The Devil Incarnate (The Devil of Ponong series #2) (19 page)

LiHoun was as grim as she’d ever seen him. “Uncle LiHoun
will not let you starve, little brothers.”

She went to the children, who leaned against the wall as if
they wished they could hide behind it. Their eyes were wide. Even the oldest
boy, who rarely stopped grinning, was solemn. “I know you want to search for
your father, but you must trust me, just as I must trust you to obey your
mother and auntie RhiHanya. None of you are to go out on the streets for any
reason.” She met each of their gazes in turn and waited for a nod of agreement.

“But you’re going out,” RhiHanya said.

QuiTai fought to keep her expression calm. “I didn’t think
you’d be the one to give me trouble.”

“You can be hurt just the same as us.”

QuiTai drew on her
deep brown velvet Thampurian jacket. “I don’t have children to protect.”

“Let her go,” RhiLan
said. “Get her out of my home.”

RhiHanya stomped
over to her cousin and shook a finger at her. “How dare –”

“Your cousin’s right and you know it. I thank you for
healing me, but it’s dangerous to let me stay.” QuiTai let enough edge into her
voice to let RhiHanya know she was in no mood to argue.

RhiLan seemed to agree.

RhiHanya grabbed QuiTai by the elbow and dragged her out on
the veranda. Seething, QuiTai jerked her arm away.

“What are you going to do?” RhiHanya asked.

“What I promised to do. Send out my informants to find
RhiLan’s man. Or his body,” she added in a whisper.

“You’re not going to let them get away with this.”

“You don’t want me to risk going out on the streets, but you
expect me to take on the entire colonial militia?” QuiTai buttoned her cuffs.

“Let me go with you. We’ll go to the inland villages and
tell the people about the attack today. We’ll tell them about the slaves on Cay
Rhi!”

“You want to start a rebellion?”

“Yes!”

Somehow, QuiTai had expected this conversation. Still, she
groaned and put her hands over her eyes for a moment. She was angry too, but
emotion wasn’t the answer. “Give me time to figure out a peaceful –”

“Peaceful?”

QuiTai shushed her.

RhiHanya lowered her
voice, but she was no less passionate. “Peaceful? You want me to be a good
slave and not raise my voice? People were beaten, little sister, perhaps to
death.”

“Yes. People may
have died. May have. But many of our people will most certainly die if we rebel
against the Thampurians.”

“They brought it on
themselves. Just like the werewolves.”

QuiTai didn’t want
to admit that she’d given over innocent werewolves to the mob in the
marketplace. She’d lost her taste for blind vengeance. “Someone is behind this,
and trust me, I will make those responsible pay for their crimes. But I need
time to figure out who it is. Things are chaotic enough right now. That doesn’t
make my task any easier. If a rebellion starts, it will be the innocent who
bleed on the streets, not the guilty. They’ve planned for this. They know they
need to hide. Give me time to hunt them down and put an end to this before it
gets worse.”

“Everyone knows the
governor is to blame.”

“Everyone doesn’t see how intricate this plot is. I’m not
convinced that he’s the only one behind it, but I don’t have any proof yet. I
need time.”

RhiHanya crossed her arms over her chest. “You have three
days, Wolf Slayer. Then I take matters into my own hands.”

There was no changing her mind. “A week,” QuiTai begged.

“Three days.”

~ ~ ~

QuiTai and LiHoun
skirted the edges of shadows as they neared the Quarter of Delights. She
clutched his arm for guidance, as she could barely see through her inner
eyelids and the small glass lenses that made her eyes look Thampurian.

The streets were as
empty as the night of the full moon. Not even soldiers walked in the darkened
streets. During the full moon, while people avoided the street, they normally
sat on their upstairs verandas. It could be pouring rain and they’d still come
out of their apartments to chat with neighbors. But tonight, Levapur cowered
behind tightly closed typhoon shutters. Even the light from jellylanterns was
trapped inside.

