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

by Braden, Jill

  If he wanted to see what one could do with power, she was more than up to the challenge.

  “About the rice… I’ve developed quite an appetite for it. Tell my lieutenants to buy all the rice the smugglers and the legitimate importers bring to the island.”

  A coughing fit shook LiHoun’s thin shoulders. “All?” he said faintly when he caught his breath.

  “Every last grain. But spread the purchases among my lieutenants. I don’t want to arouse suspicions.”

  “Forgive this old man for not understanding, but what do you want with so much rice?”

  “Leverage, uncle. You’d be amazed how much power there is in such a simple thing.”

  Chapter 8: Grandfather Zul

  Since they were in no hurry to finish repairs to the Winged Dragon, Hadre made sure every inch of the junk was inspected. He expected the crew to complain, but they were enthusiastic about it. The officers probably felt the additional investment in the ship promised fair sailing and better payouts from the ship’s profits. The crew liked the generous shore leave, since many diversions that were illegal on the continent were legal – and encouraged – in Levapur.

  Grandfather continued to demand gossip from Levapur. While Hadre had visited the Quarter of Delights, he hadn’t admitted it. Instead, he told his grandfather that he was too busy overseeing the repairs. He was used to life on board and could go months without yearning for land, or so he said.

  His crew had plenty to say about Levapur when they returned from shore leave. Most of their talk wouldn’t have interested Grandfather, but here and there he caught comments that made him hold his breath and listen intently. Those stories he kept out of his reports. He was no spy. He knew how a ship worked, but had no idea how towns functioned. Maybe it wasn’t terrible that the marketplace was all but abandoned. There were still stores people could shop in, after all, but the wharf was stacked with crates that wouldn’t move upslope until the Ponongese were allowed to return to work. The abandoned fishing fleet bobbed in the gentle waves across the harbor. That sent an ominous chill down his spine. What would people eat if they couldn’t fish?

  If only there were someone other than Grandfather he could discuss these ugly developments with. His officers were as mystified as he was by the rapid changes. Levapur had always been lawless, but cheerfully so. Now it was as dour as the trading posts on the bleak islands near the werewolves’ northern fortresses.

  He braced both elbows on his desk and rested his head in his hands.

  He missed Kyam. Several times, he’d been tempted to find his cousin and try to work out a truce, but then Grandfather pressured him to go into town and report his findings, and he grew more determined to force their grandfather to talk directly to Kyam.

  Kyam had always been far too loyal to that old man. Hadre never understood it; but then, Hadre was a ship’s Captain. Once a man grew used to being his own master, it was harder to be a filial Thampurian grandson, especially to their grandfather.

  As if thinking about the old man could summon him, the ship’s farwriter bell chimed. If only he hadn’t set the machine to the new frequency earlier, he could have ignored the muffled summons. Now or later, it would make little difference. He opened the cabinet and tore off the paper scroll.

  What was your impression of the Qui woman? TtZ

  Hadre was puzzled. He’d reported everything about her time on board the Golden Barracuda days ago, except the part about finding her and Kyam together in a cabin. Facts were all grandfather cared about. Why did the old man now want his assessment of a woman he’d met only once?

  QuiTai had made a strong impression, but one he wasn’t sure he could put into words. Kyam’s many stories about her had prepared him for her intelligence and cutting wit, but not for her intensity. Hadre smiled. No wonder his cousin was so intrigued by her. While she’d never pass as a lady by Thampurian standards, she could have ruled a salon in Surrayya with the arch of an eyebrow and a few precise words.

  Lady QuiTai is brilliant, insightful, and very quick of mind. And fearless. HnZ

  Smiling wryly, Hadre said to himself, “She’d easily outsmart you given the chance, old man.”

  Rumor has it she has separatist sympathies. TtZ

  “Is that a question?” Hadre asked his empty cabin.

