Tempt the Devil (The Devil of Ponong series #3)

by Jill Braden

  “But what if that doesn’t make them listen?”

  QuiTai gestured for her to calm down even though she didn’t feel as if she were agitated.

  “Do you have a portable farwriter? Good. You may want to keep it with you from now on.”

  “It’s heavy.”

  “Hire someone to carry it for you. That’s the Thampurian way.” QuiTai waved that aside and continued pacing. “Immediately after you’ve reminded someone that you have a writ from the King and they refuse to recognize your authority, get out that farwriter – remember, your conversation with that person is absolutely over, not another word – and send a message to Grandfather Zul. Tell him what you’re trying to do and that this person isn’t complying, so you need them removed from their position immediately. No delays. No discussion. Instant dismissal. It isn’t death, but it will have to do.”

  Just like that? Nashruu’s heart pounded. “What if Grandfather won’t do that for me?”

  “Pack your bags and go home. But if that happens, don’t imagine that you’ve failed. He will have failed when he didn’t back you up.”

  Failure was scary, but not as overwhelming as the idea of following QuiTai’s instructions. “What do I do after Grandfather acts?”

  “Turn to the next man and make the exact same request. If he balks for even a second, tell him that he, too, is dismissed from duty. If you have to force half the garrison to resign, so be it. Eventually one of them will get the message that you have the power, and he will obey you. Be ruthless. Be quick. Don’t give them time to think it over. And don’t reach out to Grandfather too many times. You have to make it clear you wield authority.”

  It was a tempting idea, but Nashruu wasn’t sure she could do it. What if the men ignored her? What if they laughed? “It sounds so simple when you say it.”

  “I understand that every inch of your soul rebels against the idea of behaving that way. You’ve been taught it’s unnatural. Remember, you don’t have to enjoy it to do it well. You can quake in your shoes through the whole thing. But it’s the only way.”

  A forbidden thought crossed Nashruu’s mind. She covered her mouth as she laughed. “Short of murder.”

  QuiTai seemed to find it funny too, and then her smile faded away. “That’s always an option.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Nashruu wondered how to lead their conversation back to Grandfather’s offer. If QuiTai’s life wasn’t enough of an incentive to come work for Grandfather, what could tempt her? She hoped Grandfather knew QuiTai better than he seemed to.

  The sound of the dungeon door opening echoed down the staircase.

  “I’m afraid it’s time for you to leave, Ma’am Zul. Matters are about to get quite intense,” QuiTai said.

  “I’m not done yet.”

  QuiTai’s gaze hadn’t left the stairs. She tensed. “This might be a very good time to run home and gather your farwriter. Bringing Grandfather up to date might not change anything, but it’s worth a try.”

  It sounded as if more than one person was coming. Nashruu gripped the cell bars. Who would it be? QuiTai seemed to already know. Maybe she did speak to the gods.

  “I can save you. Just give me your word,” Nashruu said.

  “I’m not leaving this cell yet. And you need to go. Right now.”

  Nashruu felt like a child sent off to bed just when things got interesting. So much for QuiTai being her mentor.

  Chief Justice Cuulon sauntered down the steps with a jellylantern held high. Colonel Hurust hung back from the pale orb of light surrounding Cuulon, as if he were afraid to be seen.

  “Enough tea and cakes, Ma’am Zul. It’s time for the professionals,” Cuulon said. He reached for her arm.

  “My work here isn’t complete yet. I suggest you wait.” Nashruu heart thudded as she stepped back.

  Colonel Hurust slunk around Cuulon. She yelped when he gripped her waist with far too much familiarity. He dragged her toward the steps. “Why don’t you come with me, Ma’am Zul? You don’t want to be here when Chief Justice Cuulon questions the Devil’s whore. You might faint.”

  “Return to me after you’ve shown her out, Colonel,” Cuulon said.

  It was all very well for QuiTai to say one should demand respect, but they acted as if Nashruu didn’t matter.

  QuiTai moved her fingers as if typing on a farwriter. Her glance shifted to the Colonel.

