The Seat of Magic (10 page)

He hadn't been there for the last few years of Alessio's life, but Duilio had known of the increasing rift between his father and brother, both from his mother's letters and Joaquim's. He hated to think of any family fractured like that. Sighing, he started back
toward the stairs, but hadn't quite reached them when he spotted Joaquim striding up from the kitchens in his direction.

Joaquim paused when he saw Duilio, and then headed toward him with a resolute step. “I've got something I need you to come see. We think we might have found her, Duilio. Your missing girl.”

Gita?
He hated to ask, but did anyway. “Is she alive?”

Joaquim's jaw clenched. “A girl's body was dumped last night in an alleyway behind the Dried Cod,” he said, naming a brothel in the northern part of the city. “We think her foot had been previously injured, which is what made me believe it might be your girl.”

“You
think
her foot had been injured?” Duilio repeated. How could they not know?

“It's complicated.” Joaquim took a breath and said, “She was skinned.”

*   *   *

T
he police headquarters sat beyond the cathedral, to the north of the two-level iron bridge that crossed the Douro River. Although Joaquim usually operated out of the station that sat between Massarelos and the half-completed hospital, he often visited the headquarters. There the police kept their own morgue, a small detached building with whitewashed walls and a red-tiled roof, whose windows remained shuttered even on the sunniest of days.

The only body the police currently found curious enough to hold was that of a girl, but they knew little more. What remained of her didn't tell them hair color or skin tone, and although she'd once had warm brown eyes, they were clouded over in death.

“They found her early in the morning,” Joaquim said, covering a yawn. “The police chief has ordered us not to discuss it, in the hope that it won't get into the newspapers.”

Duilio felt a flare of worry—not his gift, but his native cynicism. There would be no stilling the talk once it did get out; the newspapers loved anything sensational. “How do they think she died?”

“By losing her skin,” Joaquim said.

Which meant she was alive when that happened.
Duilio stifled a shudder. “When?”

“Likely Monday, midday.”

On Monday morning, Tigana had been asking him to find the girl. Gita had come into the city on Saturday night, meaning that an entire day had passed between her arrival in the city and her death. “Will they turn the body over to the Church?”

“Clearly not a suicide,” Joaquim said as he pushed open the door to the back room, “so it's likely.”

Erdano wouldn't like that. His people had their own ways of dealing with their dead. Duilio couldn't think of any way he could interfere, and Erdano could hardly come into the city and claim the girl as one of his own.

“I'll talk to Brother Manoel,” Joaquim volunteered, “but I can't promise anything.”

Brother Manoel received all the bodies at the monastery, but might help, given the girl's identity. There was little chance she was a Christian. “Thank you.”

They opened the door and stepped into the anteroom where visitors to the morgue were greeted, a deceptively cheerful room with blue-and-white-painted tiles ringing the lower half of the walls. A young police officer sat at a desk with a pair of chairs in front of it, his curling hair tumbled and his lean face set in an expression of concentration as he sketched on a pad of paper. He glanced up when they entered. “Back to look at her again, Inspector Tavares?”

Joaquim nodded. “Just the feet, Gonzalo.”

“It might help if I see her eyes,” Duilio offered. Selkies generally had the same color eyes, much like his own.

Joaquim set a hand on Duilio's sleeve. “You don't want to.”

Duilio didn't argue. “Very well. Just the feet.”

The young officer rose and led them back toward an inner room where bodies were held prior to turning them over to family or the Church. As soon as he opened the door, Duilio pressed a finger
under his nose, his stomach turned by a smell terribly similar to rotting meat. Only one of the tables set around the perimeter of the square room held a body.

The officer went to the table and started folding back the sheet, exposing what looked like illustrations from an anatomy book Duilio had once studied. For a brief instant, his mind told him it was a hoax, that someone had made a clay model and painted it for their benefit. The girl's skin had been flayed off, laying bare muscle and tendons in gruesome detail that none should ever see.

Duilio forced himself to look at those bared feet. The left had a gap between the second and third toes that extended halfway to the arch of the foot. The muscles and tendons didn't look newly torn, but as if they'd healed that way, thickened and twisted in spots. That could have come from the grasp of a shark's teeth, where the victim had escaped by tearing her foot—or flipper—free. “This has got to be her,” he said to Joaquim.

“You know who this is?” the young officer asked as he covered the naked feet again.

Duilio spun out a tale, keeping it vague to save trouble. “An acquaintance requested that I look for a girl, a young relative who'd become lost in the city. But there's no way to be sure.”

“No.” The young officer crossed himself. “And not much here to tell us about the unholy bastard who killed her, either. The body was only wrapped in a sheet and dumped.”

Duilio pressed his lips together. Tigana had charged him with finding the girl, but Erdano had asked him to find the girl's
killer
, a different matter. “Thank you for letting me view the body, Gonzalo.”

“Sorry it didn't have a better outcome for you, Mr. Ferreira.” The officer returned to his sketching, and Duilio followed Joaquim out of the building into the evening air.

