Grandmother Monteiro waited for them at the head of the pier. It had been almost five years since Oriana had seen her, but she hadn’t changed much. She was a tall woman, her lean figure still straight and erect, and her dark eyes sharp. Like Oriana’s own, her nails were filed down to sharp points, curving over the ends of her fingers—as much a marker of wealth as the rose-gold bangles at her wrists and ankles. Her white hair was massed atop her head in neat braids. The blue jacket she wore over her yellow pareu matched the embroidery about the pareu’s hem. Oriana stopped an arm’s length away. The two guards in the lead moved off to one side of the pier, but Duilio stopped behind her and waited for them to acknowledge his presence.
Oriana inclined her head. “Honored Grandmother.”
Her grandmother’s lips curved in a smile. “My child. And who is this you bring to the house of Monteiro?”
Oriana swept her hand to one side, and Duilio obediently stepped up next to her. “Honored Grandmother, this is my mate, Duilio, of the house of Ferreira.”
And perfectly on cue, Duilio sank to his knees and bowed to the ground at her grandmother’s feet. After only a second, her grandmother reached down and touched the top of his head. “Welcome, child.”
Oriana let loose a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. What a relief. She hadn’t expected her grandmother would reject him, not for a moment. Even so, her grandmother’s ready acceptance of him was reassuring. Oriana knew she’d made foolish mistakes in her past, but Duilio wasn’t one of them.
And her grandmother’s warm welcome made a stark contrast to the complete lack of welcome she’d had from the Paredes family on Quitos. None of her three aunts and neither of her cousins had acknowledged Oriana’s arrival on the island in any way. Legally she was dead, and therefore they no longer had ties to her. Oriana was grateful that the Monteiro side of her family, as small as it was, was more understanding.
Duilio pushed back up to his knees and smoothly came to his feet, a smile on his face. This was the first time Oriana had asked him to perform the full obeisance, and he’d done it without flinching. Her grandmother reached up and put a finger on his chin, tilting his head down so that she could peer up into his face. He complied, his lips pressed together and warm brown eyes dancing with laughter.
She eyed him narrowly and then released him, a further sign of approval. “Come, children,” she said then, including the guards in that address. “I have a carriage waiting.”
The carriage’s driver wore the blue-and-white-patterned pareu of the Monteiro servants, along with a blue vest that hid her dorsal stripe. Sailors and dockworkers strolled past the carriage and along the harbor’s main street. White plastered buildings with dark wooden trim clustered across that street, mostly cafés and shops. Farther down, the street ran past the harbormaster’s offices and along the main docks for trading ships. The hub of all foreign trade on the islands, the harbor of Porto Novo always bustled with activity.
A venerated elder on this island, her grandmother had never feared being exposed. Oriana, on the other hand, found it unnerving. She’d become accustomed to closed coaches in the last three months, ones with shades drawn so that the guards could better protect them. She cast a glance at Duilio, who signed discreetly with one hand that his seer’s gift for sensing danger wasn’t triggered by this mode of transportation. So she climbed into the carriage and settled next to her grandmother. In the seat behind them, Duilio squeezed in with two guards, leaving the other pair to ride on the carriage’s tail. Once the driver was sure they were all settled, she shook the reins and the horses set off.
As they passed the docks, Oriana peered at the ships, trying to estimate the balance of trade. A handful of English ships were moored at the piers, along with two Spanish ships, one also flying the yellow and red streamers of Catalonia. And at the far end, two smallish Portuguese freighters flew their country’s blue and white flag—one from Northern Portugal and one from Southern Portugal. It was a welcome sight after all their efforts to reestablish trade. They would have to make a point of visiting with the Portuguese captains while they were here.
The docks swarmed with human men unloading their cargos, voices lifted to carry over the raucous calls of the seagulls. Just as boisterous, sereia shore crews in their short tucked-up pareus loaded that cargo onto wagons to cart it to the nearby warehouses. The docks of Amado were among the few places where human men and sereia females treated one another as equals. By the rules of old treaties, the sereia dockworkers swore not to entice any man off those ships, and not to call them in any way. In turn, the human captains knew to keep certain crew members aboard those ships. Any male who did stir up trouble on the docks—or any male who was particularly handsome—might never return. Despite the wide differences between human and sereia cultures, the harbor’s rules had held steady for generations. It was business.
As the carriage moved away from the docks, they passed older houses, sprawling affairs with plastered walls and tiled rooftops very unlike the granite buildings in the Golden City that rose three or more stories, crammed together like sardines in a tin. Here the houses were built up the mountainsides, too steep to run them close together.
