The Golden City (31 page)

What was she thinking, coming to a man’s bedroom in the dark of the night?

“I need to show you something,” she blurted out before he mi
st
ook her intention. She held out the journal, opened to the diagram.

He took it, eyes fixed on the page. “They’ve altered the verse.”

“What?” She leaned closer to peer down at it over his arm.

He seemed to shake himself. He
st
epped out into the hallway, closed the door to his bedroom, and went and turned up the one light in the hall. “Come here.”

Oriana joined him under the hissing light fixture.

“That la
st
word in the Latin verse,” he said, pointing. “See? It should be
Domino
, but they’ve exchanged that for
regi
.”

“King?” she guessed.

“Exa
ct
ly,” he said. “That’s probably what gave Espinoza the idea that they wanted to make Prince Fabricio into a king. I guess the writing in the next ring is magic runes, but what in Hades’ name is this business in the center?”

Oriana flicked her braid back over her shoulder. “I hoped you might know.”

The center symbol was a grouping of perpendicular lines forming two Ts, one large, one small, with the tops parallel to each other. Between those were two parallel lines, one short, one long. And under one arm of one T there was a dash—or rather a minus sign, she suspe
ct
ed, since the other T had a
plus
sign under one arm. She pointed at that. “Could it be . . . mathematical?”

He ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it ju
st
a bit. “I don’t know. But I know someone who would. Do you mind if I take this? I’ll show it to him fir
st
thing in the morning.”

As if the journal is mine
. “Not at all, sir.”

An uncomfortable silence fell. It was one thing for her to sneak out to report to Heriberto at night if needed. It was another thing to wake Duilio Ferreira in the middle of what mu
st
have been a sound sleep. He was a gentleman, and gentlemen lived by very specific codes of condu
ct
. She’d had to
st
udy those rules before coming to Portugal. Meeting in the middle of the night with a woman not his wife—in his nightclothes—broke several of them. That was why he’d closed his bedroom door; he didn’t want to invite impropriety.

She glanced down and noted that his feet were bare. They were nice feet. His dressing gown covered him to midcalf, and given that she’d seen him shirtless a few days before, she’d now seen almo
st
as much of him as would be bared should he wear a pareu—little more than a length of fabric wrapped about the wai
st
—as mo
st
of the males on her islands did. She could almo
st
pi
ct
ure him wearing one.

She felt her cheeks growing warm.
What a
st
range thought!
She wasn’t certain why that image had popped into her head.

“I couldn’t find my slippers,” he said in an apologetic voice, perhaps believing she was offended. “My valet has hidden them from me.”

Oriana almo
st
laughed then, at the image of Duilio Ferreira henpecked by his own valet. Of course, the elderly Frenchman
was
very snooty. She drew up the hem of her borrowed dressing gown to show her own silver feet. “I cannot reproach you, sir. By the way, are they black felt slippers, rather worn ones, with gold embroidery on the uppers?”

That got Mr. Ferreira’s attention. “Yes.”

“They’re atop the high cabinet in the servants’ workroom,” she told him. “I wondered what those were doing there. I’ll see if I can retrieve them for you tomorrow.”

He took one of her hands in his own and lifted it to kiss her bare fingers. “I would be forever indebted to you.”

It was done in a joking tone, so she knew better than to read anything into that ge
st
ure. He let go of her hand with acceptable readiness and
st
epped back, the journal tucked under one arm. “Thank you, Miss Paredes.”

She headed toward her own room but turned back. Duilio Ferreira
st
ood at his own door, apparently watching to be certain she made it there safely. Oriana took a deep breath. “The woman called Maria Melo? She’s a sereia. A spy, but
much
higher in rank than I . . . or my ma
st
er, evidently.”

His lips pressed together as if he recognized the seriousness of what she’d ju
st
done. She’d exposed a member of her own government. She’d committed treason, although no one would ever learn of it. Duilio Ferreira would never betray her confidence. And she felt worlds better for having alerted someone else, someone other than Heriberto. It was as if a weight had lifted from her shoulders.

