The Shores of Spain (6 page)

“Did she like puzzles?” he asked instead.

Oriana took a breath to speak, thought better of it, and after a moment said, “Mother used to make up puzzles for Marina to solve when she was a girl. I was never good at them, but Marina was. I wasn’t patient enough.”

He wasn’t going to dispute that claim, but Oriana did have patience when needed. “I’m having trouble imagining Marina besting you,” he said instead.

Oriana laughed ruefully. “Don’t let her guise of helplessness fool you. She lets people think she’s compliant because that’s often the easier path to getting her way, but she’s very clever, and tenacious as a crab when she wants something.”

He had to bow to her familiarity with her sister. “Well, I think this is a cipher, an encrypted message where one substitutes one letter for another. Figuring it out is primarily logic. If Cristiano were here he could break it in five minutes. It will take me considerably longer.” His young foster brother, Cristiano Tavares, had recently received his degree in mathematics from the university in Coimbra. He loved this type of challenge. “Given some time, you and I can work it out.”

“So it’s not just . . . rambling?”

“Absolutely not,” he reassured her. “I think she meant for someone to pull out all the capitalized letters and decipher the message.” He flipped through several pages each direction and saw that the odd pattern of capitalization continued throughout. “There’s quite a bit here. I’d need to figure out on which page she started this and work through to the end.”

Oriana went and sat down on the bench again, her shoulders slumping. “Thank the gods.”

He turned in his chair to face her. “Were you doubting your father’s claims?”

“Father didn’t believe there was anything specific in the journal,” she said, “but if Mother went to all this trouble, there
must
be. If we have her guidance, it will be easier to find out who feared being exposed and had her killed.”

Even better, the embedded cipher meant that the journal was more than a toothless threat. It could be used to blackmail the culprit or culprits in return for Oriana’s continued safety. Duilio hoped it didn’t come to that, but was relieved to know that possibility existed.

They’d discussed what to do with the journal once they had it in their hands. If it named a specific member of the ministry as Iria Serpa’s protector, they could advise the ministry that they had a collaborator in their midst. Unfortunately, they still weren’t sure whom to trust. Even Oriana’s aunts were suspect, since Lygia Paredes had hidden the journal from them.

Duilio closed the journal, slid the book inside his traveling desk, and locked it. Then he joined her on the bench. “Why don’t we start off in the morning?” he suggested. “We’ll go through it from the beginning and figure it out together.”

Oriana sighed and pressed her hands over her face.

Duilio slid one hand under her vest onto her bare back, her skin warm under his fingers. She didn’t want to dive into this puzzle right away. She’d wanted a few days without the worries that had plagued
her for the last few months, days without decisions to be made. “We
can
put if off for a while.”

She dropped her hands to her lap, but didn’t reply.

He leaned forward, gazing at her downturned face. If this wasn’t about the journal, her grandmother must have said something in the library that she hadn’t wanted to hear. “What else is bothering you?”

Oriana turned partway toward him. “She wants to adopt me.”

Why would that upset her?
“What does that mean?”

“She wants me to have this house, all her property. She wants me to
live
here.”

Despite being her granddaughter, Oriana couldn’t inherit anything. She was legally dead. In the eyes of the sereia government, the Oriana Paredes who’d come to Quitos to serve as Portugal’s ambassador was a completely different Oriana Paredes than the one who’d been left chained on an island to die for unstated crimes the previous fall.

“What of our term as ambassadors?” he asked.

Oriana shook her head. “I explained that we have the rest of our term to serve,” she said. “It’s after that time that she wants me to live here. Given her age, though, she wants to start the paperwork on the adoption right away.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” she asked, a line between her brows. “She wants us to
live
here, Duilio. I don’t know what to say to her.”

He suddenly grasped what was bothering her.
He
would have to live under the expectations of sereia society. So far he’d followed their rules assiduously. He’d been silent and dutiful, and that rankled. When a new ambassador replaced Oriana, he would have more freedom to do as he wished, although he’d still need to be cautious so as not to damage Oriana’s reputation. Living on Amado would, at least, be an improvement over living on the main island.

