The Shores of Spain (13 page)

Jaw clenched, Jovita rose. “Watch what you say, girl. You may have some protection out here, but making unsubstantiated claims back on Quitos will get you killed. Do you understand me?”

Oriana rose and inclined her head slowly. “I understand very well, Subminister.”

“No doubt your foolish father has set you on this path,” Jovita said with a dismissive swipe of her hand. “It was all I could do to keep the ministry from having him executed. If you press this nonsense, I cannot promise to
protect
you, family or not.”

That wasn’t the way Oriana had expected this conversation to go. “They wanted to execute him?”

“Your father supposedly implied complicity on the part of the minister at the time.”

And Jovita had stopped his execution? “You never liked him. Why interfere on his behalf?”

“I may not have agreed with Lygia’s choice of mate, but I know what is due to my line. He’s part of my family.” She cast a cynical eye over Oriana and then, nostrils flaring, turned toward the chair where Duilio still sat. “Escort me out, boy.”

*   *   *

D
uilio had already decided that Jovita Paredes was one of the hardest women he’d ever seen. She might stab him on the way to the front door, and he doubted she would stop to watch him fall. But he wasn’t going to refuse her request. It would be unthinkable for a sereia male to refuse anything to the head of his line.
Within limits.

In appropriate silence, he led Oriana’s aunt to the house’s main door. When he reached to open the door for her, she stopped him, sharp nails pricking his wrist. “Look at me, young man.”

Duilio raised his eyes, getting his first full look at her face. He’d known that Oriana strongly resembled her mother. Clearly that extended to her aunt as well. Her aunt’s eyes were larger than a human’s, but not so much so that it was startling, as he’d seen among some sereia. Nor did she have the silvery sheen to her face that the purest family lines had. He could still see a hint of red in her hair, much like the burgundy streaks in Oriana’s. The subminister shared
Oriana’s height and strong build, and despite her age, she was a striking woman.

“The younger generation doesn’t respect our customs any longer,” she said.

Every generation believes that.
As her comment didn’t seem to require a response, he didn’t bother.

“They don’t understand the meaning of service.”

One of his eyebrows drifted upward, but he said nothing. That was service with a capital S. This was one of the aunts who’d told Oriana she was never meant to have a mate, that she was destined to serve her people instead. Since sereia females outnumbered males—almost two to one—many females couldn’t win a mate. Duilio suspected that the myth that those females were destined to live out a life of service instead had developed out of convenience. Easier to send those females out to serve in their navy, directing ships around their islands with their
calls
, to work in the gold mines, or into the fields to tend the produce others ate and the tea that provided the bulk of their exports. The sereia who worked the docks, the fishing ships, and the factories that produced the linen and cotton worn here; they were the
unmated
. It irritated him, primarily because that was the life Oriana’s aunts had envisioned for her and her sister.

Jovita let go of his arm. “I don’t approve of Oriana’s choice of a mate . . .”

He inclined his head, a mere acknowledgment.

“. . . but as I understand you’re the one who rescued her from the execution site, I can understand that she feels indebted to you. I am as well. I didn’t know if Braz could get anyone to help her. I am relieved he managed to do so.”

She was the one who sent word about Oriana’s attempted execution? Duilio wasn’t sure if he should believe that. The information had come by official mail to the sereia ambassador back in the Golden City, Braz Alvaro, brother of the Paredes women and Oriana’s uncle. Thus the same government who’d condemned Oriana had also tried
to save her. Could that have been the doing of the subminister of Intelligence herself? That had to have been a dangerous step for her to take, defying the actions of the ministry. “If you sent word to him, then I am grateful,” Duilio said cautiously. “I didn’t know where to look for her.”

“Clearly the gods wished her to be saved. In that I was their implement, as were you.”

That fatalistic way of thinking supported whatever course Jovita Paredes had chosen to take. She’d sent word—a deed that some might consider acting against her own government—with the belief that if Oriana lived, her action was merely part of the gods’ plan. If Oriana had died, that outcome would have been the gods’ will as well. Then again, Duilio knew plenty of humans who used the same logic to justify their actions, so the sereia weren’t alone in that attitude. “Oriana tells me the leviathan that intervened was a sign of the gods’ will.”

