Conflagration (26 page)

Jesamine had nodded. “It’s usually the best way.”

“You must know there’s considerable interest here in you and your companions.”

Again Jesamine nodded. “I wouldn’t have expected otherwise.”

“Without knowing all the details, we have a broad idea of your capabilities.”

“The secret was out after we saved the King from Jeakqual-Ahrach’s entities.”

De Wynter looked sharply at Jesamine. “You hold Jeakqual-Ahrach responsible, not her brother?”

Jesamine bit her lip. “I think I may have said too much.”

De Wynter lips compressed to a thin impatient line. “I thought we were talking frankly?”

“We’ve only just met.”

“And you fear that I am an enemy? That I’m a threat to either you or your Prime Minister?”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“No?”

“No.”

Madame de Wynter looked sideways at Jesamine. “I’d imagine the furtherance of your education was a large part of why Jack brought the four of you here?”

Jesamine shifted in her seat. Suddenly she felt like she was being interrogated. “That’s what we were told.”

“Have you noticed how things have changed?”

Jesamine frowned. De Wynter seemed to have abruptly switched direction. “Changed?”

“Once upon a time, it was the brother we feared. Quadaron-Ahrach was the High Zhaithan, and all trembled at his name. Now it’s the name of the sister that casts the cold shadow, and makes the candles flicker.”

Jesamine realized that de Wynter was right. “Quadaron-Ahrach would seem to have taken a back seat.”

De Wynter nodded. “Jeakqual-Ahrach is now the force. She is the shark that swims forward. While her brother grows corrupt and ancient along with his emperor, and they ponder succession and how to prolong themselves, Jeakqual-Ahrach is the initiator. She is the seeker and the researcher. She has the power because she finds it and she takes it.”

The car had turned onto a wide boulevard running along the perimeter of a park. The outlines of trees, fountain, and statues, and of shadowy figures moving among them, were just visible in the darkness. Jesamine thought for a moment. “Could it simply be she’s so much younger than her brother?”

“You’ve seen the woman. How old did she look to you?”

Jesamine shrugged. “Maybe forty, a powerful middle-age. Except, when she removed her gloves, her hands seemed older.”

De Wynter smiled. “It’s always the hands that give you away.”

“Cordelia and I did wonder if the knives of skilled surgeons had played a part.”

“Even when you were about to be tortured, you wondered how she looked so young?”

“The mind protects itself any way it can.”

De Wynter stared hard at Jesamine. “Our most conservative estimate makes Jeakqual-Ahrach more than ninety years old.”

“If that’s true, how does she do it?”

“Morgana’s Web has spies clear across the Empire, but even they haven’t penetrated that dark vault. Some claim that she became a vampire.”

“But vampires don’t exist.”

“Other suggested ministrations of apothecaries, necromancers, like you said, knives of skilled surgeons, and other specialists at whose function you wouldn’t even want to guess.”

Jesamine glanced out of the window of the automobile. She did not relish all this talk of their sworn enemy. “Right now we’re at war and we’re discussing how Jeakqual-Ahrach stays looking so young.”

“You think we should maybe be talking about the White Twins?”

Jesamine started, stunned, unable to conceal her surprise. “You know about them?”

De Wynter nodded. “Reports have been coming in for about six months.”

Jesamine was speechless. She had hardly expected anyone in the Norse Union to have heard about the White Twins except The Four, Slide, Jack Kennedy, and maybe a few others. Now she learned, if Madame de Wynter was to be believed, word of them was all over. Before Jesamine could frame a question, however, from all of those that crowded in her, Garth made a sharp left turn and swung into a pair of imposing gates that opened in a high, spiked wall. The wheels of the yellow automobile crunched on the gravel of a wide driveway that ran through trees and flowerbeds that seemed to be a private extension of the park they had just passed, and led up to an imposing white house with multiple bay windows, pillared portico, and a somewhat incongruous turret on the farthest corner. Seeing that Jesamine was impressed, de Wynter smiled. “Welcome to Deerpark, Major.”

Jesamine shook her head. “You live here? It’s like a palace.”

“It belonged to my late first husband, the Archduke-in-Exile. It was really too bad about Rudolph.”

