Tempt the Devil (The Devil of Ponong series #3) (35 page)

He shook his head ruefully. “Such poor manners.”

Despite his obvious sarcasm, she said, “That’s what I
thought too. Strangely enough, while he knew enough to stay away from me, no
one seemed to care that the guards kept disappearing from the dungeon. And to
think that was the part of the plan that worried me most, the thought that the
watch would bring a bunch of men and jellylanterns down there to search for the
men who had gone missing.”

“That’s what worried you? Not the threat of execution, or
torture?”

She gave it barely a moment of thought. “Not really.”

He felt a headache coming on.

“Then, finally, Cuulon, of all people, managed to drag
Colonel Hurust down into the dungeon. Once I had them where I wanted them, in
the torture chamber–”

“Where you wanted them?”

“Kyam, if you insist on interrupting… Yes, where I wanted
them.” She was enjoying this too much. It didn’t bother him that she did things
no normal person would dream of; it was the cheerful, matter-of-fact way she
talked about them.

He definitely had a headache. Any moment now, he was going
to lose his temper with her. He ground his teeth. “Do you have any idea how
many things could have gone wrong?” She’d put him through hell when he’d
thought she was the prisoner executed before his eyes.

“Don’t take that tone with me. I pleaded with you to
investigate. You turned me down. I had no choice.”

“I… You…” He hated it when she was right, which was
always.

“You’re sexy when you glower over me. Did you know that?
You’re breathing hard. Do you want to grab me? Shake me? Drag me to bed and
enjoy violent passion?” she asked.

“You are a very, very bad woman.”

That clearly pleased her. “I’ll take that as a yes.
Anyway, the rest is simply details. I dosed Cuulon and Hurust as soon as we
were in the torture chamber.”

Was Hurust still in the torture chamber? It was a small
room, low ceiling, stone walls and floor. There wasn’t even a chest to fold a
body into. Kyam shoved that mental image out of his mind, but not quickly
enough.

“As soon as they were in dream, I stripped the Colonel and
put him into a men’s sarong,” she said.

Kyam sensed where this was going, but his imagination
wouldn’t let him finish the tale. “That couldn’t have been enough to fool the
militia.” He rubbed his forehead. “RhiHanya. In the marketplace. We were next
to a stall that sells festival costumes. You signaled her to bump into me so I
wouldn’t see you swipe… what, fake fangs and those lenses that make your eyes
look Ponongese?”

“Very good, Governor Zul.”

“I’m amazed that you didn’t already have them with you.
You were wearing the second sarong. No doubt you also had a makeup kit and
burglar tools on you too.”

“A woman likes to be prepared, but sometimes she has a
last-second inspiration. I’m not, despite rumors to the contrary, a perfect
machine. Sometimes details do escape me in the rush to put a plan together,
especially when I only have an hour. I saw the festival stalls from the stairs
of the government building and was inspired.”

“So you gave Hurust Ponongese eyes and fangs and put him
in a sarong so the other soldiers would believe he was Ponongese. But what
about you? They know who you are. Why would they have trusted anything you said
to them?”

“I borrowed a uniform from the smallest guard in my little
collection.”

“You passed as a Thampurian soldier?” He wouldn’t believe
it if he hadn’t seen her dressed as a Thampurian boy before the rice riot. She
had a miraculous ability to transform herself. It wasn’t simply a costume and
makeup, it was the way she moved, the gestures and the way she mimicked others.

“I’ve passed as a soldier before. People see what they
want to. The other soldiers saw one of theirs struggling with a Ponongese
inside the dungeon door. It was dark. I was on the ground as if he’d struck me
down, so the height difference wasn’t as noticeable as it might have been.” She
winced as she rubbed her biceps. “Hurust made me work for it. I’ll give him
that.”

He was sure he knew the rest.

Hurust was in plain sight, where everyone could see him
but no Thampurian would notice. Hurust must have been the prisoner he, Voorus,
and Nashruu had seen hanged from the ramparts. If there had been any justice in
Levapur, the soldiers would have looked beyond the festival costume she’d
wrapped around him. The Colonel would have ended up in one of his own cells
awaiting trial, woken from dream, and yelled until his men came running to let
him out. But there was never justice for a Ponongese, so the soldiers put a
rope around his neck and shoved him off the ramparts.