“Do you think she’s the woman you saw at the church?” he asked after a moment.

Oriana shrugged. “I don’t know, but I can’t imagine why anyone else would be watching me. My ma
st
er pointed out that she can’t afford to let the Open Hand recapture me. That would endanger her mission.”

Mr. Ferreira licked his lips. “Do you under
st
and, then, why I had Gu
st
avo follow you?”

Yes, he’d worked out that possibility—that she was in peril from both the Open Hand
and
the saboteur—when it hadn’t even occurred to her. She was clearly in far deeper waters than she knew how to handle. She nodded. “I hadn’t thought it through.”

“So I’m forgiven for my interference?”

As if he needed her forgiveness. “Of course, sir.” With a nod, she made her way to her bedroom and opened the door.

“Miss Paredes?” he called after her. “Is that even your name?”

Oriana paused on the threshold of her bedroom, bemused. Isabel had never thought to ask that que
st
ion. After less than a week Duilio Ferreira seemed more of a friend than Isabel had ever been. “Yes, it is.”

He smiled. “Good night, then, Miss Paredes.”

“Good night, sir.” She went inside her room and closed the door.

He’d said once he would like to visit her people’s islands. Out of curiosity, that was all he’d meant. As a touri
st
. But it would be intere
st
ing to see how he adapted to her people’s ways. Of any human man she’d met so far, he was the one mo
st
likely to be able to pull it off.

SATURDAY, 4 OCTOBER 1902

D
uilio left the house before breakfa
st
with the journal tucked under his arm. He caught a tram heading toward the parish of Massarelos and got off in time to head down Campo Alegre Street toward the Tavares boatyard. When Joaquim’s father had left the sea to pursue boatbuilding, Joaquim hadn’t chosen to enter the nascent family business, but his younger brother, Cri
st
iano, had. Now twenty and ju
st
returned that summer from the university in Coimbra, Cri
st
iano possessed a genius for engineering and mathematics that Duilio could only admire.

Through the large open doors on the side, he entered the shop where the smaller boats were con
st
ru
ct
ed and was immediately surrounded by the aroma of fresh-sawn wood and resins mixed with a hint of cigarette smoke. Several workmen were currently assembling the ribs of a smallish boat, no more than thirty feet long. It was, to Duilio’s untrained eye, another of Cri
st
iano’s fascinating experimental designs. Duilio spotted Joaquim’s younger brother
st
anding above the pit where a boat was being assembled and called out his name. “Cri
st
iano!”

The young man grinned widely and came around the pit to embrace Duilio. He resembled Joaquim very little, having a more angular face, like their father’s. “Cousin, it’s been too long. How is your mother?”

“She’s well,” Duilio assured him, “although not changed from the la
st
time you saw her.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Frowning, Cri
st
iano waved at the workmen to continue their tasks and then drew Duilio to one side toward the office. “I haven’t seen Joaquim in weeks. Tell him he needs to come for dinner.”

“I’ll nag him,” Duilio promised. “Although I mu
st
admit now that I’ve come here for reasons other than social, to drag you into our inve
st
igation.”

Cri
st
iano opened the office door and ge
st
ured for Duilio to go in. A brown-haired English girl wearing dainty spe
ct
acles and an expensive tweed suit sat at one of the half-dozen wide drafting desks, a pencil behind one ear, scowling down at the page in front of her. Miss Atkinson was a scion of one of the British wine-trading families over on the Gaia shore, Duilio recalled, who’d come to work for the Tavares firm after leaving the university at Coimbra. She’d been the very fir
st
woman to
st
udy mathematics there. Although a couple of years older than Cri
st
iano, her petite size made her seem younger.

Cri
st
iano shut the office door. “Is this about the underwater houses?”

“Good guess,” Duilio said, glad he didn’t have to explain.

“Joaquim mentioned the inve
st
igation la
st
time I saw him. Many of the same principles as submersible crafts or submarines,” the young man said, “and I’ve been
st
udying those. So, how can I help?”

