The Devil's Concubine (The Devil of Ponong series #1) (3 page)

The Devil’s
eyes narrowed. “QuiTai?”

“Ivitch
seems to fancy him.” She forced a blatantly fake yet innocent smile.

“I like
Thampurians less than you do,” Ivitch said.

“Not
possible.”

“What does
he look like?” Petrof asked.

QuiTai tossed
the furry skull left over from Petrof’s dinner onto the tray and wiped her hand
on the carpet. “He’s a typical Thampurian snob. Surely you’ve seen him.”

“You know
I haven’t left this room for over a year.”

So he didn’t
want her to know that he’d conquered his fear of the world outside long enough
to leave his den. He was the only person she knew who had ever left the
fortress alive, but something horrible had happened behind those stone walls,
something bad enough to make a werewolf too scared to hunt with his pack
– until now. Maybe enough time had passed that his terror had faded. Or
perhaps that fear had never been real; she had only his word for it.

Perhaps he
thought she still accepted the common wisdom that werewolves could only shift
under a full moon. In the years they’d been together, she’d figured out the
wolves could shift anytime they wished. That was fair; she had secrets from him
too. She hoped hers weren’t as easy to figure out.

Petrof’s
glazed eyes moved from Ivitch to QuiTai. “I don’t like you being alone with
anyone.”

“In his
bedroom,” Ivitch said.

Ivitch,
she decided, should have a fatal accident – and soon.

QuiTai
peered into the gloom over Petrof’s shoulder. For now, she’d drop the issue of
the portrait. Eventually, she’d convince him, or she’d find another way to meet
Kyam Zul. For some perverse reason, she felt that she had to talk to the
Thampurian. As if it were fated.

“QuiTai!”
Petrof snapped.

She knew
now how sea captains felt as they negotiated the treacherous currents of the
Ponong Fangs, the only deep water passage in the Ponong Archipelago that linked
the Sea of Erykoli to the Te’Am Ocean. As with the Fangs, there was only one
safe path through this conversation. One false step, one wrong word, could
spell disaster.
 
Whatever Kyam
wanted from her, he had better be prepared to pay handsomely for it, because
she would surely pay a price herself for meeting him.

“Why don’t
you accompany me then, Ivitch? If Mister Zul acts improperly, you can rip out
his throat.”

Ivitch
tugged on his attempt at a beard. “You think I’m stupid? If I do that, the
Thampurians will know a werewolf killed him. I’d strangle him so they wouldn’t
know who to hang.”

“How very
cunning of you. Did you come up with that on your own, or did you have help?”

“The Devil told us –”

“Shut up,
Ivitch!” Petrof said.

There were
times when it was safer to act as if she hadn’t heard anything. “If you’re
against the idea, Petrof, I won’t have him paint my portrait. It was a whim,
one that I can easily forget.” She shrugged, as if it were of no concern.

“Is he
handsome?”

She held
back a sigh. Once Petrof fixed on an idea, he rarely let it go. It was better
to be truthful, in case he had seen Kyam. “The sea dragons are an attractive
race, when they aren’t sneering. He’s tall and broad-shouldered. His face is
not so plain as to be ordinary, but not too pretty either. He keeps healthy and
fit. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Petrof
lunged from his chair, took her down, pinned her to the carpet. His nose bumped
hers. “Keep taunting me and one day you’ll regret it, you cold-blooded bitch.”

The game
between them had begun as it always did.

A grin
slowly spread across her face as desire for him welled through her body. His
big hands crushed her thin wrists. He didn’t rub or grind against her, but the
anticipation had both of them breathing hard. Petrof was dangerous and
unpredictable, traits she knew she should despise, but she’d developed a taste
for the edge he brought to the bed.

“It’s my
nature to be cruel,” she said.

Petrof
stroked her hair. His lips pressed close to her ear. “Yes, my little avenging
demon, you did warn me when we first met.” His fingers clutched her hair. “How
I wish I could see your mind working. I imagine it’s a sliding puzzle with
thousands of little moving pieces.”

“Crack her
head open and find out,” Ivitch said.

Petrof’s
growl rumbled through the room. If Ivitch had been smart, he would have closed
the door and walked away. “Leave them alone now,” Casmir told Ivitch as he
reached for the door. “The master will decide when the time is right.”

Ivitch
shoved him back. Casmir leapt onto him and dragged him to the ground. She heard
furniture knock over. Petrof flinched when the wall between the rooms shook from
the impact of a body against it. Soon the pack was merrily brawling.

