by Jill Braden
He hovered over her as if he could intimidate her into a decision. That wasn’t fair – not that anything was ever fair – but he was a Thampurian gentleman to his core, no matter how much he denied it.
If he’d wanted to use Jezereet as leverage, he would have kidnapped her. He would have kept her somewhere safe and maybe even brought her black lotus while he used her against QuiTai. Even Petrof understood that technique.
Her neck throbbed and her eyes itched. She had no energy left to fight Kyam. What would it matter if she gave him a little information?
“Do you have rum?” she asked.
He rummaged through the sideboard and found a half-empty bottle. He poured some into a glass, took a sip, and handed it to her. Then he poured one for himself.
She looked through the kitchen doorway. The moon was reflected in a puddle in the courtyard. As raindrops fell, expanding ripples collided and the moon’s image fragmented. Soon the rain drummed steadily on the kitchen’s roof.
Kyam rinsed out their tea cups in a stone bowl and put them away. He turned back to her. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
His sincerity caught her by surprise. It was amazing how a few words could change the balance. He was probably the only person who would ever offer her any solace for Jezereet’s death.
“Thank you.” She meant it as much as he’d meant his condolences.
“I couldn’t tell from what I saw… how was it done?” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Do you think she suffered much?”
“It was fairly quick. But if you’re asking if she was in a vapor dream too, no, she wasn’t. She knew what she was doing –” He stopped.
“My poor Jezereet,” QuiTai murmured. Then realization dawned on her. “You know who killed her.”
Kyam took another sip of his rum and nodded.
The need for vengeance jolted her out of the fog of grief that had enveloped her. “Who did it, sea dragon?”
“Help me figure out what the Ravidians are up to, and I’ll tell you; but not until I know everything. It’s the only deal I’ll make with you.”
Their brief truce was over. It was better that way. Negotiations would keep them at a formal distance. Sympathy would only complicate matters between them.
She sat up straighter. Business. Right. A proposition was on the table and he thought he held all the tiles. That would work to her advantage.
Other people had been in the Red Happiness; maybe a few discreet questions would bring her the name of Jezereet’s killer. But until she made her inquiries, it was best to pretend Kyam had won. “It seems that I stand corrected. You are able to force my hand.”
Kyam said, “You need food. Is rice-and-eggs okay? It better be. It’s the only thing I have stored here, and the only thing I know how to cook.” He dumped cooked rice into a skillet and put it over the fire.
He was trying to set the tone for their working relationship. If he wanted to believe that they could be chums, she’d let him, but the moment she had what she wanted she’d drop the act.
She thought for a moment before saying, “Since we agree that you aren’t the murderer, I’ll assume that you followed me there. I’m still not sure why you risked the streets during a full moon when you couldn’t have known the evening would turn in your favor. I know what you think of me. Bitch. Whore. Shiftless. Snake.”
Only the word snake made him cringe. “If that’s all you were, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to get you out of the Red Happiness alive.”
Her mind went back to the brothel. The servants had standing orders to check on Jezereet every morning and evening, but still it would be hours before anyone found her body. And then the Thampurian soldiers would be called in to investigate.
QuiTai’s eyes widened as she realized what would follow. “Do you have more rum?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Because my hand hurts unbelievably badly. And because we’re about to have the ugliest conversation ever, and I don’t want to be completely sober for it.”
“Ugly how?”
“There are going to be another two murders tonight.”
He frowned. “The Ravidians have a target? Or is there someone else dear to you that you think is in danger?”
“Not people. We’re going to have to kill our consciences. Someone has to hang for Jezereet’s murder.” Now he looked thoroughly puzzled. “You really are a fresh, Mister Zul. Think. The soldiers are called to the scene. I assume even those incompetent bastards will figure out that she was murdered?”
He reluctantly nodded. “It will be fairly obvious.”
“There will be an investigation. They have to arrest someone, to make it seem as if they know what they’re doing. If not me, and not the real murderer, then who? I suggest we decide rather than leaving it up to your soldiers. As you may be aware, they aren’t too particular about actual guilt. So, which innocent is going to suffer for her death, Mister Zul?”
Grimly, he uncorked the bottle and filled both glasses.
~ ~ ~
Kyam and QuiTai sat on the wood chopping block, back to back. She’d shed her disguise and was much more comfortable in her normal clothes, except for the dull ache in her throat and the sharper pains in her heart.
The homey scent of rice-and-eggs hung in the air. Both Kyam and QuiTai clutched glasses of rum. An empty bottle sat between them, and they’d started on a second one.
Thunder rumbled as rain splattered on the tile roof of the kitchen building. They kept the door and windows shut, not because of the rain, but so the light of the kitchen fire wouldn’t give them away. It seemed unlikely to QuiTai that anyone would dare enter the small exterior courtyard without being invited in, much less go around the privacy wall and pass through the inner festoon gates to the inner courtyard where they could see into the kitchen, but she appreciated his caution.
“Is your hand any better?” Kyam asked.
“No, but I care less about the pain. I guess that’s something.”
