Conflagration (18 page)

“I’m also wondering why you always choose me for these importunate contacts. Do you believe I’ll be the first to crack?”

“Quite the reverse, Cordelia Blakeney. I play with you because you are the boldest, the most headstrong. You see yourself as the tip of the spear, and that makes you vulnerable.”

“You believe I’m vulnerable?”

Although most of the attention and analysis in Albany had always focused on Quadaron-Ahrach, and even Slide and T’saya paid him the most attention, Cordelia suspected that Jeakqual-Ahrach was, in fact, the stronger and more intriguing of the two. History was filled with males who had used religion to scale the more obscene heights of power as pontiffs or high priests. The High Zhaithan was not especially unique, but his sister was one of a kind, in that she survived, functioned, and enjoyed unquestioning obedience in the violently misogynist world of the Mosul.

“Entertain your illusions of power, girl. It can all seem very easy, after your first taste of playing the torturer, but, in the end, I will break you. And when you break, your Four will be no more.”

“You are very confident for one who can’t even show herself.”

The air in front of Cordelia shimmered.
“My voice is not enough?”

The outline of a human figure appeared, waning for a moment, but then strengthening, until a dream-image of Jeakqual-Ahrach, with a faint background of leaping flames, stood between Cordelia and the ocean. She was, as always, dressed in a black robe, but, as if to assert her femininity, it was lavishly trimmed with red and gold. An embroidered representation of the sacred flame of Ignir and Aksura curled around the entire vertical length of the garment, which was synched at the waist by a gold, ruby-encrusted belt that displayed the curves of her breasts and hips beneath the soft fabric. Cordelia had always found Jeakqual-Ahrach’s age hard to assess. Superficially she seemed to be no older than her early forties, but if she was truly the full sister of Quadaron-Ahrach, that was hardly possible. She had to be far older. History recorded the brother as being in his eighties at the very least. Cordelia had, on more than one occasion, wondered if the knives of skilled surgeons had played a part in the staving off of the ravages of mortality, perhaps along with the ministrations of apothecaries, necromancers, and other specialists whose function should not be imagined or guessed at, not in the dark of night.

“Now you see me, Cordelia Blakeney.”

“These are still parlor tricks.”

“You believe so?”

“You think your disembodied form can hurt me?”

“I’m just making you aware that I can always find you, wherever you might try to hide.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“What do you think you’re doing on this iron ship of the Norsemen?”

“I’m hardly going to tell you, am I?”

“The truth is that this ship is bringing you and your three companions nearer to me.”

“Maybe that’s something that you should be worrying about.”

“As much as you worry about my new creations?”

“What new creations, Jeakqual-Ahrach?”

“You used your whip on the Fourth Adept to find out more about them.”

Cordelia struck a pose, doing her best to appear cold and cruelly capricious. “Just an amusement, Jeakqual-Ahrach. As you said, a taste of playing the torturer.”

“And that’s why you gave him to the demon, to Slide?”

Cordelia did her best not to falter at how much Jeakqual-Ahrach seemed to know. “I will admit I was curious as to why you might be forcing these half-formed images into my dreams. It seemed a little pathetic for one who once fancied herself so powerful.”

“I have something to show you.”

Cordelia said nothing.

“You’re not curious?”

“What could you show me? You may be very clever at conjuring hollow, insubstantial pictures in the air, but anything you might show me would be nothing more than that.”

“Observe for yourself, and then tell me.”

Two smaller and far from distinct figures materialized beside Jeakqual-Ahrach, and then, they, too, grew more substantial. A white- faced boy and an equally pallid girl, identical, and possibly albino, and with huge, unnerving eyes, stood close to Jeakqual-Ahrach. The boy had his arm raised, gripping her robe. He and the girl were dressed in tiny, child-sized versions of Jeakqual-Ahrach’s black Zhaithan cowl. At first, their infant gaze was downcast, but then the White Twins slowly raised their pale blue, inhuman eyes, and stared directly at her. A malign hatred washed over Cordelia. She could not look away from their loathsome infantile gaze. The Twins’ corpse-white lips drew back in baby snarls, baring tiny, but pointed, porcelain teeth, and suddenly Cordelia was scared. In the baleful waves of dire emotion, the children seemed to be growing from just a gossamer vision, taking solid form, and moving into her reality as if they meant to harm her. Cordelia felt paralyzed, and had to summon all of her strength to stop herself screaming.

