by Braden, Jill
Lizzriat shuddered when QuiTai lowered her inner eyelids. If she blanched when the glass disks were put in place, QuiTai couldn’t see it.
QuiTai groped for Lizzriat’s arm. With an apologetic smile, she said, “Lead on.” But if Lizzriat thought she was helpless, she was wrong. All QuiTai had to do was raise her inner eyelids. Her lenses would pop off and be lost forever, but she’d have her full sight.
They returned to the office. “I have a secret exit. I’ll take you down it,” Lizzriat said. “But first...” She pulled a black scarf from her desk drawer. “I’m sure you understand.”
QuiTai let Lizzriat drape the scarf across her eyes. It was better that she not admit how blind she was.
Warm fingertips traced down her neck behind her ear.
“Under different circumstances, this could have been fun, krith amaci,” Lizzriat whispered.
Before QuiTai could reply, she felt Lizzriat leave her side. She strained to hear Lizzriat’s movements. Although she didn’t sense danger, her pulse raced. Her neck still tingled from Lizzriat’s touch.
“Out of habit, I’ve been using a female pronoun for you. What do you prefer?” QuiTai’s voice sounded unnaturally loud to herself, and her attempt at normal conversation strained.
“I thought you were beyond such matters.”
“In bed, yes, but Thampurian only allows two genders and I prefer to use the one you like.”
“I prefer Ingosolian; it’s so much more civilized. But here, in Thampurian territory, use he.” There was a quiet click before muffled footsteps crossed the thick carpet back to QuiTai’s side. “I’d hate for the Thampurians to decide I was female and take my Dragon Pearl from me.”
“I will not make the mistake of thinking of you as female again.”
Rather than take QuiTai’s elbow, Lizzriat wrapped an arm around her waist and led her across the room.
We’re going around the desk.
She extended her arm and brushed the space before her with her fingertips. Lizzriat forced her hand down. They shuffled forward.
“First step,” Lizzriat said.
QuiTai carefully moved one foot forward. After a brief, disorienting moment, her foot landed on a solid step.
“When my people perfect them, I’ll send you some instant jellylanterns. I think you’ll find them useful,” QuiTai said. She wasn’t sure why she needed the comfort of small talk when she was helpless. Normally, such conversation bored her.
“Instant jellylanterns?”
“Glass tubes about the size of a kuriwei fish. They don’t give off light until you break the seal between the liquid half and the powder. Shake them up, and suddenly you have a jellylantern.” QuiTai bumped against a wall. She placed her palm against it as she climbed down the steps.
“Clever,” Lizzriat said.
“A Ravidian invention.”
Lizzriat sucked in a breath. “Ravidian? I’d rather be in eternal darkness.”
“I’m not buying the jellylanterns from them; I stole the idea.”
“Isn’t it illegal for – Hah! I forgot for a moment who I was speaking too. I’ll take a dozen.”
“As soon as I figure out how to manufacture the glass tubes, I’ll send them to you.”
Lizzriat stopped QuiTai and removed the blindfold. “We’re here. Let me check the alleyway.”
QuiTai tried to see but the darkness was too complete. “I appreciate your help.”
“Did you get your information?”
Something in Lizzriat’s voice warned QuiTai that she – no, he – had spied on the room. QuiTai tried to remember anything she’d said out loud. What did she owe this Ingosolian? Nothing, maybe. But she didn’t feel right telling a lie to someone who could have called for the soldiers.
“Not as much as I would have liked.”
“Too bad.” Lizzriat’s arm drew from her waist. “The alleyway is clear now. You’re on your own from now on.”
QuiTai nodded. She felt the quick press of lips to her cheek before a firm hand pushed her through the hidden doorway and into the rainy alley. From the smell, she assumed she was near an outhouse.
Chapter 14: An Unexpected Meeting
After nearly a week in RhiLan’s tiny apartment, QuiTai craved quiet. Nowhere in Levapur was as tranquil and hushed as the neighborhood where apartment buildings gave way to walled family compounds.