But it also meant being far from his family. “What is the chance of going back and forth between here and the Golden City?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Would you hate me for that? Being trapped here?”

He ran his fingers through the burgundy-tinged curls that tumbled down her back. “I’m not trapped. I’m with you.”

“Don’t pretend it’s that easy, Duilio,” she said softly.

“It
is
that simple for me,” he said. “I will go where you go; I will live where you live.”

She sighed and then sniffed. “And what if
I
don’t want to be trapped here?”

Ah, she’s not sure how
she
feels about this
. Oriana always needed more time to decide about anything. They had talked about traveling after her term ended, and possibly returning to the Golden City to live. Now all those plans were endangered. “Let’s take a few days and talk it over. Surely she can wait that long.”

“I think so.” Oriana leaned her head against his shoulder.

He slid one hand under the open front of her vest. “Forget about the journal and your grandmother for now.”

She let him push the vest off her shoulders. In a
pareu
and nothing more, her dorsal stripe showed above the edge of the black fabric. He traced one finger along the rippled line of brilliant blue that separated the glittering black of her stripe from the human-colored portion of her back. Below the waist of her
pareu
, that human coloration gave way to a perfect imitation of silver scales, a source of endless fascination for him. She shivered at his touch. “You’re not supposed to be demanding.”

The core truth of these islands: the woman should always have the upper hand. “No one’s here to see me,” he reminded her.

Oriana smiled. “Please me, then.”

CHAPTER 5

                   F
RIDAY
,
17
A
PRIL
1903                   

O
riana awoke feeling uncharacteristically muzzy. The room dipped and dove as she breathed the chilly sea air streaming in through the shutters. She’d thought she was past the worst of the morning sickness. She remained still, hoping her stomach would settle into its proper place. The heady scent of lilies filled the room, odd this early in the year.

Duilio’s head lay on her breast, and she raised one hand to touch his hair. When she first told him how he would be expected to behave on the islands, she hadn’t believed his quick acceptance. Yet so far he’d done everything expected of a mate, including growing out his hair, which made it long enough that she could run the tips of her fingers through it, the webbing between her fingers snagging occasionally on his curls. He hadn’t even balked at being tattooed. She ran a finger along one line of his tattoo, only then noting an orange stain on her fingertips and webbing.

She lifted her hand away.
What is that?

His hair bore a dusting of the yellow-orange substance as well. She pushed at his shoulder and he mumbled in his sleep.

“Duilio, wake up.” He didn’t have the excuse of pregnancy for
his sleepiness. He never came awake quickly, not unless his limited seer’s gift perceived a threat. He did move his head to his own pillow, though, allowing her to ease up onto her elbows.

The blankets were heavily dusted with yellow-orange pollen.

Oriana tried to sit up without disturbing the blankets further. She ended up with her back flat against the wall, gazing down on her still-sleeping mate. “Captain Vas Neves! Captain, I need you!”

Startled into wakefulness, Duilio shook himself, but she laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t move,” she whispered. “It’s in your hair.”

Duilio blinked dazedly but obeyed, trusting her assessment of the situation. She could see the pollen now in her own curls, which meant a thorough washing was in order.
Annoying.
The bedroom door opened, but Lieutenant Benites peered inside rather than the captain. “The captain is off duty, Madam Ambassador.”

Oriana gazed up at the young woman. “Someone’s been in this room, Lieutenant, while we slept. There’s no other explanation for this pollen everywhere.”

The lieutenant’s hazel eyes swept across the rumpled blankets of their bedding, flicked toward the open shutter, and took in the bathing and dressing area. Then she closed the door again. Oriana could hear the lieutenant’s voice as she ordered another guard to fetch the captain. The door opened a second time and Benites stepped back inside. “Corporal Almeida’s gone for the captain, madam. What do you need me to do?”