Ruthless. Dangerous. Lethal. He should never forget what
she was.

~ ~ ~

QuiTai rose from her throne and slid open the door behind it.
He rushed over to help her.

The revealed room was nearly as large as the front room. A
darker square in the center showed there had once been a large rug covering the
wood. A bed draped in plum silk sat against a wall decorated with the chop in a
werewolf’s symbol.

“Is this Petrof’s bed?” he asked.

“I couldn’t get the smell of dog out of the mattress. I
gave it away. This bed was delivered only an hour ago from one of my safe
houses.”

“Good.”

Petrof had to be long dead. The werewolf wouldn’t have
stopped trying to kill her. He wondered if Petrof’s body were nearby or if he’d
been dumped unceremoniously into the gorge. He was sure she’d killed him. Maybe
one day he could ask her, and many years after that, she might give him an
honest answer.

“Good that it isn’t his bed, or good that I planned ahead?”
she asked.

“Both.”

“So I’m forgiven for taking matters into my own hands.”

She sauntered across the room to open the typhoon
shutters.

“I should care that you murdered Hurust, but you’re right.
I forgive you. I guess I’m as morally selective as you are,” Kyam said.

“You’re getting interesting. Don’t ruin it with gloomy
musings over a whiskey glass.”

Something caught her attention. His hand moved to his
baton. She tilted her head as she listened intently.

“It’s raining,” she said.

He released his baton.

She pushed opened the typhoon shutters and walked out on a
veranda. It took a moment to separate the steady rush of the Pha River through
the Jupoli Gorge from the quiet drumming on the roof. He felt it in the air
too. His spirits soared.

“Monsoon. Finally.” The long hot spell wasn’t over yet,
but relief was coming.

He followed her out onto the veranda. It thrust into the
middle of the jungle canopy. Across the gorge, an unhappy troop of monkeys
huddled in a tree. Ferns covered the stone wall of the gorge’s north rim below
them. Mist from the churning river rose to meet the rain, creating a scrim of
gray that muted the vibrant flowers.

He leaned on the railing. He could see why she liked it
here. It was a private place. If only it had a view of the ocean, it would have
been perfect.

“Can you see the future?” he asked.

“I already told you I can’t.”

“You once warned me that I would wish I’d listened to your
lectures on politics. It was as if you knew somehow that I’d be Governor.”

She leaned on the rail beside him. Raindrops fine as mist
sparkled in her hair. “I used to believe my goddess, The Oracle, revealed
things to me. Now I know it’s only me, gathering facts and guessing what will
happen next.” Contemplative, she wiped the rain from her arm. “One
disillusionment after another.”

He knew she’d been talking to herself.

“You’re a very good guesser, though.”

She seemed to agree.

“So everyone wants to recruit you because they think you
can do something you can’t – talk to a goddess – but you can
predict the future with some degree of accuracy despite that.”

“That sums it up rather well.”

“Does it matter, if the end result is the same?”

“I honestly don’t have an answer to that.” She patted his
hand and then headed back inside. “But don’t tell your former commander I’m a
fraud. At least, not until you’ve received your signed articles of transport.”

He leaned against the shutter. “I wouldn’t call you a
fraud.”

“What would you call me?”

“Maddening.”

She chuckled.

He wondered if she’d practiced that slow walk toward the
bed. When she moved liked that, it had to be an invitation to follow.

“Fascinating,” he added.

“Oh, ho!” She seemed to think he was teasing.

“And I may never forgive you for scaring me like that. I
thought it was you when they hanged Hurust. I thought the sun had been
swallowed by the sea.”

Her gasp was too quiet to be heard, but he knew this was
the second time today he’d surprised her.

“I thought you knew how I felt about you. You know
everything.”

“A long time ago, you were, shall we say, infatuated with
me. We’d shared an adventure, survived moments of peril together, and had one
memorable romp in a ship’s cabin, so that was to be expected. I assumed you’d
moved on since then.”

