The Seat of Magic (26 page)

Joaquim surveyed the overgrown vegetation in the court created between the backs of houses on different streets. “We need to talk about that.”

Duilio looked at him expectantly. “What?”

“I left seminary because of this,” he said. “Because of her—Marina Arenias.”

“That was a decade ago,” Duilio protested. “You didn't know her.”

“Exactly,” Joaquim said. “Father Santiago doubted my vocation.
He asked me to meditate on why I wanted to enter the priesthood. So I did, for three days. I'm not sure I achieved enlightenment, but I did dream. Of a woman, so I decided I must want a wife and children more than I wanted to be a priest. I joined the police instead.”

“Ah.” Duilio folded his arms loosely over his chest, prepared to wait.

“I never thought they were real, Duilio—
the dreams
. Just wishful thinking. But I wondered if I would ever meet a woman who lived up to those memories.” Joaquim laughed, and then was tempted to cry. He'd known forever, hadn't he? But he didn't know how to say it to Duilio, not when Duilio was his closest friend and he'd lied to him all these years, even without intent. “I thought for a minute that my heart had stopped, Duilio. I couldn't breathe. It was so hard to believe she was real.”

Duilio stared at him, waiting.

Joaquim rubbed a hand down his face, gathering his nerve. “It was
her
, Duilio. The woman from my dreams. Marina Arenias—every strand of hair, every eyelash, perfectly in place. The color of her skin, the sun and shadow. It wasn't only her that I'd dreamed. It was this alleyway with that pile of cobbles, the smell in the air that afternoon, the wheel marks. The way she was tugging on her gloves. Everything was exactly how I remembered it from my dream so long ago.”

Joaquim wished he knew what Duilio was thinking. He forced his eyes to meet Duilio's. “Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Duilio laid one hand on his shoulder, his expression somber. “That you're a seer, which means you're actually my brother, not my cousin?” he asked, then grinned. “I can't imagine any brother I'd rather have. I certainly get along better with you than Alessio or Erdano.”

Joaquim laughed despite himself, the weight of worry lifting from his shoulders. He'd feared that Duilio would deny his claim or perhaps protest that he was wrong in his conclusions. How foolish that had been; Duilio always took everything in stride.

“Are you hungry?” Duilio asked then. “Because it's not that far to the café. We could have a nice lunch before meeting with Anjos at the morgue.”

How like Duilio to think of eating before visiting a morgue
. “Sounds like a good idea.”

O
riana had ink stains on her fingertips, the result of writing out invitations for Lady Ferreira that morning. There had been invitations for the three gentlemen of the Tavares family, Rafael Pinheiro, her own father and sister, Lady Pereira de Santos, and one for Lady Ana as well. If everyone showed up, the numbers would be uneven, but Lady Ferreira said they would manage.

She'd been happy to do the writing for Lady Ferreira, whose hands still ached. It gave her something to do other than pacing the floor in her bedroom. Her mind was still whirling with the implications of her father's words. What was she supposed to do? Her tenure in the Ministry of Intelligence was over—she no longer even had citizenship. And even if Maria Melo was still in Northern Portugal, the woman had contacts within the ministry who hadn't flinched at destroying lives to keep her secrets.

It was a relief when Duilio returned to the house, Joaquim Tavares with him. “How did your discussion with your father go?” Duilio crossed the sitting room to her side. “Any bloodshed?”

She sighed when she noted the new bruise forming on Duilio's chin. Evidently the infante favored his left hand. “Nothing I want to discuss at the moment. I understand a few things better now.”

“That's good, isn't it?” He tilted his head trying to meet her eyes. “Or not?”

Oriana lowered her eyes. “Let it alone for now.”

He would hate that. He liked to talk about things, but she simply wasn't ready. She hadn't decided what she was going to do about all of this. Or about him. She couldn't draw him into this mess.

He acquiesced. “We are supposed to meet Anjos and his team at the morgue at three. I need to change shirts, but after that we could walk on up there.”

Strange that a visit to a morgue sounds like an acceptable diversion.
Oriana cast a glance at the table where her invitations were neatly stacked now, finished. “Let me get my mitts, and I'll be right back down.”

A few minutes later the three of them were walking along the Street of Flowers in the sunshine. As they made their way up the steep street, Duilio regaled her with the tale of his continued inability to keep the infante from bruising his face, and then discussed their brief meeting with Dr. Esteves.

“If Castigliani's journal was left on my people's islands,” Oriana said softly, glancing about to make certain she wasn't overheard, “I don't see how human doctors would have heard of it in the first place. It would take a scholar to translate it.”

“Once an idea's written down,” Duilio said, “it's damnably hard to eradicate. Something always escapes destruction. One copy hitting human shores would be all it needed.”

