The Devil Incarnate (The Devil of Ponong series #2) (3 page)

If Voorus was drunk, at least he wasn’t belligerent. Looking
sad now, he nodded and rose. He didn’t finish his drink.

Any illusion that
they were in Surrayya disappeared as Kyam walked outside into a wall of suffocating
heat and humidity. Everywhere he looked, the jungle encroached on Levapur, from
ferns sprouting out of cracks in the turquoise stucco to the colony of bats
huddled under the canopy of the mango tree to the vine cascading over the roof
of the rice merchant’s shop.

Voorus walked down the steps from the veranda with a loose,
unsteady gait that for a moment made him seem all knees and elbows. Mud
splashed on his boot when he stepped into a puddle. “Damn this infernal
island,” he said, without any anger.

The heat of loathing usually burned out after the first year
in Levapur. It took too much energy to keep it going. The weather sapped a man’s
vigor like a mosquito feasting on his blood. After a while, defeat and drink
seemed more practical. It was amazing that more Thampurians in Levapur didn’t
escape into vapor dream.

Raindrops that
shredded umbrellas and stung like sea wasps had pelted the town all day. Now
that it was only intermittent drizzle, people rushed to finish their errands
before the shops closed. Kyam was glad to see so many people. Maybe the crowds
would make Voorus think twice about talking about whatever it was that bothered
him.

It didn’t.

“It isn’t right. I don’t care about our orders. I was sworn
in to defend the king and our way of life. Don’t get me wrong, Zul. I hate
these damn snakes. But we should be teaching them how to be civilized, and that
means upholding our own laws.”

Kyam gestured for Voorus to keep his voice down. They were in
a Thampurian neighborhood, but there were plenty of Ponongese around, and they
hated being called snakes. Not that they could do much about it, but the past
few weeks, even before the Ravidian situation, he’d felt something different
about the mood in Levapur and didn’t think it was wise to provoke the Ponongese.
He couldn’t put it in words, but it was as if tension coiled under the surface
of the sleepy town. So many times he’d tried to convince himself that it was
his imagination, but QuiTai had admitted she sensed it too. He had reason to
trust her ability to foresee trouble.

If only he could talk to her! Now that he knew he was stuck
on Ponong for a bit longer, he couldn’t dismiss his foreboding as someone else’s
problem. Somehow, he knew that he was going to get caught up in it. Maybe
QuiTai, with all her cunning, could see a way to steer him through it
unscathed. If he screwed up, he’d never be allowed to return to Thampur. Maybe
this was why Grandfather wanted him here. The old man had a way of seeing
ahead, just like QuiTai.

Kyam realized Voorus expected him to say something. “Levapur
has always been lawless, Voorus. That’s part of its charm.”

“Charm.” Voorus spat into the stream trickling down a rut in
the middle of the street.

As they reached the
next alleyway, Voorus grabbed Kyam’s elbow and looked around them so
dramatically that people naturally paid more attention to him. He yanked Kyam
behind a staircase.

“My soldiers are back.
You know which ones. The men who went missing,” Voorus whispered.

Kyam’s chest
tightened.

Voorus would never
have survived in Intelligence. He didn’t understand the meaning of the word
coy. It was obvious to Kyam that he meant the soldiers who’d chased QuiTai and
the slaves when they’d escaped from Cay Rhi.

“Did they catch the
people who ran?”

Voorus pulled away. “Can
I trust you?”

Here was the moment he’d been dreading since Voorus sat next
to him in the tavern. “Probably not.” When Voorus scowled at him, he softened
his answer with a slight smile. “You’re military; I’m intelligence.”

The little joke was a mistake. Voorus seemed even more
determined to unload his thoughts on Kyam. He plucked at Kyam’s sleeve like a
child wanting attention while he whispered, “My men realized they were in enemy
territory, so they gave up the search. It took them a couple days to find their
way back to civilization – if you can call this town civilized.” He took
a deep breath. “Some of the militia think the snakes should be held captive,
but some of us... It’s wrong, Zul. Wrong.”

Shocked, Kyam stared
at Voorus. Fear seemed to have sobered the man. Could it be that Voorus had a
sense of moral right and wrong after all? He was ashamed that he’d thought so
poorly of him. “Have you told anyone what they did?”

