Tempt the Devil (The Devil of Ponong series #3) (22 page)

Voorus snorted. “There’s no question people will know who
you mean if you say QuiTai. And no, there aren’t many Qui. Aren’t any Qui, I
guess. Not since…” He winced at the memories. “I’m not sure why we call her
Lady QuiTai. If we were Ponongese, I suppose we’d call her auntie, or
grandmother–”

Mityam chuckled. It took Voorus a moment to figure out
why, and then he laughed with the old man, because he could imagine the horror
on a Thampurian woman’s face if anyone hinted she was old enough to have
grandchildren. His own grandmother had demanded he call her Aunt Iolya. He
wondered now if that was vanity or embarrassment that he was a bastard. He
stopped laughing.

“Anyway, I’m not sure who started it, but someone
recognized that she’s in a class by herself, so they gave her a title befitting
her stature.”

Mityam couldn’t seem to find the words, until he could. “You
can’t go around handing out titles. Someone might mistake her for real
nobility.”

It struck Voorus that only a
thiree
would be upset by the idea of someone being treated as their
equal. He was shocked when the next realization came to him – that all
Thampurians would react the same way if they suspected someone might be treated
as if they belonged to a higher caste. Thankfully, the Ponongese could never
pass as Thampurian because of their eyes, but when QuiTai wore continental
fashions and arranged her hair in upswept curls rather than her braid, she
appeared uncomfortably similar to a Thampurian lady of means. He’d been fooled
by her once, until she’d raised the heavy mourning veil on her hat. If she ever
conquered the curse of her eyes, no one would ever suspect the fanged menace
among them. The idea made him shiver.

“It’s too
bad she isn’t a secret princess, though,” Mityam grumbled. “I saw her play a
bare-breasted native queen once on the stage. Very exotic.”

As Mityam’s eyebrows wriggled, Voorus tried to picture
QuiTai on a stage without a blouse. The mental picture didn’t strike him as
exotic. In his vision, she looked fearsome, and the audience cowed by her
power.

Mityam’s eyebrows stopped their lascivious dance to arch. “It
bothers you when I speak of this.”

“I can’t imagine my instructors back in Thampur ever
discussing something so racy.”

“Instructors? You do mean tutors, don’t you?”

There was no use pretending to be someone he wasn’t. “No,
sir. Only regular school.”

“Yes, yes. I’ve lectured many times to rooms full of young
men, so I know that system. It’s an efficient way to teach many students at
once, but what I dislike about it is that I must make speeches and you must
take notes, and then I must test to see what you’ve memorized. Memorization isn’t
the same as knowing something, really knowing it and understanding it. You have
to take it off the shelf and turn it over and poke inside it to learn what it
means. Memorization is only the ability to tell me what it looks like on that
shelf.”

To
Voorus, school was rows of small desks in a bleak school room, with boys in
matching uniforms writing the same lesson while the teacher loomed over them.
It was chanting the lesson in unison for the headmaster. It was misery.

“Have you
heard of the Ingosolian Ikoreet Orsuna?” Mityam asked.

“I saw
his bust in the library at the military academy. Someone had put a festival hat
on his head and flower leis around his neck.”

“I have a copy of his writings in my trunk if you’d like
to borrow them. Back in his day, lessons were more like a conversation. He’d
say something, his student would ask what it meant, and they’d explore the
answers together. If that method was good enough for the greatest philosopher
in antiquity, who am I to say he was wrong?” Mityam shrugged with false
modesty.

Voorus rose and went to his desk. His entire library
stretched across the back of it. He had never learned to enjoy reading. “I have
here a copy of the Thampurian legal code. All thirty-two books. Plus this
little one for the colony. Is that where we start?”

A professorial air came over Mityam as he settled back in
his chair. His voice rang through the room as if he were addressing someone in
the hallway. “Normally, I’d spend a week explaining the fascinating history and
structure of our legal system, but I’m interested myself to read these colonial
laws that allow people to be executed without a trial, so let’s start there.”

Voorus tried to hand Mityam the book, but he waved it
away.

