Conflagration (17 page)

Her second night with Bjorn was still very clear in her memory. She had pushed him down on the bunk and literally ridden him, arms stiff, pinning his wrists to the mattress like a prone crucifixion. He had seemed to find this perfectly acceptable at the time, but afterwards, after they had caught their breath and drunk a little gin, he had made an odd remark.

“There was a moment back then when I wondered where you had gone.”

Cordelia had blinked with some surprise and not a little annoyance. “Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

“As though—I don’t know how to put it—as though you’d disappeared behind your own eyes.”

Now Cordelia was simply annoyed. “You seemed to be having a good time, wherever my eyes might have been.”

Bjorn had made the mistake of defending himself. “I wasn’t saying…”

And Cordelia had cut him off huffily. “So don’t.”

She inspected her face in the mirror above the washbasin, looking, as best she could, for any telltale signs of change. Dark circles ringed her eyes, but she wasn’t sure if they signified anything other than routine dissolution. Freckles, the curse of all those with red hair and pale skin, lightly dusted her nose. She was spending far more time in the sun and air, first on the march south with the army and now on the ocean with the Norse. Men claimed to like freckles, but she’d rather her complexion was clear and porcelain white. She frowned disapprovingly, but was also relieved that she still retained her innate and uncomplicated vanity. She cursed Slide and his damned equations, but in the moment of cursing, she also recalled how, after the interrogation, she had propositioned Yancey Slide. He had, of course, turned her down, but suppose he hadn’t. To what place would that have taken her?

“Really, what
are
you becoming?”

The cabin was a little chill for Cordelia to be standing around stark naked, so she located her knickers and started to dress. Night had fallen and the temperature had dropped considerably, so she helped herself to one of Bjorn’s rollneck sweaters, let herself out of the cabin, and made her way up to the deck. The sky overhead was cloudless, and filled with a million stars, far more than were ever visible on land. For a long minute she stood and stared in unself-conscious awe. For all her supposed corruption, Cordelia still found the capacity for moments of childlike wonder. She made her way to the destroyer’s stern where another marvel awaited her. The wake of the
Ragnar
was a glowing path of green luminescence across the dark water. She leaned on the stern rail, impressed and a little breathless. Somewhere a seaman was singing softly.

Oh Maggie, oh Maggie, for love of a sailor

You packed up your pride and went down to the shore

And looked all in vain for the sails of his brigantine

Until you were sure he’d be coming no more.

Then the voice stopped and spoke to a third person who Cordelia was unable to see.

“Goodnight, miss. Just watch your step along there. Don’t want you coming a cropper.”

This immediately distracted Cordelia from the wonder of the nighttime sea.
Miss?
As far as Cordelia was aware, the only two passengers on the
Ragnar
eligible to be addressed as “Miss” were Jesamine and herself. Cordelia stood very still. Had Jesamine recovered enough to be out and about, and, if so, what was she up to in the middle of the night? She had a brief glimpse of a female figure hurrying down to a lower deck. It was definitely Jesamine, but where the hell had she been? To the best of Cordelia’s knowledge, the only living quarters so far back on the ship were those of the captain, and the stateroom and cabin that had been assigned to Jack Kennedy and his bodyguard. Although Cordelia knew all things were possible, she hardly thought that Jesamine was visiting the captain. Had she arranged an assignation with Dawson? The only alternative was a tryst with the Prime Minister. The high-lonesome singing sailor started a second verse.

Oh Maggie, oh Maggie, for love of a sailor

You stiffened your back and signed up as whore

Disrespected, deserted, with no consolation

For love of a sailor who’s coming no more.

Jesamine was coming from a private visit with Jack Kennedy? Was such a thing possible? Cordelia knew all too well it was all too possible. Given the correct circumstances and a sufficient quantity of gin, she could do the same herself; forget the difference in their ages, and fall for his elderly but still powerful charms. Cordelia took a deep breath. “Jesamine is fucking Jack Kennedy? Well damn me.”

