The Devil's Concubine (The Devil of Ponong series #1) (20 page)

Did she actually
trust Kyam Zul?

Almost unwillingly,
she admitted that she liked him. And she found him dangerously attractive. But
trust was a rare coin, one she didn’t spend freely.

Her eyes felt heavy. She blinked and forced
them open.

There was a quiet knock at the door, and then
Kyam ducked beneath the low entrance and shut the door behind him. Hadre wasn’t
with him. Before he could speak, QuiTai said, “I am curious about... well, many
things, but first things first. Isn’t it dangerous to sail at night?”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Kyam had the
grace to look embarrassed. “Figured that out, did you?”

“As you mentioned before, I’m the brains of
this partnership.”

Kyam sat on the edge of the mattress. “Partnership?
I like the sound of that. So, if you’re the brains, that makes me...”

“The brawn, I expect.” Without a shirt, it
was hard to ignore that he was definitely brawny.

In a way, it was a relief being trapped on
board. She didn’t have to face Petrof yet. The world could go on very well
without her help for a night, and there were worse ways to spend that time. She
looked Kyam over. Much worse, indeed.

Grinning, he filled her wine glass and handed
it to her.

“Stop trying to distract me, Mister Zul.
I asked if it’s safe to sail at night.” It wasn’t his fault that her
imagination kept wandering into embraces with him. She would take
responsibility for those wicked thoughts.

“I wouldn’t dream of distracting you.” He
reclined at the end of the bed and massaged her good foot. Tension melted from
her as his thumbs pressed soothing circles into her arch.

She sipped the wine. It only seemed to make
her thirstier.

“Is this entirely personal, or do you
have a professional interest in me? Do be honest. I deserve that. Your cousin
recognized my name. That makes me wonder if your government knows it too.”

Kyam looked sheepishly guilty. “I might have
mentioned you in passing last time I went drinking with Hadre. The
past few times, perhaps.” He carefully rubbed her other foot. “And it’s always
been an entirely personal interest.”

Sleepily, she grinned. “People are going to
be terribly disappointed if we start being nice to each other in public.”

Kyam commented rather crudely on what the
people could do with their disappointment.

QuiTai covered her mouth as she yawned. Her
hand trailed down her neck and stopped at the vial of black lotus hanging from
the chain.

Kyam frowned.

“I keep it to remind me why I’m mixed up in
all this. If you don’t approve, that’s too bad. I don’t care what you think of
me.”

He made a face.

“I don’t care what you think of Jezereet
either. She was an addict. The past year, that’s who she was, not just a
problem she had. Everyone else abandoned her, but I couldn’t, because it was my
fault.” QuiTai’s lips trembled. “The Devil can be so charming when he wants to
be. He has presence. She was so used to being worshipped by her admirers that
she didn’t suspect his plans when he shared the vapor with her. And she thought
I was simply jealous. Then it was too late.”

“I’m sorry about that. But that’s not why I
didn’t like her. Still, you loved her, so I won’t say anything unkind right
now. Eventually you’ll ask for the truth, and I’ll tell you.”

Rolling the vial between her fingers, QuiTai
tried to explain. “Guilt isn’t love, but since she became addicted, I pretended
it was for her sake. Any love I had for her died long ago with the real
Jezereet. It’s terrible of me, I know, but that’s the ugly truth. So when I
ask, go ahead and let me know the worst.”

“You can bet I will. Plenty of meat to go
with that rice, so to speak.” Kyam rubbed his forehead. His eyes were weary and
his shoulders slumped. “I’ve seen too many vapor ghouls to trust black lotus,
but if you need a little to help you rest, I might be able to find a pipe on
board. You really do need to sleep. I’m surprised you’re still conscious after
the beating you’ve taken the past two days.”

“You look beat too. Get some sleep, Kyam.”

He nodded as he slowly came to his feet. He
bent down and pressed his lips to her forehead.

Her eyes closed: this time, no matter how hard she fought, they wouldn’t
open again. One moment, she was awake; the next, she was in dreamless sleep.

The
murmur of
men’s voices brought QuiTai gently out of sleep. Hadre and Kyam
spoke quietly across the cabin. Faint silvery light streamed through the cabin’s
open windows as if dawn hadn’t broken the horizon yet.

“Awake already?” Kyam asked.

She held the sheet to her chest as she sat
up. A blouse and sarong sat on the table beside the bed. They were old and a
bit faded, but she didn’t care. As she pulled on the blouse, she noticed that
the movement of the ship felt different.

