The Golden City

The girl stepped closer and laid graceful hands on his velvet-covered chest. She didn’t quite reach his chin. “She wore black. And white.”

His gift told him that this conversation was important, that he needed to know something this girl was telling him . . . or not telling him. He wasn’t sure what questions he needed to ask. “Were you close?” he pressed. “Did you see her face?”

Aga rubbed her cheek against his chest. “No. Wrong way.”

He wished Tigana hadn’t been in a mood to be generous. He didn’t need this sort of distraction now. Duilio set his hands on the girl’s shoulders, stepped back, and tried again. “This is important, Aga. Can you tell me anything else? Did she fall out of the boat?”

“No, it was waiting when she came up,” Aga said, her shoulders slumping.

Came up? From the houses? Why would someone come up from the houses? If they wanted a better look at them, they could ride out to the site on one of the submersible boats that sold tickets to curious folk who wished to see the work of art. He’d even gone to look at them himself. And at night it was too dark to see them anyway.

“You don’t want me?” Aga’s hands began to roam his chest, drawing Duilio’s wandering mind very firmly back to the present.

Oh, what a vexing question. His body had clearly noted the girl’s lithe form. Heaven knew she was attractive enough, and once he got her out of Erdano’s garments, the disturbing scent of male selkie would be greatly diminished. But she was part of Erdano’s harem . . . and there was a servant outside in the hall, waiting. Both factors dampened any ardor she aroused in him. “He’s my brother,” he told her. “I want to keep on his good side.”

“Why?” She sighed again, sounding petulant. “Tigana said . . .”

He held her at a distance. “All the same.”

“They said you were nice,” she added plaintively.

Oh, good Lord. The only time he’d gotten involved with any of the women from Erdano’s harem had been when he was fifteen. That was half a lifetime ago, and evidently they still talked about him being “nice.” Well, it could be worse. “I’m sorry, Aga, but I need to sleep.”

That only made him sound like an old man.

Her lower lip thrust out in a pout. “What do I do?”

“There’s a room down the hall where Erdano sleeps when he’s here. You can stay there for the rest of the night or go back to the boat if you wish.”

Her face took on a calculating look. “Is the handsome man from the boat still here?”

Duilio resisted the urge to laugh at her eager tone. Poor Joao. “I believe so.”

The corners of her pretty lips lifted. “Is he nice?”

Duilio wasn’t going to speculate about whether Joao was nice. “You would have to ask him, I suppose.”

“I’ll do that,” she said brightly, then her brows drew together. “Do I leave now?”

“Can you think of anything else to tell me about the woman in the water?”

Aga took a deep breath and appeared to be thinking hard, her lips pinched together. She finally pronounced, “She had webbed hands.”

Like a thunderclap inside his brain, Duilio knew.

That was the fact he’d been fishing for. His gift confirmed it.

A woman with webbed hands. Duilio set his own hand under the girl’s elbow and drew her back toward his bedroom door. When he opened it he found a very flustered-looking Joao right outside. The young man must have been listening at the keyhole.

“Sir,” Joao said quickly, “you asked me to wait.”

Seeing the young man’s flushed features, Duilio held in a laugh. “Yes, Joao, I did. Can you escort Miss Aga to Mr. Erdano’s room at the far end on the left? Or back to the yacht, if she wishes.”

Joao’s eyes slid toward the girl. “Yes, sir.”

Recalling the girl’s request, Duilio slipped off his dressing gown, bundled it up, and handed it to her. “In trade for the information, Aga.”

She petted the bundle of velvet like a pup. “Pretty.”

She didn’t even look back, but happily followed the boatman away, the light of his lamp fading as they went down the hallway. Duilio shut his door, content to leave his little problem in Joao’s capable hands. He returned to the hearth, settled into the leather armchair, and stretched out his legs.

A woman had been out in the water, near the submerged houses. That woman had webbed hands: a sereia, not a human. Unlike selkies, who were called selkies all over Europe, the sereia bore different names in other countries. The French called them sirenes, the English mermaids, and the Germans knew them as Lorelei. No matter how they were named, they weren’t allowed in the Golden City.

Selkies weren’t either, but the ban hadn’t ever kept his mother or Erdano—or him, for that matter—out. For all Duilio knew, there could be dozens of selkies living in the Golden City. Unlike the sereia, once they’d shed their pelts they were almost indistinguishable from humans. Without a selkie’s pelt, one couldn’t prove that they weren’t human. The sereia’s webbed hands, their gills, and the scale patterning of their skin were all elements of their nature that they couldn’t put aside.

Duilio laced his fingers together and propped his chin atop them. He could recall seeing sereia walking the streets of the city when he was young, in the days before the prince’s ban. Although they kept their distance from human society, a few had owned houses in the city or in Vila Nova de Gaia across the river. They had traded with the locals, but not any longer.

When Prince Fabricio came into power following his father’s demise, he had issued a proclamation banning all sea folk from the Golden City on pain of death. He’d been told by his seers he would one day be killed by one of the sea folk. Duilio had his doubts. He found it hard to believe a seer could reliably predict anything far into the future, and it had been almost two decades since then. Too many factors had changed in the interim.

Whatever the impetus behind the prince’s order, for the first few years following its issuance the Special Police—whose explicit mandate was to carry out the orders of the prince, whether or not those orders served the best interests of the people—had obediently rounded up every sereia or selkie they could find, along with many of those who protected them. Sympathizers had been jailed and their property seized. The sea folk themselves had been executed. Otterfolk rarely came into the city, and most selkies slipped in and out, interested in little beyond a night’s pleasure, so the majority of those executed had been sereia. And although Duilio hadn’t heard of an execution in the past few years, most citizens believed the Special Police still carried them out, just not publicly. There was actually an ambassador from the Ilhas das Sereias—the islands of the sereia—at the prince’s court, but the man lived under house arrest at the palace. And while Duilio had long suspected there might be sereia hiding in the city, he hadn’t been sure until he met Miss Paredes.

He closed his eyes, remembering that day. It had been a brief encounter, back in the spring. Everyone else had watched the stunning Lady Isabel Amaral. Duilio’s attention had been captured instead by the lady’s companion, a woman somewhere near his age, modestly dressed and attractive, although he wouldn’t have called her beautiful. Pretty, perhaps, but nothing special. Well, she had exceptionally nice lips, lips made to kiss. He recalled admiring her tiny waist and rounded hips, although that might simply be her corset. Her flat-brimmed straw hat had cast a shadow across her face, but as she shifted the parasol she carried to better shade her mistress’ alabaster skin, he’d noticed her dark eyes.

His breath had gone still. He had known, in that way his gift worked, that she was more than just a hired companion. She was special. That had been enough to make Duilio look again.

And for the six months since that brief meeting, his gift had kept telling him the woman was important. He didn’t know how, exactly, but he didn’t take the feeling lightly. He’d watched her from a distance. He bribed a servant in the Amaral household to discover her given name, Oriana. He’d investigated her background. Before becoming a lady’s companion, she’d worked in a dressmaker’s shop. He discovered little else. It was as if she hadn’t existed before then.

He’d often attended the same social events as Lady Isabel and her companion, even if he didn’t travel in the Amarals’ elevated stratum of society. They were old aristocracy, while the Ferreiras