by Jill Braden
The Devil’s Concubine
Copyright © 2013 by Jill Braden
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
Published in the United States by Wayzgoose Press.
Edited by Dorothy E. Zemach.
Maps by Will Mitchell.
Cover design by DJ Rogers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Advance Reading Copy
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The Devil’s Concubine
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Jill Braden
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Table of Contents
Maps of The Sea of Eryokli and the Island of Ponong
Chapter 1: QuiTai
Chapter 2: The Red Happiness
Chapter 3: A Proposition
Chapter 4: Death of a Vapor Addict
Chapter 5: Jezereet
Chapter 6: An Unlikely Alliance
Chapter 7: Tracking the Ravidians
Chapter 8: A Narrow Escape
Chapter 9: The Harbor Master
Chapter 10: Betrayal
Chapter 11: The Fortress
Chapter 12: The Golden Barracuda
Chapter 13: A Vision
Chapter 14: Race to Cay Rhi
Chapter 15: Enter the Military
Chapter 16: The Tide Pools
Chapter 17: Escape from the Island
Chapter 18: Petrof
Chapter 19: The Devil
Preview of The Devil Incarnate
Maps of The Sea of Eryokli and the Island of Ponong
~ ~ ~
Chapter 1: QuiTai
Like a school of jewel-toned tropical fish on the reef, the crowd in the marketplace suddenly veered away as QuiTai stepped off the veranda of the sunset-pink building into the town square. They cringed back as she sauntered through the stalls, as if instead of her bright green sarong she were clothed in poison. She’d decided long ago it was their guilt that made them unable to meet her gaze, not judgment. The Devil’s concubine had nothing to be ashamed of.
Further inland, the remains of Typhoon DirAmat still hung heavily in the air, but here the cooling breeze off the Sea of Erykoli tousled the prayer flags strung over of the market stalls. The sing-song voices of Ponongese women who balanced wide baskets of wares on their head rose above the din in a familiar chorus of “Mangos! Roasted jikal roots!” The scent of hot oil wafting from a tamtuk stand made QuiTai’s stomach growl.
A big hand clamped onto QuiTai’s shoulder. She knew from the chipped fingernails and hairy knuckles it was Casmir. Her nose wrinkled. She tried to shove his hand away, but his fingers dug into her collar bone.
“The Devil wants you,” Casmir said.
She turned her head to look up at him. She glanced at his hand and then raised her gaze slowly to his face again. He let go of her.
Casmir could have been chipped from the granite Alps of his homeland by a sculptor inspired by the mythic heroes. Like his face, his voice seemed to have been cut from rock. Most of the werewolves in the Devil’s pack had a brooding, wild man allure, but few had Casmir’s extra spark of malevolence. His homespun shirt pulled tight over his muscles. Sweat stains darkened his collar. Hairy barbarians from the northernmost realm of the continent, the werewolves had never adapted to the humid heat of Ponong.
Ivitch, a taller, younger man with sparse facial hair and no chin, slunk into QuiTai’s sight. When Ivitch had come to the island with the Devil, the bloom of youth had still been on his cheeks. Now he was old enough to have the beginnings of a moustache, but the wisps did not cover his mouth, which often hung open. Even with his facial hair filled in like the rest of the Devil’s werewolves, QuiTai didn’t think he’d look any smarter. The stupidity reached all the way up to his eyes. She had to keep reminding herself that even stupid people could cause a hell of a lot of trouble when they wanted to, and Ivitch always did.
Although they were Rujicks, in Levapur the Devil’s men were known only as werewolves. While few people on Ponong could point to Rujick on a map of the continent, they knew exactly what a werewolf was and why it should be feared. That suited the Devil just fine.
The hairs on QuiTai’s arms rose as a low growl rumbled from Ivitch’s chest. She scanned the crowd around them for signs of trouble, but saw nothing that might have angered him.
“Snake eyes make my skin crawl,” Ivitch muttered.
The Ponongeses’ vertical pupils, surrounded by thin bands of bright yellow, often startled visitors to the islands, but the werewolves should have been used to them by now. And Ivitch should have known better than to call her people snakes. She let her inner eyelid lower. The bright colors of the marketplace dimmed as her vision clouded.
Ivitch shuddered and looked away.
A satisfied smile curved the corners of her mouth.
“You heard me. The Devil says to come. Now,” Casmir ordered.
QuiTai flicked her long, black braid over her narrow shoulder and headed for the nearest tamtuk stand. Even though Ivitch and Casmir growled, she bought one of the fried dough balls. As her teeth cracked the golden crust, spicy steam curled up to her nose. She strolled through the spice merchants’ stalls below the stairs of the Thampurian government building while she savored the pork and rice stuffing.
The Devil – she rarely allowed herself to think of his real name in public – would be furious that she’d kept him waiting. While she knew she should have immediately returned to his den with Casmir and Ivitch, something gave her pause. This close to a full moon, she and the Devil didn’t usually talk. Why did he want to see her? The question paced fretfully on the edge of her thoughts like a hungry street cur.
