Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (34 page)

November: 3,390 BC

Earth: Sata'an Operating Base

Jamin

It was the most luxurious prison he'd ever been locked up in, far nicer than the cramped hole his father had rammed him down and covered with a rock like a tomb until his judgment before the Tribunal, but even as he paced the perfectly even floor, Jamin was painfully aware that it
was
a cage and
he
was a prisoner.

On the table, colorful images flickered across a small, flat, internally illuminated rectangle. Out of five tiny holes hissed a pleasant male voice reciting guttural-sounding words which matched the pictures.

'Wazhibu, eyakhteirdam, tawhrah, iman…'

When Jamin didn't select a picture, an annoying chirp warned he was being inattentive. Anger rumbled in his gut like a boiling cup of
chai
. He picked up the device and hurled it at the large reflective square in the wall which enabled the lizards to watch him without being seen. His
own
image stared back at him, angry, mocking, and afraid. Why did he feel like one of the wild antelope he and Siamek used to herd into a canyon so they could slaughter them at their leisure?

A crackling sound drew his attention towards the ceiling.

"Please repeat the words after the tutor," a different voice said in hissing, heavily accented Kemet, the language of trade. Unlike the consistently calm voice which flowed out of the
tek-no-lo-gee
no matter
what
insults he threw at it,
this
voice carried a hint of exasperation.

Jamin shook his fist at the small, round voice box. "I am not your pet!"

He glowered at the
tek-no-lo-gee
he'd thrown on the floor, willing his black eyes to bore right through it and stare down the lizard who spoke to him from the infernal device. But wait … should he stare at that? Or at the circle in the ceiling? Or maybe he should stare at the magic mirror in the wall? The mirror. Definitely the mirror. He whirled and fixed his most intimidating glare at the lizard behind the mirror, the glare which had caused every man in Assur except for Mikhail to back down. Just for a moment, he thought he had won the war of wills.

"If you don't learn our language," the anonymous male hissed in a tone which was a little too patronizing for Jamin's liking, "how do you expect to integrate into our society?"

"I don't
want
to integrate into your society!" Jamin shook his fist at the magic mirror. "I just want to go…"

He stopped himself before he said the final word,
home…

Inhaling so he didn't sob like some pathetic infant, he turned his back so the lizard wouldn't see his vulnerability. Home? What home? He no longer had a home. No village, no tribe, no father, and now, not even the hope of winning back the woman of his dreams. For months he'd subsisted on nothing but his hatred. Now that the winged demon was dead and his father … well … they weren't sure whether or not his father had survived, it felt as though he had nothing left inside to sustain him.

Not even Ninsianna…

"
This
is your home now," the anonymous lizard hissed. "Your planet has been slated for annexation."

Annexation. Even though the word was spoken in Kemet instead of the lizard language, the concept was still so alien that Kasib had needed to explain it to him several times. Annexation. More than a trading relationship, less than being crushed beneath an enemy's foot, it entailed slowly moving into a new territory and, over time, tightening the noose until the conquered believed your way of doing things was the way things had always been. While the Ubaid thought of conquests in terms of days, weeks or planting seasons, the lizards planned over a period of years or even several lifetimes. Although they had no qualms about slaughtering any warrior who resisted them, unlike human wars, the lizard people viewed
them
as part of those resources. He was, quite frankly, having a hard time wrapping his head around the concept.

He
was a resource….

An asset…

A thing which had been purchased to provide a service…

Indentured
the lizard people called it.

Aturdokht had sold him as a slave.

"Go to hell!!!" Jamin picked the
tek-no-lo-gee
and hurled it at the magic mirror. With a satisfying crack, the device bounced and landed on the floor.

The voice box in the ceiling remained frustratingly silent. He fiddled with the cloth pouches which adorned the clothing Lucifer had given him.
Pockets
, they were called. Small, useful satchels you could fill with needful things. He could see now why Mikhail had refused to adopt the kilts of the Ubaid, but oh! How he missed the way his unmentionables had hung so
freely
beneath his woolen kilt.

Freedom. How, in this strange journey, had he ended up a slave?

He expected the lizard from the other side of the mirror to threaten him or send in soldiers to shove him into a less appealing prison, a hole in the ground perhaps, where his status as a traitor would be acknowledged, but all he got was silence. Dammit! He had betrayed
everything
for these people! He rushed at the mirror and pounded on it, screaming expletives, but the lizard man did not speak again.

His anger spent, Jamin resumed his uneasy pacing. Four walls, intersecting at precise angles no Ubaid could ever hope to match. A table carved out of a smooth, cold substance unlike any crafted by a carpenter. A cup, finer than that spun by the most experienced potter, and unbreakable, even when slammed against the table. He knew because he had already tried. Weary of his pacing, at last he picked up the accursed tek-no-lo-gee and sat down in the single chair.

'Wazhibu, eyakhteirdam, tawhrah, iman…'
the small tek-no-lo-gee recited.
'Wazhibu, eyakhteirdam, tawhrah, iman…'
Pictures of lizard-people doing strange things paired with symbols flashed across the screen, reciting the same four words.

Jamin studied the images, searching for a pattern. He didn't realize he'd begun reciting the words, first silently, and then out loud as the sequence repeated until he got the correct answer. It was a game, he realized, like cribbage or jackal-and-dog. First it showed you the pictures, then pictures with symbols, and then finally just the symbols, all paired up with four possible choices. He began to punch through the questions in rapid succession, memorizing each symbol until he always selected the right one. At last the device chimed something out of sequence.

"Very good," the pleasant box-voice said in Kemet. "You are now ready to move up to the next level."