The scent of rotting plants and garbage filled QuiTai’s
nose. After four days in RhiLan’s apartment, the stink of the town was almost
overwhelming. It could have been her imagination, but she felt as if it was
worse now, as if the schemes of the colonial government had intensified the decay.

“Do you want me to gather your lieutenants?” LiHoun asked.

QuiTai shook her head. “I don’t want to risk their safety. I
shouldn’t even have you out here.”

“Yet you are out here.”

“You sound like RhiHanya.”

“The Rhi woman has
shown her wisdom many times.”

When Petrof or the
werewolves questioned her decisions, she could easily dismiss them as idiots.
It was harder to ignore LiHoun, even though his sudden protectiveness annoyed
her. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one grappling with a loss of faith.

“I have many things to do and a short time to accomplish
them.” A logical plan of attack was forming in her mind, but she needed more
time to figure it out. “It will be best if we go separate ways at this point.”

“I won’t leave you, daughter.”

Humbled, she blushed. It wasn’t lack of faith in her, but
concern. That, she hadn’t expected. “Favored uncle.” For a moment, QuiTai
couldn’t go on. She gently squeezed LiHoun’s arm. “Dearest friend. I’m touched
beyond words. And I do need you, but not beside me. Go to my lieutenants and
tell them that I want to know the fate of RhiLan’s man. Our sources in Old
Levapur might know, but I don’t know if the soldiers are still there, so
please, be very careful. I’d rather break my promise to RhiLan than lose you.”

“You can barely see,” LiHoun reminded her as he guided her
around a puddle.

“Distance is a problem, but up close I can see enough.”

“I wish you’d let me stay with you.”

Although there were
few people on the street, she leaned close to LiHoun and kept her voice low.
“Did we buy all the rice imported into Levapur this past week?”

“Yes. The old
werewolf den on the other side of the Jupoli Gorge is packed to the rafters.
It’s humid up there. I worry that it will start to go bad.”

“Don’t worry. We’re
about to get rid of it. Tell my lieutenants that from now on, they will charge
our Thampurian customers the market price for rice rather than the black market
price. Tell them we’ll meet tomorrow at the seventh door to discuss the effects
and fine-tune my plan, but for now, simply match the Thampurian price for
rice.”

LiHoun squinted.
“The Thampurians might buy it from the legitimate venders instead.”

“They might, but
once the legitimate merchants realize they can’t replace their inventory, they’ll
raise their prices.”

“Then you’ll undersell them? I see. You increase you profit.”

“Indeed I will make more, but we will match the market price
coin for coin. No discounts. Except for our non-Thampurian customers. They will
still pay our old price.”

LiHoun’s ears flattened against his skull. “Is that the
right move, grandmother? With everything that has happened this week, you must
be very certain of your actions. I’m sure this is one of your elegant schemes,
but it seems designed mostly to anger the Thampurians.”

“It is.”

“Then what happens?”

“When they’re angry enough, they’ll demand that Governor Turyat
do something about it. Then I will tell him to let the Ponongese back into the
marketplace and to call off his soldiers so that I can safely be seen in public
again, and to give me the names of the men who paid Petrof to kill my family,
because that’s the only thing that will bring the price of rice down.”

LiHoun quietly grumbled.

“I respect your
words of caution, wise uncle. A person who won’t hear dissent is deaf to
rational thought. But this is the only way I can think of to strike back at the
Thampurians without actually hurting anyone. They won’t starve. They’ll just be
poorer.”

“You’re lucky indeed
that your Oracle warned you to prepare for this.”

QuiTai bristled. She
didn’t want to think about the Oracle.

“But I see a
complication. Of course, your Oracle probably foresaw this, but...”

What had she missed? “The Oracle didn’t tell me anything.
This is my plan, so please feel free to share your council,” she said.

“Most Ponongese don’t buy rice from you. So won’t they end
up paying the higher price too?”

He said it gently, but she sharply rebuked herself for
overlooking such an obvious truth.

“You’re right. Spread the word that the Ponongese can buy
cheaper rice from us.”

“They won’t like this any more than the Thampurians.”

