by Braden, Jill
“Should we follow them?” The lieutenant’s voice cracked.
Voorus saw a young Ponongese girl standing twenty feet away. She didn’t seem harmed, but she didn’t move. She simply stared at the bleeding people on the ground. When he took a step toward her, she screamed.
“Oh, no, honey, it wasn’t me,” Voorus crooned to her. “It wasn’t me.” He knew he was pleading with a child, but he couldn’t bear the way she looked at him.
Her screams rent the air as he reached for her.
A Ponongese woman with a bloody face ran from the door of an ugly pink apartment building to the girl. She hugged the child until the ear-piercing screams muffled against her belly. The child’s shoulders shook as she sobbed in great, gulping breaths. The woman gestured for Voorus to step back while she spoke gibberish.
The lieutenant grabbed his arm. “Sir, we should go.”
“What is she saying?” Voorus spun around. “Do any of you speak Ponongese?” Why didn’t she speak Thampurian?
“She says we should leave, now,” the lieutenant said.
“But we –”
The woman was still talking. She gestured toward the road more emphatically. Voorus stepped back as she moved toward him.
“She says others may come soon, and they might think we’re the soldiers who did this. She said to go before they come. Or, at least, I think that’s what she means. She’s talking too fast,” the lieutenant said.
Voorus didn’t know how to explain their innocence. He could barely tell one Ponongese from another. How could she possibly believe that he wasn’t the same as the other Thampurians in uniform? He’d feared that the Devil’s whore would inflame rebellion; he’d never imagined that Thampurians would be the ones to spark it.
“I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.” Voorus gestured to the people on the ground then to the girl she held. “Tell the child I said that,” he told the lieutenant.
The lieutenant drew back in outrage. “Sir!”
Voorus realized what he’d said. Right or wrong, the Thampurians had to present a unified face to the Ponongese. Siding with the snakes was unthinkable. “Don’t tell her that.”
“Damn right I won’t.”
Before Cay Rhi, everything had been so simple and straightforward. The right thing used to always be the Thampurian way. Now it was a murky mess.
“Captain, what should we do?” a plaintive voice whispered near his shoulder.
Voorus angrily shoved away his tears and straightened his shoulders. By the Goddess of Mercy, he hated being a soldier. He fought for control over his emotions. His men looked terrified. Many of them openly cried.
If only the Ponongese understood that these men had decided to let the Devil’s Concubine and the Rhi slaves escape into the jungle. These men were good people. They believed the same things he did, in law and order and moral right and wrong. They were as sickened by this attack as he was, yet in the eyes of the Ponongese, they were probably just as guilty as the ones who had carried it out. It wasn’t fair.
How many Thampurians in Levapur would have felt the same way he and his men did if they’d been here or on Cay Rhi? Probably many of them. No one could say such things out loud, of course. It would be social suicide. But did Thampurians deserve to die in the rebellion that would surely begin now, just because they didn’t have the guts to speak out? Who would have guessed insisting on justice for the Ponongese would ever be a matter of life and death for a Thampurian?
He wanted to toss down his uniform jacket and go home, but he couldn’t abandon his men; and the gods knew Levapur needed real leadership now more than ever, because after this, there would be no stopping the violence.
A man on the ground rolled on his side and coughed up blood. Curious Ponongese were coming out of their homes on the hillside. They didn’t seem angry, yet, but they vastly outnumbered his men.
“Let’s go; but a dignified retreat, gentlemen. We don’t want them to think we’re running away,” Voorus said. He stepped backward while never taking his eyes off the gathering crowd. Fear could be the death of them.
Chapter 12: The Return of QuiTai
“You’re going to leave us?” RhiHanya blocked the apartment door so QuiTai couldn’t leave. “Didn’t you hear what RhiLan said?”
QuiTai knelt before RhiLan and took the woman’s hands into hers. “I will put my informants to work looking for your man,” she said gently. RhiLan nodded, although QuiTai wasn’t sure if her hostess was really listening. She glanced at the terrified children. “I will do my best,” she promised them.
