The Golden City Read online

  DARK ARTS

  The river’s surface above her was dark. Before her Oriana saw shapes floating in the water, more traps like the one she’d just escaped. Oriana kicked away from her prison, trying to grasp the bigger picture of what she was seeing. In the nighttime waters she could make out two neat rows, stretching on for some distance. There must be more than twenty of these prisons under the river’s surface.

  It was The City Under the Sea.

  Oriana had read of the great work of art being assembled beneath the surface of the Douro. The newspapers often opined about it, ever since the pieces began appearing in the water almost a year ago. Each was a replica of one of the great houses that lined the Street of Flowers, the street of the aristocrats.

  Oriana looked back at the house in which she’d been imprisoned. It was a replica of the Amaral mansion, Isabel’s home.

  Had Isabel been killed merely for the sake of this . . . artwork? Had others awakened in the darkness only to realize, like Isabel, that their death was seeping in about them?

  THE

  GOLDEN

  CITY

  J. KATHLEEN CHENEY

  A ROC BOOK

  ROC

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  First Printing, November 2013

  Copyright © Jeannette Kathleen Cheney, 2013

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Cheney, J. Kathleen.

  The golden city/J. Kathleen Cheney.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-60689-6

  1. Abduction—Fiction. 2. Imaginary places—Fiction.

  3. Selkies—Fiction. 4. Magic—Fiction. 5. Portugal—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3603.H4574G65 2013

  813

  .6—dc23 2013021501

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  DARK ARTS

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  EPILOG

  About the Author

  Dedicated, with gratitude,

  to the Ladies of the Carpe-Libris Writers Group, for their unfailing support; to my agent, Lucienne Diver, for her persistence; and, most of all, to my husband, Matt, for his eternal patience with the “little writing thing” I do.

  CHAPTER 1

  THURSDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER 1902

  Lady Isabel Amaral plucked another pair of drawers from the chiffonier and tossed them in her companion’s direction. Oriana caught the silk garment and folded it neatly while her mistress disappeared into the dressing room.

  Oriana laid the drawers in a pile with the others, surveyed the collection spread across the bed, and shook her head. Even after two years living among humans she was still bemused by the number of layers a proper Portuguese lady must wear. Chemises and underskirts, drawers and stockings and corsets: they all lay neatly prepared to pack away, none of them meant to be seen. It was a far cry from the comfortable—and less voluminous—garb Oriana had grown up wearing out on the islands that belonged to her people. She rarely noticed her heavy clothes any longer, but seeing all the lace-bedecked items displayed on the bed before her, Oriana found the quantity of fabric in which Isabel swathed herself daily rather daunting.

  What was missing? Even with all that lay in front of her, Oriana was sure Isabel had left something out. She puffed out her cheeks, mentally cataloging the garments on the bed.

  She wished Isabel hadn’t waited so late to inform her of the plan to elope. If she’d known in advance, she would have packed Isabel’s best clothes neatly. She could even have sent a couple of trunks ahead via train to the hotel in Paris. Being rushed at the last moment was her own fault, though. She’d made her disapproval of the match known early on, and Isabel probably wanted to avoid an argument. But it was also Isabel’s style to wait until the last moment. That made everything more of an adventure.

  Unfortunately, adventures didn’t always turn out well . . . particularly if one didn’t have the proper undergarments.

  Aha! Oriana suddenly placed the oversight. “You haven’t any corset covers.”

  Isabel peered around the edge of the dressing room door and waved one hand vaguely. “Pick some for me. I only need a couple. Marianus will buy me new ones after we’re married.”

  Isabel disappeared back into her dressing room, leaving Oriana shaking her head. She had to wonder if Marianus Efisio knew he would be spending the next few weeks shopping. While Isabel’s family possessed aristocratic bloodlines tracing all the way back to the Battle of Aljubarrota, they had very little money. Everything supplied by the various milliners and dressmakers who’d rigged Isabel out in style had been bought on credit. Isabel’s mother was counting on her beauteous daughter’s marriage to a wealthy husband. Luckily, Mr. Efisio did meet that requirement.

  Unluckily, he was already promised to another woman: Isabel’s cousin Pia.

  It was an arrangement made when he was just a boy and Pia an infant. Even so, it wasn’t fair to simply ignore the arrangement. At any rate, Oriana didn’t think so.

  Isabel had waved away Oriana’s concerns, claiming that Mr. Efisio wasn’t suited to Pia’s placid disposition. The elopement would cause a scandal, and Isabel’s rarely present father would be livid. Nevertheless, Isabel’s popularity in polite society would help her survive the disgrace. In time, Mr. Efisio would be forgiven for breaking his betrothal, particularly if Pia were to marry well. He had money, which always seemed to temper society’s disapproval.

