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

by Braden, Jill

  “The black market price for rice went up this morning. The merchants heard the rumor and started raising their prices. So people are buying more than they need, and the price keeps going up. By noon, it will have doubled.”

  Her fingertips touched her cheek. “Oh my! I hadn’t heard.

  As the man had mentioned, the line behind them grew longer. She wondered if QuiTai might talk the Devil into selling her rice at a little discount.

  “Hey! What’s taking so long?” someone shouted.

  People bumped into her as the back of the line grew restless. She gave up trying to apologize to the woman in front of her. Staying on her feet was enough of a challenge. Someone tried to cut into the queue near the stall, and she heard the shouts and a melee broke out. Pushed forward by the people behind her, she moved closer to the front of the line. The shouting and fighting grew worse. The lady in front of her held a hand to her hat as it nearly fell off. Then suddenly everyone surged forward.

  The merchant tried to protect his merchandise, but people jumped over the table to reach the sacks of rice at the back of the stall. The table was knocked over and the scale hit the ground with a thump. Men grabbed sacks of rice and tried to run off, but others jumped them. Bags split open. Rice spilled onto the wet dirt.

  Ma’am Thun shoved her fist into the gash in a burlap sack and grabbed a handful of rice as a man pushed her aside. She backed away, clutching her fist to her chest.

  A once beautiful and expensive hat sat in a puddle on the ground. She stomped on it quite decisively before rushing away. She heard shouts and the thud of blows landing. Soldiers ran past her into the marketplace. She walked at a fast clip, never looking behind, as she cradled her handful of rice.

  ~ ~ ~

  Levapur had always been a sleepy town. Tonight, it was dead. Few people were out on the streets. Voorus was glad of that. After the small riot – no, Thampurians didn’t riot. After the unfortunate events in the marketplace, he hoped people were reflecting on their actions and hiding their faces in shame.

  He should have smelled dinners cooking and heard the clatter of plates. Someone should have been laughing or scolding their children. If it hadn’t been for the glow of jellylanterns in the windows, he would have thought the town had been deserted. The quiet made his nerves jumpy.

  Although policing the streets technically wasn’t part of his duties as a soldier, Voorus hadn’t minded it until recently. He and his men could keep order when the only troubles were a few drunks in the Quarter of Delights and the occasional domestic squabble. The past few weeks, though, were a reminder that the colony needed a regular police force. Not more soldiers. The soldiers who had recently arrived were causing more problems than they were solving. It was as if they wanted to provoke the Devil’s whore into starting an uprising.

  He’d tried every day to talk to Governor Turyat. No one in the government office would admit they’d seen him. The servant who answered the bell at the governor’s compound wouldn’t allow Voorus through the gate. Chief Justice Cuulon was unreachable too. Something had to be done before matters got out of hand. His only hope was to corner the governor in the Dragon Pearl’s vapor den before the man took his pipe.

  Voorus heard breaking glass. He closed his eyes for a moment as he sighed. Lately it seemed that all he did was run toward bad sounds to find a terrible scene waiting for him. This time his men weren’t with him. It was a Thampurian neighborhood, though, so he hoped to find something simple, like a fire. A fire would be good. People banded together to fight them.

  He rounded the corner. About twelve Thampurians were gathered before a rice merchant’s store. It was hard to count in the dim moonlight. Some people were stepping through the broken windows to grasp bags of rice. The rest menaced a figure on the ground. The fallen man could have been a looter, but Voorus would sort that out after he saved the man’s life.

  He grabbed his baton while his other hand tried to capture the whistle bouncing wildly against his chest as he ran.

  “Disperse! This is the militia! I order you to disperse!”

  Several people ran away with burlap sacks of rice over their shoulders, but the rest stood defiantly as he drew closer.

  He finally got a grip on his whistle. It sounded desperate and panicked, as if giving away his thumping pulse. He hoped some of his men were close enough to hear the shrill summons.

  Steps away from the men, he realized the other seven weren’t going to run like the looters had. From their cruel smiles, they knew he was alone, and they wanted a fight.

