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

by Braden, Jill

  In the well-lit Thampurian neighborhoods, more people were out on the streets than in the Ponongese areas. Still, QuiTai read anxiety in their fretful body language when they drew close enough for her to see them. Levapur was on the brink of something, and it wasn’t going to end happily for anyone.

  Some stories were like that.

  The stupid part was that she didn’t have to do this. She could retreat to one of her hidden homes, be the Devil, and reap her profits. There was no reason to risk her life. It wasn’t as if anything she did would ever be enough. Free some of the slaves from Cay Rhi? She should rush back in with a foolhardy plan to free the rest. Pay the tuition for some children to go to school? She was grooming them for the Devil’s work. Try to provide her people with cheap rice? She was turning them into the Devil’s accomplices.

  The corset under her Thampurian clothes fought against her deep sigh. How she hated that strangulating squeeze!

  Where were the conjoined twin goddesses of self-interest and self-preservation when she needed them? Maybe, like the Oracle, they weren’t real. Not for her. Forces beyond her control were at work, trying to make her react. But what was it that they wanted from her? RhiHanya wanted blood. Strangely enough, QuiTai felt that was what the other side wanted too. There was no question in her mind now that all this trouble was meant to get her attention. Most of the moves had affected everyone in Levapur, but closing the school had been a uniquely personal message. A cold lump of fury settled in her throat. All she could do now was take control as best she could and fight both sides every inch of the way to the edge of chaos.

  You are a spectacular idiot. They snap their fingers, and you jump even when you don’t want to.

  When the gold and sapphire façade of the Dragon Pearl came into focus, QuiTai bit her lips mercilessly in the hope that they would turn deep red like a true vapor addict’s. It was too bad her clothes were so finely tailored to her slim frame, but one couldn’t have everything. To complete her disguise, she set her face into an expression of furtive hunger and desperation.

  If anyone at the gaming tables watched QuiTai climb the curving staircase to the vapor den, she didn’t see them. It was just as well, she thought. If she’d known she’d caught a curious eye, stiffness in her bearing or self-consciousness in her movements might have signaled that she was aware of being watched. A real vapor addict would only have had eyes for the second story.

  She passed the door of the shared den. Tonight, she wouldn’t waste time with ordinary citizens.

  QuiTai flinched as the shape of a person appeared before her. She scolded herself for not remembering the plush carpet that deadened footsteps. Thankfully, she recognized the bluish face and paprika curls before her fangs sprang forward.

  “If you’re looking for –” Lizzriat broke off with a gasp of recognition.

  She gripped QuiTai’s arm and yanked her down the hallway into a room QuiTai guessed was an office. Lizzriat’s personal scent and the faint fragrance of her masculine perfume scented the air. The door slammed behind her.

  “What are you doing here?” Lizzriat asked.

  “Are Governor Turyat and Chief Justice Cuulon here tonight?”

  “You can’t be here.” Lizzriat leaned against the wall, arms crossed.

  “You know I wouldn’t endanger you on a whim. Much is at stake. You heard about the raid on the Ponongese market today? I tell you that blood will run in the gutters if I don’t figure out how to fix this before it spirals out of control.”

  “Taking on the entire colonial government single-handed? Even if the Devil backs you –”

  “I’m in no mood for small talk, Lizzriat. I need access to the governor and chief justice, and I need it now. So tell me if they’re here.”

  Lizzriat shook her head.

  QuiTai’s heart sank. This business of trying to discuss delicate matters with dimmed sight wasn’t going to work. She needed to see the nuances of Lizzriat’s expression. She removed the glass lenses from her inner eyelids and put them into the vials she kept in her purse.

  The details of the room came into focus as her inner eyelids rose: Lush Ingosolian furnishings cluttered the ornate little room; fringe and rich fabrics swathed ever piece of furniture except the desk; picture frames and little porcelain statues crowded onto every surface.

  Lizzriat’s lacy cuffs almost covered her hands. As usual, she wore a man’s suit. Tonight, the hat atop her curly hair tilted at a rakish angle.