“Click,
clack. I can hear the gears in your mind whirling from here, QuiTai. Why are
you quiet?” Petrof asked.

“It’s hard
to appreciate your touch with the boys roughhousing in the next room.”

Petrof
grinned as she struggled to free her wrist from his grasp. Finally, he let go.
“Your tale of smugglers had better be true.”

“Send your
pack to question their dealers. Someone will fetch the same rumor I heard.”

Suspicion
lingered in his eyes, but he rolled off her. “Close the door, woman. The moon
isn’t the only stirring in my blood.”

~ ~ ~

Petrof sank onto the small stool in
the bathing chamber with a drawn-out sigh. QuiTai dipped a sponge into soapy
water and scrubbed mud smears from his neck. Dark auburn hair covered his muscular
chest, thighs, and back.

“I assume
from the state of your floor that you’ve eaten,” she said.

“The pack
hunted for me.”

The dirty
suds trailing down his wide shoulders told a different story. She didn’t mind
that he lied to her. She wasn’t even offended that the pack kept secrets from
her. They were his men, not hers. They made their loyalties clear in any number
of ways, including making sure that no one else on the island dared sell black
lotus to the Devil’s concubine.

Petrof
captured QuiTai’s hand and brought it to his lips as he twisted around to face
her. “You’re quiet. When you’re quiet, it means you’re thinking, and when you
think, wise men reach for weapons.”

“I’m
thinking about the smugglers.” One lie in exchange for another.

“I want
results.”

He tugged
her close as he stood. She felt him stir against her. His wet hand grasped her
bottom. She closed her eyes as his beard scraped her cheek.

“I have
further business tonight,” she said.

“With whom?”

“No one in
particular. It’s just that something feels odd in town, but I can’t put my
finger on what it is. I’m... if I observe, maybe it will come to me. I don’t
know. It’s so elusive that I can’t even be sure that it’s real.”

That was
the part that bothered her most. A faint suspicion that Kyam Zul was somehow
involved flitted on the edge of her thoughts. It could simply be coincidence
that he turned to her now; but she did not believe in coincidence.

QuiTai
slightly shook her head. Kyam was the last person she wanted to think about
when she was with her lover.

“You’re
imagining things,” Petrof said.

If it wasn’t
something he could touch, he decided it didn’t exist. She knew better. “It
might be important,” she said.

“Does it
have anything to do with the smugglers?”

“I’m sure
you’re smart enough to figure that out.”

He released
her from his hold. “When you flatter me, I instinctively check my balls, and
then my safe.”

QuiTai
gave him a playful push. “Now who is flattering whom?”

Petrof
rubbed his head with a towel until his hair stood up in spikes.
 
He wiped water drops from his thighs and
then wrapped the cloth low around his waist so that his muscles showed to their
best advantage. He stalked toward her. “Every morsel of lies from you is
wrapped in only enough truth to make it easy to swallow. I’m not sure why I
keep you around.”

QuiTai ran
her finger down the trail of hair from his navel to his groin. At the top of
the towel, her hand stopped. She tilted her head and smiled at him. “You knew
what I was when you chose me.”

Petrof
shoved her to the wall. The heat of his body rolled over her in a soap-scented
cloud. “I chose you because I believed you knew where the Oracle was. Now I
think she’s another of your lies.”

Ah, that
had been a mistake, telling him when they first met that the Oracle had led her
to him. Over the time they’d been together, he alternately wooed and threatened
her for more information. Now she answered him as she always did: “When do I
speak of her? She’s a vapor dream. Don’t waste your time chasing oblivion.”

What Petrof
did not know was that the Oracle had spoken through him many times. He simply
didn’t remember. That was perhaps for the best; if he had been able to recall
the voice that spoke from his lips, he would have been driven mad by it.

“You’re
the key to finding her,” Petrof said.

QuiTai knew
how to evoke the Oracle, as did all the women of her clan; but the Oracle was
their goddess, not a tool for Petrof to bend to his bidding. And he would not
like her; her answers seemed to make sense only in retrospect, when it was too
late to change the course of time. Petrof did not like anything he could not
control.

QuiTai
tugged on his towel and let it fall to the floor. “Enough talking.” He glowered
down at her. Maybe it was his wolf nature, but he hated it when she initiated
sex. Every time had to be a conquest. He only wanted the unobtainable.

She
slipped under his arm and sauntered to the bedroom. “Maybe I’ll head downslope
and see to my own dinner, since the only food you have here is beer and bones.”

