Tempt the Devil (The Devil of Ponong series #3) (14 page)

“Why wasn’t
Lady QuiTai put in one of these cells?” Nashruu pointed to the empty cells
built into the wall ringing the parade ground.

“Your
husband demanded we put her in the dungeon.” His tone made it clear that he’d
had enough of her already, so she didn’t press for details.

He
knocked on the door again. They stood in silence. He seemed too surly to share
information about his fortress or the militia, so she didn’t attempt any polite
chatter. She was a bit shocked he hadn’t offered to carry her satchel. Even
while annoyed, men of a certain social rank could usually be relied upon for
such manners. Then again, if he were a good example of a gentleman, he most
certainly wouldn’t have been exiled to Levapur, would he?

Although the Colonel’s lips were a natural enough shade,
she wondered if maybe he were a black lotus user. Not an addict; not yet. But
she knew he’d been caught using his position to smuggle the addictive black tar
into Thampur. She also understood she wasn’t allowed to tell him she knew why
he’d been exiled. Levapur’s unwritten rules of society were odder than those in
Surrayya.

Hurust shifted from foot to foot and pounded on the door.
He cursed dreadfully but didn’t apologize to her. Instead, he jangled a ring of
keys irritably, found the one he wanted, and shoved it into the lock.

The door swung open under protest. Her nose wrinkled as a
wave of air smelling of algae and mud oozed out of the dungeon.

Colonel Hurust stepped back and indicated she should go
first. That struck her as bad manners, but if it were a dare, she would prove
she had the nerve to step into the darkness.

She took off her blue sun spectacles. The room wasn’t as
dark as before, but the sunlight streaming through the door and the green light
jellylanterns hanging from the stone walls didn’t illuminate enough. She saw
stairs leading down into pitch darkness ahead. To the side there was a space
big enough for a roughly hewn table and a couple battered chairs. Tiles covered
most of the table. Some were up, arranged in sets, but the rest were face down
in the center. A game in progress, then. She rested her hand on the back to the
chair closest to her and examined the tiles. The north seat was winning
handily.

“My guards can escort you to the dungeon from here. Good
day, Ma’am Zul.”

Colonel Hurust’s voice grew fainter. The little alcove
darkened as the door swung closed. A half-forgotten nightmare of being buried
alive sent her hand flying to protect her neck. She found her voice. “Colonel,
there are no men here!”

“They’re
probably down in the dungeon with the prisoner. Simply call down–”

“I will
not!”

Her hand ached where she’d been gripping the chair too
tightly. She let go and went to the door. It was far heavier than she expected
and didn’t swing easily on its rusted hinges. Colonel Hurust hadn’t walked away
yet. He looked as if his lunch had turned viciously on him.

“Colonel, kindly wait with me for your men to return, or
summon someone to escort me down.”

He nodded as he turned to look at the parade ground. A
sauntering guard appeared on the rampart across the way. Colonel Hurust yelled
to get his attention, but the wind blew his voice away.

“Wait here.” He walked stiffly to the flight of steps
leading from the parade ground to the ramparts.

Nashruu pushed the door open wider to make sure it didn’t
close and lock her in.

Colonel Hurust was moving too slowly for her taste.
Everyone on this island moved in slow motion. It was as if the heat sapped them
of their will to get anything done. Impatient, she cast a glance behind her to
the dark staircase leading down.

“Hello? Lady QuiTai? We met earlier. I’m Ma’am Zul, and I’m
here to speak with you,” Nashruu said. If the poor woman was locked down there
in the dark, maybe another woman’s voice would comfort her.

Nashruu tilted her head. The soft schussing she heard
reminded her of pressing a seashell to her ear. Wait! Was that something
moving? No. That must have been her imagination.

No matter how hard she squinted into the darkness or how
hard she concentrated, she couldn’t hear anything. The sounds from outside were
muffled. Silence billowed over them and consumed everything.

A voice whispered from the pitch black staircase, “You
shouldn’t be here, Ma’am Zul.”

~ ~ ~

It had to be a weird acoustical effect where the stone
curved sound, or maybe like those entertainers who made voices come out of
puppets. QuiTai couldn’t be part of that darkness, could she? Was she close
enough to reach out and touch Nashruu?

Nashruu refused to let her imagination spook her.

QuiTai wasn’t a folktale demon. She should be feared, certainly,
but she was mortal, like everyone else.

