Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (67 page)

"This may take a couple of tries," Jamin said. "The trick is to get it embedded into a roof strut."

He gave the device a tug and, as he feared, it came crashing right back down off the wall, pulling chunks of woven river reed and straw down along with it.
Goat shit!
It made him look bad, but the Uruk were so entranced with the very idea of the thing that they did not ridicule them the way Private Katlego had done when he'd taught him how to use it. His heart pounded, fearful the inhabitants had heard the thump.

"Wait," Jamin said. "We must make certain we are not heard."

The Uruk's eyes glittered bright in the scant light of the waning moon. If somebody peered over the wall, they would be clearly visible in this spot scrubbed bare of brush or boulders. Thankfully, it appeared Laum's potion had rendered the inhabitants unconscious; or at least so wracked with stomach upset that even if they
did
hear the thud, they did not care.

"Try again," the Uruk group-leader touched his arm.

Jamin did it again, and a third and fourth and fifth, but on the sixth try, when he tugged the rope, it did not come back down, but remained securely embedded in a roof strut.

"Go!" Jamin tapped the shoulder of a slender, wiry man, the lightest amongst them who'd been chosen to scurry up the rope first, just in case the hook wasn't firmly anchored. The man pulled himself up the slender plait hand-over-hand like a monkey and disappeared over the edge. A moment later, the man's face reappeared at the top.

"All set," the man signaled.

Jamin grabbed the rope and pulled himself up hand-over-hand, his shoulder muscles screaming by the time he heaved himself, panting, over the top. He'd always prided himself on being the best warrior in the village, but ever since he'd met the lizard people he'd felt as though he was a scrawny rabbit.

One by one the rest of the Uruk warriors scaled the wall. With a grim sense of satisfaction, Jamin noted the men were
far
more winded than he was. Weak, he might be, when compared to the lizard people, but amongst his own species he was still a man to be reckoned with.

"You know what to do," Jamin whispered to the Uruk.

"We shall all grow rich on lizard gold," said the leader of the group assigned to shall smite the winged demon. "Sergeant Dahaka promised he would pay us." As a condition of their help, the Uruk insisted
they
kill Mikhail and
he
be the one to kill his father. More than just a wish to collect the gold, Taziq bore some old grudge against his father and the thought Kiyan's own son would kill him tickled his fancy mightily.

The Uruk fanned out, slipping across the rooftops. Jamin stared up at the frail, silver crescent of the waning moon. He was reminded of the goddess who whispered that his life had come at the cost of a vow. Vow? What vow? He wished he could remember
.
He crawled down a ladder into the streets which had once been his home.

Once at the bottom, he vacillated between the mission to kill his father and Taziq's promise to Laum that his wife would be taken out of the picture. His father was the more important target, but he was painfully aware that he owed Shahla a debt. Lucifer had promised to kill the viperous-tongued woman personally, but then the
príomh-air
had left this world and not returned for either of them.
He
would kill Manzur in Lucifer's stead; and when he was done, he would visit Shahla's grave to tell her that her mother had finally gotten her due. Perhaps then the poor, demented girl would cease haunting him?

He passed a few villagers curled up in the alleys, wracked with convulsions and drenched in their own vomit. One made eye contact with him, but even if he
hadn't
changed his appearance to appear more Angelic than Ubaid, by the cloud of delusion which raged within the man's eyes, he doubted the man would have recognized him even if he'd been dressed in his former chiefly regalia.

At last he came to Shahla's old house, the finest in the village after his father's and the temple of She-who-is. The stench of excrement assailed his nostrils. Whoever had decorated the linen-trader's house with the contents of their chamber-pot had done an especially thorough job. He wondered if the culprit had any idea their actions had inspired the linen-trader to betray them?

"Shay'tan be praised," he whispered to the Sata'anic dragon-god. Kasib had told him how their esteemed emperor always anticipated such human foibles and was clever enough to turn them to his advantage. Whoever had done the naughty deed, they had played right into his hands.

Laum's door was bolted tight, but Jamin had crept into the linen-trader's house enough times to lay down with Shahla that a lock was not a deterrent. In the courtyard was a tiny, luxurious garden featuring a new crop Shahla's father had been experimenting with. Grapes. They were past season now, but Jamin found a few which had dried into tiny, sweet shrunken raisins as he climbed up the support terrace and let himself into Shahla's second-story window.

He looked around her room, amazed that all traces of his former lover had been erased. The sleeping pallet had been removed, the small nightstand which had hosted her kohls and rouges now held a spinning whorl and various implements of weaving, and dominating the entire room were bundles of heckled flax and the largest loom Jamin had ever seen. An odd sense of anger gurgled deep within his belly. By the progress of the cloth bolted firmly onto the frame, Shahla's mother had wasted no time reclaiming the space to fatten her wallet!

He stepped carefully, cringing at the sound his heavy modern combat boots made with each footfall as he slipped down the stairs. He found Shahla's mother curled up in the luxurious cushions they kept in their receiving room, covered from head to toe in her own vomit.

"Laum? Is that you?" Munzur raised her head and peered at him in the dim light of the sole tallow lantern.

"No," Jamin said. He went down on one knee so that he would be eye-level with her when he killed her. He wanted Shahla's mother to know who he was so she could tell her daughter it had been
him
to do this favor.

The woman's eyes grew wide as at last she recognized him.

"You!"

"Yes, it is I," Jamin said. "The man you wished to be your son-in-law."

