The Devil's Concubine (The Devil of Ponong series #1) (21 page)

She pointed to the wrapping around her ankle,
and pulled down the shoulder of her blouse to show him the purple and yellow
bruise on her upper arm. “These past few days with you haven’t been restful.”

“Don’t you try to pin the blame for any of
that on me! That’s Petrof’s doing, not mine.”

“And he will pay. I assure you.”

“The risks you’re taking aren’t worth it.”

“Don’t you dare try to take the satisfaction
of revenge from me.”

“You’ll enjoy it, won’t you?”

“You knew what I was when we set out on this
little adventure. Don’t try to change me now.”

He snarled with frustration as his hands
twitched at his sides. “Damn it! I’m not trying to change you. I’m just trying
to make you see that the Devil doesn’t love you.”

She snorted. “Of course he doesn’t.”

That gave him pause, but he’d worked up
indignation and he had to vent it. “Yet another person you love who doesn’t
love you in return.”

She laughed. “What makes you think that I
love the Devil? Do I strike you as the lovesick type? Believe me, when I bed a
man, it’s not because I’m picturing some romantic future. I got over that a
long time ago. The pleasure of the moment is my only concern.”

“Then why are you with him?”

“I told you that I always pay my debts.”

“But you said that he addicted Jezereet to
the black lotus out of jealousy. How could you forgive him for that?”

It was like being slapped by Jezereet’s
ghost. “I am not responsible for her foolishness.”

But even as she said it, she knew it was a
lie. Could it be that Petrof was her addiction? And that she was coming out of
it as if freed from vapor dream? The lure of his body, his dangerous streak,
his skill in bed, all of it seemed distant now. It shamed her to admit how she’d
let him use her. She was supposed to be smarter than that.

“Did you ever love him?”

How Kyam’s questions pricked her conscious
and stung her pride! If she were willing to rip away the veil of
self-protection, she’d have to admit the most squalid, ugliest truth there ever
was – that for once, a lover chose her over Jezereet, and for that, she’d
forgiven the unforgivable. “It’s purely business. The Devil’s business.”

“So it had nothing to do with pleasure.”

That wasn’t true either, although in light of
her discoveries the past few days, she’d never touch Petrof again. Given a
choice between humiliating herself by admitting she’d been duped or pretending
she’d endured sex she hadn’t enjoyed, she chose not to say anything. It was a
bitter enough potion to swallow without a public confession.

Kyam lifted his hands to the sky. “You’re
driving me insane.”

“You should be used to that.” She looked out
to sea again. What she needed was a purifying bath to scrub away her past.
Maybe Kyam Zul was like the priestesses of the Qui, able to conjure accusing
ghosts from the dark places she thought she’d banished them.

She took a deep breath. “Did Hadre say how long
before we reach Cay Rhi?”

“Hours.”

Rationally, she knew that there was some
element of revenge against Petrof in the little scenario forming in her mind,
but she didn’t care. After what she’d said, Kyam would be a fool to think she
meant more than a pleasant way to spend a few hours. The desire from the night
before lingered in her blood. Maybe she could exorcise Petrof’s grip on her
soul with pleasure at Kyam’s hands. And if it didn’t work, she would hardly
count it as time wasted.

“Hmm. I wonder how we should amuse ourselves,”
she said.

His eyebrow rose.

“Do you play tiles?” she asked. To her
amusement, his nose wrinkled.

“Only if I have to.”

“Bores me too. But I’ve never been good at
waiting patiently.”

The light came back to Kyam’s eyes.

“And it seems we have some unfinished
business between us.”

QuiTai sauntered away from the bow. Half way
across the deck, she paused only long enough to look over her shoulder at him. Then
she headed down the carpeted stairs to the passenger cabins. Blue light
jellylanterns lit the short hallway. Only two cabin doors stood on either side.
Evidently, the
Golden Barracuda
was
primarily for trade, not passengers.