Only the middle boy responded, with the barest nod of his head.
“RhiHanya, I will send LiHoun to you at least once a day. He will bring food.” QuiTai was deeply worried when RhiLan didn’t react.
LiHoun was as grim as she’d ever seen him. “Uncle LiHoun will not let you starve, little brothers.”
She went to the children, who leaned against the wall as if they wished they could hide behind it. Their eyes were wide. Even the oldest boy, who rarely stopped grinning, was solemn. “I know you want to search for your father, but you must trust me, just as I must trust you to obey your mother and auntie RhiHanya. None of you are to go out on the streets for any reason.” She met each of their gazes in turn and waited for a nod of agreement.
“But you’re going out,” RhiHanya said.
QuiTai fought to keep her expression calm. “I didn’t think you’d be the one to give me trouble.”
“You can be hurt just the same as us.”
QuiTai drew on her deep brown velvet Thampurian jacket. “I don’t have children to protect.”
“Let her go,” RhiLan said. “Get her out of my home.”
RhiHanya stomped over to her cousin and shook a finger at her. “How dare –”
“Your cousin’s right and you know it. I thank you for healing me, but it’s dangerous to let me stay.” QuiTai let enough edge into her voice to let RhiHanya know she was in no mood to argue.
RhiLan seemed to agree.
RhiHanya grabbed QuiTai by the elbow and dragged her out on the veranda. Seething, QuiTai jerked her arm away.
“What are you going to do?” RhiHanya asked.
“What I promised to do. Send out my informants to find RhiLan’s man. Or his body,” she added in a whisper.
“You’re not going to let them get away with this.”
“You don’t want me to risk going out on the streets, but you expect me to take on the entire colonial militia?” QuiTai buttoned her cuffs.
“Let me go with you. We’ll go to the inland villages and tell the people about the attack today. We’ll tell them about the slaves on Cay Rhi!”
“You want to start a rebellion?”
“Yes!”
Somehow, QuiTai had expected this conversation. Still, she groaned and put her hands over her eyes for a moment. She was angry too, but emotion wasn’t the answer. “Give me time to figure out a peaceful –”
“Peaceful?”
QuiTai shushed her.
RhiHanya lowered her voice, but she was no less passionate. “Peaceful? You want me to be a good slave and not raise my voice? People were beaten, little sister, perhaps to death.”
“Yes. People may have died. May have. But many of our people will most certainly die if we rebel against the Thampurians.”
“They brought it on themselves. Just like the werewolves.”
QuiTai didn’t want to admit that she’d given over innocent werewolves to the mob in the marketplace. She’d lost her taste for blind vengeance. “Someone is behind this, and trust me, I will make those responsible pay for their crimes. But I need time to figure out who it is. Things are chaotic enough right now. That doesn’t make my task any easier. If a rebellion starts, it will be the innocent who bleed on the streets, not the guilty. They’ve planned for this. They know they need to hide. Give me time to hunt them down and put an end to this before it gets worse.”
“Everyone knows the governor is to blame.”
“Everyone doesn’t see how intricate this plot is. I’m not convinced that he’s the only one behind it, but I don’t have any proof yet. I need time.”
RhiHanya crossed her arms over her chest. “You have three days, Wolf Slayer. Then I take matters into my own hands.”
There was no changing her mind. “A week,” QuiTai begged.
“Three days.”
~ ~ ~
QuiTai and LiHoun skirted the edges of shadows as they neared the Quarter of Delights. She clutched his arm for guidance, as she could barely see through her inner eyelids and the small glass lenses that made her eyes look Thampurian.
The streets were as empty as the night of the full moon. Not even soldiers walked in the darkened streets. During the full moon, while people avoided the street, they normally sat on their upstairs verandas. It could be pouring rain and they’d still come out of their apartments to chat with neighbors. But tonight, Levapur cowered behind tightly closed typhoon shutters. Even the light from jellylanterns was trapped inside.
