The Devil Incarnate (The Devil of Ponong series #2) (25 page)

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 government, 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.”

“Is that why you saved me tonight? For my information?”

She perched on the small table. Her hands folded in her lap.
“All my life, I’ve been told that Thampurians are more civilized than the
Ponongese. I thought I’d rejected those teachings, but apparently some of the
poison wormed its way into my brain and affected my thinking. I will not make
the mistake of underestimating Thampurians’ capacity for violence again.”

He had no idea what she was talking about. All he knew was
that she hadn’t answered his question. “Why did you come to my rescue?”

“Because you were horrified by the other soldiers’ attack on
my people in Old Levapur.”

“Who told you that?” Of course she knew what had happened.
The Devil had spies everywhere. For the first time, he was glad the criminals’
network was so well organized. It shamed him that the Thampurians couldn’t make
the same boast.