Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (124 page)

February: 3,389 BC

Earth: Uruk Territory

Gita

Avoiding detection by the roving bands of Uruk who searched for Tizqar, son of Zamub, chief of the village of Akshak, wasn't easy this deep into Uruk territory, especially since they were unfamiliar with the landscape. Gita finally gagged the man to cease his threats using a strip torn from his own, elaborate robe. Only the fact the desert was flush with moisture from the winter rains prevented them from dying of thirst. Tizqar glared at them with dark, hateful eyes.

Gita pressed the point of her blade into the Uruk mercenary's throat.

"I will release your gag so you can eat and drink some food," Gita said. "But if you cry out, I shall cut your throat. Do you understand?"

Tizqar nodded. After he had tried to escape the second time, Dadbeh had hobbled his feet with a twisted strip of cloth so he could only take small steps without falling on his face. That had slowed them, but at least there had been no more escape attempts.

Gita lifted a waterskin to his mouth. Tizqar suckled on the end like an eager kid goat, heedless of the moisture which dribbled onto his robes. At last the waterskin grew flaccid. He smacked his lips and bared his teeth at her, trying his best to appear intimidating.

"My father will find you," Tizqar hissed in broken Ubaid. "And when he does, he will flay you alive for taking his son and heir."

"You are a
third
son," Gita said. "I remember that much from the times you visited Laum's house. The reason, I suppose, you have chosen to prey upon helpless travelers?"

"And what do
you
know of commerce, daughter of a drunk and a whore?" Tizqar asked.

Gita resisted the urge to slap him. She focused instead on carving strips of raw flesh off the carcass of a hare Dadbeh had shot earlier with his bow. She fed it to him uncooked because they did not dare start a fire.

"What do you know of my mother?" Gita asked.

"That she was a temple prostitute at Jabel Mar Elyas," Tizqar sneered, "who would spread her legs to any man who paid the temple money."

Gita’s hand made a sharp ‘crack’ against his cheek.

"My mother was a
priestess
! And she was far better person than
you.
"

She pressed her knife against his throat, but Tizqar was not intimidated because he knew she wanted his testimony far more than she wanted vindication for the reputation of a mother who was long since dead and in the grave. The man had no idea that she had engaged in a bit of sacred prostitution herself to win back the life of the man he had tried to kill. To shut him up, she dug the knife in just a little harder than was necessary; just enough to make him wince; just enough to draw a little bit of blood.

"Gita!" Dadbeh's voice was a sharp distraction. "If you kill him, you shall never clear your name."

Gita removed the knife. Tizqar stared at her victoriously.

"We should kill him and go join the Kemet," Gita said.

"We have no trade goods," Dadbeh said.

"We will if we take the pack he carries on his back," Gita said.

"That gold belongs to the Kemet," Dadbeh said. "We already reached agreement on this. We shall only take enough to pay an appeasement to She-who-is at the temple for Shahla's soul, and then we shall hold the rest until the Kemet travel through again next year."

Gita averted her gaze. She didn't have the heart to tell him that, no matter
how
much appeasement they paid, Immanu would refuse to perform the death ceremonies.

"Is
that
what this is all about?" Tizqar taunted? "You want vindication for the soul of a girl who was a whore?"

"You seem fixated on everybody being a whore," Dadbeh said. His words were crisp as he spoke.

Gita heard the warning in his voice. Tizqar, unfortunately, was more accustomed to a man who blustered and ignored the warning.

"Laum's daughter
was
a whore," Tizqar laughed. "Her mother gave her to Yazan's brother before the girl had even had her first menstrual cycle; and for a ripe price, too! Dirar always had a taste for the brutal and the young."

"That makes her a
victim
," Dadbeh's mismatched eyes turned green and black, respectively. "Not a harlot."

"Were you aware that Shahla was carrying Qishtea's child?” Tizqar taunted. “Not Jamin's?"

Dadbeh's cheek twitched as his eyes took on a look that was stricken. Gita noted the way his hand slid down to caress the hilt of the knife tucked in at the belt of his Ubaid kilt.

"The child Shahla carried was
mine,
" Dadbeh said. "And had she not been killed, I would have married her. Even after she miscarried the baby."

Tizqar laughed, an obnoxious, raucous sound.

"Shahla lost that baby because her mother gave her
waters of bitterness
every single day since the girl first got her moon-blood cycle," Tizqar laughed. "Laum gave it to every woman in his brothel because no man wants to
fuck
a woman who is heavy with some other man's child."

The hairs stood on the back of Gita's neck. She remembered the disgusting tea Shahla's mother had insisted she drink three times each day, and how, towards the end, Shahla had grown clever and begun to pour it into a goatskin she carried under her shawl.

"Why would Laum do such a thing?" Dadbeh's voice sounded anguished. "Why would he do such a thing to his own daughter?"

"Daughters are useless!" Tizqar spat upon the ground. "He told Shahla to seduce one man, and then she took it upon herself to seduce many others!"

"You lie!" Gita sputtered. "Shahla would have told me if she'd been forced!"

"She
didn't
tell her mother she was with child," Tizqar said. "Not until it was too late for the silphium to work. But Laum, he was looking for an excuse to entrap one of the chief's sons so he could expand his trading network, he didn't care if it was Assur's chief or Nineveh, so he went to them both and tried to convince each of them child was theirs. And when that failed, he came to me to procure some tincture of ergot."