Voorus looked at him
as if he had gone insane. “They’d hang my men.”

“Then why, for the
love of deep water, did you tell me?”

“Because I think you knew what the Devil’s whore planned to
do, and you let her. I think you agree with me. I think you’re a real patriot
too.”

Kyam searched Voorus’ face for any hint of cunning. He
realized that Voorus was looking at him for the same sign. Trust was an awful
lot to ask. On Cay Rhi they’d had each other’s backs, but that was against the
Ravidians. Now it was Thampurian against Thampurian.

Which was the real treason? Refusing to follow orders, or
betraying the principles you’d sworn to uphold? Kyam saw that Voorus knew the
right answer, but was he willing to put his life on the line for that
principle? He obviously wanted to know the same thing about Kyam. As if he
could spend all night waiting in the stinking alleyway for an answer, Voorus’
pleading gaze never left Kyam’s face.

One of them had to break the silence. Since Voorus was the one
who wanted to talk, he did. “I know that you hate her, Zul, so the way I figure
it, you feel the same way I do about the slaves. Otherwise, you would have let
us take the Devil’s whore captive on Cay Rhi.”

Kyam had to be careful. As Voorus pointed out, theirs were
treasonous acts, if only by failure to act. A man in trouble might turn over
anyone to save his own neck.

 
“So she and the
escaped slaves are somewhere on this island,” Kyam said slowly to buy himself
time to think. If Voorus was telling the truth, QuiTai had eluded the soldiers
and gotten away. A burden lifted from his soul. He’d known he was worried about
her fate, but he hadn’t realized how tightly his nerves had been knotted as he’d
awaited news. If only she’d sent him some sign. But where the slaves only had
to dodge the soldiers, there was more danger lurking in the jungle for her.
Maybe her luck ran out. She couldn’t outsmart everyone forever.

“You know what worries me?” Voorus asked.

Dear Goddess of Mercy, there was more? Wasn’t the threat of
death enough? “What?”

“The Devil’s whore has three days’ head start on us.”

Kyam had no idea where Voorus’ thoughts were headed.

“Why hasn’t she done anything?” Voorus asked.

Kyam’s brow furrowed. “What do you expect her to do?”

Voorus shrugged. “You know her reputation as well as I do. She’s
capable of any brutality. We know she has separatist sympathies.
 
And think about this – there are
only about eighteen hundred Thampurians on this island, and that’s if you count
the plantation owners. There are thousands of Ponongese, and they hate us. You
can see it in their eyes. They’re just waiting for any excuse to slaughter us,
and she has that excuse, Zul. We gave it to her! For all we know, she’s touring
the island with those escaped slaves and whipping the Ponongese in the remote
villages and outer islands into an army. We know how bloodthirsty these savages
are. They tore those werewolves apart with their bare hands on the steps of the
government building for their part in the Full Moon massacre.” He nodded
sharply. “Think on that.”

Kyam’s stomach lurched. He hadn’t been in Levapur when that
had happened, but QuiTai’s description of the carnage had been enough. And he
knew how casually she reacted to death, how ruthless she could be, and how much
she hated Thampurian rule of her home.

“You should have let me throw her into that cell with the werewolves
when I had the chance,” Voorus said.

He was surprised no one had demanded an explanation about
that from him yet. At least he’d had time to work on a good excuse. “She alone knew
where to find the Ravidians. I needed her alive.”

Voorus nodded. “Well, obviously. I didn’t think you’d let
her go without a damned good reason.”

Hopefully, if anyone
else asked, they’d accept his explanation as easily as Voorus had.

Voorus grasped Kyam’s sleeve tighter and pulled him back out
onto the road. People picked their way across puddles in the street. The
Ponongese boys toting their packages waded right through the muck.

Voorus seemed headed somewhere in particular, but if he
wanted to go to the fortress, they’d turned the wrong way. “It would have been
better if my men had killed them all – the slaves and her. Then we
wouldn’t be in this mess. The slaves aren’t the problem. They let themselves be
put in chains, after all. No leadership there. No spirit. Typical Ponongese.
But her... She’s dangerous. You can see that crafty native cunning in her
shifty eyes. Thankfully, Petrof is still out there, waiting for his chance. Once
he kills her, we’re safe.”

