Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (128 page)

If
that was even true…

No. It couldn't possibly be true! Since when did the Emperor's adopted son consort with Shay'tan? Jamin must have lied!

How? How had Jamin even
known
who his Prime Minister was unless someone else had told him?

The lizards. The lizards must have put him up to it. It was all part of their game of psychological warfare to make up for what he suspected was a serious crimp in their supply lines.

Chief Kiyan stood next to Immanu, but their bodies pointed away from one another, arms crossed, Immanu's wild, salt-and-pepper hair jolting out of his forehead like a god of thunder. Mikhail had always found the Chief to be a little too pragmatic for his tastes, but ever since he had awoken from his coma, he found himself drifting towards the reliability of a man driven by practical concerns rather than the whims of a man who relied upon a goddess who was fickle.

"Please don't do this," Mikhail said. "These men are mere foot soldiers. You cannot execute them for following orders unless they
personally
committed genocide."

"We are not part of your Alliance, Champion," Immanu spoke with a voice that was not entirely his. "These prisoners will tell me where my
Chosen One
is, and if they do not, we shall flay them all alive."

The iridescent golden eyes which stared out of his father-in-law were all too familiar. That dark power which always swam just beneath the surface of
his
body whispered for him to be patient with
HER,
made excuses for
HER,
begged him to appease her and to understand
SHE
acted vicious out of worry, but Mikhail was
not
that dark power, and he forced it to recede until he could think on his own.

"How is it that
you
don't know where she is?" Mikhail asked softly enough so that the other villagers would not hear him. "And yet you expect five mortals to tell you what you, yourself do not know?"

Immanu's eyes turned reddish-gold, the color of fire when it consumed a log. Yes. He was right.
SHE
could no longer speak through Ninsianna, so she had found a voice through the vessel of her all-too-desperate father.

"You question me?"

"I question a parent who is just as desperate to find Ninsianna as I am," Mikhail said. He tucked his wings respectfully against his back, understanding that the line he walked was a razor thin one. "If you wish me to help you, you have to let me do it my way."

"Then you shall lose her," She-Who-Is-Immanu said.

"I have
already
lost her," Mikhail said. "And not even you, with all of your power and premonitions, were able to stop it."

"You have no choice."

"There is
always
a choice," Mikhail said. He thought of something the Cherubim queen had once told him. His mouth twitched into an involuntary smirk. "That is
your
law if I remember properly, isn't it? Your way of making sure that, despite your temperament, you will never turn into your father?"

The visage-behind-the-visage softened.

"North," She-Who-Is-Immanu said. "You will find their base to the north. Beyond that, I cannot see where the Evil One has taken her. He is invisible, even to me."

The fire faded from Immanu's eyes, leaving only a grief-stricken shaman whose behavior had alienated him from his wife and friends. Mikhail suppressed the urge to curse at him. North? North-what? Due north? Northeast? Northwest? How many days travel? What distance? Were they even on the same continent? Having gotten similarly vague directions from the Eternal Emperor in the past, he resisted the urge to shake his father-in-law and demand directions from a deity who was clueless about distance as perceived by a mortal.

Immanu blinked, as if unsteady, and then swayed into the Chief who caught him and held him upright.

"Wh-what just happened?" Immanu asked.

"We were just discussing the terms of the First Galactic Convention Outlining the Rights of Prisoners and Civilians," Mikhail said. "If you violate that treaty, when I summon the armies of heaven, the Eternal Emperor will refuse to help you."

It was a lie; an outright, bald-faced lie, the first lie he could remember ever telling. But if he had his way it
would
be the truth, because there was nothing he despised more than mistreatment of men who were only following orders, even if they were soldiers of the enemy.

"What are we supposed to do with these prisoners, then?" Chief Kiyan asked. "We have no cage capable of holding them, and if we let them go, who knows what intelligence they will spill to our enemies?"

He didn't add, 'Or prevent the villagers from lynching them.'

"The Galactic Convention says that all prisoners of war must be treated with a minimal level of care," Mikhail said. "You must put them in a house, and let their physician treat them as best he can. You must give them adequate meals, sunlight and exercise, and you must allow them their prayers, even if you find them to be offensive."

The crowd had pressed in upon them, eager for the spectacle of a public flaying, especially an enemy so fantastic as three lizard soldiers, a Catoplebas, and a blue-skinned Marid.

"Why should we give such creatures mercy?" the Chief asked. "When amongst our own kind, we would never guarantee such protections."

Mikhail's mouth tightened into a grim line.

"The Convention is not to protect
them,"
Mikhail said. "It is to protect
you.
And
me.
And any creature who gets caught between the anvil of the Eternal Emperor and Shay'tan's hammer. The two old gods made this agreement millennia ago. So long as you
follow the letter of the contract, the old dragon will reciprocate rather than burn your planet into ash."

He may have lacked Ninsianna's gift to make others
see
whatever she pictured within her own mind, but something in his demeanor must have been convincing, because the fear which rippled through the village was almost palpable. He had described the old dragon to the warriors one night, and now those tales proliferated through the village.

"Bring up the one who claims to be a physician," Chief Kiyan said. "Set three warriors to guard him with swords. If he gives his word he will not escape, I would appreciate it very much if he tried to save my friend."

"Varshab's wounds are far more serious than he could treat here," Mikhail said. "What will you do if, despite his best efforts, Varshab dies?"

