Jophiel's mouth tightened into a grim line. Even through the door, she could smell the scent of the tear gas her men had used to force the protestors to back off. Her continued presence here put the Emperor at risk. She turned to face the tall, slender Muqqibat dragon who, like her, was one of the Emperor's most trusted confidantes.
"You will explain to him why I have left?"
Dephar's snout twisted up into a wistful expression.
"He will be hurt, but I will impress upon him you have done so because you have his best interests at heart."
"He is stubborn," Jophiel said. "When I asked him, he specifically forbade me to leave."
"Hashem's stubbornness will be his undoing," Dephar said. "Especially when his temper is aroused. But in your case, once he understands you have not abandoned him, I hope he will realize you have done the right thing?"
There was a loud clattering as something hit the Great Gate, a minor missile, no doubt something mundane such as a shoe. The shouting grew louder. If she did not leave now, soon she would not have the choice.
"Tell him I still serve him with every ounce of my being," Jophiel said. "But he bred our species to be his defenders, not the other way around. I belong out there, rallying his supporters to come to his defense, not in here, cowering like a frightened little girl."
"Signal me as soon as you get to your ship," Dephar said.
Jophiel did not enlighten the man that she had one stop to make before she risked it all in an attempt to fuel a counter-rebellion.
"One way or another," Jophiel said, "you will find out whether or not I have been successful."
She patted her living needle ship until it rolled over and opened up its marsupium. Dephar helped her step into the creature's pouch as she settled her wings so she would fit inside. She adjusted her oxygen mask, trying not to grumble as Dephar jammed her duffle bag between her knees. This was going to be a miserably claustrophobic ride!
She tried not to fight it as the creature shut its pouch around her and gripped her tightly like an infant passing through the birth canal. The needle-handler had given the creature one set of coordinates, but she communicated a different set of coordinates altogether. Her stomach lurched as the creature leaped through the dimension that otherwise only the gods could use and popped out on the other side.
The needle opened its marsupium.
Jophiel popped up out from under her pile of clothing. 'Ohthankthegods that is over!!!' How had Raphael done this every week to see her and Uriel?
A hand reached down to help her out, his expression bemused as he unpacked her from amongst her belongings like just another piece of luggage. She stared up into the visage of Major-General Kabshiel, father of her eldest child.
"Major-General," Jophiel said.
"Supreme Commander-General," Kabshiel replied.
Jophiel gave him a sad little smile.
"We both know that is no longer true," Jophiel said.
"We are on my protectorate," Kabshiel said. "Here, I call you what I want to call you. And what I call you is breathtaking."
Jophiel blushed. Kabshiel had always hinted he'd wanted more than the two-day mating appointment which had resulted in the birth of her eldest son. She'd still been a cadet then, still smarting from Lucifer's rejection and wary of any man who might try to touch her heart. Now that Lucifer was dead, she saw her former lover in a new light.
"What do you have for me?" Jophiel said. She stuck to what she knew, which was to act professional.
She noted the glint of disappointment in Kabshiel's eye. Born of the same generation as Abaddon, Kabshiel was close to retirement age. It was common for two Angelics who'd once produced offspring together to look each other up once they were free to form the union they'd been forbidden to make so long as both were obligated to serve within the military. As the years had passed, she'd come to realize Kabshiel nursed a torch for her. She suspected that was why he helped her now.
"His name is Hasdiel," Kabshiel's lip twitched with regret. "His sister Pravuil was one of Lucifer's interns."
Jophiel snorted with disgust. "We both know how that ended."
Kabshiel was one of the few people in the galaxy who knew he had been her second mating appointment, not her first as most people believed. But nobody but Lucifer knew about the one man whose seed not even she had been able to set.
Her hand moved to touch her womb, the one Raphael had not been able to fill … or maybe he had? Her death-blood had not come, and yet the pregnancy test still registered inconclusive.
Kabshiel handed her the slender service record of a cadet. Inside was a picture of what had to be the plainest looking Angelic she had ever seen. In a species prone to beauty, an Angelic who was ugly was truly an anomaly.