As she
bent to grab her sarong, he gripped her arm. “You’ll stay.”

“I told
you that I have further business tonight.” It was getting harder to pretend she
didn’t want him to take her to bed again. His lips tickled her neck, and she
trembled as his breath sent a chill down her spine.

“And I
told you that you’re staying,” he said. He dragged her to his bed and pushed
her onto the mattress. “Cold, cruel, devious QuiTai. What does it take to melt
your reptilian heart?”

Even
though his hands weren’t on her throat, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
Warnings flashed through her brain. If she struggled against him in earnest,
she’d never escape his touch. This called for a subtler approach. Luckily,
there was a temptation he could never resist.

“Shall we
take the vapor first?” she asked.

Thirty
minutes later, she sped across the timbergrass bridge, leaving Petrof lost in vapor
dream. His memory of the evening would be hazy; he wouldn’t remember if he’d
let her go. Halfway to the funicular station, she paused: In her hurry to
escape, she’d forgotten to scrape the remains of the black lotus from his pipe.
And perhaps she should have taken the opportunity to summon the Oracle and ask
for guidance on what might be amiss in Levapur.

No. To
summon the Oracle she had to inject Petrof with a non-lethal dose of her venom.
The Goddess of the Hunt fated the Ponongese to feel a connection with the
animals they poisoned, so they’d have empathy for their food. QuiTai couldn’t
bear linking her mind and emotions to Petrof, especially this close to a full
moon. His thoughts were ugly enough when he wasn’t completely unhinged.
Besides, she could find the answer without the Oracle’s help.

And maybe
Kyam Zul was the first place she should start looking.

Over
the next few days,
Petrof became more furious that no information was
forthcoming about the smugglers. He threatened QuiTai; he beat his pack; he
broke things. But none of it made any news happen. And that made it harder to
talk him into allowing her to have her portrait painted. But tonight she finally
had his permission, and she wanted to act before he changed his mind. She
hurried from the wolves’ den toward Levapur, intent on making her way to the
Red Happiness.

While Levapur didn’t
have official boundaries, the apartment building squatting near the Jupoli
Gorge was considered the outskirts. QuiTai grimaced as she neared it. She never
liked to pass by the hovel, but there was only one path into town from upslope.
The sun and humidity had long ago peeled the paint from the graying wood where
ferns sprouted like hair on the ears of old men. There were gaps in the
upstairs veranda where the wood had rotted away. The jungle had consumed the
houses that used to stand near it, but the old dwelling refused to go away. Someone
should have burned it down long ago.

Silent children with
suspicious eyes darted onto the veranda to stare at her as she walked down the
center of the dirt trail. She never saw them play during the day, but at night
they stirred to life. A woman leaning against the veranda railing left her
watchful sisters to duck behind the sheet hanging in the doorway. QuiTai often
wondered if all these aloof people were related to each other, or if the town
pushed everyone like them to the margins.

“Auntie QuiTai!” A
whiskered man with bowed legs pushed aside the sheet and headed toward her. She
would never set foot on that veranda, so she did not stop, but slowed her steps
to give him time to catch up. She hadn’t planned to contact her spies this
evening, but she couldn’t ignore LiHoun.

He pressed his hands
together. “Auntie QuiTai, have you eaten?”

She was no more the
man’s aunt than he was her uncle, but respect was a balm for many woes. QuiTai
returned the bow. “Yes, uncle LiHoun. Thank you for asking. And you?”

“Yes. Very well,” he
said.

“You must
have an appetite for air.”

He
laughed, showing teeth that sprouted from his jaw like the monolith stones in
the harbor. His pupils were vertical like hers, but his iris was like the
jungle under the canopy, muted green with patches of brown. He had no inner
eyelid and no fangs. His people were from a cluster of volcanic islands several
hundred miles south of the Ponong archipelago. Despite their similar coloring
and language, the Li weren’t related to the Ponongese.

He stopped
at a glade of banana trees at the foot of an eroded hillside. After pushing the
back hem of his homespun sarong into the front waistband, making billowy
shorts, he squatted. “I heard a story.”

Despite
the fancy Thampurian style dress she wore, with a heavy velvet jacket that
reached her knees, velvet leggings, a long scarf that draped across her chest
and shoulders, and a hat from the finest milliner on the continent, QuiTai
squatted beside him in Ponongese fashion and set down the black box she
carried. Both faced the road. They watched the turning shades of twilight draw
across the sky and the night spirit moths flutter through the thicket of trees.
She lit a tightly rolled kur, inhaled deeply, and passed it to him. Then she
rested her hands on her knees.

