Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (29 page)

Gita swallowed apprehensively.

"What happened?"

"We don't know," Chief Kiyan said. "One moment he was sleeping peacefully. The next he started shouting that he couldn't feel his wife."

The Chief leaned on Varshab, his chief enforcer, and wore his arm up in a sling. As they walked, the villagers pointed at her and whispered
there is the traitor,
and at all times Siamek and Firouz kept her firmly between them. That small, dark voice which kept her alive warned her that these lofty people would betray her in a heartbeat.

She heard the shouting even before Immanu's house came into view. Homa scurried out, her cheeks flush with worry. In her hands she held Ninsianna's red cape, sodden wet with water. From inside the house came Mikhail's voice shouting, a thud, the sound of wings whooshing, and a ringing sound like he pounded upon the mud-brick wall with his sword. .

"Here is Ninsianna's cape." Homa shoved it into her hands. "We washed the blood out of it. It's still wet, but at least it's clean."

More shouting came out of the house, including words which Pareesa had told her were Angelic curses.

"You'd better get up there," Chief Kiyan said.

The Chief placed the scarlet cape around her shoulders. Moisture seeped through her own thin, brown cape. Gita gave him an apprehensive look and pulled the hood up to cover her head. As she climbed up the stair, she did her best to appear to be her cousin.

Voluptuous figure. Remember the way Ninsianna swings her hips when she walks? Her smile, as though she is always mulling over a secret. Full lips, jut them out. And let him see my hair. Ninsianna let it grow longer after she met him while mine is darker and thin, but she wears it loose because it pleases him, I am certain of it, because before she met him she always wore it in a braid.

Needa stood at the top of the stairs, wringing her hands.

"He's in
our
room," Needa said. "Searching for Ninsianna."

Gita peeked into the room. Mikhail stood with his wings pressed against the window like a prey animal trapped in a burrow and wielded his sword the way a man might use a walking stick to poke his way into the dark. He had an irrational, wild-eyed look about him, and despite the sword, his expression was not one of anger, but grief. Against his fever-reddened face, Gita could see the stain of tears.

Pareesa blocked the door, attempting to reason with him.

"Immanu just went to get her," Pareesa spoke in a soothing tone. "Ninsianna is fine. She just went down to the river to bathe."

Mikhail flew at the door, his sword aimed straight at where Gita stood.

"Ninsianna!
Ní féidir liom a bhraitheann tú!"
His wings pounded against the walls of a room far too small to accomodate his twenty cubit wingspan.

Gita squeaked in terror. Mikhail's sword poked precariously close to where she stood, frozen in the doorway. He knew! He
knew
she was an imposter! Was he trying to kill her?

"Bishamonten josei watashi no tsuyo-sa...
Onegaishimasu!"
Pareesa shouted at him in the clicking Cherubim language. She dodged the sword, her reflexes preternaturally fast as she shoved Mikhail back and used the butt end of a spear-shaft to deflect his sword. Gita realized he wasn't aiming at
either
of them, but simply trying to get away

"We can't let him fly out of here," Pareesa shouted. "If he does, we shall never find him again. This badly injured he will never survive."

Mikhail turned back to the window and swung at the opening, the metal ringing against the mud bricks and shooting sparks into the room. Pareesa stepped back behind the doorjamb to avoid being knocked unconscious by his flailing wings.

"Ninsianna,
ní féidir liom a bhraitheann tú!"
he shouted again and again. The opening grew wider. Mud-bricks made for a sturdy wall, but they could not stand against the unearthly metal of his sword. A chunk of brick finally popped outwards, down into the street below. Mikhail pounded out a few more bricks, then moved to shove his enormous frame through the tiny opening. The words exited Gita's mouth before she even had a chance to be afraid.

"Mikhail? What in the name of She-who-is do you think you are doing?"

Mikhail paused, his head tilted in confusion. His movement was jerky, feverish as he shifted his wings and turned to face her. Gita forced herself to step forward, hand outstretched to touch him.

"Ní féidir liom a bhraitheann tú!"
His wings trembled as he tucked them against his back. He swayed like a man who at any moment might collapse. This was not the stoic Angelic the village knew as their hero, but a delirious, anguished man who had just lost the woman he loved.

'If he learns the truth, you shall lose him...'

Gita stepped forward, determined to perpetuate her cruel deception; not because she feared Immanu; not because it was what the Cherubim god wanted; not even because she carried an affection for him and did not want to see him die. No ... Gita stepped straight into the sword because she could not bear to watch him suffer.

"Of
course
you can't feel me," Gita said. She did her best to appear bossy the way that Ninsianna always acted when someone did not meet her expectations. "You told me to go and get some rest!"

He swayed and stepped towards her, his sword still stretched in front of him. Gita trembled. It occurred to her how very tall he was, even without his wings, and she was so very, very small.

"Ní raibh mé in ann a bhraitheann tú," Mikhail cried out. "Bhí mé ina thromluí go bhfuair tú bás."

"He had a nightmare that you died," Pareesa mouthed the translation. Her blue-tinged eyes were frightened, not of
him,
but of witnessing him lose his faculties. The thought passed between them, unspoken, but understood. The Cherubim god had denied him his power because he did not want him to fly off and will himself to die. What would happen if, in his grief, Mikhail invoked that
other
power, that dark god whose power he could
also
channel? The others had no idea... Not even Ninsianna knew her husband could act as a vessel for He-who's-not.