“Something changed since last night. When I
sailed home from the continent, sea dragons swam alongside the hull, took guide
ropes from the junk, and guided us into port. That wasn’t the sound of sea
dragons I heard, and the distinctive scent of juam nut oil lingers. You have an
engine on board, a big one,” she said.

Hadre set down the peculiar brass instrument
in his hand. He pointedly didn’t look at her. “Very perceptive. We raised the
sails about an hour ago. Had to, now that the sun is about to come up.”

“Told you she was sharp,” Kyam said.

“If anyone asks, Lady QuiTai, I implore you
to stick with our story that you fell asleep immediately after the ship’s
doctor tended to your wounds,” Hadre said.

QuiTai wrapped the sarong around her waist. Hadre’s
face grew pinker. She’d forgotten how prudish Thampurians could be.

“Your secret propulsion device is safe with
me. I’m much more interested in our route than sounds below the deck.” She sat
at the table and peered at the chart Hadre had spread out in a curious frame,
but the wonderful smell of breakfast tore her from the puzzle. “Oh, food.
Excellent idea. Does anyone mind if I...” Before the men could answer, she
dropped a piece of fish on top of the rice, draped seaweed over it, and quickly
formed a roll that she popped into her mouth. The seaweed was slick on her
tongue. The fish had been liberally doused in tart citrus juice that puckered
her mouth. Cuisine at sea was never to her liking, but complaining to her host
was beyond rude. Even food she didn’t like was better than none, after all.

Now that she’d eaten something, she could
concentrate better on the machine before her. She pointed to the chart past the
rendering of the island to the dashed lines that surrounded it. “I see you know
about the sand bars off the leeward side of the island. In some places, you can
walk a mile from shore and the water will only be up to your chin. I know that
junks have shallower drafts than, say, Ravidian ships, but you’d still run
aground long before we reached the leeward plantations. At least, I assume we’re
off to confront the Ravidians.”

Resting his elbow on the back of his chair,
Kyam grinned at her. “The adventure continues.”

“You’re in a cheerful mood this morning. Did
I miss something?” She made another seaweed roll.

“Nothing we can’t continue at a more
convenient time. It’s a pity we were both so tired last night.”

“Kyam! Really!” Hadre sputtered.

QuiTai and Kyam exchanged an amused glance. “We’ve
scandalized your cousin, Mister Zul.”

“He’s spent his life at sea, so that’s saying
something, Lady QuiTai.”

“It’s good to know that our ability to
entertain and astound hasn’t diminished. Tea?” She lifted the pot.

Kyam handed her his cup. “Please.”

“Captain Hadre?” Dazed, he pushed his cup
toward her. She filled it. “What was that instrument you held earlier?” she
asked Hadre.

Obviously relieved at the turn from
scandalous topics, Hadre picked up the brass contraption. “First I set the
chart number into this bit by the frame, then set in our current longitude and
latitude. I touch this end of the instrument to our present position on the
chart and the other one to our destination. This wire connects the instrument
to the frame, so it can read what I’ve touched. Then a series of numbers appear
here, along the frame, that our navigator uses to calculate all sorts of
wondrous information. Don’t know if I trust it yet, but I’m under orders to use
it and report back.”

“Interesting.” From the look on his face, her
curiosity alarmed him. If it was such a big secret, he shouldn’t have told her.
As repayment for his kindness, she’d pretend to ignore it. “Now, about our
approach to the leeward side of the island: How do you propose to avoid the
shallow water? We’re not going to sail all the way to the end of the
archipelago, round the islands, and come back at the windward side. That would
take weeks. So can I assume that you intend to sail through the Ponong Fangs?”

Hadre nodded. “Precisely.”

She stood to get a better look at that end of
the chart. Her ankle barely twinged when she put weight on that foot. “The tide
pool plantations are clustered here, here, and here, but the one I’d take over
if I were a Ravidian hoping for privacy is this one.” She pointed to Cay Rhi, a
small island about a mile southwest of Ponong. “The owners are notoriously
private. They hardly even socialize with the other plantation owners. A monthly
skiff brings their supplies and takes their harvest back to the harbor, and I’d
be willing to bet that the harbor master and his brother were the ones who made
that run. It might have been months, maybe years, before anyone realized they’d
gone missing.”

Kyam and Hadre studied the chart.

“That is why you brought me on board, wasn’t
it? To show you the exact location of the Ravidians? As I said, I’ve sailed on
many junks before, and none raised anchor in ten minutes. The
Golden Barracuda
was ready to sail
before the soldiers brought us to the harbor.”

“Frightening, isn’t she?” Kyam asked his
cousin.