He couldn’t love her more. Nothing she’d done, no matter
how terrible, would change the way he felt. “Never.”

She looked at him like she wanted to believe but couldn’t.
He’d give her no reason to.

“I won’t tell my commander you’re a fraud, because I’m not
turning you over to them.”

Anger darkened her face. Kyam stopped, baffled. He didn’t
understand. She was supposed to be relieved.

“Don’t be an idiot, Kyam. Of course you’re handing me over
to them.”

She was infuriating. He glowered down at her. She tried to
walk away, but he blocked her way. “Give me the Devil’s name.”

QuiTai rolled her eyes and stepped around him. “One year
working for Intelligence isn’t much. It’s not as if you’re selling me into
slavery.”

“
You
said one
year. They didn’t. And maybe you keep your word, but they don’t. If they
promise you a year, they’ll find a way to keep you longer.”

“I’d like to see them try.”

Her
defiance was so typical. She believed she could think her way out of anything.
She was lucky, and of course she was brilliant, but this reckless disregard for
her life was going to get her killed.

Clearly
annoyed, she stalked away from him. “What do you think you’ll learn by chasing
the Devil? He doesn’t matter. He’s nothing, a smoke wraith.”

“Of course
he matters. You matter, I should say.”

She
recovered from her shock quickly. A slow smile spread across her mouth. “Very
good, Governor Zul. How long have you known?”

He shrugged and went to her. He slipped his arm around her
waist. “Sometimes it’s what you don’t hear that matters, and what I didn’t hear
much today was anyone talking about the Devil. It was all about you. Even you
didn’t seem that interested in the Devil, when you used to fear him.” He
lightly stroked her neck. “Then I thought about how much the Devil has changed
over this past year. How much smarter he seemed to be. No more kidnappings or
murders for hire, while the scale of the smuggling operations increased
dramatically, which was always your contribution to the organization. Your network
focused more on information and less on intimidation. Our militia, as
ill-equipped as it is for police work, was able to catch the rougher element of
the Devil’s gang in the commission of crimes. One might even wonder if there
was a concerted effort to weed them out.”

She spread her hands as if she had no idea what he was
talking about.

“Oh, you’re good. I’d almost believe you, but I know you
too well.”

“Your Grandfather also knows I’m the Devil, so we have to
assume soon everyone will.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“It makes me a target, which is why I’m going to have to
keep out of sight for a while.”

“You mentioned when you came to my office that you delayed
your plans because of this mess. So you aren’t going into hiding inland. You’re
going somewhere.”

She was impressed. “Dangerous man.”

“Every
time I think we’ll catch a break, you abandon me. Us.”

“You didn’t
think we’d get to have this, did you?” She gestured to the room. “Not people
like us. Never. You and I are the best at what we do. We can’t stop, not with
the war coming. So we will take our hours together when and where we can, but
don’t ever fool yourself into thinking we’re going to settle down into a dull
marital triangle of husband, wife, mistress. We both have too much to do.”

He knew
she was right. He didn’t want the easy life. If only he could run off with her
and join her adventures!

“You know my plans. What are yours? The only thing keeping
you here is the Governor’s office. And your wife. She’s very nice.”

She yelped and then laughed when he pinched her.

“Yes. I hope she and Voorus are extremely happy.” He
nuzzled her neck. Her hair smelled so good.

“My offer still stands. I will spy for Thampur, if that’s
what it takes to get your articles of transport. It’s my fault you’re Governor.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.”

“You said I owe you.”

“I was sulking. Nothing I said while sulking matters. And
I’m not going to let you be my ticket out. I can damn well do that on my own.”

He loved the admiration in her eyes.

“I never doubted it, Kyam. What do you have in mind?”

“I was thinking about something you said earlier in my
office. This trial for PhaSun is going to anger a lot of people. Imagine how
they’ll react when I pave the streets and put in sewers. Or stop corruption.
And if I fire everyone in the government building who tries to stop me, they’ll
be begging the King to put me out of office.”