“A good
story is meat for your rice,” she said.

“This
story is a plump chicken.” He took a long drag on the kur, pulling the orange
line of embers close to his curved fingernails, and held the smoke in his lungs
before slowly releasing it in a plume. QuiTai quietly coughed. He smiled shyly,
took another drag, and handed the roll back to her with an apologetic shrug.

QuiTai
pulled the hot smoke into her mouth and returned the nub to him. The stimulant
made her blood feel hot. “I’d rather have meat than smoke anyway, uncle.” She
exhaled.

Time
slowed as it always did during these meetings. They leisurely discussed LiHoun’s
family, the price of rice, working conditions in the upslope plantations, and
rumors of another typhoon forming over the Te’Am Ocean. Thankfully, impatience
wasn’t a Ponongese vice. It was always better to let matters unfold at their
own pace.

Finally,
LiHoun came around to it. “PhaNyan regularly sticks his finger into a dirt
Thampurian’s bowl, without giving the Devil his share. Several weeks ago, the
dirt Thampurian, by the grace of gods in a capricious mood, smuggled several
large crates onto the island. When he didn’t share his bounty with PhaNyan,
PhaNyan cried to a cat, who whispered the story to the wolf slayer. But
somewhere in the retelling, PhaNyan’s name was lost to the story.”

QuiTai
could imagine where. She’d deal with that later. For now, she wanted to know
more about the Thampurian who aided the smugglers. His name hadn’t been
attached to the rumor either when it reached her, which meant that someone down
the line had held back information. That person would regret his foolish
decision.

If she’d
passed by LiHoun, it might have been another few days before she heard his
information. Manners, she reflected, were never wasted effort.

“The gods
love and protect their fools,” she said.

A rasping
cough shook LiHoun’s thin shoulders. “So it’s said. I wonder how a dirt
Thampurian talked anyone into trusting him with their shipment, and how he
managed to do everything right except get paid?” His cunning eyes narrowed as
he tilted his head.

Unless he
was paid in some other way than coin. There were few ways for a Thampurian to
sink to dirt: the most assured route was becoming a vapor addict. If PhaNyan’s
source knew smugglers who brought black lotus onto the island outside of the
Devil’s syndicate, she wanted to talk to him.

“I wonder
what was in those crates,” she said.

LiHoun
nodded. “That would be a story worth telling.”

She handed
him several coins. “It would be a story worth hearing, uncle. Worth ten times
this tale.” She held up another coin between her fingertips. “Those crates went
somewhere. Find them.” She put a second, larger, coin with the first. LiHoun’s
eyes widened with appreciation. “For me alone. Not the wolves.”

He took
the coins. “Wolves eat cats.” She flinched, but he didn’t seem to see it. He
went on, “I don’t do business with them.”

“The
wisest hairs are gray.” QuiTai gripped the black box by her ankle and rose.

“May your
bowl always be full, auntie.”

“May yours
be full of anything but sorrow, uncle.”

“Or air!”
He laughed heartily as she headed down the road in search of PhaNyan.

~ ~ ~

She found PhaNyan drinking among a row of plantation workers
at a plank nailed to the railing of a veranda. Like the other men in the back
alley bar, the weight of the day hunched his back. His hand curled around his
beer as if someone might snatch it away. The fragrant haze of kur rose in heavy
tendrils that reflected the sickly green light of an aging jellylantern.

The man beside him
saw QuiTai first. He nudged PhaNyan with his elbow.

PhaNyan bolted down
the alley, but stopped running after only a few steps. His shoulders slumped as
he turned to face her. Tall for a Ponongese, he was delicately featured, except
for his flattened nose.

As angry as she was
that she had to hunt him down, QuiTai knew better than to talk the Devil’s
business in front of the bar’s patrons. She gestured for him to walk with her
deeper into the maze of alleys off the main road.

“Little brother
PhaNyan, have you eaten?”

PhaNyan licked his
bottom lip as he cast side glances at her. “Yes, auntie. And you?”

“Alas, no.
When the Devil does not eat, neither do I.”

He made a
face. “He’s from the continent. Why do you share a bowl with him, auntie
QuiTai?”

“You
question my loyalties?”

“I’m not
the only one.”

“Ah.” The
last thing she needed was that sort of trouble. The werewolves were good at
enforcement, but her network was mostly natives who were far better at the
subtle art of intelligence gathering. If they questioned her, they wouldn’t
continue to help the Devil.