They walked along the street together, Joaquim listing off what he did know about the girl's death—which proved to be very little. Her body had been dumped behind the brothel sometime during the
previous night. There hadn't been much blood there, a sure sign she'd been killed elsewhere. Her missing skin wasn't in the alleyway, either. The killer had apparently kept that.

That brought to mind another question Duilio hadn't answered. “We still don't know where her
pelt
is.”

Joaquim walked along with his hands behind his back, a pose that usually meant he was troubled. Duilio couldn't blame him.

“As long as no one knows she's one of your brother's people,” Joaquim said, “I'll still be permitted to investigate her death, so the pelt can't figure in anything I do. If word gets out I'm looking for such a thing, any investigation will be terminated.”

“I'll look for the pelt myself, then. I'll talk to Mother to see if she's ever heard of anything like this.”

Joaquim set a hand on his sleeve. “Don't worry her, Duilio.”

Duilio stopped in the street near where the paving ended. A clump of road workers in dust-marked trousers and shirtsleeves approached, so he waited until they'd passed to say, “She needs to know. Even if it has nothing to do with her people, she needs to be warned.”

“She doesn't need to know exactly what happened, though, does she?”

Sometimes Joaquim was more protective of his mother than he was himself. “I'll try. She's not likely to go out for a while anyway.”

“Is she still . . . hurting?”

“Not too much any longer, but now she's helping take care of Oriana.”

Joaquim smiled. “She must like her. How is she, by the way?”

So they walked down the Street of Flowers toward the house, discussing Oriana, the surprising visit of Monteiro, and the possible relationship between the two.

*   *   *

T
he intricately carved wooden kneeler in the library didn't see a great deal of use. Duilio's mother had only a tentative adherence to the Church, and Duilio himself had never been particularly
devout in his practices. But he lit the candle there anyway, hoping that God would forgive his regular lapses in piety and restore Oriana to them. Well,
to him
, actually.

He prayed for the dead girl Gita as well, little though she might appreciate it. No one deserved such a death. He only hoped her soul had found some peace with the god of the sea. He kept his words short, figuring whichever saint carried
that
prayer to heaven wouldn't appreciate the burden of excess words in addition to the blasphemy. Then Duilio rose, blew out the candle, and headed back upstairs to Alessio's old room.

When he stepped into the bedroom he heard water dribbling into the tub, which told him Oriana was still under that water. He found his mother sitting on the floor in the bathroom, gazing over the tub's rim at Oriana's unmoving form, her brown silk skirts billowing about her. He touched her shoulder and settled on the rug nearby. “Has she woken?”

“No.” His mother gave him a direct look. “Why do you think they did this?”

“I still don't know, Mother. Alvaro and Monteiro each thought it was done to keep them from talking, although Monteiro didn't know what he wasn't supposed to talk about.”

“It will be hard to forgive what her own people have done to her,” she said, her voice sad.

Duilio sat back against the wall. “She's safe here,” he said. “We'll keep her safe.”

His mother touched his cheek with a damp hand, her fingertips still reddened and raw, and rose from the floor. “I'll have Teresa bring up a dinner tray for you, Duilinho.”

“Thank you, Mother.” He shifted over to where she'd been sitting and gazed over the edge at Oriana's sleeping face under the water.

She lay on her side, facing him. Her full lips were parted, and the steady movement of her gills told him she was breathing. Although
his mother had left the towels wrapping the tub for Felis' sake, Duilio pushed them back enough to locate Oriana's hand. He drew it up out of the water, metal shackle and all. Her long fingers curled against his in reaction, hiding away the webbing between them. He wrapped his hand around hers and rested them on the lip of the tub. He just wanted her to know he was there, waiting on her.

O
riana woke sore and achy, with an empty stomach. Her eyes seemed more willing to focus, showing her that the glow had left the skylight above. Now a pair of fainter lights shone. Gaslights—it must be night. She was still in the Ferreira household, a miracle of sorts.

She could tell the water in the tub had been changed, as there was less salt from her own body in it. Pure sea salt instead. The dull burning in her gills had faded. She was determined not to dwell on the rest. Grasping the lip of the tub in her right hand, she pulled herself into a sitting position. It took all her strength to accomplish that. As the water sloshed around her, she took a deep breath of air into her lungs. Her head spun.

Her motion had dislodged several thick ivory towels laid over the top of the tub, sending them slithering either into the tub or off onto the floor. She plucked at one that had fallen over her legs, frustrated by the wet weight of it, and finally succeeded in freeing herself from its grasp.

The sun had left her right side tender, but the blistering and crusting of salt were gone, as were the deposits the damned albatross had left. Where not red, her skin had transformed from the chalky white of dehydration to its normal opalescence. Her thighs and belly had regained their silvery coloration. She let out a shuddering sob, relieved it wasn't worse.

She was alive. She had survived, when someone had meant her to die.