  “And here I thought you were part of what’s wrong with this island,” Lizzriat said.

  QuiTai’s grin was part relief, part self-mockery. “This week, I’m playing the part of the reluctant hero. When this is over, I’ll return to my usual role as scourge of Levapur.”

  “Couldn’t talk anyone else into sacrificing himself?”

  “If you have anyone else in mind...”

  “Kyam Zul was here just minutes ago, also asking to see Governor Turyat and Chief Justice Cuulon.”

  QuiTai wasn’t sure if she wanted to curse or thank her stars that Kyam was on the same trail she was. She had no idea why he wanted to talk to them, but it was possible that he too was trying to get to the bottom of the market fiasco. She’d have to talk to him soon, even though it might be an awkward discussion.

  “I showed him into their private room, but he found them in no condition to help.”

  “Then they are here.”

  Lizzriat didn’t seemed happy that she’d let that slip. Her mouth twisted in varying expressions of anger and unhappiness until she finally sighed. “I don’t know why I risk my neck to help you.”

  “It’s my charming personality.”

  “Or the fact that you could cut off my black lotus supply.”

  QuiTai clutched her hands to her chest. “Finally, someone who understands me.”

  Lizzriat chuckled quietly. “You could say I’m well aware of whom I’m dealing with. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re poisonous.”

  “I have a stomach full of worship and it’s giving me indigestion. So I’ll take it as an insult – with a grain of tikkut. I’d hoped to keep our relationship cordial.”

  After examining her flawless, buffed nails, Lizzriat finally met QuiTai’s gaze. “Cordial is such a cold, formal word. A Thampurian word. I prefer something a bit warmer, and from what I’ve heard, most of your relationships are torrid.”

  QuiTai smiled weakly, acknowledging but dismissing Lizzriat’s suggestive tone. “I take it the governor and chief justice are in vapor dream?”

  Her graceful shrug proved that Lizzriat wasn’t offended. Some flirtations weren’t meant to lead to anything; they were simply undertaken for the pleasure of it. Then she nodded.

  “Excellent. If you please, show me the way.”

  “I don’t know what you did to that customer the last time you were here. All you did was hover over him. I watched him carefully, but he showed no signs that you’d harmed him. Do I have your word that you won’t hurt the governor or the chief justice?”

  “They will not be harmed, and they will have no memory that I was here.”

  “They’d better not.” This time, there was a hard edge to Lizzriat’s voice.

  ~ ~ ~

  Lizzriat gestured to the insensate figures of Governor Turyat and Chief Justice Cuulon sprawled across dreamer’s beds as if to say, “Here they are, for what it’s worth.”

  Unlike the sparse den that common people shared down the hallway, the private room reminded QuiTai of an Ingosolian room of ardor. Copper and purple striped paper covered the walls. She assumed the thick velvet drapes hid typhoon shutters that led to a private veranda. The carpet was so dense that QuiTai’s heels sank into it with each step. In the light of the oil lamp burning on a low brass table, gold and jewels glinted from the dreamer’s beds.

  “I won’t ask what you plan to do, but I insist that you do it quickly,” Lizzriat said.

  QuiTai nodded. “Ten minutes, maybe a few more.”

  “I’l
l come back for you.” Lizzriat put her hand on the door but didn’t slide it open. “Don’t kill them. I have enough troubles without two dead Thampurians on my hands. Disposing of bodies is so difficult, don’t you think?”

  QuiTai batted her eyelashes. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. What was I thinking?” She smirked, nodded to QuiTai, and left.

  QuiTai didn’t have time to waste. Governor Turyat supposedly knew everything that went on in Levapur, but she knew him to be a bit of an idiot. Chief Justice Cuulon was the real power behind the colonial government. Besides, she’d used him as a conduit before.

  She gathered her heavy skirts as she knelt beside the chief justice. After a quick glance to make sure Lizzriat wasn’t peering through the door, she leaned so close to his face that his rumbling snores blew in hot gusts across her lips. It was possible that there were spy holes drilled into the walls, so she let her braid fall across her face to block the view, opened her mouth, and brought her fangs forward.

