Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (104 page)

"That's 'cause Zepar told us they were nuthin' but farm animals!" Procel said. "What man on this ship ain't fucked something weird because none of them Angelic chicks would give us the time of day?"

Ninsianna squelched the urge to claw their eyes out. She had no idea what kind of creatures they referred to, but she'd heard whispers from her
own
people, off-color jokes about shepherds and sheep.

"You and me," Ruax pointed back and forth between himself and Procel, "you and me, we been pulling duty together a long time. You think she's gonna traipse all over the uncharted territories with you, dodging the bounty hunters after you abscond with Lucifer's offspring?"

Ninsianna's interest piqued like a hungry jackal which had just heard the scrapings of a mouse. Okay, maybe these men
weren't
so empty-hearted. Procel was considering
stealing
one of them?

"I'll just wait until she gives birth and leave the kid behind," Procel said. "Lucifer won't care. He's already broken her. Everybody knows he only cares about the offspring."

"Look at her," Ruax pointed at the terrified woman. "You see how she's clutching at her belly? These human females, they ain't gotten all the maternal instincts bred out of 'em yet like Hashem did to
us
. You try forcing her to leave her baby
,
she's gonna claw your eyes out and run right back to
him
. And then where will you be? Shot out of an airlock, and they'll shoot
me
out right along with you 'cause I'd known you was planning it, and I didn't say nuthin' to Zepar."

She remembered Eligor's admonition, that her manipulations would get these men killed. So? Perhaps her earlier match-making
had
born fruit? Okay. How could she use this to get herself out of this mess? Encourage the matches. Yes. The only fly in her plans was that the mind-broken women were too terrified to encourage the Angelics' advances.

Perhaps that was why the Evil One had broken them?

She glanced over at the ebony-skinned woman, who watched what she did cautiously from her bunk.
That
one was a lot less crazy than she let on. So how? How could she get these women to stop acting so …
crazy?

She tried to put herself into the
pampooties
of the woman huddled in terror beneath the spread of Procel's wings. What if that had been her mission all along? To undermine the Evil One's power right from underneath his nose?

"Procel," Ninsianna asked. "Would you like me to teach you how to make her like you better?"

Procel's expression was almost comical in his earnestness. Even
without
her gift of sight, she could see the poor guard had worked himself into a frenzy daydreaming about what he'd do once he got her out of here.

"She doesn't like me," Procel said.

"She doesn't like your
wings,
" Ninsianna said. She pointed to the two offending appendages. "To us, all you Angelics look alike, which means you look like Lucifer, even if you don't
act
like him. But I got used to my husband's wings. Even enjoyed them," she lowered her voice, "if you know what I mean?"

Ninsianna caressed her arm the way her husband had often done with his wing-tips whenever he wished to engage in a bit of foreplay.

Procel turned pink at the mere suggestion. What was it with these Angelics? Were they
all
as sexually repressed as her husband had been before she'd taught him the ways of pleasure?

"Well the big oaf keeps flapping them all over the place," Ruax said. "'Cause that's what the Angelic chicks dig. So tell me, what are we supposed to do? Cut them off?"

"If you knew your species would be saved," Ninsianna asked, no longer flirting. "Would you do it? Would you leave this all behind if it was the only way our people would accept you?"

Procel looked horrified.

"N-n-NO!"

Ruax leaned against the empty food card, laden only with the empty trays from breakfast.

"Maybe," he said. He glanced over at his
own
favorite, the Uruk ringleader who was forever the bane of Ninsianna's existence. "Maybe not cut off my wings. But the only reason I serve Lucifer is 'cause a man like me, a man with a record and a past, there ain't no other place for us to go."

"What kind of black marks," Ninsianna blurted out before she could stop herself. Stupid! Stupid stupid stupid!

Ruax's expression hardened. He looked away, and for a moment she feared she had lost her chance. The female Uruk ringleader chose at that moment to stop hissing at them and regarded them with hostile curiosity.

"
Bad
things," Ruax said. "Real bad things. Things that didn’t mean much at the time, but as you get older, those things start to eat at you. The men ye killed, they start whispering to you in your sleep, tellin' you yer gonna get yours when you pass into the dreamtime."

"What about Lucifer?" Ninsianna asked.

That open, self-revelatory expression on Ruax's face disappeared behind a scowl. The room grew silent. Even the other women were intuitive enough to understand Ninsianna had stepped into quicksand.

"It's complicated," Procel said to break the silence. "Lucifer … let's just say sometimes we like him, and other times we just want to run away."

This complicated things. Just because
she
hated the man's guts didn't mean that
they
did. Oh! If only She-who-is was here to whisper how to make these men see that Lucifer was possessed by evil?

"I didn't mean any offense," Ninsianna said.

Procel tucked his wings against his back and handed Ninsianna the piece of fruit he'd brought for his favorite, the one the Anatolian woman had rejected.

"Maybe she'll take it if
you
give it to her," Procel said.

Ninsianna noticed the Anatolian woman was fixated on the fruit. She wanted it, even if she was too terrified to reach out and take it from the guard.

