The Seat of Magic Read Free Page B

money was nothing to Duilio, so now Joaquim sat in this cold cell on a sunny Sunday afternoon, his jaw clenched and his stomach churning.
    The girl hadn’t been dead long so there was surprisingly little smell, but watching a doctor take apart a young woman and put her back together always bothered Joaquim. He had never developed the strong stomach he needed for this job.
    A discreet tap at the door preceded portly Brother Manoel opening it to allow Duilio inside. Joaquim gestured him over to another empty stool, and Duilio came, looking winded as if he’d run all the way from his house. Likely he had. He shifted his morning coat as he settled atop one of the other stools, then adjusted his well-tied necktie. Joaquim might accuse his cousin of being a dandy if Duilio’s up-to-the-mark garb didn’t make him self-conscious about the shabbiness of his own brown tweed suit.
    Joaquim shot a glance at the doctor’s square shoulders. He didn’t know Dr. Teixeira well, but he’d run across the older man at Mass several times. Teixeira hadn’t looked up from his work at Duilio’s intrusion, occupied with replacing things he’d previously removed. Joaquim turned away, glad he hadn’t eaten lunch.
    â€œHow long have you been here?” Duilio asked.
    â€œHours,” Joaquim said with a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to see Rafael before he headed back to Lisboa. But I caught Dr. Teixeira at Mass and he preferred to do this right away. You’ll be paying extra, by the way, for doing this on a Sunday.”
    Duilio shrugged. “So what has he found?”
    â€œNothing. Not yet.”
    â€œPoison?”
    â€œNo sign of it,” the doctor intoned without glancing over. “There’s surprisingly little bloating, though, despite the time passed since her death. I don’t know that it’s pertinent.”
    Duilio got to his feet and crossed the room to where the doctor was replacing the last of the organs he’d removed. Not willing to miss anything exchanged there, Joaquim followed, doing his best not to look at the body lying on the table.
    â€œThere are, of course, poisons we can’t trace,” Teixeira added, “but we usually see some damage in the affected organ. Nothing here looks out of the norm except for the heart.”
    Duilio leaned closer to peer down at the body, probably looking
inside
, which was a ghastly thought.
    â€œIs there a poison that affects only the heart?” Joaquim asked.
    The doctor shook his head. “Not this way. Not that I’ve ever seen before. It’s possible one exists, but . . .” He exhaled and said, “If you look at the damage to the heart and the tissues around it, it resembles damage done by a bolt of lightning. But that’s not what happened to her.”
    â€œWhy not?” Duilio asked.
    The doctor laid his hand somewhere on the body and Joaquim forced himself to look. The doctor had pulled the sheet back up to cover most of the girl’s body and her skin had been pulled closed, saving Joaquim from casting up the nonexistent contents of his stomach, but the long incision running down the center of her chest and up to each shoulder was grisly enough. The doctor pointed to the skin above the girl’s left breast. “No evidence of an entry or exit.When lightning strikes, the electricity passes through the body and usually leaves a burn on each end. This is localized to the tissues directly around the heart.”
    Joaquim looked up at him. “And what would do that?”
    Teixeira glanced over at Duilio and then back. “How familiar are you with healers?”
    â€œA healer did this?” Duilio asked before Joaquim had the chance.
    The doctor shook his head. “That’s not what I said. But”—he scowled down at the body—“keep in mind that I haven’t seen this kind of thing in a very long time. When I was a young