The Shores of Spain (48 page)

“Why do you keep asking questions?” the Vilaró snapped. “I can feel the guard’s feet on the steps. I’ll retrieve his keys and gun, but you need to help Leandra out of this place.”

Joaquim heard the footsteps of the guard above them now, clomping in heavy boots down the stone stair. A brawny man with curling hair came off the last step and turned to survey the atrium where Joaquim and the Vilaró stood. He turned his head one way, as if trying to spot something out of the corner of his eye, and Joaquim realized the guard couldn’t see him.

The Vilaró was hiding them, making them invisible even though they stood in plain sight only a few feet away. Back in the Golden City, the Lady could do the same, as could Prince Raimundo. That told Joaquim they all had common blood.

But the guard clearly recognized there was danger. He drew a dagger, then advanced. The man had a pistol in his sash but hadn’t chosen it, wise in this stone-walled space where any missed shot
would ricochet. He paused again, expression puzzled, only a few feet away from where Joaquim stood.

Joaquim felt the Vilaró’s hand on his shirt slacken, and when he glanced back, the Vilaró was gone.

And in that same instant, the guard saw
him
. “Who are you?”

Trapped against the wall, Joaquim made his choice. He lowered his shoulder and rammed forward into the man’s stomach. The guard went down, Joaquim atop him, and let out a groan when his head hit the hard floor. As Joaquim grabbed at the dagger, the man’s head lifted, his teeth bared. He huffed cigarette-smoke-laden breath in Joaquim’s face as they wrestled for the blade. It hit the floor with a clatter. Joaquim reached for it, only to gasp in pain when the guard’s hand closed around his burned arm. The guard pushed, throwing off Joaquim’s weight. Joaquim’s back hit the floor, his head striking the stone floor hard enough to send stars flaring through his vision.

By the time he got his eyes to focus, the guard had rolled to his feet and now loomed overhead, pistol in hand. At this distance, he couldn’t miss. He took a step toward Joaquim, but then abruptly jerked away with a loud cry. Joaquim rolled onto his side and used his elbow to lift himself. The Vilaró held the guard against the wall.

The guard’s eyes were wide with terror. “No,” he pleaded with his captor. “No, Vilaró, don’t hurt me. I swear I will let you out of here.”

Joaquim couldn’t see the Vilaró’s face from this angle, but he heard a low laugh. Then the guard faded back into the wall, as if falling through it. The Vilaró continued to push him until all that was left were the guard’s splayed hands, and then those were gone too. The Vilaró’s arms emerged from the stone wall as if they were coming out of water.

Joaquim swallowed, tasting blood from a bitten tongue.
What did I just see?

His breath short, Joaquim pushed himself into a sitting position against the hallway wall and regarded his savior with trepidation. In a low tone that he hoped wouldn’t carry, he asked, “What happened to him?”

The Vilaró merely said, “I wouldn’t think about it too hard.”

Joaquim glanced downward. His sleeve was bloody now where the guard had grabbed his arm, the brand bleeding again. It burned anew.

“There’s your gun,” the Vilaró said, pointing.

The guard’s pistol lay on the floor. He must have dropped it when the Vilaró grabbed him.

The Vilaró pushed his hands back into the stone, looking as if he was feeling about in the dark. When he withdrew his hands from the stone, one of them gingerly clutched a ring of large old keys. That hand was sheathed in stone. The Vilaró dropped the keys and the stone about his fingers dissolved into a cloud of dust that drifted to the floor.

Joaquim’s eyes slid toward where the guard had disappeared. “He’s dead, isn’t he? The guard?”

The Vilaró smiled benignly. “Very much so. I could have left him half in, half out. I was merciful, to spare your sensibilities, not because he deserved that mercy.”

Joaquim regarded the Vilaró, a prickle of fear running down his spine. He hated to imagine what this man thought
just
punishment looked like. “What did that guard do to you?”

“Nothing,” the Vilaró said. “But I tell you this, the sirenas of the prison are off-limits to the men. If a guard attacks one of them, he will die slowly. That same protection was never given to any of the human women here. Ask Miss Prieto when you see her next. Don’t bother praying for that man’s soul.”

Joaquim didn’t intend to ask. He had a very good idea what could happen to a woman in a prison.

