The Golden City

Silva laughed aloud. “Mata? You think I’m giving him orders? You don’t understand what’s going on at all, do you? Playing policeman again—I should have known. What a waste! If all that money had come to me instead, as it should have, I wouldn’t be spending my time hunting for missing servants.”

Duilio gazed at Silva wide-eyed, trying very hard to look stupid. The man clearly knew something about Mata. There was no telling what else he knew. “Missing servants?”

Silva tilted his head. “How did you find Miss Paredes first? I planned to have her in my quiver of arrows, so to speak. But, alas, now she’s warming your bed, when I would have been using her as bait.”

He hoped Miss Paredes wouldn’t be offended, but he didn’t intend to argue with Silva about that insult to her. “Bait?”

Silva patted him on the shoulder in a fatherly fashion. Duilio was hard-pressed not to sweep the man’s hand aside. He did his best to ignore it.

“You see, pup,” Silva said, “I don’t know exactly what the Open Hand is doing out there, but when she escaped them, your fishling lover changed the balance of prophecy. The prophecy that Fabricio is destined to die at the hands of the sea folk? Every day that prophecy is growing stronger and stronger.” Silva smiled with false affection, his hand heavy on Duilio’s shoulder. “So, keep in mind that while she’s powdering your sainted mother’s cheeks and handing her fans, your little fishling is planning to kill your lawful ruler. That makes you treasonous just for harboring her in your house.”

Silva dropped his intrusive grasp and strolled past him toward the door.

The Open Hand? Duilio hoped nothing showed on his face. He clenched his hands behind his back. Silva had just spilled far more information than he’d expected, which meant at best it was poisoned. It was more likely all false.

“By the by, I wasn’t going to seduce the little one,” Silva said as he went. “Too bland for my tastes. But the older girl might prove interesting. A bit of fire in that one.” He paused at the door to see if Duilio was attending, then added, “Or perhaps I’ll wait until after you marry her.” With dramatic grace worthy of the theater, Silva swept out of the library.

Duilio closed his eyes. He could not begin to express how much he hated talking to that man. He took a couple of calming breaths, afraid that if he spoke to anyone too soon he would bark at them. Then he turned back to look for the two women who’d heard every word of that exchange. They still stood next to the couch, less than ten feet away.

Miss Paredes regarded him with wide, haunted eyes. “It’s not true,” she said softly.

“I know,” he said, although he didn’t know anything of the sort. She could be an assassin. It was possible, but the very fact that Silva asserted it made Duilio think it unlikely. If she’d posed a direct threat to his prince, Silva would never have let her go. “I take everything he says with a great deal of skepticism.”

Miss Paredes looked relieved, her shoulders losing their tightness.

“Well, I found that informative,” the Lady said, apparently unfazed by all the distractions of Silva’s conversation. “Let’s have a look at that book.”

Duilio located the book Silva had set back on the shelf. It stuck out from the others just enough that he could readily spot it. He pulled it out, noting that no title appeared on the spine.

“Please hand it to me,” the Lady said. “Carvalho may have given me permission to use his library, but he didn’t extend that to you, Mr. Ferreira.”

He had no way to verify that, so he didn’t see any point in arguing. Duilio handed it over.

She opened it out and flipped through a few pages in the center. Then she shook her head. “I wonder how many times Silva’s managed to get into this house. I suspect he’s stealing most of his better prophecies. I don’t know if you’re aware, but Silva isn’t a particularly strong seer. Stronger than you, Mr. Ferreira, but nothing like Abreu or Gardineiro.” She turned the book so that Duilio could see the handwritten pages. “Whose prophecies are written in this volume. This belongs to the city’s Freemasons and is not for public consumption—the reason Carvalho keeps it locked away. I will suggest a more secure arrangement for the future.”

Miss Paredes had come closer, simply listening. Duilio hoped she was keeping track. It would give him the luxury of having someone with whom to discuss this bewildering evening. He turned back to the Lady. “Are you a member of the Freemasons?”

The Freemasons sought enlightenment in all things, and someone who studied the practice of witchcraft in the abstract might fit well into their ranks. But they didn’t have female members here, even if they did in France and in the Americas.

“No,” she said. “Carvalho is my contact, should I need information from them, but I am not a part of any of their organizations.”

That was a nicely unequivocal statement. “What about the Open Hand? Who are they?”

“A secret society?” the Lady said musingly. “So far we’ve identified five officers within the Special Police who seem to be members of this Open Hand, Mata among them. There have to be others outside the Special Police, but we don’t know yet who they are. At this point, we don’t know exactly what their goal is, either.”

Not very helpful. All Special Police officers bore the sigil of an open hand on their caps, a symbol modeled after a stone carving on the gate of the palace itself. It seemed only logical that this group might be found within their ranks.

“I find it interesting that your uncle handed that name to you on a platter,” she added.

Ah, the Lady was aware of his relationship with the man. Duilio suspected she’d chosen those words to inform him of that. It increased the likelihood that she actually had known Alessio. “I did too,” he said. “I’ve never heard that name before tonight.”

“But he has,” she pointed out. “Silva is like a spider, Mr. Ferreira, and his web touches on everything. He has friends everywhere, if you can call them friends. I suspect most of them tolerate him because he’s pulling their strings; no more.”

That was Silva’s special talent: twisting people’s words and intentions, provoking them to distrust one another. Getting them to dance to his tune. It was gratifying to hear someone else say it aloud. “So he wanted to assure the police heard that name, through me,” Duilio surmised. “Why would he use Miss Paredes as bait?”

The Lady’s pale eyes flicked toward her. “Most practitioners of witchcraft are very superstitious, Mr. Ferreira. A spell of this complexity—and I suspect there’s much more of it than what appears on the surface of that table—it does not require a specific victim, save for the apparent fact that they lived in that house. However, if the witch involved wants to go back and fix this spell, fix the fact that one of the intended victims escaped, they will prefer strongly to recover the original victim.”

Miss Paredes’ eyes lowered to the carpet.

“So this Open Hand will be looking for her,” Duilio said, “to try again.”

“It’s very likely.” The Lady turned to Miss Paredes. “I would keep my distance from the Special Police, Miss Paredes, or you might be rejoining the other maid you mentioned in that house. I want you to appreciate the danger you stand in.”

Miss Paredes’ hands were shaking now. “Not a maid, Lady. It was Isabel Amaral, my mistress. She died there.”

For the first time, the Lady appeared disconcerted. “I thought you said they were servants.”

“Until last Thursday night,” Duilio said, sparing Miss Paredes from repeating it. “Lady Isabel was planning on eloping, and decided that she and Miss Paredes should dress as housemaids to escape notice.”

“Whose idea was that?” the Lady asked.

“She seemed to have come up with it on her own,” Miss Paredes offered hesitantly.

“I don’t trust anything that convenient,” the Lady said. “If I understand correctly, they’ve chosen dozens of victims already, and managed to cover their tracks well enough that the police didn’t catch on. Miss Paredes, you were the one person in the Amaral household not likely to die if put in the water, yet they chose you, a sereia? Does that not strike you as an unlikely twist of fate? It makes me suspect you were there intentionally.”

Miss Paredes looked as haunted as she had when Silva implied she was an assassin. “I am not in league with them.”