The scent of rotting plants and garbage filled QuiTai’s nose. After four days in RhiLan’s apartment, the stink of the town was almost overwhelming. It could have been her imagination, but she felt as if it was worse now, as if the schemes of the colonial government had intensified the decay.
“Do you want me to gather your lieutenants?” LiHoun asked.
QuiTai shook her head. “I don’t want to risk their safety. I shouldn’t even have you out here.”
“Yet you are out here.”
“You sound like RhiHanya.”
“The Rhi woman has shown her wisdom many times.”
When Petrof or the werewolves questioned her decisions, she could easily dismiss them as idiots. It was harder to ignore LiHoun, even though his sudden protectiveness annoyed her. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one grappling with a loss of faith.
“I have many things to do and a short time to accomplish them.” A logical plan of attack was forming in her mind, but she needed more time to figure it out. “It will be best if we go separate ways at this point.”
“I won’t leave you, daughter.”
Humbled, she blushed. It wasn’t lack of faith in her, but concern. That, she hadn’t expected. “Favored uncle.” For a moment, QuiTai couldn’t go on. She gently squeezed LiHoun’s arm. “Dearest friend. I’m touched beyond words. And I do need you, but not beside me. Go to my lieutenants and tell them that I want to know the fate of RhiLan’s man. Our sources in Old Levapur might know, but I don’t know if the soldiers are still there, so please, be very careful. I’d rather break my promise to RhiLan than lose you.”
“You can barely see,” LiHoun reminded her as he guided her around a puddle.
“Distance is a problem, but up close I can see enough.”
“I wish you’d let me stay with you.”
Although there were few people on the street, she leaned close to LiHoun and kept her voice low. “Did we buy all the rice imported into Levapur this past week?”
“Yes. The old werewolf den on the other side of the Jupoli Gorge is packed to the rafters. It’s humid up there. I worry that it will start to go bad.”
“Don’t worry. We’re about to get rid of it. Tell my lieutenants that from now on, they will charge our Thampurian customers the market price for rice rather than the black market price. Tell them we’ll meet tomorrow at the seventh door to discuss the effects and fine-tune my plan, but for now, simply match the Thampurian price for rice.”
LiHoun squinted. “The Thampurians might buy it from the legitimate venders instead.”
“They might, but once the legitimate merchants realize they can’t replace their inventory, they’ll raise their prices.”
“Then you’ll undersell them? I see. You increase you profit.”
“Indeed I will make more, but we will match the market price coin for coin. No discounts. Except for our non-Thampurian customers. They will still pay our old price.”
LiHoun’s ears flattened against his skull. “Is that the right move, grandmother? With everything that has happened this week, you must be very certain of your actions. I’m sure this is one of your elegant schemes, but it seems designed mostly to anger the Thampurians.”
“It is.”
“Then what happens?”
“When they’re angry enough, they’ll demand that Governor Turyat do something about it. Then I will tell him to let the Ponongese back into the marketplace and to call off his soldiers so that I can safely be seen in public again, and to give me the names of the men who paid Petrof to kill my family, because that’s the only thing that will bring the price of rice down.”
LiHoun quietly grumbled.
“I respect your words of caution, wise uncle. A person who won’t hear dissent is deaf to rational thought. But this is the only way I can think of to strike back at the Thampurians without actually hurting anyone. They won’t starve. They’ll just be poorer.”
“You’re lucky indeed that your Oracle warned you to prepare for this.”
QuiTai bristled. She didn’t want to think about the Oracle.
“But I see a complication. Of course, your Oracle probably foresaw this, but...”
What had she missed? “The Oracle didn’t tell me anything. This is my plan, so please feel free to share your council,” she said.
“Most Ponongese don’t buy rice from you. So won’t they end up paying the higher price too?”