Jovita’s shoulders straightened slightly. “Leviathan?”

Yes, that surprised her.
The leviathan was one aspect of Oriana’s rescue of which very few people had heard. Once Duilio and Joaquim had unchained Oriana and carried her aboard their sailboat, a ship attempted to stop them. Far larger than their little sailboat, the steam corvette would have quickly overtaken them, but a leviathan attacked it. The creature broke off the corvette’s bowsprit, forcing the ship to give up the pursuit. Leviathans were typically shy creatures that preferred deep waters, so its unexpected intervention had been most startling. And as the sereia held that leviathans acted only on the will of the sea gods, it bolstered Oriana’s belief that she’d been spared so she could one day find her mother’s killer. “It attacked the ship that tried to prevent us from rescuing Oriana,” Duilio explained. “We would have died that night had it not appeared.”

Jovita eyes narrowed. “A ship tried to stop you?”

She was repeating him, a trick he used when plying others for information. Her quizzical tone seemed genuine, as if she truly didn’t
know the details of the incident, but Duilio didn’t know her well enough to evaluate her acting skills. He took a chance. “Yes. The sailors demanded that we hand her over. When we ran they attempted to overtake us.”

“What manner of ship?” she asked cautiously.

“A steam corvette,” he said. “Human sailors. They didn’t make landing in any Portuguese port after the incident—a missing bowsprit would have been remarked—but we finally learned that the ship limped into Ferrol, a Spanish port. That ship
knew
Oriana was on that island that night. They’d come hunting her, just as we had.”

The corner of Jovita’s mouth pinched in, but she merely gestured for him to open the door. She stopped on the threshold and peered at him, brows drawn together. “Is it true that you carry a gun?”

Duilio felt heat creeping up his chest, burning in his cheeks. He usually wore his Webley-Wilkinson revolver strapped to his thigh, hidden under his
pareu.
He should have expected that she would have heard about the embarrassing incident. He took a deep breath and let it go. “Yes.”

“Interesting.” She swept past, and Duilio watched as she stepped into a closed carriage. Her guards climbed into a second carriage, an open one, and the two vehicles slowly pulled out of the drive.

Duilio shut the door and closed his eyes. Jovita’s surprise about the leviathan had seemed genuine, but he doubted she would have been able to climb to such a high position in the Ministry of Intelligence if she couldn’t lie convincingly. Even so, the idea that the unidentified ship had known Oriana was there and had come specifically for her—
that
had disturbed Jovita. He needed to spend some time mulling that over, but later, after he’d discussed it with Oriana.

He turned back toward the courtyard and spotted Lieutenant Benites standing off to one side in an alcove, at ease, with one hand on her pistol. She must have taken that position in case the subminister’s guards tried to enter the house. Corporal Almeida watched from the opposite hallway, her rifle in her hands and her narrow face
pale. She didn’t look as sanguine as Benites about the possibility of taking on four sereia guards.

“It’s fine,” he said to them both. “They’re gone.”

Almeida slung her rifle over her shoulder then and stood at ease as well.

“They wouldn’t have gotten past the door, sir,” Benites said. “Captain’s on the roof with her rifles. She would have dropped them long before they reached the house.”

“I have to agree.” Four guards wouldn’t be enough to defeat a marksman like Vas Neves. He thanked the two guards and headed back to the courtyard, where he found Oriana pacing.

The stiffness in her shoulders eased when she saw him unscathed. “Was she rude to you?”

“Not terribly,” he said. “She doesn’t approve of me, but that isn’t a surprise.”

Oriana came and set one hand on his waist. “I warned you.”

“She did, however, thank me for bringing you back from that island.”

Oriana stepped back, a line between her brows.

“She said she wasn’t certain the ambassador could do anything to help you.” When Oriana continued to look confounded, he recounted most of his conversation with her aunt. “She could have been lying,” he finished. “I don’t know her as well as you do, so I hesitate to make that judgment.”

