The Devil Incarnate (The Devil of Ponong series #2) (16 page)

Rising, she shook off RhiHanya’s black lotus lethargy and
paced the room, quickly striding from one end to the other. She pushed open the
typhoon shutters and gulped in air as the rain splattered on the veranda.

Grandmother and Mother
were linked to the conduit the same way I was through our venom. It opens a
connection from our minds to the conduit’s and to the Oracle. Grandmother and
Mother saw everything I saw, but they didn’t put the woman’s memories together.
They didn’t see it any more than the woman did. They’ve never had the ability
to gather information and read the meaning that connects it together. But I do.

“No. No. No.”

She stared up slope at the tiers of apartment buildings, her
hands balled into fists. Was there nothing of her past that she could keep? Her
daughter, Jezereet, her parents and aunts all gone. Even the terrible things
like Petrof and the werewolves had been wiped away. Now this?

This is why you couldn’t get the visions you
wanted from those vapor addicts in the Dragon Pearl. They didn’t know anything
you wanted to see. Their memories don’t contain the information you seek.

Everything she tried
to hold rotted in her hands. A world stripped of magic and wonder was as bleak
as the rocks of the Ponong Fangs.

She collapsed on the
divan and drew her knees to her chest. RhiHanya’s memories clamored for her
attention. She shut her eyes, as if that could make them go away. QuiTai
groaned, “Leave me alone.”

 
A voice, familiar but unwanted, echoed
in her mind. “
You are an Oracle, and the
Oracle is you.”

The Oracle had
spoken. And she was never wrong.

Kyam
walked through town
with his head bowed against the pouring rain. If he was
going to be stuck on this island for the foreseeable future, he would at least
make good use of his time. Tracking down the Ravidians and stopping their
scheme had whetted his appetite for espionage. He was sober – mostly
because he couldn’t afford to waste his dwindling supply of coins on drink
– bored, and ready to put his mind to work.

There were few mysteries in Levapur that interested him. He
wondered who his neighbors were hiding in their apartment, but he couldn’t
bring himself to spy on such good people. The newly arrived soldiers were only
a puzzle because he didn’t like Governor Turyat or Chief Justice Cuulon enough
to ask them what was happening. They’d make him grovel and then probably
wouldn’t tell him anything. Or he could pump Voorus for information. Something
so easily solved wasn’t nearly challenging enough, though. He could search the
deed documents in the government building to find out who really owned the Red
Happiness, but digging through musty files sounded dull. He wanted action.

He grinned as he remembered one of his last assignments
before he’d been exiled. Stealing hull plans for the new Ravidian fleet had
been his kind of espionage – lots of action, some narrow escapes, and of
course the satisfaction of helping his country. Thwarting the Ravidian scheme
on Cay Rhi had been almost as good, but he’d never be lucky enough to find that
sort of adventure in Levapur again. The town was too drowsy, its intrigues too
domestic.

But Voorus had handed him a clue to something interesting.
Someone had paid Petrof to kill QuiTai. Was that assassination attempt
successful? Voorus didn’t think so. If Kyam found out who hired Petrof, then
he’d probably also know if QuiTai were still alive. That, he knew, was the real
mystery he wanted to solve.

It occurred to Kyam that if QuiTai were alive, they were
probably now enemies. He knew how she felt about the colonial government, and
she was smart enough to realize she held a secret that could bring the governor
and chief justice ultimate disgrace in the eyes of Thampurian society and anger
the Ponongese. Like Voorus, he wondered what she was waiting for. Was she
building a rebellion inland? He couldn’t let her do that. He regretted that the
colonial government had no real control over Ponong outside Levapur. The
Ravidian scheme on Cay Rhi proved that the isolated plantations could fall
under enemy control and no one would know for weeks or months. If QuiTai used
the escaped slaves to stir up anti-Thampurian sentiments, the colonial militia
wouldn’t know until her army marched across the Jupoli Gorge Bridge, and then
it would be too late.

He hoped she’d been sincere when she told him that she’d
sacrificed the werewolves to stop further bloodshed. She claimed she could see
that future and had done her best to stop it, even though it made some of her
own people hate her. As far as he could tell, she’d never outright lied to him.
Omitted truths, certainly. Twisted words as if they were hushoin art paper,
constantly. And selectively revealed information like a practiced seductress
removing her clothes. But she hadn’t lied about wanting to contain the escalation
of violence, had she? He hoped; but he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe.