Munzur struggled to sit up, but the nausea hit and caused her to convulse in pain. She tried to retch up more of her supper, but from the stench of vomit she'd already upended the entire contents of her stomach. Marwan hadn't been kidding when he'd said it was a powerful purgative.

"You don't belong here," Munzur hissed, but her accusation was as weak as she was.

His own blood roared in his ears.

"I don't belong here because of
you,
" Jamin said.

"You killed my daughter!" Munzur accused.

"
You
killed your daughter," Jamin growled, his eyes black with fury. "You killed her with your manipulations."

"You lie!"

Jamin gave her a jackal's grin.

"I do
not
lie," Jamin said. He leaned forward. "Before she died, Shahla and I made our peace, and she told me how terribly
cruelly
you treated her after her baby had died. There is only one thing I must do to earn her forgiveness. Do you want to know what that is?"

Munzur's eyes grew wide with fear.

"My husband will be home any moment!" Munzur clutched her vomit-stained shawl. "He has vowed revenge for what you did to our daughter."

Jamin's grin grew wider, feral, a predator who had his dinner cornered.

  "Shahla wished for me to repay your cruelty with like," Jamin said. "I have come to pay my debt."

"Help!" Munzur hit at his hand as he placed his fingers around her throat and squeezed.

"Don't fight it!" Jamin crushed her windpipe. "Just close your eyes, and when you open them again, you will find yourself in the dreamtime."

Munzur clawed at his hands, but the hellebore had weakened her enough that her struggles were surprisingly ineffective. Her eyes bulged as deep in her chest she made a strange, gurgling sound.

An odd urge of power warred with that part of him which screamed this was a murder, not the justice as he wanted it to be. How many times had he dreamed of cutting out Munzur's viperous tongue? She kicked and tried to roll away, but the more she fought, the harder he clenched his fingers. He remembered the way Lucifer had pressed into his backside as he'd whispered into his ear and told him to visualize his enemies as he'd pulled the trigger on his pulse rifle.

That same peculiar euphoria he had felt
then
tingled through his body and aroused a pleasant sensation in his loins. Jamin's cock grew hard at remembering that overwhelming sense of power. He could almost
hear
Lucifer whispering for him to bury his shaft as the life left her body so that he could take her essence and absorb it into his own.

'Take her … take her … take her,'
Lucifer's seductive voice whispered into his brain.

His cock vibrated between his legs so violently that had he been wearing an Ubaid kilt instead of the cumbersome leg-coverings called
pants,
he might have succumbed to the urge. Jamin's eyes rolled up into the back of his head as his balls convulsed. Oh, gods! He'd always liked it rough, but this? So close! He was so close! How many times had he fantasized about doing this to Ninsianna after she had broken his heart? To take his unfaithful former fiancé by force and throttle the life out of her as he fucked her?

Another voice whispered to him, a quieter voice, his mother's voice, whispering that above all he must always treat others kindly. He had made a promise as he'd lain dying of infection from Aturdokht's arrow as the Amorites had carried him across the desert. He breathed deeply and focused on his mother's imaginary treasure-box, drowning out the memory of Lucifer whispering into his ear.

"Laum asked that your death be a tender one," Jamin said. "Sleep, woman. Go to sleep, and when you awaken you will find yourself in the next world."

Munzur's struggles grew weaker. He realized there was nothing tender about the way his fingers dug into her neck. He grabbed a cushion and pressed it over her face. There. Shahla would want her mother to have a soft death, not a hard one. He waited until her body stopped convulsing, and then pulled off the pillow, pressing his fingers to her throat to make sure she was truly dead.

There. It was done…

He stared at Munzur's lifeless body. Somehow he'd thought the act of revenge would have given him greater satisfaction, but with her lips blue and tongue protruding from asphyxiation, all he could think about was how much she resembled Shahla. Shouldn't he feel
something
for having killed her? Guilt? Self-loathing? Self-justification? Maybe even relief? Nothing. He felt nothing. Not even that strange sense of euphoria and sexual power. Not towards
her
, anyways.

He picked her up and carried her gently up the stairs to settle her into her bed. Her
empty
bed. Thanks to him, the woman need never know it had been her husband who had ordered her death, nor suffer at the hands of the village for her husband's treason. It was a kindness, really, what he had just done.

"You should not have forced your daughter to pursue
me
while I was under the spell of the sorceress Ninsianna," Jamin said as he placed his fingers over Munzur's vacant eyes and shut her eyelids.

He made sure her dress was straight and crossed her arms before pulling the covers up to her neck. So many manipulations, so many people vying to catch the eye of the Chief's son back when he had still been a catch and not some stateless criminal. Might he have fallen in love with Shahla if Ninsianna hadn't used her magic to seduce him while he'd been weakened from the auroch wound? He stared at Shahla's mother, who resembled her only somewhat.

"No," he said to no one but himself. His father had been right all along. All his life he'd been waiting for someone who would love him the way that his father had loved his mother. Shahla had not been that woman, and neither had Ninsianna. But perhaps had he not been blinded with daydreams about the shaman's daughter, he would have treated Shahla a lot less cruelly?

"May Shay'tan guide your spirit into the dreamtime," Jamin whispered as he kissed the dead woman's forehead, and then pulled the covers over her head.

He paused long enough to wash his hands in the bucket of hellebore-tainted water, mindful not to place a single drop in his mouth, and then arranged his clothing to be so neat it would survive one of Sergeant Dahaka's surprise cleanliness inspections.

It was time to go pay a visit to his faithless father...

~ * ~ * ~