Kyam took his time following her. “Just like
that?”

“We’ve been flirting for over a year. You
made it clear you want more, and I’ve decided I do too. People like us don’t
need to make it complicated. But I can amuse myself perfectly well without you,
so run along if you’re insulted.”

QuiTai barely had time to reach for the knob
of a cabin door before he was next to her, cradling her face between his hands
and stooping to kiss her. He fumbled for the door latch: when it opened, he
dragged her into the room. For a passenger cabin, it was of a respectable size,
meaning little bigger than a jail cell and as sparsely furnished. A wardrobe
and small desk were built into one wall, a bed into the other.

Kyam pulled her away from the door and
slammed it shut. The narrow passage between the bed and the walls wasn’t wide
enough for two people to stand face to face unless they were exceptionally well
acquainted and rather fond of each other. His hands pressed to the wall on
either side of her. There was no escape, not that she wanted to get away. His
eyes already had that bedroom look, focused on pleasure and little else. As he
leaned down, he grasped her head and pulled her mouth to his.
 
With deft fingers, he unbuttoned her
blouse and dropped it on the floor without breaking their kiss. He kicked off
his trousers and slid his hand down to the small of her bared back.

QuiTai stepped back from his embrace. His
shoulders rose and fell with each deep breath. He took a menacing step toward
her. Waves of anticipation moved through her body. Her lips curved as she
shoved him back onto the bed. The slight confusion that furrowed his brow eased
as she straddled his hips.

“Wait!”

If he was going to be like Petrof, she would
leave.

He pointed to the table beside his bed. “Top
drawer.”

She leaned over to pull open the drawer. As
she drew out the sheaths, she nodded her approval. “I like a man who plans
ahead.” Then she leaned down and bit his bottom lip.

~ ~ ~

Kyam’s head dropped to the pillow as he released a long
groan. Grinning, he stretched his arm over his head. It was almost adorable how
smug he looked, as if he’d conquered her.

“I’ve wanted to do that with you longer than
I’ve wanted to kiss you.”

“How delightfully debauched of you. I
approve.” QuiTai climbed off his lap and stretched beside him. As her
fingernails rasped lightly over his ribs, he laughed and grabbed her hand.
Between kisses pressed to each of her fingers, his dark eyes gazed at hers. “I
never should have let you find that ticklish spot.”

There was a knock on the cabin door. Kyam got
up and pulled on his trousers. He rubbed his chest as he looked down at her
with possessive satisfaction.

There was another knock. “Just a moment,” he called.
He limped the few steps to the door and turned back to look at her. “You play
rough, don’t you, my dear?”

“I warned you.” QuiTai pulled the sheets up
to her chest in case the person at the door could see around him into the
cabin.

He smirked. “Would you like some food? I’ll
ask them to send up a plate from the galley.”

She leaned over the mattress to the small
table near the bed and opened Kyam’s silver kur case. “And something to drink.
Where’s your lighter?”

Kyam opened the door. Hadre glanced at QuiTai
as she lit a kur and exhaled a plume of smoke with leisurely contentment. His
cheeks went pink. “Kyam, I received orders on the farwriter, and so did you.
You must come to my cabin and read them,” he said.

Kyam picked his shirt up from the floor. He
sniffed it before he pulled it on. “Of course.” He sucked a deep breath between
his teeth as he walked stiffly out of the cabin.

Hadre looked toward QuiTai but couldn’t seem
to meet her eyes. “I’m so terribly sorry about this, Lady QuiTai. Orders.” He
winced as he pulled the door closed.

She heard the turn of a key. Kyam’s voice
eventually faded, so she guessed he must have followed Hadre to his cabin. She
fluffed the pillows behind her and inhaled the stimulating kur smoke.

This was an interesting turn of events.

Who would Captain Hadre take orders from?
Only the Zul family or the government. She could guess which one told him to
take her prisoner. So why would the Thampurian government care enough about her
to lock her in a cabin on a junk when she had no means of escape? She was no
sea dragon. It wasn’t as if she could dive from the deck, hit the water, shift,
and swim away. Although that’s almost what she’d done at the fortress.

