"Okay," Ninsianna sighed. "We'll talk someplace else."
"Too late," Jamin's expression was victorious. "You accuse me of being a traitor because I attempt to reason with our enemies instead of going to war with them to resolve every dispute? Well guess what? They gave me this piece of gold!"
"The Halifians cannot afford to feed their own children," Ninsianna snorted with disgust. "Much less trade for gold!"
"But they do have something to trade now, don't they?" Jamin stepped uncomfortably close.
"I don't understand what you're getting at," Ninsianna said.
Jamin's musky scent filled her nostrils. Although neither as strong nor powerful as her Angelic husband, Jamin ranked a close second. Just for a moment, she was reminded of why she had said 'yes' to his marriage proposal until she had come to her senses. Tall, handsome, and powerfully built, although he bore the swarthy complexion of most Ubaid, Jamin had the straight nose and high cheekbones of the people of the north. Most striking was his smoldering black eyes. Whether they expressed passion, hatred, anger or love, whatever Jamin felt, his eyes did not hide. He was the emotional opposite of her restrained husband.
Jamin's expression softened. The hand he used to hold the golden disc faltered as he reached out to touch her cheek. His pupils expanded as he stared into her eyes, as though just for a moment it was he who had been given the vision of She-who-is, and not the other way around. Jamin still fancied himself as being in love with her.
"Ninsianna," Jamin flattened the palm of his hand against her cheek. She felt his hand tremble. "I…" His spirit light lost the angry red hue he'd been wearing ever since she'd been given the gift to see and turned pink, the same color her husband's often did when they shared a tender moment.
She realized she was making a spectacle of herself, a married woman, in front of dozens of villagers. Love? More like nursing a bruised ego because she had dumped him for somebody better. She stepped back and slapped away his hand.
That momentary glimpse into why She-who-is had always found favor with him disappeared as his expression hardened into one of hatred.
"It means, Chosen One," Jamin sneered, "that our neighbors have been hired to kidnap our women by Angelics. Your husband's people! They are the slave masters buying our women! And now I have the proof!"
Her face must have betrayed she knew there might be truth to this accusation, because an explosion of chatter erupted from the other villagers. Jamin passed the gold disc around for all to touch, the mere existence of such a precious treasure giving weight to his lies. Gold. A metal all desired, but none but the Chief could afford.
"You stole it from your father!" Ninsianna accused.
"Is that what your goddess tells you?"
"Yes!" Ninsianna snapped. She took a breath and was dismayed when words not of her own making bubbled forth from her lips.
'No…'
The villagers looked between her and Jamin. They had seen her channel the voice of She-who-is enough times to know this was not Ninsianna who spoke. It wasn't often the goddess spoke through her directly rather than simply gifting her with a vision, but when she did, the air itself vibrated with HER power.
Rather than appearing vindicated, the look that appeared in Jamin's eyes was one of fear. He stepped backwards, nearly tripping over a rock. Aha! He was hiding something. Ninsianna tugged on that thread of consciousness that connected her to the mind of She-who-is and was frustrated when she encountered the same blank wall she always hit whenever she tried to pry into the memories kept from her husband.
"It's your husband's people taking our women," Jamin backed away. "I am telling the truth."
"Ask her," the villagers clustered around her like bees. "Ask the goddess."
Ninsianna did ask, and came up empty. Being denied answers until the goddess felt it was time to reveal whatever game pieces she had hidden up her sleeve was nothing new, but having the goddess side with Jamin, and not her, was unusual. Why? Why did the goddess warn her, night after night, about an evil white-winged Angelic, and then refuse to show her anything more?
"The goddess does not wish to share any further knowledge," Ninsianna feigned a haughty expression to hide her surprise. The villagers no longer stood behind her, but clustered around Jamin the way they had before Mikhail had usurped him from his petty throne. Oh, why hadn't she taken the chance to speak to him alone?
"He shows up in the most powerful Ubaid village and marries our highest ranking female just before somebody starts kidnapping women of marriageable age," Jamin said. "And now we hear from the kidnappers that it's his people who pay this, gold, to buy them!"
"Mikhail wouldn't do that!" Ninsianna exclaimed. "He's an honorable man!"
"Why?" Jamin's expression was victorious. "Because you say so? She who broke off her betrothal without cause?"
"Because all he had to do was ask me to follow him wherever he wanted to go the day I found him," Ninsianna retorted, "and I would have gone with him. Willingly! Even into slavery if it meant escaping you!"
Ninsianna delivered the bitter words with a sweet smile to drive the knife even deeper. Jamin was tough, but she knew his weakness. Her.
"He says he can't remember why he was sent here," Jamin said. "What better way to learn our weaknesses than to marry into the household of the shaman who advises my father? Are you certain that, once he gets his memories back, he won't abandon you?"
The dream. Every night she called for her husband to save her but he did not come. What would happen if the mission he couldn't quite remember was to conquer her people instead of help them? The morning sickness didn't usually bother her this time of day, but the stress that thought put upon her body made her swoon, right into Jamin's arms.
"You have seen this in your visions," Jamin helped her right her balance. "Tell me it is not so." His arms lingered, his lips so close to her ear that, for a moment, she thought he might try to kiss her.