"Don't move," Ninsianna told Procel. She made a great show of accepting the fruit as though she was a priestess in the temple, accepting a gift of tribute from the Chief. She then brought the fruit over to the Anatolian woman and spoke to her in Kemet.

"Procel would like for you to accept this fruit as his gift," Ninsianna said. " If you like it, he will bring you more."

The woman met Ninsianna's gaze. Her lip trembled as she clutched at her own bicep,
wanting
to break free and take the fruit. Although Ninsianna could no longer
see
people's spirit-lights
,
that older gift, the one she had inherited from her mother, enabled her to
feel
the jagged edges of the woman's shattered spirit. Her mother often
described
what she felt as such; tactile terms, not the visual language that her shaman father used. And yet it occurred to her that her mother had been describing the same thing all along. Whether she could
see
the broken spirit-light, or only
feel
it, the methodology to
fix
the problem would be the same. Wouldn't it? Much more difficult because she'd be fumbling blindly in the dark. But the same remedy would work for the same illness.

Ninsianna laid the fruit carefully onto the bed. The Anatolian woman reached out and grabbed the fruit, clutching it to her breast, too frightened to eat it. She stared at Procel as she did this and not Ninsianna, making eye contact although she did not eat the fruit. So. The woman was cognizant enough to realize that Procel was her benefactor?

"See," Ninsianna whispered so she wouldn't startle the woman. "If you approach her carefully, after a while she will grow less fearful of you."

"How long?" Procel asked.

Ninsianna
felt
along the jagged edge of the woman's spirit light. To her imaginary hands, the sensation felt like shards of broken pottery. Mama had always referred to this process as 're-shaping the clay.'  Papa, on the other hand, spoke of 'soul retrievals' to snatch broken spirits away from demons.
She
had never been trained to perform
either
gift, disparaging broken-spirited people with the same profound disgust that she'd always viewed the spirits of the dead. Oh, what she wouldn't do to have that knowledge now?

"My Papa," Ninsianna lied. "He taught me how to fix such things. But it takes time. And I need help. To fix a broken spirit light, you need a sponsor, somebody who will loan them some of
their
spirit protection until the sick person becomes strong enough to finish healing on their own. Can you do that, Procel? All you have to do is keep visiting her and teach yourself to not appear so terrifying?"

"Just tuck my wings in," Procel said. "Just like the military guys do. And after a while, the girls will begin to like me."

Ruax snorted and grinned.

"Doesn't sound too hard. We gotta do that anyways whenever we're around Zepar."

"Come back tomorrow with extra fruit," Ninsianna said. "And tell the other guards, the ones smart enough to keep their mouths shut, to come in here quietly with their wings tucked against their backs and if they favor one, I'll try to help them get to know her."

The two Angelics finished up their duties and then wheeled out of there, discussing which human female was the favorite of which guard. Ninsianna had met many of the guards, but according to Apausha, there were sixty-three Angelics on this ship and so far she'd only met around a dozen. Counting Lucifer, Zepar, and the two 'goons' she'd met thankfully only briefly, that left 59 Angelics she might be able to corrupt.

Plopping down upon the Anatolian woman's bed, Ninsianna closed her eyes and began to sing a shaman's chanting song…

~ * ~ * ~

January: 3,389 BC

Earth: Village of Assur

Mikhail

Mikhail felt just well enough to drive himself crazy, ruminating about ways to steal a space shuttle. No matter
how
many times he plotted out maneuvers in his mind, the Assurians always came out the losers. Primitive weapons were a poor defense against modern weaponry.

'And what if you send out your distress call, and the people who respond aren't the people you -hope- will answer, but this white-winged Angelic who kidnapped Ninsianna?'

He shoved the thought aside. He would deal with that eventuality as he gained more intelligence. He thought over Qishtea's description of the Sata'anic shuttle which had transported Jamin when he had blasted down a portion of Nineveh's wall. Which class of space shuttle was it? What weaponry did it carry? Which weak spots could he use to take it down using the limited resources he had at his disposal?

He picked the straw out of his mattress and shoved the strands up in between the feathers of his outstretched wing, using it to compute all the ways different primitive weapons might fare against the clumps of emmer and einkorn when Needa walked in and bagged him in the act of using his thus-decorated wing as a troop movement board.

"What in heaven's name do you think you are doing?"

Mikhail gave her a sheepish grin.

"Planning?"

"Planning what?"

"Planning how I'm going to get back your daughter."

Needa gave him a weak smile. She set down a ceramic bowl of steaming water and a basket filled with healing supplies, some primitive, other items things from the first responder kit in his shuttle. Whether or not he was supposed to give these people technology, the truth was, he'd already given much of it to them.

Needa pulled up a stool and began to carefully unbandage his chest, pausing when the linen tugged against a scab, causing him to inhale sharply. She stared at his injuries, never meeting his eyes.

He studied how thin his mother-in-law had become. Where once upon a time only a peppering of grey hair had marred her tresses, now a good half of her hair had gone white with worry. Her eyes appeared sunken with dark circles around them, and as she cut his bandages, he noted her hand had developed a tremor.