She heard a soft sigh then and gazed over the side of the tub. On the fine silk rug next to the tub, Duilio slept. He wore only a linen shirt and trousers. His dark hair was tousled. He was unshaven as well, his square jaw darkening with stubble. For a moment, she stared down at him with her head propped on her folded arms. Then a drop of water from her hair splashed onto his wide forehead.

His seal-brown eyes blinked open. “Oriana?” He sat up quickly, his face level with hers. “Can you see?”

“Yes,” she managed.
Ah, gods, I sound so feeble.

His shoulders slumped in relief. “Thank God. We feared it might be permanent.” His eyes searched her face and then he moved closer, setting his warm cheek against her chilled, damp one. His arms went around her, holding her to him even though the wall of the tub remained between them.

Her throat ached, and she shuddered as if she'd come in from the cold. She'd forgotten what that felt like, to have someone hold her. To have someone wanting to care for her, rather than the other way around. For a long while, she pressed her face into the crook of his neck, smelling the light musky scent of his skin. She wanted to stay there forever. “I knew you would come for me,” she whispered.

He backed away and set one hand on each of her cheeks. “I wish I had come sooner. I've never been so afraid in my life.”

“Soon enough. I'm still alive.” That would be her mantra for the rest of her days—the gods had given her a second chance. They hadn't thought her deserving of death. It was proof of innocence that none of her people could dispute. “How did you know where I was?”

“The ambassador told me,” Duilio said.

“Uncle?” she asked, mind spinning. How had her uncle intervened? As the ambassador, he was trapped up at the palace. “You went to see him?”

Duilio stroked a lock of hair back from her face and tucked it behind one ear. “We can have a long talk about that later. Do you think you could eat something?”

Her mouth immediately began to water and her stomach clenched. “Oh, yes. How long have I been asleep?”

“Almost a full day round,” he said, pulling away from her and rising. “I'll go to the kitchens and see what I can find at this hour.”

She nodded, and dropped her head onto her arms again. He was gone an instant later. She stared at the manacle affixed to her right wrist, a couple of links of chain dangling from it.

Then Duilio was gently shaking her shoulder to get her attention. “You drifted off.”

She shook her head, and the room spun.

Duilio settled cross-legged on the floor and set a plate in his lap. He had a selection of cold baked cod and smoked salmon, along with a crusty hunk of bread. “It's been a while since you've eaten, so take it slow.”

She managed to untangle her arms and took a piece of cod when he held it out to her. It tasted heavenly to her starved mouth, and she dutifully chewed while he watched her with concerned eyes. “Why are there towels in the tub?” she asked once she'd swallowed.

He handed her another piece of fish and flashed an embarrassed smile. “Felis has been helping watch over you. If she knew I'd seen you unclothed she'd cane me.”

“But you have before,” she pointed out. Despite having lived among humans for two years, their prudishness regarding nudity still surprised her.

“Felis doesn't know that,” he said. “No questions. Eat.”

She obeyed. He talked about his mother's trip out to Braga Bay and her taking seal form for the first time in years. Every time Oriana took a breath to ask a question, he handed her another piece of food. The salmon had a delicious smoky flavor, the bread was perfectly baked, and after he switched to his mother's plans for a dinner
party—in which she was evidently expected to participate—Oriana realized the plate was empty. She moved her right wrist and was dismayed when the heavy cuff dragged it off the bathtub's edge. Her arm dangled there. “How do I get this off?”

“We'll take care of it later,” he promised, lifting her arm back to the rim. “Now, do you want to stay in the tub, or should I move you to the bed?”

After a full day in water, her gills could use a rest. “The bed.”

He set the plate to one side, got up, and left the bathroom. He returned a moment later with the old nightgown she'd left behind. “Felis laid this out for you,” he said. “If I help you out of the tub, can you dry off and put it on?”

“I can try.” He got one arm under hers and lifted her out of the tub, getting water all over the rug and the floor. When her feet hit the ground, though, Oriana discovered exactly how weak she was. Her head spun dizzily again, and she had to hang on to his shirt to stay upright. “No, I don't think I can.”

“Well, Felis doesn't have to know.” Duilio picked her up and carried her out to the darkened bedroom. He laid her on the sheets, still wet, and drew the blanket and coverlet over her. He tucked them neatly beneath her arms.

The sheets lost their chill after a moment, and she felt warm for the first time since she'd left this house. She was safe.

“Thank you,” she managed. It was insufficient for everything he'd done, by any measure.

He smiled down at her. “I'm going to go sop up the mess you made in there. You'll be asleep before I'm done.”

She was.

*   *   *

D
uilio carried the armchair over and set it next to the bed. He'd left the lights turned up in the bathroom, and in that glow he could see Oriana's face. As he'd predicted, she'd fallen asleep, so he just settled into the chair.

He wanted more than anything to join her on that bed. Only to hold her, he told himself. But she needed rest now. Everything else they could work out later.

He couldn't imagine what would drive someone to take Oriana out to that island and chain her there to die. He had a better chance of understanding why someone would kill a lost young selkie girl by skinning her.

He slid down farther in the chair, thinking dark thoughts.