  Isabel was like a tidal wave, though. She always did as she wished, and the gods would merely laugh at anyone who stood i
n her way.

  Clucking her tongue, Oriana sorted through the contents of the rickety chiffonier’s top drawer and selected the two best corset covers. She’d just laid them neatly on the bed when Isabel emerged from the dressing room, her arms overflowing with skirts and shirtwaists. She dropped them atop the garments Oriana had already folded, and a narrow line appeared between her perfectly arched black brows. “Am I missing anything else?”

  “A nightdress,” Oriana answered. She eyed the wreckage of her neatly folded stacks. Isabel probably hadn’t even looked before dumping the clothes she’d carried. Oh, well. There was nothing to do but start over. Oriana nodded briskly and lifted the top skirt off the pile.

  A knock came at the door, and she jumped. She instinctively hid her bare hands in the fabric of the skirt. She was usually so careful, but she’d taken off the mitts that normally hid her fingers so she could help Isabel pack. Then she realized she was wrinkling the skirt terribly and forced herself to let it go. She took a calming breath, hoping her voice would sound normal. “Who is it?”

  “Adela, Miss Paredes,” one of the maids responded from the hallway. “I have what my lady asked for.”

  Oriana cast Isabel a questioning look. What was Isabel plotting?

  Isabel hurried to the bedroom door herself. Oriana stayed by the bed and shoved her hands behind her back. Other than Isabel, no one in the Amaral household knew her secret. Oriana wanted to keep it that way.

  Her webbed fingers would give her away, and being caught in the city would mean arrest and expulsion, if not worse. They were her great flaw as a spy. She’d finally made the decision to have the webbing cut away, as her superiors insisted, and had planned to take her half day off this weekend to have it done. But Isabel’s sudden decision to elope had fouled those plans. Oriana hadn’t decided if she was vexed . . . or relieved.

  Isabel opened the door only wide enough for the maid to pass her something and closed it quickly. She turned back to Oriana, a mischievous grin lighting her face, and held up a pair of maid’s aprons and two crumpled white caps. “See what I have?”

  Oriana stood there with her mouth open. Why would Isabel ask for those?

  Isabel rolled her eyes. “A disguise,” she explained. “See? If we wear black, we can put these on over our skirts and we’ll look like housemaids.”

  Well, the only thing more scandalous than engaging in an elopement had to be exposure while doing so. The disguise would make the two of them less noticeable at the train station; most people in Isabel’s circles didn’t notice servants. Surely none would comment on a couple of housemaids dragging luggage about for their mistresses, even this late in the evening.

  “I understand,” Oriana said, trying for an enlightened expression. The black serge skirt she currently wore would pass for a housemaid’s, but her white cambric shirt and the blue vest wouldn’t. “I’ll need to change my shirt, but it should do.”

  Isabel tossed the aprons atop the chiffonier and grinned. “See? It will all work out.”

  “I’m certain you’ve planned for everything,” Oriana allowed, inclining her head in Isabel’s direction.

  A dimple appeared in Isabel’s alabaster cheek. “When it comes to marriage, one must.”

  Oriana laughed softly. Isabel always had a clever retort on her silver tongue, a talent she envied.

  She regarded the pile of garments atop the bed and tried to think of the best way to tackle the task ahead of her. An open trunk waited on the old cane-backed settee at the foot of the bed, although she would have to fold and tuck judiciously to get all these garments into it. She would likely have to add a portmanteau as well. Mr. Efisio had gone ahead to Paris, but he had ordered his coach to pick them up no more than a block away. She could carry their luggage to the coach in two trips if needed.

  Isabel watched, tapping one slender finger against her cheek. “Now, what have I forgotten?”

  “Nightdress?” Oriana reminded her.

  “Oh, I mustn’t forget that.” Isabel dashed back to the dressing room.

  Oriana folded the blue skirt from the top of the pile and set it in the trunk, located the shirtwaist Isabel wore with it and tucked that in next, and then headed into the dressing room to hunt down the matching jacket. She found Isabel standing before the full-length mirror in the cluttered dressing room, holding up a nightdress. It was her most daring, a white satin that bared much of her bosom like an evening gown.

  Isabel glanced over one shoulder at Oriana, her face glowing with excitement. “Do you think he will approve? It’s not too shocking, is it?”

