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...
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 18
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.
"Leave us," Jophiel said. Her heart beat loudly in her ears. She averted her gaze from the eager laboratory assistant so Congmin would not witness the glisten of tears.
"Yes, Sir," Congmin said. His throat-pouch harummed with disappointment at her rudeness. With an injured sigh, he shuffled out of the room and shut the door behind him.
Jophiel stared down at the four-star general whose foolish actions had lit the fuse to the trap Lucifer had set out like a master demolitions expert. Last in a long line of highly-decorated Centauri stallions and mares, the thirteen-foot tall cavalry general didn't look so fierce now, pacing back and forth as he clutched his tiny foal to his chest, born five months premature, and willed his foal to stay alive.
The room took on a bit of a faraway, ethereal feel. A lump rose in Jophiel's chest, settled in her throat, and threatened to erupt past her icy exterior into a wail of misery. So acutely could she feel what the Centauri stallion was going through that her lips moved as Kunopegos did, breathing along with his foal. Breathe. That's a good little girl, just one more breath, and another, and another. Don't stop breathing, please! Don't forget to take the next breath! Jophiel wiped her nose. Her hand came away drenched with tears.
Why, oh why, had the Emperor sent her to ask these questions? She, who could in no way remain unbiased? She forced her emotions behind the icy mask of the Ice Princess. Wings flared like a raptor, she descended down the steps and yanked open the door.
Kunopegos did not whirl, agile on his hooves to salute her. No. The Centauri stallion placed his enormous hooves carefully so his steel-clad war-shoes did not clang against the floor and disturb his foal.
"Sir," Kunopegos whispered.
He'd unbuttoned his uniform so his foal's ear could rest against his heart. Unable replicate the gentle rocking of its mother's womb, the Emperor had strapped the medical equipment which kept the foal alive to its father's equine back as he paced, trailing IV's, wires, and all the other hardware across the floor. Other than one tiny black hoof which peeked out of the convergence of IV's, tubes and wires into a pink blanket, Jophiel might as well have stared at a trans-dimensional alien.
"As you were." Jophiel forced her features to remain hard.
"We have to keep our voices down," Kunopegos said. "If Dierdre startles, the increased adrenaline makes it harder to process oxygen."
The breathing machine hissed as pure oxygen flowed into her impossibly immature lungs, enriched with the Emperor's elixirs. A second machine ran tubes filtering toxins from the foal's blood, a job her mother had done until Aigharn's renal system had failed. Jophiel's lip quivered. How many tubes had they run into Uriel before they'd given up and told her to just hold him as he died?
Only Uriel hadn't died. She had kept him alive. She and Raphael. By doing the exact same thing Kunopegos did now. Out … in … here … take my breath … take my life … I'll do anything if you'll just take one more breath … please … just one more breath … anything … take me, goddess! I'll do anything, just please don't punish my child!
Her hand inadvertently brushed across the one medal Abaddon had allowed her to keep, the one she had gained by birthing her fifth child right on the battlefield. Duty. Honor. Service to the Emperor. It had all been a mistake. That entire battle had been a mistake.
Compassion forced her to soften the Ice Princess mask.
"I'm here to find out what you know," Jophiel said.
"I have confessed to every crime," Kunopegos brown eyes were filled with anguish. "I will take any punishment, including death. Just don't let the Emperor give up on my filly."
How many times had she made the exact same plea as Uriel had lay dying from the wasting sickness?
"It's not a confession I seek," Jophiel said. "But information."
"I told the Cherubim everything I know."
"It's not what you know you know," Jophiel said, "but what you don't know. What we don't know."
"You want to know how I deluded myself into doing something so stupid?" Kunopegos guessed.
"Yes."
"I don't know!" Kunopegos burly shoulders dropped lower as he cradled the sleeping infant closer. "I just … I guess I just heard what I wanted to believe."
"Lucifer testified he had no recollection of ever telling you it would be safe to harvest the foal at eleven weeks premature," Jophiel said. Eleven weeks. Not twenty-six…
"That's what he claimed when I confronted him a few weeks before Aigharn died." Kunopegos voice rose in anger. Immediately an alarm on Dierdre's breathing machine cast its shrill warning into the room.
An eerie sense of déjà vu settled over Jophiel and made her feel lightheaded and weak. Both fell silent, listening for the foal to regain her equilibrium. Finally the beeping ceased and the alarm went away. The tiny black hoof wriggled deeper into the soft pink blanket as the foal fell back to sleep. Jophiel realized she'd been holding her breath.
"When we first intercepted the Syracusia," Jophiel spoke softly, "you said it felt as if Lucifer had spoken inside your head?"
"That's crazy talk," Kunopegos said. He mashed his face into his shoulder since he had no hand free to wipe away his tears. "It was just as Parliament said. I deluded myself into believing what I wanted to believe."
"What if I told you Lucifer had the ability to make people see what they wanted to see," Jophiel said.
Kunopegos stopped his pacing.
"I'd say you were crazy," Kunopegos said. He started pacing again, then paused as he reached the end of the floor and turned to pace back again. "But then, that makes me crazy too, doesn't it? Because the bastard made me see this foal before she'd even been conceived."
"Really?" Jophiel asked. "I mean … he made you see the future?"
A hint of a smile lit up Kunopegos face as his eyes turned into the past.
"He showed me a chestnut colt," Kunopegos said. "One who looked like me. On my back rode my wife, and at her breast suckled this little girl, right down to her mother's almond-shaped eyes."
Jophiel had not had an opportunity to look closely at the foal, but she took his word for it. Kunopegos brief smile turned downwards as he regained his grief-stricken expression of only moments before.
"Have you ever wanted something so badly you would sell your soul to get it?" Kunopegos asked.
Until she had nearly lost Uriel, Jophiel would have said no. Now…
"Yes," Jophiel answered honestly.
"I served Lucifer during the Emperor's absence," Kunopegos said. "Long before you were even born. Do you know why we all served the little bastard?"
"Why?"
"Because he always understood exactly what we wanted," Kunopegos said, "and he always gave us just enough of it that, even when the shit hit the fan, we were always willing to stand behind him."
"The same could be said of the Eternal Emperor."
"The Emperor abandoned us when we needed him the most!" Kunopegos stomped his hoof. "Lucifer was a pompous little prick, but you always felt like he watched out for the good of the Alliance."
Jophiel was wise enough not to let him know she disagreed.
"That day though?" Kunopegos said. "The day he gave me Aigharn? It was like Lucifer was a different man."
Jophiel's pinfeathers stood on end. "Different?"
"He was, I don't know?" Kunopegos said. "It was like there was more of him than there was before."
"More?"
"More … everything," Kunopegos said. He stared over her shoulder, as if he stared at Lucifer now. "Lucifer was a cocky bastard. Always knew how to get what he wanted, and make you want it, too. But that day?"
Kunopegos tail twitched as though he was chasing away a fly.
"Even before he stepped foot off his shuttle," Kunopegos said. "It felt as though … I don't know how to describe it."
"Try."
"You'll think I'm crazy."
"I already think you're crazy," Jophiel said. She rustled her feathers to get rid of the heebie-jeebies. "That doesn't mean you're wrong."
Kunopegos nuzzled Dierdre, checked her tubes before he finished telling his story. Jophiel waited for him to compose his thoughts.
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 19