when you were young, that’s what you were trying to do. You were always very serious.”

“If I was that strong a seer, is it possible that I
allowed
myself to be hexed? Knowing I would be left like this? Without my gift? Or without access to it?”

Joaquim puffed out a breath. “I think that’s a question only you can answer.”

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