“Now, I promised Leandra I would help the others escape, so I must go back. You help
her
escape,” the Vilaró ordered.

Then he walked away through the wall.

Joaquim was alone. The Vilaró was gone, distant, he could tell. Probably back at the prison. But Leandra was upstairs in one of the cells, and he had to get her out. So he picked up the pistol and the keys and headed up the stone steps.

CHAPTER 44

T
he walls of the underground prison were cool and faintly damp, smelling of moldering stone. The cell was the only one on this level, with an iron-barred door like that of the cell Joaquim had woken in. Inside the darkness of the cell, Joaquim could see a still form lying on a bare bunk. Trying to be as quiet as possible, he tried several keys until he located the correct one. He pushed the door inward.

Leandra lay on her side, her unbound hair straggling off the edge of the narrow bed. Her swollen hand was swathed in bandages. Joaquim shook her shoulder gently.

Her eyes opened. “What are you doing here?”

“The Vilaró brought me to get you out.”

She started coughing. Joaquim helped her sit up and waited until the coughing fit passed. “They weren’t supposed to worry about me,” she said.

“Apparently, the Vilaró doesn’t see it that way,” Joaquim said.

She laughed diffidently and pushed herself off the bench. “If I asked you to leave me here, would you?”

Joaquim didn’t bother to answer. “Do you have any idea how many guards there are?”

“Two or three. No need to have more. I’m the only prisoner here right now.”

Make that one or two,
Joaquim thought, thinking of the one the Vilaró had dispatched. “Where would they be?”

Leandra walked like one half-dead. Joaquim suspected if he offered to carry her, she would only insist on walking on her own. “At the door,” she said.

“The door?”

She stopped at the edge of the cell and peered out into the dimly lit hallway. “Out the hall, to the left, and up one flight of stairs. Door to the ground level.”

The same path along which they dragged me out of here
. “Do you have a plan for this?”

“No,” she admitted. “I expected to be left behind.” The hallways were preternaturally quiet. As they left the cell, Leandra stumbled and set one hand against the wall to balance herself.

Joaquim wrapped one arm around her waist. “Why did the Vilaró not just take you out of here, the way he brought me? Through the stone?”

“Because he keeps his word,” Leandra said with a dry chuckle. “He promised me he would make certain the others were free first before he came after me. Since he brought you here to get me out, that still conforms to the exact terms of our deal.”

They headed for the stair that would lead up to the surface. There would be a landing, he recalled, then an iron door, a few more stairs, and a gate. Then they would be in the echoing area with the well. He was glad he’d been paying attention when the guards dragged him out.

Once at the stairwell, Joaquim helped Leandra up the first couple of steps, stopping when he thought they might become visible to the guards on the landing. He let Leandra go so she could lean against the wall.

Crouching down, he climbed as close as he dared and peered over the edge of the landing. Only one guard waited there, seated at a desk near the large iron door. To one side Joaquim saw a sereia, her gray dress giving away her identity as one of the wardens. Was she with them, or was she Spanish?

Joaquim felt for the gun he’d shoved into his belt. How close could he get before he had to strike? The guard would be impeded by the desk, so the sereia would have to be the first target.

Then she looked at him, taking away any option. She opened her mouth and began to
call
.

It was a low tune, the words unintelligible. It carried her yearning, her exhaustion, endless weariness bearing down on Joaquim’s bones, but her magic slipped past him. The guard’s head lowered to the desk’s surface instead.

Joaquim trained his gun on her. He hated shooting people.

The sereia stepped closer to the sleeping guard and reached down to take the man’s gun, still watching Joaquim’s face. The words of her
call
continued to flow past him, some taking shape now.
Sleep,
she sang, just as Reyna had sung in the cell, but . . .

Portuguese.
She was singing to him in Portuguese. This was one of the women from the islands. Her
call
had stopped, he realized then, but the guard slept on. In her hand she now held the guard’s gun, but pointed it past Joaquim—at Leandra.

Leandra had reached the top step by herself and stood leaning against the wall. “Aline, let him go.”

“What’s happening here?” the sereia asked.

“The Vilaró is loose. He’s helping us escape.”

The sereia’s chin lifted. “And once you’re gone, what becomes of us?”

