Conflagration (28 page)

JESAMINE

Jesamine wondered if it was possible to be both bored and anxious at the same time. Most of her mind was on the nervous edge of her seat wondering if and when Jack Kennedy would send for her. She knew she was verging on obsession about Kennedy, although she suspected that might partially be the result of the yellow capsule she had taken without thinking, on top of the absinthe, and on top of the other drinks at the reception. One of the women at the table had smirkingly intimated that, among its other properties, the drug enhanced sexual pleasure. What was it called? Benodex? That had been quite enough to prompt Jesamine to take the first one without further question. It was probably also the benodex that was causing her to lose track of time. It did not, however, do anything to make the waiting more tolerable. Indeed, it actually made her feel more jangled than she already was, plus it created distracting wisps of hallucination at the periphery of her vision, and firmly convinced her that she was once again somewhere she did not want to be. For what seemed like an hour or more, Cordelia and Harriet Lime had been verbally sparing and drinking more and more absinthe. Gideon Windermere was in an intense conversation with a young officer in the Norse Air Force and a woman in scarlet, who seemed to be the officer’s girlfriend, although relationships were hard to evaluate in what seemed to be a city that was headlong in its promiscuity. Every so often, someone would address a remark to her, and she found it increasing hard to respond.

“Jesamine?”

She blinked at Cordelia. “I’m sorry, I was miles away.”

“Did you ever hear of the Knights of the Rhine?”

Jesamine grimaced. She noticed Cordelia’s speech was becoming progressively slurred. “I’ve heard of them.”

“And?”

“That was about it. Even Phaall wouldn’t talk about the Knights of the Rhine except for the odd cryptic hint that they dabbled in really deep abomination.”

Now Lime was speaking to her. “They seem to be currently working with Jeakqual-Ahrach.”

Jesamine frowned. “I guess abomination attracts abomination.”

At that moment, she spotted a waiter moving purposely in her direction. Her heart leapt. Was this the word that she had been waiting for all evening? The peripheral hallucinations glowed brighter, and she could have sworn the flames from the braziers blazed higher. The waiter kept on coming. Harriet Lime was saying something to her about necromancers, and how women of childbearing age were being held prisoner by Jeakqual-Ahrach. It was probably important, but Jesamine found it impossible to breathe. The waiter stopped at the table. “Major Jesamine?”

“Y … yes.” She gathered what wits she had left. “I mean, yes.”

“Your car has arrived.”

“My car?”

“I believe it was sent for you, Major.”

“Right. My car.” She was on her feet. She smiled around at the table. “I have to go.”

Harriet Lime simulated distress. “So soon? We only just got here. Things haven’t even started to hum.”

“Alas…”

Cordelia chuckled drunkenly. “The major has a very important and very secret assignation.”

RAPHAEL

Daphne pulled Raphael’s head back and her tongue was in his ear. Raphael’s eyes were closed, his jacket was unbuttoned, and his shirt was open to the waist. Nell leaned in and ran her hand up the inside of his thigh until she cupped his crotch. Raphael let out a groan that only he could hear, then Nell gripped harder, as if challenging him to resist their concerted advances.

His fling with Hyacinth Musgrave was a long time in the past, and half a world away, and, for once, Raphael Vega was not going to resist any damn thing. He was as elevated as a kite and two young women were eagerly pawing at him. Daphne’s skirt had hiked up revealing her fine, black-stockinged legs and an expanse of white and glorious thigh. He rolled lengthways on the cushions, which was easy to do, and kissed the whiteness. The movement caused tiny stars to dance daintily on the backs of his eyes, and he exhaled happily. Daphne reached down and ran her fingers through his hair. “Our Americano is flying. He has made the acquaintance of the magic capsule.”

Beside him, Estelle was starting to unbutton and undress a totally acquiescent Argo, and Raphael had felt a need at least to minimally assert himself. “I am not an Americano. I am a son of Hispania, and we are a proud people.”

Nell had not relinquished her grip when Raphael moved, and now she dug her fingers harder into him. “You’re a son of something, but you’re dressed as an Americano, so therefore you are an Americano. Our Americano.”