She climbed out of bed and opened the window
screen. They’d already sailed past DiaHoun Rock, a high, domed monolith almost
big enough to be an island in its own right, if it hadn’t been only thirty
yards off Ponong’s western shore. If she’d been anxious to escape, she would
have wriggled through the window and dropped into the sea. She wasn’t
desperate, yet. Still, she looked down at the water to gauge the drop.

Long, sinuous shapes undulated alongside the
junk. The sun gleamed off their scales.

Sea dragons.

Kyam once said that she could add one and one
and come up with five. She added secret orders and being locked in the cabin with
a platoon of sea dragons, and slowly sank back onto the bed. She didn’t need
the Oracle for this vision. Every step unfolded before her with horrible
clarity. The things she’d sensed on the edge of her perception came roaring out
of the darkness like a waterspout spun off a typhoon.

The
Golden
Barracuda
had been ready to sail when they got to the harbor. Kyam had
planned to board and then demand to know exactly where she thought the
Ravidians were. He’d get his proof and then triumphantly report back to his
superiors. Only something had gone wrong, and someone found out that he was on
the trail of the Ravidians. They hadn’t been exactly secretive about their
investigation, after all. He’d told too many people, despite her warning.

Back at the fortress, Voorus tried to get her
close to the cell that held the werewolves. The captain’s hand had been on the
cell’s biolock. The military was after her. Not Kyam.
Her
. Voorus wanted to use her against the Devil, but they wouldn’t
have sent so many sea dragons to follow the
Golden
Barracuda
just to bring her back to the fortress. There was a bigger reason
behind that decision, and it went higher up than Voorus, she was sure. The only
question in her mind was if it was the colonial government or the Thampurian
government itself that wanted her dead.

She looked out the window again and counted
sea dragons. Maybe twenty: a huge landing party, considering that there were
only three Ravidians.

The bigger picture was clear, and it made her
blood run cold.

Maybe Kyam hadn’t meant to hand her over to
the military, but his motives didn’t concern her any more. Nor did his future:
That would happen anyway, no matter what either of them did. The Oracle hadn’t
spoken about her future, though. Perhaps she didn’t have one. Perhaps it would
end on the cay. But she wasn’t going down without a fight, no matter who got
hurt. Even him.

~ ~ ~

A search of Kyam’s cabin revealed nothing QuiTai could use
as a weapon.
 
The silk scarf he’d
given her was crumpled under his pillow. She left it.

She sat on the bed
and unwrapped the gauze around her ankle. Ivitch’s teeth had scraped off some
skin. There were only a couple of punctures, but the skin surrounding them was inflamed
and warm to the touch, a sure sign that an infection had set in. At least it
didn’t hurt to walk.

After she rewrapped
the gauze and dressed, there was little to do but wait. Eventually, someone
would come for her. Until then, she should prepare as best she could for all
the possible futures.

She unscrewed the
cap from the vial of black lotus and carefully squeezed a few drops of her
venom into it. After replacing the cap, she shook it hard to mix the resinous
tar with the pale green neurotoxin. She wasn’t sure that the combination would
work the same as vapor, but summoning the Oracle wasn’t her main objective. A
person would recover from such a small amount of her venom – Petrof
always did – but they’d be incapacitated for a while.

She peered through
the porthole. In the far distance, haze wreathed the peaks of Ponong. They had
to be near the cay by now.
 
She
heard footsteps on the stairs outside the cabin.

It was time.

Kyam
opened the
cabin door. He wore a Thampurian military uniform and stood
stiffly as he looked slightly over her head. “You’ve been summoned to the
Captain’s cabin.”

She stepped into the
hallway. Two soldiers in uniforms that matched Kyam’s waited on the stairs; she
recognized them from their march through the marketplace.

