The Golden City

Something had happened or was going to happen in the river.

He was helping the police investigate the work of art being slowly assembled near the river’s mouth, The City Under the Sea. Surely his edginess was related to that. The artist, Gabriel Espinoza, had taken into his mind to re-create the grand houses that lined the Street of Flowers. He’d anchored the first replica in the water a year ago, yet only recently had the Security Police—the regulars—begun to investigate those houses, suspecting that something more sinister than art might be driving the creation. They had immediately been ordered to close their investigation, although it was unclear from how high in the government that order had come. That had only served to pique Duilio’s interest. As a private citizen, he could still ask all the questions he wanted.

The latch of his bedroom door turned with a faint click.

Reflex more than anything else got him onto his feet before the door opened halfway. He didn’t feel the twinge of warning that usually alerted him to danger, but he snatched up the revolver that lay on his nightstand and held it ready as he turned to face the intruder. A shape stood unmoving in the doorway, startled by his sudden action. Someone else waited in the hallway with a lamp, casting the intruder into silhouette.

His visitor was female, even though she clearly wore trousers. That didn’t mean she was harmless; a woman could be as dangerous as any man. But Duilio felt sure there was no reason to fear this visitor. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “What do you want?”

“You’re him, aren’t you?” a feminine voice asked, confirming her gender. “Erdano’s brother.”

Well, any woman who knew that wasn’t likely to be a threat. Duilio lowered the revolver and set it back on the nightstand. His visitor had to be one of Erdano’s women—part of his brother’s harem.

Duilio buttoned the top button of his nightshirt and started hunting for his felt slippers. “Give me a moment, please.”

Very few humans had any inkling the Ferreira family possessed selkie blood, and those who did were polite enough not to let themselves into his bedroom in the middle of the night. It was, of course, an open secret among their employees that Duilio’s mother was a selkie. While most selkies spent their lives in seal form, every moment in the sea or on a beach, she’d been raised among humans. But for a time she had lived as a seal among the nearest harem, to the north of the mouth of the Douro River at Braga Bay. Erdano was her child by that harem’s master. He often visited the Ferreira household, but tonight he’d sent one of his women instead.

Duilio cursed under his breath. His valet had hidden his comfortable-but-worn slippers again, an unsubtle reminder that the man wanted Duilio to replace them. He gave up on finding them, crossed to the mantel, and lit the gaslight there. It wasn’t likely that bare feet would offend this woman anyway. He turned up the light enough to cast a feeble circle of illumination about the armchair and table waiting before the hearth, then looked back at the unknown woman. “Do you have a message from Erdano?”

“Yes.” She stepped into the light, revealing pointed features set in a heart-shaped face. Light brown hair fell sleekly over her shoulders. She was a lovely girl, but as soon as Duilio caught the scent of her, any thought of getting to know her better fled. Evidently before she walked barefoot into the city to find him, she’d simply borrowed some of Erdano’s garments. The clothes—a man’s trousers and shirt cinched tight by a wide belt at her waist—reeked of musk. Duilio resisted the urge to pinch his nose closed. Even though he was only half selkie himself, he had never much liked the scent of other males.

“Sir?” a voice asked from the hallway, dragging Duilio’s attention away from the girl. Joao, the young boatman who stayed down on the quay with the family’s boats, stood there, his sheepish expression evident in the light of the lamp he carried. “She came onto the yacht looking for you, sir. I thought it best to bring her here to the house. I . . . I thought she would knock, but . . .”

“It’s fine, Joao.” Duilio knew better than to expect polite behavior from this girl. Selkies didn’t have the same manners as humans. She stood gazing up at the gaslight distrustfully. “Give me a few minutes,” Duilio said, “and then you can escort her back.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man nodded quickly and withdrew into the hallway, pulling the bedroom door shut as he went.

Duilio wished Joao hadn’t closed the door. The girl wouldn’t be concerned for her reputation, but Duilio would prefer that the servants not get the wrong idea. He plucked his velvet dressing gown off the end of his bed, drew it on over his nightshirt, and belted it. Then he returned to the girl’s side, leaning closer to get her attention. “What did you need to see me about?”

“Oh. There was a woman in the water,” she said, watching the flickering gaslight as if concerned the flames might suddenly jump out of the fixture.

A woman in the water? That had to be what his gift had been yammering on about. “Where?”

The girl glanced at him for the first time. Her eyes slid toward his velvet dressing gown, her brows drawing together. “What is that?”

She’d probably spent most of her life in the sea and would have little familiarity with human luxuries. Duilio held out his arm so the girl could touch his sleeve. “It’s called velvet.”

She laid a tentative hand on his arm. The corners of her lips lifted as she ran her hand over the fabric’s nap. Her warm brown eyes were, in the gaslight’s glow, quite lovely. “Pretty. Can I have it?”

In addition to their ability to change form, most selkies purportedly had magical abilities in the area of seduction—selkie charm, it was often called. Duilio doubted this selkie was more than eighteen; young in human terms, but likely experienced in many things human girls of that age would not be. He patted her hand in his best fatherly manner. “What is your name?”

“Aga.” Her eyes flicked toward the bed and then up to meet his. “Tigana said I could stay with you. You could give me the velvet.”

God help me. Duilio pressed his lips together, weighing his response. Tigana, the queen of Erdano’s harem, had control of the harem’s many females. It wasn’t the first time she’d sent him a girl, apparently believing he must be in dire need of a woman. Duilio had never been sure of the rules of harem politics and, not wanting to cause friction between Erdano and his queen, he’d always refused the gift. Well, save for the first time. Since then he’d tried to handle it diplomatically.

“Can you tell me what you saw, Aga?” he asked, reminding the girl of the reason she’d come. “Where was the woman?”

The girl’s mouth drew down in a moue. “Over the rotting houses.”

The rotting houses were what the selkies called The City Under the Sea. The houses themselves were all new, even the oldest not showing much wear from being underwater yet. All the same, the selkies had noticed a scent of rot in the water about them—a detail that Duilio feared was linked to several reports of missing servants. They had only made a connection between those missing servants and the work of art a few weeks ago, when Lady Pereira de Santos had reported two of her maids missing only a day after the replica of her house had been mentioned in the newspapers. They’d wondered if their bodies might be hidden within those houses. Aga’s sighting firmly linked Duilio’s sense of foreboding to The City Under the Sea, but he was still missing some vital clue. “Was she swimming?”

Aga shrugged fluidly. “Yes, but then she was in the boat.”

Duilio felt his brows drawing together. When had a boat entered the conversation? “How late was this, Aga? Had the sun set?”

She sighed as if vexed by all his questions. “Only a little while ago. I swam to the mouth and then to the big boat . . .”

The “big boat” would be the Ferreira family’s yacht, moored out past the Bicalho Quay. “I see.”

“. . . and then I walked here with the man.”

Duilio chewed his lower lip as he calculated. Aga had swum out to the mouth of the Douro, almost three miles against the current, back to the yacht, and then she’d walked nearly a mile up the steep streets of the Golden City. How long had that taken her? Perhaps two hours? Three? “So, was it before the moon rose?”

“Yes.” Her tone suggested he might be dense.

Women did not swim in the river in the middle of the night. Most human women never learned to swim at all. “Did you see the woman, Aga? What did she look like?”