He said it gently, but she sharply rebuked herself for overlooking such an obvious truth.
“You’re right. Spread the word that the Ponongese can buy cheaper rice from us.”
“They won’t like this any more than the Thampurians.”
“It’s only a temporary measure. They can go back to buying rice from legal merchants when the price drops. Besides, it’s not as if they’ve been able to buy any rice since the marketplace segregation began. At least we’ll see to it that their children don’t go to bed hungry.”
He sighed. “You’ve always been able to predict how people will act. Every time I doubt you, I am proven wrong. But this plan can’t work forever. Eventually, more shipments of rice will be delivered to this island, and the soldiers will make sure the legal merchants get all of it.”
“I expect that. But trust a Thampurian to make a coin off suffering. They’ll keep the prices high.”
“So will the smugglers. They’ll hear about this. Then it will cost you a fortune to buy more.”
“That’s why I bought all that rice. I will continue to sell it to the Ponongese at the lower price until there’s such a glut that the legal market price drops back to normal, even if it means paying the higher price for a couple weeks to keep them supplied with cheap rice.”
LiHoun didn’t seem convinced. “You’re going to lose so much money.”
“The Devil won’t cry if he loses a few coins.” The corners of her lips curved. “But the Thampurians? They will howl.”
~ ~ ~
RhiHanya turned on her cousin the moment QuiTai and LiHoun left. “How could you push her out like that?”
“She’s bad luck.”
“Do not! Do not even say such a thing to me. If it weren’t for her, I’d still be on Cay Rhi with the other slaves.”
“And ever since you showed up at my door, look what’s happened! The marketplace, the school, the beating today!”
“You are not going to blame me for that.” RhiHanya stared down her cousin.
RhiLan wrung her hands. “If we don’t upset the Thampurians, maybe they’ll forgive us –”
“Forgive! What have you done?”
“Nothing! I’ve done nothing! We’ve done nothing. But they obviously think we have. So we’ll stay calm and behave ourselves and show them they can trust us, and eventually, they’ll let us back into the marketplace,” RhiLan wailed.
RhiHanya put her hands on her hips. “Always the peacemaker, cousin. Right? Always the one to make excuses for your mother when she beat you
and you’d run to our house, crying. And my mother would fix you up and heal your wounds and beg you to stay with us forever. But you’d go back to that woman and pretend if you were good it would never happen again. Only it did, didn’t it?”
“Shut up!” RhiLan curled onto the divan, her face to the wall, and put her fingers in her ears.
“Keep on pretending. It isn’t going away, and it won’t get better. Mark my words.” RhiHanya glared at her cousin’s children, who stared at her with wide eyes. “But we won’t let it get worse.”
The middle boy ran his fingers over his chin much as his father did, even though he had no beard to stroke. “You told the Wolf Slayer she had three days to do something.”
RhiLan sobbed louder; RhiHanya nodded.
He rubbed his chin again. “She wears green because she likes it.” Then he nodded once, as if that settled the matter in his mind.
~ ~ ~
LiHoun slipped through the alleyways with speed and grace that would have amazed anyone used to his usual bandy-legged gait. QuiTai had eight lieutenants, but only the five in Levapur needed to know about the rice scheme. He hoped he wouldn’t have to convince them the plan would work. They rarely questioned orders from QuiTai, but he was nervous, and it might be contagious.
QuiTai hadn’t told him to, but he would warn them that there might be trouble. He would say she wanted them to take their enforcers everywhere. He would say she said for them to be careful of the soldiers. He was frightened for everyone.
Chapter 13: The Dragon Pearl
QuiTai had lied to LiHoun: her vision through her inner eyelids was dangerously bad on the darkest streets. From now on, even though it was ridiculous at night, she’d wear a mourning veil. Her eyes would be barely visible through the dense lace, and she’d be able to see.
She bumped into people and things and apologized to both in cultured Thampurian tones. Considering her destination, that was probably the most convincing detail of her disguise.