Before Madame de Wynter could explain what had happened to the Archduke-in-Exile Rudolph, Garth brought the car to a halt in front of the portico. He pulled on the handbrake and climbed down to open the door for his mistress. Madame de Wynter exited the car, looking around, noting that a number of other cars were parked where the driveway widened beside the house.

“I see my guests have already started to arrive.”

If Madame de Wynter hadn’t gestured in the direction of the parked cars, Jesamine might never have looked, but, when she did look, what she saw stopped her dead in her tracks and filled her with a horrible chill. As she pointed in alarm, her voice was little more than a choked gasp. “Zhaithan! There, by that car! Zhaithan in full uniform!” She swung round to face de Wynter. “What are the Zhaithan doing here? What are you doing to me?”

ARGO

“What the fuck?”

“What?”

“Zhaithan. Fucking Zhaithan, in full uniform, standing around bold as brass. One of them is even smoking a fucking cigarette.”

Argo leaned forward and rapped on the partition in the official car that separated the passengers from the driver. “Go. Quickly. Get us out of here!”

Raphael, meanwhile, looked at Bowden Spinrad, their ES escort, in alarm. “What the fuck is this?”

Spinrad attempted to calm the two of them. “It’s nothing to be alarmed about.”

Argo looked back at him in total disbelief. “What do you mean it’s nothing to be alarmed about.”

“They’re just a chauffeur and bodyguard.”

“What are a Zhaithan chauffeur and a Zhaithan fucking bodyguard doing in the middle of London?”

“They belong to the Mosul chargé d’affaires.”

“The Norse and the Mosul have diplomatic relations?”

“We’re not officially at war.”

“And they come to de Wynter’s parties?”

“Khurshid Nawaz, the chargé d’affaires of the Mosul Empire, is quite the party boy. He’s a royal cousin; they had to send him someplace he couldn’t do too much harm. I mean, the relationship between the NU and the Empire is so bad, there’s nothing he could do to damage it.”

Argo and Raphael stared at Spinrad, not wholly believing him. “Are you sure about this? We’ve been targets of the Zhaithan for too long to screw around with this.”

Spinrad again did his best to allay their fears. “You really have no need to worry. Khurshid Nawaz isn’t the kind to try anything.”

Raphael glanced at Argo. “What do you think?”

Argo shrugged. “If Spinrad here says it’s okay, I guess we can take him at his word.”

Bowden Spinrad was young, not much older than Argo and Raphael, and a junior operative in Windermere’s ES Section, although, as far as Argo could see, something of a party boy himself, unless the long lank hair, the long leather evening coat, and the androgynous eyeliner were just some kind of cover to enable him to move through London’s high society without anyone taking him very seriously. He had arranged for a government car to take Argo and Raphael from the Palace of Westminster to Deerpark, the residence of Madame Anastasia de Wynter, and then come along with them for the ride. Since he seemed to know everyone, and also kept up a stream of genuinely funny banter, Argo and Raphael were pleased to have him along until the two Zhaithan appeared in the darkness beside the parked cars in front of Deerpark.

The driver was now forcing the issue by climbing down from the car to open the passenger door. Raphael treated Spinrad to a hard stare. “You’re sure about this?”

“Certain.”

As they cautiously exited the car, Spinrad turned to the driver. “Do you have a sidearm, Wilson?”

The driver nodded. “Of course, sir.”

Spinrad gestured to the two Zhaithan, who were maybe twenty yards away, in their black cloaks, red and black tunics, spiked and turban-swathed helmets. “You see those two?”

“Indeed I do, sir.”

As Argo had observed, one of them was smoking a cigarette cupped in the palm of his hand. “If either one of them makes a hostile or threatening move, shoot them.”

Again Wilson nodded. “Whatever you say, sir.”

Spinrad turned back to Argo and Raphael. “Shall we go inside?”

RAPHAEL

“Cold cruel, cold cruel, cold cruel,

You’re a cold cruel bitch!

Cold cruel, cold cruel, cold cruel,

You’re a cold cruel bitch!”

