Tempt the Devil (The Devil of Ponong series #3) (5 page)

A year ago, Kyam wouldn’t have thought twice about the
teen boys loitering at the fringes of the marketplace. He might have even
nodded to a few of the lads he knew by name. But ever since his grandfather had
pushed the Ponongese dangerously close to the point of rebellion, he worried
when the boys laughed, and moved his hand to his baton when they fell silent.

QuiTai surveyed the marketplace from the top step as if
awaiting her audience’s attention. She stretched the fingers of both hands into
painful poses like a temple dancer with golden fingertips. He went down the
steps, and then realized she still hadn’t moved. He extended an impatient hand
to her. She was the one who’d said she was in a hurry. She finally deigned to
take it.

He would have gone around the edge of the marketplace to
the funicular station, but she plunged ahead of him into the midst of the most
chaotic section. He ducked beneath red and orange festival flags slung between
leaning poles and swatted banners out of his way to keep her in sight. The
aisle meandered like an ill-planned labyrinth. Noisemakers blared too close to
his ears.

Sellers didn’t call out to QuiTai as she glided past their
stalls. What use would a Ponongese have for costume fangs, a wig of wooly hair,
or lenses to give her eyes a reptilian shape? But they held out to him cheap
sarongs in colors too somber for any real Ponongese. When he’d been an
itinerant artist, he’d shoved the costumes away; but now that he was governor,
he had to be more polite about it and not rant about how much he hated this
ridiculous festival.

Back in Thampur, the last long voyages of the season were
beginning ahead of the monsoon season and the typhoons that made crossing the
Te’Am Ocean to the southern continent so dangerous. If they remembered the
minor festival at all, people celebrated by slipping an extra coin to the priests
or placing a sweet bun sacrifice on the gold platters at the temples. In
Levapur, Thampurians celebrated with fancy dress balls and great feasts of
Thampurian dishes, as if it were the King’s birthday rather than a footnote on
the maritime calendar.

He swerved around a lower caste Thampurian woman and her
twin boys. Under the awning of a yellow and beige striped tent, a basket of
fruit appeared inches from his nose.

“Ambrosia fruit! All the way from Thampur! Ours come on
the fastest ships, only nine days from port!”

He used to climb the tree in Grandfather’s garden and
gorge on the honey-perfumed pink fruits. The best part was the thick nectar that
gushed out with each bite.

The seller’s grin widened as he saw Kyam’s expression. He
pushed the basket closer to Kyam’s face. “How many, Governor? For you, a
special price.”

The ambrosia fruit in the basket looked sun-wilted, but he
hadn’t eaten one in years.

Ahead of him, QuiTai moved through the crowd with measured
steps, as if she were keeping count of each one. He told himself he could keep
sight of her long enough to buy one.

“One, please.”

“Discount if you buy more.”

“One,” he said firmly, as he plucked the least bruised one
from the basket and handed over a coin.

As he rushed after QuiTai, he cupped his hand under his
lips to catch the juices and bit into the flesh. But there was no juice, and it
wasn’t the taste of home he expected. He spit the dry, woody mouthful into his
hand and dropped it into the dust.

They were almost past the stalls when a Ponongese woman
bumped into Kyam hard enough to spin him. She yelled at him, even though he was
sure it had been her fault. He knew he recognized her, but couldn’t immediately
put a name to her face. Since he’d moved from his old apartment to the family
compound, his relationships with the Ponongese had grown formal and distant.
Kyam the painter, they knew. Kyam the governor was just another Thampurian.

Kyam caught up to QuiTai. He almost grabbed her elbow but
thought better of it. He didn’t want anyone to think he was dragging her
somewhere against her will. The last thing he needed now was a riot.

This was all too easy. That was the most unsettling part.
She’d agreed too quickly, as if she’d already known what deal she was prepared
to offer. He didn’t trust it. Fate was going to cheat him out of this somehow,
and if Fate’s name was pronounced QuiTai, he’d never forgive her.

~ ~ ~

RhiHanya bumped into Governor Zul in a narrow aisle in the
marketplace and then scolded him loudly, so everyone would look. That was all
she’d been told to do, so she sailed away on a cloud of theatrical indignation
as he tried to apologize.