  If she does, she was far too canny to say so in my hearing. HnZ

  I’m not interested in what she said or didn’t say. I want to know if she were provoked, would she lash out at the colonial government? Is she the type? Is she an angry woman? Is she a leader? You said she was fearless. TtZ

  She leapt off the walls of the fortress to escape the werewolves. She could have landed on the rocks and broken her back. The harbor is shark-infested and apparently she isn’t a strong swimmer. I saw her jump without hesitating. HnZ

  This is welcome news. TtZ

  Not since his first ship had run aground on a moonless night and he’d woken to the sickening groan of the damaged hull scraping against rocks had his stomach dropped with such leaden fear. At least then he’d known right away why he was frightened. He’d sailed through heavy seas during winter storms that sent waves crashing over his deck and toppled his main mast. He’d survived plague that had killed half his crew in two weeks, and more than once he’d fought hand to hand with pirates for control of his ship. None of that had worried him as much as this message, and nothing angered him more than being scared by words. Words were nothing. They were maishun spirits without substance. And yet, they deeply disturbed him.

  Bile rose in his throat as he carefully worded his next message.

  As you said, she might have been apprehended. I haven’t heard anything about her since she left the Golden Barracuda with the colonial militia. HnZ

  She hasn’t been arrested yet. Why is she holding back? TtZ

  Grandfather, musing in a farwriter message? Hadre bet the old man wished he could recall that message. Lady QuiTai hadn’t been captured by the soldiers. That part was clear, but Why is she holding back? What the hell did that mean? Why would she hasten to be arrested?

  Ask Kyam. He knows her far better than I do. HnZ

  Far, far better than I do, he thought. Hadre’s cheeks burned as he remembered her pulling the sheet over her naked body and the smell of sex in Kyam’s cabin.

  Chapter 9: Major Voorus

  Kyam took two steps into the Red Happiness, saw his cousin Hadre drinking with his new first mate, and walked out. It seemed there was nowhere in town he could go for a quiet drink. He was an exile among exiles in a town that suddenly seemed so small he couldn’t draw a free breath.

  The Dragon Pearl was only a block from PhaJut’s, so he went there next. It wasn’t quiet, but Lizzriat, the worldly, androgynous Ingosolian owner of the Dragon Pearl, kept a quality house. Kyam was never sure if he should think of the gender-shifting Ingosolians as male or female, but since Lizzriat wore foppish suits rather than dresses, Kyam had always thought of Lizzriat as male. Besides, the other casino owners would have shut the Dragon Pearl down immediately if they had been able to prove their rival was a woman.

  Lizzriat was in his usual place near the main entrance where he could keep an eye on the action and greet his customers. Smiling, he lightly gripped Kyam’s elbow and deftly steered him to an open seat at one of the tables. Governor Turyat and his cronies sat in the other chairs. Lizzriat’s smile never faltered, but a cloud of concentration settled on his brow as Kyam made his excuses and backed out the front door.

  It was just as well that he hadn’t taken the place at the table. He’d gambled away most of his last remittance payment on purpose so he’d have an excuse to accept QuiTai’s portrait commission. She’d called his obsession with details narcissism. How she’d laugh if she knew he was living off the bag of coins she’d tossed at him as part of their act.

  The least Grandfather could do, if he planned to make Kyam stay in Levapur much longer, would be to send more money. And it would be helpful if Grandfather would tell him why he
had to stay on the island. But the old man hadn’t acknowledged any of his farwriter messages.

  As further proof that he had nothing but bad luck, as Kyam strolled down the street behind the government building, he saw Voorus at the corner – and he couldn’t dodge into the nearby shop quickly enough to avoid being seen.

  Voorus walked up the veranda steps with his hands shoved into his trouser pockets. He glanced around the store as if the bins of brown, black, and white rice were a quaint oddity. “Zul! I almost didn’t see you. Buying rice?”

  Kyam didn’t see any way out of it, with Voorus ready to ask annoying questions and the merchant expectantly waiting for his order. He didn’t cook often. He didn’t even have a rice pot in his apartment. Then he remembered his oath to buy rice for his neighbors and thanked the Goddess of Mercy for the excuse.