Like her mother's journal. One single idea in it had provoked a backlash against her family, even though no one in the Ministry of Intelligence had ever seen the thing. They'd only had her father's assertion that it even existed. And yet . . .

“The library at Alexandria was destroyed,” Joaquim pointed out. “Countless texts were wiped out, never to be seen again.”

“But that was before printing presses made multiple copies available to the common man,” Duilio argued. “Now everyone can read them.”

“Only two out of ten men in this country are literate, Duilio, if
that. For the common man it's all still rumor and hearsay. They have to lean on the word of their so-called betters.”

They'd gone beyond the specific text in question, Oriana decided, and were going to start arguing about rights and education now. She only half listened as the two men discussed the country's educational system. Fortunately the morgue wasn't much farther and soon they walked through the doors into the unpleasant air of the small building. Oriana pressed the side of her hand under her nose, not caring how improper that looked.

Inspector Gaspar was already there. Duilio went to greet him, leaving Joaquim standing with her.

Officer Gonzalo came to lock the door behind them, but paused when a carriage stopped before the door. Oriana watched as Inspector Anjos opened the carriage door and stepped down and turned to help the other passenger out. Miss Vladimirova took his hand and descended from the carriage, draped and veiled in black as always. And as it had the first time she'd encountered the woman, a shiver made its way down Oriana's spine. Her throat tightened and her heart began to race.

Miss Vladimirova was
unnatural
and clearly her mind recognized that fact. Oriana took a few deep breaths in an effort to quell her panicked reaction as Anjos greeted them politely. The man looked even more tired than the last time she'd seen him, a couple of weeks ago at the Carvalho house.

“Now, shall we get this in the open?” he asked, his eyes on Gaspar.

Gaspar gestured for them all to follow Officer Gonzalo. Inside the same back room where Felipa Reyna had lain only two days ago, two tables were set up side by side, and on each lay a fabric-draped body. Oriana pressed her finger under her nose again. Officer Gonzalo went to the first table, cast a quick glance at Anjos as if to ask permission, and then carefully folded back the sheet. A young woman lay there, her dark hair still pinned up and her eyes closed.

Gaspar crossed to that first body, gesturing for Anjos and his black-draped companion to approach.

Duilio laid a hand over Oriana's on his sleeve and whispered, “Stay here.”

No need to worry.
She had no intention of going over there.

Anjos led Miss Vladimirova to the table. Oriana couldn't make out the petite woman's features since she went so heavily veiled, but she didn't recoil from the sight of the body. Miss Vladimirova reached out one black-gloved hand and touched the dead girl's bare shoulder.

“You think I did this, Gaspar?” Miss Vladimirova asked. No emotion tinged her voice, reinforcing her strangeness.

“Did I say that?” Gaspar asked.

Anjos lifted his gaze to Gaspar's, accusation in his tired eyes. Apparently Gaspar believed Miss Vladimirova was involved in the deaths, but Anjos didn't agree.

“You wouldn't have brought me to see a corpse otherwise,” she went on. “There are no marks, but I can feel it on her. She was killed by a healer. Her life didn't drain slowly away as it usually does, but was taken all at once.”

“So our killer
is
a healer?” Duilio asked.

“There are things other than a healer that can do this,” she said, “but this has the feel of a healer about it. A signature,
more or less.”

“I've talked to every healer I could find in the city,” Gaspar said. “None of them had enough strength to do this.”

“Then you haven't found her yet,” Anjos said, a hint of irritation in his normally civil tone.

Gonzalo covered the body and moved to the other table to reveal a second woman, older than the first. Miss Vladimirova confirmed the second had died the same way. Then she walked back in the direction of the receiving area. Oriana tried not to draw back as the woman neared, but a chill went through her anyway. She caught the scent of river water when Miss Vladimirova passed, strangely out of place in this room.

“You should know,” Duilio said as the others moved away from the two tables, “that the doctor who did the autopsy for us last week apparently died in his sleep Thursday night.”

Anjos paused at the threshold of the anteroom. “When did you learn this?”

“We went to speak with another doctor this morning about our case,” Joaquim said. “He was leaving to attend the funeral.”

Gaspar indicated that Anjos should go on into the anteroom, and they all followed. There were only two chairs—one on each side of Gonzalo's desk—so Oriana remained standing while Miss Vladimirova sat. She didn't want to approach the black-veiled woman anyway.

Anjos lit a cigarette and turned his gaze on Joaquim. “Can I assume you suspect the same killer was involved?”

“It could be a coincidence,” Joaquim began.

“But my gift tells me we'll learn it's not,” Duilio finished for him.

“If our healer has been killing nameless women”—Gaspar held up one hand to forestall Joaquim's protest of that terminology—“women with relatively no status in society, I should have said, why suddenly switch to the doctor? How could she have known that he performed the autopsy?”