 
Now Kyam really
wished he could talk to QuiTai, but he wasn’t helpless on his own. He was a
spy, a colonel in the Intelligence community. Some people whispered that he’d
risen to his rank through connection, but he knew how hard he’d worked to earn
his position. He could figure this out without QuiTai. He was smart. He knew
how to investigate. If only he were as quick to see the bigger picture as
QuiTai was. He had a bad feeling that lag might be the difference between
weathering the coming storm and falling victim to it.

His mouth was dry as
he asked the terrible question that hovered over the moment. “What makes you
think Petrof hasn’t killed her already?”

“He would have collected his reward by now. They haven’t
said anything about that.”

Someone paid Petrof to kill QuiTai? He realized he was just
seeing the clouds when the typhoon was almost on them. “Who are ‘they’?” Kyam
asked.

Voorus stopped at a yellow apartment building on the edge of
the Thampurian neighborhood. It was in much better repair than the one Kyam
lived in. “Like I said, slavery is wrong, and no amount of justification from
my superiors will make me betray the basic tenants of Thampurian law, but I’ll
be damned if I’ll stand by and let these snakes slaughter every last Thampurian
on this island. I guess it’s a good thing that troop of soldiers came from
Thampur on your grandfather’s boat. We’re going to need their numbers.” He searched
through his pockets. “If I were you, Zul, I’d sleep armed, and I’d move out of
that apartment of yours. That place is crawling with snakes. Meanwhile, the Zul
compound across town sits empty.” He found his key in the breast pocket of his
uniform jacket. “I never could figure your motive; unless you’re collecting
intelligence on them. But do you have to live among them to do that? Hell, I’d
move back into the barracks if those new soldiers hadn’t taken over every spare
bed in the fortress. It might be damp and the cots are lumpy, but at least I’d
have a couple feet of stone between me and the snakes when the slaughter
begins.”

QuiTai
resisted licking
her cracked lips as long as she could. When her skin
didn’t burn, chills wracked her body, but she didn’t have time to be ill. There
were no rumors yet that the soldiers who had chased her and the escaped slaves
from Cay Rhi had returned to Levapur, but they could at any moment, and then
the hunt for her and the slaves would begin again.

Earlier in the evening, she’d slipped into the Dragon
Pearl’s second-story vapor den. The Dragon Pearl’s owner, Lizzriat, wouldn’t allow
a Ponongese past her front door, but QuiTai hadn’t needed a front door, or
stairs, to get inside. She’d climbed onto the veranda but stayed outside in the
deeper shadows around the back of the building. It was unlikely that anyone
would come outside, even though the veranda was covered. There was an apartment
building across the way, but the carved wood shutters were closed tight against
the rain, and from the darkness behind them she guessed the interior shutters
were closed too.

The rain had been falling all day, but the drops now were
like lead fishing weights that pummeled the roof. The faint green light from
the jellylanterns inside the den was no match for the fading twilight.

On the street below, people waded through the rising muddy
water coursing downslope, their expressions shifting between resignation and
impatience, while the addicts headed for the Dragon Pearl were seemingly
oblivious to the deluge. They made no attempt to stay dry. They probably hadn’t
eaten dinner, because the need for vapor was always stronger than any other
hunger. They would pass by the gambling tables on the first floor and walk up
the stairs. Some would sprint.

QuiTai peered between the slats of the typhoon shutters to
watch the shadowy outlines of customers enter the den. They took delicate pipes
from velvet-lined cases and jostled for their turn to cook the black lotus over
the small spirit lamps. As the tar melted, they climbed on the raised platform
along the wall and sucked the vapor into their lungs. One by one, they slipped
into dream. Some would be lost to the vapor for hours; the heavily addicted
would rise for another pipe sooner.

QuiTai opened the shutters and crept into the den. The reek
of black lotus hung in the stuffy air. Pipes cluttered the tables around the
still burning oil lamps. Overhead, ceiling fans churned sluggishly in the heat
as if they knew their efforts were wasted.