One of the nice things about Cri
st
iano: he didn’t wa
st
e time. Duilio opened the journal, searching for the page that held the diagram in que
st
ion. “My que
st
ion is a
ct
ually mathematical.”

“Miss Atkinson’s grasp is better than mine.” Cri
st
iano ge
st
ured for the English girl to join them.

As Duilio hunted for the right page, Miss Atkinson rose and nearly tripped when her skirt was apparently caught under the leg of the
st
ool. She jerked it free with one hand and came to join them, murmuring imprecations under her breath.

“According to this,” Duilio told them, “the houses have walls of cork, thinly covered with wood, which is why they’re
st
ill floating despite filling with water.”

“I told you those buoyancy charms were meaningless,” Cri
st
iano said a bit smugly.

“I recall.” Duilio finally located the page near the back and
st
uck on a finger to hold the place. “This is secret, so you can’t say anything about it to anyone.”

The girl nodded dutifully, and Cri
st
iano did likewise.

Duilio opened it out to the diagram. “Is this symbol in the middle something mathematical? Some bizarre formula? It has a plus sign in it.”

Cri
st
iano and the girl exchanged a glance that appeared to condemn Duilio’s ignorance. “No, sir,” she said, “that’s not mathematical.”

“It’s more my field,” Cri
st
iano offered. “Ele
ct
rochemi
st
ry. That’s a schematic for a pile.”

“A pile?”

“A voltaic pile,” Cri
st
iano said, “although it might mean a different form. The symbols aren’t
st
andardized across Europe.” At Duilio’s blank look, he continued. “It’s a form of battery, a way to convert chemical energy to ele
ct
rical energy using two disparate metals, usually silver and zinc, with saltwater as an ele
ct
rolyte—”

Duilio held up his hand. “Wait. Chemical energy converts to ele
ct
rical energy?”

“Yes,” Cri
st
iano said patiently. “The two elements in each cell . . .”

“You’re ju
st
going to say more words I don’t under
st
and. Let’s go back. This is a symbol for a battery. Two parts linked by seawater, right?”

“That’s one form,” Cri
st
iano said. “It depends on your needs. Dry-cell batteries—”

Duilio held up his hand again. “What if it converted something like
life force
?”

Miss Atkinson’s brows rose. She ca
st
a glance at Cri
st
iano that plainly said Duilio was losing his grip on sanity. At his nod, she went back to her desk. Cri
st
iano waited until she was out of earshot. “Are you serious?”

“Sadly enough, I am,” Duilio said quietly. “We think there’s one of these in each house. The middle ring is some form of necromancy. When the person touching the ring dies, their half of the diagram lights up. Two people die, it all lights up.”

Cri
st
iano gazed at him disbelievingly. “This is part of those houses? Sitting underwater? Mo
st
of them have been there for months, Duilio. Any ele
ct
rical charge would have dissipated long ago.”

“But this is magic, not ele
ct
ricity, so the rules wouldn’t be the same, would they?”

“I have no idea,” Cri
st
iano said dryly. “We don’t
st
udy magic at Coimbra.”

Duilio closed his eyes, trying to figure out what was important here. “Each house had two people in it. Two elements in a cell, you said. So how many
cells
would they need to do something? If it were ele
ct
ricity, I mean.”

“Ju
st
one,” Cri
st
iano said. “But more cells
st
acked together increase their power.”

“How many cells would you need if you were planning something big? If you already have twenty-six.”

Cri
st
iano’s lips pursed. “I guess for
st
yle’s sake I would use thirty-two.”

Hadn’t Oriana's elderly friend said that the choice of two languages in the spell was a matter of
st
yle
rather than content? “Why?”

Cri
st
iano shrugged. “Twenty-eight is your next perfe
ct
number, thirty-four is your next magic number, but I would lean toward thirty-two. It’s a power of two, which works well with current.”

Duilio didn’t know what he meant by
perfe
ct
number
or
magic number
, but he did under
st
and powers of two. “One la
st
que
st
ion. Say one of the cells was broken. Only halfway lit. What would happen then?”

