The Devil Incarnate (The Devil of Ponong series #2) (4 page)

If they hadn’t been so addicted, the dreamers probably would
have grumbled about the lack of a mattress on the crowded communal bed against
the wall. They didn’t even have pillows. Thampurian sensibilities had no place
here. They sprawled together in a tangle of limbs. Some mumbled. A few stared
into the darkness, but if they saw her, they only knew her as part of their
dreams.

 
QuiTai’s eyelids drooped. She rubbed her
face. The deep pink sea wasp scar on her hand was hotter than the rest of her
palm. At least it didn’t hurt anymore, but the rest of her body simply ached.
She wanted to sleep more than she’d ever wanted anything.

QuiTai kicked empty
vials out of her way. They rolled across the scuffed floor.

She coaxed the
nearest man into swallowing a few precious drops of her venom. The vision the
Oracle brought her through him was useless. She didn’t care that the man was
embezzling money from the bank where he clerked. She needed the name of the person
who had paid Petrof to kill her and her family.

The connection to the conduit would break when the small
dose of her venom worked through his system, but with time so precious, she decided
not to wait. She dosed a second dreamer while still connected to the first.

QuiTai had never tried to use two conduits in such a short
span of time, and now she understood why it was a bad idea. The thoughts of
both stumbled through her mind as she tried to focus on the Oracle. The
dissonance of the dreamers’ thoughts made her dizzy. She gripped the edge of
the pallet and pulled deep breaths through her nose. Mind reeling, she waited
for the Oracle to speak.

The second vision came, but it was as useless as the first.

Please, Goddess, if I offended you, forgive
me. But I need this vision. I need an answer
.

Maybe she was a masochist, but she had to try one more time
before she gave up. With Petrof dead, she no longer had a conduit at hand. She
had to make the most of this night and the den’s supply of dreamers.

At least the connection to the first had grown weak enough
that she could barely sense him. The second conduit was also fading a bit. It
would be a couple hours before their minds completely separated from hers, but
with each passing minute, her head and stomach felt better. Now if she could
only cool the blistering heat under her skin.

All of the dreamers were Thampurian. With so many to chose
from, and only one last chance to get it right, she searched through them for
someone who might tempt the Oracle to say something useful. From their clothes,
the dreamers in this room were merchants and low-level clerks. Perhaps that was
her mistake. The few times she’d summoned the Oracle through a Thampurian, her
chosen conduit to the goddess had been a member of the inner circle of the
colonial government.

Except the harbor master’s brother. He’d been dirt, the
lowest a Thampurian sea dragon could get, yet the vision the Oracle had brought
through him had been so strong.

She tugged at her bottom lip. Perhaps it was because he had
been dying at the time. After all, a proper summoning of the Oracle always
ended with the death of the conduit. She’d accidently discovered black lotus as
a substitute for the poisonous red paste the Qui used in their ceremonies.
While it wasn’t harmless, at least black lotus didn’t kill. At least not
quickly. No. It took years.

A wave of grief overcame her.

Jezereet had known
the danger. She’d chosen the vapor. QuiTai rubbed a tear into her cheek. She
didn’t have time for emotions. Sniffling slightly, she frowned at herself and
bent over the dreamer with his head near the edge of the pallet. Her fangs
sprang from behind her upper teeth. They felt much lighter now that she’d used
so much of her venom.

This one’s lips were deep red, and his clothes, while still
in good repair, looked as if they belonged to a stouter man. Those were sure
signs of a long-term user. Perhaps her mistake had been picking dreamers who
weren’t deeply addicted. The dirt Thampurian had been a heavy user. Yet Petrof,
who had been her main conduit to the Oracle the past few years, had taken the
vapors only occasionally.

She could mull this over later. When the Thampurian soldiers
returned – if they returned – she’d have plenty of time to reflect
while in hiding.

She took deep breaths and steeled herself for the trial to
come. If only she could wait an hour; but by then the dreamers would be
rousing, and she didn’t want to wait for one to take a second pipe.

