Conflagration (47 page)

Falconetti looked Argo up and down. “I don’t believe I caught your name.”

Argo inclined his head in a very slight bow. “I’m sorry, I didn’t give it. The name is Weaver, Argo Weaver.”

Falconetti repeated Argo’s name as though committing it to memory. “Major Argo Weaver of Albany.”

“Of Albany and Virginia.”

Falconetti grinned gold. “So welcome to my city, Major Argo Weaver of Albany and Virginia.” He turned to include the Rangers in his gesture of greeting. “Welcome to you all. You’ve come a long way and you must all be hungry and thirsty.” Falconetti gestured to a table against a side wall that was set with wine and beer, cheese, and cold cuts, and bread that looked crisp and fresh, but was a decidedly strange color. The Rangers saw the beer and wine, and moved towards it with a will, but Argo held up a hand. “Hold it. We have to stow the weapons before anyone starts drinking.”

Falconetti was amused. “The Major looks out for the welfare of his men.”

Argo knew he was being patronized, probably because of his youth. “Just recalling how alcohol and Bergman guns tend not to mix.”

Falconetti was maybe aware that he was pushing Argo further than he was prepared to go. “Very wise. Your men can stack their hardware against that wall. Within reach, but not too easily seized in anger.”

“I would expect your people to do the same.”

“And indeed they will.”

“Stack the heavy weapons against the opposite wall, boys.”

Falconetti’s men did as they were ordered, and Argo nodded to Steuben. “Have the men do as Mr. Falconetti has suggested.”

“What about knives and sidearms, Major? Do we stash those, too?”

Argo looked at Falconetti. “Hold on to them I would think. Agreed?”

Falconetti happily assented. “Agreed. Some of mine would never give up their knives.”

With the laying down of the weapons settled, everyone moved on to the food and drink, Argo included. He helped himself to a beer, assuming that this was an interlude for refreshment before the serious discussions about Cordelia and what was going to be done with her. Windermere, however, was in no mood to wait. Even as Argo was still swallowing his first, grateful mouthful, Windermere brought up the topic with Falconetti, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I think, Damon, before everyone gets too friendly, we should settle the matter of Lady Blakeney.”

Falconetti stopped uncorking a wine bottle and looked at Windermere dourly. “What about Lady Blakeney?”

“A basic assurance that she’s here, she’s alive, and she’s being well treated.”

“Business before pleasure?”

“Always.”

Falconetti looked disbelievingly at him. “Always, Gideon?”

Windermere smiled ruefully, obviously at some mutual piece of history. “Well, this time, at least.”

Falconetti finished uncorking the wine, and drank straight from the bottle. “You want to know if she’s alive and well? All I can say is that she was very alive and very well when last I saw her, which was yesterday, when I wined and dined her, and then fed her a most exceptional de Richelieu cognac. After that, I gave formal charge of her to Harriet Lime, strictly according to the terms of the contract, and they left.”

“She’s gone?”

Falconetti laughed and shook his head. “Of course not. She and Lime left for bed, not parts unknown. You think I would permit that? A contract is a powerful instrument, but it doesn’t override basic common sense. In fact, Lady Blakeney, Mme. Lime, and my daughter are right now awaiting your arrival, or they should be. They recently sent word that they would be busy for a while, and join us as soon as they could.”

Jesamine looked round in amazement. “We fly all the way across the sea in that damned Black Airship, and Cordelia’s too fucking busy for us to rescue her?”

CORDELIA

“We have a quiet room for exactly that purpose.”

Sera had said the words like a flat statement of fact, and Cordelia had not known exactly what to expect. It turned out that the Falconetti Family maintained a compact, but well-equipped dungeon for the confinement and questioning of prisoners. After a long underground walk, Bonaparte unlocked a door in a damp stone passage with an imposing brass key. An eight-point star-in-the-circle had been daubed on the door in red paint, but no explanation of the symbol was offered. Located somewhere in the extensive and inexplicable Falconetti Family stronghold, the room had a stained wood floor, and the walls and ceiling were one continuous arch of dark, unbroken brick. It was too narrow to be a section of Metro tunnel, and Cordelia had to assume that it was yet another part of a sewer, now high and dry above the revised water level. The quiet room was lit by an electric vacuum globe that, once turned on, supplied a stark and remorseless light, and revealed a number of devices to which the unfortunate Harriet Lime might be attached while Sera and Cordelia, as Cordelia had put it, “hurt her until she confesses everything she knows.” In addition, a wall rack was stocked with a very comprehensive selection of instruments with which the prisoner might be beaten or flogged, plus an array of modular straps, buckles, clasps, clamps, and rings that might be used for more ambitious and extensive infliction of discomfort. The choice was so wide that Cordelia found herself at a loss. Bonaparte, who was now Lime’s one-man escort, obviously realized this, and looked questioningly at Sera and Cordelia. “Do you want me to secure her?”

