Conflagration Read Online Free Page A

that made them two of a kind. Cordelia had, however, become so adept at giving the woman the slip that Slide had devised the ruse of putting a young cavalry captain called Tom Neally in charge of her safety and welfare. He and Cordelia had immediately become lovers, which made Neally’s assignment considerably easier. The two of them had been fucking each other’s brains out every night since the army had passed Richmond. Cordelia actually believed she was being the soul of discretion, and she had everyone fooled, but the truth was that most of the high command, plus a majority of their fellow officers, were well aware of what was going on. Argo knew from months of experience that Cordelia could be totally carried away by illusions of her own excessive cleverness.
    Raphael and Jesamine, the other two members of The Four, seemed less bothered by the watch that was kept on them. Very little seemed to bother Raphael. The taciturn and withdrawn Hispanian had been a Mosul conscript the previous fall, and Argo could only assume that just about anything would be acceptable after being dragged from his home when barely in his teens, beaten and bullied through Mosul boot camp, and then shipped across the Northern Ocean in an ironclad troopship to serve as cannon fodder in the American war. Through the winter, Argo and Raphael had trained together, bunked together, and even, on a couple of occasions, drunk themselves stupid together, but Argo still did not feel that he really knew his young companion. It may have been a legacy of Raphael having served in Hassan IX’s Provincial Levies, or maybe just a facet of his deep and complex nature, but a part of his character seemed to be permanently concealed, even to those who were supposed to be closest to him. He drew in his sketch pad and said little, and no overtures or encouragement seemed able to change that.
    Argo could hardly say that he did not know Jesamine. They had started sleeping together almost as soon as the two of them had joined the ranks of Albany, and, although he was loath to admit such a thing openly, she had been his first extended relationship and only the second woman he had ever bedded. Although she was less than a year older than him, the nightmare experience she had suffered as a Mosul prostitute and the concubine of a brutal Teuton colonel had left her with a wealth of carnal experience he might never equal. She had been his erotic mentor, teaching him lessons, and raising him to heights of pleasure that had left him awed. They had shared a hundred secrets and a thousand intimacies, and, for a time, Argo had worshiped her huge dark eyes, her lithe, honey-colored body, and long dark hair, but she, too, seemed to keep a part of her mind closed off. Argo suspected, though, that the same could be said about him. He knew that he had never revealed everything about himself to Jesamine, even at the height of their shared passion. This may well have been a result of also having lived under the harsh rule of the Mosul invaders, when so much had to be concealed just in order to survive, and it could also have been the reason that Cordelia, who had never lived that way, chaffed so hard under the current surveillance while he, Jesamine, and Raphael were more able to take it in their stride.
    Jesamine had also taught Argo to drink, passing on the fruits of her long experience, when alcohol had been the easiest and most available way to provide a little insulation between herself and her innate revulsion at being a chattel of the conquerors. At first the drunken nights had been fun—high as kites, rolling and sliding together in bed or elsewhere, their bodies slick with mingled sweat—but then the training of The Four had started, and the affair had ended. Argo and Jesamine had parted on the specific orders of Yancey Slide, their inhuman mentor, but Argo and Jesamine had always known this was the way that it would be. All of The Four knew from experience that sexual energy