As she licked the last salty crumb of tamtuk from her fingers, she headed for the jellylantern merchant’s stall. The light in the Devil’s den had grown so dim in the past few weeks that she could barely see inside, which was perhaps more of a blessing than a curse, but nonetheless someone had to buy them. She lifted a jellylantern to inspect the tiny bioluminescent medusozoa floating in the glass tube. She turned it to the light and gave the tube a gentle flick. A few dead creatures settled to the bottom. The delicate, transparent bodies of the live ones glowed faint green.
“The price went up again?” she asked the merchant.
Color rose in his cheeks and he lowered his chin so that he seemed to answer his rounded belly instead of her. “It’s typhoon season. Shipping rates always go up.”
“Ridiculous, considering we raise the medusozoa right here on Ponong.”
The merchant said nothing. He’d probably had this argument with too many customers. It wasn’t his fault the occupying Thampurian government had made it illegal to sell the harvest to anyone but the Thampurian-owned medusozoa monopoly. It wasn’t his fault that half the harvest died on the long ocean voyage back to Thampur, where the jellylanterns were manufactured, or that the people of Ponong had to pay shipping both ways. It was the price they paid for being a colony. And paid. And paid. In land, in coin, in jus
tice.
QuiTai scanned the crowd. Shoppers seemed to have sudden urgent business elsewhere as Casmir and Ivitch, lured by the scent of blood, wandered to a butcher’s stall several yards from the jellylantern seller. Soon there were no other shoppers to be seen. The men were too far away for her to hear their conversation, but the butcher clearly didn’t want werewolves rubbing their noses against the pigs’ heads hanging from his awning.
Still scanning, she turned in the other direction. Her expression hardened the moment she glimpsed the Thampurian spy Kyam Zul standing among the wide, spreading limbs of the banyan tree across the town square. He seemed to be trying to hide, which was ridiculous: his broad shoulders and height set him a head higher than most Ponongese.
Of course Kyam had to ruin her afternoon. He was always the mosquito in the dark room.
As usual, he was between shaves, and his glossy straight black hair fell into his eyes. From the distance, his thigh-length shewani jacket and tight trousers seemed impeccable, although she knew up close she’d see frayed hems and missing buttons. None of that diminished his good looks, which only irritated her more.
While she couldn’t hold the jellylantern merchant responsible for the price of jellylanterns, she was more than willing to point the finger at Kyam Zul and all his kind. As a scion of one of the privileged thirteen families of Thampur, he shared their blame. His grandfather was one of the thieves who had stolen her country from her people.
Kyam stopped a boy playing tag around the banyan tree and spoke urgently to the squirming child. His gaze met QuiTai’s before he looked away.
The jellylantern merchant cleared his throat. She turned back to him.
“How much for the blue light ones?” she asked.
He named a staggering price.
QuiTai carefully stacked tubes of expired green jellylanterns on his counter with a rueful shake of her head. Yelling at him wouldn’t solve anything, even if it would make her feel better. “More green, then. What are you giving for the old tubes?”
“Same as always.”
She clenched her jaw. “At least give me fresh ones. There are too many sinkers in these.”
Perhaps if she were not the Devil’s concubine, he might have told her in rough language where she could take her business. Instead, he opened a crate in the back of his stall and put twelve strong green jellylanterns on the counter. She counted out the coins and gently placed the tubes into her basket.
A sweaty little hand pressed something scratchy into her palm and then tugged on her sarong. She looked down into the yellow-ringed eyes of the boy she’d seen with Kyam.
“Pui, auntie?” His front teeth were almost too big for his mouth, and he smelled of salted earth, as if he’d been playing hard in the sun all day.
Her breath caught. Despite the heat, icy fear shot through her. She glanced quickly at Casmir and Ivitch. Their backs were to her as they held a dripping pig’s liver high above the butcher’s reach.
Surely someone had warned the boy to stay far away from werewolves. Unfortunately, he was at that age when boys were fascinated by the things that scared them. She quickly handed him a coin and pushed him away. “Go, before the Devil’s werewolves see you, little brother.”
His eyes widened as his smile faded.
She shielded him from Ivitch and Casmir’s sight as she shoved him again, harder. “Obey auntie.” She meant to sound terse, but a warble of fear made it more of a plea.
A woman with a basket of fish yanked the boy’s arm and dragged him further away from Casmir and Ivitch. When she let go, an old man weaving straw hats urgently beckoned the boy to duck into his stall. From across the square, Kyam Zul nodded curtly at QuiTai and then disappeared behind the banyan tree.
Their sport with the butcher over, Casmir and Ivitch headed toward her.
Even though the boy was gone, her pulse still raced. She hoped the slight tremor in her hands wasn’t noticeable as she put the last of the tubes into her basket.
“That better be the last of your errands,” Ivitch said.
QuiTai tucked a cloth around the jellylanterns so they wouldn’t clank together. A broken tube couldn’t be returned for credit.