“Formidable. No wonder the Devil was able to
consolidate his power in less than two years.” Hadre bowed to QuiTai.

“That idiot doesn’t seem to appreciate what
he’s got,” Kyam said. QuiTai popped another fish roll into her mouth.

“The family that lives across the landing
from my apartment is from Cay Rhi,” Kyam said. “They wanted their daughters to
get a better education and wanted their sons to marry up, so they moved to
Levapur. They often talk about their village on the edge of the lagoon.”

QuiTai pointed to the lagoon on the map. “That’s
where the skiff docks. Most of the Ponongese from that village work on the
plantation.” And then a horrible vision swept over her. She gripped the arm of
her chair and collapsed into it.

“QuiTai,” Kyam said, “What is it?”

Hopeless in the face of what she envisioned,
she raised her gaze to his. “The villagers would know, Kyam. The Ravidians
would have to silence them too. They have several days head start on us. We
might be too late.”

Kyam reached for Hadre’s arm. “Cousin, you heard
her. Lives are in the balance.”

“I can’t use the engine. As it is, I’m going
to catch hell for using them last night. Enemy spies might be watching from
Ponong, and our speed and wake would give them vital information I’m not allowed
to disclose. I’m sorry, Lady QuiTai, but it would endanger the neck of every
person on board.”

Disgusted, Kyam tossed his pile of farwriter
messages across the desk. “It will take hours to sail around the east end of
the island, and longer still to negotiate the Fangs, even with your charts.
Damn the rules, Hadre. People may be dying.”

“This is precisely the kind of thinking that
got you exiled, Kyam. And as Lady QuiTai pointed out, they already may be dead.”

“Turn around,” QuiTai said. Her throat hurt.
The spark of energy she’d had when she woke sapped out into a fog of despair.
If only she hadn’t dismissed the Ravidians as simply a Thampurian problem.

“What?” Hadre asked.

“Turn your ship around, Captain. Sail west
for the leeward side. We can be there in half the time.”

“But the sand bars!”

Her chair tipped over as she jumped to her
feet. She pointed to a section of the map with no markings. “You can anchor
here, where the water is deep. We’ll lower the lifeboats and row the rest of
the way. Or Kyam can shift and I’ll hang onto him. Or damn it, I’ll swim the
rest of the way myself!”

A moment… and then Hadre dashed out of the
cabin, and QuiTai heard him shouting orders to change course. “I knew I liked
him,” she said.

Kyam said, “I think he likes you too.”

With
the change
of course, the activity on board took on new urgency. QuiTai
withdrew from Hadre’s cabin as his navigator and several other uniformed
members of the crew gathered around his desk. She stood on deck, at a loss as
to what she could do to help.

“Excuse me, miss,” a
sailor said as he rushed past her.

She headed for
another part of the deck.

“Pardon me, I need
to tie off these ropes.”

She retreated to the
bow, which seemed to be the only place on deck where no one was working. Sea
spray misted her face as she leaned against the rail. Even with the wind
favoring them, it would take two hours to come within sight of Levapur again.
From the shadows on the deck, noon was still several hours away. It would be
late afternoon before they reached Cay Rhi.

The crimson sails of
the
Golden Barracuda
were like
partially unfolded fans, with thin strips of timbergrass that ran through the
sailcloth and bowed in the wind. High atop the masts, the banners bearing the
Zul chop undulated like a sea dragon through water. At the far end of the junk,
over Captain Hadre’s cabin, a gang of muscle-bound sailors manned the rudder.

Kyam came out of Hadre’s
cabin and headed toward her. He moved with natural ease across the deck, unlike
her awkward attempts to stay out of the sailors’ way. She would have never
called him clumsy on land, but she could see that he was much more at home at
sea. His permanent scowl had been replaced by buoyant anticipation.

“I received a
message on the farwriter from the fortress. We lost a few soldiers, but the
rebellion was put down within an hour after we fled, and the werewolves were
hanged at sunrise. Unfortunately, one wolf still seems to be at large.”

She ignored his
hint. She’d already accepted that Petrof was trying to kill her, even if she
still didn’t understand why.

The verdant smell of
the island came to her on shifts of wind. It had been several years since she’d
stood on a ship and seen her home from a distance. Long streaks of white
cataracts cut through the deep green of the mountains. Mist shrouded some of
the high peaks: Up there it rained every day, sometimes all day long. At the
lower elevations, the plantation terraces made the mountainsides look like
banded malachite. The land came to an abrupt stop at the edge of cliffs where
few plants clung to the red clay soil. Below the cliffs, the water was shades
of turquoise. The beauty of her island made her ache. When she’d returned home
from the continent, she’d wanted to rush ahead of the ship to touch the land as
soon as she could. Now the same urge overwhelmed her.

