Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (74 page)

"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 used 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.

"I did my duty…" Jophiel whispered.

"I know," Kabshiel said. He gathered her in his arms, gently, not possessively, and kissed the top of her head. "But what we did, created a son together; that was not a duty, but a privilege. I think that's why our species is going extinct."

Kabshiel held her only an instant, and then he let her go. She rustled her feathers, trembling with pins-and-needles at Kabshiel's revelation. All this time she'd told herself she was better than Lucifer, when all along
she
had left behind an even broader trail of heartache because, in their hearts, all twelve men considered themselves to be her 'husband.'

"I am sorry," Jophiel said. She pushed back her guilt into the mask of an ice princess, or at least enough that she would not cry until later.

Kabshiel held out his hand and helped her step back into her needle.

"Forget me," Jophiel said as she jammed in her wings and lifted the air mask to her face. "Take good care of our son."

Kabshiel squished her duffle bag back between her legs, and then handed her the folder with the star charts.

"Whatever this intern stumbled upon," Kabshiel said, "whenever I've started digging, either people clam up, or the evidence starts to disappear. Whatever it is, it's a whole lot bigger than Lucifer and his petty rebellion."

Jophiel nodded. Yes. Given what she knew now about the potentiality that this so-called
Evil One
might be at play, even if Lucifer
had
been
involved, he was likely little more than a façade.

"Thank you," Jophiel said.

Kabshiel did not ask where she was going, and
she
was not about to tell him. But there was one more favor she needed from him.

"If you get a distress call informing you a large number of men have been put off onto a marginally habitable asteroid, could you please make sure ships are sent to rescue them quickly?"

"Consider it done,
Chol Beag,
" Kabshiel said. He bent and kissed her forehead, his lips lingering with regret. "Goodbye."