MONDAY, 20 OCTOBER 1902
Duilio guided the boat north, along the rocky coastline. He’d received a note that morning informing him the Lady would meet him at the monastery as requested at three that afternoon, which gave them several hours to get up the coast and back. The paddleboat had a shallow draught, making it a good choice for hugging the shore so long as the sea remained calm. Fortunately, since the storm on the day of Oriana’s departure, mild weather had ruled.
His mother’s pelt lay at her feet in the small boat. Like all selkies, she was tied to her pelt. A little over three years before, a footman had found it in the house and stolen it. Duilio’s father had immediately blamed his bastard half brother, Paolo Silva, the prince’s favored seer. The footman had been hired by Silva, it turned out, but he’d sold the pelt instead to a collector of magical items, none other than the Marquis of Maraval. Duilio had found the pelt on the man’s yacht two weeks ago, nailed to the wall of the captain’s cabin.
Now that she had it back, his mother would be able to take seal form for the first time in years . . . but at a price. Since there were nail holes in the fur, when his mother donned her pelt again, she would have open wounds there. They would heal in time, Erdano insisted, but in the interim they would bleed and seep—an unpleasant prospect in either seal or human form. Nevertheless, his mother was determined to go back to the water, and Duilio would never deny her that.
Even aware of the pain she would have to endure, she smiled up at the brown-winged gulls peppering the rocky headlands and trailed a hand in the calm water. Duilio hadn’t seen her this happy in years.
As they approached the opening of the secluded bay, seals slid by the boat, dark shapes in the water. Erdano’s harem had come out to welcome them. One thumped the side of the boat with her tail. Duilio opened the valve and let the engine die, then slipped out a pair of oars to take them the rest of the way into the bay—a safer approach for the sake of the bay’s inhabitants. While the adults knew to keep a safe distance from the boat’s paddles, Erdano had several children too young to be wary.
Duilio had once attempted to count them. He’d estimated between twenty-five and thirty females in the bay, although his mother had told him a handful of those were true seals, living within the selkie harem for safety. He hadn’t inquired further into that. As much as he liked his half brother, he truly did not understand the way Erdano’s mind worked when it came to females.
Duilio rowed the boat into the bay and shipped the oars. Rocky cliffs as high as a three-story house surrounded the circle of beach—a narrow strip of pale sands. The bay itself was shallow, so Duilio slipped off his rubber-soled shoes and jumped over the side to drag the boat onto the beach. Several pups sunning themselves there cried in dismay at the sight of a human until a pair of females came up onto the sand to comfort them.
Duilio helped his mother off the boat. Her bare feet still in the water, she stopped to watch as, in the center of the beach, a bull seal heaved his bulk awkwardly onto the sands—Erdano. He rose on his hind flippers and stripped off his pelt, dropping it there where a couple of the females could watch over it. Unabashed as always, he strode naked along the beach toward where their mother waited.
Try as he might, Duilio had never gotten used to their complete lack of concern over nudity. He’d spent too many of his childhood years clothed. He had, however, become adept at pretending it didn’t bother him. As they also spent much of their lives in the water, Oriana’s people shared the seal folk’s nonchalance about nudity. Duilio had succeeded in hiding his blushes around her, mainly due to his olive skin.
A roaring voice brought his attention back to the present. “Mother! Little brother!”
Erdano’s handsome face lit with a smile. He embraced their mother, dwarfing her—selkie females never had the bulk the males did—and then slapped one beefy hand onto Duilio’s shoulder. “What are you doing here?”
In human form, Erdano was a large man, a hand taller than Duilio and half again as wide. His dark hair hung in damp curls over his shoulders to the middle of his back. There was little resemblance between them, save about the eyes—they had both inherited their mother’s eyes.
Duilio smiled up at his brother. “Mother asked me to bring her out today to try her pelt.”
Erdano’s thick brows drew together. “Are you certain, Mother?”
“Yes,” she said with a brisk nod. “If I’m going to heal, I must start sometime.”
Erdano looked to Duilio, brown eyes wide. Reading his brother’s expression as a request for verification, Duilio simply nodded. If his mother had made up her mind, he didn’t intend to fight her. Erdano made a barking call then, and several of his harem came swimming over.
Duilio watched as three of the seals rose out of the water, removing their pelts as they did so. It still baffled his eyes, that moment when one of the seal folk slid a flipper across their chest to draw off their pelt. The shape of their bodies altered as they did so, and they withdrew first human arms and then shoulders from within the sealskin. It was a feat he would never be able to imitate; he had been born human, with no pelt to remove.