“Find the judicial code relating to murder and read it to
me. You should ask questions when something confuses you. And if something
confuses me, well, we have a problem, don’t we?”

It would take them weeks to get through a single page if
they stopped every time Voorus got confused. He felt as if they should be doing
something for QuiTai, something quick and active, something he was good at. All
morning he’d felt as if his dreams were stupid, and now he felt useless too.

But QuiTai wouldn’t have wasted her money if she’d thought
he was hopeless. She wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to help him. Sure, she seemed
to think he was an idiot; but she thought everyone was an idiot, and some of
those idiots did quite well despite her opinion of them.

“There’s nothing about trials or murder in the colonial
laws. I’ve read this cover to cover three times. It’s all about taxes and land.
There must be another book, because there are laws the militia enforces that I
can’t find anywhere in here, and I’ve looked, believe me. When I asked the
clerks for the book with those laws, they said it doesn’t exist.”

“That’s rather interesting.” Mityam scowled at the book in
Voorus’ hand. “Do you know why Chief Justice Cuulon was exiled to Ponong?”

Voorus was mortified. “No, and we don’t–”

“I can see from your face that it’s a taboo subject. I
wonder who conned people into believing that the past is best left buried.
Although I guess everyone here is guilty of something they’re ashamed of.”
Mityam winked, although it was hard to see under the weight on his wild white
brows. “Cuulon was a policeman of some repute for his tough stance on crime. He
kept the lower castes in line. Brutally. And everyone looked the other way when
he punished or executed people he said were criminals. Of course their families
complained, but when someone dies, we’re used to the family cutting a fine
burial shroud for them. We assume they lie about the virtues of their dead. The
lower castes, after all, are inherently criminal classes.”

From the way Mityam said it, Voorus didn’t think he
actually believed what he said. Not too far in his own past, though, Voorus
knew he would have agreed with that statement. To his embarrassment, he still
tended to assume that the lower castes were guilty when they were arrested. It
was hard work to constantly climb out of that mindset.

“What finally brought Cuulon down wasn’t the
disappearances or pile of bodies at his feet. It wasn’t the brutal beatings or
the lack of trials. No. What got him exiled was the time he roughed up two
scions of one of the thirteen families when he caught them burglarizing their
aunt’s house. You see, they were upstanding lads from a good family, even
though they’d apparently been breaking into homes of family and friends for
almost a year. Boys of our caste have high spirits and play pranks; they aren’t
criminals. But Cuulon treated them like the thieves they were, and that’s when
he suddenly became an object lesson to the rest of the police in Thampur: make
sure the person you’ve arrested has no powerful friends before you bang his
head against the rocks and throw him into a cell with the rapists.”

“I shouldn’t be listening to this,” Voorus said
uncertainly. It was fascinating, though.

“I’m a newcomer here. I can be forgiven for a little
social blunder.” Mityam sipped of his cooled tea. “It sounds as if he took up
exactly where he left off in Thampur. He’s judge, jury, and executioner. Which
means, of course, that he’s a common murderer with the power of the state
behind him.” He leaned back in his chair. “He’ll probably do very well when
this war starts. His sort always do.”

Voorus
gladly set aside
the thick book when there was a knock on his apartment
door. His brain was numb and his mouth dry from reading aloud and discussing
the text. It had been an hour, and they were only on the second page. He’d take
any break he could get. Maybe it was Kyam, bearing good news. Or even better,
maybe it was QuiTai herself, come to let them know she’d been freed and to see
if Mityam was settled comfortably. That was the kind of thing she’d do.

Expectations buoyed his mood as he rose. “Excuse me a
moment, sir.”

Mityam motioned for Voorus to go ahead.

Voorus opened his apartment door, and the smile slid off
his face. It was her, but the wrong her.

How had she found him? Why was she walking around Levapur
without an escort?

He tugged the door tight against his body so Mityam wouldn’t
be able to see around him. He couldn’t breathe. It was worse than the way he’d
felt at the wharf earlier, because this time she saw him. He wanted to grab her
by the arms and demand she explain everything. He wanted to kiss her and tell
her he didn’t care that she’d disappeared without a word. He wanted to hug her
and close his eyes and dream that they’d gone back in time eight years. But all
he could do was save her reputation.

