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

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 st unning Lady Isabel Amaral. Duilio’s attention had been captured in st ead by the lady’s companion, a woman somewhere near his age, mode st ly dressed and attra ct ive, 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 wai st and rounded hips, although that might simply be her corset. Her flat-brimmed st raw hat had ca st a shadow across her face, but as she shifted the parasol she carried to better shade her mi st ress’ alaba st er skin, he’d noticed her dark eyes.
    His breath had gone st ill. He had
known
, in that way his gift worked, that she was more than ju st 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, exa ct ly, but he didn’t take the feeling lightly. He’d watched her from a di st ance. He bribed a servant in the Amaral household to discover her given name, Oriana. He’d inve st igated 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 exi st ed 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 st ratum of society. They were
old
ari st ocracy, 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 lady’s affe ct ation. She always chose high-necked shirts, even at formal occasions, carrying her mode st y to an unfashionable extreme, although he’d heard a rumor from one of the servants that she had spots . . . or something
catching
on her hands.
    Taken individually, none of those things had given her away. But the longer he thought about it, the surer he became that all of those foibles combined were signs of a sereia hiding her true nature. Duilio opened his eyes and st ared at his cold hearth. He had no proof that Miss Paredes was a sereia, but his gift assured him it was true.
    Ju st as there might be dozens of selkies hiding in the city, he was willing to accept that sereia might be living here as well. But it was more dangerous for them. Their nature was harder to hide. The mo st reasonable explanation that he could come up with was that she was a spy, although what she could learn in the Amaral household my st ified him. While the Amaral family had impressive social ties, their political ties were limited.
    And if she were a spy, what had she been doing out by
The City Under the Sea
? Did her people find the ta st e of death in the water as obje ct ionable as did the local selkies? Or could she have had some other reason for being there? A vague frisson of worry snaked out of the back corner of his mind, his gift trying to give him another clue to unlock the bundle of que st ions.
    Black and white. Aga had said the my st erious woman with webbed hands wore black and white. That had been important. Duilio closed his eyes and concentrated, hoping to force a dire ct answer out of his gift. He took several slow breaths.
Was it Oriana Paredes out on the river near
The City Under the Sea
?
    His gift supplied nothing in response.
    Duilio rubbed one hand across his face and groaned.
Stupid.
That was the wrong que st ion. That event was in the pa st already, and his gift only looked forward. He reformulated his mental que st ion and asked himself,
Will I learn that Oriana Paredes was out on the river tonight near the rotting houses?
    And then he
knew
. Sooner or later he was going to discover that Aga’s my st erious