Oriana glanced back at Duilio. He was watching those mountains with eager eyes. One of the advantages he’d gained from being half selkie was good lungs. He enjoyed climbing. She didn’t, but was willing to join him so long as they could go slowly enough for her. She suspected at least one extended hike was in their future, perhaps along one of the aqueducts that brought freshwater down from the mountain springs to the shores.
When they finally reached the edge of Porto Novo, Oriana made the gesture that told Duilio he could talk. “Honored Grandmother,” he said immediately, “Oriana pointed out the beach where you live. Is it far?”
The driver cast a glance over her shoulder, but didn’t comment on the male talking out of turn behind her. Here on Amado it wasn’t that unusual.
Oriana’s grandmother turned in her seat to glance back at the three men crowded onto the bench behind her. “There’s no need for such formality, child,” she said to him. “You’ve met the requirements of custom. You may simply call me Grandmother now.”
“I am honored,” Duilio said, inclining his head.
Her grandmother smiled and gestured toward Oriana. Pretty, her hands said—a reference to Duilio’s behavior rather than his appearance. Then she pointed at the next spine of the mountains that slid down to the sea ahead of them. “It’s just beyond that ridge. Not as far as it seems.”
“You don’t travel back and forth every day, do you?” Oriana asked. Her grandmother was nearing eighty, and rattling along these dirt and gravel roads had to be hard on her constitution.
“Not every day, child.” She patted Oriana’s knee and turned back to gaze at the men. “I imagine that the last few months have been difficult for all of you.”
The two guards glanced at each other as if startled to be addressed. Duilio just smiled secretively. “It has been challenging, Grandmother, although in different ways for each of us.”
“Duilio’s greatest challenge has been refraining from speaking,” Oriana informed her, making the sign for the chattering of seagulls with one hand. Duilio just grinned.
“I believe that males have as much right to be heard as their mates,” her grandmother said to him. “It’s a common belief here on Amado. Please don’t be afraid to ask questions.”
That was one of the great differences between Quitos and Amado. On Quitos, traditional ways held sway. Because of their comparative rarity, sereia males were seen as creatures to be protected. They were to be cared for, and weren’t to involve themselves in demanding activities like government or business. Once they had a mate, they cared for the children and stayed in the home. It was a near parallel to the role of women in Portugal, although not exact. In Portugal there wasn’t a dearth of women as there was of males here, so poor women there had no choice but to work.
Duilio leaned forward, eager to take advantage of the chance to ask questions. “Your son was educated, I understand. What percentage of males pursue that here?”
Her grandmother sighed. “Less than twenty percent, even now. The poorer the family, the less likely the sons will be educated. You attained a university degree, did you not?”
Oriana suspected her father had included a great deal about Duilio in his letters to her grandmother.
“Yes,” Duilio admitted. “I studied law and serve as Oriana’s legal advisor here.”
“And you’ve traveled abroad, my son told me,” her grandmother continued. “Most males here would be jealous.”
“I’m fortunate,” Duilio admitted. “My family is wealthy. Many human males would envy those opportunities just as much as sereia males.”
“True,” she countered. “My son was also born into a wealthy family, one with enough political consequence that I could afford to have an eccentric child.”
Oriana reined in her urge to laugh. Hearing her father described as an eccentric child would bring her secret amusement for years to come. The carriage passed over the ridge, finally giving them a view down into the bay. The surrounding slopes were steep and heavily wooded, but on the beach there were a handful of houses widely spaced apart—homes of some of the wealthiest families on Amado.
Even from this distance Oriana could see her grandmother’s house, the familiar outline of it with its two courtyards and terraces. She and Marina had slept out under the stars on those terraces many nights. It was the closest thing she had to a home.
* * *
The advance guard had arrived with the luggage on an earlier ferry, so their bags waited in a fine bedroom with a view of the sea. Oriana had warned Duilio that the furnishings would be minimal given their proximity to the water. A delicately carved bench in dark wood stood to one side of the doorway, and two matching chairs waited near the windows with a small table between them, but there was no bed. Only the elderly or the infirm used beds here. Instead, above a shallow indentation in the floor, the bedding hung neatly from hooks on the wall, meant to be laid out and picked up every day so that it could air properly. The room’s heavy wooden shutters each had a screened inner shutter that would let in a fresh breeze and sunlight, but not seagulls. Duilio threw those open and surveyed their luggage, deciding what to unpack first.