“I would suggest abandoning the prisons altogether,” Leandra said wearily. “You’ll never be safe from the Vilaró here. Even if he doesn’t kill you, he won’t forget what was done to him, and he’ll live a very long time.”

“And if I let you out?” the sereia asked. “Would you take me back to the islands?”

“I’m willing to try,” Joaquim offered.

“Make up your mind, Aline,” Leandra said. “Which side are you on?”

The sereia gazed at Leandra, tears glistening in her eyes. “I want to go home.”

Leandra nodded once, and Joaquim followed her lead. She knew this woman; he didn’t. But somehow the woman’s statement rang false in his ears. Not that he had a Truthsayer’s talent; he’d simply had too many people lie to him in his work for the police. He’d seen faked tears before.

“He has the keys,” she said to Joaquim, motioning toward the guard slumped over the desk, now snoring lightly. Slipping his gun back into his waistband, Joaquim went around the desk and tugged a ring of keys loose from the guard’s belt. But when he rose, he saw that Aline now held Leandra’s arm twisted behind her, her gun held to Leandra’s side. He considered the tableau, weighing the odds.

Leandra wasn’t afraid of death; he had no doubt of that. Her eyes were flatly unconcerned.

Would the other woman actually shoot Leandra? He felt sure that Aline didn’t want to. But if he went for his gun, she could easily kill Leandra before he got off a shot. Instead he threw the keys directly at Aline’s face.

She flinched, dropping her grip on Leandra at the same time. Leandra didn’t hesitate. She elbowed the woman in the side of the neck, directly on her gill slits. The woman fell to her knees and clutched at her neck. Then Leandra brought her knee up, catching the other in the face.

It wasn’t pretty, but it
was
effective. The woman on the floor began to moan, a
call
woven into it, sending spasms of familiar discomfort flickering down Joaquim’s spine. That was pain, and he’d heard a sereia
calling
in pain before. Even the protection Marina had given him didn’t block that completely.

“Give me the keys,” Joaquim managed through gritted teeth.

Leandra leaned over, having to rest against the wall to do so, but fished the keys out from under the other woman’s skirts. She kicked Aline’s gun away, and it slid under the desk. She handed the ring to Joaquim as he came to help her to the door.

“Will there be a guard on the other side of that door?”

“I don’t know,” Leandra admitted.

Joaquim glanced at the iron door’s lock and selected one of the five keys. He tried the first key, his fingers fumbling as Aline’s keening grew louder. It didn’t work. How soon before the guard woke and came to Aline’s rescue?

Joaquim stuck the second key in the lock.

*   *   *

A
flurry of activity alerted Marina to the approach of the mayor as he bustled down the stairwell to greet the marquesa. It appeared that in addition to a pair of guards, he’d brought along a couple of assistants. When the man saw the marquesa enthroned in the middle of the hall, he rushed over toward her, trailing attendants.

The
paer en cap
was an older man with slicked-back hair and spectacles, the sort one would expect to be an accountant, with a too-tight collar. He looked distressed before he reached the fuming marquesa’s side. Marina had met enough of this sort of person while working for her father, a man trying hard to do the right thing while caught between too many expectations. The mayor bowed to the marquesa and launched into a formal introduction of his two assistants.

The marquesa waved that away with one hand. “There is a prison below this hall,” she snapped. “My great-grandson is being held in it. I want him brought up to me immediately.”

The man blinked a couple of times, as if no one had ever mentioned a prison to him before. “But the Morra was closed up, Marquesa,” he said firmly. “Ages ago. No one goes in or out.”

The marquesa’s jaw hardened. She glanced over at Father Escarrá, who nodded, and turned back to the mayor. “Even in Terrassa we’ve heard rumors that the Morra is in use, that prisoners are brought here from the prison, never to return. I assure you, my great-grandson is down there. As I have heard no charges against him, I want him released now.”

Marina held her breath. The marquesa was the source of
Joaquim’s gift of finding, so she must know where he was. Perhaps she had a sense of him below. Marina barely restrained herself from looking down at the floor.

“Do you pretend you don’t know?” the marquesa went on. “Or is it more convenient to let those fish girls run your prison for you and close one eye to their other actions?”