She
stopped in a dark alley with a dead end. “Setting aside my choice of bedmates
for the moment, you’re fortunate that the Devil hasn’t heard of your betrayal
yet. There’s still time to replace the meat in his bowl before he notices it’s
gone.”

His head
snapped up. She could see understanding dawning in his eyes. It wouldn’t matter
to the Devil why he’d withheld information. Her protection was the only thing
standing between him and a painful death.

His Adam’s
apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “I would be grateful.”

She cupped
his chin in her hand. “Gratitude becomes you. But, of course, he’ll be ravenous
when I do tell him, so it’s best to make sure he has extra to feast on.”

“I have to
eat too.”

“Don’t we
all.”

“But they
haven’t sold anything to our fences yet, so I have no cut to offer the Devil as
penance.”

The crack
of QuiTai’s fist hitting his jaw echoed through the alleyway. He staggered back
against a wall, and shook his head as if to clear it.

“I name
your penance. Not you,” QuiTai said.

PhaNyan’s
fingers traced over his jaw. She gave him cool silence so that he would know
she wouldn’t strike him again. He grimaced before grasping her hand and bowing
over it to place a reverent kiss on her knuckles.

Knowing
that her displeasure would spur his efforts, she soured her smile. “Bring me
the names and movements of every stranger on the island.”

Still bent
in his bow, he lifted his gaze to hers. “Are you searching for the Ravidian
smugglers to make an alliance against the Thampurians?”

So the
smugglers were Ravidians. Many shipments that passed under the harbor master’s
greedy eye weren’t legal, but as a Thampurian, he would have drawn the line at
aiding Ravidians. Or maybe not: the dirt Thampurian had worked for them, after
all. Still, chances were that the Ravidians used one of the smugglers’ coves to
bring their crates ashore. If so, LiHoun would find out.

PhaNyan
said, “I knew it! You’re only working with the Devil until you can start the
revolution.”

She
grabbed his hand and bent it back until he dropped to his knees. “Foolish
little brother! Don’t ever speak of such things where we might be overheard.
Spies are everywhere.”

He
screamed as she broke one of his fingers.

“That’s
for withholding information. Refuse to tell the werewolves if you must, but
never try to hide anything from me.”

“Forgive
me, grandmother QuiTai!”

She
wrapped her hand around his thumb. “Dirt has a name. I want it, and where I
will find him. Now.”

He sobbed
out an answer as his thumb snapped.

~ ~ ~

As she headed for the Red Happiness, the scent of a thousand
different dinners wafted from hibachis on verandas. People leaned over the
railings of the upstairs verandas to chat with neighbors below. Lovers gathered
in alleyways to smile shyly and share long silences. Only the full moon could
drive Ponongese to seek shelter inside their apartments.

The line between the
Thampurian and Ponongese neighborhoods was visible at night as a change in the
color of light that filtered through their intricate carved wood window screens.
The blue jellylanterns the Thampurians could afford were much stronger than the
cheaper green, but they were still too weak to conquer the night’s shadows.
Like a giant jellyfish floating in a misty ocean, Levapur glowed everywhere she
looked. Beyond the town, the Sea of Erykoli was a different sort of darkness,
one that seethed with the remnant power cast off by the last typhoon.

QuiTai’s Thampurian-style
clothes were ridiculous in Ponong’s tropical climate, but it seemed to irk Kyam
Zul when she dressed like his people, so she endured the layers of
undergarments and heavy fabrics. With every breath, the corset under her jacket
tightened around her ribs like a constrictor: that explained why Thampurian
ladies, who wore such outfits every day rather than a sensible sarong, swooned
so often in the streets of Levapur. No matter how hard she fought to breathe,
QuiTai refused to faint. She wouldn’t give anyone the satisfaction, especially
Kyam Zul.

Standing in the
light mist, she opened her dainty umbrella and watched the Red Happiness brothel
from across the road. The scent of damp plants and Ponong’s rich soil filled
the air as clouds released warm, fat raindrops. Customers and workers sat on
the wide veranda of the Red Happiness in white wicker chairs, the veranda’s
roof protecting them from the rain while allowing the cooling breezes from the
ocean to waft over them.

Conversations
stopped as QuiTai entered the brothel through the open typhoon shutters. She
shook the water off her umbrella and closed it. Kyam sat toward the back of the
long, narrow room where small cabaret tables clustered. He had been waiting
three days for her to answer his message. By now, he was probably furious. She
didn’t let her gaze linger on him long enough to find out.