“Oriana,” Duilio interrupted.

She held up one hand to forestall him. “We need to roll this blanket up without dislodging any of the pollen. If this is what I think it is—
gornarva
pollen—it induces sleep.”

“Oriana,” Duilio tried again. “Did you get up during the night at all?”

She spared him a glance. He was up on his elbows as she’d been a few moments ago, the yellow-dusted blanket still covering his chest. There was an orange blotch on the tip of his nose, matching his stained
fingers. His eyes were fixed on a spot across the room near the door to the bathroom. “No,” she answered. “Did you?”

“No,” he said, his voice tight. “Look at my desk.”

Oh gods. We’ve been robbed.
The desk’s lid was up, but Duilio had been careful to lock it the night before. She’d seen him do it. Her first impulse was to jump up and search for the journal, but they needed to clear this mess before a wind came in through the open shutters and disturbed the pollen, putting them all back to sleep. “Duilio, stay here.”

He didn’t argue, but his jaw clenched in frustration.

Oriana waved the lieutenant over and waited while the young woman carefully lifted the edge of the blankets so that Oriana could shimmy out from underneath them. Then she clambered to her feet and dashed into the dressing room. Unfortunately, the abrupt motion turned her stomach, and she had to stop at the basin to retch up its meager contents.

She quickly rinsed out her mouth and washed her hands. Then she grabbed one of her blue-embroidered
pareus
off the dressing room shelves and wrapped it around her waist. She snatched one of Duilio’s as well and returned to the bedroom.

“What exactly is
gornava
?” He eyed the orange-yellow dust warily.

She knelt next to him and began carefully rolling up the blanket. “A carnivorous plant whose pollen, in sufficient quantities, can stun its victims. Usually that’s limited to flying insects, but enough collected can induce sleep in a human or sereia.”

Her arms folded over her chest, Lieutenant Benites turned away to preserve Duilio’s limited modesty. “Someone walked in here and drugged you, madam?”

Oriana had rolled the blanket back enough that Duilio could slide out. He rose and glared down at the yellow-stained bedding. Then he spotted the black
pareu
she’d brought and donned it. “Everyone stand still. Let me look at things before you disturb them.”

Oriana crossed her arms, frustrated. She needed to find the
journal, but Duilio was right. He knew what to look for in this sort of situation, things that could tell them who’d done this. She didn’t. So she stayed put, gesturing for Benites to remain where she was as well.

Skirting the pollen sprayed across the floor, Duilio crossed to the window and crouched down to peer at the shutter’s latch. “I think, Lieutenant, that the order is reversed. They drugged us and
then
walked in here. I latched these shutters before you returned last night, Oriana.”

She still felt queasy.
The journal’s gone
. She
knew
it already, even without inspecting Duilio’s desk. They had nothing else worth stealing here, nothing worth the exorbitant price of this much
gornava
pollen.
We’ve lost our best chance of finding my mother’s killer.

Oriana swallowed and forced herself to be calm.

A ring of the doorbells preceded Captain Vas Neves letting herself into the room. She wore her full uniform and even had her rifle with her, as if she slept with one hand on it. Perhaps she did
.
The captain nodded grimly to Lieutenant Benites, eyes flinty, and then surveyed the mess of the bedding. “What’s happened here? Is this a prank?”

Duilio left off his investigation of the windowsill. “Please stay where you are, Captain. I’d like to examine the room before anyone disturbs anything else. Someone pried up this screen’s latch from the outside, dusted us with pollen while we slept—apparently to keep us that way—then entered. Note that the pattern of the pollen sprays out from this point, so they had to have blown it in from here. Since there’s a guard in the hallway, they simply went back out this way.”

Benites cleared her throat. “Actually, Captain, Almeida and I arrived at our stations at five this morning. Costa wasn’t at his post.”

The captain scowled. “Why wasn’t I woken?”

“He told Pinho he needed the water closet,” Benites said. “We didn’t think it exceptional at the time.”