Conflagration (40 page)

Damon Falconetti extended the bottle of cognac towards Cordelia. She nodded and he filled her glass. Falconetti was dressed in the uniform coat of a ranking officer in an army that probably no longer existed, with a barrel chest full of decorations that she suspected he might well have awarded himself. Under the tunic, he cut a dash with a flowing dress shirt and leather riding pants with buckles down the outside of the leg. Cordelia sipped her brandy, because the story of Old Temps Perdu was not yet over. “So everything might have been well and good, and Perdu might have become a Zulu national hero with fucking statues of him all over Soweto, but he got a little too good at what he was doing and found himself running the guns on a Zulu trireme. The galley was sunk by Caribbean privateers and he found himself fished out of the drink and sold in the slave market in Marseilles, from which he managed to escape, and ultimately wound up here in Paris. Isn’t that true, Perdu?”

Old Temps Perdu nodded and reached for the cognac. “Every word, boss, give or take?”

Cordelia smiled as though highly entertained. “And the moral of the story?”

“The moral, Lady Blakeney? The moral is that everything and anything, absolutely without exception, is capable of changing when the times demand it.”

Cordelia observed that the senior Falconetti had called her “Lady Blakeney” three times, and seemed impressed by titles. She noted that for further use.

Although she had not slept, Cordelia felt considerably better than she had since she had so unwillingly been removed from the driveway at Deerpark. Since she arrived in Paris, she had been allowed to bathe, and Sera Falconetti had lent her a change of clean clothes that actually fitted her, and then, dressed in a pair of snugly-fitting cotton pants and a loose silk shirt with flowing sleeves, she had been brought to Falconetti Sr., who had wined and dined her and treated her to his most amusing and informative discourses. She had hardly minded that some verged on the self-indulgent and long-winded. Paris was not as daunting as it had seemed when the big black Benz had stopped beside the dirty, mist-shrouded river in the very first light of a grim, gray dawn, and she had been transferred by Sera and her two male companions to the flat-bottomed barge that seemed to be the favored mode of transport in the ruined and partially flooded city.

As she had stood near the bow of the barge, cold, scared, and miserable, hunched in the old greatcoat that was a leftover from a Boulogne brothel, she had wondered if drowning herself in filthy, scum-covered water might be a better option than facing whatever horror presented itself next. Cordelia had been in tight spots before, but had never previously contemplated suicide. Later she would explain her near-terminal despair to herself as a result of being in multiple shock from the death of Jack Kennedy, her own kidnapping, and the frightening encounter with the White Twins beside the huge Amiens Pyramid. Not to mention the lingering effects of absinthe, chloroform, and benodex. Cordelia, however, was hard to keep down. The barge had floated between the blackened Parisian ruins, and she had found herself once again starting to take notice of her surroundings, if for no other reason than the city, although supposedly destroyed, was very much alive.

The first thing to present itself was what Cordelia called the writing on the wall. The blasted and soot-encrusted surfaces of the ruins that faced the river were daubed with complex layers of whitewashed graffiti. Cordelia could see words and slogans in a half dozen languages, and also texts and ideograms that were totally indecipherable, and probably invented or deliberately abstract. Representative art came in the form of monotone murals, often unfinished, and mostly vivid with violence or inventively pornographic, some crude but others executed with a high, if primitive, skill. As they moved deeper into the devastation, she started to see people. At first, it was children, which surprised Cordelia. She had not considered kids living in such a place, but on reflection it made sense. They were lean and dirty, ragged, and strangely silent. They stood or sat immobile, keeping watch on the river. Some, dressed in bits and pieces of ancient and discarded uniforms, cradled weapons like a juvenile guerrilla army: long-barreled muskets, crossbows, and single shot, flintlock pistols. One crew manned a primitive but effect catapult, capable of hurling quite large chucks of masonry, while two older boys leaned on the rude mounting of an antique three-inch brass cannon. The spectacle had been so eerie and menacing that Cordelia had turned to Sera and questioned her about it. “The children are the city guards, the watch on the Seine?”