“I spoke to a healer I know afterward,” Duilio said reluctantly, “although I don't recall mentioning either the doctor or autopsy to her.”

Gaspar leaned forward. “Which one?”

Duilio sighed, but said, “Mrs. Rodriguez, on Fonte Taurina Street.”

“It's not her,” Gaspar said quickly. “I checked her off my list.”

Oriana saw the tension leave Duilio's shoulders. He would have hated to have gotten his source in trouble. “Could the doctor have told someone himself?” she asked.

“That's our best likelihood,” Anjos said. “We'll start with the doctor's records, speak to his nurse, and find out if he did anything out of his normal patterns. Do you want the doctor's body exhumed?” he asked Joaquim.

Joaquim shook his head. “We won't gain any evidence to present to the courts.”

Anjos nodded slowly. “Pinheiro told us these cases are connected, so we should proceed as if they are. So if you'll tell me about
your
dead girls, that will give us a place to start.”

Oriana leaned back against the tiled wall, content to wait while they discussed the two cases as a group. She'd heard all of this the day before, so she found her mind drifting. Her eyes landed on Miss Vladimirova's unmoving form. The conversation went on, the gentlemen rehashing the two sets of murders. It took a few minutes before Oriana realized what was wrong—Miss Vladimirova wasn't breathing.

No, it's not an overly tight corset
. The woman was
not
breathing. Her chest didn't move at all until she was about to speak . . . then she drew in a breath, spoke, and stopped breathing again.

Oriana swallowed. The woman was supposedly a water spirit of some sort, a claim strengthened by the scent of river water that Oriana had smelled on her. She'd been interrogating officers of the Special Police, using her abilities to influence them to talk—a talent for suggestion similar to a sereia's
call
—but Oriana found the idea that they might be related repugnant. She looked away, catching Duilio's eye as she did so. One of his dark brows rose as if to ask what was wrong, but she shook her head.

“The healer who's killing our first set of victims is letting them lie where they fall,” Joaquim pointed out. “The second killer is moving the bodies from wherever he killed them, stripped and wrapped in sheets. Why not drop them in the river instead of leaving the bodies where they'll be found? There are plenty of places where that can be done without being seen.”

Anjos ground out his cigarette in an ashtray on Gonzalo's desk. “Our first killer isn't hiding anything, but the second almost appears to be making an effort to be seen. One seems to be targeting prostitutes, one nonhumans. I expect the first killer is opportunistic. The
other is deliberate in his choice of victims. So far I'm not seeing a link.”

“Only Dr. Teixeira.” Duilio glanced over at Joaquim. “He said he once observed a healer while he was at the medical college. Could we track down who that healer was?”

“We can visit the medical school in the morning,” Joaquim offered.

That seemed to serve as a plan for the next day's search. Joaquim and Gaspar worked out a few further details to assure they wouldn't be duplicating efforts. Anjos approved their idea and suggested they all leave.

Oriana stopped him. “Sir, have your people had any luck finding Maria Melo?”

“No,” he said. “It appears that entire identity was fabricated for the purpose of infiltrating the Open Hand. We don't know where she came from or where she's gone.”

Oriana took a deep breath. She had no qualms about exposing the woman—not now—but it still violated years of training. “Would it help to know she's a sereia spy?”

Anjos went still. Apparently he grasped the import of what she'd just done, revealing one of her people's spies to the police. “That's how she knew about your being a sereia in the first place, I suppose.”

No point in denying it now. “Yes.”

“Then we'll redouble our efforts to find her,” Anjos said, “but don't count on success. We've never actually set eyes on her. If she's a spy, she's likely to have disappeared into another identity. Unless we know where to start, we have nothing to go on.”

“I can talk to some people,” she offered. Surely someone among the sereia community here in the city had an idea who Maria Melo truly was.

Anjos accepted that offer gracefully, not complaining that she'd withheld information that might have helped their search for the woman in the first place.

It was possible Maria Melo hadn't figured out that she'd returned to the Golden City. Oriana suspected instead that the arrest of
any
sereia would draw attention Mrs. Melo didn't want right now. The Special Police wouldn't be kind to Mrs. Melo if they found her. They wouldn't be kind to Oriana Paredes, either, but she had friends in the Special Police now, didn't she?

“Oriana?”

Oriana realized that Duilio was holding out his arm for her to take. How long had he been standing there while she chased down the woman in her mind? Belatedly, she laid her fingertips on his arm and let him lead her out into the sunshine.

*   *   *

D
uilio sat impatiently through dinner that night. He hadn't had much time to talk to Oriana alone. He wanted to know what her father had said that had brought about her change of heart, but Joaquim had wanted to talk to his mother first, so Oriana had gone meekly off to her bedroom to change for dinner. That worried him.