The Devil Incarnate (The Devil of Ponong series #2)

by Braden, Jill

  QuiTai was concerned and confused. This was bad business in more ways than one. The Thampurians couldn’t be stupid enough to ruin their own merchants, could they? It was so unlike them. Normally they grubbed after every coin they could get their hands on.

  “I was able to buy fishcakes for the children’s lunch. I have no idea what we’ll eat this evening since I couldn’t buy rice.” RhiLan wrung her hands together.

  “Maybe your man will bring home a fish. We can go without rice for one day,” RhiHanya said in a calm, reasonable tone that seemed to soothe RhiLan.

  “But what about tomorrow?” QuiTai asked. “If RhiLan can’t sell her sarongs, she won’t have money for food.”

  RhiHanya spun around to wag her finger at QuiTai. “Don’t go looking for more trouble when your bowl is overflowing with it already.”

  “You can’t eat trouble, and a stomach full of it will keep you up at night,” QuiTai countered. “And our squabbling is only making auntie RhiLan uncomfortable. It solves nothing.”

  “But we did solve the problem! We plan to set up our own market in Old Levapur tomorrow,” RhiLan said with modest pride. “I’ve been spreading the news.”

  “That’s a smart idea.” QuiTai pulled on her bottom lip.

  RhiHanya gave her a sharp look. “You don’t sound happy about it.”

  “I have questions. Why are the Thampurians doing this? It makes no sense. I need to think. No more potions. They dull my mind. And I need –” What she needed was quiet, no distractions, and a place to pace, but how could she ask her hostess to leave her own apartment?

  “But why don’t you like the idea of a market in Old Levapur?” RhiHanya asked.

  It was always harder to open her mind to the bigger picture when people insisted on dragging her back to one element of it. That was one thing she’d enjoyed about Kyam Zul. He could almost keep up with the speed of her thoughts, and he knew how to hold his tongue. She wondered if he’d already left Levapur or if he was in the fortress. Those seemed like the only two options. She hoped he hadn’t been blamed for her escape with the slaves. If he’d been hailed as a hero for discovering the Ravidian plot, he’d probably immediately have asked for, and been granted, articles of transport. He was probably standing on the deck of the Golden Barracuda and facing home with a cocky grin on his face. That image brought a twinge of regret. She’d miss him.

  “I guess I could go to one of the stores for rice,” RhiLan said unhappily. “If I can find one that will take my money. I made the mistake of going into a Thampurian store when we first moved to Levapur. The merchant cursed me and shoved me out.”

  “Or...” QuiTai sat up.

  Thankfully, RhiHanya and RhiLan didn’t speak or even move while her brain furiously wove together the threads of an idea. Oh, it was too beautiful. Did the Thampurians really hand her such an opportunity? Pleased, she smiled to herself.

  The Devil was feared for murder, blackmail, and occasional kidnappings. Those violent crimes had been the werewolves’ realm, and she’d rarely been involved. She’d considered such ventures a foolish waste of time since there was little money in them, especially considering the risk. What people didn’t realize was that the bulk of the Devil’s business came from black market goods. That’s where she’d established his power and made his fortune.

  No werewolf worth his swagger would be caught dead selling something as boring as rice, Petrof had told her. They weren’t lowly merchants. They were hardened criminals. Or so he’d seen himself; what he’d really been was a cowardly lowlife thug. But she didn’t want to remember how she’d elevated him from that to being the Devil. It was too embarrassing.

  What she chose to remember was that she’d ignored his sneers. She’d bought rice from smugglers and corrupt traders and sold it through her lieutenants. Then she’d expanded into other staple goods. They weren’t exciting or flashy, but they’d made a steady profit. Of course, the Thampurian merchants had to pay that outrageous import tax to the colonial government while she didn’t, so she could always afford to sell for less than they could and still earn more.

  For a moment, she doubted her plan, but she’d successfully raised the price of black lotus. According to LiHoun, her customers had been so fearful of a shortage that they’d been grateful to get any, even at the higher price. Her grin spread. Only addicts bought black lotus, but everyone in Levapur ate rice, even Thampurians.

