The Devil's Concubine (The Devil of Ponong series #1) (23 page)

“Two of my friends have died in the past two
days, and all you care about is a red mark on my hand? Heartless Thampurian
bastard.” QuiTai let her knees buckle as she forced more tears to roll down her
cheeks. She bit her knuckles, but her sobs grew louder.

Voorus pushed her into Kyam’s arms. “Beat her
if you have to; just get her to stop that unseemly wailing. The Ravidians might
hear. I have to see to my men.”

Kyam’s eyes were dark with fury as he pulled
her in the opposite direction. “You can cut the act now. Remember, I’ve seen
real grief on your face.”

QuiTai immediately stopped wailing
and batted her eyelashes.

“How did you do it?” Kyam asked.

“Do what?”

He jerked her hard against his body. “Quit
playing the innocent. How did you get a message to him? Was it that woman at
the tavern?”

She wasn’t about to let him know.

“This is going to stop, Lady QuiTai, and it’s
going to stop now. I won’t let you hurt any more soldiers.”

“Ah, you’ve found the mosquito in the dark
room.”

“What did you do to that one back at the
lagoon? Did you...” With two fingers, he made a gesture like fangs in front of
his mouth.

“Heavens no. Just a touch of black lotus. He’ll
have nice dreams and a wicked headache tomorrow.”

Kyam exhaled as he ran his hand over his
hair. “Okay. But no more. Letting those men touch the sea wasp stingers was
cruel.”

“Those men rushed into a trap without
thinking while on a raid. That sort of carelessness could get them killed in
any number of ways. And do I have to remind you that they tried to throw me
into a cell with werewolves last night?”

“Voorus may be slow, but eventually he’ll
figure out what you’re doing.”

She smoothed her sarong and pushed her braid
over her shoulder. “Just as I figured out what he’s doing.”

“He’s securing the compound.”

“No, Mister Zul. He’s securing the production
of sea wasps.”

“You and your words. I swear I’m going to
start calling you Princess Pedantic. What’s the difference?”

“The Ponongese slaves working the tide pools.”

Kyam all but rolled his eyes. “There are no
Ponongese slaves, Lady QuiTai.”

She didn’t care to be spoken to like a dim
child. “I assure you there are, Mister Zul. Otherwise, the village would be
littered with dead. Remember when you told me the Ravidians treat the natives
of their colonies worse than Thampurians do? So trust me when I say that there
are enslaved Ponongese working the tide pools of this plantation, and after the
colonial military secures the compound, they will still be slaves and no one
will ever know.”

From his suspicious look, she thought he
didn’t believe her, but she could see understanding dawning behind his anger.

Kyam ground his teeth. “The government in
Surrayya will put a stop to that.”

“You’ve been read the Secrecy Act, I assume.
Tell anyone back in Surrayya what happened here, including your handlers in the
intelligence service, and the colonial government will execute you. I’ll be
surprised if you still have a farwriter in your apartment when you return, and
good luck boarding a Zul ship without an armed escort in the future. Ask your
cousin Hadre to send a message, and they’ll kill him. So no, I don’t think your
government will put a stop to anything.”

“You could –”

“You really don’t see it, do you? I’m
Ponongese.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

“They’ll never let me off this island alive.
I know too much about the sea wasps, about the harbor master, about the slaves.
You may appreciate my special talents, but to them I’m just another snake.” She
strolled a few steps away from him. Her gaze flicked to his groin then back up
to his eyes as the corner of her mouth curved. “At least I’ll be safe from
Petrof here. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Shaking his head, he mouthed the word ‘no.’

Exploiting his weakness for her was no way to
treat a lover, but it wasn’t the time to play nice or fair. One of them had to
be the villain to play out the rest of this script the way it was meant to
unfold. And that was a role she was born to play, especially for a Thampurian
audience.

She circled him. “Would you like that,
Colonel Zul? Me held captive here, pried away from the Devil’s bed, at your
mercy, in chains?”