"Then we have lost nothing," the Chief said. He gestured oh-so-subtly to the crowd. "The captives get a little more time, and Varshab gets a chance to live."

Mikhail read what had not been said. The Chief had little hope for Varshab. He simply purchased time for the villager's bloodlust to wane.

Siamek let down a rope and stepped back as the lizard doctor climbed out of the hole. The villagers gasped. Doctor Peyman's green, scaled head darted back and forth like a prey animal surveying the grass for a lion, and then settled upon Mikhail, his gold-green eyes wide and guileless.

"So you are the one who's been causing us so much trouble," Doctor Peyman spoke in Galactic Standard. He tucked his tail up tightly against his right side, a Sata'anic gesture of respect.

"Why are you annexing this planet?"

"If I tell you, you know Shay'tan will put a bounty onto my head."

"If you
don't
tell us," Mikhail said, "the Chief of these good people will order them to flay you alive."

"Flay me?" Doctor Peyman said, his expression perplexed. "Why would they do that? Didn't I offer them vaccinations and knowledge of healing?"

"You brought them slavery," Mikhail said, "and force them to pay tribute to a distant god."

The lizard tasted the air with his long, forked tongue. He tilted his head, genuinely curious.

"And what of
you,
Angelic," Doctor Peyman said. "Your species is dying, and yet your Emperor drives you to extinction."

Anger tore into Mikhail's gut. It must have shown by the way he flared his wings, because the warriors moved to stand firmly behind him.

"I have found my one true mate," Mikhail said through clenched teeth. "And
you
took her from us."

"It was not
I,"
Peyman said. "But your own Prime Minister. He showed up three months ago and demanded we hand over the mate of the last living Seraphim."

A warning ripple swam just beneath Mikhail's subconscious, but whatever it was, it had nothing to do with the lizard standing before him now, and everything to do with a memory which kept refusing to come to the surface.

"You took her from me," Mikhail said. "Where is she?"

Doctor Peyman blinked, his gold-green eyes carrying that earnest fire that all good healers had.

"We don't have her anymore," Doctor Peyman said. "You were a problem. Lucifer offered to take that problem off our hands. We gave him the woman in exchange for giving us these grain growing fields."

"In case you haven't
noticed,
" Mikhail said, "these fields are already occupied."

"We don't want these people to
leave,
" Peyman said. "Quite the contrary. Shay'tan has ordered that humans are to be integrated into the Empire as full Sata'anic citizens."

"These are
our
ancestors!" Mikhail said.

"And you cared so much about them that you
lost
them," Peyman said. The lizard sighed and then patted some dirt off of the front of his uniform. "Listen. You want them. Let your Emperor make a deal with Shay'tan. Those two always have
some
intrigue up their sleeves. Don't take your problems out on these people. We've become quite fond of them, you know? The ones who have already integrated into our city."

City? A clue…

"And which city would that be?" Mikhail asked. A city … to the north. Someplace. Those were two clues he hadn't had before.

The lizard fiddled with his buttons and then tasted the air.

"Perhaps I should be quiet now," Doctor Peyman said. "I believe you have several patients who are in need of my skills?"

"You stabbed him," Mikhail said.

"I didn't stab
anybody,
" Peyman said. The doctor blinked using his clear, inner eyelid, indicating he was perturbed. "I am a physician. My job is to heal people, not kill them. That's the skull-crackers' job." He pointed to the other four pits which still had stones over them to prevent escape.

"We have no facility to hold them," Mikhail said. "Until we do, they're just going to have to stay down in the hole."

He directed the lizard to follow Siamek back to Varshab's house. As he did, the Chief ordered the crowd to disperse, leaving only guards to make sure the prisoners didn't push the rocks off of their holes. The rocks were heavy, but the Sata'anic soldiers were strong.

He signaled for Homa and Gisou to wait. The two girls were part of his original eight archers, healers-in-training who had helped Needa care for him when he'd been sick. They were both just a few months older than Ninsianna, and when they spoke, they came off as giggly girls, just the kind of woman who would lull the earnest doctor into thinking they were too bubble-headed to pump him for information.

"Do you both understand what you need to do?"

"Yes, Sir," Homa and Gisou said together.

He glanced at their shawl dresses, tied high around their like warriors.

"The more feminine you appear," Mikhail said, "the less he will realize you are clever. He will recognize Needa is intelligent enough to be a threat, but you two? The more you act like silly little second-wives, the less wary he will be when you ask him innocuous questions about what landmarks are near the base and hints about the climate and terrain."

"Wouldn't it be easier just to torture it out of them?" Homa asked.

Yesterday morning's dream filtered back into the edge of his subconscious, not complete, but the image of an elderly Sata'anic man toiling in the fields. In the dream, that man had been a friend.

"The lizards are just people," Mikhail said, "not so very different than you or I. That doctor was captured because he ran out of his ship to help his enemy. When you try to hate him, remember that. He is here because he made the mistake of trying to help us."

Suitably mollified, the two girls adjusted their shawl-dresses into long, feminine drapes and made their way to Varshab's house, scheming about what kind of clues they hoped to elicit from the lizard man. Was the base near a river? Or was it near the sea? Was it on one of the other continents? He doubted it was incredibly far. Everything indicated the lizards were operating at the crimped end of a very lengthy supply line, one which had made them reluctant to waste their energy coming after
him
, but had caused them to go through mercenaries.