The Seat of Magic (25 page)

If he'd told her that story a month before, she wouldn't have believed him. But that had been before she'd lived out a scenario frightfully like his claims. No trial, only judgment.

“They searched the house after you were taken,” she told him. “My aunts said they were looking for seditious materials. Pamphlets or something.”

“The journal,” he said. “I made the mistake of telling them that your mother had written it down.”

Oriana sat back in her chair, trying to organize her thoughts. “The woman who wrote to you and warned you not to talk, Maria Melo. Do you know anything about her?”

His brows drew together angrily. “Ferreira told me about her.”

“Heriberto hinted she did so because Maraval's plot threatened
her
mission. Her mission, whatever was important enough that I became expendable. That's what Heriberto wanted to warn me about.”

Her father crossed his arms over his chest, scowling now. “That's probably why he's fled. If one spy is expendable, all are. Ferreira seemed to think she might be an assassin.”

“Yes. What else could this be?”

He shook his head. “It would provoke a war with Northern Portugal, and probably Southern Portugal as well. Unless the navy has grown vastly more robust since I was exiled—which I doubt—it would be suicide. Your government can't be that foolish.”

“I don't think it's my government any longer,” she said softly. “What happened to Mother's journal?”

“I sent it to your grandmother on Amado. I didn't think it would be safe to keep it on Quitos, where the government might find it and destroy it. I assume she still has it.”

There were those who argued that sereia males were incapable of reasonable thought. Her father was surely evidence to the contrary.

Oriana wistfully recalled the beach on Amado near her grandmother's home. She missed those summers there. She'd last visited three years ago, when Marina had disappeared. She would have done better to remain there. “Why did Grandmother not tell me? Why not tell me why you were exiled?”

“After what happened to me? Do you think that either of us wanted that for
you
, Oriana? There was nothing to be gained by telling you the truth. I know you. You wouldn't have been able to leave it alone once you found out.”

Oriana wanted to rail at him for hiding the truth from her. She wanted to, but she would have been just as willing to hide the truth from Marina, wouldn't she? Her father and grandmother had been trying to protect them. “Are you still in contact with Grandmother?”

“Of course,” he said. “She's talked about coming here, although I've counseled against it. She can do more good there.”

“Tell her to hide it, then,” Oriana said, rising. “And give her my love.”

He grasped her hand. “Oriana, there's no name in the journal, and no one in the ministry will help you track that woman down.”

“Mrs. Melo came to the Ferreira house before I left the city. She threatened you to get me to go back to the islands. She said if I didn't go, she would expose you.”

“I'm sorry,” her father said. “But that threat has always hung over you and me both.”

“That's not my point, Father,” Oriana said. “As she was leaving,
she said that I had Mother's look about me. She said that Mother didn't understand the rules of the game.”

He leaned back away from her. “She knew your mother.”

Oriana nodded slowly, feeling the strands of the rope twisting together in her mind. “That's why you were threatened,” she said aloud. “And Uncle Braz. Someone high up in the ministry is protecting this woman. They don't know what's in Mother's journal. They don't know what happened to it, or whom you've told. But they're afraid it's proof of how far they were willing to go to protect Maria Melo, to protect her mission.”

Her father rubbed fingers across his brow. “Oriana, don't pursue this further.”

“I have to,” she told him. “Did Duilio tell you that a ship tried to keep them from rescuing me?”

“Whose ship?”

“They don't know, Father, but that ship was stopped by a leviathan.” Her father may be mostly Christian, but he would understand the significance of that creature's interference. “The gods wanted to ensure my rescue, and that means they have a mission for me. Now I know what it is.”

*   *   *

J
oaquim strode out of the police station in the late-morning sun, clutching his hat under his arm since there was no likelihood of its staying put in the rising wind. Fortunately, Duilio was coming in the opposite direction, arriving only a few minutes late. He wore one of his finer jackets, showing that he'd gone to the palace to meet with the infante as planned. Together they headed back in the direction from which Duilio had just come.

