THURSDAY, 30 OCTOBER 1902
Oriana woke in her own bed with midmorning light slanting in from the skylight in the bathroom. Her arm ached and the bandage’s constriction annoyed her, but she’d had worse. For a time she lay there, her mind rambling over the things that she’d seen. She wished the entire previous day and night could be dismissed as a bad dream, but she knew better. She sighed heavily.
“Are you going to get out of bed?” Duilio asked.
She lifted her head and spotted him sitting across the room on her leather chaise, a book in his hands. He was neatly dressed in a dark coat and trousers. “What time is it?”
“Almost ten.” He rose and came to stand by her bed. “See, I’ve left the door open to keep the servants happy.”
“To keep Felis happy,” Oriana said. “You’re afraid of her.” She sat up in bed, trying to decide whether her appetite or any other urges were particularly pressing. She could wait. “What are you reading?”
“The French book,” Duilio said. He held Monsieur Matelot’s flawed volume on sereia culture. “Mother’s right. There needs to be a more accurate book on your people’s customs.”
If they could return to her people’s islands, he could easily write that book. But there was still someone within her people’s government who’d been willing to sacrifice her, someone who’d funded Serpa’s obscene plans and the murders of her uncle and Felipa Reyna. She didn’t know if she would ever feel safe there, but she needed to find out who’d been involved. “Perhaps someday,” she equivocated.
“We’ve heard from Lady Pereira de Santos, by the way,” he said. “The warrant for your father’s arrest has been canceled, so you can rest easy on his account.”
She laid her hands over her face. “Thank the gods.” Then she recalled their other unfinished business. “Have we heard from Dr. Esteves?”
Duilio came and sat down on the edge of the bed facing her. “Yes, he believes he found a copy of Serpa’s journal at the medical school’s offices. He should be over in a couple of hours. Will you want to join us in the library when he arrives?”
“Yes,” she said. “And what until then?”
His smile grew. “Did you have anything particular in mind?”
Oriana cast a glance at the bathroom door where she could see sunshine streaming down through the skylight. “Do you still want to get a look at my dorsal stripe in the daylight?”
“Is that a possibility?”
“It is,” she admitted. “Although I suggest locking the bedroom door first, in interest of being discreet.”
Duilio didn’t waste any time.
* * *
A worn-looking Dr. Esteves produced a pair of leather journals bound with black ribbons as soon as he entered the library. One was printed, the title on its spine in Spanish—El sede de la magia—verifying that the book had been translated into a human tongue. The second must be Dr. Serpa’s notes, the handwritten pages filled with a tidy, flowing script.
“Do you think there were more copies?” Duilio asked, looking at the notes.
“No way to tell,” Esteves said. “I read some of this. Serpa truly did believe he was creating something fantastic.”
Standing against the bookshelves with her arms folded, Oriana stared at the books as if they were a nest of snakes.
Joaquim shook his head. “There’s a limit to how far one should go.”
“Which is why I’m here, son.” The doctor nodded to the two books resting on the polished library table. “Are those the original?”
One was the copy his father had brought from the islands; the second one, Joaquim had found at the doctor’s house. “Yes,” Duilio admitted. “One of them has been sitting in this library most of my life, unread.”
“Serpa left his copy on his desk,” Joaquim added, “in plain sight. Waiting for someone to pick it up and admire his cleverness, no doubt.”
“So what do you plan to do with these?” Esteves asked.
Joaquim shot a glance over at the library hearth, which one of the maids had lit that morning to battle the chill. The flames had died down to embers, but he picked up the doctor’s journal, walked over to the hearth, and ripped out a few pages. Then he tossed them on the embers. The paper curled, the ink smoking. The edges caught fire. Esteves picked up one of the journals and went to join Joaquim at the hearth. Soon they were both feeding pages slowly into the flame, the smell of burning paper acrid about the room.
Duilio ran his hand over the last book, the volume his father had owned. “We’re destroying knowledge. What if there’s something important in here?”
Oriana set her hand over his. “My uncle died because of this. Those girls did, too. Nothing is worth that.”
“Some things come at too high a price,” Joaquim said.
“What they did wasn’t a miracle, Mr. Ferreira,” the doctor said, glancing over his shoulder at Duilio. “It wasn’t even a success. It was butchery, and we know enough ways to butcher each other already.”
Serpa had killed at least six people in his quest for infamy—although the sixth, Prince Fabricio, wasn’t dead yet. There was no knowing how many Salazar had killed. And all they had created between them was death.
Duilio picked up the last volume and carried it over to the hearth. He didn’t know if burning the book was the right decision, but it was what he was going to do.