  Isabel was blessed with an ivory complexion and thick black hair. She had delicate features, delicate hands, delicate feet. Her hazel eyes had been the subject of many a wretched suitor’s poem, and her rosy, bow-shaped lips had earned their own paeans. She was everything that Oriana wasn’t—beautiful by any standard. A good thing too, as Isabel’s sharp tongue and cutting wit might have earned her enemies were she less lovely. But she’d gathered a court of suitors and held them fast while waiting for a man of both adequate means and malleability to come along. Mr. Efisio had never had a chance once Isabel made up her mind to have him.

  Oriana’s eyes met Isabel’s in the mirror. “I’m certain he’ll like it, shocking or not.”

  “Good.” Isabel smiled contentedly at her reflection, but turned back to Oriana, her face going serious. “I know you don’t approve. I’m grateful you’re coming with me anyway.”

  Oriana opened her mouth to apologize for her earlier arguments with Isabel over Mr. Efisio’s fate, but paused. She still didn’t approve. She nodded instead.

  “I do love him,” Isabel said then, the first time she’d told Oriana so. “Have you never been in love?”

  Oriana gazed down at her folded hands, her throat inexplicably tight. She was only a few years older than Isabel, but her situation in life had never been amenable to courtship. How many times had her aunts pointed that out? Unlike women within human society, among her people a female often remained alone; there simply weren’t enough males. Those females not meant for a mate were destined to serve their people instead, as Oriana did.

  That thread of Destiny that bound her soul to some other’s? Oriana didn’t think it existed. She had resigned herself to that years ago . . . or she’d thought she had. Seeing Isabel so excited about her upcoming nuptials made Oriana wish she’d been one of the others—those for whom Destiny had chosen a mate. “No,” she admitted when she found her voice. “I’ve never been in love, so I suppose I can’t understand.”

  Isabel’s brows drew together. “Do your people believe in love? Or are your marriages all arranged, like Pia’s?”

  Oriana mulled that over. “We believe we are destined for one in particular, or—”

  “Then perhaps you just haven’t met him yet,” Isabel interrupted with a blithe wave of her hand.

  Apparently Isabel believed that if she were to have a husband, then everyone must. At least Isabel’s interruption had saved her from admitting aloud she was destined to be forever alone. Oriana nodded again, as if she agreed. She was realizing she did that quite often.

  Isabel surveyed the mess on the bed with narrowed eyes, plotting how to subdue it, no doubt. “Now, why don’t you go pack your own bag, Oriana? I’ll finish up in here.”

  Oriana cast a glance back at that chaos and suppressed a shudder. Isabel would simply cram her clothes into that trunk. As she wasn’t taking a maid along, Oriana would end up ironing everything later. She hated exposing her delicate hands to all that heat, but she would do so to help Isabel start off in her new life properly. One last thing she could do to repay Isabel for her kindness.

  She tugged on her black silk mitts to hide the webbing between her fingers. “I’ll be back shortly, then.”

  She slipped out the bedroom door and walked down the hallway, rubbing her hands up and down her arms to
warm herself. The Amaral household was one of contrasts. In the public areas of the house no expense was spared. Fires would no doubt be burning merrily in the parlors to chase away the September evening’s chill. The silver was regularly polished, and the china lovingly displayed in a fine oak sideboard in the palatial dining room. The rugs and tapestries were of the finest quality, many dating back to the family’s wealthier days.

  The social elite of the Golden City seemed to believe that facade of affluence, counting the Amaral family among their most important members. Isabel and her mother were invited to all the important affairs, the balls and picnics and soirees. They attended the theater regularly. Isabel’s approval was sought by younger girls, and her hand by all the men.

  But while the Amaral family worked hard to present an affluent image downstairs, they didn’t bother upstairs. The second floor, where Isabel and her mother had their bedrooms, was left unheated. The draperies and rugs were threadbare, and the hall runner had begun to unravel along one edge. Only half the gaslights were turned up, leaving the hallway murky.

  The areas of the house where the servants lived and worked were worse. When Oriana reached the narrow back stair leading up to the third floor, it was altogether unlit. But since her eyes were better than a human’s in the dark, she didn’t bother to fetch a lamp to climb its creaking length. The servants’ quarters were cramped and cold, the floors covered only with aged floor cloths. Like most houses on the Street of Flowers, the Amaral home had been transplanted to this spot in the Golden City in the previous century, moved stone by stone. The servants lived in rooms that hadn’t been improved since that time: no plumbing, no lighting, and with peeling paint on the walls. Small wonder the maids so often fell ill.

  Being Lady Isabel’s hired companion, Oriana had a room to herself. She was grateful for that. Her little room was a safe haven, a place where she need not hide her hands or her gills or the inhuman coloration of the lower half of her body. While she looked more human than most females on her people’s islands, those things simply couldn’t be escaped.