The 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?”
The mayor blinked rapidly. “I have not been told of this.”
Father Escarrá nodded when the marquesa glanced his way.
“I have sent a message to the king with my protest,” she announced. “You would do well to satisfy my demands before I speak to my cousin in person.”
“The king?” the man asked, paling.
“I sent him a telegram myself. This place may have suited the world of the nineteenth century, but this is a new century.” She turned to the priest, who stood at her side. “Father Escarrá, go fetch Bishop Meseguer for me. He’ll want to know what’s been going on under his nose.”
The paer en cap whispered something to one of his adjuncts, who dashed back up the stairs. “There’s no need, Marquesa,” he said. “We’ll get to the truth of this immediately. I’ve sent for the keeper of the keys. If the underground is being used, we’ll find out now.”
Marina glanced down at Alejandro, whose lips were pursed. Getting them out didn’t guarantee they would stay free.
A man in a different uniform, a plain gray one, came jogging into the hall, breathing hard as if he’d run a long way. He began speaking to the mayor in urgent, low tones.
“He says the wall about the main prison has fallen down,” Father Escarrá whispered to Marina. “Like the walls of Jericho, it simply fell. The prisoners who were in the courtyard fled in all directions, and the guards cannot chase them all down.” He paused, listening. “He says the bad prisoners—he means the violent ones, I think—the hall they’re in is intact, but the nationalists are escaping.”
The man continued to talk to the mayor, and the priest’s head cocked as he listened. Then he whispered to Marina again, “The mayor asked why the sirenas who run the prison haven’t called the escaping men back, and the guard said they’re busy with something else.”
The adjunct who’d gone upstairs returned with a barrel-chested man in the fancy livery of the city guard. The mayor, still talking with the guard from the prison, waved for him to go on. The large man paraded past them toward a walnut railing under one of the arcades. He opened out an iron gate and then disappeared down a flight of steps.
* * *
His nerves rattled, Joaquim tried the next key. Aline pushed herself back up to her knees, only one hand to her throat now. Her pained call had shifted to the call he’d heard before: come, come. It was yearning, pure and simple, trying to drag him away from the door.
The guard who’d been asleep at the desk shook his head blearily. He gaped at the calling sereia, only a few feet from him, then rose and helped her to her feet, gazing at her worshipfully.
Leandra tugged the key ring out of Joaquim’s hands, freeing him to draw his gun again, and pushed the next key into the hole. This one turned in the lock, clicking as it went around. Joaquim kept his gun trained on Aline and the guard.
The sereia woman saw the gun under the desk then and bade the guard to retrieve it. He dove under the desk.
“I’ve got it!” Leandra tried to shove the door open, and Joaquim reached past her, pushing the iron door ponderously outward.
Aline grabbed the gun away from the guard and shot wildly, but the bullet found its mark, searing its way into Joaquim’s calf. He cried out, his right knee buckling. He hurtled forward and landed atop Leandra. They both fell onto another stone landing.
A muscular man in a different uniform—not the prison guard’s gray—stood a few feet away on the landing above them, his mouth gaping. Joaquim rolled away from Leandra, lifting his borrowed pistol. He turned it on the sereia. Aline was already coming after them. She lifted her pistol again, her second bullet firing wide. It hit the low wall near the unknown guard’s feet. He cursed vehemently.
Joaquim trained his gun on the woman. “I’m a much better shot than you are, Aline. You’d better drop that gun.”
* * *
Marina heard the guard’s startled exclamation. “Stay right here,” she told Alejandro.
She dashed across the hall to the walnut railing and peeked over it. At the bottom of the stairwell, the large guard stood frozen in indecision. A few feet away, Joaquim sprawled half across a woman who must be Leandra Rocha, pinning her to the floor with his weight. Joaquim had a gun trained on someone beyond Marina’s field of vision.
She grabbed up her skirts and ran down the stairs, halting next to the guard. On the other side of the iron door, a woman in gray walked up the steps, a gun in her hands. Her eyes were fixed on Joaquim.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” Joaquim was saying.
“Do you think I can let you get away now?” She raised her gun. “If I fail Reyna . . .”
Marina didn’t wait to hear what the woman had to say. She laid her hand on the town hall guard’s arm and worked a call into her whispered voice. “Shoot her.”
The guard drew his gun and fired.
The woman tumbled back onto a stone landing on the other side of the heavy door. Marina darted past the befuddled guard to kneel at Joaquim’s side.
He regarded her as if unsure she was real. “Marina?”
Marina saw blood staining his trouser legs. “Are you injured? Can you move?”
Before he could answer, she spotted movement farther down the stair, beyond the door. A gray-garbed guard like the one who’d come from the prison had been helping the unknown woman, but he glanced up, his eyes meeting Marina’s. He started toward the steps, patting his holster . . . only to find it empty.
Marina didn’t wait for him to locate his missing gun. She jumped up and pushed the iron door, groaning when she realized how heavy it was.
But the town hall guard stepped over Joaquim, caught the edge of the door, and shoved it closed with one hand. Then he locked it, an effective means to cut off the combatants and prevent any more shooting. He glared down at Joaquim and grabbed up the pistol and keys that lay on the steps near him. “What’s going on here?” he barked.
Joaquim held out one hand to Marina and she did her best to help him up. He hissed when he put his weight on his right leg, though, and ended up stretching one arm over Marina’s shoulders. Once Joaquim’s weight was off her, Leandra rose slowly. She ignored the guard’s hand when he moved to aid her. She’d been beaten, one eye swollen almost all the way closed. One of her hands was heavily bandaged and she moved as if exhausted. Even so, she looked very formidable.
This is Alejandro’s mother, Marina thought, feeling a sudden pang of loss.
Her jaw clenching tightly, Marina turned away. She drew Joaquim up the steps to the ground floor of the hall. She wanted to find a place where she could inspect his injured leg or, better yet, get him to a hospital, but she didn’t know whether they were safe or not.
“What are you doing here?” Joaquim asked.
Marina touched his swollen cheek. “I’m here to rescue you.”