The soldiers led her upstairs. Kyam followed
them to Hadre’s cabin.

Voorus’ boots rested on Hadre’s desk as he
leaned back in a chair. Hadre stood to the side, quietly fuming. Twenty
Thampurian soldiers packed into the small space. Kyam pressed against her back
as he closed the cabin door.

Voorus swung his feet off the table and
leaned over the map. “Very good. Now that we’re assembled, we can begin our
operation. Captain Zul, your sailors will row us to the cay. The snake will
accompany us as our native guide.”

“I’ve never been on Cay Rhi before,” QuiTai
said.

His gaze rose to meet hers. It wasn’t hatred
that she saw, just smug superiority. “I didn’t give you permission to speak. I’m
also not giving you a choice. Come willingly, or come in shackles.”

QuiTai could feel the crackling energy of a
shift spread through Kyam. She always thought sea dragons had to be in the
ocean to shift, but every type of shifter was unique, and it had taken her
almost two years to learn that everything she thought about werewolves was
wrong.

“She told you that she doesn’t know the cay.
What use would she be?” Kyam asked.

“May I remind you, Zul, that you’re an
observer. This is my operation.”

Sensing that it might be best to pretend that
was a surprise to her, QuiTai looked over her shoulder at Kyam. “Colonel Zul?”

Voorus laughed. “Certainly he used to be a colonel,
but he’s nothing more now than a remittance man. Stripped of rank and sent away
where he couldn’t embarrass his family anymore. Did you actually believe he was
in charge? I thought that you were supposed to be smart.” His laughter was
poorly faked.

Something didn’t strike her as right about
the scene. It might have been true that Kyam was currently in disgrace. He
might have been stripped of rank: That explained why his government wouldn’t listen
to him, and why he’d tried to bribe her with family money. Could the Oracle
have been wrong? No. It wasn’t possible. Kyam Zul was much more than a
remittance man, even if he and Voorus didn’t know it yet.

“Tell her, Zul.”

His eyes pleaded with her for understanding. “You
think I’m a spy. I’m not. I still have my rank, despite what Major Voorus says,
and technically I have duties on Ponong, but my real job is to fade into
obscurity. Here’s irony for you: As awful as you’ve been to me, you’re the only
person on this island who’s treated me as if I still mattered.”

A man like him with nothing to do all day but
paint flowers while serving a life sentence on a beautiful island prison. A sea
dragon forever banned from setting foot on a boat home. No wonder he simmered
with frustrated anger all the time. She should have seen it. The entire plan to
follow the Ravidians had been his desperate attempt to win back his place in
Thampurian society.

Although Kyam couldn’t know it, the real
irony was that she could see the future unfolding; and that she, of all people,
would be the one to make the Oracle’s vision come true after fighting so hard
to stop it. Kyam Zul would become the governor of Ponong. She didn’t know how,
but it would come to pass, probably because he’d eventually get credit for
bringing the Ravidian plot to the attention of his superiors. And he’d always
know that she was the only reason he had figured it out. Colonial governor Zul
would be in her debt. The possibilities were delicious. It was a pity she
couldn’t let him in on the cosmic joke: Kyam could probably use the laugh.

“You’ve been made the fool,” Voorus told
QuiTai. “I’m curious though. What could possibly tempt the Devil’s whore into
helping a man she clearly hates?”

The question was, what would Voorus believe?
He didn’t need the truth.

She lifted her chin. “They promised me that
they’d get me into the new kinescoptic motion pictures in Rantuum. I’ve had
enough of living on this boring island. I’m an actress. I belong on the stage.”

That time, Voorus’ ugly laughter was real. “A
promise he won’t keep, I assure you.”

QuiTai spun around and slapped Kyam. “You!”

Voorus found that even funnier. “Get the little
viper under control, Zul. We have work to do.”

Kyam grasped her wrists.
 
She put up a token struggle while Voorus ordered them to board the
lifeboats.