Sera nodded. “I think that’s what we came here for.”

“So where? Which one? The stocks? The chair?”

Sera deferred to Cordelia. “You choose.”

Cordelia looked around the torture chamber. The room gave their voices a harshly ringing echo that, when combined with the harsh light, lent everything an edge of austere brutality. She was quite taken with a set of sturdy traditional stocks, but she thought it might be a little difficult for Lime to speak with her neck thrust into the merciless wooden collar, and also, when she did speak, Cordelia wanted to be looking her in the face. “You’d better put her on that cross thing. Let her look like a Jesu-cult martyr.”

Bonaparte took Harriet Lime by the arm and steered her to the cross. It was constructed from a diagonal of weighty timber beams to which leather cuffs for wrists and ankles were affixed with stout screws, as was a belt that buckled around the victim’s waist. Lime did not protest until Bonaparte started to cuff her left wrist. “I can’t believe that you are doing this to me after I fucked both of you.”

Cordelia’s expression was bleak. “You should consider, my dear Harriet, how put out I am at having been fucked by someone who planned to betray me to Jeakqual-Ahrach.”

Bonaparte attached Lime’s other arm to the cross. Now Lime stared at Sera. “You shouldn’t be allowing this. I haven’t done anything to you.”

“You’ve made use of Il Syndicato, and deceived us about your intended purpose. It has the potential to make us look foolish and inept. That alone would be enough to put your head in the vise over there. If this was my father’s deal, he would be turning the screw until your skull cracked.”

Bonaparte was now kneeling, securing Lime’s left ankle to the cross. In a sudden burst of frustrated anger, she lashed out at him with her right foot, catching him in the chest and causing him to topple backward. He righted himself, out of reach of her thrashing leg, but, instead of doing anything, he simply sat and watched her struggling against the straps on her wrists. He only grabbed for her ankle again when she ran out of steam, hanging from her wrists, breathing heavily, with her blonde curls falling in her face. With a grip that compelled Lime to be still, he forced to her to submit to the restraints, while hissing between clenched teeth. “Try that again, missy, I’m going to have to put a hurt on you, over and above these ladies’ plans.”

Bonaparte secured the belt around Lime’s waist, and synched it tight. He stood back and admired his handiwork, then he turned to Sera and Cordelia. “If you’re going to want hot irons, I’ll need time to get a fire going.”

Sera glanced at Cordelia, who shook her head. “No hot irons.”

Lime was, of course, fully dressed, and Cordelia decided to rectify that. “What you can do is strip her.”

Bonaparte regarded the helpless Lime. “She really should have been stripped down before I secured her.”

Cordelia shook her head. “It’s more fun this way. It can be done slowly. Use your knife. Cut her dress off.”

With the dexterity of a magician, Bonaparte caused a spring-loaded jackknife to appear in his hand. He advanced on Lime, who jerked against her straps. “Not the dress!”

“The dress is the least of your worries, girl.”

Sera glanced at Cordelia. “I’m extremely glad she changed out of her chic aviatrix outfit.”

Cordelia nodded. “The leather one? Oh yes,
très chic
.”

“She and I are roughly the same size, so I decided it’s mine when we finish with her.”

Bonaparte slid the blade of his knife under the neckline of Lime’s dress and slit the seam along the shoulder and sleeve. It fell away, exposing one of her breasts. Lime cursed him as he repeated the process on the other shoulder. “Bastard!”

Sera made a warning gesture. “Address your remarks to us please, Harriet. Bonaparte is only following orders.”

“You think I’m going to talk, don’t you?”

Cordelia smiled sweetly. “I’m certain you’re going to talk, but feel free to hold out as long as you like. I will thoroughly enjoy the preliminaries.”