This was one of the rare times when he did miss his valet, who’d moved up in the world and was now valet to a prince. It would be nice to have someone unpack for him. But this was his duty here, to make sure Oriana had everything she needed.
She emerged from the bathing room and came to wrap her arms around him, setting her chin on his shoulder. Her sharp nails pricked his bare waist. “Leave it,” she urged. “We can sort it out after dinner.”
“I don’t want to make a poor impression,” he admitted, indicating his pareu, wrinkled during the ride from the harbor.
“Grandmother’s not overly critical,” Oriana whispered against his ear. She’d unbraided her hair and now wore it loosely tied back, a hint of informality. “You’ll be fine.”
So they went to dinner without changing. In the dining room, a fine linen tablecloth covered with whitework embroidery lay atop a wooden table surrounded by chairs whose backs bore intricate carvings of vines and leaves. Very different from the wicker furniture more common on Quitos. Duilio would definitely call the décor in this room, at least, Portuguese.
Grandmother Monteiro assessed Duilio, her dark eyes bypassing his rumpled pareu altogether, and then sat at the head of the table, directing them to sit to either side of her. She waited until the servants had brought in the first course, potato and kale soup, before asking, “So, now that we’re alone, is it true that you’re half selkie, young man?”
Duilio supposed that to a woman of her age, young man was an acceptable description for a man who’d recently turned thirty. “Yes, Grandmother.”
Her dark eyes narrowed. “You don’t seem uncivilized, but my son told me your mother was raised among humans.”
“That’s true.” The sereia commonly perceived selkies as savages, since they chose to live on the ocean. “Most people back home have no idea that my mother isn’t human.”
Grandmother Monteiro gestured, signing acceptance by touching her chin. It didn’t necessarily mean she believed him, but that she chose not to argue the point. Duilio inclined his head to grant her that. It had taken him a while to learn some of the finer points of sereia gestures. Their people used hand signals to communicate underwater, but those same signs were also used on land, an augmentation to their words that went beyond facial expressions. It added a second level to dialogue that often belied the words spoken aloud. Oriana had begun teaching him those long before they’d accepted the assignment as ambassadors to the Ilhas das Sereias, mostly so he could understand what her father was signing.
“My son speaks well of Lady Ferreira,” Grandmother Monteiro added. “He says your family has proven supportive, especially now that their marriage has been made public.”
Oriana’s father had been secretly married for almost eight years to a Portuguese noblewoman. But he’d recently accepted Portuguese citizenship, and the newspapers, fascinated by the dozens of New Portuguese—mostly sereia who’d lived secretly in the Golden City for years—had exposed his marriage. It was scandalous enough that a woman of the aristocracy would wed a commoner, her man of business, but when it became public that the man in question was also nonhuman, many of Lady Pereira de Santos’ friends had abandoned her. Fortunately, Duilio’s mother cared nothing about the opinions of society. “My mother finds them both charming company, as well as the lady’s daughter.”
“And speaking of daughters,” Grandmother Monteiro said, “I hope that I may have a great-granddaughter eventually?”
Oriana’s eyes met Duilio’s across the table and he winked at her, permission rather than any salacious commentary. Sereia tradition held that once a woman became pregnant, she would signal that to others by folding the tucked-in edge of her pareu differently. Oriana hadn’t done so yet, wanting to break the news to her family first. “Actually, Grandmother,” she admitted, “we are expecting our first child.”
Her grandmother pressed her webbed hands together, almost as if in prayer. “I am pleased, child, and I hope for nothing but health for you.” She turned to Duilio. “Are you good with children?”
Because she expects me to raise those children. “I had a much younger foster brother,” he said, “and I did well with him. I hope to care for our children well.”
And so the meal went on, a chance for Oriana’s grandmother to catch up not only on Oriana’s recent history but on that of her father and her sister, Marina, who also lived in the Golden City now. The conversation ranged from there to the nascent movement for women’s suffrage in Portugal and how it compared to the male suffrage movement on the islands, and then the views of the various countries in which Duilio had lived. It was normal dinner conversation, carefully avoiding the issue they’d come to this house to discuss. Oriana and her grandmother would likely handle that in a more private venue.
After the meal, Duilio excused himself to return to their room, but stopped first to determine how the guards were settling into their temporary posting. Lieutenant Benites had taken over one of the sitting rooms, transforming it into the guard contingent’s office and armory. She glanced up from her work and rose when she saw him standing there. The young lieutenant was quicker than Lieutenant Costa, who rose from his chair belatedly with a flush on his cheeks.
