The Devil's Concubine (The Devil of Ponong series #1) (15 page)

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A sour auntie backed out of an apartment on the first floor
with a huge basket of laundry. She sniffed when she saw QuiTai, but her eyes
lit up at the jade eggs in Kyam’s hand. “Eggs, little brother?” She plucked one
from Kyam’s hand. “Three is an unlucky number.” Satisfied that she’d saved him
from peril, she tucked the egg into the corner of her basket.

“My landlady,” Kyam
explained to QuiTai. “Although you two have met, I think.”

“It’s been a while,” QuiTai murmured. “Have
you eaten, auntie?”

The woman cupped her hand to the side of her
mouth but didn’t bother to whisper. “I know nice Ponongese girls. I could
introduce you. For a fee,” she told Kyam. Her nostrils flared as she looked
over QuiTai from head to foot.

“This is business, auntie. I’m painting her
portrait.” Kyam pushed QuiTai toward the stairs.

The landlady grunted and called out, “She
lives with werewolves! Too good for her own kind, not good enough for yours.”

As they climbed the stairs, Kyam said, “Don’t
take it to heart. She hates everyone.”

“And as you said last time I was here,
everyone loathes me.”

Kyam winced. “That was for Ivitch’s benefit.”

“Oh, certainly.” She enjoyed his discomfort.

They rounded the landing and stopped with
their feet on the first step of the last flight of stairs. The door to Kyam’s
apartment was ajar.

Kyam put the eggs into her hands. “Wait here.”
Then he crept up the remaining stairs. He flattened against the wall, peeked
through the door, then threw it open fully and rushed in.

QuiTai sauntered in behind him. Either the
place had been searched, or he’d dumped all his paints on the floor. She lifted
her sarong as she stepped carefully over a canvas.

“I told you to wait,” Kyam said.

She put his prized eggs near the cooking fire,
then righted a chair and sat. “I see you’re in the habit of running into
dangerous situations on your own, Colonel Zul of His Majesty’s Intelligence
Services.”

“Me? I’m the one who rushes in? My dear Lady
QuiTai, I think you’re ignoring your own penchant for trouble.”

His overly polite words didn’t match his
tone. He glowered at her as if she’d done something to anger him. She wondered
why his mood had turned so quickly. Then she saw his sketch book was on the
ground near her foot. She picked it up and flipped through the pages. While
preliminary sketches of her were there, the full drawing was gone.

“Someone took a memento,” she said. “I meant
to tell you yesterday that you’re quite talented with a pencil. I was
surprised.”

Kyam searched under the piles of clothes and
canvases. “My art tutor had more luck than the music tutor.”

He didn’t do it on purpose, but there were
times when he made it so clear how very different they were. Even the best
school in Levapur didn’t teach drawing or music. She wondered suddenly if he
missed his home as much as she’d missed Ponong when she’d been away.

Stay focused.
Every minute she could buy for LiHoun was
precious now. The trick was to keep Kyam talking. “Do you have a handler on the
island, or do you report directly to Thampur? If I were you, I wouldn’t let the
colonial government know about this just yet. Maybe never.” There was nothing
specific that she could point to, but the more she thought about the colonial
government, the more uneasy she grew. It was as if she’d seen or heard
something that raised a warning at the back of her mind.

“We may be partners in this investigation,
but there are some matters that must remain confidential. Aha!” He triumphantly
waved a handful of instant jellylanterns. “These might come in handy.” He
dropped them on the mattress and reached further under his bed.

“I keep the Devil’s business from you, so it’s
only fair if you withhold Thampurian business from me. However, I’m curious
about something,” she said.

Wariness hooded his eyes.

She waved her hand. “Nothing top secret, I
assure you. It’s just that I have a, shall we say, personal curiosity about
biolocks. I know that your farwriter is protected by one. May I observe you
opening it?”

He leaned against the mattress. “What’s it
worth to you?”

“Worth?”

“You’re the one who treats life like a series
of business deals, so consider this a side negotiation. What would you be
willing to give up for a chance to inspect my biolock?” There was a hint of
teasing in his voice.

“What do you want?”

“The truth. There’s a biolock somewhere you
want to crack. Why?”

He was the most infuriating man. A worthy
adversary, and an even more worrisome ally. Still, she wanted to see how the
lock worked.

“I’ve paid several necessary business
expenses out of my own pocket. The Devil is reticent to reimburse me, even
though he knows I invest it for his benefit. Unfortunately, his fortune is
protected by a biolock.” She folded her hands in her lap. “I have no intention
of robbing him. I only want what’s mine.”

Kyam laughed. “So you’re financing the Devil’s
crime syndicate and you get nothing in return? I thought you were smarter than
that. But where the Devil is concerned, you’ve proven yourself to be
exasperatingly blind.”

“There’s no need to be unkind, Mister Zul. It’s
merely a difference of management styles.”

“Oh ho! Management!”

One of their arguments could rage for hours
if she managed it right. “The Devil’s business is just that, Mister Zul –
a business. As a sea dragon, you should appreciate that. Other nations built
navies; Thampurians built a merchant fleet, and conquered the Sea of Erykoli
with it.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said
about Thampurians.”

“Respect where it’s due.”

It used to be so easy to goad him into
fights. If she hadn’t been so thoroughly tired, she would have done a better
job of provoking him. Certain there’d be another excuse for harsh words, she
decided to let this line of discussion go. If she tried to revive it now, he’d
get suspicious.

“So, are you satisfied with my reasons? May I
see the lock?”

He kicked scattered clothes aside on his way
to the trunk that lay open and on its side near the wardrobe. Then he knelt and
reached for the lower of the two recessed metal bands that encircled it. “Come
over if you want to see.”