Sera had shaken her head and shrugged. “Those are the
petits,
the little ’uns. The ones who’ve made it their mission to man the approaches. More kids come here than adults; all the runaways from all over the province and even farther. And they’re one fuck of a lot harder to handle than the grownups, because the Zhaithan don’t want the second and third generation subjects learning to read and write if they can help it. I guess that’s one of the advantages of the gangs. If the kids attach themselves to a gang, they at least get some kind of education that stops them from turning feral.”

“They’re scary, so quiet and still.”

“That’s the mudlarks and river rats. They’re the kind of predators who watch and wait. I mean, all
les enfants
are predators of one form or another, but most are more boisterous about it. The hardest thing with this lot is to stop them killing the Mosul agents when they come in to trade.”

“What about us? Suppose they take a dislike to this boat?”

“They know enough not to fuck with me and mine.”

“They still look scary.”

Sera glanced up at the silent children once more. This time, she was not so dismissive. “I must admit that they have been looking a tad more scary of late. There are even rumors going around the city that the rejects from the breeding program were being dumped here to fuck with us.”

“What?” The words breeding program had instantly snagged her interest.

“Supposedly the Zhaithan have been shipping them in and letting them go at the outskirts of the city. Seeing if they can make their way to the inhabited sections.”

“What breeding program?”

Sera was surprised. “You never heard of the breeding program?”

“There are a lot of things I seem not to have heard of.”

“That’s something else we have to talk about later. Probably after my father has had his say.”

Cordelia allowed herself to become just a little aloof and resentful. “I’ll hold myself in readiness.”

The exchange had, however, lifted Cordelia’s spirits, and restored more of her hallmark resilience. While still reserving judgment, she accepted that all Sera had said tended to confirm she was more than just the helpless hostage. Indeed, by the time she had considered most of the implications, she was so well recovered that, when out of nowhere, she had heard Jesamine’s unmistakable accent inside her head, she did not immediately break down in screaming horror.

“Cordelia, it’s me. I was sent to find you.”

The fleeting image of a golden wolf appeared for a moment, standing impossibly on the surface of the river. For an instant, Cordelia did reel, but she rapidly recovered, even remembering to focus hard and communicate without speaking or even moving her lips. “Jesamine. Is that really you?”

“I was sent to find you.”

“Are the others here?”

“There’s no time to explain. They are helping me. Where is this place? Where are you?”

“This is Paris.”

“Paris?”

“Don’t ask.”

It wasn’t until they were almost done that Sera Falconetti noticed something, but assumed that Cordelia was merely showing signs of wear and tear. “Are you okay?”

As the whisper of Jesamine departed, Cordelia put a modestly dramatic hand to her brow. “I suddenly felt a little faint. Today came with a sizeable helping of wear and tear.”

In fact, Cordelia was feeling quite reinvigorated. Word of her location had been passed, and the others were free. They hadn’t been kidnapped as well, and were seemingly addressing the problem. She was also fascinated by the vision of the golden wolf on the water. Maybe Jesamine had learned a thing or two while she’d been screwing around with the Ohio. What did they call things like the wolf? A
Quodoshka
?

Sera seemed to buy her charade of fragility and debilitation, and made her voice reassuringly concerned. “Don’t worry, we’ll be in the underworld in a moment, and not far from where we’re going. When we get there, you’ll be able to clean up and rest for a while.”

Only minutes later the barge negotiated the slime-covered broken piles and fallen spans of a collapsed bridge, and turned against the current to pass through a broken arch into a dark and vaulted tunnel that must have also once been part of the Parisian sewer system. For a few minutes they were in semidarkness, only able to see little more than the silhouettes of each other, but very aware of splashings, scuttlings, murmurs, movements, all around them; but then they rounded a bend and into what had to be a main thoroughfare in this demolished outlaw city. A missing section of roof let in broad shafts of daylight, and other areas were lit by burning torches and braziers. The barge was floating through a continuous traffic of rowboats, dinghies, canoes, even circular coracles moving around and between more barges like the one they were on. Cordelia was surprised that so much travel was by water. Later she would learn that most of inhabited Paris was reached by boat, and that the operational sections of the city were the archipelago of tiny islands formed when, during the bombardment, the banks of the Seine had completely collapsed. Even after so many years, urban explorers and sewer-rat garbage prospectors would break into a previously sealed area, and find burned skeletons and even mummified bodies, undisturbed since the original Mosul firestorm.