“You can’t be seen here. It isn’t proper,” he whispered.

“Is that any way to greet me after all these years?”
Nashruu asked.

Her genteel voice sent him reeling back a step. Years ago,
he’d hidden smiles when she’d imitated cultured tones. Only now he realized
that was her real accent. No one ever expected a
thiree
to try to slum below caste. Was anything he knew about her
real?

Nashruu
lowered her voice but not her gaze. “We need to talk.”

“Not now,”
he said between clenched teeth.

He turned
back to see if Mityam were eavesdropping. All he could see was the old man’s
arm and the back of his chair. However, Mityam’s hairy ears might be as sharp
as his wit, so he shuffled closer to her and tried to close the door behind
him. She might be seen in the hallway, though. He couldn’t decide if it were
safer to let her into his apartment or risk a gossipy neighbor.

She
pushed on the door. “I have to talk to you about Lady QuiTai. Right now.”

He didn’t understand. This woman looked like his Nashruu,
but didn’t act like her. Her gaze was too direct and her bearing almost
unfeminine. She didn’t look as if she cared what a man or her family thought of
her, which was unthinkable. Ladies didn’t behave that way. Where was the
obedient lover who had joyfully sacrificed herself in every way for his
happiness? This
thiree
woman wouldn’t
have lived in an apartment where cold air seeped around the windows and the
hallways smelled of poverty dinners, as his Nashruu had. And how could she
possibly know about QuiTai? How could QuiTai concern her? She’d only been in
Levapur a couple hours.

“Is that
Ma’am Nashruu Zul I hear?” Mityam asked.

Nashruu
drew back. Now she had to understand why she shouldn’t be here. Voorus put his
finger to his lips as he silently implored her to go away, even though they
knew it was too late. She leaned against the wall and drew in quick breaths.
Then the color came back into her face and she pushed the door open enough to
walk inside.

“Yes, it is. Is that you, Mister Muul? What a pleasure to
see you again.” She extended her hands to the old man as she walked around his
chair. That darling dimple in her cheek showed as she smiled down at him.

Completely confused, Voorus watched his dream lover turn
into a real person before his eyes. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

~ ~ ~

Nashruu settled into the chair Voorus offered. With
downcast eyes and her hands folded into her lap, she looked like a proper
Thampurian lady. Had it only been this morning that he’d found out she was
alive? It seemed he’d always known, although the news that she was married to
his half-brother had been a shock. QuiTai had explained things to him, things
he hadn’t wanted to hear.

“This whole thing
has the stench of Grandfather Zul to it,”
QuiTai had whispered to him.

As Voorus looked at Nashruu, he began to hate her as
passionately as he’d once loved her. Heat rushed over his face. He wanted to
yell at her. He wanted to send her away. He would die of embarrassment if he cried,
but his emotions were so muddled that he didn’t think he could control himself
much longer. He was glad he was standing behind Mityam’s chair, so only she
could see his shameful trembling.

“I’m so
pleased to see you again, Mister Muul,” Nashruu said. Her gaze flitted up to
Mityam’s face as she gave him a warm smile, and then fluttered back down to her
hands. She pressed them together as if any moment she’d wring them in distress.
It reminded Voorus of QuiTai’s deceptions.

“And I you. We were fellow passengers on the
Golden Barracuda
and spent many
delightful hours playing tiles with Captain Hadre,” Mityam told Voorus. “What
brings you here, dear lady? Shouldn’t you be resting?”

For a second, Voorus thought her expression hardened, but
he blinked and she looked soft and biddable again. He was a bit annoyed at
Mityam himself. This was his apartment; he was the host. If anyone should be
chastising Ma’am Zul, it should be he, but the things he wanted to say couldn’t
be repeated in front of a witness.

“I’m afraid that I have urgent business with Captain
Voorus that can’t wait. I hate to impose, but it’s a personal matter.” She
shyly glanced at Mityam as she left it to him to act on the implied request.