Conflagration (32 page)

Cordelia was quite disappointed that this achieved absolutely no result. Had Jeakqual-Ahrach appeared to her in an occult vision as she had on the
Ragnar,
it would at least have forced the issue and she wouldn’t have been lying in the dark, waiting to find out her fate. She tried again. “Losing your touch, bitch? You were able to find me on the
Ragnar
in the middle of the Northern Ocean, but you can’t find me when I’m your prisoner? Or are you scared to face me, even when I’m helpless?”

This second outburst yielded a result, but hardly the one that Cordelia had wanted. No apparition of Jeakqual-Ahrach manifested itself, with or without the White Twins, but the footsteps above her halted, and male voices exchanged words, although Cordelia could not make out what was being said. She realized that the challenge to Jeakqual-Ahrach had not been exclusively mental. She had spoken out loud, and warned whoever was up there that their prisoner had woken from her chloroform stupor. She’d wanted to force the issue, but maybe not in the way that it was now going. The footsteps turned and moved toward what she had already concluded was a hatch in her “ceiling.” Bolts squeaked as they were pulled back, and then the cover was lifted, flooding Cordelia’s confinement with more light than she could, at first, handle. It took her a few seconds for her to see that the figure who crouched looking in was a skinny, barefoot, tow-haired teenager in ragged canvas trousers and a striped seaman’s shirt; hardly what a Zhaithan agent was supposed to look like. She knew her only course was to play the indignant aristocrat to the hilt. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

The boy’s eyes widened, but, instead of answering her, he turned and shouted. “Hey, Skipper, she seems to have come round.”

An older man’s voice gruffly responded but, again, Cordelia couldn’t make out the words. She decided to go on pressing the boy and see what happened. “You know you’re going to pay dearly for this, don’t you?”

The boy looked nervous. “I’d put a lid on that, girlie. You don’t want to piss off the skipper.”

“And you, lad, don’t want to piss off Lady Cordelia Blakeney.” Cordelia wished that she could stand, but the leg irons prevented her.

The boy shook his head. “You’re cargo. I shouldn’t be so much as talking with you.”

“You, my boy, should be down on your scrawny knees begging my forgiveness.”

The sound of heavy boots stamped across the deck, and Cordelia figured it had to be the skipper. Matters were proceeding a little swiftly, but she supposed it was better than waiting. Now a weatherbeaten, bearded face, topped off by a peaked naval officer’s cap; white but filthy and battered, with the insignia stripped off. “So you’re awake, are you?

Cordelia now doubly wished she was standing. “That’s right, I’m awake. And you may well be looking at a hanging party when all this comes out.” The slightest flicker of doubt crossed the captain’s face, and Cordelia knew she had him. “Would you care to explain what exactly has been happening here? Maybe starting with what happened to my clothes?”

The captain did his best to bluster. “Lady whatever you are, I have a boat to sail. I don’t have the time for explaining and, moreover, I’m not paid for explaining.”

Cordelia snapped back. “And I’m not accustomed to being chained nearly naked and against my will.” That the man seemed to be English also made her revise some of her original conjecture. Neither the boy nor the skipper was anything like conventional Zhaithan, or even Zhaithan operatives. If they were working for Jeakqual-Ahrach, the degrees of separation had to be numerous and very much removed. The situation appeared more complicated than she had imagined. “Do you know what kind of manhunt is being mounted for me right now?”

A third figure now joined the skipper and the boy. This one was a muscular Caribbean with wild braided hair, an eyepatch, and gold earrings. “Man, I knew the bitch wasn’t no Limehouse doxie.”

“So what is she?”

The boy volunteered the information. “She says she’s Lady Cordelia something.”

Cordelia pulled out all the stops. If her top drawer voice of authority did not do it, nothing would. “I’m Lady Cordelia Blakeney. I’m a major in the Albany Rangers on the staff of Prime Minister Kennedy of the Kingdom of Albany on a state visit to the Norse Union. The fact that I find myself in leg irons and my skivvies may well constitute, at the very least, a diplomatic incident.”

The Captain jumped down into the space in which Cordelia was confined. “You’d better not be shitting me.”

“I’ve told you my name, Captain. What’s yours?”

“I’m Joe Conrad, lady. Master of the
Nancy Belle
.”

Cordelia went for a logical guess. “A smuggler perhaps?