QuiTai pressed her mouth to the chosen dreamer’s. Her tongue
slipped between his lips and pried them open. His breath stank like a bloated
corpse. She milked two drops of her venom from her fangs and let them slide
onto his tongue. Any more than that could be dangerous, not that anyone would
suspect venom if he died. Without puncture marks from her fangs, they’d think
he was simply another black lotus addict lost forever to the vapor.

She pushed another dreamer onto his side to make space for
her to sit on the edge of the pallet. He rolled back with a sigh. His arm
flopped over her thighs. Glaring at him was useless; he didn’t know she was
there.

QuiTai turned her attention to her chosen conduit. He
swallowed. She felt the bob in her throat. Exhaustion swept over her and her
mind went blank for a moment, but she couldn’t be sure if it was she or the
dreamer causing the void.

Her thoughts jolted
to a dream. She floated through a stylish continental casino. The black and
white floor tilted so sharply she should have slipped, but she had no problem
walking across it. She was sure she stood upright, but so did the woman in the
skeletal hoop skirt who walked on the wall. The laugher of grotesquely
distorted gamblers and prostitutes seemed to come from another room in muffled
waves. A powdered face, green in the glow of a jellylantern, popped up inches
from her. The lips were obscenely red. She reeled back.

Forcing herself to
touch on reality, she put her hand to her chest, as if that would push down the
tiny bubble of panic rising through her ribs. As she’d been taught, she
reminded herself that it was his dream that she saw. Every Qui had her own
mantra to ground her. QuiTai repeated hers with eyes shut tight. Her parched
lips moved as she exhaled the words.

The conduit’s dreams meandered like Kirith Diaal celebrants
stumbling through a darkened maze. Now they were out of the casino. Her stomach
lurched as they moved to the deck of a ship, but quickly whisked away to him
frolicking in the sea with another sea dragon in their shifted forms. She felt
the slide of a long, scaled body against hers. The intention was clear as its
coils wrapped around her.

QuiTai was no prude, but she really didn’t want to take part
in his dream encounter. Sexual fantasies tended to jolt from scene to scene,
sometimes replaying the smallest part many times. Besides, that slither of a
muscular, scaled body against hers reminded her too much of Kyam Zul, and she
couldn’t be distracted by thoughts of him right now. She pushed past the
conduit’s dreams and into his memories.

She heard footsteps. Not sure if it was part of the memory
she’d connected to, she opened her eyes.

In the real world, an Ingosolian slid open the den’s door.
Her eyes widened when she saw QuiTai, but she didn’t make a sound. She slipped
in and quietly slid the door closed behind her. She took her time drawing the
latch before turning her head and watching QuiTai from the corner of her eye.

QuiTai didn’t dare suck in the breath for which her lungs
burned. She knew that this Ingosolian, Lizzriat, wasn’t Jezereet. Jezereet was
dead. Petrof had killed her when she’d stopped him from strangling QuiTai. Her
body had been shipped back to Rantuum several days ago. She knew that Jezereet
was dead. She’d closed her beloved’s eyes. But Lizzriat’s soft, pale blue cheek
in profile, framed by rampant shoulder-length paprika curls, was like a glimpse
of Jezereet ages ago, before she’d taken the vapor, back when she was the toast
of the stage on the continent; and it hurt, how it hurt when a tiny sliver of
hope and denial stabbed her heart.

Ingosolians outside Ingosol usually chose to shift to a
conforming gender aspect for safety’s sake. There was never a female as
curvaceous or a male as broad-shouldered and firm-jawed as an Ingosolian living
in another country. They found other cultures’ obsession with gender absurd and
loved to mock it. That mischievous streak was just one of the many things
QuiTai adored about them. Lizzriat, however, chose an androgynous aspect, as if
she were in Ingosol, where being any gender for an extended period was
considered eccentric. Even thinking of Lizzriat in terms of gender was
dangerously close to an insult. Since the workers at the Red Happiness almost
always chose to shift feminine, QuiTai often referred to all Ingosolians as
female – but that was a limitation imposed by the Ponongese and
Thampurian languages. It was simply impossible to refer to someone as just a
person, and only an ignorant, boorish fool would be low enough to refer to
another person as ‘it.’ So even though Lizzriat’s vest, white shirt, and
trousers were cut in a masculine silhouette, QuiTai thought of Lizzriat as
female. The effect of the foppish suit, to QuiTai’s way of thinking, was far
more enticing and sensual than a purely male or female form.