~ ~ ~

Captain Voorus rubbed his eyes. Reading by jellylantern
light strained his sight. His chair scraped against the floor of his apartment
as he dragged it closer to the window. He wished Thampurian buildings were more
like the Ponongese ones, with wide verandas wrapping around each floor. He
would have liked to sit outside while he read. Monsoon clouds covered the sky,
but they glowed in the midday sun. Unless the wind picked up, the cover
overhead would shelter him from the fine rain.

He flipped through the pages of the volume of colonial law
he’d borrowed. There was nothing in it about inheritance law that he could find
except mystic sentences that said things such as
Refer to Thampurian law, section...
followed by a string of numbers
and letters. When he’d asked the law clerk about those notations, he’d been
told that meant he’d have to read it from a book of Thampur’s laws. But there
was only one set of books like that on the island, and the clerk swore Chief
Justice Cuulon would have them gutted if they dared touch them, so he’d done
the next best thing. He’d asked his mother to buy the books and send them to
him. She didn’t have much money, but sometimes she could go to her rich friend
and beg for gifts.

Once he had the Thampurian law books, he’d see if there was
any hope of reclaiming his inheritance from his father; not that it would do
him a damn bit of good as long as he was in exile. Unlike the privileged Kyam
Zul, he didn’t even know why he’d been sent to Ponong or what it would take to
earn his way back, but he suspected that an inheritance would help. If there
was one thing he’d learned on Ponong, it was that government officials could be
bought.

While he waited for the law books to arrive, he decided to
use the one he had to learn how to decode the confusing texts. The words looked
like Thampurian, but they seemed to have different meanings. He’d already been
over to the government building five times to ask the law clerks what a
sentence meant. They’d made it clear they didn’t want to talk to him anymore.

He thought if he
looked up a law he knew, it could be a valuable key to deciphering what the
laws meant in everyday terms. Voorus searched for a simple entry, such as the
law against Ponongese baring their fangs to a Thampurian, but he’d flipped
through the books several times and he still hadn’t found it. It had to be
written down somewhere. Since he’d come to Ponong, they’d hung at least five
Ponongese a year for that crime. Everyone knew that was the law. Even the chief
justice said so; he signed the death warrants, after all. But Voorus couldn’t
find the damned law in any of the books.

~ ~ ~

QuiTai and LiHoun
squatted on RhiLan’s veranda as they shared a kur. Her gaze flitted to Kyam’s
dark apartment and then away, but not quickly enough.

“Thank you for delivering my newspapers and letters. They
were a welcome diversion,” QuiTai said.

“Any news of note from the continent?”

“Troubling developments, uncle. Foreigners denounced as the
source of all troubles, rising patriotism, plays censored or closed for
offending official thought, new restrictions, paranoia. It doesn’t look good.
Each country is withdrawing into its borders. But those are their problems, and
we have plenty to concern us here.”

“Our rice bowls are full,” he agreed.

While she organized her thoughts, she watched a stand of
palm trees on Levapur’s first hill bend under the onshore breeze. LiHoun
waited. Inside the apartment, RhiHanya hovered near the typhoon shutters,
probably hoping that they’d lapse into Ponongese or Thampurian. Thankfully, the
rest of the family was at the market in Old Levapur.

While she’d never been a deeply religious person, the loss
of the Oracle made QuiTai uneasy. It had been such a nice dream that someone
with great power watched over her, loved and protected her. Now she’d woken and
felt like a child in the middle of the night who heard strange sounds. Maybe
she could force herself to believe again. There was comfort in faith, like a
jellylantern glowing in the darkness. But now that she knew the truth, she
didn’t think she could ever accept the falsehood again. She wondered if her
mother and grandmother had known they were Oracles. Had they deliberately led
her to believe in something they knew to be false?

I’ve always had to rely on myself. If I’m
honest, I never trusted the Goddess to do anything for me. I always did it
myself. So what did I lose when I lost faith? Nothing real. In a way, maybe
this is better. I know I can trust myself. False deities? They’ve never done a
damn thing for me. And I guess I always knew that.

But what about my vision of glass covered in
blood? That didn’t come out of any conduit’s memory. It helped me when I fought
Petrof.

For a moment, she had hope, but her logical mind turned it
back
.

 
My visions were usually vague, and only
after something happened that sort of aligned with the vision did I pronounce
it as fulfilled. Maybe the dirt Thampurian saw one of the Ravidians slice his
hand on glass when the container of sea wasps broke, and I tapped into that
memory but didn’t remember that I had. After all, I was under the influence of
the vapor too. Then when I saw the shattered jellylantern, I believed it would
save me because that fit the vision I believed in. Interpretation is art, not
science. Faith is not logic. I know which one I trust more.