“Mr. Ferreira, is there anything you need?” Benites asked. A stocky young woman from a small town outside Lisboa, she had a perpetual half smile on her face. She did, however, approach her assignment with great seriousness.
In Duilio’s opinion, she also carried out her duties better than her male counterpart. And she’s considerably smarter than Costa. “No, Lieutenant. I only wanted to be sure you had everything in hand.”
The lieutenant nodded once. “Yes, sir. The layout the ambassador drew for us is quite accurate, so we’ll be able to proceed with the duty roster as planned. Having seen the house now, though, I would like our hostess’ permission to put a guard on the roof instead of the terrace.”
They’d only brought a dozen guards to Amado, so they would be stretched thin for the next month. That had been one of their concerns in coming here. While there had been little official notice of the arrival of the new Portuguese mission, someone certainly had noted Oriana’s return to her homeland. It hadn’t taken long before threats began to appear, usually sent via the mail, but a few delivered directly by members of the sereia government. They usually suggested that Oriana should return to Portugal for her own safety. Someone in the government found her presence threatening.
The embassy on Quitos was a solid building behind a wrought-iron fence, tidy and defensible, but this house was on an open beach. Surely they could spot anyone approaching either by land or water from the rooftop. The lieutenant’s idea was a good one, Duilio decided, provided the rooftops were accessible.
“I’ll inquire into that in the morning,” he promised. He could ask Grandmother Monteiro directly, but he would go through Oriana first.
Captain Vas Neves, the officer in charge of the embassy’s guards, entered their office then, nodding to him before striding past and setting her Kropatschek rifle among the others neatly lined up against one wall. Vas Neves was a hard-faced older woman, tall and lean, with gray hair scraped back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Duilio knew little of her background save that she’d grown up in the former colony of Portuguese East Africa, the daughter of a big-game hunter there. She rarely spoke of her past, but, given what he’d observed of the guards at their target practice, she’d inherited her father’s deadly aim with firearms.
It hadn’t been a popular decision to place a woman in charge, not within the upper ranks of the army, but grudging consent had finally been won. Women were far less vulnerable to the call of a sereia than men. That had prompted Prince Raimundo to argue for the creation of a contingent of female guards, a shocking suggestion back home. He’d further shocked his constituents by arguing that the women should wear uniforms identical to the men’s—with trousers, not skirts—granting them greater freedom of movement. The prince had finally won out over the army’s objections, but the obstacle of finding and training the women in the short months before they set sail remained. Thus the ambassadorial staff had arrived on Quitos with a guard contingent that still had a dozen male members. Those remaining male soldiers spent their time guarding Duilio rather than Oriana, but he would be relieved when they packed them back to Portugal. They were too much at risk here, and Duilio was perfectly willing to trust the female members of the guard with his safety.
He turned to the captain. “So, Captain, are your soldiers settled in?”
“We’ve had a couple of issues with the baggage and one dispute with a servant, but Lady Monteiro’s head of staff has sorted them out for us. Nothing serious,” Vas Neves said, one hand lying comfortably on her pistol. The guard’s main challenge had been to distinguish between what was an actual threat and what was normal behavior for a very different culture. They’d avoided triggering any incidents so far, but the past three months in Quitos had been nerve-racking. “Quarters are assigned,” the captain went on, “and Benites has the duty rosters well in hand. We’ve also sent word of the ambassador’s presence here to the Portuguese ships in harbor, and will let you know if the captains wish to arrange a visit.”
Obviously they had everything under control, so he wasn’t needed here. “Thank you, Captain. Let me know if there’s anything we can do to make this easier for your personnel. This is supposed to be a retreat for us all.”
The captain nodded and Duilio left the officers plotting their next few days. Duilio walked along the white hallways, nodding to sloe-eyed Corporal Almeida as he passed her duty station in the hall outside his and Oriana’s bedroom. Once inside, he crossed the room to unlatch the inner shutters, allowing the cool evening breeze in through the screens.
For a moment, he stood inhaling the sea air.
Oriana might joke about his frustration over not being allowed to speak, but in truth this was far more difficult. He was accustomed to doing, not to standing by while Oriana did all the work. The last three months had been an eye-opening experience. Oriana had done this often enough while she was in the Golden City, forced to wait while he’d gone off to investigate. He could do it too.
He sighed and turned his eyes to the bedding hanging from hooks on the wall. I have chores to do.