The Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney Read Free Book Online

his brain, Duilio
knew
.
    That
was the fa ct 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 flu st ered-looking João right outside. The young man mu st have been li st ening at the keyhole.
    “Sir,” João said quickly, “you asked me to wait.”
    Seeing the young man’s flushed features, Duilio held in a laugh. “Yes, João, 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.”
    João’s eyes slid toward the girl. “Yes, sir.”
    Recalling the girl’s reque st , 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 João’s capable hands. He returned to the hearth, settled into the leather armchair, and st retched 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 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 almo st indi st inguishable 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 st reets of the city when he was young, in the days before the prince’s ban. Although they kept their di st ance 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 predi ct anything far into the future, and it had been almo st two decades since then. Too many fa ct ors had changed in the interim.
    Whatever the impetus behind the prince’s order, for the fir st 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 be st intere st s of the people—had obediently rounded up every sereia or selkie they could find, along with many of those who prote ct ed them. Sympathizers had been jailed and their property seized. The sea folk themselves had been executed. Otterfolk rarely came into the city, and mo st selkies slipped in and out, intere st ed 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 pa st few years, mo st citizens believed the Special Police st ill carried them out, ju st not publicly. There
was
a ct ually an ambassador from the Ilhas das Sereias—the islands of the sereia—at the prince’s court, but the man lived under house arre st at the palace. And while Duilio had long
suspe
ct
ed
there might be sereia hiding in the city, he hadn’t been sure