The Golden City

inherited was an irrational fear of fire.

Duilio squeezed his eyes shut. Don’t panic. Deal with this.

He opened his eyes again and tried to take stock. Flames already coursed around the edge of the room, feeding off the scattered papers. His eyes flicked around the room, hunting for some escape.

Damnation! How had the fire grown so fast? He couldn’t get near the door. Someone had splashed kerosene all over that wall.

But there were still the front windows. The fire had already reached the couch in front of them, but hadn’t yet touched the curtains. He could get out that way. He had to, or else the fire would trap him in the narrow bedroom.

Duilio ran back to the bed and stripped off the blanket, then returned to beat at the flames on the couch. Bits of charred paper flew up with the vigor of his actions, glowing on the edges. He took a deep breath, tasted ash, and started coughing. The flames roared, loud enough to drown out the sound of his harsh breathing. He cursed under his breath.

Calm down.

Covering his mouth with one sleeve, Duilio doggedly beat out the flames on the couch. He grabbed the top edge of the couch and flipped the whole thing over, sending more sparks into the air. But the backside of the couch wasn’t afire yet. He got behind it and shoved it over, away from the window. He grabbed the curtains and drapes and yanked them down, all in one heave, and tossed them over onto the upturned couch.

He wiped ash and sweat from his face, then pressed close to the dust-clouded window to peer out. There were a dozen or more people in the street below, pointing and crying out. They weren’t looking at him.

A huge groan came from the floor below his feet, and he knew.

The woodworker’s shop on the first floor was ablaze as well—a place likely filled with stains and resins and other chemicals that would burn hot. For a second his breath stilled. A cold sweat broke out all over his body.

Someone intended to bake him alive.

CHAPTER 17

Duilio looked out the window. It couldn’t be more than fifteen feet to the cobbles.

He grappled with the latch and finally got it open, the windowpane swinging out and banging against the stop. That caused another round of cries as glass sprinkled down to the cobbles below. Smoke began to billow over his shoulder, and Duilio glanced back to see that the flames had almost reached his feet. He had no time left.

He climbed over the sill and a second later dangled by his hands from the window’s frame. Voices urged him to drop, so he did so. He landed on his feet, but felt that jolt through his very teeth. People were still crying out, and there seemed to be chaos about him in the street.

Then water splashed all over him from behind, startling him out of his numbness. “What in Hades’ name are you doing?”

The man holding the bucket clapped Duilio’s shoulder. “Back of your coat was on fire.”

Duilio instinctively craned his neck, trying to look at the back of his coat. “Thank you,” he mumbled as the man strode away.

Something exploded in the shop then, scattering the pedestrians. Duilio backed away with the rest of the crowd. Another barrel or keg blew, this time shattering the front windows, and black smoke began to roil out of them, joining the stream that came from the upper floor. The Corps of Public Safety fought most of the fires in the city, but Duilio didn’t think they would get there in time to save any part of the building.

I should not be here when they arrive, he thought with sudden clarity. His sodden and apparently burned jacket would place him as having been in the apartment. He didn’t want to try to explain his presence there to them. Pulling up the collar of his coat, he eased away through the crowd, heading in the direction of the church at the end of the street. He felt again the sense of being watched, but was too tired to care at the moment.

Duilio settled on the stone steps before the church. His coat was ruined, so he tugged it off, rolled it up, and tucked it under his arm. His shirt and waistcoat were ruined as well, but weren’t as bad. He didn’t care, save that Marcellin was going to have a fit of apoplexy over this. A weak laugh worked its way out of his chest, then turned into a cough.

“You need someone to watch your back,” a man said in a voice that suggested they’d been chatting for a couple of hours. “That time he almost got you.”

Duilio looked to his right. Leaning against the stone wall that surrounded the church’s grounds was the man who’d thrown water on him when he’d hit the ground. The man’s dark skin and short-cropped black hair hinted he might be from one of the old African colonies. His eyes were an odd shade of smoky green, hard to mistake should he turn up again. His suit looked to be well made, although of a foreign cut. Oddly, Duilio’s gift had given him no warning about this man’s approach, as if he wasn’t there at all.

Duilio rose, keeping the coat under his arm. He didn’t want to lose it—or the journal in one of the pockets. “Who almost got me?”

“Donato Mata,” the man said. “Do you know him?”

“No,” Duilio admitted. The name didn’t mean anything to him. “And you are?”

“Inspector Gaspar, Special Police,” the man said.

A frisson of worry slid down Duilio’s spine . . . but it wasn’t his gift warning him. It was simply the normal reaction to speaking with a member of that body. The man spoke in accented Portuguese—from Cabo Verde, if Duilio placed it correctly. The inspector extended a card in one gloved hand. “What exactly were you doing up there? Why is he after you?”

Duilio took the card. It bore the man’s name, Miguel Gaspar, along with his seal and a stated rank of special investigator. It looked impressive, but it wouldn’t be difficult to find a printer to falsify cards. Despite his doubts, Duilio tucked the thing into the damp folds of his coat. The rank put this man above Joaquim. Even above Captain Rios, Duilio suspected. “What did you mean when you said he almost got me this time?”

The man fixed his gaze on Duilio’s face. “He took a shot at you last night in a tavern. I assume your gift warned you in time, although it didn’t do you much good today.”

Duilio felt his breath go short again. Did the Special Police know he was a seer? That couldn’t be good.

“Then again,” the man added, “setting a fire isn’t acting directly against you, which would allow your gift to miss it. Probably why he chose that method rather than a direct confrontation this time.”

“My gift?” Duilio asked.

Gaspar’s smoky green eyes narrowed. “You’re a seer, although not a particularly strong one. I suspect your selkie blood limits your gift somehow.”

His instinctive desire to take a swing at the man and run seemed a good idea now. Why was his gift not helping him? If Gaspar knew that Duilio was part selkie, then he had every right to drag Duilio down to the station and throw him in jail. But he hadn’t done so. And how did he know? The number of people who were aware of both those things was limited. “I imagine your superiors wouldn’t approve of your conversing with me if that were true.”

Gaspar smiled mildly. “There are Special Police, and then there are Special Police. And then, Mr. Ferreira,” he added, “there are special Special Police.”

While that answer didn’t precisely make sense, Duilio understood. Within any police body there were divisions. He’d not heard any rumor of such, but merely because the regular police hadn’t heard of this didn’t mean the Special Police weren’t at one another’s throats. “And what makes you think those things are true about me?”

It was a dangerous question to ask, but at this point why not chance it?

“I see it, Mr. Ferreira,” Gaspar said. “I look at people . . . and I know.”

Duilio gazed at the man leaning against the stone wall. Did he correctly understand what Gaspar had just