“You didn't bring Miss Paredes with you?” Joaquim asked.

“She had something she wished to discuss with her father,” Duilio told him. “I don't know what.”

Joaquim raised a brow. “We've got an appointment to meet Anjos at the morgue at three. Two more bodies turned up last night.”

Duilio walked toward the intersection where one could always find a cab. A few minutes later their cab trundled up Torrinha Street toward the doctor's office. “Human?” Duilio asked.

“Yes. Like the earlier ones. No apparent cause of death.”

Duilio groaned. “I wish Rafael would have told us how the cases are connected. It would make things so much easier.”

Joaquim chuckled. “Being a seer doesn't make
anything
easier, does it?”

“No,” Duilio said. “It just gives you more responsibility.”

Duilio might have thought Pinheiro's comments on Sunday about his gift were merely flippant remarks, but Joaquim had a strong feeling that Pinheiro had meant those words for
him
. He glanced over at Duilio's face in the light coming through the cab's windows. “I never thought I was prejudiced until Saturday.”

Duilio gave him a quizzical look. “Comparatively, you're not,” he pointed out unhelpfully. “Certainly far less than most.”

Duilio couldn't have missed his reaction to learning that Marina Arenias wasn't human. Joaquim was still ashamed at his hesitation to speak with Miss Arenias after that. He'd always believed in equality for everyone, no matter their class, gender, or race. “Does it never give you pause that you're courting a sereia woman?”

“She's courting me. A custom among her people—the woman courts the man.”

Joaquim cast him a dry look. “So you're courting her by allowing her to court you. Semantics, Duilio.”

Duilio shrugged. “I love her. It's that simple.”

Joaquim grabbed on to the cab's door as it swung around the corner onto Carmo Street a bit too quickly. “Your mind's made up, then?”

“Yes. I let her get away once. I'm not going to make that mistake again.”

“When will we be having the wedding?”

“Good question,” Duilio said. “Among her people, it's a private
agreement as far as I can tell. No wedding, and I've agreed to comply with her people's customs.” He sighed as he watched the buildings slip by. “If I insist on marriage, it would sound like an implication that her people's customs aren't as valid as ours.”

Joaquim remained silent as the cab rattled on up the street toward the Torre dos Clérigos, then said, “I can see her point. It would be easier to argue, though, that each of you should bind yourselves under your respective traditions, rather than choosing one or the other.”

“I'll let
you
tell her that, then,” Duilio said with half a laugh.

The cab stopped near the doctor's address before Joaquim could press him further on the issue. The waiting room was empty, and the doctor's spinsterish secretary turned a sour eye on them, but eventually Dr. Esteves came to their rescue. Duilio introduced Joaquim as they followed the older man back to his office.

The doctor gestured for them to sit. “So what strange inquiries do you have for me today, gentlemen?”

Joaquim kept an eye on the doctor, trying to read his reactions. He'd asked around at the station about this doctor, and no one had heard anything ill about him. That wasn't always a reliable gauge of a man's actions.

“Have you ever heard of a book called
The Seat of Magic
?” Duilio asked.

The doctor frowned. “I've heard of it, although I've never seen a copy.”

“Do you know what it contains?”

Esteves paused halfway around his desk, his lip curling upward in distaste. “It's supposed to be the record of a doctor who tried to find the biological source of magic in various peoples and remove it.” He sat down behind his desk, heavily. “The greatest breach of ethical conduct imaginable. Do you suspect the murder of that otter girl had something to do with it?”

“There have been two other deaths,” Duilio told him. “A selkie,
who was skinned completely, and a sereia whose throat was cut out. She might have been a patient of yours, a girl named Felipa Reyna.”

The doctor's shoulders slumped and he crossed himself. “Ah, how terrible. I know the Reyna family. She came to me for her hands, about five or six years ago?”

Joaquim looked away, his mouth a narrow line. This was the man who'd cut the girl's webbing away. It had been done to protect her life, but the girl hadn't had much choice, had she?