Raphael could only groan. Acquiescence had its rational limits, and he would be whatever they wanted. “Okay, okay, I’m an Americano.”

The room in which Raphael found himself groaning and hallucinating was large, indistinct, and dimly lit, a dark cavern that had been draped in silks, satins, and tapestry; a place of shadows and sensual mystery, lit by candles and the occasional shaded electric globe, where the air was thick and scented, and many people, in varying degrees of dress and undress, sprawled on piled drifts of cushions. This was another level of Madame de Wynter’s bacchanal. So far, with Nell, Daphne, and Estelle as part of their group, he, Argo, and Spinrad had passed through the ballroom, with its forceful dancers doing their sweating utmost to the loud music, to a pool house, where more guests swam and nakedly embraced to the accompaniment of a fully clothed string quartet. They had crossed the broad terrace in the rear, and seen Cordelia and Jesamine seated at a table, but they had been with Gideon Windermere and a number of other men and women, and Raphael had not been inclined to join them. He saw no reason why The Four needed to hang together like an inseparable crew during their off-duty hours, although one of those seated at the table had been the blonde called Harriet Lime, and that had caused Argo some slight consternation. He had been talking to this highly desirable, ringleted blonde earlier, and from the way she looked to be dominating the conversation at the table, even with Cordelia present, she was not only beautiful, but also had to be possessed of a forceful personality. Raphael knew that Argo had been attracted to her, but, with Daphne, Nell, and Estelle now firmly in tow, and seemingly with their own erotic designs, Argo had been forced to choose, and had apparently opted for what might be called the birds in the hand rather than the one at the table. He and Raphael had merely waved and, after collecting glasses of sparkling Frankish wine from a passing waiter, had moved on to the extensive grounds, where they encountered more varieties of coupling, and in one case a tripling, in the shadows, and also a number of men and women practicing nighttime archery with luminous arrows and a burning target. Raphael considered this more dangerous than decadent, and had made to shepherd the others back inside the house.

The soft dark space where they were commencing their own coupling, appeared, as far as Raphael could tell, to be the calm but pulsing, exotic heart of an event wholly devoted to advanced and fairly complex hedonism, with clear threads of pain and power passing through it. The six of them had entered the large dark room in time to catch the end of an entertainment by a naked dancer who moved to the accompaniment of bodhran, pipe, and dulcimer, with such high authority that she commanded the room’s central open space, and did not look in the slightest bit absurd when she incorporated a well-fed python into her finale. Raphael and the others had found themselves an alcove with a deep semicircular couch where they were first to sprawl and watch and then, after some moments of acclimation, to begin to take a more intimate interest in each other. In fact, Raphael did not look up at all until the music stopped, and he raised his head from Daphne to see why. As far as he could tell, some new diversion was now being prepared. Three girls in the costume of torturer’s assistants, one with the lower half of her face covered by a combined mask and gag of purple leather, and the other locked in a collar with razor spikes, were erecting a tall tripod. Raphael was somewhat shocked by how it was almost identical to the tripods used in the Mosul infantry for their milder, but still often life-threatening, field punishments. The only real difference was that where the Mosul tripods were made from remorseless unfinished iron, this frame was upholstered in black velvet and blood-red leather. Raphael glanced at Daphne. “Is that thing what I think it is?”

Daphne had grinned naughtily. “That depends what you think it is.”

“It looks like a whipping frame.”

“That’s what it is. Someone’s going to be put smartly through their paces.”

The someone in question turned out to be an oiled young man with the bleached curls of an adolescent god, who was brought into the room by the torturer’s assistants once they had fully assured themselves that the tripod was set correctly. The young man walked naked and barefoot between the two women, his spine straight, but his eyes submissively lowered. He skin was oiled, his head was crowned with a small chaplet of what looked like oak leaves, and a locked slave collar was round his neck. Raphael blinked. “He looks like a human sacrifice.”

Nell affected innocence. “There are some who believe suffering constitutes an offering to the Goddess.”

Daphne laughed. “Especially if it turns you on.”