She pushed her braid over her shoulder and lifted her chin.
LiHoun seemed to notice her focus return to him.

“Colonel Zul asked
me to pass on a message,” he said.

QuiTai was instantly
alert. “He knows you work for me?”

“He guessed that I
work for the Devil.”

Of course he would.
“He’s far too clever, that one.”

LiHoun grinned as he
inhaled kur smoke. The bright orange embers nearly touched his pointed finger
nails before he took it from his lips. “Not clever enough sometimes.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said someone
hired Petrof to kill you.”

“He knew Petrof was
trying to kill me, but the last time we spoke, he didn’t know it was on
another’s orders. I wonder how he learned about that.” She waved away the
offered kur. Her blood burned, and she had too much vitality for the cage that
confined her already. “Was that message for me or the Devil?”

“For you, but for the Devil if I couldn’t warn you.”

So Kyam hadn’t figured out that she was now the Devil. Not
yet. She had no doubt that he’d eventually figure it out. He couldn’t make the
mental leaps she did, but he had enough determination to methodically take
every step until he reached the same conclusions.

She idly scratched her arm. Contact with black lotus
wouldn’t addict her, thanks to the Ponongese’s natural immunity, but it
certainly made a pipe more alluring. “I’m trying to decide if it’s an advantage
that Colonel Zul figured out that you work for the Devil.”

“I think he’s more interested in knowing if I work for you.”

“His interests aren’t my concern. But maybe he’s heard other
information we could use. After all, he can get into places we can’t.”

“You don’t care
about his interests?”

She didn’t like LiHoun’s
sly smile. “Should I?”

He shrugged.

“Uncle LiHoun?”

“He saw that I was observing the new soldiers. Unless there
are more down in the fortress that I haven’t seen, there are thirty of them.”

“Thampur has doubled their troop strength in Levapur.” That bothered
her. Someone expected trouble.

“Colonel Zul was also watching them.”

She gritted her teeth. “That man is constantly crossing my
path.”

“You find him irritating?”

“Very.”

LiHoun seemed to find that amusing. “That’s something, at
least.”

Exasperated, she glared at him. “What are you hinting at?”

“We’re storing the
rice in the werewolf’s old lair.”

“This is the second
time you’ve changed the subject, uncle.”

“I thought you
wanted to talk business. We can discuss the Thampurian if you prefer.”

It seemed LiHoun was
in a mood to tease her. She wasn’t used to that. Why did he think she had any
interest in Kyam Zul? She’d told him about being taken to the fortress and her
escape, their timely rescue by Captain Hadre, and most of what happened on the
Golden Barracuda
and Cay Rhi, but she
hadn’t so much as hinted that she’d seduced Kyam. It wasn’t an important part
of the story. Besides, it was none of the old man’s business. But if she
avoided talking about Kyam, LiHoun might think she wanted to avoid the subject.

She looked directly
into LiHoun’s eyes. “Okay. Let’s talk about him. I’m curious. How did he figure
out that you work for the Devil?”

LiHoun almost seemed abashed. “I was counting soldiers for
you. Captain Voorus hauled me across the street to carry Colonel Zul’s
shopping, seeing as the soldiers had cleared the streets around the town square
of all Ponongese.”

QuiTai tapped her bottom lip with her forefinger. “These
soldiers, they knew you weren’t Ponongese? They let you stay when they chased
away the Ponongese? You dress almost like us. From a distance someone could
easily mistake you as a native, and as you well know, once a Thampurian soldier
makes a mistake, they’d rather kill the witness than admit they were wrong.”

“They accosted me, but the leader inspected my ears and
hands and peered at my eyes. As soon as he declared me Li, they walked away.”

“So they’re
specifically targeting Ponongese for these humiliations.” It was further proof
that her forming theory was right. Now was the time to be careful about jumping
to conclusions, though. While she normally enjoyed the speed of her thoughts
and ability to act quickly on them, this time she hesitated. She needed more
information. It was time for her to come out of seclusion and gather facts.

“Their uniforms are high quality, grandmother, and lighter
weight than the material the colonial militia wears. Someone wanted them to be
comfortable in this heat. And that same someone made sure there wasn’t a single
identifying mark on their clothes. I misspoke when I said that the man who
inspected me was their leader. I have no idea what rank he held, or any of the
others. They called him Mister. Not major, not colonel, not captain. Mister.
And he referred to them the same way. No family name.”