  “A quarter-measure, please,” Kyam told the merchant. That would be enough for the Rhi family for a couple meals.

  Voorus peered into a bin as if the color of the rice puzzled him. “Do you need that much? Aren’t you leaving Levapur?”

  Damn Voorus and his curiosity.

  “It isn’t for me.” He regretted saying that. He paid the merchant and left.

  Voorus seemingly had nothing better to do with his time than follow him. “Who is it for?”

  The problem with living in a small, sleepy town was that the only entertainment was gossip. There was no way Kyam could escape Voorus without an explanation.

  “The marketplace is still closed to Ponongese, so I thought my neighbors might need rice.” There. That was simple enough. And it was true.

  “You’re giving a gift to a Ponongese?” Voorus laughed.

  Kyam stared ahead as his jaw set tight.

  “You know that’s just asking for trouble. Even I know they get angry if you give them a gift.”

  “They like gifts the same as anyone else would, but you never bring food into a Ponongese home. It implies they don’t have enough to share, and that’s a huge insult to them,” Kyam said. “If all they had was a grain of salt, they’d find a way to cut it so everyone got a taste.”

  “Well, what do you know?” Voorus seemed genuinely delighted to learn that, although his easy grin and slight slouch reminded Kyam of the bored scions of the thirteen families sprawled across the dainty pink divans in his mother’s salon. They could rouse from a drunken stupor and go through the motions society demanded and then pass out again and not remember a thing the following morning.

  As annoying as he was, though, Voorus had a point. Such matters required a delicate touch. The best way to approach it was to cook the rice himself and invite the Rhi to join him for dinner. He’d have to borrow RhiLan’s cookware, but that might smooth over any other awkwardness.

  Voorus tagged along when Kyam stopped at a butcher to pick up some thin strips of pork and then at the grocer’s for some vegetables. Hopefully he could make them into something edible. RhiLan was such a good cook. She knew a million ways to prepare fish so it didn’t feel like the same meal every night, and her rice never crunched when you bit into it. But there was no way around the coming embarrassment unless he wanted to play the clueless Thampurian who stomped on Ponongese toes with the grace of a floundering h’vet out of water, and they’d humored him far too many times to try that ploy again.

  Voorus frowned at his packages. “How many gifts are you giving them?”

  “Most of this is for my dinner.”

  “I wouldn’t feed a pig those greens you bought.”

  “I didn’t have much choice. The shops are nearly empty because everything is rotting on the docks and no one will carry the crates up to town.”

  “Don’t give them to your neighbors. They’ll really be insulted.”

  When Kyam didn’t respond, Voorus nudged him with his elbow. “So you know their customs; but even you have to admit that most Ponongese are funny about strange things.”

  He knew he was going to regret asking, but he said, “Such as?”

  “These snakes have a thousand different rules about who is in charge. Sometime it’s the oldest person, which is proper thinking, but then you’re in a different situation and it’s someone else. At least in Thampur, if you’re the eldest, everyone obeys you no matter where you go or who you’re with. Direct. Easy. Sensible. Order and structure.”

  Kyam didn’t understand how Voorus could live beside people for several years and still know nothing about them. If he had more time he could teach Voorus enough to stop looking like an ass, but who knew how soon he could leave Levapur?

  A grunt of amusement shook Kyam’s shoulders at the thought of being anyone’s etiquette instructor.

  “With the Ponongese, much depends on where you stand socially in relation to someone, which sometimes, but not always, is a matter of your actual ages. When in doubt, the old people are grandfather or grandmother, adults you don’t want to anger are uncle or auntie, and anyone younger than you is little brother or sister.”

  If Kyam got it wrong, the Ponongese were too polite, or amused, or mortified, to correct him.

  “I’ll be damned if I’ll treat a snake like a relation.”