“That cell would be useless. I would ju
st
try to bypass it,” Cri
st
iano said. “It depends on how the cells are wired together, but if each is discrete, as those houses are, one cell should be easy to cut out.”

“And replaced by another?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“But that wouldn’t be tidy, would it?”

“No,” Cri
st
iano said. “I would ju
st
replace the broken cell . . . or recharge it.”

Recharge.
Which would mean finding Miss Paredes and
st
icking her back inside. Duilio closed the journal and
st
uffed it back into a pocket. He wasn’t about to let that happen.

•   •   •

O
riana had enjoyed a leisurely breakfa
st
with Lady Ferreira and had ju
st
settled in the front sitting room to read to her when Mr. Ferreira
st
rode in, the leather-bound journal in his hand. He ge
st
ured for Oriana to join him at the doorway. She excused herself to the lady, who nodded vaguely, and went to go speak to him.

“It’s a battery,” he said. “The whole thing is a battery.”

Oriana glanced back at Lady Ferreira to see if she’d overheard, but the lady’s attention had wandered. “What?”

“This symbol in the middle is a schematic for a voltaic pile, which takes one sort of energy and converts it to another. But the energy isn’t converted until the conne
ct
ion between the two halves is made by . . .” He closed his eyes. “Damn! I forgot what he called it.”

“Duilinho, watch your tongue,” his mother said softly from across the room.

He a
ct
ually flushed at his mother’s mild rebuke. “My apologies, Miss Paredes. Cri
st
iano was speaking of seawater, although in this case I don’t think that would be it, since we’re dealing with magic and not silver and zinc.”

Zinc?
Hadn’t the Lady said something about
silver and gold
being used for magic? “I don’t under
st
and.”

He took a breath and visibly forced himself to slow down. “A battery doesn’t do anything until you conne
ct
all the parts and then conne
ct
it to . . . a light, for example. What if
The City Under the Sea
is the same? It’s not doing anything until everything is conne
ct
ed together and there’s something to turn on. The Lady called it a recipient, right?”

“Yes,” Oriana verified.

“So the table’s
st
oring the power,” Mr. Ferreira said with a nod. “For now. I guess the plan is to use it all up at once.”

That made sense in a twi
st
ed way. And it would neatly deal with the Lady’s concern about a lack of a recipient. The recipient ju
st
hadn’t shown up yet. “Would that be enough power to make the prince into a king?”

“I don’t know . . .” A knock sounded on the front door, and they both turned to look. Cardenas came bu
st
ling down the hallway pa
st
them in response. The butler opened the door, and a voice outside said, “I need to speak to Mr. Ferreira immediately.”

The butler drew himself up to his full height. “May I have your name?”

“Captain Pinheiro, Special Police.”

Mr. Ferreira tossed the journal onto the ground and gave Oriana a not so gentle push. When she
st
umbled back a few
st
eps, he swung the door closed, leaving him in the hallway, where the officer would surely see him.

What has he done?
Heart pounding, Oriana pressed one ear again
st
the door, hoping to hear what passed in the hallway. There wasn’t any yelling going on, nor could she hear the sound of a scuffle. She could make out low voices talking, Mr. Ferreira and this newcomer, the officer of the Special Police. She wasn’t going to be able to hear anything specific. She sighed and leaned back again
st
the wall. She would have to hope he could manage the man on his own.

•   •   •

D
uilio glared at the officer who
st
ood in his hallway. Pinheiro was alone, a
st
range choice if he was planning to drag Miss Paredes away by force. The man was near his own height, although heavier. Near his age too, at be
st
guess. “What can I do for you, Captain?”

“Anjos said it was up to me whether or not I told you, but I figure the be
st
way to get you to tru
st
me,” he began, “is the truth. The seal pelt
st
olen from your house three years ago? My father doesn’t have it. He never did, but he won’t admit that to you. He knows you—rightfully, I have to point out—blame him for its theft in the fir
st
place.”