“I prefer the term ‘free trader,’ ma’am. Or ‘embargo runner.’ Not a wholly dishonorable trade in this day and age.”

“So, Captain Conrad, why don’t you do the honorable thing and take these irons off me?”

JESAMINE

Jesamine could not remember any time when she had been so happy. She had spent a thrilling and blissful night in the arms of Jack Kennedy, and now she was riding as part of his parade through the streets of London, in an open carriage with a ceremonial guard, acknowledging the cheers of the crowds packed on the pavements. Her only regret was that she was not riding beside him in the lead carriage, openly recognized as his woman. Then the shots had rung out and absolutely everything changed. In an instant she knew in her heart, beyond any doubt. “Jack! They’re shooting Jack!”

Argo was the first out of his seat in the carriage, rounding angrily on Jane Tennyson. “Give me your damned sidearm, Commander.”

Jane Tennyson shrunk in her seat. “I can’t do that.”

“You took our fucking weapons away from us, and now an attempt is being made on the life of our Prime Minister. And we’re unarmed.”

The plainclothes police officer raised a warning hand. “Easy, lad, we don’t know…”

Raphael had a revolver in his hand and a grimly merciless expression. He had clearly disobeyed the order that had disarmed them. “Give him the gun.”

For a moment it seemed as though the policeman was going to do something brave but stupid. Tennyson clearly decided to prevent that by giving in. She held out her gun to Argo. “Here, take it.”

Raphael was already springing from the carriage. “Let’s go, damn it.”

Argo was a pace behind him, and Jesamine, freed from the momentarily paralysis of shock, was also galvanized into action, and jumped down with the men. Her honey skin had turned pale but her face was set. They ran forward down the length of the procession. Up ahead the ranked and orderly parade had turned into a milling chaos. Jesamine was doing her best not to come apart. “If they’ve hurt Jack…”

Argo looked quickly back at her. “We don’t know anything yet.”

The noise alone was a storm of deafening madness. The clatter of hooves on cobbles, the roaring of the crowd, screams and shouts, sirens somewhere in the distance; orders were being yelled by authoritative voices, but they constantly countermanded each other. The crowds on the sidewalk pushed forward, and police and soldiers struggled to hold them back. A lancer galloped past, also making for the melee at the head of the parade. Discipline had broken down as everyone followed their own idea of what to do. A man with blood on his long civilian overcoat, and cradling a light Bergman gun, was coming toward them, running with desperate speed as two of Roper’s Light Horse galloped after him. Jesamine knew it had to be an attacker. The man realized he couldn’t outrun the cavalry horses, and turned to fire a wild burst. A horse and rider went down, in a confusion of thrashing limbs, but then the other horseman cut the man down with a saber. The assassin fell with blood arcing from a gaping wound between his neck and shoulder. He half rose, but was kicked by the horse as it turned. He rolled and lay still. Jesamine attempted to blot out the gore that made the road surface slick underfoot. She was maintaining her sanity by holding on to a single lifeline of hope. Maybe the attack, or whatever it was, had been beaten off, and Jack was safe. But then she reached the milling crowd and could no longer run. They had to push, duck, and weave, negotiating the confusion, although their uniforms, and Raphael’s and Argo’s drawn pistols, did compel people to let them through.

All hope drained from Jesamine as they reached what, moments earlier, had been the head of the procession. She pushed past Black Watch pipers who milled, dazed and without orders, among the rearing, wild-eyed mounts of the Lifeguards. All around the carriage in which Jack and the Governor had been riding was a scene of carnage, bloody as an abattoir, the clear aftermath of murder.

“Jack!”

One wheel had come off the ornate landau, and it lay like a tilted ruin, bullet-ridden and surrounded by the bodies of men and horses. Governor Branson sat in the street, a few yards from it, head in his hands, and with a crude, bloodstained bandage wrapped around his left arm. Two soldiers knelt beside him, talking quietly to ease his shock. One of the police motorcycles lay on its side, in a pool of burning petroleum from its fuel tank that had mercifully not exploded, adding grim red flames and an evil pall of black smoke to the hideous tableau.

“No!”

The body of Jack Kennedy was surrounded by more soldiers and police, as it lay on its back where it had obviously fallen, sprawled half out of the wrecked carriage, legs twisted, arms out-flung, eyes staring, and with the top of the skull blown away on the left side. The Norsemen remained at a distance, unsure of what they should do, and maybe shamed by their inability to protect their distinguished guest. Dawson’s bullet-riddled body lay a few feet in front of Kennedy, as though he had been vainly attempting to take the bullets. Jesamine, suddenly detached, could hear someone screaming an insane mantra.