  There was such focus in QuiTai’s stare that Nashruu feared for the Colonel, although she didn’t understand why. Why wasn’t she afraid for Cuulon? Or for QuiTai, for that matter? Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that she should warn the Colonel. Maybe his affiliation was different from hers at this moment, but he was a Thampurian, someone she understood at a gut level, while QuiTai was something alien and deadly.

  She was sure of it now. QuiTai was coiling to strike. She should warn Colonel Hurust. And yet, she held her tongue.

  Lady QuiTai and I are fighting together against the colonial government. How did she twist me into this?

  Colonel Hurust’s eyes looked like a spooked horse’s, too wide and showing too much white. He moved behind Nashruu. Was he using her as a shield?

  “Chief Justice Cuulon, Colonel Hurust, I warn you that the King himself wants this woman alive. If she dies, so do you.” Nashruu wanted to say so much more, but QuiTai signaled her to stop talking, and she obeyed.

  Chapter 18: Cuulon

  “I wondered when you’d show up, Cuulon,” QuiTai said.

  She mocked him even though she was the one behind bars. He couldn’t wait to see the look in her eyes the moment she realized she was about to die. She’d regret everything. She’d beg for mercy. She’d break. And he’d simply smile down at her.

  “And Colonel Hurust. How very nice to finally meet you. I’ve been waiting all day for this honor,” QuiTai said.

  Offended pride pricked Cuulon’s complacency. Why was she taking notice of the Colonel? He was the most important man in the room. He held her life in his hands. Hurust was no one.

  He hated the way her dark magic still made him want to drop to his knees before her even in this filthy place. He’d make her regret every night she’d sent dreams to torment him. Once she was dead, he’d finally be free.

  A smile played across her mouth as if she read his mind. He remembered those long silences when she’d weighed his soul and found it wanting.

  “Unlock her cell, Colonel,” Cuulon snapped, turning to Hurust. He’d show her he wasn’t afraid.

  “I don’t – Governor Zul took the key.”

  Cuulon looked back at QuiTai and recoiled in shock – somehow, in the second he’d glanced away, she had transformed into the image of a wrathful water demon. Her unbound hair twisted in long locks as if tangled by the shifting tide while she’d floated face down in a lagoon. The thin yellow rings around her oval pupils glowed like candles in her skull. Even though he knew she couldn’t be a demon spirit, fear dropped into his gut and sat there, hard and unyielding.

  “Oh come now, Colonel Hurust. We all know there’s another key. There’s always another key,” QuiTai said.

  The odd way her voice reverberated against the stone walls, as if it came from anywhere but her mouth, made his skin crawl.

  “I left the key in my office,” Hurust said.

  “Then what’s the ring on your belt for?” QuiTai snapped.

  Colonel Hurust flinched.

  Cuulon clasped his hands behind his back and lowered his gaze to the stone floor. It embarrassed him how that tone of voice could make him revert to that stance. He peeked at her. Had she noticed? Why wasn’t she looking at him?

  He stood straight again. He was in charge here. “Get one of your soldiers to fetch the key if it’s not on that ring,” he told Hurust.

  Time was slipping away. That damned fool Kyam Zul might come dashing in here any moment to stop him. Everyone knew Theram Zul had brought a private army to Levapur before the rice riot. No one knew where they’d gone. They might have gone back to Th
ampur, but what if they were lurking in Levapur still? The Zul clan was making a move. He was sure of it. Why else would Mityam Muul have come to Ponong?

  Words seemed stuck in Colonel Hurust’s throat. His gaze flicked to QuiTai again. “My men have vanished.”

  QuiTai clicked her tongue. She shook her head as if confronted by a great sorrow. “Surely not all of them. It would be so careless of you to lose track of them.”

  Hurust rushed to the cell and shook the bars. “Shut up! I know why you’re here.”

  Cuulon looked around the dungeon. Why was it so infernally dark down here? “Where’s the torture chamber? Near your office?”