Kyam clenched his jaw as he drew in a ragged
breath. His fists clenched. She stood on her tiptoes to whisper into his ear. “Tempting
vision, isn’t it?”

“You have no conscience, do you?”

“Don’t be ashamed of how it stirs you, Kyam.
Many people fantasize about such things. I would relish binding your hands to
your headboard with that silk scarf you bought me.” He closed his eyes and
swallowed hard as her fingernails rasped across the nape of his neck. “I know
that right now, you would very much like to control me. Maybe even make me
beg...”

“QuiTai...” Her name was a plea on his lips. The
fight for control passed over his face like a shadow. He dropped his voice into
a harsh whisper. “Not another one of my men, QuiTai. I’m warning you.”

A mocking smile played across her mouth as
she bowed. Against his better judgment, he would still protect her, because
that was the type of man he was.

“And don’t you dare think of siding with the
Ravidians. Even the king couldn’t save you then.”

“I will never show mercy to anyone who
enslaves my people.” He could interpret that as he wished. “I’ll make you a new
deal. From now on, you concentrate on your people, and I’ll focus on mine. No
more shared rice.”

At that moment, he clearly hated her. “Agreed.”

~ ~ ~

A couple of soldiers drew near them. “Major Voorus says to
move out, in case the Ravidians come to investigate.”

QuiTai studied the
guard tower in the center of the compound. It looked as if it had been hastily
constructed, but ugly aesthetics didn’t change its effectiveness. From that
height, the Ravidian in the tower could send pain and death raining down in a
wide circle, and he obviously had the weapon to do it.

For three men
defending such a large position with no cover and no geographical advantage,
they had an effective set up. She’d assumed they were scientists, but now she
suspected they were military.

“They won’t bother
to come here,” QuiTai said as they returned the main group of soldiers.

“What does that mean?” Kyam asked.

“The Ravidians don’t ever have to leave that
guard tower,” QuiTai said.

She daubed the last fake tears from around
her eyes. “Take another look at PhaNyan’s body. The area surrounding him is
covered in sea wasps, but closer to the wall, there are none.”

Kyam’s eyes opened wide. “They have some
way of propelling the sea wasp stingers all the way from the tower?”

“Nonsense,” Voorus snorted.

“Go stand in that clearing and catch the
Ravidian’s attention. You’ll find out soon enough.” She hoped he would.

“How?” Kyam asked.

“I think the Ravidian in the guard tower is
carrying some sort of propulsion device for a load of stingers. We guessed that
they’d weaponized them. Now we know how,” QuiTai said. She was speaking to
Kyam, but she looked at the soldiers who gathered around her.

“Listen, I know weapons, and I can tell you
that there’s no way that splatter came from that guard tower. They must have
surprised your spy while they walked the perimeter,” Voorus argued.

She squatted and searched across the ground
for stones. As the soldiers watched, she formed a short stack and a tall one.
She squinted as she compared the heights. “The tall stack represents the tower.
The short stack is the compound wall.” She stripped a twig of leaves and rested
the stick on the two piles of stones. Where the twig touched the ground, she
drew an arc. She pointed to the inside of the arc. “No spray.” Then she pointed
outside the line. “Spray.”

The soldiers looked from her model to the
clearing.

“That’s ridiculous. No one can send something
flying that far without a catapult of some type, and there’s barely enough room
for a man to stand up there,” Voorus said. But he squatted beside QuiTai to
look at her stacks of stones. “Unless they’ve developed a weapon we’ve never
seen before.” He looked at QuiTai with a measure of respect she hadn’t
expected.

“We have to rethink the plan for this raid,”
Kyam said. He uncapped a flask and drank from it. The other soldiers leaned
against trees and took out their flasks. One started to hand his to QuiTai, but
Kyam pushed it away. “Don’t take anything she hands you. And from now on, be
very careful about touching her. She’s poison.”

She smiled and shrugged. They would have
tasted the black lotus if she’d added it to their water anyway.