“Did it ever occur to you that the murderer might give your name to the authorities? He might have meant for you to be found in the room with her,” Kyam said.
“He? So it was a man?”
“General, non-specific he, the same way you refer to all monkeys as he.”
“I refer to the female monkeys as she, but we’re getting off topic again.”
It was a mistake to spend time with Kyam. Her normal defenses were shattered, and he was too easy to talk to, too reasonable, except for the anger he directed at Jezereet. QuiTai had to think about her loyalties, and they sure as hell didn’t lie with a Thampurian spy.
She felt Kyam turn, and she looked over her shoulder at him.
“This is getting us nowhere,” he said.
“I still refuse to pin it on a Ponongese. You are aware that my people are people, right? Actual thinking, feeling humans. Not snakes. It’s not as if we’re shifters too.”
He bristled. “Shifters aren’t animals.” When she grinned slightly, she could see him force his temper aside. “Okay, fine. And I won’t implicate Thampurians, so quit saying we should accuse the chief justice of the colonial government.”
“You have no idea how dangerous that man is. Besides they wouldn’t hang a Thampurian for killing an Ingosolian prostitute. They save those punishments for the Ponongese.”
“You always have to slip in that lecture about politics, as if I’m personally responsible for everything every Thampurian has ever done.”
He had a point. Still, if he would agree that Thampurian rule was unjust, she might back off. And he worked for the government, which certainly made him guilty of something.
The steady sound of the pouring rain made her sleepy. Even though it was warm in the kitchen, she kept the blanket around her shoulders.
It had been a while since her last crying jag. Bit by bit, she pried grief from her heart. She accepted that she was fated to find Jezereet’s killer and make him pay for his crime, because the sense of cold calm it broug
ht her was the only way she knew to keep going.
Why kill Jezereet, who had never harmed anyone? Who was doomed anyway? It might make sense to kill QuiTai, but why Jezereet?
“You’re awfully quiet. Nodding off?” Kyam asked.
“Thinking.” QuiTai sipped her drink. It helped when he talked. It stopped her from spiraling down too far into her thoughts.
“You realize we’ve limited ourselves to about one percent of the island’s population.” Kyam hopped off the chopping block and gripped it to steady himself.
“You also narrowed my list of suspects considerably.”
Kyam grimaced as if he had just lost a point in a game. Then he pushed away his glass of rum. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to turn in the Devil, would you?”
“That’s not an option.”
“Why not? Unless he’s just a myth.”
“What a thing to say. Of course he’s real.”
“No one has ever seen him. But everyone knows you.” Kyam poked her arm with an unsteady finger.
“Stop that.” QuiTai clumsily shoved his hand away. She slid off the block to stand up to him. Her brain felt as if it floated. “I think I better stop drinking now.”
He picked up the bottle and shook it. “I like you drunk. You haven’t insulted me for over two hours.”
“More reason to sober up. You should slow down too, or you’ll be too drunk to tell the soldiers who to arrest, and then where will we be?”
“We’d feel like better people.”
“Don’t fool yourself. Even having this conversation has soiled our souls forever.”
“Then decide. Don’t you know anyone who deserves to hang? With all those criminals in the Devil’s organization, one of them has to be guilty of a capital crime. Someone you don’t like?”
“I have nothing against them, but have you thought of the Ravidians?” QuiTai asked.
“I certainly have, but for now, I need them alive. Come on. You know the dregs of society. Who’s a villain?”
Ivitch. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of him sooner?
Kyam shook his finger at her again but didn’t poke her. “You have that look on your face. Tell me.”
Petrof would never forgive her if he ever found out. She grimaced. Ivitch had surely told Petrof some story about how she’d failed with the dirt Thampurian. Petrof might never give her a chance to tell her version; but with Ivitch out of the way, she’d have a better shot at earning her way back into his good graces.
“All right. Don’t. Protect people who don’t deserve protection. I’ve decided anyway.” Kyam grabbed a hearth shovel and banked the glowing coals in the cooking pit together.
This would be interesting. “Who?”
“Ivitch.”
She gasped. “How did you –”
Kyam leaned forward as if he were afraid he’d miss the next words out of her mouth.
“Are you trying to get me to tell you who the Devil is? Never,” she snapped. “But I think we’ve reached an agreement on the official sacrifice. And just in case you have any qualms tomorrow morning when your head is clear and you start trying to have a conscience again, Ivitch killed a Thampurian citizen after you left us at the harbor. So technically he’s due for hanging anyway.”
“That proves one thing at least. Ivitch isn’t the Devil. You’d never give your lover up that easily, even if he abandoned you to suffer alone down in the harbor. You’re stubbornly loyal to people who don’t deserve your affection.”
“Ivitch didn’t touch me. He wouldn’t dare. I was hurt after he left. He doesn’t know.”
Kyam raised his hands to the roof as if inviting the gods to join their conversation. “And now you’re covering for him too. Unbelievable.” His arms fell to his sides. It seemed he couldn’t bear to look at her until he swiftly turned back to her, hand outstretched. “Look at the way you’re able to predict what will happen when Jezereet’s body is found – and yes, I think you’re dead right. You’re twenty steps ahead of everyone, even in your condition. But for such a smart woman, you’re a marvel of selective vision.”