“Tincture of ergot?” Gita said. “But tincture of ergot is a poison.”

Tizqar laughed.

"Shut up," Dadbeh hissed.

"She convinced you to marry her,” Tizqar said, “and the child was not even yours!"

"I said shut up!" Dadbeh pulled his knife.

Gita placed her hand over Dadbeh's arm.

"Do you know what this testimony means?" Gita said.

"It means this man is responsible for my child's death," Dadbeh hissed.

"The child wasn't yours!" Tizqar said. "And even if it was, the last thing Laum wanted was for his prize bargaining chip for a favorable trade married off to the son of a landless tenant-farmer."

"I
wanted
the infant," Dadbeh shouted. "Whether or not it was mine! And I wanted
her!
Because I loved her! With or without her father's money!"

Tizqar laughed.

"That baby was as good as dead before Jamin even beat it out of her," Tizqar said. His eyes were filled with contempt. "He just did her father a favor by focusing the blame on
him
so he would have a mechanism to extract recompense from the Chief via the tribunal!"

A cold, empty feeling settled into Gita's gut like an old, hungry wolf which had gone too long without a feeding. That dark gift whispered to her, whispered all the places she could bury her knife into the man and watch him suffer. Slowly. Painfully. She would cut out his entrails and feed them to him alive.

Dadbeh's hand moved to cover hers. So focused had she been on answering the hunger which cried out for this man's sacrifice that she hadn't even noticed her hand had moved to carry out the daydream.

"We should kill him and feed his body to the hyenas!" Gita hissed.

"Yes," Dadbeh said. "But we won't. Because everybody knows that ergot causes madness and hallucinations. If he testifies to that, perhaps they will stop blaming Shahla for being the puppet of her father?"

His tears glistened in the faint light of the crescent moon. Even now, now that she was dead, Dadbeh still loved the girl, and he would do whatever he could to clear her name.

A cool chill touched her head and caressed it as though somebody brushed her hair. Gita glanced up and saw Shahla, still carrying the rag-doll. Gita’s eyes met Dadbeh's. He saw her, too. Shahla was trapped between, and if they did not help her, she would be condemned to live in limbo until at last her spirit grew tired and disappeared.

"Gag him," Gita said. "And if he tries anything, bury your knife into his heart. For I'd like nothing better than to watch him suffer the way I had to watch Shahla suffer in the end."

Dadbeh shoved the gag back into Tizqar's mouth, and then they tied him face-down into the dirt with his legs bent up behind him and his feet tied to his hands. This way, even if he
did
manage to break his bindings, he would be so stiff afterwards that his movements would be slow.

They moved a little way off so that they could speak without Tizqar overhearing their words.

"Don't listen to him," Gita said. "This only proves Shahla wasn't in her right mind."

"I know," Dadbeh sighed. He gave her a lopsided grin, more wistful than cheerful. "You saw her just then, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Gita said.

Dadbeh nodded.

"Towards the end, Shahla swore Ninsianna was messing with her mind," Dadbeh said. "I guess it was all part of her hallucinations?"

"Perhaps," Gita said. She thought of how successfully Immanu had turned the other villagers against her, so much so that they'd agreed to throw her alive upon the bonfire. Perhaps Dadbeh might feel better if he knew that some of Shahla's ramblings had been real? Just as her ramblings about the white-winged Angelic had been?

No… What use was it defiling her cousin's name? No evidence that Tizqar had given so far cleared
her
of her part in Ninsianna's kidnapping, and until her cousin was safely returned, there would be no safe haven for her anywhere in Ubaid territory.

Dadbeh touched her arm.

"It's understandable, you know?" Dadbeh said gently. “No one can fault you for doing what they asked.”

"What?" Gita asked. She stared into his earnest, mismatched eyes.

"That you fell in love with him," Dadbeh said. “Had you not loved him, he never would have mistaken you for Ninsianna.”

Gita averted her gaze.

"Get some rest," Dadbeh said. He jabbed a thumb at their prisoner. "It's going to be another long day tomorrow."

Gita moved back just close enough to Tizqar so she could hear him move, but not so close that he could roll towards her and do something to her in her sleep. She dozed off listening to the chirp of the insects and the gentle song of the wind, wishing in her dreams that she was back in Mikhail's arms. She drifted, happy in the song, until her dreams changed and became chaotic with movement.

Pain. She cried out as she fell.

Lizard demons.

Jamin stared down at her, but his expression was filled with hatred; not the friend she missed.

She rolled.

Chaos.

More pain shot into her wing. She sped after the sky canoe, but she could not catch it.

Tired. So tired.

"Mikhail! You are fallen! You must fly!"

A hand shook her awake. "Gita!"

She sat bolt upright, shrieking the warning which had come to her in the dream.

Her heart racing, it took her a moment to realize it was Dadbeh who stared at her and not Jamin or the lizard demons. She took deep breaths until her racing heart subsided, her body chilled and damp with sweat.

"Are you alright?" Dadbeh asked.

Tears welled in Gita's eyes, but she forced herself not to cry.

"It was just a nightmare," Gita said.

Dadbeh checked their prisoner's bindings, and then he settled in for a nap, turning the watch over to
her
. As soon as Dadbeh's chest began to rise and fall in a gentle rhythm, she pictured Mikhail where he had fallen, and then she began to sing.

Far off in the desert, the hyenas joined her song with harmonies of their own, their song a laughing one, too far off to be a threat.

~ * ~ * ~