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Rusk laughed then, dark and growling as ever, be he man or ghost. “The pleasure of your pleasure, fool. To watch you work yourself up ‘til you’re fair panting for it, ‘til you beg and weep for an end . . . ”

“Sir! You go too far, entirely!”

“Aye, and would go further still, as I damn well know ye’d love t’allow me, much though you prate th’ opposite. Come now, Jerusha, must I really bend the knee? What gestures must I play out, t’ bring us both what we seek?”

“Ask—ask my permission, for once. Not that I dream you would.”

“Like some puling schoolboy, some mother-may-I? Nay, doesn’t sound much like me at all . . . and yet, very well: Jerusalem Parry, will ye grant me the honour of you? Might I be let to breach that strait-laced gate, and make us both the happier for it?”

Settling back onto him before Parry could object, ‘til Parry fell limp at the feel, unable to do more than punch the air and gasp. Then heard himself answer, much against his better judgment—

“ . . . You may.”

At this, Rusk gave a satisfied sort of snarl, a hungry lion’s half-cough, and heaved himself up, re-settling in. Smiling in triumph, as he crowed: “Ah, my Jerusha, you marvel, my poor sweetheart! My nice divine, pretty little parson-to-be, aspirant soul-saver; you, who hate everybody and everything, yourself included . . . ”

“Do not mistake me for some—Navy slug, sir! I know my sins, at least, instead of . . . revelling in them . . . ”

Yet here he lost the thread, every part of him buzzing, raked and itching from the inside-out. Rusk laughed again to see it, dropping his face in the crook of Parry’s neck and keeping unmercifully on, voice flesh-muffled—

“Aye, as I do mine, ‘revelling’ aside. Which makes you no better than me, for all your airs! Or perhaps ‘tis that we’re neither of us so good, let alone so bad . . . ”

“The one thing we’re alike in’s damnation!” Parry made to snarl, but groaned instead, knowing it far too late to stop his own disgrace. While the coda to this stew came, as ever, in a rush of heat and mess and awfulness, a dreadful coring joy. Parry tried to turn from it, but Rusk seized him fast and forced his gaze forward again. “Nay, none o’ that,” he growled. “Stay wi’ me ‘til the throes are done at least, if no further.”

“Leave me my shame, man, for Christ’s own love!”

“Ah, but ‘tis a foolish habit of yours, my Jerusha, that same shame. I aim t’ cure ye of it, if it takes me ‘til Doomsday.”

Parry cursed him roundly, to the very limits of his knowledge and invention, before invective at last turned silent. Then, exhausted, he lay awhile in Rusk’s arms, too tired to fight on, and was forced to accept the unhappy benefit of his ravisher’s cold comfort.

Yes, ‘twas a brave bloody night, by Christ, Rusk’s ghost said from somewhere nearby, a trifle sadly. I think on’t often, who have little enough left to distract me, for all I’m sure you don’t do the same. But then again, the pleasures of the dead are few, as you’ll eventually discover.

It was another of those contortionate dream-moments, twisting Parry free and fading the past in a single wink, so he sat once more upright next to Clione in their nest of sheets, staring Rusk’s full-dressed spectre down with all his hairs upright and his frame rage-rigid.

Why would you? Parry demanded, insult of it burning in the nose, like blood. Bad enough in life, but to come to me thus in dream! You amaze me, sir.

Oh, I doubt that. Rusk gave a sigh. Yet how else am I to gain your attention, Jerusha, with you so enmeshed?

Parry huffed. Aye, on your advice, as I recall—and why not, since it ensues she does indeed find me pleasant, after all? I have little enough to make me happy in my waking life, forever confined by this curse you worked on me . . .

Yes, well: about that. Might be I was . . . inaccurate in my estimation, when first I pushed you t’wards her arms. For there are things in her I glimpse that I can only assume you don’t, still bein’ locked in your fleshly state—

Oh, do tell—or don’t, rather, for I have no patience for it! Might be you shouldn’t’ve played through my life’s most humiliating night as preface, if you truly wished my attention on the matter!

Ye damned contrary creature! Are you a sailor born, now, to know the ocean’s store of uncanniness better than myself? For if ‘twas me, I’d’ve thrown her back in the sea to sink or swim as she pleased, days agone. As there were many said I should have done with you, by Christ!

Indeed, sir? I confess myself unsurprised.

I did not mean—Jerusha, only listen t’me, for your own profit! She is not what ye think her—

Nor you, I warrant, when you seemed to mean me well, ‘til you showed your true colours! When you broke your oath and treated me as no host would an honoured guest, unless perhaps that host be Satan himself, welcoming damned souls into Hell—

But: Be still, a third voice intruded, cutting through their wrangle like Alexander’s blade. Enough o’ this muddle. We must put yah house in order, Cap’n Parry, ‘fore ya sink yourself through foolishness, and all else along wi’ you.

Parry did not even have to turn t

o know who it was who spoke, though he had not had the pleasure since his first attack. Merely inclined his head her way, all at once on best behaviour, and

acknowledged, with as great a courtesy as he might muster—