  “No. Down here.” Colonel Hurust gestured away from the stairs as if the motion exhausted him. He seemed to deflate. He lifted a ring of keys from his belt and put one in the lock. Cuulon shot him a look, but the Colonel’s back was to him as he pulled open the cell door.

  “Was that so difficult?” QuiTai crooned. She slunk across the opening like a cat deciding if it wanted to go outside, and was in no rush to.

  Cuulon took the jellylantern and waded into the darkness even though it gave him the chills to turn his back on her. Was that a door ahead? Hurust must have grabbed QuiTai’s arm and dragged her with him, because the scuff of their shoes seemed to come close on his heels.

  “So it’s torture and a chat? Or just torture? Because you know I didn’t murder Governor Turyat, so I can’t imagine we have much to talk about, Chief Justice,” QuiTai said.

  “You killed him.”

  “You know I didn’t. I enjoyed playing with him too much.”

  He opened the door to the torture chamber. “Bitch snake.”

  “Snake? Oh, I am crushed, Cuulon. You used to call me Ma’am.”

  He prayed Hurust thought she was lying. There were many interesting devices in the chamber to make her stop talking. The spiked iron ball, for instance, would pin her tongue to her chin, and every sound she uttered would drive it deeper into her flesh.

  “Bring her inside, Colonel, and shut the door. We don’t want to be interrupted.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The snake woman walked around the torture chamber as if she were thinking of leasing the place. Colonel Hurust had seen plenty of her people come into this room with their heads held high, but even they’d balked at the board, with its iron cap and the shackles for wrists, ankles, thighs, and shoulders. If they turned away from it, they saw the cruel implements hanging from the iron grid on the wall, and they showed fear. But this one coolly extended a fingertip to a slim metal spike and tested the point.

  So this was the Devil’s whore. Hurust didn’t leave the fortress often, so he hadn’t known her by sight. Everyone talked about her peculiar beauty, but she looked like a half-remembered childhood nightmare to him. The last time she’d been in his prison she’d escaped before he’d even seen her. This time he’d avoided her as best he could, but Cuulon had forced him to come down here. What made the Chief Justice think he had authority over the militia? For too long they’d served the powers in Levapur rather than running the place. He was changing that, but first he had to help Cuulon get rid of her, because she was the symbol of everything wrong and decadent in Levapur.

  She was so calm. Nearly cheerful. Maybe she was drugged, although nothing in her movements or voice seemed as if her senses had been dulled. Could it be that she truly had no fear?

  He drew back from her as her snake’s eyes turned on him. Her lips formed into a cruel vee, the most malevolent smile he’d ever seen. It was ghastly.

  “So many instruments of torture, Colonel. They overwhelm a girl. Kindly point me to the ones with hooks,” she said.

  Wordlessly, he pointed to the far left of the metal grid bolted to the wall. This creature was loose in his fortress. Far more dangerous than werewolves, more crafty than an octopus, as soulless as a drowned corpse. She probably ate livers, or souls.

  “So kind. Thank you. That’s exactly what I was looking for.”

  Hurust jumped when Cuulon slammed shut the heavy door and threw the bolts.

  He was locked inside with her.

  ~ ~ ~

  Nashruu was glad she’d forgone her corset despite Simarn’s scandalized tutting. Even without it, her clothes felt as if they clung too tightly. Her skin felt slick and unclean.

  Colonel Hurust’s secretary made her wait outside his office again, a game she had no time for. She leaned forward in the hard wooden chair until she saw him at his desk. He tried to pretend he couldn’t see her waiting. Another soldier, perched on the edge of his desk, chatted about his lucky evening at a place called the Dragon Pearl. Major Rheagus grew more distracted as she continued to stare at him.

  If only QuiTai had warned her this morning to keep her farwriter with her. Now it was too late. Why did everything in this strange place move as if struggling through knee-high snow? Everything except the clock. It relentlessly moved forward while the militia made her wait in a hard wooden chair in a bare hallway.