Kyam said, “I’ve
sent messages to everyone in Thampur, protesting the actions of the colonial
military last night. It’s a mess. Intelligence is fighting to keep me in
charge. Not for my sake, but because it’s a matter of jurisdictional jealousy. The
colonial government is calling in every favor they can to maintain their
sovereignty. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but you should know that I have
the least influence of anyone in this fight. You keep believing in me for some
reason, so I’m doing my best to be worthy of your faith.”

“Fight for yourself,
Mister Zul, not for my esteem.”

He leaned against
the railing. “At least Hadre didn’t run the engines at full throttle last
night. If he had, we would have been through the Ponong Fangs already.”

“Thank goodness he
didn’t throw caution to the wind, so to speak?” It was the sort of flippant
remark he’d expect her to make, even though her heart wasn’t in it.

She cradled her head
in her hands. “I keep thinking that if I’d convinced the Devil sooner to let me
hire you to paint my portrait, we would already be there. But then I remind
myself that I didn’t even know what the Ravidians smuggled onto the island
until yesterday. Or was that two days ago? I’m losing track.”

“You can’t be
serious. You blame yourself for this?”

“I should have seen
it.” The vial of black lotus nestled between her breasts. If only she could
consult the Oracle. Who could she talk into taking the vapor, though? Kyam?

He gently pulled her hands from her face. “Even
your vision has limits.”

He couldn’t have known how that tempted her.
The Oracle was never wrong, but would she give the answers QuiTai desperately
needed?

“As you’ve been pointing out with boring
regularity, I can be selectively blind. That isn’t what concerns me, though. I
sense a pattern. Something is coming together, but I can’t think fast enough to
stay ahead of it, or to see what it’s leading to. Selective blindness can be
fixed. This…” She shook her head. “It’s like trying to grasp wraiths in a vapor
dream. Smoke through my fingers. It’s as if I catch glimpses out of the corner
of my eye, but when I try to look directly at it, nothing is there. Like the
glass shards and the sea wasp stinger in that puddle on the skiff. That’s the
image that keeps coming back to me. Bloody glass. If only I could find the
right angle…”

There was a glint of dark humor in his eyes. “Is
this a daily thing? Do you get contemplative and morose every morning, or is
there something about me that turns your thoughts to doom and gloom?”

Wryly smiling, she laughed at herself. “It’s
you, of course. Normally, I’m a little rainbow of joy and happiness.”

“Of course you are.”

Kyam leaned against the railing and looked at
the coastline. “When I was five, or six at the most, my father and grandfather
took me on my first voyage. I think we went to Rantuum. It was the longest and
shortest week of my life. Longest because it was the first time I’d ever been
away from home. Shortest because it flew by so fast. Every school break after
that, I hopped on board whatever junk was headed to sea and worked as a common
sailor. My grandfather believed in learning the business from the bottom up.
Being land bound is the worst part of my banishment. Every time I see one of
our ships in the harbor, I get that itch to go to sea.”

She joined him at the railing. “Then go.”

“I can’t.”

“I don’t believe you. But even if it were
true, there are far worse places than Ponong to live in exile.”

“Once you get used to coming home to an
apartment infested with monkeys because you left your window screen open, and
checking your boots every morning for those little lizards, or those hot
chilies they hide in your food in the marketplace, or being robbed ten minutes
after you first set foot on the island.” He turned to her. “What was that
about?”

“I foresaw your future here, and objected to
it. Now I see that I was wrong.”

He clutched his chest. “You were wrong?
Amazing. I’ll remember this moment forever.”

“Oh, do be quiet.”

“Are you going to tell me this future?”

“No need to. It’ll unfold as it unfolds.”
Serious again, she gazed down at her hands. “But as surely as the future
begins, some things reach their end.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“I swear that you now know everything I do
about the Ravidians. Do you agree that I’ve kept my end of our bargain?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell me now who killed Jezereet. I
think I know, but after the things you’ve shown me the past few days, I want to
be very sure that I have the right culprit.”

“I don’t think this is the time.”

“We won’t reach Cay Rhi for hours. When else
but now?”

“The whole truth?”

“You know how we Ponongese like our stories,”
she said. “Make it a good story, Kyam.”

~ ~ ~

Hands clasped, Kyam thought for a while before speaking.