"Help him..." Pareesa whispered.

What could
she
do to convince Mikhail she was Ninsianna? It would take more than wearing her cape. Ninsianna would be ... bossy. Brazen. She would step right up to him and...

The sword was in Gita's hand before she realized she'd acted upon the impulse.

"Mo shaol maité,"
Mikhail cried out. He wrapped his arms and wings around her as he sobbed.
"Shíl mé gur chaill mé leat go deo!"

Gita trembled with a mixture of relief, fear, and some other emotion at suddenly finding herself in Mikhail's arms. He crushed her frail body against his chest until she feared she could not breath. His skin was hot, feverish, burning up. Great, shuddering sobs wracked his body; anguish, grief, horror.

"It's okay." Gita pressed her cheek against his chest so he would not get a good look at her face. "
I'm
okay. Now lets get you back into bed."

He sagged against her, the horrible wound in his chest nearly level with her face. It oozed black puss and stank like a rotted carcass left in the sun. Angry red lines snaked out of the wound like a pit of vipers slithering across his chest, down his abdomen, and up into his neck. Pareesa leaped forward and helped her wrestle the enormous Angelic back into his own room.

Pareesa's eyes met Gita's as he staggered between them to his sleeping pallet. With injuries such as his, he shouldn't even have been capable of getting out of bed. They both nodded simultaneously. This deception was something they needed to do.

"Come, sensei," Pareesa said. "Off to bed with you. You'll be good as new in no time and ready to teach us all how to use a sword."

"Ninsianna,
is gá dom a bhraitheann tú,
" he mumbled. With a content sigh, he took Gita's hand and wrapped one dark wing around his body as if it was a blanket. Her hand, however, he did not release, not even when his chest began to rise and fall in a feverish, fitful sleep. If anything he tugged her closer in a death grip.

That peculiar sensation of
knowing,
of
feeling
his anguish as though it echoed within her own heart, made Gita nearly weep. Pareesa had the same frightened look Gita was certain
she
wore. How long could they pull this off before he knew?

Gita cast her eyes out the window, past the tattered spiderweb to the stars from whence he had come. Where were his people? If they found a way to summon them, did they have enough magic to heal this wound? Why, in all the time he'd been here, had they never come looking for him?

She shut her eyes and sent up a prayer to this unknown Emperor, the god Mikhail said he could only vaguely remember serving...

~ * ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.11 AE

Sata'an/Alliance Border

Former Supreme Commander-General Jophiel

Jophiel

Former
Supreme Commander-General Jophiel passed through the cavernous hallways of the Eternal Palace until she reached the wing which jutted out of the building like the tail in the letter 'Q.' Two enormous, ant-like Cherubim stood sentry at the entrance.

"Supreme Commander-General," the Cherubim spoke in unison.

Jophiel did not remind them she was no longer a general. They bowed their heads and un-crossed their staff-like naginata to grant her egress to the Emperor's
real
seat of power, his genetics laboratory.

She slipped past cages full of animals the Emperor had spliced together from older species. Some said the Emperor
created
life, but technically he
improved
life forms, gave them genetic adaptations. His highest law was non-interference, but when it came to tinkering, the Emperor rarely followed his own edicts. Just a tweak, he would say, and the next thing you knew a finned species sprouted legs. She found him deep within his lab, bent over what appeared to be a tissue culture. She waited for him to look up at her, and then she saluted him.

"Reporting for duty, your Majesty!"

"We need to find out what Lucifer was
really
up to before he died," the Emperor said. "Interrogate General Kunopegos and find out what he knows. Maybe it will be easier for him to confess to
you
?"

"Kunopegos never
stopped
confessing," Jophiel said, "the moment you told him you were willing to save his foal, he became willing to confess to anything. Even crimes he has not committed."

"I need him to bounce ideas off someone," the Emperor said. His features wrinkled up into an exasperated grimace. "Why do mortals always assume that just because you're a god, you automatically know all there is to know?" The Emperor gestured to a froglike Delphinium assistant who had hopped into the genetics laboratory. "Congmin will show you to the quarantine chamber."

"Yes, your Majesty," Jophiel bowed.

Congmin gestured for her to follow with his webbed hand. He was an affable creature, wise in that nerdy way the Emperor's laboratory assistants were wont to be. He fumbled the key-code as he punched the numbers into a door lock and had to enter the password a second time.

"Sorry," Congmin's broad mouth curved up in an embarrassed smile, "been burning the pulse reactors out of both polarity poles."

Jophiel gave him a non-committal nod. She'd learned the hard way the best policy was to be polite, but not show any emotion. It was all part of the Ice Princess persona she'd built to survive as the Alliance's highest-ranking military commander.

"He's in there," Congmin pointed to a quarantine ward.

Chills rippled through Jophiel's feathers.
She
had once spent time in one of these rooms, not on Haven-1, but a smaller version in the Youth Training Academy where she had nearly lost Uriel. The Emperor's lofty observational theatre gave him a birds-eye view over the insignificant stallion pacing back and forth, trying to keep his foal alive.