The Devil's Concubine (The Devil of Ponong series #1) (7 page)

There might have been some truth to that, but
sworn enemies usually exaggerated about each other. She could imagine what the
Ravidians said about the Thampurians. It probably wasn’t all that different
from what she said about them. “There are only three Ravidians on Ponong. I’ll
take my chances.”

Kyam said, “Don’t underestimate how
determined I am to get what I want. I’d rather have your cooperation, but I
have other means.”

She sensed the same change in the power flowing
around him as she did when the werewolves shifted. She crossed her arms over her
chest to hide her gooseflesh.

He said, “Don’t force my hand, Lady QuiTai.”

“You will never be able to force mine, Mister
Zul.”

His mouth tightened. Then he hunched over his
pad, barely looking up at her as he furiously erased something with rubber gum.
He had no right to be angry. She was the one who should have been insulted. Did
he really think she’d help the Thampurians?

As his pencil swept along the paper, he said,
“The drugs, the smuggled rice, the murders, the burglaries, the extortion
– our soldiers could interrogate you about those crimes for hours. They’ve
wanted to get their hands on the Devil ever since he killed his competitors and
became the face of criminal activity on this island. Only he’s not the face, is
he? He’s the coward who hides in the shadows while you run the syndicate. I
could have you arrested right now. I could have you tortured.”

It was true. If not for her generous payments
to key Thampurians in the colonial government, she probably would have been
taken in long ago. She knew that was an illusion of safety. A bought man wasn’t
to be trusted. No one would protect her if the soldiers dragged her to the
fortress.

But Kyam forgot that she knew he wanted her
help. It was the trump tile in this game.

“Go ahead. Have me arrested. I dare you,
Mister Zul.”

He flipped the cover of his drawing pad
closed and stood. “That’s enough for today.”

She ambled over and extended her hand. “Let
me see.”

He thrust the pad at her.

In his sketch, there were harsh lines around her mouth, and her eyes
were cunning. It was the portrait of an unrelenting, cruel woman. The drawing
was quite good, which surprised her. She handed it back without comment.

As
QuiTai went
to collect Ivitch from his game on the wharf, she saw Kyam head
toward the funicular. The attendant shut the door, and the train began to rise
up the slope to the town.

“He could have asked
them to hold it for us,” Ivitch said. He covered his ears as the engine that
powered the funicular’s drive chain gave off a shrill whistle.

QuiTai pointed to
the steep road leading up the hillside. “You could always walk.”

“I’ll wait for the other car to come down.”

“Suit yourself.” She walked away from the
ticket booth.

“Where are you going?”

“As long as I’m here, I thought I’d pay a
social call. Run along. I no longer need you to protect me from Mister Zul.”

“I take my orders from the Devil, not his
whore.”

“I am wounded, Ivitch, simply gutted by your
scathing condemnation.”

Confusion spread over his features slowly, in
keeping with the speed of his thoughts. It was as if his brain were surrounded
by thick paste. It was almost painful to wait for her barbs to hit their mark; she
used to lose patience and try to push the process along, but that only seemed
to confuse him more. It was a mistake to ignore him, though, the same way it
would be lunacy to turn her back on a mob.

She was sorry he wasn’t Kyam. There was a man
who could hold his own in a conversation, and understand an insult, no matter
how veiled.

Finally, Ivitch grinned, as if it had been a
compliment. She could have wept for him, but never would.

“If you’re about the Devil’s business, then I
should come along.”

If she said no, he would tell Petrof, and
then she’d have to explain her reasons. It would be easier to let him come. All
she planned to do was find out if the dirt Thampurian who’d helped the
smugglers was a black lotus addict. If so, she could return later and question
him alone.

They crossed the beach to the far end of the
harbor where small sailing skiffs and fishing boats moored. She pointed to a
skiff at the end of a line of boats tied together; used, weathered wood was
bound together to shape a ramshackle lean-to at the stern behind the sail. That
matched the information from PhaNyan that the dirt Thampurian lived on his boat,
which made sense since his brother was the harbor master. “That one,” she said.

“How do we get out there?”

After checking to see that no one watched,
QuiTai stepped from the narrow dock onto the deck of the first boat in the line.
She reached for the tieline to the next boat and pulled it close; then, carefully
balancing, stepped from one boat to the next.

Ivitch tried to follow and nearly lost his
balance as he stood with each foot on a different boat and a wave sent them
rocking. “This is stupid.”

She turned to press her finger to her lips,
and kept going.

“Why are we doing this?” Ivitch asked.

“I heard a rumor this man might know something
about the smugglers.”

