Sir, João said quickly, you asked me to wait.
Seeing the young mans flushed features, Duilio held in a laugh. Yes, João, I did. Can you escort Miss Aga to Mr. Erdanos room at the far end on the left? Or back to the yacht, if she wishes.
Joãos eyes slid toward the girl. Yes, sir.
Recalling the girls 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 didnt 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 Joãos 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 sirènes , the English mermaids, and the Germans knew them as Lorelei . No matter how they were named, they werent allowed in the Golden City.
Selkies werent either, but the ban hadnt ever kept his mother or Erdanoor him, for that matterout. For all Duilio knew, there could be dozens of selkies living in the Golden City. Unlike the sereia, once theyd shed their pelts they were almost indistinguishable from humans. Without a selkies pelt, one couldnt prove that they werent human. The sereias webbed hands, their gills, and the scale patterning of their skin were all elements of their nature that they couldnt 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 princes 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 fathers demise, he had issued a proclamation banning all sea folk from the Golden City on pain of death. Hed 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 princes order, for the first few years following its issuance the Special Policewhose explicit mandate was to carry out the orders of the prince, whether or not those orders served the best interests of the peoplehad 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 nights pleasure, so the majority of those executed had been sereia. And although Duilio hadnt 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 Sereiasthe islands of the sereiaat the princes 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 hadnt 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. Duilios attention had been captured instead by the ladys companion, a woman somewhere near his age, modestly dressed and attractive, although he wouldnt 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, hed 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 didnt know how, exactly, but he didnt take the feeling lightly. Hed watched her from a distance. He bribed a servant in the Amaral household to discover her given name, Oriana. Hed investigated her background. Before becoming a ladys companion, shed worked in a dressmakers shop. He discovered little else. It was as if she hadnt existed before then.
Hed often attended the same social events as Lady Isabel and her companion, even if he didnt travel in the Amarals elevated stratum of society. They were old aristocracy, while the Ferreiras were newly moneyed and not worthy of their conversation. Duilio had watched Miss Paredes carefully, though. She often kept her hands in her lap. She wore silk mitts rather than gloves, an old ladys affectation. She always chose high-necked shirts, even at formal occasions, carrying her modesty to an unfashionable extreme, although hed heard a rumor from one of the servants that she had spots . . . or something catching on her hands.