“Jack! Jack! Oh no! No! No! No! Jack! No! No!”

Then she realized the screaming voice was her own.

CORDELIA

“Are you telling me that you’ve never taken money to change loyalties in mainstream, Captain Conrad?”

Conrad shrugged and smiled. “I wouldn’t say never, Lady Blakeney. No one could accuse Joe Conrad of not seizing fortune by the forelock.”

Cordelia smiled. “I always thought the phrase was ‘fortune by the foreskin’?”

Conrad looked rueful. “I believe you’re right. I was modifying my language, seeing as we had a lady on board.”

“But you won’t take a higher price to turn the boat around and take me back to England?”

“The freebooter must always, first and foremost, look out for himself and his crew. I won’t say the offer isn’t tempting, but in your case, m’lady, such a thing would present a few too many problems. For a start, and meaning no disrespect, you don’t have any actual money. Only promises to pay later.”

Cordelia had to concede he had a point there. “You’re saying you don’t trust me?”

“It’s hardly a matter of trust, now is it, m’lady? A deal has been made and we’re out on the water making good on the transaction. It’s a little late to be putting about on just your say-so.”

“My say-so can carry a good deal of weight.”

“That’s as may be, but we also have to face the fact that someone has sold you out, Lady Cordelia, and someone else is willing to pay a pretty penny for your warm body. I’ve already trusted you enough to bring you up out of the chain locker when my orders were to not so much as speak to you, but I fear that’s about the limit.”

Joe Conrad was completely correct about how he had trusted Cordelia sufficiently to unfetter her, allow her to exit her cramped confinement, and join him and the crew of the
Mary Belle
up in the fresh air on deck. It had taken logic, begging, all the high-born authority she could muster, plus a garnish of mildly seductive flirtation, before Conrad had finally produced a key and freed her from her leg irons. The flirtation part had not been hard considering that Cordelia was almost naked through the conversation, to the point that, as Conrad had unlocked her shackles, he dryly advised her, “You’d do well to wrap that blanket around you, Lady Blakeney. The wind off the Channel is brisk and frisky this fine day.”

Emerging onto the deck of the
Nancy Belle,
Cordelia had discovered that it was indeed a fine brisk day, and that the
Nancy Belle
was a small battered sailing vessel with patched red sails, perhaps a two-masted sloop; she was not exactly an expert at identifying types of ship. In addition to Conrad, the boy, and the Caribbean whose name, as it turned out, was Reuben, the
Nancy Belle
’s crew of five was completed by a Frank called Marcel, and Lars, a squat Swede who hardly ever spoke. Her mission had been to find out where exactly she was, why she was there, and who was behind it all. Conrad had no problem answering the first question. They were in the English Channel, marking good time, and waiting for the arrival of the small Mosul herring fleet that worked the North Sea. The fishing boats were an odd assortment of craft with which Conrad could mingle, after a minimal change of the flags, and use as enabling cover under which to slip into the port of Boulogne without attracting the attention of either Mosul patrol boats, or Imperial customs officers and Zhaithan harbor police. He had even revealed that Cordelia had been delivered to him as part of an entire cargo of contraband that had included machine parts and parabiotic medicines denied the Mosul by the Norse trade embargo: the inevitable benodex, some boxes of the brand-new Bergman parabellums, so highly prized by Teuton officers, cases of aquavit and Scotts whiskey, bundles of London pornography and other publications prohibited in the Empire, but also craved by the Zhaithan, boxes of Caribbean cigars, plus a quantity of small individual items privately ordered and sent as sealed packages. For all practical purposes, Cordelia herself fell into the latter category since Conrad professed to having no knowledge of where she had come from, or what her ultimate destination might be. Seemingly the
Nancy Belle
quite regularly transported women prisoners from England to the occupied lands of the Franks, and usually they were young, pretty, and destined for the upmarket brothels in the provincial capital at Lyon or to be some general’s concubine. Conrad therefore claimed to have believed she was just another of these high-priced unfortunates when she was carried aboard unconscious, and to have thought nothing of it. “I swear, m’lady, if I’d known you were some important Americano out of Albany I would have asked a few questions and probably have upped my price.”