  The drop of her venom hung heavily at the tip of her fang before oozing into Chief Justice Cuulon’s open mouth. For a moment, she wondered if her new crisis of faith in the Oracle would affect her ability to link with his memories, but suddenly she was at a gambling table and she knew she’d connected with him.

  He set a tile down on the felt. The image on it writhed into another form. He picked it up and made a joke, but his pulse raced. He stared at the tiles in his hand. Some images on the tiles melted, others turned into nonsense symbols. That was the first layer of vapor, the dreamer’s dream. It rarely made sense. She delved deeper, as she’d been taught.

  QuiTai realized her breaths were too fast and shallow. She was growing dizzy. Wearing the corset had been a mistake. She forced herself to slow the rate of her breathing, even though it felt like suffocation. She didn’t have time for this nonsense. If she’d always been the Oracle – an Oracle – then there was nothing different about this time. She knew how to follow threads of memory to the event she wanted to see. She’d always been able to do that.

  What first?

  She was back at the gambling table with him, only it was a different night than in his vapor dream. Several soldiers entered the Dragon Pearl. Chief Justice Cuulon panicked. The jolt sent her pulse racing too. His thoughts became like a feral animal wanting to run but too afraid to let him move. She hated that feeling, like those dreams she’d had as a child where a boar crashed out of the jungle undergrowth as she helped her mother collect herbs, and her legs wouldn’t work or she could only move in slow motion. His heart pounded along with hers as if in a race that neither of them could win.

  What was it about the soldiers that frightened him?

  He had tried to appear unruffled, but he glanced at the soldiers constantly. Not being able to control his flitting gaze frustrated her. But between those looks she was able to piece together information. The soldiers weren’t the usual colonial militia. Their uniforms were better quality and bore no insignias. If she hadn’t known from the chief justice’s thoughts that they were soldiers, she would have thought she was looking at a private army.

  If he or the governor had brought these soldiers from Thampur, why did he want to hide from them?

  “Memories are a web, not a time line. They connect to similar memories. The more connections, the stronger the memory. Picture the scene as the center and trace outward from it. Soon you will have enough fragments to tell a story,” grandmother had lectured.

  But there were so many fragments! And every time the chief justice spied a soldier, she felt like burrowing under the dreamer’s couch and covering her eyes.

  This is getting me nowhere I want to go. What’s this link? Chatting with the governor in this room, but when? If only people would glance at a newspaper and focus on the date with each memory, or say something like ‘I’m glad Typhoon DurMat didn’t hit Ponong two days ago.’

  She searched the connected memories. In one, he stood in the upstairs hallway of the Dragon Pearl with the governor.

  “She’s still out there! She can ruin us!”

  Governor Turyat had scratched his arms, reminding her of Jezereet. “If only Zul hadn’t tricked us into taking slaves –”

  Anger and fear welled up in Chief Justice Cuulon’s chest at the mention of Zul. “Shut up!”

  Governor Turyat had ignored the chief justice as he looked around. “Where is Lizzriat?”

  She’d felt Chief Justice Cuulon’s surge of longing for the vapor, but he said, “This is no time to get lost in the vapor, Turyat. She’s escaped, she has the slaves, and she could bring us down at any second. We have to find her!”

  QuiTai clasped her hands over her mouth. She had heard this discussion. She knew the date it took place.

  Chief Justice Cuulon heard bumping against the sliding door that led to the commoner’s den. A slight smile tugged at her lips as she remembered her brief struggle with Lizzriat.

  The memory muddled at that point, as if often did when the conduit attached no importance to the events, but it had a strong connection to another memory. She followed the strongest thread.

  The governor and chief justice had been in this same room. Lizzriat had lit the oil lamp on the brass table between the dreamer’s beds and then scooped the black lotus tar from a vial into two pipes. She’d knelt by the table and started to cook one over the lamp flame. The governor had leaned forward with glittering eyes and inhaled the scent, but the chief justice had gripped her wrist.