  What was Cuulon doing to QuiTai? She shivered as her imagination went to a dark, bloody place. Cuulon obviously hated QuiTai, but why? He’d started it when he’d paid Petrof to kill the Qui. QuiTai hadn’t even known he was behind it until last year. Although, when one thought about it, the reason wasn’t important. All that mattered was the palpable loathing. QuiTai might loom large in the imagination, and her personality certainly filled a room, but her body was a fragile vessel for that power. In his rush to make her suffer, Cuulon could easily go too far.

  Nashruu jumped to her feet and walked into Major Rheagus office. “Chief Justice Cuulon is about to torture Lady QuiTai against my direct orders. Our King wants her alive. I insist you stop him immediately.”

  Major Rheagus clearly wasn’t used to women storming into his office. She could almost read the progression of his thoughts as his face reflected them. He was outraged, but she was the Governor’s wife. Respect for thirees – how that word irritated her – had been drummed into him since birth, so he hated them while probably also believing deep down that she was superior to him. And while she was only a woman, she claimed to speak for the King. Those warring facts put him in a difficult spot.

  He looked at the other soldier. A silent agreement seemed to pass between them. He placed his palms on his desk. “Ma’am Zul…” he said with false reluctance.

  Could she simply kill him?

  Alas, no, but she understood why QuiTai recommended it. Instead, she raised a hand to stop him from saying something that might incite her to pick up the pen beside his inkwell and jab it into his eye.

  “Is your plan is to move as slowly as possible without actually refusing to obey?” she asked.

  He jerked back. The other soldier chuckled warily.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Make your farwriter available at once.”

  Major Rheagus leaned back in his chair. He smirked as he put his boots up on his desk. “No.”

  She rose as she felt heat flood her cheeks. She couldn’t fail, not matter how humiliated she felt.

  The other soldier laughed openly at her now.

  There was nothing wrong with her glove, but she tugged at the wrist while she steadied her nerves. She didn’t like this. If only people would be reasonable – but they wouldn’t, because they always had to show you they were powerful and you were not. They were cruel simply because they could be. She used to cry from the frustration and humiliation, but years of living with Grandfather had wrung every teardrop from her, every foot stomp and outcry. “Your children, your wife, and your parents. Your sisters and brothers, cousins, aunts, and uncles,” she said wearily. She pointed to the other soldier. “Yours too.”

  Of course Major Rheagus was confused. He probably thought she’d gone strange, so he chuckled the way you did when your employer said something a ten-year-old boy would find unsophisticated. “What is that, Ma’am Zul?”

  “The list of people who will die tomorrow at the hands of assassins if you allow Cuulon to murder Lad
y QuiTai.”

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  That was long enough to hold his gaze so he knew she was serious.

  She spun around and walked out of his office. Once you’d made a threat like that, there was nothing left to say. She forced herself to walk slowly even though she wanted to run. As QuiTai had predicted, she was shaking in her boots.

  Her pulse drummed as she strained to hear what might be happening behind her. Would Major Rheagus call out for her to stop? Would he yield? She didn’t think so, but she hoped, right until the moment the fortress gates slammed shut behind her, that they would take her seriously. Then she was out in the sunshine. The mist from a wave was light on her skin, and only the gulls heard her cry out her frustration into the wind. The families would have to die. Once you made a threat like that, you had to go through with it, or you were forever lost.

  Chapter 19: PhaSun

  “Governor Zul, why are you in my office again?” Lizzriat asked.

  “Because, honestly, I don’t know where to go anymore.”

  “I told you. The Red Happiness.”

  Kyam sat down in a wood chair. “I didn’t learn anything there.”

  Lizzriat rolled a kur and lit it. He didn’t offer it to Kyam. “QuiTai swears you’re smarter than this, but I don’t see it.”

  “You talk about me?”

  A puff of exhaled smoke rose toward the draped fabric on the ceiling. “Don’t be flattered. It wasn’t that kind of conversation. We were talking about your mistakes in governing this town and which one of us should be the unlucky one to pull you aside for a chat.”

  They had no idea how hard it was to push the clerks and department heads in the government building to do anything. It wasn’t fair to judge his efforts by his results. That was yet another reason why he’d never miss this stupid town.