“I don’t know her all that well either,” Oriana admitted softly.

“What we need,” Duilio said, “is to determine whether she was actually the one to send the message to your uncle Braz about your execution.”

“Or if she actually did keep my father from being executed as she claimed,” Oriana agreed. “Unfortunately, we don’t have any spies within the ministry.”

That
was
a problem.

CHAPTER 11

                   T
HE
OPEN
OCEAN                   

M
arina had quickly grown bored with watching the water and skies, although Joaquim could tell she was trying not to
seem
bored. Sailing could be that way. Despite her disgust for stoves, she’d gone below and put together a hot lunch of cod with potato and onions that was far better than the cold meals of bread and
chouriço
Joaquim had managed the previous day. She’d talked with Aga over their meal and listened intently to João’s idea for starting a business carrying tourists up and down the Douro River Valley.

But otherwise she’d stayed at his side, keeping his mind occupied. Truthfully, though, his mind had been occupied with her even when she was away from his side. After João and Aga went below to nap, Marina asked questions about the ship and sailing, neither of them mentioning what was on
his
mind, if not on hers.

If we’re traveling together, we should be married
. He’d waited a decade for her to come into his life. Now that he’d let himself kiss her, he wasn’t sure he would hold off bedding her. And he didn’t think she would refuse him should he ask.

Marina’s people didn’t have the same expectations as humans. According to Duilio, their idea of marriage was a verbal agreement,
not sanctioned by any of their mysterious gods; the man simply moved into the home of the woman’s family. No ceremony at all. He didn’t know how Marina felt about that, and couldn’t find a way to broach the topic that wouldn’t sound as if he found her people’s customs inferior.

She’d been sitting in silence for some time, merely watching the sails, when he saw her shade her eyes to look up. A seagull floated above the masts, hunting for food, no doubt.

“We must be close to land,” Joaquim said.

“The outer islands are just piles of rock in the ocean.” Marina tilted her head. “I don’t hear anything yet.”

His experience with the
call
of a sereia was limited. He’d once heard Oriana
calling
, luring Maraval’s henchmen into the water to save Duilio’s life. With his ears stuffed with wool, Joaquim hadn’t felt much. The second time, however, had nearly been his death. He’d been so fixated on reaching the sereia who
called
him, Iria Serpa, that he paid no heed to the woman’s husband slipping up behind him with a knife. If Oriana hadn’t shot the man, he’d be dead. “They’re not trying to hurt us, right?”

“They shouldn’t be,” Marina said.

He nodded, feeling a prickle of apprehension anyway. Even though he was a witch himself, he still found magic disturbing.

They waited, listening to the wind in the sails, the increasing squawks of gulls, and the creak of wood from the ship as it rolled on the swells. Marina tilted her head sharply. “I hear it now.”

Joaquim blinked. If there was a sereia’s song on the air, it wasn’t affecting him.
Not yet
. “I need to go below for a moment. To get the cotton.”

He checked the wheel and then headed around toward the cabin. He still couldn’t hear anything—perhaps he was supposed to
feel
it instead—but just as he turned to step down onto the ladder, he saw João about to climb up. He stood back from the hatch to let the young man come out on deck.

Once João’s head was above the deck, he asked, “Have you checked the course, Mr. Joaquim?”

Oh, Mother of God
. “We talked about this earlier, João,” Joaquim said, exasperation creeping into his voice. “We’re still on course. You’re hearing the blockade.”

Joaquim still couldn’t hear it himself, but he could feel it tugging at his will. He recognized that touch of magic now, but didn’t feel the compulsion to obey that João evidently did. The magic brushed past his skin, like fog or smoke.

Brows drawn together, João climbed out onto the deck. “What are you talking about, sir? I don’t hear anything
.
”

Neither do I, come to think of it
. If João was responding to a sereia’s call, shouldn’t they be able to hear the sereia in question? Joaquim turned his eyes on Marina. “Why can’t we hear it?”

João tried to push past him on the narrow deck to get back to the wheel. Joaquim blocked him, earning a mulish look from João.