  Honest people like RhiLan rarely bought black market rice or anything that QuiTai’s network sold. They simply sighed and paid the higher prices from legitimate merchants because they didn’t like doing business with the Devil. But the Thampurians had a different view. If there was one thing a Thampurian loved, it was a bargain. Prying money from their tight fists was going to be delicious.

  RhiHanya folded her arms and scowled disapproval down at QuiTai. “I may not know you well, little sister, but I know mischief is brewing when someone smiles like that. What are you thinking?”

  QuiTai put on her best stage expression of innocence. “I –”

  “Uh huh.”

  During her stint as a magician’s assistant back on the continent, QuiTai had learned the importance of misdirection. She had to make RhiHanya and her cousin focus on anything but rice by doing something unexpected and shocking. In her experience, nothing distracted her fellow Ponongese like a display of appalling manners.

  She sat up prim as a schoolteacher and said, “In the meantime, we have a situation. No good guest would ever imply that her hostesses’ hospitality is lacking, but she wouldn’t allow her hostesses’ children to go to bed hungry either. So what do I do? Do I let RhiLan spend her entire afternoon in search of rice and allow her to be insulted by Thampurian merchants? Or do I send word to LiHoun and tell him to bring us some?” With eyebrows raised, QuiTai looked from RhiHanya to RhiLan. They stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. She was quite pleased with herself.

  RhiLan’s face went bright red. “I couldn’t –”

  “Yes, you could. And you will,” RhiHanya said.

  Oh, how I adore practical women, RhiHanya. If you only knew.

  “It’s just rice, after all, cousin. It’s not as if she’s offering pork.”

  RhiLan seemed close to tears. She tugged her hair as she paced the small apartment. “If only the regular soldiers had been at the marketplace. They may be rude, but they see me every day. They know I belong there. They know I don’t make trouble. They might have let me in.”

  Different soldiers?

  RhiLan shrank back from QuiTai’s intense gaze.

  “Tell me about these different soldiers, auntie. Tell me everything.”

  ~ ~ ~

  During their somber dinner, QuiTai stifled her screams of boredom and smiled politely, but she wasn’t sure she could hold them in much longer. The one thing they would not talk about in front of the children were the events in the marketplace, and the unspoken subject weighed heavily on the conversation though, leaving the adults in a mood to only pick at their food. RhiLan’s man hadn’t been allowed to pass through the town square to the harbor path, so there was no fish. Unless the other Ponongese families in Levapur could find goat or pork tomorrow, tonight might be their last meal with meat.

  A meal without meat or rice is indistinguishable from an empty bowl.

  The effort to join the meaningless chatter exhausted QuiTai. Every smile felt brittle as cheap jellylantern glass. Each inane bit of small talk made her teeth grind. All she could do was cast glances at LiHoun and hope he understood that she wanted to talk to him alone. She couldn’t ask her hosts to leave their apartment while she chatted with LiHoun, and she couldn’t talk the Devil’s business in front of them, so she forced herself to sit still, listen, and make appropriate noises of concern and sympathy while frustration burned through her gut.

  Finally, RhiLan rose and dragged the bathing tub from the corner. The middle son carried buckets of collected rain water from the veranda and put them on the cooking fire to boil while h
is sister dragged a privacy screen in front of the tub. RhiLan’s man took some of their rice to see if he could barter with the neighbors for eggs and oil. RhiHanya stayed where she was, though. Perhaps she expected LiHoun and QuiTai would discuss freeing the slaves left behind on Cay Rhi, and she fully expected to be part of the conversation.

  “The rain has stopped. Perhaps auntie QuiTai would like to exercise her legs with a short walk on the veranda?” LiHoun asked.

  Bless you, uncle.

  “She can’t be seen,” RhiHanya reminded him.

  Stop hovering over me, woman! I don’t need protection.

  “I’ll stay close to the wall. There’s little moonlight tonight, and no jellylanterns out there. No one will see my face.” QuiTai came to her feet.

  RhiHanya immediately rose and supported QuiTai by the elbow.

  “You’ve been stuck watching me all day, auntie RhiHanya. Let LiHoun give you a moment’s rest.”

