Colonnade.
A letter delivered. A tongue silenced.
His business in Porto Delgado concluded, James Delaney steps out of the townhouse into the bustle of a busy market street. The blood under his fingernails has already turned to brown. The dirt under the nails of a workingman's hands.
Colonnade. Supplier of false documents to every empire under the sun, James was hardly either his first or his most lucrative client. He had not recognized his client's face at their meeting: you never remember the faces of those below you. When they'd first met James had been a boy, part of an unmemorable gaggle of solemn boys in identical uniforms, obedient without question to the captain of a British slave ship.
He'd knifed the man in the throat then bit into the wound his knife had created. Savored the gush of hot blood, the salty sweetness of raw flesh. Cut again into the man's chest to remove the heart, his every sense alive and awake, his appetite ravenous.
He was glad that Lorna could not see him like this. Cursed Zilpha because she no doubt could. He'd wanted to keep her eyes and heart pure, had not counted her among the damned. But the dead see everything.
Walking down the street, he notices a woman in front of a market stall, perusing oranges with long, delicate fingers. Olive skin, high cheekbones, mouth pursed into a scowl. She turns away from him quickly, as if shy at being seen. A Spanish lady, probably, or Italian.
Her skin is the same hue as that of the sister he hadn't wanted at first, he reminds himself now, not when she'd been a squalling infant presented in the arms of her mother—"Your mother too now," Father had lied—whose screams only laudunum or a trip to the attic would shut up. He'd been the one to bring her up to the attic, in secret, when Father wasn't home. Then one day he'd gone up, only to find the attic cleared. "Your mother is dead."
"So lovely, and such a wonderful dancer! You must have Spanish blood," one of his sister's suitors had said, while James silently seethed. The suitor's face had been alight, no doubt recalling all the usual licentious rumors about Spanish girls. He'd wanted to smash the simpering man's face against the tile floor of that elegant ballroom. Zilpha had not looked at him at all but instead beamed up at the stranger, her face radiant: a girl's idea of cruelty.
He wants to follow the woman now. Take her into some alley and fuck her breathless. But she's lost herself in the crowd. Or was she only a vision, kin to the ones he's had nightly on the ship?
The dead don't sing, Lorna had said. Perhaps she is right...and it is only madness...
Nevertheless he will seek her out tonight in the water, his sister, his love. He's found her again nearly every night he's turned to its black depths. Black water that smells like fire. Her black hair unbound, falling in loose tresses onto her breasts, her nipples standing out proud as always, rising up from the cold sea yet hot under his ravenous hands, her face twisted in ecstasy as she pulls him to her and whispers:
"Return to me."
"I cannot. Not yet."
"Return to me, James."
"Not yet. But I will soon, I promise."
"How close are you to shore?"
…
Lorna again. That woman's incessant nagging is enough to drive any man mad. The moment they'd left Porto Delgado she'd walked up to him and asked in a taunting tone, "Aren't you going to ask me about the fun I've had off shore?" His silence had been all the reply she deserved, but she hadn't taken the hint. "Aren't you going to ask me about all the fascinating people I've met?"
"No."
She'd pouted at him, in a manner probably meant to be charming. He'd taken a swig of brandy and muttered something under his breath about whipping crew members for insubordination. She'd called him ridiculous, but walked away quickly after that.
Yet here she is again, now that their crew of the damned is safely ensconced at an inn not far from South Street, back to her old games and bold as ever. She follows him as he staggers into his room from the tavern, nearly too drunk to walk at all.
"You must have suffered a great deal during this voyage," she declares, her face a mask of compassion. He grunts. "Did you?" Damn her.
"Every day and every night," he replies. He is surprised at his own words, suddenly loud in the small room. He had not prepared to give her such honesty. It must be the brandy loosening his tongue.
"She's dead, James. How long are you prepared to suffer for her?"
Something is wrong...
"All the days of my life, in this world and the next."
"Enough of your romantic nonsense! How many years are you going to suffer and waste away?"
Concern, he's had plenty of that from Lorna. This is concern, yes, but also something else. He sits up, willing her face not to blur. Is it hers? Or are the dead playing tricks on him once more?
"How many years, James?"
He gets up off the bed and strangles her.
Expecting mockery, he gazes into her eyes and finds only pleading, abject fear. He pushes her away, looks down at his own hands in revulsion. I will protect you, he'd promised her.
In truth, he'd enjoyed the feel of her heartbeat under his hands. That wild joy in releasing his darkest instincts, onto a body he'd convinced himself belonged to someone who deserved it.
…
Next night at the inn, he wakes to hands around his throat. The atavistic desire to live surges up in him as he struggles to find breath. He is about to peel the intruder's fingers from his neck and break them, when he is stilled by a familiar scent, a familiar whisper:
"Lorna's a gentle soul. She forgave you almost the instant after you'd strangled her. I do not."
Zilpha's dark eyes study him. She loosens her grip slightly. He sees that she is naked on top of him, as naked as he is. He does not move to escape her but pulls her down hard against him, cunt to cock. Forgiven or not, he will take his pleasure from her. Forgiven or not, he will possess her again.
"I booked passage on two ships, then bribed the inn's maid for a key to your room. A diamond is a truly valuable thing." She smiles down at him.
"And my visions? I saw you every night in the water's depths..."
"Lit fires."
He turns his head and sees her clothes lying in a pile in the corner: yes, she is real.
Her hands are still around his neck.
"Have you come to kill me then. If you mean to do it, do it."
"I want you alive. Can you say the same about me?"
In answer he pulls her face down to his. He's driven to feel it again, the velvet of her lips. They taste like cinnamon and salt and need. He drags his mouth down her cheek and to her neck, to the fine soft hair at the back of her neck where the smoke smell still lingers.
Her hands have moved down, are scrambling to find purchase under his back. To take him in.
He wraps his arms around her back and rolls them both over so that he is staring down at her. Those black eyes that see everything, that are like his own. He licks at her flesh from breasts to stomach to cunt, driven still by this animal need to confirm that her taste is still the same. He bites down, gently, but still a bite. Feels her soft gasp before he hears it.
"Again," she says, and he does. Again and again. Then takes his mouth from her cunt and looks at her, his mouth still dripping with the wetness of her arousal.
He wants to believe that if it were blood dripping from his mouth, she still would not flinch.
He still cannot believe entirely that she has not come to kill him.
Her lithe body shifting under him drives him into a frenzy. He pushes her legs back and violently thrusts into her, again and again, hard and unsparing. Then puts his hand over her mouth because she is alive and real and will cry out and then hate him for it, the way she did when they were children and he even dared to glance at her where others could see. She bites down onto his hand, harder than she'd need to in order to still herself. She is alive. But like the dead, she demands blood.
When they are both spent, he lays his head on the pillow next to hers. "I missed you," he says softly. She sighs. "What, you don't believe me?"
"How many years though?" she says, her voice close to breaking. "How many years would you miss me?"
The rumour around the barracks about Spanish girls was that they were superb in bed but unstable, jealous and violent, fine for an affair but completely unsuitable as wives. Zilpha is not Spanish. She is his, like it or not, in this world and in all the worlds to come.
He takes a stray lock of her hair between his fingers, tucks in behind her ear, and gives her the answer she wants.
"Ten."