QuiTai’s braid slid over her shoulder as she
leaned down for a closer look. If she saw how it worked, maybe she could find a
way around it.

“I put my fingers into these copper-lined
grooves. You can’t see them, but there are indents I have to line up with.”

She’d felt similar grooves on Petrof’s
biolock.

“It’s rather advanced technology. My fingers
react with the copper to form a signature electrical circuit. It’s very weak,
but it’s enough to –” The metal bar inside slid back to reveal a narrow
gap between the false bottom of the trunk and the side. “It triggers a simple
latch that slides back.”

“And the biolock can’t be opened by anyone
else?”

“It doesn’t read my fingerprints, but the
grooves were molded to my fingers. The lock has to receive a certain current
that I’m told only my body can produce. That may not be true, but I doubt that
a biolock keyed to a male werewolf would yield to a Ponongese woman. Your hands
are far too small.”

“Would you please stop trying to trick me
into telling you who the Devil is?”

“I think I already know everything I need to
about him.”

She tried to remember any hints she might
have dropped, but she’d been careful. She knew she had. Maybe Kyam was bluffing.

“Do you have to be alive to complete the
circuit?” When he flinched, she said, “A hypothetical question.”

“You wouldn’t kill me for a farwriter. At
least, I don’t think you would. Would you?”

QuiTai put her finger to her chin and
pretended to think about it. Finally, she shook her head. “Too many witnesses
have seen us together.”

“Sometimes I’m not sure if you’re joking.”

He lifted a small black iron machine with
round brass keys from the compartment and placed it on the small desk that had
been pushed against the wall. The desk looked as if it had originally belonged
to a lady in a grand house. For all she knew, it had once sat in Kyam’s family’s
compound.

“Since it’s the Devil’s safe you want into,
I’ll tell you that – hypothetically – if it was soon enough after
his death, the lock might still open. Try it and find out.”

“That option was never really on the table.
Merely curious.”

Although if the lock would open
for a corpse, it would certainly work for someone in vapor dream.
She was a little irritated with herself for
not thinking of that before.

He took a smaller box from the trunk and
removed a small device with a crank that reminded QuiTai of a pepper mill. At the
center was a copper coil. Wires stuck out of the bottom.

“Is that a generator?” she asked.

“Mobile units need a source of power.” Kyam
attached wires from the generator to the small farwriter then cranked the
handle. “So. The lock. Did you see any way around it?”

“Most certainly.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me?” Kyam asked.

“I shouldn’t, but I’m sure that it’s occurred
to you too. That lock is like putting seven bolts on a door made of rice paper.
If, for example, I desperately wanted to get into your trunk, I’d break open
the bottom with an axe rather than waste time fiddling with a lock. The only
problem with my method is that you’d know I’d done it. I prefer a subtler
approach, something that wouldn’t arouse even a whiff of suspicion that the
safe had been breached.”

“The Devil would kill you if he caught you
stealing from him?”

She looked at her hands. “He wouldn’t react
well.” That was an understatement, but she was sure Kyam knew that.

“Has he caught you trying to open his safe?”

“How careless do you think I am?”

“Everyone runs out of luck at some point,
QuiTai. Even you.” Then he turned his attention to the farwriter. Using two
fingers, he began to peck out a message.

QuiTai lifted her hand to her mouth to cover
a yawn.

“If you’re tired, you can stretch out on my
bed. I promise to stay over here,” he added quickly when she shot a look at
him.

“If I eat, I’ll be fine.”

“You had a rough day yesterday, and today
hasn’t been any easier.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I prefer to
keep moving. Then I don’t have time to dwell on matters best forgotten for now.”
But even saying that brought the dull ache back to her heart.

She forced herself to pay attention to Kyam’s
farwriter. Maybe it was possible to see the frequency he used from across the
room; then she could monitor Thampurian government messages. She squinted. But
then he fiddled with knobs on the side of the device.

“It wasn’t set to the right frequency?” she
asked.

He glowered at the machine as he hunted for
the next letter. “You know how it works.”

His slow typing seemed to drag on forever.
Watching his fingers, curved high over the keys and moving across them before
he found the next one to press, drove her crazy. It was everything she could do
to stop herself from offering to type it for him.

Her stomach growled loudly. Kyam had the
manners to cover his smile.

She rose and went to the cooking fire. He had
no plates, which was unusual for a Thampurian, but he might have adopted the
Ponongese habit of using bowls. Bowls made poor pots and pans though, and he
didn’t seem to have any of those either.

“Do you eat your eggs raw?” she asked.

“I either share my neighbors’ cooking fire
out on the veranda, or grab a bite at the Red Happiness. You have an excellent
cook and the prices are reasonable.”

She hadn’t understood how dangerous it would
be to spend time with him. While his mind didn’t work as quickly as hers, he
still put the pieces together. She wondered what other information she’d
inadvertently given him that could come back to haunt her. “So you figured that
out.”

“You knew too much about the brothel to be a
casual visitor. And that secret staircase went behind the café next door, so I
presume it’s also under your control. Are they the Devil’s businesses, or yours?”

“I’ll answer any question about the Ravidians,
as per our original agreement, but that’s the extent of what I’ll tell you.”

Kyam finally sent his message. Then he turned
the frequency dials, a precaution she would have approved of even more had she
been able to read the settings before he changed them.

“You’re not going to wait for their reply?”
she asked.

“It’ll notify me of incoming messages.” He
pulled a chair over to face hers and sat. “We were talking about the Red
Happiness. I could check government ownership documents, or you could just tell
me.”