Two soldiers reluctantly edged into the room with her.

Colonel Hurust had found her escort, but he stood behind
them and didn’t cross the threshold.

“These men will take you down to see the Devil’s whore, Ma’am.
If you see my other men, tell them to report to me.”

She didn’t feel as if she should carry messages for him.
Perhaps his men had taken a meal break, been relieved of duty, or… She glanced
down the staircase again and gulped. Oh, this was silly. QuiTai could hardly be
a threat to a fortress full of soldiers.

The
soldiers didn’t move. Apparently, she was supposed to go down the stairs first.

“I
require a lamp,” she said.

Jellylantern in hand, the three of them descended into the
gloom. The stone stairs were slick and there was no handrail. The slow drip of
water echoing through the dungeon could have been blood draining from a corpse.

The fading green light of a single jellylantern in the
dungeon barely illuminated the first cell. It was impossible to know what
lurked in the utter darkness outside the sickly halo of light. Nashruu’s arms
prickled as she peered into the gloom.

The soldier’s shuffling boots on the stone floor sounded
like the scrape of talons behind a wall. It made the hairs at the back of her
neck stand.

QuiTai stood at the back of the first cell. It was hard to
see where she ended and the shadows began. Even her face was difficult to see,
but it was undoubtedly she.

Nashruu’s relief to find her locked away was a bit
embarrassing. She was glad no one knew how she felt.

The soldiers glanced around with wild eyes There was
nothing to see, so their imaginations seemed to paint pictures for them. They
edged toward the stairs as if they might abandon her.

“Wait!” Nashruu’s voice ricocheted off the stone dungeon
wall. She raised her hand as she peered through the cell bars. “Let me into the
cell with her.”

The soldiers drew themselves up as if a silent consensus
had been reached. She knew the signs of men about to lie to justify something
stupid.

The one with the luxuriant mustache spoke slowly, as if
forming a lie took all his concentration. “Yes, well, that may be what you
think you want, miss –”

“Ma’am.”

He rolled his eyes as the other one smirked. “Ma’am. We
can’t let you put yourself in danger.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Lady QuiTai won’t kill me.”

At least, she hoped not. Out of the corner of her eye, she
watched the small figure waiting patiently for this scene to play out.

A quiet groan echoed through the chamber.

QuiTai stepped closer to the bars of her cell. Her unbound
hair fell in matted, twisted locks down to her knees, as if she’d been floating
face down in the sea for several days. In the sickly green light of the sole
jellylantern, her eyes seemed to glow from the bottom of deep pits. It was
silly to think this, but she looked exactly like the
surkraim
from that illustrated book of folktales that was probably in every nursery in
Thampur. But QuiTai wasn’t a vengeful marsh spirit. No adult believed in such
things.

Somewhere else in the dark, something moved.

The soldiers bolted for the stairs, leaving Nashruu to
face her alone.

~ ~ ~

“We haven’t been introduced properly, Lady QuiTai. I’m
Governor Zul’s wife. Please call me Nashruu.”

“Not for all the rice in Levapur.” She sounded a bit
annoyed, as if the interruption were barely tolerable.

“Are we enemies?” Nashruu was able to keep her voice light
and pleasant. That was something, at least, although she suspected that QuiTai
could hear her booming heartbeat.

“That has yet to be determined, Ma’am Zul, but you must
appreciate my caution. In this place, I can’t afford a single misstep.”

It dawned
on Nashruu that QuiTai’s refusal to use her name hadn’t been personal. If the
soldiers overheard a Ponongese being familiar with a Thampurian, they’d
probably use it as an excuse to beat her. Nashruu been warned that rules were different
in Levapur: more formal, rigid, harsh. That was easy to forget in a place with
no paved roads, where animals and plants seemed to wander where they willed,
and most people walked around draped in little more than a bed sheet. At least
QuiTai’s reminder had been gentle. Grandfather would have roared at her.

She
lifted her satchel. “Do you care for tea? I’ve brought cakes, too. One can’t
have proper tea without a little something to nibble on, don’t you think?”

Her
nerves were showing. She had to stop talking so much.

QuiTai’s fingertips trailed across the cell bars as she
sauntered the width of her cell. “Tea and cakes in the fortress dungeon? How
delightfully absurd.”

