The Devil Incarnate (The Devil of Ponong series #2) (15 page)

“He seemed to know. He approved!”

“Everyone knows,” QuiTai said. She pointed to a place on
RhiLiet’s page and told him, “That letter is a dragon scale. There’s a little
point at the tip. Yes, like that.”

RhiLan felt as if she’d been dismissed. “I didn’t know! Why
do you corrupt such a good thing?”

QuiTai made a face as if she were reluctant to speak. “I
grew up in Old Levapur. My mother had the foresight to send me to Ma’am Thun’s
school even though it meant going to bed hungry many nights. Other parents in
the slums wanted to send their children but couldn’t afford to. I taught what I
could to the ones who were interested, but teaching requires a mindset I don’t
possess. Once I was in a position to pay tuition for others, I did, much to the
relief of those I tried to teach.”

“See?” RhiHanya said.

“But she gets her money from the Devil.” RhiLan gasped. “I’m
sorry, Wolf Slayer. No offense.”

QuiTai inclined her
head. “None taken, auntie,” she said even though RhiLan was certain her
frighteningly serene guest was irked.

If you are what becomes of a child with a
Thampurian education, perhaps my children are better off out of school
, RhiLan thought. She immediately regretted
feeling that way. The Wolf Slayer had done nothing to her to deserve such a
waspish sting.

“So what do you plan
to do about this?” RhiHanya asked QuiTai.

“About what?” QuiTai
asked.

RhiHanya paced the apartment with that roll to her hips that
warned RhiLan that her cousin was spoiling for a fight. She’d been foolish
enough to insult the Wolf Slayer, but she had an excuse. Her cousin was a fool
to continue prodding her to argue when she was already angry. While RhiHanya
was much curvier, QuiTai looked like the type who would strike fast, and
fatally.

“Your school being closed,” RhiHanya said to QuiTai.

“It isn’t my school.”

“Uh huh.” RhiHanya’s head bobbed with attitude.

RhiLan felt pressed from all directions. The Thampurians,
her overbearing cousin, the Wolf Slayer, and now even the Devil seemed to have
staked out territory in her mind so that she could barely think without bumping
against one of them. If only there was a polite way to get the Wolf Slayer to
move out. And then her cousin.

“Maybe I should go to the market,” RhiLan murmured.

RhiHanya turned on her. “At least you can leave this
apartment. We’re stuck here. Right, auntie QuiTai?”

Rather than answer,
QuiTai gently combed through RhiTeek’s waist length black hair. “One day, when
you are fertile, you will wear your hair in a braid like your mother and
cousin,” she told the girl.

“Can I have a clip
like yours?” RhiTeek asked.

QuiTai smiled down
at the girl but said nothing. RhiLan didn’t want any more of QuiTai’s charity.

“Only I want an
orange one. Green is ugly,” RhiTeek said.

“RhiTeek!” RhiLan
was mortified. It was bad enough to say such a thing to an ordinary guest, but
to this one, who sat coiled around her daughter, it was alarming.

 
QuiTai chuckled. “Orange is a good
color. It says that you’re happy and strong, like the sun.”

“What does green mean?” RhiTeek asked.

RhiLan sucked in a breath between clenched teeth.

Brow furrowed, QuiTai finally said, “It means I like green.”

“Oh.” RhiTeek shrugged and bent over her letters again.

RhiLan exhaled in relief.

“It means she’s dangerous,” her middle boy said. He looked
at QuiTai for only a moment with his solemn eyes. It was the first words he’d
spoken in her presence.

“Are you dangerous?” her eldest boy RhiLiet asked, suddenly
much more interested in QuiTai than he had been.

“Yes,” QuiTai answered RhiLiet in her unnervingly flat tone
that made one wonder what she might be thinking.

“Stop it this instant! Have you no manners? Wolf Slayer,
forgive them,” RhiLan said. Her heart raced. She didn’t think QuiTai would harm
her children, but she swept over to the table and yanked RhiTeek out of
QuiTai’s lap. She grabbed RhiLiet by his hair, since he had been the rudest,
and dragged him to his feet. He twisted and turned under her grasp, his chubby
cheeks flushing bright pink as he yowled. “We’re going to the market,
children.”