“We were down at the
harbor doing the preliminary sketches for your portrait. When the funicular
took me to the top of the hill, I decided to stick around and follow you to
find out if I could get any leverage to force your hand. I got it, but believe
me, not the way I would have chosen.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

“Ivitch came up on the next funicular after
me and took off running upslope. I would have followed him, but I knew that he
was a werewolf and it was full moon. Besides, it was you I wanted. So I waited.
And waited. Then the last cars came up and you still didn’t show. The sun was
setting. That’s when I really started to worry about you. I almost headed down
to the harbor when you finally staggered up the hill, looking like walking
death. My first thought was that Ivitch was the Devil and he’d beaten you. It
was hard to watch you, wracked with pain, fighting on the way you do. And then
seeing you begging in that alleyway for vinegar!”

“Those men were quite helpful.”

“They treated you like a pariah. They knew it
was full moon and saw how hurt you were and still let you walk away.” He shook
his head. “Unbelievably, you kept going. The look on your face when you stood
in front of that vine at the Red Happiness. Such utter exhaustion. Anyone else
would have broken down in tears. Not you. Grim determination is more your
style. It wasn’t easy to stand back and let you climb up to the second story
veranda, but I did, because I was sure you were near your breaking point.”

That’s what she would have done. It was good
to know that he was willing to do what he had to. That was the kind of person
she could count on.

“I already knew you had some sort of
relationship with Jezereet, so I went into that voyeur’s room between her room
and the one next to it.”

“There weren’t any viewing holes through her
wall. We plastered over them a long time ago.”

Kyam cleared his throat. “There are now.”

“Ah. Very resourceful.” QuiTai wondered if he’d
watched them together more than the one time, and if he would have turned away
if she and Jezereet had been intimate. Not that there was much of a chance of
that; at the end, Jezereet only had one appetite, and it wasn’t for heated
kisses.

“It was frustrating, watching that look on
your face, as if you knew something was wrong about the way Jezereet acted, but
seeing that you were too tired to put it together. I didn’t have a chance of
figuring it out. Until you took the vapor. Then it all became too clear.”

Little flashes of QuiTai’s memory were like
puzzle pieces that fit together in a surreal picture. Too many pieces were
still missing, although she suspected she knew what fit into the spaces. She
braced herself. “Did I kill her?”

“What? No!”

She hadn’t thought so, but she couldn’t rule
it out. The vapor stole a slice of time from her that would always be blank.

“Was I the intended victim?”

Kyam nodded. “At least, you were the first
one he headed to, and he only stopped because he was interrupted.”

“Was Jezereet working with him?”

Kyam flinched. That was enough of an answer.

He licked his lips, and then spoke carefully
as if he weighed each word. “She fought him when he put his hands around your
throat. I ran out into the hallway, so I missed part of what happened, but when
I kicked in the door, he’d already broken her neck and was headed back to
finish you off. I don’t know why he didn’t attack me, but he went out the
window onto the veranda and leapt down to the street. That’s why I had to get
you out of there. He could have come back.”

Revenge seemed like a moot point now,
especially since Jezereet had invited the murderer in, but the name was what
she’d bargained for, not a happy ending to a sad story.

“What is his name?”

Kyam shrugged. “I know I promised to give
that to you, but all I know is what he looks like. He’s a werewolf with reddish
hair, and a medium build for one of his kind. He wasn’t captured with the
others that were taken to the fortress.”

There was no way she could deceive herself
anymore. Petrof.

She’d made him the Devil. She’d solidified
his power and run his organization. Instead of anger, though, all she felt was
vast disappointment and a strangely calm acceptance. She’d known for a while
that it was Petrof who tried to strangle her. Even without Kyam’s broad hints
and accusations, she’d known. It seemed inevitable.

She squinted, as if trying to focus on
something far away. “His name is Petrof.”

“Is he the Devil?”

“He’s the leader of the wolf pack.” That wasn’t
a direct lie, she told herself. Besides, what exactly did she owe Kyam? Not a
word about the Devil. Their deal only included the Ravidians. That mess with
the colonial military proved that she had good cause to keep her secrets.

“Damn it! I hoped –”

“I know what you hoped, Mister Zul. But never
fear. I will see that he pays for Jezereet’s death.”

“Will you let me help you?”

Sadly, she shook her head. Then, with a small
smile, she caressed his cheek. “This is the Devil’s business.”

Color flooded his face. “What has he done
except let a mad dog killer come after you again and again? How does he hold
your loyalty? I’d love to know why you set aside your safety for his convenience,
when as far as I can tell he’s never done a damn thing for you!” He pointed to
her throat. “Do you think this is the first time I’ve seen bruises on your
neck?”