She hurried back to the banyan tree at the edge of the
town square. Clusters of Ponongese squatted in the shade of the enormous tree.
She stopped short as a little girl ran in front of her.

LiHoun raised his hand to get her attention. RhiHanya
picked her way over the women weaving baskets. She made sure her bright orange
sarong was secure before she squatted. The gap in her front teeth showed as she
grinned at him.

“Have you eaten, brother?”

“Yes, sister. And you?”

She switched to LiHoun’s native language. “We both eat
well, thanks to Little Sister. May she have a plump chicken for her rice bowl,
and praise the gods, maybe we’ll continue to share.”

He coughed until he gasped in shoulder-wrenching whoops.
He turned his head and spat bloody phlegm into the dirt. “It went smoothly?”

“You don’t hear him yelling, do you? She has quick hands. Even
I didn’t see what she did, and I was looking.”

LiHoun fished a small spiked huwewe fruit from his pocket
and held it out to a gray monkey. It paced at a skittish distance, sat for a
moment, and paced again. Then it darted forward and grabbed the huwewe from
him. As it scampered up the banyan tree, a gang of bigger monkeys tried to take
it from him. LiHoun laughed as a bold monkey ran up his back and stuck a hand
into his pocket. Finding it empty, the monkey dashed up the tree and scolded
him from a safe branch high overhead.

LiHoun coughed until his face turned ashen. He turned to
RhiHanya. “She was a magician’s assistant when she lived on the continent.” He
liked knowing more about QuiTai than anyone else. He hoped she wouldn’t decide
he knew too much.

“No one gets hands that fast by folding herself into a
compartment at the bottom of a cabinet.”

“She only talks about the tricks she doesn’t mind you
knowing about.”

RhiHanya watched Kyam and QuiTai emerge from the market. “I
hope our Wolf Slayer knows a trick where she can survive being hanged, uncle.”

“She will find a way.” He folded his arms across his knees
and rested his chin on them.

“So you think she has something up her sleeves?”

“I know better than to try to figure her out. You’ll drive
yourself as mad as nesting
gregru
if you spend time
worrying about her.”

“Of course I’m worried. She’s going to the fortress, isn’t
she? That means the sea dragon wouldn’t investigate the murders of SungHi and
ChiHui.”

“I told her he wouldn’t.”

“Why doesn’t she tell him we already–” Her mouth
snapped shut as he jutted a thumb toward the circle of mothers several feet
away. Her sigh was long on suffering.

LiHoun chuckled. “Mad as a gregru.” He formed his hands
into beaks and mimicked a pecking fight between the strutting male birds. “Worry
about what happens to us if she fails. She is the Wolf Slayer. We are lowly
jungle fowl
– snacks for those who hunger for
power.”

~ ~ ~

Peels of lavender paint clung to the weeds at the base of
the funicular station’s ticket shack. Dust coated the single window. A double
line of yellow ants flowed across the exposed wood and disappeared into a wide
joint.

The back door squeaked open. A Thampurian in a creased
uniform stepped out of the ticket shack and kicked a crate toward the door to stop
it from swinging closed. He listed as he carried a tin of
juam
nut
oil to a disintegrating shade hut on the other side of the track
terminus.

Grabbing a grimy cloth from a nail on a post, he gingerly
unscrewed the funicular engine’s fuel tank. He pulled back his fingers between
twists to blow on them. The oil tin’s sides collapsed inward until the flow
slowed. Air rushed in, popping the sides out again. Amber oil gushed out, then
trickled, and finally fell in drops. The operator screwed down the tank cap and
wiped his hands on the cloth. He started the engine again, and it belched black
smoke. After watching it for a bit, he nodded and returned to the shack.

QuiTai went to the end of the ticket line. As Kyam waited
behind her, he noticed her sarong was bulkier than usual. How many times a day
did she change clothes, anyway? She was usually so meticulous about her clothes,
but her choice this time he found unflattering.

“Seeing as the colonial government is so poor right now, I’ll
buy my own funicular ticket. Shall I also buy one for you?” she asked.