  The nearest man looked as if he’d spent a lifetime lifting heavy crates. Voorus wasn’t as muscular, but he’d trained for fights at the military academy. He ran at the man with his baton ready. While the man raised his hands to protect his face, Voorus slammed the baton low against the side of his thigh. As the man collapsed, Voorus gripped the end of the baton and pushed against the man’s knee, then stomped on his ankle. The man screamed as he rolled on the ground.

  Voorus was already on the next man, but he couldn’t work fast enough to take down all seven. He heard running footsteps leading away from the fight, and then someone else tackled him to the ground. He kept swinging as he was forced onto his back. Bile burned his throat as he fought to keep his dinner down when a man landed on his stomach. He bucked until the man tipped forward. Their faces were inches apart. Before one of the other men could pin his arm, he hugged the man on top of him, gripped both ends of his baton, and rolled it hard against the man’s ribs.

  “He’s breaking my back!” the man screamed. “Get him!”

  Voorus almost got enough leverage with his scrambling feet to roll the man off him, but the other men grabbed his legs and arms. He desperately kicked and twisted to get away from them. They grunted as his boots hit soft flesh, but there were just too many of them. A harsh blow on the side of his face stunned him. Pain flamed through his shoulder. The baton wrenched out of his hand. He gripped lips and gouged everything he could with his thumbs.

  “Uh!” One of the attackers slapped his hand to his throat and toppled over.

  “My legs!” a man screamed. “I can’t move my legs!” Then, oddly, he stared at his hand and giggled as he slowly collapsed.

  Voorus threw punches, but his assailants seemed to fall to the ground of their own accord. He sat up. Sharp pains in his back, legs, and arms warned him that his injuries went deeper than bruises.

  He jumped as a hand clutched his arm.

  “Thank you! Thank you for saving me!”

  Voorus finally got a close look at the man who had been at the center of the mob when he rushed in. The man’s huge nose twisted oddly to the side. Two streams of blood dribbled out of it. Mud coated his jacket and pants.

  Voorus drew up his knees and lowered his head to them to stop the spinning in his brain. He knew from his trembling that he was close to going into shock. “What’s going on?”

  “They demanded I sell my rice at yesterday’s price,” the merchant whined. “Then they wouldn’t let anyone come into my store. And they broke my windows!”

  Voorus nodded. This was the first shop he’d heard of being attacked, but one of the merchants in the marketplace had been attacked by a mob too. “Maybe you shouldn’t have been so greedy.”

  “A man’s got a right to make as much profit as he can in times like this.” The merchant rose on his knees then got to his feet. He took two stumbling steps before he yelped and collapsed on the ground.

  Voorus knew he should get up and do something. He knew he should care that the rice merchant had fallen face-first into a puddle and might drown in the murky water, but he couldn’t work up the empathy. He was too dizzy and confused and by now was shaking all over.

  The rice merchant rolled over, but from his limp arms, Voorus knew he hadn’t done it himself. He turned weary eyes to the merchant’s feet.

  A Ponongese man with a neck thicker than his head gripped the rice merchant’s ankles. Several people stood behind him. They looked
like the crew of a Ponongese pirate ship, even though two were women. He saw long timbergrass tubes in their hands and remembered hearing once that the Ponongese hunted with darts dipped in their venom. Their victims should have been paralyzed, but from the happy, vacant smiles of the men on the ground, he suspected black lotus.

  The Ponongese group parted. One of the men solicitously helped a petite Thampurian woman swathed in dark velvet draw nearer. He thought he knew most of the society women in Levapur, but he couldn’t begin to guess who she might be. Clothes that elegant probably cost more than he made in a year. But why would any Thampurian woman surround herself with such dodgy Ponongese escorts; and with Levapur teetering on the edge of chaos, why did the men in her family allow her out of their compound at night?

  Voorus shook his head and instantly regretted it. His head felt as if it might float away from his shoulders. Black and white pinpricks flashed at the side of his vision. He lifted his gaze up the nearing velvet skirt, past the tasseled waist scarf, to the darkness under the fashionable hat.