Followed by the werewolves, she walked past the bank and cafés where the business district gave way to a residential neighborhood. The noise and scents of the marketplace grew fainter as the hush of wealth enveloped her. The limbs of tall trees formed a shady canopy over the dirt road as the tropical sun beat on the low tile roofs of the houses behind their compound walls. She shook her head at the stupidity. Leave it to Thampurians to get things so entirely wrong. They seemed to think they still lived in their blustery capital.
“What did that brat want?” Casmir asked.
Despite her alarm, QuiTai shrugged. “Pui.”
Ivitch chuckled. “You should have let us have him.”
It felt as if he’d plunged his fist into her chest, but she drew air deep into her lungs as if it were perfumed.
A few servants walked on the wide lane between the compounds, but they were far away. The Thampurian neighborhood slumbered through the afternoon heat.
She took her time looking at their surroundings and sighed with great satisfaction. “I love this part of the city. So private; and yet, still close to the marketplace.” She opened her mouth and let her fangs spring forward. Never one to waste what she might need later, she held back the flow of venom, but the werewolves wouldn’t know her fangs were dry.
The color faded from Casmir’s face. He walked away quickly. She pressed her fangs back against the roof of her mouth then followed at a slower pace. Ivitch fell behind her.
When both men were at a distance, she unfolded the note from Kyam. Only a Thampurian would use such fine stationery for a clandestine note.
Mister Zul asked that she hire him to paint her portrait and suggested they meet at the Red Happiness. His words were amusingly polite, given that he was asking to meet her at a brothel. If he thought she would be insulted by the implication that she was a whore, he was wrong.
While at first glance it seemed a simple enough request, QuiTai and Kyam Zul both operated in a world beneath the surface. She found his note rather cryptic. Normally people begged her to plead with the Devil on their behalf, but he’d called for the Devil’s arrest too many times to dare beg for that kind of favor. No, Kyam Zul wanted to discuss something with her. How intriguing. If he’d resorted to asking his biggest enemy in Levapur for a favor, he must be desperate.
Desperate enough to send a child within a few feet of the werewolves. The bastard.
The werewolves had been too far away to see the boy slip the note into her hand, but it would be best to be rid of it before they arrived at the Devil’s den. She tore the thick stationery into tiny pieces and dropped them one by one into murky puddles left behind from the monsoon rains. If Ivitch saw them fluttering to her feet like night spirit moths, he didn’t say anything.
What was Kyam up to?
She shook her head. She couldn’t dwell on Kyam’s note; she had to prepare herself to face the Devil.
~ ~ ~
The town of Levapur clung to the edge of a cliff high above a turquoise harbor on the Sea of Erykoli. The narrow band of flat land close to the cliff edge had been seized by the Thampurians colonists. Beyond their compounds, the hillside began a steep ascent to the Ponongese neighborhoods. Past the buildings, the cloud-cloaked mountains of the interior range rose to sharp peaks.
The border between the jungle and Levapur was indistinguishable in places. Troops of monkeys and lizards and colonies of bats lived as comfortably in town as outside it. Brightly plumaged jungle fowl scattered as QuiTai walked through the small flock foraging in deep weeds between two apartment buildings. She hoisted the hem of her sarong above the deep, meandering rut of orange slurry that ran sluggishly downslope. When monsoon rains fell, the tiny trickle became a river.
Casmir huffed as he led the way through the increasingly steep alleys.
; Her shoulder blades itched every time Ivitch grunted behind her. She hated being followed. They did it for their safety, not hers. She couldn’t decide if that amused or annoyed her. As they climbed upslope through the alleyways, the space between the buildings became too narrow to walk side by side, but even where the gaps widened neither of the men drew closer to her.
Finally, the hills grew so steep that they had to leave the alleys and take the road that climbed the hillside in sharp switchbacks.
By the time QuiTai and her silent escorts neared the stone bridge over the Jupoli Gorge, the closely packed buildings of Levapur had given way to lush plants. Pink blossoms the size of her hand fell from overhead to cover the path with wilting petals. Although shaded, the torpid air under the jungle canopy was much hotter than in town, so thick with humidity that it felt like a weight against her chest.
Far below the stone bridge, the Pha River churned between narrow limestone cliffs. Anyone foolish or unlucky enough to fall into the river would be swept several miles downstream by the torrent before hurtling off a cliff and dropping three hundred yards into the treacherous waters of the Ponong Fangs, where the Sea of Erykoli met the Te’Am Ocean.
Over the sound of the water thundering through the gorge, she could hear the chug of the steam engine at the base station of the funicular that ran in stages up the steep mountainside to the plantation terraces carved into its slopes. Before she reached the station plateau, she veered from the upslope road onto a narrow path that ran along the southern rim of the gorge. She went around a stand of banana trees and stepped onto a wide timbergrass bridge that jogged left, right, and then left again to thwart demons and spirits who could only travel in straight lines.
She heard Ivitch step onto the bridge behind her as she passed through a vine-covered moon gate. Then he shouldered past her, knocking her hard enough that she had to grab the bridge railing.