He wished she wouldn’t say that where anyone could hear. “Thank
you, but I can–”

She turned to the window. “One, please. I’m feeling
hopeful. Make it a round trip.”

The quip was vintage QuiTai, but her heart didn’t seem to
be in it. Maybe she was thinking ahead to the fortress. He was tempted to give
her shoulder a friendly squeeze of support, but then reminded himself that she
was his article of transport out of this place. This was business. She always
made that clear in the past, so he wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking it was
something more this time. It was her choice to face her biggest fear. It was
her fault he had to be beside her when she did it.

Kyam told himself he could admire her and still lock her
away. But damn it, why? Why was she doing this? And how was he going to rescue
her? She trusted him to do it, maybe because she knew what he’d lose if he didn’t.

After Kyam
brought Nashruu
and her servants to the family compound, he muttered an
excuse and left her to deal with the household, furniture, luggage, and a
million other matters that she of course could manage but wished hadn’t been so
abruptly dumped into her manicured hands. Two years living in exile had
roughened his edges, she decided. The alternative was that he was simply that
rude, or that he hated her. She preferred her first explanation.

She was cross, a mood she had no patience for. Kyam had
been out of sorts too, although neither of them would admit to it. If they had,
they would have blamed the searing heat of the day, or perhaps – she
slapped a gnat that seemed determined to share the shade of her parasol –
the abundant insect life with a taste for flesh. Because they were Thampurians,
they would never confess that their bad moods had begun when they’d turned to
look back at the wharf from the lower funicular station and had seen QuiTai and
Voorus huddled together behind a stack of crates at a warehouse door.

Nashruu and Kyam had turned sharply away from the scene
when the couple went to greet Mityam Muul. Thankfully, Mityam shuffled so
slowly that the funicular left that station before they came up from the wharf,
and Nashruu was spared the indignity of sharing a car with them.

On the funicular ride up to the town square, conversation
between Kyam and her had gone from strained to unbearable. They seethed in
their private hells of jealousy and humiliation. No wonder Kyam took the first
opportunity to go pout in privacy. Unfortunately, that left her to handle
greeting his servants and moving her staff into the house alone.

The interior of the compound consisted of only two
buildings. Back home, wealthy families often had four or more, as each
generation added to the clustered houses inside the walls. Squatting women
stared at her from inside the smaller of the two buildings. The bright yellow
band around their oval pupils glowed in the deep shadows. They held woven fans
that they passed over a ring of stones on the ground, probably fanning the
coals of a cooking pit. In Thampur, the kitchens were in the main house, but
she’d heard it was so hot in Ponong that only the poor cooked in the same
building where they slept. She wondered if that was true during winter, too.

The main house looked almost like a typical Thampurian
mansion, except for the odd ways in which it didn’t. Every room on the ground
floor opened onto the courtyard through glass doors, which she could see
through. If there were curtains, they were pulled aside. At least upstairs, the
glass in the typhoon shutters was frosted at the bottom, so anyone looking up
from the courtyard wouldn’t see much below the ceiling murals, but they still
opened onto a shared veranda. Having servants meant never having true privacy,
but this was so
exposed
. She felt as
if she would be living in a shop window along the Lirhumet Canal in Surrayya.

Although the wide canopy of a single tree shaded most of
the main courtyard, the sun was too brutal to endure for long. Since Kyam hadn’t
bothered to introduce his staff, and they didn’t seem inclined to come out to
greet her, she’d have to invite herself in and take over.

It struck her that during the years she’d been married to
Kyam, they’d spoken, to the best of her memory, six hundred and thirty-nine
words to each other. Well over a hundred of those had been exchanged this
morning. She wondered when he’d become so chatty. He’d used only four to
propose marriage; she’d used one to answer, and those had been a mere formality
for both of them. On their fifth anniversary, he’d accidently walked into her
parlor and sputtered as he’d grasped frantically behind his back for the
doorknob, “Oh, wrong room. You’re looking well. Splendid. Is that a new frock?
Color suits you. Is that the boy? Wonderful. Must run. Love to auntie.”