She watched intently as the two assistants carefully stretched the young man on the tripod. He offered no resistance to the restraints placed on his wrists and ankles, nor to the wide belt when it was strapped around his waist. For Raphael, the ceremony continued to resemble some softer distaff version of a military flogging, but it seemed to be having a mesmerizing effect on Daphne. Her hand went to Raphael’s thigh as the boy was stretched against the triangular framework. The same percussion that had previously kept time for the dancer started a soft sonorous beat, and an eerie silence settled on the room. The dulcimer picked a mournful lilt. Daphne’s grip tightened, and guests who had previously been wholly engrossed in each other came up for air. The beat of the drum quickened, and became more threatening and dramatic as the assistants withdrew and two fresh figures entered the room’s central pool of amber light. Two statuesque women halted beside the immobilized victim. They were stripped to the waist, save for necklaces of silver mail, and were garbed below in belted leather kilts and high-studded, over-the-knee boots with straps, buckles, silver spurs, and exceptionally high heels. Their skin seemed artificially bronzed to show off their already well-developed and decidedly unfeminine musculature. As they removed their gauntlets and ran their bare hands over the boy’s body, feeling and testing, the assistants returned, each bearing a selection of implements on purple velvet pillows. Daphne leaned close and breathed in Raphael’s ear. Her fingers dug into his thigh. “I would love to be a Lictoress.”

“What’s a Lictoress?”

“They are. Nadia and Matisse. They are famous all over the city. They also make an awful lot of money.”

“I see.”

“How would you like to be in that boy’s place.”

The statuesque women were looking over the implements. Raphael shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Daphne smiled wickedly. “Wait until we take you to the Turret Room and Anastasia. You might just change your mind.”

“The Turret Room?”

“That’s right.”

“Anastasia?”

“You’ll see.”

CORDELIA

Cordelia leaned against a pillar and felt extraordinarily wonderful, although moving and even thinking coherently was something of a challenge. The tunic of her uniform was unbuttoned to reveal very unmilitary cleavage. By her own admittedly hazy count, she had taken either two or three benodex capsules, consumed at least three shots of absinthe, and the number of martinis she had thrown back since that first experiment in the chilled glass back at the Asquith Hotel was beyond all reckoning. The new room was a luxury womb, or a velvet tomb, filled with people feeling and fondling. The two bronzed amazons had paused in their flagellation, and a half-dozen spectators were crawling slowly into the light, transfixed and slithering, completely focused in their desire to reach and touch the young man who was cuffed and belted to the whipping triangle. She wondered how so many of those present had conceived of the same move. No invitation had been issued and no permission granted. Cordelia could only think that entertainments of this kind were regular occurrences, and the crawling prostrates were an accepted part of the ritual. The amazons were plainly in control of the rite. When the first hands reached for boy and his latticework of crisscross body welts, one of them snapped. “No hands, only tongues!”

Tongues were extended, and necks craned as the prostrated licked the sweat from the victim, but then a girl in lace lingerie steadied herself while rising unsteadily from all fours by placing a hand on the inside of the boy’s thigh. The plaited singletail in the hand of one of the amazons cracked, causing the miscreant to cringe and squeal, and raising a red weal that extended across the backs of both her legs.

“Oh my!” Cordelia was pleasantly shocked. Was this what happened to a culture after a thousand years? Cordelia was talking to herself, but she didn’t give a damn. She appreciated the amazon’s technique. She wouldn’t have been able to wield a whip with even an approximation of accuracy. But she had tasted the meting out of real torture. The interrogation of the Zhaithan prisoner had left her with the unnerving realization that she had both the talent and taste for it. “But that’s my little secret.”

“What is?”

Cordelia was suddenly aware of a presence behind her. First she smelled the perfume, then heard the breathing, and sensed the proximity. She spun as fast she was able, and came face to face with the knowing smile of Harriet Lime. “Are you following me?”

Harriet Lime looked past her at the prostrates running their tongues over the victim, while the amazons looked on and occasionally delivered a corrective lash. “Actually I was. You left the table so abruptly.”

“I was bored. This party had been very heavily promoted, and I was seeing nothing of it apart from a table on the terrace.”