As the women waited in the gently rolling water, Duilio’s mother undressed on the shore, pulled her pelt from the boat, and began to wrap it around herself. Then she shrank down next to the water, a seal again. Duilio hadn’t seen her do that for years. He folded his arms across his chest, worried, even though he’d held his tongue in front of her.
Dark blood seeped from her flippers onto the sand. She shivered, ripples running along her dull pelt, but shuffled out to the water anyway. She barked when the salt water came up over her wounds, then dove farther in, swimming on her own.
The other females donned their pelts again, all save one. That one boldly walked over to the sands where Duilio waited—Tigana, Erdano’s queen. She had beauty to equal his, her nearly black hair streaming over slender shoulders. Like Duilio’s mother, she had borne a son, which gave her superior standing among the harem. She settled gracefully on the beach with her pelt laid across her lap and patted the damp sand next to her as an indication that she wanted Duilio to join her there.
Erdano eyed him sharply, but went back to the center of the beach to retrieve his own pelt. Duilio sat on the sand, carefully picking a spot where he wasn’t looking too directly at Tigana’s nude body. Erdano did have limits to his permissiveness.
Tigana’s fingers stroked the dark pelt in her lap. “Erdano has not noticed,” she said in her velvety voice, “but one of the girls is missing—Gita. She followed him into the city two nights ago and didn’t return.”
Duilio didn’t pretend to understand the dynamics of the harem. Why so many females stayed attached to one man—who was not by his nature faithful to any of them—eluded him. Erdano wasn’t even faithful to his harem as a whole, since he had several human lovers as well. Two of the housemaids were in that group, despite the fact that his mother had previously asked Erdano not to seduce their staff. Yet for some reason Tigana and the others didn’t seem to mind his excesses. “Why would she have gone into the city?”
“She was following him. Gita thought if she could approach him outside the harem, he would lie with her. Foolish.”
It had never occurred to Duilio that his brother didn’t mate with all the females of his harem. Erdano had never mentioned that curious fact. “Why would he not?”
Tigana’s eyes flicked up toward his and her hands stilled. Her rigid posture suggested offense, although her expression didn’t show it. It was often the case with the seal folk that they didn’t display their feelings the same way. “She is too young. She is only thirteen.”
“Ah,” Duilio said quickly. “I didn’t realize there were females that young in his harem.”
“She became disoriented in the recent storm and washed up here,” Tigana said with a graceful roll of one shoulder. “It was either kill her or take her in.”
Duilio wondered if his own mother had ever said such a harsh thing when she lived on these sands, when she’d been the queen of Erdano’s father’s harem. “So she’s new here,” he said. “Does she know anything about the city? About the laws there?”
“She has been warned,” Tigana said, “but I doubt she listened. Too young.”
Duilio’s gift presented him with a feeling of ill-fatedness for the missing girl. He shook his head to drive it out. “Did you want me to look for her?”
Tigana’s brows drew together slightly. “Why else would I tell you?”
Conversation was not one of her amusements, Duilio remembered. “What can you tell me about her, then? What does she look like?”
“As a human?” When he nodded, she continued, “Small like Darina. Brown hair, lighter than Guisa’s. Paler than me.”
He tried to recall either of those females, but failed. “How tall would she be if she stood next to you?”
Tigana held her hand just above her dark-tipped breasts, which told Duilio the girl fell short of five feet. Short, with brown hair and fair skin, slight build—that described far too many of the young girls of the city to be helpful to him. “Did she have any scars? Marks?”
Tigana considered for a moment and then shrugged. “I do not recall. I will ask the children if they remember.”
Duilio hoped she didn’t expect him to provide a miracle. The girl would likely have been nude when she came up on the docks, and that would serve as the only point of distinction for describing her. Without her pelt, she would appear completely human. He would have to start at the quays and track her from there. “Do you know where Erdano went that night?”
“She works in a tavern. Her name is”—Tigana scowled again, but Duilio suspected that was frustration, not dislike of the other woman involved—“Zenaide.”
That would help him retrace Erdano’s path, as he knew in which tavern Erdano had met that girl . . . unless there were two tavern girls named Zenaide in Erdano’s life, which seemed unlikely. “That’s helpful. I will try, Tigana, but I do not think I will find her.”
