The Golden City Read Online Free PDF Page A

loose from the wood. She slid her hands into that narrow opening and pushed with all her st rength.
    The boards gave enough for her to squeeze through.
    After one la st glance at Isabel’s lifeless form, Oriana wriggled through that space. Her skirt caught on a nail, and she had to rip it to get loose.
    She was free.
    She let herself float there for a moment. Her skirts were heavy, but her natural buoyancy kept her from sinking too quickly.
    The river’s surface above her was dark. Before her Oriana saw shapes floating in the water, more traps like the one she’d ju st escaped. They were twenty feet or so under the surface, trying to float but prevented from rising any higher by thick chains that tethered them to the river’s murky bed below. Why didn’t they sink to the bottom? Oriana kicked away from her prison, trying to grasp the bigger pi ct ure of what she was seeing. In the nighttime waters she could make out two neat rows, st retching on for some di st ance. There mu st be more than twenty of these prisons under the river’s surface.
    It was
The City Under the Sea
.
    Oriana had read of the great work of art being assembled beneath the surface of the Douro. The newspapers often opined about it, ever since the pieces began appearing in the water almo st a year ago. Each was a replica of one of the great houses that lined the Street of Flowers, the st reet of the ari st ocrats. Shrunk down in scale to no larger than a coach, the replicas were con st ru ct ed in wood. They were all upside down, enspelled so that they would float, yet chained to the riverbed so they could never escape. They swayed in the grasp of the river’s outbound current, all moving in eerie unison.
    Oriana looked back at the house in which she’d been imprisoned. It was a replica of the Amaral mansion, Isabel’s home. To one side was the copy of the Rocha mansion, and on the other the elegant Pereira de Santos house.
    Had Isabel been killed merely for the sake of this . . . artwork? Had others awakened in the darkness only to realize, like Isabel, that their death was seeping in about them?
    Oriana gasped, drawing in water, and corruption touched her gills. The water ta st ed foul, reminding her of a shipwreck, bodies left behind in the water for the fish and other creatures to pick clean. Nausea sent a flush of heat through her body. She slapped a hand over her mouth and nose, as if that could prote ct her from breathing in the death that was all about her. Oriana kicked hard, fighting the weight of her garments. She had to get to the surface, away from this graveyard.
    She swam toward a spot of light that mu st be the moon’s refle ct ion on the water. But when she broke the surface, her head banged again st the hull of a small boat, hard enough to disorient her. She in st in ct ively shoved away. The st ars spun. In the di st ance she saw the lights of a city, although she couldn’t tell which one. She let herself slip back under the water, the only safe place. She spread her fingers wide so she would feel in her webbing when the boat moved away.
    In st ead she sensed someone diving into the water. Oriana kicked back down toward the depths, but her pursuer kept after her. She drew her dagger again, but before she could turn about, a large hand clamped down on her hand. She had no leverage to jerk away, and it took only a second before the man attached to that hand managed to pry the blade loose from her fingers. It spun away down through the water, quickly obscured. The tang of blood floated in the water; the dagger had cut her hand when he’d wre st led it away. The man wrapped an arm about her che st and dragged her back up toward the surface.
    When she broke the surface again, a second man dug his hands into her sodden dress while the man in the water pushed her up and over the edge of the boat. She tumbled into the bilge.
    For a second Oriana huddled there, hands balled into fi st s, trying to catch her breath. Her head throbbed