Her grandmother had often mentioned that the rare swath of flat land had been fields for crops before the Thampurians seized it. Once upon a time, the terraces her people had carved into the sides of the mountains had been rice paddies. Once upon a time, the Ponongese had been able to feed themselves. Now they were forbidden to grow anything. They could harvest food that grew in the wild, such as fruit, jikal roots, fish, and wild boars, but everything else had to be imported.
The Thampurians were about to learn their laws could cut both ways.
No one was on the wide lane that meandered through the Thampurian Quarter. It was rumored that their Ponongese servants had fled the compounds when the soldiers attacked the market in Old Levapur, but QuiTai hadn’t heard yet if that was true. She hoped the Thampurian ladies were stooping over their own cooking fires. Thampurian men had it much easier since they viewed their women as servants anyway. The men probably didn’t care who made their dinner as long as it appeared on the table before them.
Since no one was likely to see her in this still, quiet place, she paused to remove the lenses from her eyes. With her inner eyelids raised, the details came back into focus: limbs of the trees on the side of the road stretched overhead and tangled together; rain dripped from the pointed tips of leaves. She hopped the puddles between islands of gravel on the road to avoid the slimy mud.
As she traveled deeper into the neighborhood, the compound gates were further apart and the walls were higher. Inside the smaller compounds, the houses were close enough to the lane that she could see the second story windows, but by the time she heard the ocean waves crashing against the nearby cliffs, she could only see the roofs of the buildings behind the walls.
Near the end of the lane, she stopped at a high carved wooden gate. A brass bell hung from a gracefully arching bracket beside the gate. She didn’t ring it. No one had invited her, and she knew no one would be inside. The gate swung open for her. She was surprised, but grateful, that it wasn’t locked.
The gate opened into a formal first courtyard almost as big as RhiLan’s apartment. A blue tiled privacy wall bearing the Zul family chop sat in the middle of the courtyard. A stone basin brimming with rain water sat in the corner. If a servant had let her in, he would have offered her a dipper of the water with which to ritually wash her hands in the Thampurian manner. QuiTai, however, felt no need to cleanse herself of anything that might offend lurking ancestral ghosts.
She didn’t give the ornate festoon gate a second glance as she passed through it; she’d seen similar carvings on the red and gold columns of the government building. Her heart broke a little more each time she saw Ponongese boys playing on the steps of the government building as they waited for a Thampurian to hire them to carry shopping or run errands. She always wanted to force them to look at the snakes writhing under the cruel claws of the sea dragons and remind them that they should be angry about the crude depictions of the Ponongese people, but she knew that outrage was a difficult state to maintain. It sapped your heart and soul but did nothing to hurt your enemies or change the future. In the end, all it did was leave you exhausted and frustrated. But she wished they wouldn’t act as if it didn’t matter that they had to see themselves depicted that way everywhere they looked.
And how could she scold them for not caring, when so many times on the stage she’d played the part of the comical servant – rolling her eyes, dressing like a savage, speaking in broken language? She’d refused to go along with it after a while and demanded dignity, but it had always been a battle. It would be the worst hypocrisy to pretend she hadn’t taken such roles.
“It didn�
��t use to be this way,” she wanted to tell the children. “Once upon a time, this island was ours alone. We were a free, sovereign people.” But how could you convince children that such tales were true when you had never seen it either? All she had were her grandmother’s stories; and the next generation would never hear such tales directly from the witnesses.
The main courtyard was beyond the festoon gates. Built by Grandfather Zul when he’d been the first colonial governor of Ponong, the compound had once been a raw, uncouth statement of Thampurian power. Now it was a ghost mansion where jungle vines pushed aside courtyard tiles and deep green ferns sprouted from walls.
