Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (18 page)

"She blamed Mikhail for her baby's death."

"I heard he was the baby's father."

"No. It was Jamin."

"Shahla slept with every warrior in the village."

"She propositioned Mikhail. I saw it. I was there. Nobody refused Shahla when she offered her favors."

"I don't blame Jamin for beating her," Qishtea gave Gita a shove. "If it was me, I would have killed her. Not just beaten the bastard out of her belly."

Gita fell to her knees and touched the cheek of the woman who had been both her protector … and also her biggest curse. She touched her own tattered brown cape, a gift from Shahla once it had become too worn to be respectable for the daughter of a wealthy flax-cloth merchant. Shahla had spoken to her when no one wanted to be her friend because
nobody
wanted to be seen with the daughter of the village drunk. She had slipped Gita bits and snippets of food pilfered from her father's pantry to keep her from starving. But Shahla had always had a weak mind, one easily manipulated by any warrior willing to give her the affection her own father denied her.

"Shahla, what have you done?" Tears slid down Gita's cheeks at the loss of her last and only friend. That dark gift, the one which showed her if there was some life spark to be fortified and keep a wounded creature alive, showed her Shahla was beyond all hope, not even for the song.

Words flowed around her, whispered in one ear and out the other, none of them sticking as she stared over the pile of bodies between her dead friend and the beautiful winged man that Shahla had betrayed. Warriors circled around them, touching Mikhail, moving his wings, dragging the dead out of the way so Ipquidad could push forward a cart for transport.

That dark gift whispered that someone else needed her gift, someone else was still alive. She stared at Mikhail with her huge, black eyes, seeing the piss-puke-putrid green darkness which emanated from knife and spread into Mikhail's body as though it fed upon his life's energy. Pausing to cross Shahla's hands across her chest, Gita rose and stepped towards Mikhail, that whisper growing louder the closer she got to him.

"Immanu," Pareesa shouted at Immanu. "Where is Ninsianna? Mikhail needs her. Please! Use your gift!”

Immanu's bushy eyebrows knit together in concentration. Gita could sense an eerie tickling, like the kiss of a spider web, as Immanu used his shamanic gift to access the dream realm. His brow wrinkled, perplexed.

"I can sense her," Immanu's voice warbled with emotion, "but I cannot tell whether she is in the dreamtime, or still resides within this realm. It feels like … it feels as though she is here, but someone has covered her with a blanket."

That dark gift whispered the name of the terror against which the Priestesses at Jebel Mar Elyas had prayed for protection against three times each day.

“The Evil One has her,” Gita spoke before her brain could register she had uttered those words aloud.

Immanu lurched to his feet and grabbed Gita by the shoulders.

"What do you know of this Evil One?" Immanu screamed at her. His tawny-beige eyes turned copper with hatred as he dug his fingers deep into her flesh. Gita cried out in pain.

"I … I … I," Gita sputtered, cowed by the hatred which burned in her uncle's eyes.

"Gita was just bragging to us how Shahla was her best friend," Qishtea gave her a self-satisfied smirk. "Isn't that right, everyone?"

"Yeah," several of the warriors chimed in. "Everybody knows Gita and Shahla were inseparable."

"It was all Shahla could talk about," Qishtea said, "the last time she accompanied her father to our village. About how she could tell her best friend
anything
!"

Immanu's hands tightened so hard they threatened to snap her bones. Gita had never been welcome at their house because of some rift which had occurred between her uncle and her father, but this was the first time she'd realized her uncle
hated
her.

"Like father," Immanu snarled, "like daughter."

"I didn't do anything," Gita cried out. "Please, uncle. I didn't have anything to do with this!"

"I saw them together the day before we left Assur," her own B-Team leader, Yaggitt, gave her an accusatory glare. "She was down by the river, brushing out Shahla's hair and laughing."

"
You
planned this!" Immanu struck her face. "You and that white-winged demon!"

Gita blinked, shocked. Immanu's words slithered into her brain and taunted her as recognition of what he said paired up with the happy ramblings of a mind-damaged young woman.

"Wh-what?" Gita's face betrayed her knowledge. "A white-winged Angelic?"

"You knew?!!" Immanu knocked her to the ground and began to kick her, egged on by Qishtea and the other warriors who needed someone to blame.

"No! Uncle! Please! I knew nothing of this! You never said anything about the Evil One being a white-winged Angelic!"

She curled up in a ball to protect her vital organs the way she did when her father beat her, praying for the madness to stop. She had known! Shahla had come home three days ago and bragged a white-winged Angelic had taken her for a wife, but on the heels of her ranting that Mikhail was her husband and had secretly fathered her deceased baby, a delusion Gita knew for a fact was
not
true, she had sloughed off that claim as just another one of Shahla's delusions.

"Nobody ever told me the Evil One was a white-winged Angelic!" Gita cried out. "The priestesses always depicted him as having the head of a bull!"

It was Ipquidad, big, silent Ipquidad, the biggest, most timid member of the B-Team, who grabbed Immanu's hand and stopped him mid-punch.

"You never said anything about the Evil One being one of Mikhail's own species," Ipquidad said. "You led
us
to believe a lizard-demon orchestrated the attacks against Assur."

Gita clamped her hand over her mouth to silence her own cries of pain. When you got beaten, if you cried out, it only made your abuser beat you harder. She'd learned that lesson from her father.

Pareesa stood up from where she'd been holding Mikhail's hand.

"Nobody ever told us about a white-winged Angelic," Pareesa said. "Not even
me.
" She pointed at Gita. "But there are
other
secrets Mikhail withheld from us, secrets even
he
didn't remember because of his memory loss. Perhaps it's time you enlightened us, Immanu, about the
real
enemy the Ubaid face?"