  “We will cook our own,” Chief Justice Cuulon said.

  Anger flashed over Lizzriat’s face but was quickly replaced by a placid countenance. She rose. “As you wish. Gentlemen.” She bowed and left the room.

  With a rush of impatience and disgust, Chief Justice Cuulon grabbed both pipes before the governor could. “This is serious. Zul is making his move. Mark my words, those soldiers are under his control. He brought them here on that miserable junk the Winged Dragon, and rumor has it that he was on board.”

  Which Zul? Hadre? She couldn’t believe it. Besides, why would it be worth mentioning that Hadre had been on board a Zul ship?

  The governor’s gaze never strayed from the pipes.

  “He’s going to use the slaves on Cay Rhi to discredit us back in Surrayya. He swore he’d get his revenge on us when we forced him out years ago. I warned you not to let the soldiers keep the Rhi as slaves. Our secret died with the Ravidians on that island, and we would have been safe if only you’d listened to me.”

  QuiTai sat back, her hand over her mouth. She looked at the ceiling as she gathered her thoughts.

  I don’t have time to mull over this. Sort through the facts later. Collect them now, while you can.

  She lifted her heavy skirts and moved over to Governor Turyat. It was going to make her nauseous, but she had little time left and she wanted to see his memories too.

  QuiTai glared at Governor Turyat’s prone body. His head lolled against a red pillow, exposing the loose, wrinkled excess skin on his neck to her. As before, she shielded her mouth as she milked a drop of venom into his mouth.

  How have you manipulated your memories to make it possible to live with what you’ve allowed to happen, Governor?

  His mind was a mess. His connections were weak, and there were far fewer of them than in the chief justice’s memories. How did he retrieve anything? How did he rule? If strong memories were the ones people attached the most importance to, then he thought only black lotus and sex workers were important. However, it was clear that he feared the new soldiers as much as the chief justice did, and he had no control over them.

  “Please let the Ponongese back into the marketplace,” he whined to the soldiers’ leader when they visited his office in the government building. “You’re going to anger the Devil’s Concubine. You have no idea how dangerous she is, or her power over the snakes.”

  The soldier smiled.

  Sweat trickled down QuiTai’s face. While she’d expected the disori
enting whirl from being connected to two conduits at the same time, she’d forgotten how bad it could get as memories overlapped. Her brain simply couldn’t handle more than one vision at a time.

  Her heavy Thampurian clothes clung to her back, and she felt as if she had another fever. Any moment now, she was going to throw up. But at the same time, she was sinking down into vapor dream. Unnerving blank moments disrupted her train of thought.

  “Will you two shut up,” she said as she shoved her fingers into her ears. It made no difference. Their connection was inside her head, not buzzing around it like a mosquito. She kicked the train of her heavy skirt behind her and paced the room to escape the tendrils of vapor chasing her.

  “If they find out we took money from the Ravidians, they’ll hang us.”

  QuiTai spun around. Which one of them had that memory come from? She’d long suspected that they’d been as corrupt as the Harbor Master, but these two had helped the Ravidians? She’d kill them both.

  “You have no idea what you’ve brought down on your heads,” she told the insensate men. Despite her promise to Lizzriat, she advanced on the governor. Unlike Petrof, he was going to die quickly.

  Their memories still flowed to her. She no longer tried to sort out which man’s mind they came from as she bent over the governor.

  There were footsteps in the hallway. The door began to slide open. QuiTai pressed her fangs against her roof of her mouth with her tongue and forced her temper to cool. It was just as well she’d been interrupted. Until she learned what they knew about Petrof, she had to let the governor and chief justice live. That was fine. She could wait. Patience was a Ponongese virtue.

  Lizzriat rushed into the den and shut the door behind her. “Your time is up.”

  ~ ~ ~

  QuiTai needed to get out of the claustrophobic den. The smothering heat and dense fabrics threatened to suck all the air out of the room. If she never touched velvet again, she’d die happy. Besides, she didn’t need to be near the conduits to tap into their memories.

  “A moment. I must put my lenses back on.”