  “It’s not –” Kyam could see that it was no use trying to convince Voorus that the Ponongese wouldn’t see it as a claim of kinship. “Where it gets tricky is when they defer to the person with greater knowledge or experience with a given situation. If one of them refers to an obviously younger person as ‘uncle,’ that’s the person in charge, but only in that situation. An hour later, the same person might refer to that younger person as ‘little brother.’ Unless they both call each other ‘uncle,’ and then it gets really convoluted.” The more he tried to explain it, the more complicated it seemed. In real life, anyone who paid attention could understand what was going on. Voorus didn’t seem like the type to pay attention.

  “See? What a mess. Some people are born to lead, and others to follow, no matter what the situation.”

  “Would you listen to the advice of a fishermen if you were trying to catch a fish? Sure. But you wouldn’t ask him to write your will.”

  With a twist of his hand, Voorus waved that argument away, but his eyes lit up. “Interesting that you should use that phrase. Guess what? I’ve decided to study law. With these new soldiers taking over, there’s no way to distinguish myself and earn my articles of transport home. But as a lawyer, I might. Never wanted to be a soldier anyway.”

  “Then why are you in uniform?”

  “Mother’s friend arranged entry to the academy, and how could I say no? It’s not as if I had private tutors or the kinds of connections that get you into a university.”

  It took connections to get into the military academy too, so Voorus’ mother’s friend must have been a member of one of the thirteen families. She had good taste, and more sense than her son.

  “Borrowed a set of books from one of the assistants to Chief Justice Cuulon. He hasn’t even cracked them open. Said the Chief Justice tells them what’s what, saves them the trouble. Once I got the hang of the language, though, I plan to figure it out for myself. From what I hear, it’s fascinating stuff. For instance, did you know that it was perfectly legal to seize the agricultural terraces when we colonized Ponong? Their women owned the land, but by Thampurian law women can’t hold property, so of course it all came under the control of the colonial government.”

  “Well, that’s neat and clear, isn’t it? I can’t understand why the Ponongese still call it theft.” Kyam swore he could hear QuiTai’s words coming from his mouth. In his mind, he heard her voice, and that dry sense of humor. But if women couldn’t hold property, how did QuiTai own the Red Happiness? The Devil had to be the owner. Or was it someone else? No wonder QuiTai wanted those deed documents buried where no one could find them.

  “Although it’s a shame they can’t. My uncle seized the family home when my father died.” Voorus shook his head. “Doesn’t seem right. It was all my mother had.”

  “Why didn’t it go to yo
u?”

  “Happened before I was born.”

  “Why didn’t she claim your rights afterwards?”

  Voorus glanced away. “My uncle made threats. Washed out to sea with the tide now. Anyway, a friend of Mother’s bought a small place for us to live in a decent enough neighborhood, so we weren’t on the streets.”

  The fact that they didn’t fight it probably meant Voorus had been born suspiciously late after his mother’s husband died. That friend who got Voorus into the military was probably Voorus’ real father. Since Kyam didn’t feel like being pummeled bloody, he decided to keep that deduction to himself.

  Kyam juggled his packages in the hopes of reminding Voorus he had errands to run. The top one almost fell.

  “You’re going to drop one of those. Hire a boy.” Voorus glanced up and down the street.

  They were still close to the government building where the new soldiers roved in packs to scare away Ponongese. The only people in the shops were Thampurian or Ingosolian. A cat-eyed Li man squatted by an alleyway staircase behind the soldiers as he smoked a kur.

  “I need a market basket,” Kyam said.

  Voorus drew back. “Have you gone native, man? Or has the sun cooked your brains?”

  Kyam reined in his anger. He’d barely noticed all the stupid rules everyone followed in the past year and didn’t want to start now. The petty taboos grated on his nerves. There was no need to act like a Thampurian. He was one. No market basket could change that.

  “I need –” He almost said “rum” just to see what level of outrage Voorus’ face could twist into. So he’d acquired a taste for the local brew. What of it? It was far cheaper than whiskey and much better quality than any of the imported spirits.