QuiTai rose. “If I may impose, RhiLan, could you do me a
favor?” She grabbed a few coins from the purse that hung always from her waist.
“Buy a few things.”

RhiLan wanted to say
no, to ask this woman to go away, but she was beginning to fear QuiTai, so she
took the coins. “What do you need?”

“Anything. Not food,
though. From what you said, no one is willing to spend money. Someone has to be
the first. If they see you willing to spend money on something you don’t need
to survive, it will have a greater impact.”

“Can I have a hair
clip?” RhiTeek asked.

“Not for several
years, little sister,” QuiTai told her.

RhiLan bristled at
QuiTai’s nerve. “Many, many years,” she said. “And definitely not until you
show better manners to our guests.” She glared at her boys. “And that goes for
you two. No sweets.”

RhiLiet was still
pleading his case when they left, but his younger brother said nothing.

~ ~ ~

RhiHanya chatted as she bent over the sarong on RhiLan’s
frame to pick off the ruined wax designs. “My cousin doesn’t have the
temperament for an adventure.”

If only she could have
gone with them. I need quiet time to think.

QuiTai couldn’t figure out what to do with herself. She
could recline on the divan and pretend to sleep, but her mind would still be
wide awake and frantic for activity. Every letter and newspaper LiHoun brought
her had been read so many times she could almost recite them from memory. She
crossed the room and opened a typhoon shutter.

“You are not going out on that veranda in daylight,”
RhiHanya said. Her fist was on her hip.

“I’m bored.”

“You and me. So liven my afternoon by taking a step outside.
Go on.”

They’d both feel so much better if they could get out of the
apartment, or distract themselves from the heat and relentless boredom somehow.
Unfortunately, sex was out of the question. Or was it? She saw RhiHanya’s
scowl. Angry sex could be fun.

But you couldn’t get away afterward, could
you? Better not entertain that thought much longer.

“I wish LiHoun would stop by.”

“That’s fine for you, talking in those cat-words so I can’t
join the conversation. That’s rude, you know.”

RhiHanya definitely wanted a fight. QuiTai was in no mood to
help her, so she bowed her head. “I’m sorry. It is.”

QuiTai looked around
the apartment. There was nothing new to see. By now, she knew every inch of the
room, every item in it, and far too much about the people who lived there. If
she’d had any skill with a needle, she would have searched their mosquito nets
for holes and repaired them. Her gaze alit on the double boiler RhiLan used to
melt the wax for her batik work. Steam still curled over the pot.

She went to the
cooking fire and put the kettle over the fire. Then she opened each of the
drawers in RhiLan’s spice cabinet.

“You’re making
yourself tiuhon tea, right?” RhiHanya asked. The edge was still in her voice.

Irritation prickled QuiTai’s temper like a heat rash. It
took every ounce of control to keep it out of her voice. “My fever already
broke.”

“So?”

QuiTai growled. “Oh, all right. I’ll make tiuhon tea. But if
I have to drink it, so do you.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Neither am I.” She took a deep breath. She would not be
dragged into a fight, especially not one as stupid as this.

RhiHanya seemed to have reached the same conclusion. “If
that’s what it takes to get you to drink it, then go ahead and make a cup for
me too.”

The plot that formed
in QuiTai’s brain wasn’t one of those that hit with the full force of clarity.
This one was far stealthier. It crept up on her as she waited for the water to
boil. Instead of seeing a whole plan, she only saw the first step. Tiuhon tea
was bitter and strong enough to hide other flavors. She glanced at RhiHanya,
who was still picking at the wax on the sarong. Then she slid open the drawer
with the black lotus and palmed the vial.

Minutes later, she
handed RhiHanya a scalding cup of tiuhon tea and settled on the divan with her
own cup. They chatted idly about inconsequential matters, each trying hard to
be polite when they wanted nothing more than to snap and make snide remarks.

RhiHanya’s thoughts tailed off, unfinished. She yawned
loudly. “Sorry.”

QuiTai reclined on her elbow and closed her eyes to slits as
if she, too, were drowsy. Thunder rattled the typhoon shutters. Rain sprayed
down moments later.