A large, stately two-story residential building with a Thampurian roof and architectural details sat on one side of the inner courtyard. Typhoon shutters on the second floor opened onto a veranda, the one nod to Ponongese design. The kitchen was in a separate building at the back of the compound. That’s where she and Kyam had slept when he’d brought her to the compound to hide from Petrof. Perhaps she should have been insulted that he’d kept her in the servants’ quarters rather than allowing her into the family home, but she doubted he’d done it because she was Ponongese. He’d said that there was no furniture to speak of left in the main house, so the servant’s quarters would be more comfortable, and she’d believed him.
Kyam had told her that he rarely went to his family’s compound. She also believed that, although she wasn’t sure why he shunned such a prestigious address with spacious living quarters. He preferred to live in his tiny apartment in a run-down building amongst the Ponongese. It was one of his maddeningly attractive traits.
Because she tried to be honest with herself, even when it made her wince, she admitted that she’d enjoyed most of her adventure with Kyam. It wasn’t often that she had to work so hard to stay ahead of someone in a mental game. He’d forced her to remain sharp, honed, focused. And he’d been rather fun to talk to. Not to mention how easy he had been to look at.
She scowled. Enough of that. On Cay Rhi, they’d agreed to pursue the interests of their own people and parted ways. She assumed he was keeping his end of the bargain, as she intended to keep hers. Unfortunately, that meant that they probably would never work together again. Life being what it was on Levapur, they would probably find themselves at odds. She looked forward to matching wits against him.
A warm smile played across her mouth. She quickly quashed it. This was no time for those kinds of thoughts. She had some serious thinking to do, and now that she’d come to the perfect quiet hideaway in which to mull over the events of the past week without interruption, she wasn’t about to start daydreaming about his hands tugging impatiently at her sarong or his devouring kisses.
~ ~ ~
QuiTai was curious about the interior of the mansion. Did chandeliers of long-faded jellylanterns wait in the darkness like ambush spiders? Did jungle vines slip through the slats of typhoon shutters like moonlight and creep along the walls? Would ghost footprints show on the dusty floors? Or did servants come every week to scrape mushroom ears from the walls and polish the banister in anticipation of a master who might never come?
She lightly pulled on the grand entrance door. It didn’t budge. The doors to the second floor veranda probably weren’t locked, but her Thampurian clothes made climbing impossible. As she’d cautioned Kyam, just because one was curious didn’t mean one had a right to know, so her questions about the mansion would have to remain unanswered.
She turned to the low second building in the compound. The door was slightly open. She couldn’t remember whether she or Kyam had closed it, but despite neglecting the property, he had enough sense to make sure it didn’t become home to a troop of monkeys. Cautiously stepping forward, she tried to keep a cloak of shadow around her.
The scent of hot juam nut oil was faint but grew stronger as she drew closer. Whoever was inside had recently used the cooking fire, although she didn’t smell food. She concentrated on sounds. Under the splatter of rain dropping from the eaves to the courtyard tiles, someone gulped a drink and sighed. From the depth of tone, she was sure it was a man.
Had Kyam somehow guessed that she’d come here? He was smart, but he wasn’t psychic. Maybe he’d followed her. He knew she could pass as Thampurian when she wanted to. But when had he guessed her destination, and how did he know a quicker route?
She should steal away before he knew she was there. It was a long walk through Levapur to her nearest safe house in the jungle, but what was inconvenience compared to safety? She didn’t know that it was Kyam inside. If the man were someone else, matters could get dangerous. But what if it were he?
Her heartbeat throbbed painfully in her throat, and she moved in slow motion to the window and peered through the shutter. The man inside was undoubtedly Thampurian. His shoulders were broad, and even though he sat on one of the low stools beside the cooking fire, from the length of his outstretched legs, he was tall. Unlike Kyam, he wore some sort of uniform jacket, although if it had borne a soldier’s epaulets, the silver threads would have glinted in the low light.
She watched him drink from a nearly empty bottle as he stared into the cooking fire. Like her, he seemed to have something to mull over. She almost hated to interrupt him, but she now had a strong suspicion who he was, and a warm smile had already spread across her face.