"This is a picture of her," Kabshiel said. "According to her brother, our illustrious Prime Minister was just her friend."
A friend? Did Lucifer have any such creatures?
"So what's this have to do with our missing Prime Minister?
"Why don't you just ask the man yourself?" Kabshiel said.
"I thought he was in prison?" Jophiel said.
"He is," Kabshiel said. The Major-General gave her a wolfish grin. He hadn't moved up the ranks by sitting on his hands. "I was able to pull some strings and get him transferred to prison here."
Jophiel shoved her disheveled belongings back into the needle and patted the creature on the nose. It closed its marsupium to protect her bag. She then followed her former lover through a labyrinth of hallways, down into the bowels of a maximum security prison. The thought crossed her mind that perhaps Kabshiel had turned her in, but no, he had always possessed a soft spot for her and she had given him his only offspring.
They stepped into an elevator and waited as the device descended deep into the prison. As it did, Kabshiel stepped close enough that the tip of his wings brushed lightly against the edge of hers. She had to tell him. It was unfair to lead him on, especially as she suspected he still nursed hope she might be interested in bearing him a second child.
"Kabshiel," Jophiel put her hand upon his arm. "You do know I have given myself to another?"
Kabshiel's grey-speckled wings drooped. His expression was wistful.
"I had heard the young Brigadier-General meant more to you than just a casual mating appointment," Kabshiel said. "I had hoped it was nothing but a rumor."
"We are mated," Jophiel said softly. "We said to each other the Seraphim wedding vow."
Kabshiel's face wrinkled with a blend of regret and, surprisingly, a little bit of cheer.
"An old man can hope? Can't he?" Kabshiel said. "Congratulations. I guess you must think of me an old fool?"
"No," Jophiel said. She leaned forward and pecked her former lover on the cheek, an intimacy she never would have dreamed of until she'd become mated to Raphael, but now, the gesture seemed somehow natural. "We shall always have our son … and three grandchildren! Think of that? Between us, we have produced a child who is not burdened by the defect which has driven our species to the brink of extinction."
"Thank you for telling me the truth," Kabshiel said.
They leaned together, his large speckled wings wrapped protectively around her smaller, white ones, until they reached the correct floor. The opening elevator doors forced them to stand apart. They passed through several checkpoints until at last they came to an interrogation room. Kabshiel gestured for her to go inside.
"I'll be right here if you need me," he said. "But from all reports, young Hasdiel is a model prisoner."
She knew Kabshiel would watch from the two-way mirror. She sat down at the table and waited, doing her best to not scrunch up her nose at the stench of musk and urine or squint under the too-bright lights which illuminated an otherwise dank and featureless room. The opposite door opened and in trailed two burly guards, leading between them an Angelic bound up in chains. Like most Angelics, Hasdiel was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, with the typical white wings of a species that had adapted to live on ships in spa
ce. The guards bolted the man's foot chain to a ring underneath the desk, and then his handcuffs to a similar ring on the table.
"Is that really necessary?" Jophiel asked.
"This man tried to assassinate the Prime Minister."
"It's okay," Private Hasdiel said. His white wings fluttered with hope. "I'm used to it. Really. All that matters is somebody finally responded to one of my letters."
"Leave us," Jophiel ordered the guards.
One of them moved to leave, but the other one sneered at her, no doubt aware she'd been busted down in rank to E-fuzzy. The first guard jabbed his thumb at the two-way mirror.
"Mess with her and you'll deal with him," the guard said.
The second guard glanced at the two-way mirror, his expression wary as he realized Kabshiel watched them from just outside. He trudged out after the first one, leaving Jophiel alone with the man who had purportedly tried to shoot Lucifer.
Oh … if only if he had!
Jophiel tapped on the video record button of the equipment which had already been set up to record a prisoner's confession.
"Could you please state your name for the record?"
"My name is Hasdiel, brother of Pravuil."
"You claim you have specific knowledge about the circumstances and events which preceded the Prime Minister's unlawful actions and subsequent disappearance?" Jophiel asked.