“Has she been here since?” Duilio asked.

The doctor's expression went pensive. “I suppose it won't do any harm to divulge that at this point. She was here last week, one afternoon. A feminine concern.”

“Thursday? The day I visited?”

The doctor rose and called for his secretary to bring his agenda to him. When she'd done so, he flipped through a couple of pages of entries and laid it open for them to see. Felipa Reyna had visited the doctor that afternoon, his last patient.

Joaquim spotted the name of Marina Arenias above hers. “Miss Arenias was here shortly before her and was assaulted down the street from this office. Were you aware of that?”

The doctor appeared genuinely surprised. “Was she hurt?”

“No,” Duilio said. “Inspector Tavares happened to be nearby and stopped her assailant. She was more frightened than anything else.”

“And was Miss Reyna taken from near here as well? Is that what you're thinking?”

“We don't know,” Joaquim said. “How many doctors in the city treat nonhumans?”

“I honestly can't say. It's not something we talk about, for obvious reasons.”

Joaquim didn't doubt that answer. “Do you know of any doctors who might show an interest in procedures like those outlined in that book?”

Esteves appeared taken aback. “You suspect a
doctor
is responsible for this?”

Joaquim didn't back down. “The officer who received the girl's body noted that the cuts on her throat were neatly done with a sharp implement.”

The doctor's mouth pursed. “Would it be possible for me to see the bodies?”

“The otter girl has been buried, and the selkie given to the sea,” Duilio said.

“And Felipa Reyna was buried this morning at the Prado do Repouso,” Joaquim said.

Esteves shook his head. “Well, then, I suppose not. As to the book you mentioned, I can't recall anyone offhand who showed an inordinate interest in the topic. I can make some discreet inquiries, gentlemen, but I don't want to arouse the attention of the Special Police.”

Duilio rose. “That's all we can ask. Thank you for your help, Doctor.”

When they headed out of the office, the doctor walked along with them. “I'm on my way to the cemetery myself,” he said, “so I'll lay some flowers on Miss Reyna's grave as well.”

A chill went down Joaquim's spine. “The cemetery?”

“A friend of mine passed a couple of days ago,” he said. “His funeral is today.”

Duilio glanced over at Joaquim, lips pursed.

Joaquim knew that expression. There was something
important
about this. “Who, sir?”

“Dr. Teixeira,” Esteves said. “You've met him, Inspector. You hired him to perform an autopsy last week.”

That can't be a coincidence, can it?
“How did he die?” Joaquim asked. “He seemed in good health.”

“In his sleep,” Esteves told them. “It happens sometimes. The heart gives out. If you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I don't want to be late.”

With a few words to his nurse, Esteves escorted them out his
front door and locked it behind him. Joaquim walked toward the spot where Marina Arenias had been assaulted, waiting there for Duilio to catch up. The empty lot smelled faintly of urine and the gravel was rutted with wheel tracks now. “Dr. Teixeira's death is the first clear tie between these two cases,” he said when Duilio reached him. “Could it be a coincidence?”

Duilio scuffed the sole of his patent shoe on the pile of cobbles lying to one side. “I don't have much faith in coincidence, Joaquim.”

There were a lot of things Duilio didn't have faith in. Joaquim didn't bother to say that.

“Speaking of coincidence, what were you doing on this street that afternoon?” Duilio asked suddenly. “When Miss Arenias was attacked.”

“Walking home. I'd been making inquiries about Gita's abductors.”

“So you wouldn't have been walking down this street in time to help Miss Arenias if you hadn't been investigating Gita's murder,” Duilio pointed out. “Fate, perhaps?”

Joaquim licked his lips. “I've asked myself if she might have
called
me.”

Duilio peered down the crowded street as pedestrians wove their way about them. “Did anyone other than you run to her aid?”

“No,” Joaquim said.

“Marina Arenias didn't use her
call
, then, not if you were the only man who responded.”