“Who should I be loyal to? You?”
“Of all the people you know, I’m the only one who protected you tonight.”
“I didn’t ask you to.” She smoothed her sarong. “If Ivitch is captured alive, he may implicate me in that death, and nothing, not even the Zul family money, can protect me from the rope if he does. So if you want me to help you with the Ravidians, you’re going to have to protect me from your government.”
Grudgingly, Kyam laughed. “You really are unbelievable.” He cleared his throat when he saw her scowl. “Does Ivitch have good cause to implicate you? Are you guilty?”
“If my word means anything to you, no, I’m not. I most explicitly warned Ivitch not to kill the man. The dirt Thampurian was an informant who could have told me about the crates the Ravidians smuggled onto the island. Ivitch ignored my orders.”
Kyam set down the iron shovel. “I knew it! You do have information on the Ravidians. What was in the crates?”
“You and the Devil would love to know the answer to that.”
“How about you? Aren’t you curious?”
“I –” She stopped herself abruptly. She was speaking far too much. Talking to Kyam was effortless, as if the words flowed of their own accord. Either he’d spent the entire last year studying her to find a way through her defenses, or he was unaware of how he affected her.
“Not even the tiniest bit curious? Come on. That’s not the QuiTai I know.” Grinning, he gently bumped her with his shoulder.
He probably didn’t mean anything by it other than a friendly gesture, but that was dangerous enough. She steeled her mind and moved away from him. “I only want to know who killed Jezereet.” Everything else – the crates, the Ravidians, everything – were simply coins that would buy that information. She didn’t owe it to Kyam to be sweet. Her suspicious nature had saved her life many times, and if it hurt his precious manly feelings, that was just too bad. Jezereet had tried to be the accommodating hostess when a cunning monster showed up at her door, and look where that got her.
Chapter 7: Tracking the Ravidians
The rum and the sound of the rain that fell through the night worked their magic to lull QuiTai to sleep, but every time she moved, pain shot through her hand and woke her. After a difficult night of tossing and turning, her unbraided hair was a mess. Her clothes from the day before stank of sweat and vinegar. As she reluctantly considered putting them on, Kyam knocked quietly at the door of the cook’s quarters. When she opened the door, a soft pink batik print sarong and blouse lay folded neatly on the floor. It wasn’t a color she would have chosen, but the blouse fit, and it was better than wearing her soiled clothes another day. He’d even left her a bowl of water, a sliver of fragrant soap, and a wash cloth.
From the pile of blankets on the floor outside the door, she guessed he had slept there while she took the only cot.
When she joined him in the kitchen, he wore fresh clothes too. He offered her a bowl of fritters. “I went shopping right after sunrise. These are cold already, if you trust me enough to eat them.”
“You seem to want me alive, for now, so I’ll risk it.”
QuiTai climbed gingerly onto the chopping block rather than take one of the low stools near the cooking pit. Her feet dangled above the floor. She bit into a sweet fritter, while Kyam frowned at his reflection in a narrow, stained mirror fragment hanging from the roof’s support beam.
“Why don’t you do that in the house? You can’t even see your entire face in that mirror,” she said. She got down from the block and reached for his ear. She pinched his earlobe much harder than she needed to. He flinched. “Stay still,” she said, “unless a dollop of shaving cream on your ear is the latest in Thampurian fashion. And you missed that spot on your cheek you always do.”
His hand slid over his face in search of the errant whiskers.
“I’ll do it.” She reach
ed for the razor on the sideboard.
Kyam snatched it first. “Only a fool would hand you a straight razor.” He turned his head and tried to see the spot he’d missed.
“Don’t be an idiot. I won’t kill you until you tell me who killed Jezereet.” She lightly pushed on his arm. “And share the mirror. Do you have a hair brush? I need to plait my hair.” She’d never go out in public with it loose, as if she were a child.
When he gave her space to look at herself, she saw that her throat was bruised. She stepped closer and spread the neckline of her blouse. That explained why it hurt so much. “Mister Zul?” She turned to him.
“I told you that we’d talk about what happened last night after you helped me with the Ravidians.”
“You said you’d give me the name of the murderer. That’s different.”
“You are a sargasso sea.” He clipped each word with terse precision.
“I take it that’s a Thampurian insult.”
“Literally, it means you’re seaweed blocking my shipping lane. Metaphorically, it means you’re a massive pain in my a– backside.”
That gave her more satisfaction than it should have. “Afraid that I’ll figure out the culprit on my own?”
“You have a remarkable ability to add one and one and come up with five. The description of the murderer is the only leverage I have. I can’t risk slipping up, not around you.”
It was strange to be with someone who complimented her, even when he was furious with her. Petrof always said that her abilities were annoying. “How about an exchange? I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.”
Kyam shook his head. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from you, it’s that I don’t ask the right questions. So I’d rather you volunteered information.”
“You’re the one with the pressing timetable. Jezereet is beyond my help.”