Ivitch cracked his knuckles. “It’s a good
thing I’m along.”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “No, it’s
good that I’m along.” He wrested away from her touch, setting the boat they stood
on to rocking violently. QuiTai said, “We only want to question him.” To be
sure that Ivitch understood, she had to be clear. “Don’t kill him. Threaten to
if he won’t cooperate, but offer the forgiveness of the Devil before you damage
him too much. He needs to be able to work off his debt.”

Ivitch climbed onto the skiff. QuiTai ducked
under the boom of the main sail and followed him to the lean-to.

Ivitch already held the skeletal dirt
Thampurian by the throat. From the smell of the shelter, the man was a heavy black
lotus user, although that didn’t explain the sharp scent of vinegar under the
sweeter stink of vapor. A spirit lamp and clay pipe with a tiny bowl sat on an
upturned crate. The cot he lay on was held together with leather straps and
hope. There wasn’t much else in the tiny, dank space – probably not even
food, QuiTai assumed.

The Thampurian wore only trousers. Every bone
in his chest protruded, and his skin barely stretched over his skull. His lips
were deep red, in stark contrast to his unhealthy pallor. QuiTai had to bite
her lip to stop it from quivering: Eventually, Jezereet would look like this.

“Gently, Ivitch. He probably won’t remember
any lesson you try to teach him.”

As Ivitch hefted at the ghoul in his hands,
QuiTai swiped a vial of sticky black resin from the crate by the cot and hid it
in her blouse. Empty vials rolled loose under their feet with several vinegar
bottles. The smugglers evidently had paid the dirt Thampurian in black lotus
instead of coin.

The Thampurian gurgled.

“What did he say?” QuiTai asked.

“Who cares what the fuck a vapor dreamer
says?”

“He looks pretty far gone. We’ll get nothing
useful from him now. I’ll come back to interrogate him later.”

The Thampurian gurgled again.

“Let him go, Ivitch.”

Ivitch wiped his hand on his trousers. “I
already did.”

QuiTai knelt before the man. His tongue
protruded from his mouth.

“Why are his lips turning purple?” Ivitch
asked.

“Because you crushed his throat, you idiot.”

“He shouldn’t have been so weak.”

Red bubbles foamed at the edges of the Thampurian’s
mouth as he gasped for air. His hand clawed at something only his glazed eyes
could see.

“Excellent work, Ivitch. You’ve killed our
only link to the smugglers, not to mention a Thampurian citizen, and the
brother of the harbor master.”

“An addict and a thief.”

“I’m sure that the colonial government will
take that into account when they try you for murder.”

Ivitch slapped his hands together as if
washing himself of the matter and crossed the skiff.

“For the love of – Ivitch, get down. We
can’t afford to be seen now.” QuiTai turned back to the man on the cot. His
struggle for air was painful to hear. “Petrof will hear about this. You weren’t
supposed to kill him.”

Ivitch already had a foot on the next boat. “He’s
not dead.”

If only she could keep him alive. She glanced
frantically around the bare shack, but even if an entire surgery full of
instruments had been there, she wouldn’t have known what to do for him. She was
overcome with sadness: One day, Jezereet’s beautiful face would be like his,
her eyes abnormally large, her lips virulent red, her soul lost forever in the
nothingworld of vapor.

She risked raising her voice to say, “Ivitch,
you bastard, get back here!”

“My orders were to make sure you didn’t sleep
with Zul. You’re on your own now.”

QuiTai bit back the insults she gladly would
have shouted at him if it hadn’t been for the soldiers.

She waited for Ivitch to reach the dock
before she leaned over the dirt Thampurian and lowered her fangs. Fear seeped
through the fog of the vapor as his eyes darted about in search of help. She
pressed her mouth to his, gently parted his lips with her tongue, and milked
enough drops of her venom into his mouth for a gentle death that would end his
suffering; she stroked his throat to help the poison down.

He gripped her arm with sudden, bruising
strength. His eyes widened as his pupils imploded. Fleeting wisps of his thoughts,
blurred by fear and dreamer’s eyes, pushed into her mind as her venom invaded
his brain. Words bubbled from his mouth with the red foam of his blood and
burst gently on his lips.
Help Kyam Zul
find what he seeks.

The Oracle had spoken.

Before the Thampurians had brought their
black lotus to the island, evoking the Oracle had been an ordeal. The women of
her clan gathered rare roots and seeds and cooked them into a red tar that was
then smoked, much as the black lotus was. The difference was that black lotus
wasn’t fatal; at least, not if used in extreme moderation. The red tar always
killed. The visions were more potent, but given the price, her clan rarely
evoked their goddess.