ARGO

Argo woke from a dream. The White Twins had been a part of the dream, and yet they had not actually been in it. Even as he regained the waking world, the memory started to fragment but was replaced by very conscious unease. Near at hand, someone was in grave danger. In the cabin Argo shared with Raphael, he had the top bunk and Raphael had the lower one, but when he swung down to the floor, he found that Raphael’s bunk was empty. Had something happened to him? The dream faded, but the unfocused menace grew stronger. Argo fumbled into his pants and pulled on his boots. His hand went to the handle of the cabin door, but then, acting on a sudden afterthought, he reached for the revolver that hung in its holster from the belt of his dress uniform. On a mission such as they were on, the sidearm was little more than a prop, like the formal swords worn by the Norse naval officers, but that did not mean that it was not loaded and fully functional.

In pants and shirt, and holding the pistol down by his side, Argo made his way quietly and quickly up to the nearest open deck. He could sense no located emanations that might give him an idea of the threat’s direction, and he hoped that he would be able to see and feel more once he was no longer enclosed in a cabin, corridor, or companionway. A part of him felt that he ought to raise the alarm, but he hesitated while he still had nothing but a bad feeling and the final fragments of monochrome dream. He doubted that the
Ragnar
’s officers would see either as sufficient reason to place the destroyer and its crew at action stations, and recognized the irony in this. He was only aboard the
Ragnar,
only being taken to the Norse Union, because he had an ability to sense things that others couldn’t, and yet he would almost certainly find himself ridiculed if he acted on that ability. On deck, the air was clear and chill, and the fear diminished slightly. If he stayed there too long in just his pants and undershirt, he would soon be shivering. He was still wondering what to do next, when a familiar voice with an Hispanian accent cause him quickly to turn.

“Are you planning an assassination?” Raphael was regarding him with a expression that was both puzzled and amused. Argo shook his head, feeling decidedly awkward. “No, I…”

“Then why the gun?”

“Didn’t you feel something?”

“What kind of something?”

“I don’t know. It was intense, but kind of vague, like something bad was happening in another part of the ship.”

Raphael shook his head. “Nothing like that. I just had this need to get out of the cabin. You were sleeping and I’d been reading a book, and then suddenly I felt kinda…” He searched for the right word. “… claustrophobic, and had this overwhelming desire to get out on deck.”

“So you did feel something?”

“I suppose you could call it that.”

They both looked carefully around. Everything about the destroyer was perfectly normal. They could see officers moving in the dim light of the
Ragnar
’s bridge, and a crewman came out of the wireless shack and went below. Raphael frowned. “You think we should tell someone?”

“What could we tell them?”

“Maybe we should check on the girls?”

Argo nodded. That was a workable idea, in that it was something to do, and would counter the sense of unformed disquiet. “Why don’t we?”

They hurried through the night interior of the destroyer and knocked discreetly on the door of Cordelia and Jesamine’s quarters. At first they received no reply, and then Jesamine’s cautious voice responded to a second, slightly louder rapping. “Who is it?”

“Argo and Raphael.”

“What do you want?”

“Open the door. It’s nothing we need to shout about.”

“Hold on.”

Bolts snapped back and Jesamine peered cautiously out at them. She was wrapped in a sheet as though she had been sleeping, except she had a certain dreamy sated look in her eyes that Argo knew a little too well from the time they had been together. Was someone in the cabin with her? “What’s up?”

Argo glanced at Raphael before answering her. “I don’t know, but something.”

Jesamine didn’t seem impressed. “What are you talking about? And what’s the gun for?”

Argo couldn’t understand why she couldn’t just open the door. “Let us in and we’ll tell you.”

“Cordelia isn’t here.”

“Where is she?”

Jesamine looked annoyed. “How the fuck should I know? Probably with her sailor boy.”

“Are you alone.”