RhiHanya yawned so hard that tears fell from the corners of
her tightly closed eyes. “I can’t think why I’m suddenly so tired.” She pulled
a sleeping mat off the pile in the corner and stretched out on the floor.
Before long, her breaths turned to a deep, even rhythm.

“And that’s why I rarely accept a drink from anyone,” QuiTai
told RhiHanya as she sat upright, her eyes fully open.

The final stages of
her plan had come to her as she watched RhiHanya drink the bitter tea. She set
aside her cup and limped across the apartment to the spice drawers. No one
would notice the daub of black lotus missing from the vial that she placed back
exactly where she’d found it.

She went to RhiHanya
and knelt beside her head.

“I’m not a nice
woman.” That didn’t explain why she’d laced the drink with black lotus.
RhiHanya wouldn’t hear her, but she still felt as if she owed, if not an
apology, at least a reason. “I can’t sit here and do nothing for days on end. I
need information. I need a conduit to the Oracle. And you were foolish enough
to trust me.”

She pressed her lips
to RhiHanya’s and milked a drop of her venom into her mouth.

~ ~ ~

QuiTai saw
RhiHanya’s pillow sister and fleeting glimpses of the Ravidians taking the
villagers captive. But the majority of the Oracle’s vision was about the escape
from Cay Rhi.

Show me the future, Goddess.

The scene shifted,
but not to the future. She saw LiHoun talking with her on the apartment
veranda, although this time they spoke in Ponongese, and they discussed a plan
to free the slaves.

QuiTai sat back on her heels. That was wrong. They’d spoken
Li. Besides, the plan was deeply flawed. Only an idiot would attempt something
like that.

Why are your visions
wrong, Goddess? You’re never wrong. And why don’t you speak?

She was seeing RhiHanya’s dreams, not memories. That
explained the difference between what she knew to be true and what she was
seeing. She pushed those aside and dug deeper into RhiHanya’s mind. A flood of
memory came to her, but it was only about RhiHanya’s life on Cay Rhi. There was
nothing about the men who had paid Petrof to kill her. Once again, the Goddess
failed. It was an unprecedented string of failures.

This would take a great deal of thought.

The visions she saw were usually of past events. These came
through the conduit and were always from the conduit’s perspective. From their
memories. She’d seen plenty of her conduit’s memories, first from the vapor
addicts and now RhiHanya.

Of course. That’s what the Oracle is really for –
searching their minds for guilt or innocence. They can’t hide their memories
from her. The way I use her is wrong, which is why she’s punishing me.

Her thoughts turned
to years ago, when her mother and grandmother had trained her in the Oracle’s
ways. It had been years since she’d taken part in a true Qui ceremony. The
Thampurians had been quick to ban the Qui’s practices when they took over the
island. They called it human sacrifice. To be fair to the Thampurians, it was.

How could she ever forget that innocent woman who died at
the hands of the Qui? Guilty people she didn’t care about, but killing an
innocent was just murder, no matter how convinced you were that you had the
right to do it.

That woman, the one accused of murdering her neighbor. She’d
denied it even as they forced the red tar’s smoke into her nose and mouth. My
mother lifted me so I could add my venom to hers and Grandmother’s. The Oracle
showed us the woman’s innocence and grandmother proclaimed it as the woman’s
heart slowed. But then a strange thing happened. All her memories linked
together like parts of a story, and I knew who had killed the neighbor. The
Oracle spoke, but no one heard what she told me.

For years I wondered about that, until a few
days ago in the Dragon Pearl when Lizzriat said she heard nothing from that
Thampurian when I did. It’s obvious now. The Oracle doesn’t actually speak from
the mouth of the conduit. I hear her in my head. That’s why Mother and
Grandmother didn’t hear the Oracle proclaim the name of the real killer.

But why didn’t that woman tell her accusers
everything she knew? It would have saved her. She knew who killed her neighbor.
She had it all locked in her memories.

Unless the woman
didn’t know what those memories meant. She couldn’t see the big picture.

Hand over her mouth,
QuiTai’s eyes widened. She’d never had such a terrible thought before.

No. This is sacrilege.