Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (129 page)

"Gisou?" Mikhail called out at their disappearing backs.

"Yes, Mikhail?"

"Bring him a cooked fish and tell me if he eats it," Mikhail said.

They gave him a curious look.

"Tell him we are low on grain, but there is abundant fish in the river. If he eats the fish right away, come and tell me."

"Should we bring him a rabbit or some roasted goat?" Homa asked.

"He won't eat it," Mikhail said. "They can't digest it. Their stomach lacks some sort of enzyme. But he will eat fish if he has no other choice, though he will gag the first few times he takes a bite as they loathe the taste. Let me know if he refuses to eat it even though he is obviously hungry, or simply grimaces and swallows it down without complaint."

Homa and Gisou looked at one another and grinned. These were the sort of intrigues the two girls were quite good at, although usually their mischief had to do with matchmaking one of their friends.

They skipped off together like two little girls, leaving him to stare at Pareesa's nine-year-old brother, Namhu, who had taken to following him around like a second shadow. He actually
smelled
Namhu before he saw him, reeking of animal excrement and the musty stench of cave.

"Hello, Namhu," Mikhail said. "I take it you found another bat cave?"

"We did," Namhu said. He held up a stinky bucket. "It's about a quarter-day march from here. But why do you need so much bat poo?"

Mikhail gave him a rare grin.

"Let's just say we find ourselves in a really crappy situation," Mikhail said. "And if you understand how to refine that crap, you can get a few surprises out of it."

"Refine bat poo?" Namhu asked. "Into what?"

Mikhail bent down so he was eye-level with the boy he suspected would someday be every bit as gifted as his sister.

"Magic," Mikhail whispered conspiratorially. "But don't tell anyone. Its forbidden knowledge. But if you and your friends bring me back thirty baskets, I will make it into something which will frighten even the lizard demons."

"Out of bat poo?"

"Out of bat poo," Mikhail said.

Namhu gave him a mischievous grin that was so much like his big sister's that it made him think of the first time Pareesa had ever shot an arrow. Those had been good days, happy times, with him trying to win Ninsianna's heart. Oh, how he missed her, but for the first time in a very long time he had hope they might finally have a lead …
if
he could keep the bloodthirsty villagers from killing off the men who held the clues.

Namhu skipped off, determined to help him on his secret mission. He, of course, left behind his next younger sister, what was her name? Pareesa had so many brothers and sisters that they all jumbled into a blur.

"Hello," Mikhail said.

The little girl stared up at him, every bit as unafraid of him as her bigger brother. He remembered this one's name was Zakiti.

"Hello," Zakiti said.

"Aren't you supposed to be home with your granny?" Mikhail asked. "We've got lizard people in the village now."

"I'm not afraid of him," Zakiti said. "Rebsie will scare him away."

"Who?"

"Rebsie," Zakiti said. "You want to see him?"

"Sure," Mikhail said. "Where is he?"

"Here," Zakiti said. She held out a covered basket about the size of Ninsianna's sewing box.

Mikhail settled his wings loosely against his back and kneeled so he wouldn't tower over the child. With Ninsianna missing and the village falling down his ears, he was desperate for any kind of normalcy he could get, even if that meant getting his feathers plucked by a five year old girl. Rebsie, he assumed, must be a kitten or a mouse, one of the animals children frequently kept as pets.

Zakiti grinned and pulled the lid off of her box.

'Rebsie' jumped at him.

Mikhail catapulted himself skyward with a shriek that sounded most un-Angelic. He fluttered, just out of jump-reach of the creature, his heart racing, until he realized he'd just been made the butt of a joke.

Zakiti burst into laughter, a childish giggle that bore just the hint of malicious mischief.

"Don't
ever do that again!" Mikhail scolded her.

The almost cubit-wide camel spider scurried away, a harmless arachnid with a non-venomous bite, but one which nearly every sentient species in the galaxy had an instinctive fear of.

An idea began to percolate in his mind.

"Do you think you could get me more of those?" Mikhail asked.

"What will you give me if I do?" Zakiti asked.

Oh. This was
that
little sister. The one Pareesa cursed because she was forever blackmailing her to not tattle to her mother.

"I could get you some honey cakes," Mikhail suggested.

Zakiti pouted up her sweet little mouth and shook her head.

"A pretty bauble for your hair?"

Unh-huh…

"A bucket of goats milk to give your mother?"

"No," Zakiti said, giving him a calculating stare that was far too old for her tiny, five-year-old body. "Besides. Everybody knows you're terrible at milking the goat."

"Well what do you want, then?" Mikhail asked. He knew she refused because as the next-to-youngest of seven siblings, the child had learned to drive a hard bargain.

The child pointed up into the air.

"You want me to give you the sun?" Mikhail asked.

"No, silly," Zakiti gave him an unabashedly sweet smile. "I want you to carry me into the air."

"Your Mama would never approve," Mikhail said.

Zakiti picked up the lid of her basket and tapped it lightly back onto her box.

"Then I guess you'll have to make sure she doesn't find out!"

Zakiti skipped off in the direction the camel spider had just run off in. It wasn't hard to track the thing. Shrieks of terror wafted from the crowd. What was it with Pareesa's brothers and sisters that they were
all
far more precocious than their years?