“It’s only a
temporary measure. They can go back to buying rice from legal merchants when
the price drops. Besides, it’s not as if they’ve been able to buy any rice
since the marketplace segregation began. At least we’ll see to it that their
children don’t go to bed hungry.”

He sighed. “You’ve always been able to predict how people
will act. Every time I doubt you, I am proven wrong. But this plan can’t work
forever. Eventually, more shipments of rice will be delivered to this island,
and the soldiers will make sure the legal merchants get all of it.”

“I expect that. But trust a Thampurian to make a coin off
suffering. They’ll keep the prices high.”

“So will the smugglers. They’ll hear about this. Then it
will cost you a fortune to buy more.”

“That’s why I bought all that rice. I will continue to sell
it to the Ponongese at the lower price until there’s such a glut that the legal
market price drops back to normal, even if it means paying the higher price for
a couple weeks to keep them supplied with cheap rice.”

LiHoun didn’t seem convinced. “You’re going to lose so much
money.”

“The Devil won’t cry if he loses a few coins.” The corners
of her lips curved. “But the Thampurians? They will howl.”

~ ~ ~

RhiHanya turned on
her cousin the moment QuiTai and LiHoun left. “How could you push her out like
that?”

“She’s bad luck.”

“Do not! Do not even say such a thing to me. If it weren’t
for her, I’d still be on Cay Rhi with the other slaves.”

“And ever since you showed up at my door, look what’s
happened! The marketplace, the school, the beating today!”

“You are not going to blame me for that.” RhiHanya stared
down her cousin.

RhiLan wrung her hands. “If we don’t upset the Thampurians,
maybe they’ll forgive us –”

“Forgive! What have you done?”

“Nothing! I’ve done
nothing! We’ve done nothing. But they obviously think we have. So we’ll stay
calm and behave ourselves and show them they can trust us, and eventually,
they’ll let us back into the marketplace,” RhiLan wailed.

RhiHanya put her hands on her hips. “Always the peacemaker,
cousin. Right? Always the one to make excuses for your mother when she beat you
and you’d run to our house, crying. And my mother would fix you up and heal
your wounds and beg you to stay with us forever. But you’d go back to that
woman and pretend if you were good it would never happen again. Only it did,
didn’t it?”

“Shut up!” RhiLan curled onto the divan, her face to the
wall, and put her fingers in her ears.

“Keep on pretending. It isn’t going away, and it won’t get
better. Mark my words.” RhiHanya glared at her cousin’s children, who stared at
her with wide eyes. “But we won’t let it get worse.”

The middle boy ran
his fingers over his chin much as his father did, even though he had no beard
to stroke. “You told the Wolf Slayer she had three days to do something.”

RhiLan sobbed
louder; RhiHanya nodded.

He rubbed his chin
again. “She wears green because she likes it.” Then he nodded once, as if that
settled the matter in his mind.

~ ~ ~

LiHoun slipped
through the alleyways with speed and grace that would have amazed anyone used
to his usual bandy-legged gait. QuiTai had eight lieutenants, but only the five
in Levapur needed to know about the rice scheme. He hoped he wouldn’t have to
convince them the plan would work. They rarely questioned orders from QuiTai,
but he was nervous, and it might be contagious.

QuiTai hadn’t told
him to, but he would warn them that there might be trouble. He would say she
wanted them to take their enforcers everywhere. He would say she said for them
to be careful of the soldiers. He was frightened for everyone.

QuiTai
had lied
to LiHoun: her vision through her inner eyelids was dangerously
bad on the darkest streets. From now on, even though it was ridiculous at
night, she’d wear a mourning veil. Her eyes would be barely visible through the
dense lace, and she’d be able to see.

She bumped into people and things and apologized to both in
cultured Thampurian tones. Considering her destination, that was probably the
most convincing detail of her disguise.

In the well-lit Thampurian neighborhoods, more people were
out on the streets than in the Ponongese areas. Still, QuiTai read anxiety in
their fretful body language when they drew close enough for her to see them.
Levapur was on the brink of something, and it wasn’t going to end happily for
anyone.