All eyes turned to Immanu, accusing
him
. Her uncle's voice warbled as words poured out with truths that had never been revealed.

“Every night Ninsianna had nightmares about a white-winged Angelic who would lead a legion of lizard-demons to destroy our village," Immanu said. "The chief knew, but we didn't tell anyone else because we feared it might cause you all to distrust Mikhail."

"And nobody saw fit to tell us this?" Pareesa asked. "Not even me? His closest student?"

"Maybe you weren't as close as you thought," Qishtea taunted her. "But why would he tell you
anything?
You're nothing but a
girl."

Pareesa stepped into Qishtea's personal space even though her head barely came level with the Ninevian leader's nose. With a whispered prayer to the Cherubim God of War, she used Mikhail's sword to point to the dead she had personally smote to save him.

"Mikhail taught me to channel the power of a god," Pareesa spoke with a voice that rumbled through the men like thunder. "Tell me, Qishtea. What have you taught
your
men?"

"Look at her eyes," one of the warriors whispered. "They're blue like Mikhail's."

That dark gift, the one which enabled Gita to
see
showed her the blue cloak of energy which surrounded Pareesa the same as it did whenever Mikhail entered the killing dance.

Blind, deaf, dumb, pig-headed and stupid as he could be, Qishtea stepped back, even
his
stubbornness recognized that in Mikhail's absence, the Cherubim God of War had chosen a
new
mortal vessel to wield its power.

"Pareesa," Ipquidad spoke from where he kneeled next to Mikhail. "He's not doing so well. We have to get him back to the village so Needa can take a look at him."

"Let's get him onto the cart," Immanu stepped away from Gita. He glowered at her. "We shall finish this later."

Pareesa stopped, then gestured from Shahla to Gita.

"Get Ninsianna's cape off that traitor's body and put it on
her,
" Pareesa said. "She needs to impersonate Ninsianna."

"Gita helped Shahla set this trap," Immanu said.

Pareesa tilted her head as though she was listening to somebody speak. Her voice was cold, inhuman, her movement alien as she pointed at Gita.

"She did no such thing," Pareesa said.

"I don't trust her," Immanu protested.

"
I
trust her," Pareesa said. "And so does the Cherubim god. If Mikhail thinks that Ninsianna has passed into the Dreamtime, he will cast his spirit after her, for his species will follow their mate, even unto death."

Immanu gasped.

"Is she … dead?"

"The God of War doesn't think so," Pareesa's eyes glowed bluer. "Merely hidden by the Evil One so even the gods can't find her." She pointed at Immanu and, this time, the voice which erupted from her throat was definitely not
hers.
"Son-of-Lugalbanda … if you want to see your daughter alive, you will make sure the only man capable of
finding
her doesn't die while you stand here bickering about who's to blame."

Immanu stepped back and allowed Gita to scramble to her feet.

Gita felt light-headed as the warriors rolled Shahla's body out of the cape and dumped her into a pile along with the enemy dead. She stifled her urge to cry, to plead with them not to desecrate Shahla's body. Right now, she needed to look after her
own
life, which, given the glances of hatred from every person except for Pareesa, might be ended the moment one of them got close enough to stick a knife between her ribs.

Immanu took his daughter's cape and arranged it over Gita's shoulders. It stank of blood, death and dirt. Wetness soaked into her back where Shahla's blood had saturated the cloak. Gita wept as Immanu tore out her braid and arranged her hair around her shoulders the way Ninsianna often wore it. He bent forward and whispered in her ear.

"If he dies, I will burn you alive upon his funeral pyre..."

Gita swallowed. With tear-stained eyes she met his golden ones and nodded. She had known, however innocent that knowledge might have been, and had not told anyone about the white-winged Angelic. The words she
truly
wished to say, that she would have never betrayed her cousin's beautiful, dark-winged husband because from the first moment she had lay eyes upon him, she'd been in love with him, died upon her lips. Shahla had professed love for Mikhail, too, but in the end she had betrayed him.

Gita sniffled as the warriors lifted their poor leader up onto the rickety wooden cart and began the long, sad procession back to Assur. A hand touched her shoulder. Gita turned to find Pareesa carrying Mikhail's sword.

"He needs you to
be
her," Pareesa said, nothing but a brown-eyed, thirteen-summer girl once more except for a faint glow of
blueness
which still radiated out of her irises. "Ninsianna would walk beside him and hold his hand."

"I'm no healer," Gita said. "And … everybody knows Mikhail hates to be touched by anyone except for Ninsianna."

"He let
you
touch him," Pareesa said. "For some reason he keeps thinking
you
are
her.
Use that," Pareesa grabbed her hand, "please?"

"Ninsianna would never forgive me," Gita said.

"I don't care about Ninsianna," Pareesa said. She qualified that. "Not as much as I care about
him
. Things weren't as wonderful as people believe between them just before Ninsianna was taken."

"I heard them … argue," Gita whispered. "I thought she was being terribly cruel to him."

"All I care is that Mikhail should live," Pareesa's eyes filled with tears. "No matter
what
the cost."

Gita nodded. Pareesa had single-handedly thrown herself into battle against seventy men to save him. All they asked of
her
was one, tiny deception, to pretend to be Ninsianna until the
real
Ninsianna could be rescued. Accelerating her pace to walk at the head of the cart, she slipped in past a brown wing which dragged despondently on the ground. He looked so pale, so lifeless, no longer the most powerful man in their village, but the weakest.

She pictured Ninsianna, the way she stood, the way she moved, the way that her cousin had touched her husband, and oh, gods! How many times Gita had watched Ninsianna sink into her husband's arms and wished it had been
her
who had found Mikhail the day his sky canoe had fallen from the sky and not her esteemed cousin. Oh, how she had fantasized that someday he might take her hand just as Pareesa asked her to do right now.