Raphael could not believe the volume of what was only a five-piece combo. The small stage was flanked by a pair of huge conical steel horns, maybe five feet across at the open end, that came close to dwarfing the musicians with their stringed instruments—the string bass, the guitar, the hipzither. Raphael had never seen anything like the objects they were playing. Even the Mosul occupation had not been able to eradicate the guitar from Hispania, and he was familiar with the common, six-string model with the hollow wooden sound box, but these devices were a whole new development. They were carved from solid wood and came with odd electrical contacts and wires that ran back to boxes with glowing radio valves that, in turn, altered and amplified the sound and then hurled it out at the enthusiastic, dancing crowd like waves of physical force. The noise the young men created was harsh, angry, and metallic. At one and the same time, it was aggressive and all pervasive, dense with an excitement that was close to sexual. Raphael not only heard it, but was able to feel it in his skull, bones, and chest cavity. In addition to the three string players, two oriental boys hammered with mallets on huge wooden drums. Overhead, multiple beams from electric spotlights were directed at an imposing pedant chandelier, creating refracted rainbows that rotated like radiant hallucinations over the people below. At the Palace of Westminster the dancing had been formal and sedate, but at Madame de Wynter’s party, the total reverse was true. The crowd in front of the stage and under the lights was wild, sensually unfettered, and wholly improvisational. Some were even flailing and violent. A number of young men and also some of the young women had stripped to the waist, sweating and shaking, in contortionist abandon. One pair of youths was costumed in formfitting bandages, with medical prostheses attached to perfectly healthy limbs. A gilded boy in shorts was being passed hand to hand. A woman in hellfire scarlet flicked her partner with a knout as they quivered together, while someone of indeterminate gender, wearing an elaborate gold mask, was prancing all on his/her own, a palsied leaping and twitching that was more akin to an affliction of the nervous system than a dance. Dancers around him/her had cleared a space, wary of the unpredictable arms and legs. Raphael pointed him out to Spinrad.

“Is this how London gained its reputation for decadence?”

Spinrad looked down and laughed. “As a matter of fact, that is none other than Khurshid Nawaz, the chargé d’affaires of the Mosul Empire. You see now why I said he was no cause for concern?”

Deerpark was large enough to have its own high-ceilinged ballroom. The place was also incredibly soundproof. He, Argo, and Spinrad had hardly heard the noise until they were actually entering. It was not until much later that he learned Madame de Wynter needed soundproofing for some of her rituals, and that Deerpark had been built with walls that, at some points, were more than three feet thick. The Archduke Rudolph, in addition to being obscenely rich, even for an exile, also had a morbid fear of being blown up by his supposed enemies, and had, before his untimely end, that ironically had nothing to do with explosive or infernal devices of any kind, endeavored to make his London home as bombproof as was scientifically possible. They had entered the ballroom by way of a mezzanine or minstrel’s gallery at the opposite end from the musicians, from which they were able to look down on the squirming mass of eerily lit dancers. From there, they could descend to the main floor down a theatrically curving flight of stairs. The whole interior design of this house, that all but qualified as a palace, seemed to be designed for dramatic effect, and the fact was certainly not lost on the tall and skinny woman, in the short white dress, white lipstick, with dead straight platinum hair, who had a daisy painted in pink and magenta on her left cheek, and was climbing the stairs toward them. Raphael stood with Argo and Spinrad at the top of the stairs. The woman in white seemed in control, but nevertheless intoxicated to the point where she had to stop and focus on the three men. Assuming that they were about to descend to join the dance, she said, “You don’t want to go down there, unless you really get off on your arse being groped at random by total strangers.”

A new song started, slower than the previous thrash, and, instead of bellowing in English, the guitarist began to sing in a language that Raphael was at a loss to explain, but would subsequently be informed was a mixture of Carib, Zulu, and Icelandic. The seafaring ways of the Norse, and especially the English, had created some exotic cultural mixes in their cities. The woman in white with the daisy on her cheek continued to peer drunkenly at the three of them, especially Raphael and Argo. She advanced up three more steps and then stared at them as though inspecting specimens. A knowing smile spread across her face. “You’re them, aren’t you?”

Spinrad, talking it upon himself to act as some kind of proxy host, attempted to handle the situation. “Aren’t we what?”

The girl looked at Spinrad and shook her head. “No, not you, those two.” She indicated Raphael to Argo. “You’re them, aren’t you?”