The images changed. This time they were more understandable, lizards engaged in various types of work.
To sweep. To weave. To shape clay.
Jamin learned these words and moved up to the next grouping, and then the grouping after that. He'd beaten the machine through ten-tens of words … it wasn't like he had anything better to do … when a sound at the door reminded him he was a creature in a cage.

Jamin glanced up. Sergeant Dahaka, a much higher ranking lizard than the one assigned to babysit him from behind the magic mirror, had come to give him the beating he deserved. Like most lizard soldiers, Dahaka towered over him by half a cubit and outweighed him by probably sixty stones. Jamin noted the way he could suddenly hear his own heartbeat.

"General Hudhafah will see you," Sergeant Dahaka said.

That small voice of caution whispered in Jamin's ear.
Even Mikhail had feared the lizard demons!
Jamin rose stiffly from his chair, his chin jutting out as he unflinchingly met the lizard's gold-green gaze and, in one last gesture of defiance, tossed the tek-no-lo-gee onto the table so it skidded across in a noisy clatter.

"It's about time," Jamin gave an indignant snort.

He moved to toss his shawl around his shoulders in a chiefly cloak and remembered, only
after
his hand failed to find the fabric, that he'd given it to Lucifer so he could dress him up like a 'modern' man. Deprived of the gesture he'd used since birth to convey his rank, he hesitated, his expression momentarily confused. Dahaka was too astute to miss the fumble. The lizard's gold-green eyes narrowed into amused slits.

"Follow me," the lizard growled, but beneath his gruffness Jamin thought he could detect a hint of laughter. Dahaka pointed to the tek-no-lo-gee on the table. "And take that with you. Hudhafah will want to see it."

Jamin considered telling the lizard soldier to shove it up his tail, but decided perhaps his petty rebellion might wait for later? He grabbed the device and handed it to Dahaka. Puffing out his chest to look as intimidating as possible, he followed the lizard down the ramp of the enormous grey sky canoe into the seaside village where the Sata'anic lizards had set up their base.

Every inch of the compound bustled with activity. Amongst their ranks moved soldiers that looked like boars, others with blue skin, and a smattering of other creatures, including humans, though every one of them was male. The Sata'an had taken over existing buildings where they could, but most were temporary, enormous tents far larger than the wealthiest desert shaykh. Above each flew a colored flag, and on those flags were symbols Jamin recognized from the tek-no-lo-gee game.

"That says
food
," Jamin pointed up at a colored flag.

"You already knew that." Dahaka didn't even bother slowing down. "You've eaten there before."

Jamin hurried to catch up with the lizard man's longer stride, feeling very much like a toddler racing after an older sibling. Yes, he'd already known that tent was where the soldiers ate, but he'd never realized the symbols were more than decoration.

Dahaka led him inside a building made of stone. He knocked twice on a wooden door which, by the hasty way the doorframe had been grafted onto the rock, was a recent addition to the temple, and waited for whoever was inside to call,
duhooli
[enter].

As expected, Lieutenant Kasib stood gatekeeper between the Sata'anic general and riffraff such as himself. Dahaka handed Kasib the tek-no-lo-gee and launched into a conversation in the hissing Sata'anic language. Jamin couldn't follow what they said, but every now and again a word struck a familiar chord. Dahaka finally tucked his tail alongside his body, gesticulated, and marched out of the office.

Kasib was far slighter than some of more burly lizards, but Jamin had learned quickly that size wasn't the only trait the lizard people prized. The sparse red stripes on the lizard man's uniform, his pale chartreuse dewlap, and his modest dorsal ridge, all screamed
'I'm nobody important,'
but Kasib was a go-to man, someone you went to when you wanted favors from the chief. All his life Jamin had despised such men. Ass-kissers. Suck-ups. Men who attended to the petty details so great men, such as himself, could get on with the business of being a leader. And yet, with a flick of a clawed hand, Hudhafah trusted Kasib to mobilize more resources than the entirety of all the Ubaid chiefs combined.

What Jamin wouldn't do to have such power…

"I see you've been busy." Kasib scrolled through the screens of the tek-no-lo-gee game. "Four hundred words in eleven hours?" The lizard man glanced up, his gold-green eyes questioning. "Are you certain you've never been exposed to our language before?"

Jamin plastered an
'I don't care'
expression on his face and shrugged. "I speak many languages. My father liked to negotiate with far-off tribes. He claimed it was a gift I inherited from my mother."

"Did
she
speak our language?" Kasib asked. "Perhaps when you were a child?"

"How would I know?" Jamin said. "She died…" Just for a moment his deliberately disdainful tone slipped. He repeated it, softer this time. "She died when I was nine."

Kasib nodded, blinking with his clear inner eyelid. He ran his claw-like hands around a crack which had developed in the casing of the tek-no-lo-gee when Jamin had thrown it against the magic mirror.

"I suggest you address the general with more respect than you treat your teachers," Kasib said. "He is not a cruel man, but he will not tolerate
any
insubordination."

Jamin nodded, not because he feared Hudhafah, though he
did
fear the lizard general, but because all along Kasib had been straight with him. Whether he was a prisoner here, or a slave, he owed the lizard-man the courtesy of not betraying his trust.

"Alright then," Kasib tilted his head in an almost birdlike gesture. His large, gold-green eyes scrutinized Jamin's posture. "If we've any hope of convincing General Hudhafah of embracing this crazy plan, the first thing you must do is
look
like one of us." The lizard man clicked his heels together and tucked his tail up tightly along his left side with a crisp snap. "And that starts with learning to pay the proper respect to authority."

"I don't have a tail," Jamin said.