A raised flagstone walkway, like a broad sidewalk, ran along one side of the water. Thronged with people, it offered all the fun of a ragged but energetic fair. An extensive and comprehensive flea market was in full swing, and Cordelia saw merchants conducting trade from behind booths and stalls, and even from blankets laid out on the flags. The fastest and most popular trade was in food and provisions, and, although standards of cleanliness and public health might not have measured up to London or Albany, customers lined up at the stalls of the bakers and butchers, the men and women selling relatively fresh produce, and even crowded round the vendors of decidedly dubious-looking canned goods. Food was not all that was on sale. An elderly man handed out dusty bottles of wine in exchange for what looked like goodly sums in coins and some kind of script. An armorer made deals on carefully restored swords and firearms. Racks of used clothing were pawed through and inspected for bargains, and still more tradesmen hawked tools, household goods, trinkets, while an apothecary presided over pills, potions, and powders in an array of bottles and jars. Wandering musicians, one playing an inevitable saccharine accordion, plus jugglers, a fire-eater, a man with a performing dog, another with a monkey, and a variety of low-level bawds and prostitutes moved through the more mundane buying and selling, offering their more exotic goods and services. Cordelia had to assume that a covert contingent of pickpockets was also working the multitude, while those who did not perform, fuck, or steal, wagered and gambled. During their short progress down the underground waterway, she noticed two crap games and a three-card, spot-the-lady table.

The barge approached a jetty that was guarded by a trio of armed and heavyset men. Ropes were thrown, and the vessel quickly secured. As soon as they stepped ashore, one of the guards informed Sera that she and Cordelia should make themselves presentable for her father. Stone side passages and a flight of medieval spiral stairs led to what turned out to be the Falconetti family’s quarters, which proved luxurious in the extreme compared to what Cordelia had seen of the rest of the city. In most things, Sera had been as good as her word, but in the promise of resting for a while, she underestimated her father’s impatience. Cordelia had barely been given time to wash off the streaked whorehouse makeup and scramble into a quick change of clothes before being brought to the lair of Falconetti senior.

By the time she had listened to all of Damon Falconetti’s stories, plus an analysis of the Parisian gang structure, and how a long history of bloody family vendettas had only been brought to an end a few years earlier by a set of laboriously negotiated treaties, she was starting to feel the cognac weighing heavy on her eyelids. Maybe because she was tired, and also a little drunk, Cordelia made her first serious misstep. “So that was when Il Syndicato was formed?”

Falconetti’s face darkened. The others in the room fell silent, and exchanged glances as he stared hard at Cordelia. “Il Syndicato?”

Cordelia was nervous and knew that it showed. “Did I say something wrong. I was only repeating what I heard.”

“There is no such thing as Il Syndicato.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I do.”

Falconetti repeated the words like a mantra. “There is no such thing as Il Syndicato.”

“I can only apologize again.”

“Repeat it for me.”

“There is no such thing as Il Syndicato.”

“It is an invention of the Norse newspapers. It sounds exciting and theatrical, but it is a fanciful fiction, and that’s another way of saying it’s bullshit. You’d do well to remember that.”

“I will.”

Then a slight twinkle wavered at the corner of Falconetti’s eye. “That’s not to say that there isn’t a degree of organization.”

“Oh course not. I could see that by the way I was brought here.”

Old Temps Perdu actually smiled as Falconetti continued. “If some minimal accord had not been created, the gangs of Paris would be at each other’s throats with axes and butcher knives like they were in the old days, planting nailbombs and creating royal fucking mayhem. We’d be decimating each other until there were so few of us, the fucking Mosul could walk in and clean out those that were left with half a regiment of raw recruits.” A number of the henchmen nodded in agreement. “Damn right.”