  RhiHanya gave LiHoun a long look. She didn’t want to let go, but LiHoun was older than she, and thus worthy of respect, so she backed away and let him take QuiTai’s arm.

  ~ ~ ~

  As the horizon rose to meet the sun, a blessedly cool ocean breeze blew inland. Levapur seemed to have relaxed into the evening, but QuiTai wondered if behind the shutters, Ponongese were as fearful as she was of the coming days. Uncertainty was a hard pillow.

  “Banning us from the marketplace was bad enough, but no fishing? How dare they? This is our island. We belong here. They don’t,” QuiTai whispered. If words had venom, each of hers would have struck a Thampurian dead. “And don’t even get me started on how they kept the workers from repairing the funicular. Don’t they understand that everything they import has to be carried up from the harbor until the funicular cable is replaced?”

  It felt good to let out some of her anger, although she still had plenty left. She closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath, and then flashed a meaningless smile at LiHoun that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “Forgive me for slaughtering your language, uncle. It has been a long time since I’ve spoken in the words of the Li.”

  QuiTai and LiHoun squatted on RhiLan’s veranda as they shared a kur. Her gaze flitted to Kyam’s dark apartment.

  “Another apartment shares this veranda,” LiHoun said.

  “Kyam Zul lived there. He’s probably on a ship bound for Thampur.”

  “I saw him at the Red Happiness this afternoon.”

  The news caught her by surprise. Curiosity overrode her fury at the Thampurians. She checked her hair to make sure her braid was smooth before she slipped over to the typhoon shutters and peered in through the shutters. The apartment was dark and stillness seemed to have settled over it like dust on furniture in an abandoned house. She pressed a hand to the frame of a shutter and turned the handle. It wasn’t locked.

  “Allow me, grandmother.” LiHoun slipped past her into the room. He returned quickly. “Paintings are tied with twine and a trunk sits in the center of the floor. The wardrobe is empty. It seems he plans to leave soon.”

  “Maybe he’s waiting for the Golden Barracuda to sail.”

  “It left the harbor two days ago. There are more ships in the harbor, but only one flying the Zul family chop. It’s an ugly old junk with faded sails.”

  QuiTai closed the shutter. The Oracle had said Kyam would be the governor of Ponong. She was never wrong, but the timing of her visions was always a mystery. Still, it was disquieting that Kyam hadn’t left yet. Even more worrisome were her mixed feelings about that.

  “Is your leg giving you pain?” LiHoun asked.

  She realized she’d winced, but not because of her ankle. “A little, but I need to move. Lying on that divan all day is making me weak.” She rested her hand on his shoulder. “I have asked far more of you in the past weeks than before. If it’s a burden, be honest with me. You know that I will not take offense. But also know that you’ve been a great help, favored uncle, and I would be hard pressed to find a more worthy right hand.”

  LiHoun pressed his hands together and bowed. “You honor me with your trust, grandmother. And you’ve always been generous.”

  That put one of her many worries to rest. With LiHoun at her side, life would be much easier. There was so much she had to attend to. She simply didn’t have time to train a new agent; not to mention that she’d have to reveal that she was the Devil to someone who hadn’t proven themselves yet. Eventually, the news would come out, but for now it was safer to keep the myth of the Devil alive.

  They reached the end of the veranda. She could barely smell food, even though they were in an overcrowded neighborhood. Many families had gone hungry tonight. That senseless cruelty sparked her anger.

  Not willing to show how irritated she was, she said, “Smells like rain.”

  LiHoun sniffed the air. “And lightning.”

  “A storm is coming.”

  He watched her from the corner of his eye. “It may be an ill wind.”

  “That’s the foul stench of Thampurian law burning inside your sensitive nose.”

  LiHoun laughed.

  She could tell that he wanted to squat as they normally did and talk, but she tested her ankle with mincing steps and decided not to strain it further.

  “Does your goddess tell you anything?” LiHoun asked.