Bonaparte had the blade under the hem of her dress and was ripping upwards. Now the dress was nothing more than strips of scarlet fabric hanging from the strap that bound her to the cross. With a second touch of the conjuror, he ripped these free, and Lime stood spread-eagled in her scanties and brassiere. Cordelia nodded to Bonaparte. “The undergarments also.”

Two swift cuts, and Harriet Lime was exposed and naked. The rags of her former clothing lay on the floor in front of her. Cordelia turned to the implement rack. She took a pair of clamps that were attached by a short chain. She held them up for Sera to see. “What part of the body are these designed for?”

“The nipples.”

Cordelia nodded. “Ah.”

Next she picked up a short but deadly looking knout and swished it through the air. Harriet Lime whimpered and tugged at her cuffs, but then seemingly gave in to the inevitable and stood very still, taking deep, calming breaths. “Okay, let’s deal. Stop this charade and I’ll tell you everything.”

Cordelia wasn’t particularly interested. “I have a strong desire to hurt you anyway.”

Bonaparte cleared his throat. “The real professionals always administer a first infliction before they even start to negotiate. It’s supposed to dispel illusions, and get the subject’s attention.”

Sera glared. “Shut up, Bonaparte.”

“Just trying to be helpful.”

“You’re not.” She turned to Cordelia. “Which are you more interested in? Knowing what she knows, or causing her pain.”

Cordelia flicked the whip and pouted. “I know it’s probably childish and nasty, but I want to hear her screaming. I imagine what would have happened to me if she’d turned me over to Jeakqual-Ahrach and her Zhaithan. They’d have had me riding an electrode as they stripped the skin from my body one little piece at a time.”

“Can’t you let go of that?”

“Would you?”

Sera thought about this. “I guess not.”

Lime used the discussion as the starting point for another chance to save herself. She tossed her head, to remove hair from her eyes. “You know you can’t kill me, Cordelia.”

“I know no such thing.”

“Think about it. Jeakqual-Ahrach will be contacting me. If I’m dead, she can’t do that, and you lose a vital source of information.”

Sera took Lime’s point. “You should hear her out.”

Cordelia ran the plaited leather of the knout between her fingers. “Keep talking.”

“The White Twins are arriving in Marseilles, and going to the pyramid.”

“We already know that.”

“But I’m the one who will know when and how they will come there.”

Cordelia frowned. “You’re saying that you’ll totally sell out Jeakqual-Ahrach?”

Lime did her best to look helpless. It was not hard. “What other choice do I have?”

Cordelia continued to play with the knout. The temptation to lay it hard across Lime’s thighs or breasts was very strong, part of a nasty aesthetic desire to watch her suffer. “I don’t know, Sera. If we keep her alive, we’ll have to watch her all the time.”

“I’ve been with Jeakqual-Ahrach longer than anyone imagines. I know a great deal.”

Cordelia scowled. “That only makes me even more inclined to take a whip to you.”

“She turned me years ago. In Muscovy. No one ever suspected. I’m telling you, I have a lot of information. I’m valuable, dammit.”

Cordelia flicked the whip. “But are you sufficiently humbled?”

“I’m sufficiently afraid.”

“That, on its own, may not be enough.”

“I even know about her rejuvenation techniques.”

Suddenly she had both Sera’s and Cordelia’s attention. “Are those the procedures she was talking about?”

“That’s right. She’s really very old. She’s the twin of her brother Quadaron-Ahrach, and she needs them more and more.”

“Needs what more and more?”

“It’s getting to be a longer and longer process. She spends all this time with these evil old men from the East, and there are rituals, and blood, and sacrifices, and then she goes into this long trance, while all these chemicals and potions are pumped into her veins through tubes. But when she comes out of it, she looks … well … young again.”

“And she’s having one of these done right now?”

Lime was puzzled. “How do you know that?”

Cordelia smiled nastily. “You forget I overheard your whole conversation with her manifestation.”

“She needs her strength before this ritual with the pyramid and the White Twins. That’s why you really need to keep me alive and intact, because there’s more to it than anyone can imagine.”

Cordelia knew there was a core of truth in this. “How much more?”

“She’s attempting to mess with the basic fabric of dimensional reality.”