  Voorus swatted at the sharp prick on his neck and felt the barb lodged in his skin as gloved hands lifted the thick mourning veil to reveal the face under the hat. “I’m dead,” he groaned. But suddenly, it seemed so absurd, so funny that she would be the one to rescue him, that he giggled.

  ~ ~ ~

  Voorus was dragging himself out of a bad vapor dream when an incongruous thunderclap jolted him back to reality. He was in a room. The ceiling was simple lathe and plaster with whitewashed beams, common enough in Levapur and Thampur, but he knew that he’d never seen this particular ceiling before. Rain drummed against the roof and splattered on the ground outside.

  He smelled something warm and homey cooking, though he couldn’t name it. A rough blanket draped over his bare legs and feet, but there was no pillow or sheet on the cot. The leather strips creaked as he rolled on his side. Except for a table beside the bed and a low, three-legged stool such as one would find by a cooking fire, there were no furnishings. The room felt abandoned. There wasn’t even water and a basin to wash the smeared mud from his face. At least there was a white light jellylantern in the wall sconce so he could see.

  He heard voices outside the room, but the rain drowned out any distinct words. One voice was clearly from a man, the other from a woman. QuiTai! He struggled to sit up. That bitch had taken him prisoner. Voorus untangled his legs from the blanket and rose carefully, so the creaking cot wouldn’t give him away. He got to his feet. He wished he had something to hold on to. He tried to control his labored breath so he could listen to the voices. The low murmur continued. He took a step toward the window. Every muscle ached.

  Four more steps took him within reach of the carved window screen. There was no lock on it. She’d obviously expected him to sleep much longer, or she was a poor judge of how to keep a prisoner.

  He gulped. He’d tried to hang her. Had she kept him alive just to execute him? He imagined hundreds of blood-thirsty Ponongese being whipped into a frenzy as a noose tightened around his neck. He’d seen the aftermath in the marketplace when QuiTai had left those werewolves on the steps of the government building like offerings on a heathen altar. What a goddamn mess. He hadn’t been able to sleep for weeks afterwards. The werewolves had been torn to pieces. The worst part, he’d been told, was that the werewolves had been alive when it started.

  Chief Justice Cuulon had told him that QuiTai, and all the Qui clan, were priestesses of a cult that committed human sacrifice. The cult had been all but destroyed when the werewolves killed the clan, but QuiTai escaped, and she’d gotten her revenge against the werewolves. The colonial government could never prove she’d done it, but everyone knew. Immediately after the mob tore apart the werewolves, he and his men had found her at the Red Happiness, deep in vapor dream, and from the smell of the room, it wasn’t her first pipe. The whores all swore she’d been there since the day before, but he’d known they were lying. Why they hadn’t been allowed to arrest her baffled him, but the orders came from Thampur to let her get away with it. The mob might have killed those werewolves, but she’d made it happen, which made her more guilty in his eyes. Mobs didn’t think. She’d planned it out in her cold, monstrous way. Then he’d almost had her, but she’d escaped from the fortress before he could hang her for her crimes. Now, she had him.

  He wondered how long a man could live while a mob ripped his arms and legs from his body. He hoped the heart or brain knew to shut down when the pain got unbearable, but he’d tortured enough prisoners to suspect he couldn’t count on that mercy.

  Voorus opened the window screen. He was on the ground floor – that was a relief. The rain fell so hard beyond the eaves that he couldn’t see far, but he was almost sure he saw a compound wall beyond the silvery veil. He glanced around the room again and realized he was in the servants’ quarters of a kitchen building. That baffled him, but escape was more important than trying to figure out his strange prison.

  He leaned against the wall to rest. He didn’t think he could climb up on the window ledge, even though it was only waist high. Experimentally, he lifted a leg. Beads of sweat dappled his brow as pain shot up his back. As he fought for breath, he realized the voices were closer. Before he could summon the strength to escape, the door opened.

  Captain Hadre Zul ducked as he entered the room.

  “Thank the Goddess of Mercy! Zul!” Voorus cried out. Maybe his men had come right after the black lotus swept him into dream.

