The Seer's Choice: A Novella of the Golden City Read Online Free PDF

named Pinheiro that day. “Your father? I’d heard you were raised at the seminary for orphans.”
    He glanced up at her, an olive between his fingers halfway to his mouth. “You don’t know.”
    What didn’t she know ? “I suppose not.”
    He put the olive back down on his plate and wiped his fingers on his napkin. “Well, that proves the three women on the force gossip less than the men. Because all the men seem to know about my father and regularly comment on his behavior.”
    “I apologize. I assumed you were an orphan.”
    “By the time my mother learned she was with child,” he said, “she had formed such a disgust of my father that she chose the convent over trying to force him to marry her. I was sent to the seminary when I was born.”
    How awful to be separated from his mother. “Do you blame her?”
    “Not at all,” he said. “She made the best decision for me. If my father had been part of my life I would be a far different person. I don’t believe I would be better for it.”
    The same could be said of the man who’d fathered her. “Who is he?”
    For the first time she saw hesitation on his face. “He can’t be worse than my real father was,” she pointed out. “Mine was a murderous defrocked priest.”
    He laughed shortly. “My father’s not worse so much as obnoxious .”
    “He can’t be worse than Lord Carvalho, either.” The man who’d raised her and then turned her out when he’d learned she was a bastard, Lord Carvalho was a bear of a man with a foul temper and a tendency to yell at people. She’d always been his least favorite daughter, the least like him.
    Captain Pinheiro took a deep breath. “Paolo Silva.”
    Genoveva gaped.
    She despised Paolo Silva. Silva, the former prince’s pet seer, had a fondness for seducing young women. The man had once threatened to compromise Constancia’s reputation, and then had the gall to suggest that Genoveva offer herself in Constancia’s place to save her younger sister from ruin. That day in the library, certain he was behind Constancia’s kidnapping, she had railed at him.
    How was it possible that kindhearted Captain Pinheiro was related to that horrible man?
    “He never knew about me until my mother passed, not quite four years ago now,” the captain said when she didn’t speak. “She told him on her deathbed, which wasn’t a favor to me. Silva’s been a thorn in my side ever since, mostly by trying to be fatherly and failing at it utterly.”
    His longsuffering tone made her want to laugh. The poor man . Her own father had shown up in the city the previous year and abruptly demanded she train as his apprentice, as if he had some right to direct her life. Captain Pinheiro’s father wasn’t the fiend hers had turned out to be, but Silva was awful in his own way. “We truly can’t help who our parents are, can we?”
    “Not at all,” he said with a shake of his head. “Fortunately I was well established in the police when he found out about me, and he usually does listen when I put my foot down over his attempts to interfere in my life.”
    Mr. Botelho brought the fish then, and for a few moments, Captain Pinheiro was consumed with eating, but eventually the discussion turned to his ideas for meeting during the week to learn how to fire a pistol. “So tomorrow at . . . four, barring any odd occurrences, I’ll take you and Mrs. Anjos out to the field we use for firing practice.”
    It seemed like an acceptable plan.
    

    Monday, 3 April 1903
    Rafael watched while the two women unloaded their guns a final time. Mrs. Anjos handled hers gingerly, as if she held a snake. Miss Jardim, on the other hand, wore a grim face but didn’t back down. She’d shown decent aim so far. For beginners, they’d done well.
    Mrs. Gaspar stood to one side throughout, an amused smile on her face. She hadn’t touched either of the guns—too much steel for her to handle—but watched the proceedings with keen interest. “Now the