Her laughter didn’t sound cruel or mocking. It was gentle.
After all the warnings about QuiTai, Nashruu was surprised at her kindness. “I’d
planned to have tea with you the moment I set foot in Levapur. Grandfather
insisted I visit you here as soon as he heard you’d been arrested. I’m being
efficient and doing both.”

“You are either naive, Ma’am Zul, or you’re the bravest
Thampurian I’ve ever met.”

Brave? Since stepping into the dungeon, she’d imagined the
weight of the fortress overhead crushing down on her. Every breath dragged the
stench of the place across her tongue. She didn’t trust the bars to protect her
from this woman whom even Grandfather feared.

With some effort, she willed her hand from her jacket’s
frogs and down to her side. Her arm felt awkwardly posed, but there was nothing
she could do about it. She had to prove she deserved Grandfather’s faith in
her.

Nashruu set the satchel on a stair and undid the heavy
buckles. The compartments on one side held a box of little pink cakes, a tin of
tea leaves, sugar, and a thermos of cream. The other held a teapot, spoons,
saucers, and two cups. It wasn’t practical; it was flash, the kind of toy most
people liked to have but never used because it was more trouble than it was
worth. “This is my favorite part.” She unsnapped the base to reveal a
rectangular metal canteen that was uncomfortably warm to the touch. “This end
here has the fuel and enclosed flame. The rest is filled with water. It takes a
while to boil.”

“Ingenious. Made for train travel, I assume,” QuiTai said.

Grandfather said QuiTai had a fascination for inventions
of all sorts. She’d certainly smuggled enough of them into Levapur. He’d
slipped a few items into those shipments to see what she might make of them,
although Nashruu wasn’t sure how he found out an answer. His spies watched
QuiTai, but she had proven herself elusive many times.

“The protected flame was an innovation for ship
passengers, since fire is the worst hazard on board. Cake?” Nashruu placed the
thickly iced cakes on a plate with a gold edge and handed it through the bars
to QuiTai.

“Perhaps it was in the past, before jellylanterns, which
makes one wonder why the incidence of burns has risen sharply among the
Golden Barracuda
’s crew. Mm. Such a
pretty cake. Suin’s?”

“I was told it was the only pâtisserie in Levapur worth
visiting.” Nashruu took the plate from QuiTai and picked up a cake for herself.
She bit into the corner. The filling wasn’t the usual berry jam, but it was
quite good. She popped the last bite into her mouth and flicked away the moist
crumbs from her fingers. “Grandfather will be jealous that he didn’t join us.”

“You have no idea how much I also wish Grandfather were
here.”

There was menace in her tone. Nothing overt, of course,
but her intent was clear.

“You call him Grandfather too?” Nashruu asked.

“It’s a sign of greatest respect among the Ponongese. If
he doesn’t like it, I will use another name for him. I’d hate for him to think
I underestimate him. Or his agent.”

For a moment, she was taken aback, until she remembered
that she’d told QuiTai herself that Grandfather had sent her here. Was QuiTai’s
seeming clairvoyance merely the result of listening to the things people forgot
they’d said?

“That’s quite flattering,” Nashruu said.

“Not at all. Oh, I see. You’re suspicious because I’m on
my best behavior.”

“Are you?”

QuiTai smiled to herself. “I’m not usually that generous.
Such a warning, and for free!”

Nashruu thought back furiously over their conversation.
What warning? “I’m sorry. I must have–”

QuiTai’s very breath sounded impatient. “If I can spend an
hour at the wharf and observe three crew members with obvious burn marks on
their hands and arms disembarking from the
Golden
Barracuda
, imagine what a spy who was looking for such things might learn.
And it doesn’t take much to extrapolate the rest of the story, does it? Three
sailors, who from their jocular banter, work together. Their paler skin
suggests they work below deck, but they are allowed shore leave, even though it’s
known that the
Golden Barracuda
sails
tomorrow on the tide. So they don’t work with the cargo or ship’s stores,
because those crewmen are working furiously to make sure everything is in order
for tomorrow. Not to mention that their clothes reek of burned juam nut oil.
And then there’s the ship’s doctor, openly negotiating the purchase of a large
quantity of black lotus on the wharf where anyone might overhear. Black lotus
has many uses, but in a ship’s doctor’s pharmacy, it’s used for pain – intense
pain. He also bought
juikoo
leaves, which are used to
soothe burned skin. Need I go on?”