  “He’s awake,” Hadre said to someone behind him.

  QuiTai appeared at the doorway. “I don’t suggest trying to leave that way, Captain Voorus. Your boots and trousers are drying in the other room, and running through town half naked is bound to cause talk.”

  Voorus stared at her. “No. You’re working with her?” he asked Hadre. He was going to be sick.

  “Have some manners, Voorus. She saved your life. And for the love of the sea, man, cover yourself.” Hadre’s cheeks were pink.

  Voorus knew he couldn’t climb out the window. Even if he did, he couldn’t outrun Hadre, and who knew where QuiTai’s thugs lurked?

  She stayed in the hallway outside the room, but her gaze never left Voorus. He felt as if his soul were being judged. Then he saw her gaze move down his body. He grabbed the blanket and fashioned it into a sarong. That seemed to amuse her.

  QuiTai finally turned her attention away from Voorus. “Tiuhon tea for the Captain, I think, Hadre. He’s been through an ordeal, and a restorative is called for.”

  To Voorus’ surprise, Hadre nodded and left the room. Outraged, he sneered at QuiTai. “You dare use his first name? You dare order him around? Captain Zul is descended from one of the thirteen families.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I dare a lot of things, Captain Voorus, and by the end of the night, you might be glad I do. Now sit down before you fall. One of your pupils is slightly smaller than the other, which I believe means you suffered a hard knock to the head. We can’t send for the ship’s doctor just yet to tend to your injuries, and you do not want to experience my nursing skills.”

  “You’re not going to kill me?”

  QuiTai’s mouth curved up in that smile he’d always wanted to punch off her face. It was as if she knew something no one else did. “If I wanted you dead, I would have ignored your distress call and let those men finish what they’d started. After all, you can’t hang someone for failing to prevent a murder.”

  She had a point. He hated how her answers always sounded like insults, though. Back on Cay Rhi, he’d been certain several times that she was mocking him.

  The situation thoroughly confused him. A Zul and the Devil’s whore were working together? Maybe he was still in vapor dream. Bright white light flashed through the window screen. Thunder shook the room immediately after. He decided this was real.

  If this was no vapor dream, he had to do something. Next to the Devil, she was the most wanted criminal in Levapur. “In the name of the colonial governmen
t, you’re under arrest, QuiTai.”

  She scratched her ear. “I refuse. Ah, I see that confuses you. Let me put it this way: Play nice. I did. I didn’t have to.”

  Her superior tone did nothing to improve his mood, nor did her reminder that he owed his life to her. Despite the power of her lover, she was nothing more than a whore. He was a Thampurian, and he had to act like one.

  “If you lead a revolt in Levapur, the government will just send more soldiers, and your people will suffer,” he warned her.

  He expected her to be shocked that he’d guessed her plans. He expected her smug face to slowly register defeat. Instead, she nodded gravely, her smile now gone.

  “Exactly, Captain Voorus. That’s why we must talk about the events of the past few weeks, figure out who is behind them, and stop this nonsense before someone gets killed.”

  He jerked back in surprise. Voorus glared at her as he tried to work up suspicion. She couldn’t mean that. Yet he couldn’t convince himself that she was deceiving him. He’d been trained to detect lies during interrogations, and every signal her body and face sent was utterly frank.

  If she was serious, that explained why she hadn’t incited a rebellion. Maybe he’d been wrong about her. He knew she wasn’t liked by many Ponongese in Levapur, but they respected her. They feared her. If one overlooked the fact that she was a common criminal, she was a lot like the men who ran Thampur.

  He had no idea how QuiTai planned to keep the peace, but if anyone could, he believed it would be her. He hoped she had a good plan. He never would have believed he’d look to a Ponongese whore for guidance, but it made as much sense as anything that happened in Levapur.

  He shuffled over to the cot. His thighs flared with pain as he sank onto it. “Start talking.”

  “We will wait for Hadre. This concerns each of us, and we all have important pieces of information to contribute. Together, we will see the bigger picture.”