"I do," Hasdiel said. "But I expect the evidence my sister forwarded to me has long since been destroyed. What I remember, I will relate to you as accurately as I can."
"Okay, then," Jophiel said. "Since this is your story, I will let you choose at what point you wish to start?"
"My sister Pravuil," Hasdiel said. "We were half-siblings, same sire, different mother. Although our mothers never really took too much of an interest in us, our sire wanted us to know one another. Pravuil … she and I were pretty tight. We wrote to each other several times per week."
"What does this have to do with Lucifer?"
"A few months after she started working for him, one day, out of the blue, Pravuil sent me copies of some documents she said proved Lucifer had never been formally adopted by the Eternal Emperor."
"That's common knowledge," Jophiel said.
"It is now," Hasdiel said. "But then … everybody thought that big ceremony the Emperor had the day he led Lucifer through the Great Gate and declared he was his son was legally binding."
"He led me through that gate," Jophiel shrugged. "It doesn't mean anything other than the Emperor trusts you."
"No," Hasdiel said. The young Angelic leaned forward in his seat, causing his handcuffs to clank against the table. "That's not what that ceremony means. Pravuil did some digging. She discovered there's an older significance behind the passage of someone through the Great Gate of the palace."
"What?" Jophiel asked.
"Lucifer told her the Emperor made him put his hand into the mouth of the lock that is on that door," Hasdiel said. "Legend says it's the mouth of a great, golden bull."
An odd warning bell rang somewhere in the back of Jophiel's mind.
"So?" Jophiel said. "So what?"
"Only a direct descended of Moloch can open that lock," Hasdiel said. "She believed he was a Morning Star. A great prophet who would come to lead the Alliance out of a dark age."
"Morning Stars don't have anything to do with the Alliance," Jophiel said. "The legend precedes the birth of the universe."
Hasdiel's expression was sharp and thoughtful.
"Did you have to stick your hand into the mouth of the bull when the Emperor announced he'd made you his Supreme Commander-General?"
Jophiel's feathers rustled. She hid her unease behind the ice princess mask.
"It's just a lock," she said. "Nothing more! Is this why you brought me here? To tell me fairy tales?"
"No," Hasdiel said. "There is more."
"Tell me," Jophiel said. "But I warn you, don't play games. I didn't come here to hear tall tales."
Hasdiel fiddled with his chains, his expression thoughtful. She was so desperate for a lead that she would do anything, even listen to a bunch of ghost stories. She softened her expression, used the one she donned whenever she was trying to entice her son to eat his piseanna and cairéid.
"Just tell me what you know," Jophiel said. "Please… The Emperor finds himself in one heck of a pickle and it is up to me to help him fix it."
Hasdiel met her gaze, his expression wary. Life was not kind to a soft man in a hard man's prison. She could see his exuberance was tempered by distrust. For a moment she feared he might tell her to go to Hades, but then he leaned back and fiddled with his chains.
"Before she disappeared," Hasdiel said, "Pravuil contacted me. She said she suspected the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff was shooting him up with some kind of illegal drug."
"Zepar?" Jophiel snorted. "More like the other way around. Lucifer was known for his excesses. If it gave a buzz, chances are Lucifer was either shooting it up or drinking it down."
"You act as though you speak from first-hand experience?"
Hasdiel sized her up the way a mouse might study a cat that had come to eat it. He puffed out his wings, an instinctive gesture to appear bigger and more important. Jophiel gave him her ice-princess stare rather than let the man know he'd hit a nerve. His time in prison, it seemed, had hardened the man.
"She sent me some star maps before she disappeared," Hasdiel said. " She claimed she'd conducted an audit and discovered an ungodly amount of Alliance funds were being redirected to some project out on the outermost fringes of our galaxy.
"The Monoceros ring?" Jophiel asked. "Those are our oldest stars, the ones which date back to the formation of this galaxy. There is nothing out there. All those worlds are purportedly dead."