JESAMINE

Jesamine ducked into the cabin she shared with Cordelia. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to be so furtive, but she was relieved that Cordelia was not there, probably bunked-up with the sailor who was keeping her amused through the voyage. Jesamine closed the door behind her, dogged it shut, and flopped on her bunk, remaining absolutely still as her body continued to tingle. He had been an old man, physically slow, with an old man’s body, but with the ease of confident experience, and possessed of a elemental power from which she still trembled. No wonder his people adored him and trusted him implicitly. He was like no other man that Jesamine had ever encountered; an ancient lion with a mane of white hair, who had taken her to him without self-consciousness, compromise, or effort. At one point she had straddled him, knees bent, with him deep inside her, rolling her hips against his thrusts, cupping her own breasts and moaning deep in her throat, brazenly eager to please and impress him. In her previous life, she had faked and fabricated so much passion, so many times, in so many ways, she wanted to push every wanton limit to give him something genuine, honest, and wholly of herself. Maybe Jack Kennedy would have enjoyed her just as much as a slut, but she wanted to be much more for him. He must have somehow sensed a part of what she was feeling, because, as she had dropped to her already trembling knees, and taken him in her unconstrained eager mouth, working her hard-won whore-skills, he had first groaned, but then whispered. “Easy, my dear, easy. Just take your own pleasure and relish it. You have nothing to prove to me.”

She had gone to Kennedy under no illusion about how the encounter might end, but with the attitude that she was bestowing the gift of her youth on the elderly hero. She’d had no idea that she would receive a gift far more intense than her youth and willingness. He had been waiting, in a smoking jacket and silk pyjamas. He had offered her cognac and she had accepted. He been in no apparent hurry to touch her, and he had again talked about the American interior, and how much he loved the vast undiscovered continent. He had told jokes about his moonshiner father, and tales of his youthful brushes with the American city gangs, like the Booze Fighters, the Roman Bloods, Blind Rebels, and the Richmond Shamrocks. Kennedy told stories of the internal struggles in Albany during the reign of Carlyle’s autocratic father, and how they had pulled him into the business of power and politics that had taken up the remainder of his life. He had not, however, concentrated exclusively on himself. So many of the so-called powerful men that Jesamine had met believed they need only boast about their exploits to impress a woman, but Kennedy was mindful to ask her about her own life and experiences. He had asked probing questions about the desert village of her childhood, and congratulated her on her ability to survive all the horrors and degradations that had been thrown at her. He had inquired about the other lands of Africa, especially those of the Zulu Hegemony, but had deftly exited the topic when he discovered just how little she knew beyond what might be expected of a Mosul camp follower. Even though Kennedy had handled the revelation of her ill-informed ignorance with the utmost grace and tact, she had spent some minutes feeling inadequate and stupid, but then Kennedy had handed her the promised Caribbean cigar, and lit it for her with meticulous care. They had sat facing each other in silence as the stateroom filled with rich blue smoke. Kennedy had stared at Jesamine with a calm intensity. Had another done such a thing, she might have been irritated or uncomfortable, but, with Kennedy, she simply met his gaze and basked in the attention. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft, amused at his own sense of awe. “Jesamine…” He had rolled the name as though saying it for the first time. “… you are very beautiful.”

Jesamine had finally felt on much safer ground. Slowly and sensuously she rose to her feet. She hadn’t spoken, just smoothly unbuttoned the back of her best blue dress, the one from New York, and allowed it to fall to the floor so she stood naked, but for her jewelry, her high heels, and the velvet choker around her throat. A slow smile had spread across Jack Kennedy’s face, and he had stretched out a hand to her. “Come here, my dear.”

Jesamine realized that, as she remembered what had just come to pass, she was unconsciously hugging herself. She knew that she must still smell of him. Her hand moved surreptitiously to touch herself, but at that moment someone started hammering on the cabin door.

CORDELIA

The too-familiar voice had come out of the cold thin air on the stern on the
Ragnar,
and whispered sickeningly, as always, maintaining the hollow ring of the torture chamber where Cordelia and Jeakqual-Ahrach had first come face to face with each other.
“So Cordelia Blakeney, I understand you have been asking questions about my new creations.”

Cordelia’s blood turned to ice. “What?”

She could see nothing, but she knew for certain the disembodied voice was neither madness nor hallucination. A split second earlier, Cordelia had been leaning on the destroyer’s stern rail, trying to resolve her feelings about a possible liaison between Jesamine and Jack Kennedy, but now she was a coiled spring, poised for fight or flight. A tense silence ensued for almost a minute before the voice came again.
“Did you think that I couldn’t find you, even in the middle of this great ocean?”