She slunk several steps away from the building and then walked toward it again, this time making sure the sole of her boot scrapped across a tile. By her third audible step, she heard him rise with a bit of a groan. He wasn’t the type of man who expected trouble, so he didn’t try to move silently. She lifted her hand to knock on the door, but it slid open.
His eyes widened seconds before his pleased grin. “Lady QuiTai!”
“Captain Hadre Zul.” Relieved, she beamed as she extended both hands to him.
After placing dry kisses on her hands, he backed away from the door and gestured for her to come in. “Have you eaten?” he asked.
“Yes, and you?”
He nodded.
Hadre busied himself with host duties, apologizing profusely for the stool he offered her instead of a proper chair, and placing the kettle over the fire. Once they were settled, he stared at her. “This really is the most unbelievable luck. I was just thinking about you, dear lady. But why are you here?”
She accepted a cup of tea from him after it had brewed. He didn’t seem to notice her hesitation before pretending to take a sip. It smelled like regular tea, but she wouldn’t taste it until she was sure of his intentions.
“I understood from your cousin that this property was infrequently in use, and I had a great desire for a private, quiet place to think,” she said.
“I’m almost sorry that you found me here, then. I came here for the same reason. I can shut the door of my cabin and tell my first mate that I’m not to be bothered, but the watch calls out and the conversations of the crew drift from the main deck through my windows, and that damned bell on my far writer interrupts me with no regard to my train of thought. And I knew that Kyam wouldn’t come here. I have no such guarantee from any public venue in Levapur.”
That comment struck her as odd, but she didn’t think it wise to pry. While she hadn’t sought Hadre, she was glad to have this chance to talk to him. “I’m surprised to see you too, and not just in this unlikely retreat. I was informed that the Golden Barracuda sailed days ago.”
Hadre’s scowl reminded her of Kyam. While Hadre was better at hiding it, it was clear he had a temper to match his cousin’s. “It did.”
She wondered if he’d been removed from command as punishment for his part in the Cay Rhi adventure.
“I’m now captain of the Winged Dragon.”
She had no idea which junk was the Winged Dragon, but the Golden Barracuda was the Zul family flagship, equipped with experimental technology. The Winged Dragon had to be a lesser post. “But still, you have not sailed.”
He glanced away. “The ship is in need of repair.”
&
nbsp; She didn’t doubt that was true, but it seemed he didn’t want her to know something about the circumstances. The more he talked, the better chance she had of figuring it out on her own. People never realized how much information they let slip. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a long acquaintance. There wasn’t much idle gossip she could use to lull him into lowering his defenses. But as she took a deep breath in preparation of launching into the only subject they had in common, he suddenly turned to her.
“What are your feelings for my cousin?”
Shocked, she found her mind suddenly blank. Finally, she managed a coy smile. “That’s rather direct for a Thampurian.”
While her tone was light, he looked as if she’d slammed something sharp across his knuckles. “Forgive me. When you’re on board a ship for months on end with only a male crew, you forget how to treat a lady.”
“Don’t –”
“Ky-ky and I have had a falling out. I’d hoped to find you and ask you to talk to him, but you’re devilishly hard to find. The only people who showed any interest when I mentioned your name were colonial militia, so I stopped asking. But that wasn’t getting me anywhere, until, well, here you are. So could you have a word with my cousin? Maybe he’d listen to you.”
“Surely –”
“He saw me in the Red Happiness and cut me. Spun on his heel and marched out.”
If anyone else had interrupted her like that, she would have made it clear not to dare try it a third time. Hadre was talking to himself more than her, though, and he was clearly worried. Besides, a man who had turned his ship around on her orders deserved every modicum of respect and generosity she could extend to him.
“But you’re going to have to be careful. Much more circumspect than I was,” Hadre said.
What could have come between Kyam and Hadre? She’d only spent a day with them, but they were obviously close. Now, only a week later, they wouldn’t sit in the same room together. They’d exchanged angry words at the Red Happiness, but that fight over their grandfather wasn’t enough to destroy their friendship, was it?