He rubbed the hole in his chest where Shahla had tried to carve out his heart. Oh, gods, he missed Ninsianna. Without her, this village was falling down around his ears! Why couldn't he have been born gifted as she had tried to teach him? To close his eyes and see where she'd been taken? What he wouldn't do now to have such a gift, but whenever he tried to do it, all he ever saw was images of an empty desert and an endless wind which sounded like a song.

With an unexpected strategy under his belt, Mikhail made his way to the widow-sister's house where, for the first time today, perhaps he would be able to feel he was at home?

~ * ~ * ~

February: 3,389 BC

Earth: Village of Assur

Yalda

Few within the village were old enough to remember when Yalda and Zhila's husbands had died. Both sisters had loved their husbands dearly, but with small children to raise, neither had possessed the luxury of willing themselves to die from grief. They had turned to one another, two women who had always been close as sisters growing up, but who had become closer still once they'd combined their households to finish raising their children.

The children had grown up, their sons had been killed in the same war which had brought Immanu and the Chief to power, and their daughters had married men from far-off villages, but the widow-sisters stayed together. After they'd grown too old to labor in the fields, they'd turned to an old family patron-goddess to help them ensure they would always have the things they needed. The widow-sisters came from a long line of fermenters and bakers, and the goddess who blessed them was Ninkasi, the goddess of bread and beer.

Yalda reached into her beehive oven to peel off the hot, fresh flat breads plastered to the inner wall and plop them onto a wooden platter. She limped over to the table and plunked it down in front of their favorite guest, the man they adored as if he was a son or grandson.

"Here you go!" Yalda said to Mikhail. "That's your last one! I'm all out of dough."

The ridiculously tall Angelic glanced up at them with an expression akin to a little boy who'd just been given a treat for being good.

"Thank you, Yalda," Mikhail grinned. It was an expression he rarely wore outside the confines of this house. "Are you sure I haven't eaten through the stores of barley I brought you?"

Yalda reached out with fingers still strong from a lifetime of kneading bread and squeezed his arm like a roast she tested for doneness. While Mikhail was no longer emaciated, he was far thinner than he'd been before and he tired easily, no matter how hard he pushed himself to regain his strength.

"You're still too thin," Yalda said. "To get bigger, you must eat! You won't fatten up on Needa's cooking, that's for sure!"

Mikhail raised one dark eyebrow, too polite to speak ill of his mother-in-law, and yet he looked amused.

"Stop baiting him!" Zhila called from the back room where her younger sister produced the yeast which made her breads rise. Zhila liked to call it her Temple of Ninkasi, but rather than icons and flowers, she filled the room with tall, narrow-necked ceramic vats of beer, of mead, of fermented fruit juices, and just about anything else you could ferment.

Zhila carried in a cook-pot sized vat cradled to her chest the way one might carry an infant. As she walked, she held one hand out in front of her, for Zhila was almost blind, her iris's blue from cataracts. Despite this disability, Zhila was otherwise healthy, and it had been
she
who had first taught Mikhail how to throw a spear, back when he'd first come to their village. Zhila plopped the vat onto the table in front of him.

"It's a special brew, just for you," Zhila said.

Mikhail's expression instantly grew wary.

"Oh, no, I couldn't," he said.

Zhila cackled like an old broody goose.

"What? Are you afraid I'll give you another hangover?"

The widow-sisters had seen Mikhail fight dozens of enemies. They'd seen him survive not just one injury which should have killed him, but two. They'd even seen him survive repeated humiliation by Immanu's recalcitrant dairy goat. The one thing he
was
reluctant to take on, however, was a hangover, especially as his species seemed to nurture a woefully low tolerance to alcohol.

"I put honey in it to increase the yeast," Zhila said. "It should fatten you right up!" Zhila patted her stomach.

Yalda placed a long, slender straw made out of a river reed in front of him. As much as the Angelic claimed to eschew all forms of alcohol, he enjoyed their company, so while she and Zhila sampled their latest brew, Mikhail sipped politely as an excuse to linger. His in-laws marital problems had caused him to flee their house. He came over here most nights, and sometimes he avoided going home.

They talked about the latest developments within the village until the big Angelic's wings developed a carefree spread. He was a serious chap, but around them he dropped that unreadable expression he used to protect his feelings. They talked about how dearly he missed his wife, what he would do once he found her, and interesting tidbits about things he remembered now that his memories had been restored.

Yalda fiddled with her sip-straw. There was one topic of conversation on her mind today, and it was one which had been a significant drain on their meagre purse. Merariy, Gita's drunken father, had been blackmailing them for bread and beer, aware of how very protective they were of Mikhail's good name, especially given the earlier scandal involving Shahla. If the man blabbered the accusation to the larger village, they feared it would undermine Mikhail's campaign to retrieve his wife.

And Mikhail was completely unaware of all of this…

"Here," Zhila slipped a fresh vat of beer under his nose. "Try this one. I made it especially for you."

One thing a disciple of Ninkasi learned was that food and alcohol, when combined with a sympathetic ear, tended to loosen the tongue of even the most reticent man. They waited until Mikhail began to slur before they began their interrogation.