“Get away from me you old and twisted bitch!”

“Anger won’t protect you, Cordelia Blakeney. When will you accept that, whatever you do, and whatever powers you might believe you have acquired, you will always be vulnerable to me?”

“You haven’t been able to get near me in months.”

“I’m with you now, aren’t I?”

Cordelia could not deny this. Behind her, the wake of the
Ragnar
still created its strange luminescence, but she could no longer appreciate it. “I order you to get away from me.”

“Do you recall the first time we met, Cordelia Blakeney?”

“How could I forget it, Jeakqual-Ahrach?”

“You were strung up before me, naked. You and the coffee-colored whore.”

Cordelia was frightened. She had never imagined that Jeakqual-Ahrach could find her and communicate with her here on the deck of the Norse warship in the dark of night. The knowledge was nothing less than a profound shock, but she did her best not to reveal her fear. “The coffee-colored whore has a name. She is Jesamine.”

“My black Zhaithan had the two of you hanging from a bar, straining on tiptoe, arms stretched above your heads by the silk ropes around your wrists.”

“But we escaped you. And now your army has gone down in defeat.”

“My concern is not with armies.”

“It was at the time.”

“Even you should be aware that circumstances change.”

In that respect, Jeakqual-Ahrach was right. Circumstances had changed. When the Mosul invaders had stood at the borders of Albany, poised to attack and subjugate the kingdom, Jeakqual-Ahrach and her brother, Quadaron-Ahrach, had wielded almost as much power in the Mosul Empire as Hassan IX himself. It was a different kind of power, however. While Hassan might measure his might in military divisions and conquered territories, Jeakqual-Ahrach and Quadaron-Ahrach held sway over the dark forces and nameless menaces of the Other Place, and, through their command and manipulation of the Mosul religion and Quadaron-Ahrach’s control of the Zhaithan, they maintained a vicelike and unrelenting grip on the hearts and minds of enslaved millions.

Cordelia realized that she was holding on to the rail so hard that her hands hurt. Using all of her breeding and all of her training, she forced herself to relax. She wanted to run, to hide, to find the other three if a fight was to be fought. She was not going to expose her terror to a voice from empty air. “I notice that you don’t show yourself.”

“You want to see me, Cordelia Blakeney?”

“Not particularly, Jeakqual-Ahrach. I’m just wondering if you could stretch your power that far.” Cordelia had few doubts that Jeakqual-Ahrach could manifest herself if she so desired. She would never make the mistake of underestimating the power of either Her Grand Eminence or her equally sinister brother, the High Zhaithan. Since the Mosul defeat on the Potomac, much time had been spent assessing the dangerous siblings’ real position within the hierarchy of Hassan’s empire. In Albany, one school of thought reasoned that the military reversals in the Americas could only have brought about an eclipse of their power. Both the High Zhaithan and his sister had visited the Mosul army right before the push across the river, and surely they must have been saddled with some of the responsibility for its failure. This theory was, to a degree, born out by Cordelia’s own experience. In the first weeks The Four had been together, Jeakqual-Ahrach had harassed and harried Cordelia, not only with unbidden voices in her mind, but with actual hallucinations and, on one unpleasant occasion, a startlingly demoralizing sense memory of the brush of silver needles, to which Cordelia’s body had been subjected in the Zhaithan torture chamber. Through the winter and spring, though, a diminishment had occurred. Jeakqual-Ahrach’s last invasion of Cordelia’s mind had been during the early days of their winter training, and Cordelia, weary, but toughened by the rigors of the relentless regimen, had, in a moment of fury, found the angry strength to cast Jeakqual-Ahrach from her with enough force that, up to this present and unwelcome moment, the woman’s manifest, wind-walking presence had not returned. The paranormal attack at Newbury Vale, while seeming intense at the time, had been comparatively ineffective and weakly peripheral to the terrestrial battle. Had it not been for the common dreams about the strange White Twins, Cordelia might have come to believe that Jeakqual-Ahrach and her brother were a spent force, but now, here she was again, seemingly as effective as ever.