“You are better to look for her than Erdano. He is too easily distracted.” She rose, bundling her pelt under one arm, her delicate feet white against the black sands. Duilio managed to keep his eyes on those feet. “I will ask the children,” she said, and left him alone on the sand.
The day felt chillier then as Duilio contemplated the impossibility of hunting a nonhuman girl in the Golden City. Young Gita must be strong-willed if she’d defied Tigana and set off on her own after Erdano, but that didn’t mean she could make her own way in the city, not in the harsher parts of it, and not when revealing her identity would mean her death.
The city had once welcomed all of the peoples, human and sereia, selkie or otter folk. Duilio was old enough to remember that time. He remembered sereia walking through the streets among humans, with no enmity between. When the prince’s father died, young Prince Fabricio had closed the city to nonhumans after ascending the throne. The Ferreira family had always kept his mother’s bloodlines secret—simple enough to do since she wore human form—but from that day on they had lived with the fear of exposure.
It was more dangerous for one of the sereia. When Duilio had noticed Oriana back in the spring, though, it had never occurred to him to expose her. He’d noted the reddish cast of her curling brown hair, her large and dark eyes, her hands always hidden in silk mitts rather than gloves. He hadn’t been certain, though, until he saw her in the bathtub. He’d walked in on her there intentionally, citing a need to know the truth. Her skin bared, she could never pass for human. Her belly and thighs had a silvery coloration that mimicked a fish’s scales. Her webbed fingers had been visible as well, the pink-edged gill slits on the side of her neck vibrating as she lay with her eyes closed under the surface of the water, singing to herself. And while the teeth hidden behind her full lips resembled a human’s, he knew them to be much sharper.
Only when she’d dived into the water that last morning had he gotten a glimpse of her dorsal stripe. She had never turned her back on him before that. A glittering black band several inches wide, it stretched from a point beneath her shoulder blades and tapered down again to her heels, defined by a narrow edging of royal blue. Golden stippling ran down her sides and thighs. A strikingly attractive combination, even though it was merely an imitation of a tuna’s markings. The memory of that morning made him smile . . . and then fret again when he thought of her continued absence.
Sighing, he leaned back and watched the seals in the bay breaking the surface as they swam. He didn’t know enough of the females to make any sense of what was going on, but it seemed as if they supported one of their number. That had to be his mother, even though he couldn’t see enough of her pelt to be certain. Over at the center of the beach where the pups sunned themselves, he saw one larger female moving among them, her almost-black fur marking her as Tigana. Seagulls flew overhead, enjoying the warm morning.
Water rushed up toward the spot where Duilio sat, warning him a second before Erdano threw himself up on the beach, bearing a wave of seal musk with him that offended Duilio’s nose; he’d never liked the scent of other males. The bull seal waddled onto the sands and rose up out of seal form, slipping off his pelt once more. With a grin, Erdano came and settled nearby. He reclined propped up on an elbow, his pose reminding Duilio of an odalisque, as if he was displaying himself for his harem’s enjoyment. Duilio resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
“She come back yet?” Erdano asked. “Oriana?”
“No, she hasn’t returned,” Duilio admitted. Erdano had more than once hinted he wouldn’t mind seducing Oriana. Duilio didn’t think she’d give in, but women did seem to find Erdano irresistible, part of his selkie charm.
“Too bad.” Erdano smiled past him. “Mother is in pain, but swimming strong. That’s good. She will stay at the house if the other one comes back, won’t she?”
How could he answer that? “There isn’t any understanding between myself and Oriana.”
Erdano rolled his eyes dramatically and snorted. “I’m not that stupid, little brother.”
She’d agreed she would try to come back, no more. Somehow Duilio doubted Erdano would believe him. “Of course, Mother would stay,” he said. “It never occurred to me that she would leave.”
“Good. She doesn’t fit in here anymore. Been among humans too long.” Erdano nodded his head, watching the seals in the water now. “Did Tigana tell you one of the young ones is missing?”
So much for Erdano not noticing. “She mentioned it to me.”
Duilio pressed his lips together. “I can try, Erdano, but I have a bad feeling about her.”
Erdano fixed him with a worried gaze. “Is she dead?”
Birds chattered in the rocks above them. The sun went behind the clouds for a moment, taking the glare off the surface of the water, and Duilio could see the seals swimming calmly in the midst of the shallow bay—a peaceful scene. “I believe so.”
“Then find out who killed her,” Erdano ordered.