The dirt Thampurian’s head lolled. She felt
his waning life. At least he wasn’t afraid anymore.

She crawled across the hull and peeked over
the side. Ivitch was already at the beach. He bypassed the harbor master’s
office and went to the funicular station. Thank goodness he wasn’t smart enough
to send someone to the skiff and frame her for the dirt Thampurian’s murder.

She cast a glance over her shoulder at the
crenellated walls of the fortress. Two soldiers leaned against the ramparts
overlooking the harbor. From the movement of their hands, she suspected they
shared a kur. She had no idea how often the harbor master came to visit his
brother, but as soon as the body was found, there would be questions, and she
couldn’t risk the soldiers remembering her crossing the line of boats. And despite
growing up on an island, she wasn’t a strong swimmer. Not to mention the dark
shape gliding through the harbor water, its head swaying gently side to side
opposite the movement of its tail. A fin broke the surface. The biggest sharks
rarely swam into the harbor, but a man-killer could be lurking near one of the
monolith stones. Even if she made it to land safely, the soldiers might wonder
why she was swimming through shark-infested waters.

Another glance up at the ramparts. One of the
soldiers sat on the wall now. They weren’t moving anytime soon.

QuiTai crept back toward the lean-to. Water
pooled in the sections along the keel of the skiff, and as she crawled, her
hand slipped off the damp wood into a puddle. Fiery pain shot through her palm.

With tears running down her cheeks, she
examined her hand. A thick, dark red welt rose along her skin. She squinted at
the pool of water: at the right angle, she could see shards of thick glass.

She rolled onto her back and gulped in air.
The pain grew worse.

She held her palm close to her face, expecting
to see a sliver of glass in the welt. Instead, she saw a long, gelatinous,
nearly invisible medusozoa tentacle clinging to her skin. A bright orange
stinger, no thicker than a thread, ran through it. Her fingertips burned as she
tried to peel it away. Cursing, she crawled to the cot in the lean-to, grabbed
the corner of a threadbare blanket, and used it as a makeshift glove to pull
the stinger from her hand. Fresh, raw pain seared across the welt. Her face
felt hot, her mind dizzy, heart pounding, and now she couldn’t stop her legs
from churning. She stared at the roof of the lean-to as she writhed helplessly.
Sweat dripped down her temples. Tears poured freely down her cheeks.

A bloodied shard of glass appeared in her
mental vision as pain once again sliced through her palm. She grasped her wrist
and forced her trembling hand closer to her face. There was no blood on the
ugly dark red welt. No glass.

Think of anything but the pain.

The welt looked like the scar she’d seen on
the hand of the Ravidian in the Red Happiness, the one he’d hidden when he saw
her staring. He’d been sunburned, as if he’d spent a lot of time out in the
sun. Maybe on a skiff.

She could hear choppy waves slamming against
the seawall. The skiff rocked. She could envision the scene: three Ravidians
huddled in the hull when a rogue wave hit and a crate tumbled over. They rushed
to set it upright and discovered a glass container broken. Perhaps they simply
tossed it over the side without noticing that some of the contents had spilled.
It would be hard enough to see glass and stinger in the puddle when the water
was calm.

The vision was so clear, so specific.

She stared at the dirt Thampurian. This was
what he’d seen. And then, with his last horrible gasp, his death cut their
connection.

The vision cleared and the real world flashed
over her like flames across dry tinder.

Her heart hammered so hard she could feel it
in her ears. She could barely catch her breath. She wondered briefly if she
might die, then hoped she would, then scolded herself for being so dramatic.
The pain would pass. It had to pass. Until then, the trick was to keep her mind
occupied.

Sometimes, Ponongese workers fell into the
tide pools and suffered multiple stings from the blue-light medusozoa. They
might be in pain for days, and the stingers left scars, but nothing like this.
The stinger that marked her had to have come from another species. No one
fished from a skiff, so it was unlikely something got hauled on board in a net;
but why anyone would deliberately bring such a creature aboard a boat puzzled
her.

Her heart still pounded as if she’d run
miles. She staggered to her knees and reached toward the bottles of vinegar.
They clinked together with the dull thud of empty glass, but she shook them
over her hand one at a time in the hope that a few small drops were left. Sobs
lifted her shoulders as she flung the last empty bottle away.

Then she pushed the tears back down. Her
anger shoved the pain away for a moment and cleared her thoughts. She took the
vial of black lotus from the pocket in her blouse. A tiny bit of the resinous
tar could put her into oblivion for a couple of hours. Ponongese, for some
reason, seemed immune to the powerful addictive properties of the vapor, but
not the effects.