Everything about the Ingosolians was beautiful.

Jezereet had always claimed that black lotus made QuiTai
amorous, even poetic. QuiTai remembered no such thing, but as long as she was
connected to the conduits, she too was under the influence of the vapor. If
Jezereet had been telling the truth, she had better keep tight control over her
thoughts of Lizzriat.

Lizzriat turned slowly but kept her hand on the door. “I’m
surprised to see you here, Lady QuiTai.”

“I won’t stay long.” QuiTai bit the insides of her cheeks
and pinched her arms to help her focus.

“Perhaps, if I knew
what you wanted...” Her long fingers extended an invitation for QuiTai to
speak.

“Right now, only
that you don’t summon the soldiers who are no doubt downstairs at your gaming
tables. I realize that I’m asking for a huge favor, given our history.”

“We’ve never been enemies,” Lizzriat said.

“Nor are we friends.”

Petrof had often commented that QuiTai was a consummate
liar. That was true, but she also made it a habit to speak blunt truths because
Thampurians loved to dance around a subject for hours. It always shocked them
when she went straight to the heart of the matter. She enjoyed their dismay and
embarrassment. Lizzriat’s eyes shone though, as if she were enjoying a private
joke. Jezereet had often reacted the same way to QuiTai’s attempts to shock
her.

QuiTai folded her hands on her lap. “If the soldiers knew a
Ponongese was here and that you failed to report me, they’d close this place.
Maybe arrest you. At the least, they’d levy a hefty fine before you could open
your doors again. It would be unforgiveable of me to hurt your profits like
that.”

That should be enough
to warn her to keep her distance from me.

Lizzriat chuckled. “So it seems that all I have to gain by
reporting you is harm to my business. I’m not that stupid.”

“I’m still
endangering you. I want you to know that I recognize the risk that I pose to
you, and the debt implied.”

Lizzriat inclined her
head slightly, acknowledging the debt rather than denying it. She crossed the
room and extinguished the oil lamps. “Let me worry about the soldiers, Lady
QuiTai. I hold too many of their markers for them to get greedy about payoffs.”

“All the more reason
to hang you.”

Lizzriat’s faint smile drew into a serious line. In the
green glow of the jellylanterns, her bluish skin appeared the color of a warm
lagoon. “So stop endangering me. Tell me what you’re looking for. I will help
you, if only to get you out of here sooner.”

QuiTai held up a finger. “I may have it in a moment.”

While she didn’t think Lizzriat would summon the soldiers,
QuiTai was still glad that she’d already shared her venom with the dreamer. It
wasn’t a lack of trust in the Dragon Pearl’s owner... QuiTai almost laughed out
loud at her thoughts. Of course she didn’t trust Lizzriat. There were very few
people who’d earned that honor. Lizzriat probably didn’t trust her either, with
good cause. QuiTai owned the Red Happiness brothel, but most people assumed the
Devil did. The thinking, QuiTai assumed, was that if the Devil were willing to
muscle into a legal business like the brothels, surely he’d turn his interest
to the gambling dens next. That would explain why the owners of the gambling
dens flinched when QuiTai walked in.

Or maybe it didn’t.

No, there was no
love lost between her and Lizzriat, although they treated each other with
careful respect. Still, baring her fangs to a Thampurian, even one lost to the
vapor, was punishable by death. It was safer that Lizzriat didn’t know what
she’d done.

She lightly placed her hand on the dreamer’s chest and
leaned over his body. Thankfully, they still had a connection. QuiTai closed
her eyes again. Her conduit’s dreams had fractured and now floated on a vast
void inside his mind. She’d been in that oblivion. Most people who used black lotus
spoke of that place in hushed voices that betrayed their longing to return. She
loathed it. Her conduit wanted to sink further into it. She forced herself not
to fight her way out since she might drag him to consciousness. While he
drifted, she imagined a place where she could hold onto solid reality and
bridge through him to the Oracle. She caught onto a memory and dragged herself
out of his void.