  His question surprised her. This was the second time he’d mentioned the Oracle, though she’d never discussed her goddess with him. Maybe he’d heard the other whores at PhaJut’s shyly ask her about the Oracle on those late, lazy nights when they’d had no customers and all other talk had been exhausted. Back then, she’d only known one way to evoke the goddess, and the conduit always died. The Thampurians would have executed her for that, so she’d never seriously considered summoning her goddess. Besides, she knew the other workers and their troubles well enough to guess their futures. They didn’t like to take her word for it, though. The Oracle was never wrong, but QuiTai was just another whore with an opinion.

  “Lately, the Oracle seems obsessed with the dull lives of dull people.”

  But maybe if she stopped asking the Oracle for an answer... Hadn’t her mother and grandmother always warned her that the goddess didn’t work like that? Or maybe the Oracle didn’t like her selfish inquires. Maybe she would bring a vision for something that affected her people.

  Oh! QuiTai shut her eyes for a moment. Maybe that’s what the Oracle had been trying to tell her – that she should focus on the ordinary people and not on herself.

  Maybe.

  “The Oracle’s visions can drive people mad,” her grandmother always said.

  Yes, they can.

  She touched the veranda railing closest to the Rhi apartment. Silhouetted by the light of the single green jellylantern in the apartment, she noticed RhiHanya hovering near the shutters. Unless she spoke Li, though, she wasn’t going to overhear anything she could understand. Still, QuiTai leaned close to LiHoun’s ear. “Tell me about the black lotus sales.”

  “Only the werewolves knew all their clients, but your lieutenants visited every den, brothel, and gaming hall in town, so the major customers now have a supply. As I told you last night, they barely noticed the price difference. We told the ones who complained that they didn’t have to buy, of course. They were so afraid we’d refuse to sell them any that they quickly shut their mouths. Best of all, your lieutenants are singing your praises for enriching their purses.”

  “I do so love the sound of profits rolling like ocean waves. Constant and reliable.”

  “Rice, and meat.”

  A wry smile tugged at the corners of QuiTai’s mouth. “Speaking of rice...”

  When she’d first thought of her plan, she’d seen it as a contingency. For some foolish reason, she’d hoped and believed that the colonial government would come to its senses. Instead, matters only grew worse. Who knew what new insults would come with the next day? Now she felt she had no choice but to shove back.

  “How much rice should
I bring tomorrow?” LiHoun asked.

  “Not too much. I don’t want to insult my hostess any more than I already have. A quarter measure, I think. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Uncle, this matter with the fishing fleet disturbs me. I know the governor is a bit stupid sometimes, but I can’t fathom his reason for starving everyone. Or why, after years of ignoring crime in Levapur, he suddenly uses soldiers for enforcement.”

  “Maybe he has more to command. RhiLan said the soldiers who turned her back were strangers.”

  “If we can believe that her observations are correct.” QuiTai raised her hand to stop LiHoun from interrupting. “I’m not saying that she’s mistaken, but does she know all the soldiers on sight? I don’t.”

  “I will have your network observe and report,” LiHoun said.

  “Get me an estimate of their numbers.” She tugged on her bottom lip. “I suppose it’s possible that the Thampurians sent extra troops to safeguard the plantation on Cay Rhi, but…”

  LiHoun waited silently for her to work through her reservations.

  “If that’s true, then why are they disturbing the peace in the town square instead of guarding Cay Rhi? And how did they get here so fast? The Golden Barracuda is the fastest ship in the Zul fleet, but even it can’t possibly sail round trip in three days.”

  Or could it? That engine she’d heard below decks had moved them at speeds she’d never imagined. In open water, it might run even faster. But between Ponong and Thampur, thousands of small islands formed a dangerous archipelago. Only a fool would try to thread through them at high speed, even if he knew the safe shipping lanes.

  No. It seemed more probable that the troops had set sail before she’d led Kyam to the Ravidians, which meant the two weren’t connected. The only other possibility that came to mind immediately was that Governor Turyat had asked for more troops before he knew about the Ravidians, so he’d been planning to cut off the Ponongese from the marketplace for some time now. But why? There had been no extraordinary tensions between the Ponongese and Thampurians in the past few months. Admittedly, she’d sensed something odd in the mood of the town, but Governor Turyat would be the last person to notice such things. The sudden change mystified her. Could Governor Turyat simply have brought the additional soldiers to Levapur to show his power?