Jesamine’s annoyance grew. “If course I’m alone. What’s this all about?”

“I have a feeling…”

“What?”

“I have a feeling that something is wrong.”

After an instant of reluctance, Jesamine visibly pulled herself together. “What kind of wrong?”

“I don’t know. Not tangible, but definitely wrong.”

Jesamine looked to Raphael. “Do you feel the same?”

“Not as strongly, but I couldn’t sleep.”

She glared at Argo. “This had better not be bullshit.”

“It’s not.”

“Well, since we’re all here, we’d better assume it has something to do with Cordelia.”

“So where do we find this sailor of hers?”

“I don’t know?”

“You’ve never been to his cabin.”

“I was sick as a dog up until today.”

“Right.”

Raphael glanced up and down the corridor outside the cabin, but it was empty. “We’re going to have to find out. Do you know his name?”

“Bjorn something, I think.” Jesamine thought hard. “A lieutenant. Bjorn … Hawkins…”

“We’ll have to find an officer and ask.”

Jesamine looked hard at Argo. “You’d better be right about this feeling, because otherwise Cordelia is going to have a shit fit.”

CORDELIA

“Observe the Holy Twins, Cordelia Blakeney. Observe the Gods made flesh. Meet Ignir and Aksura.”

Cordelia wrenched her eyes away from the baleful hallucination of the Twins, and they retreated a little from her reality. “These abominations are not gods.”

All of Cordelia’s instincts told her that Jeakqual-Ahrach was lying. Whatever the White Twins might be, they were not gods incarnate, but that didn’t exclude their being potentially very evil, very powerful, and very dangerous.

“You don’t believe that gods can journey to the human plane?”

“It’s something I’ve never given much thought to, but, if they did, I doubt they’d be clinging to the skirts of an evil crone like you.”

“You’ll believe it when you feel their power.”

A wave of hate struck Cordelia like a fist, and it was all she could do to stop from reeling. Mercifully, her own fury kept her on her feet. “I can believe they might have the power of some vile monstrosity that was conceived in iniquity and grown in some loathsome vat. Or could it be that your unholy brother somehow mated and begat these spawn?”

“You will suffer!”

Even allowing for the excesses of propaganda, Jeakqual-Ahrach and Quadaron-Ahrach were reputed to enjoy a particularly unique relationship, even in the perverse annals of human depravity. Maybe she had guessed close enough to the truth for Jeakqual-Ahrach’s comfort. Again the White Twins seemed to be taking on solid form, as though they were about to move into her reality and hurt her. The malign energy of the Twins and the force of Jeakqual-Ahrach’s rage threatened to overwhelm her. All Cordelia could do was to take a step back and scream to the full extent of her lungs. “GET AWAY FROM ME!”

And, in that exact moment, Jeakqual-Ahrach and the White Twins vanished, as though snuffed like a candle. Cordelia couldn’t believe that she had driven them off so easily, and then the voice came from behind her. “Cordelia!”

RAPHAEL

Cordelia staggered back from the stern rail of the
Ragnar
screaming at the top of her lungs, “GET AWAY FROM ME.”

Argo raised his pistol and raced towards her. “Cordelia!”

No target presented itself, and he was at a total loss. Cordelia stumbled and almost fell, but Argo was quickly beside her, supporting her with one arm while he still looked for an attacker. Raphael and Jesamine were quickly there, taking her from him.

“What happened?”

Cordelia let out a long sigh that ended in a sob. “Jeakqual-Ahrach found me. The blackwitch bitch from hell knows we’re on this ship.”

Argo whistled under his breath. He had hoped that Cordelia’s visits from the blackwitch were a thing of the past. Seemingly this wasn’t so. “On the wind?”

“She windwalked to a battleship in the middle of the ocean.”

“Damn.”

Argo lowered his pistol. “Where is she now?”

“She vanished. It was either me screaming, or all of you showing up. Maybe she didn’t want to take on all four of us.” She took a deep gulp of air. “How did you all get here?”

Raphael and Argo looked at each other. “We felt something.”

“Felt what?”

“We’re not sure. Some kind of threat. Something indistinct but intimidating. That’s how it was for me.”