QuiTai wandered away from them and squatted
in the shade. Her inner eyelid slid down to protect her from the swarm of gnats
trying to drink from the corners of her eyes. Ivitch’s bite on her ankle itched
under the gauze wrappings. She tried to scratch it through the bandage.
Blood-tinged pus had seeped from the infected punctures and hardened on the
gauze.

Watching the soldiers gulp down water made
her mouth dry. She searched through the plants with thick stems until she found
one with reservoirs of rain water trapped in its crevices. After picking out
the drowned insects and plant debris, she pressed her face to the stem and
sucked as much of the water as she could reach.

She could see Kyam’s face as he addressed Voorus.
His gaze met hers. She listened as he said, “Assume that it is possible that
the Ravidians have such a weapon. What are our options? I need a good plan, and
I need it now.”

“You need? I think you’ve forgotten your
place, Zul. You’re an observer,” Voorus said.

When he wasn’t using his height and rumbling
voice to intimidate her, QuiTai had to admit that Kyam’s glowering was quite
effective. There was no humor in his eyes now as he faced the major. “Fine.
Then you come up with a plan.”

“Can we go over the wall?” a soldier asked.

“I think those are sea wasp stingers hanging
from the wires. We could clear a section, but if we’re seen, we’ll lose any
advantage we had. Besides, we’d risk one of the men touching a stinger, and we
can’t waste vinegar,” Kyam said.

“We could build a battering ram and smash the
wall, sir.”

Voorus shook his head. “Focus on the
Ravidians, not on destroying the compound.”

Kyam’s eyebrow rose. Maybe now he believed
her that the soldiers had been sent to secure the plantation, not to destroy
it. That didn’t mean he would betray his people though. They were each taking
care of their own now: That was the deal.

~ ~ ~

The new plan was to scout the front of the compound for a
way in. It wasn’t QuiTai’s plan, but she approved of it. What else could they
do? With the back gate bricked over and the walls turned into death traps,
there was only one way in.

The jungle thinned
as they drew closer to the beach. The soldiers moved farther from the compound
wall to keep under cover. Now instead of simply hacking through the growth
blocking their way, they selectively cut leaves and branches and affixed them
to their uniforms with tightly cinched belts. Up close they looked a bit
ridiculous, like the odd crabs that stuck bits of kelp and sea anemones to
their shells, but from a distance, it would be harder for the Ravidians to see
a human shape.

“We need to get a
closer look at the compound. Voorus, QuiTai,” Kyam gestured for them to follow.
Despite Voorus’ fuming, Kyam couldn’t seem to overcome his natural leadership.
How he’d controlled that instinct around her was a mystery to QuiTai.

“She doesn’t need to come along,” Voorus
said.

“She’s Ponongese.”

QuiTai guessed what Kyam was thinking and
nodded. It was refreshing to work with a smart man.

Unfortunately, Voorus needed it spelled out
for him. “So?”

Kyam explained in a patient tone, even though
she saw his jaw muscles clench from the effort. “If the Ravidians see us and
come to investigate, we’ll sacrifice her so that they won’t know Thampurians
are on the island.”

“Oh. Well. Yes. Of course.”

While QuiTai tried to stop her eye roll and
loud sigh, Kyam glanced at her and raised his eyebrows. Even when they were at
odds, they were still in agreement.

Kyam dropped to his hands and knees and
crawled forward. The sandy soil clung to QuiTai’s hands as she followed him.
The machete in her sarong’s waistband clapped against her thigh. By the time
she, Kyam, and Voorus reached the last low growing plants, they were using
their elbows to slither along.

In the water at the end of a small, rocky
beach, a small fishing boat bobbed on the waves.

Two Ravidians stood near the ocean. They held
odd contraptions similar to the one their countryman wielded in the guard
tower. The Ravidians watched thirty or so Ponongese: some children and the rest
adults. Guessing from the size of the village, there were many more she
couldn’t see. They were probably inside the compound.