"Something is out there," Hasdiel said. "And whatever it is, it's been eating up ten billion trillion quadrillion Alliance boinn óir a year."
"Ten billion trillion quadrillion?" Jophiel repeated a number so large her brain refused to wrap itself around the concept. That was more than the budget for all four branches of the Alliance military combined!
Hasdiel pointed at the folder Major-General Kabshiel had given her. Sticking out of it were star maps. Her former lover had already interviewed Hasdiel and found what he had to say credible enough to alert her. She pulled out the maps and slid them under Hasdiel's nose.
"Where?"
"I don't know the exact coordinates," Hasdiel said. "I don't think she knew, either. Only a generalized location."
"Where?"
Hasdiel pointed to a broken spot in the outermost spiral arm of the Milky Way, far beyond even where Raphael searched for Earth.
"Here," Hasdiel said. "What few references she could find to coordinates all pointed to something being built out here."
Jophiel's eyes traced the trajectory of the Orion Cygnus arm, the broken remnant of a devoured dwarf galaxy where Raphael searched for Mikhail, beyond the place where it crossed the Perseus arm, into the empty space beyond. It was a vast area, but with so few stars, there were only so many planets where a secret military base could be hidden. The question was, who was building it and why had they built it so far away?
"Thank you," Jophiel gave him a polite nod. "I don't know what this information means, if it means anything at all, but if there is money being misappropriated from the Emperor's treasury, at least you have given us something to look for."
"What about my sister?" Hasdiel asked. His blue eyes waxed hazel with worry. "She trusted Lucifer implicitly, but when I went to him, his men attacked me and said I had a gun."
"A gun was found on you," Jophiel said. "And they had video footage of the gun held in your hand."
"It was faked," Hasdiel said. "I swear, I did no such thing. All I wanted was Lucifer to help me find my sister."
Compassion ... and guilt ... flooded into Jophiel's cheeks. What could she say to the man? The truth? That Pravuil had stumbled onto a secret and Lucifer, or those men who us
ed him as a puppet, had no doubt ordered her killed?
"Major-General Kabshiel will offer a reward," Jophiel said. "If someone comes forward to confirm your story, perhaps I could prevail upon the Emperor to grant you a pardon?"
Hasdiel glanced at the now-empty patch where once upon a time her rank pins had sat. He nodded. Even in here, everyone knew Lucifer had cast her down from her lofty pedestal. She was offering him the best deal she could give him.
She rose and exited the interrogation room, her stomach lurching as though she had eaten something distasteful. Kabshiel met her right outside the door.
"Did you find anything useful?"
"I'm not sure," Jophiel said. She stared at the star maps in her hand. Her gut instinct said yes even though her mind told her that what Hasdiel claimed had to be preposterous. At least the part about where. Money disappearing ... that part of his tale was nothing new. Graft was part of the military-industrial complex.
"I'll bring you back to your ship," Kabshiel said.
They walked in silence through the prison, up the elevator, back into the room where her needle waited to carry her to her ship. Kabshiel stood, a tall, reassuring wall of feathers at her back, silent, imposing, and regretful that even now, when she was at her most vulnerable, she could not give him what he wanted.
"Do you know why Abaddon gave you back your children?" Kabshiel asked at last.
Jophiel gave him a regretful smile.
"Because you asked him to," Jophiel said. "I am well aware that you and the Destroyer earned your stars fighting in the trenches of many of the same deadly battles."
"Yes … and no," Kabshiel said. The major-general looked sheepish. "I support him, you know? Abaddon? I support what he's trying to do. Find Earth so our people no longer have to live as slaves."
Jophiel looked at him in surprise. All this time she had thought of Kabshiel as one of the Emperor's greatest supporters.
"Why?"
"Because it cost me you," Kabshiel said. "Ever since we were together, there has not been a single day that I have not thought of you, or regretted the laws which forbade me from ever telling you that I loved you."
The major-general's eyes glistened a little too brightly in the harsh light of the prison. Not tears, for so fierce a warrior would never weep, but regret. Definitely regret.
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 48