The villagers buzzed behind him, some disagreeing, others questioning Mihkail's motives,. A third, larger group didn't know what to think. Ninsianna stared into Jamin's spirit light and saw that, whatever his motives, he truly believed what he said to be the truth. The stamped gold disc had a way of lending credence to his accusations which, until now, had been losing traction amongst those he tried to rile up against the man he saw to be an enemy.
Jamin thought he had the upper hand, but Ninsianna had the winning shot in this battle between herself and the son of the village chief. She pushed away the arms that held her steady and jutted her chin into the air.
"Mikhail is now Ubaid." Ninsianna caressed the slight swell of her abdomen so that her implication was clear. "Sometime late spring, I will bear him a son. Such is the goddesses will."
She watched with glee as her venomous dart found its mark in Jamin's heart. The nice thing about being able to see what people were feeling was not only could she see the hurt expression he hid behind a mask of anger, but she could continue seeing the red energy which spiraled out of his heart into the air around him like blood out of a fish she was cleaning in a stream.
The two eagles which perpetually circled the Hiddekel River, forever in search of fish, caught her eye. The larger female cried out, the sharp, piercing call of a huntress, the smaller male answered, its cry sounding hurt and forlorn. The stalks of grain rustled from the river to the pathway upon which they stood, the wind whispering secrets in her ear.
'Ninsianna … it does not behoove you to be cruel…'
Jamin tossed the golden disc in the air, causing it to flash in the sun so that the eyes of every villager was drawn to it, and caught it. He stared down at her, his expression grim, as he tucked it back into its pouch.
"His people pay gold to kidnap our women," Jamin said deliberately and evenly. "I swear on my dead mother's soul that I will prove this to you if it is the last thing I ever do. When I do, we shall see if you are still proud to carry that abomination which grows now in your belly."
Without another wor
d, he turned and stalked the rest of the way up the steep embankment, past the sentries and into the narrow alleyway which helped protect their village from attack. The other villagers trailed behind him, resuming their daily trek from the fields to their homes to eat supper and then return to train with Mikhail to become an army. Already, those who had heard the exchange were splitting into those who did not believe a word Jamin said, and those who wondered whether Mikhail perhaps couldn't remember he had originally been sent to enslave them?
Mikhail was teaching her people more effective ways to work together, but he had also divided them. So long as this rift existed between her former fiancé and her husband, with no clear leader to guide them, Assur would be vulnerable.
At some point, one of them, she feared, would have to go, and it wouldn't be her husband…
"You could have warned me," Ninsianna spoke aloud to the goddess as she heaved her basket to her shoulders and made her way back into the village. "Could you do that for me next time, please? Make me see stars and flowers or send a hawk to warn me that when somebody runs up to me and says they want to talk, to follow them someplace private so the whole village doesn't hear?"
A grasshopper landed on her elbow and stared up at her, its head tilting to either side as it listened to every word she said. The tiny creature gave a reassuring hum of its wings as it leaped into the air and flew away.
"Apology accepted," Ninsianna said.
Chapter 16
Galactic Standard Date: 152,323.09 AE
Zulu Sector: Command Carrier 'Light Emerging'
Angelic Air Force
Brigadier-General Raphael Israfa
Raphael
"General Israfa," Glicki called down from the bridge. "Supreme Commander-General Jophiel is on the line."
"That's Brigadier-General Israfa," Raphael good-naturedly corrected, "Colonel Glicki." The first thing he'd done upon making general was promote his hard-working second-in-command to the rank he had held only weeks before.
The sound of Glicki's under wings whirring with laughter crackled through the intercom. Mantoid physiology inhibited many of the vocalizations and facial expressions soft-skinned species could emote, but the insectoids had evolved whole other ways of expressing their feelings, foremost being the sound created by their gossamer wings.
Raphael straightened his rank-pins and made sure his feathers weren't sticking helter-skelter out of his wings before hitting the button on his video monitor. His heart skipped a beat as Jophiel's ethereally beautiful face appeared on the screen. His buff-gold wings flared with hope even as he tried to suppress the instinct. White-blonde hair, porcelain features, unearthly blue eyes, and snow-white wings, if ever the Eternal Emperor were to point to a single specimen of his genetic tinkering and say 'this is it,' it would be Supreme Commander-General Jophiel.
Always efficient, Jophiel got right to the point. “Brigadier-General Israfa. What have you found?”
Raphael knew better than to take offense. The closer they bonded emotionally, the more formal she became whenever discussing official Alliance business. Favoritism earned through personal contact was something the Supreme Commander-General loathed.
“Absolutely nothing,” Raphael replied. “We’ve been hitting any remotely M-class planet, including many that aren’t on any star chart since this is largely uncharted territory. We did stumble across an interesting pre-sentient species a few days ago. It’s in my report.”
“What about the suspicious Sata’an shipping activity.”
“Whatever they were doing," Raphael said, "either they finished, or they’ve found a route around the ships we placed across the entrance to the Orion-Cygnus spur.”
Jophie tapped one neatly groomed finger on her ruby lips, deep in thought. “What if they didn’t come up though the galaxy proper?"
"General Harakhti is monitoring the Sagittarius Arm," Raphael remembered a report forwarded by the fierce Leonid general that patrolled the disputed borderland between Alliance and Empire territories. “He said all traffic tickets have stopped.”
“All what?”
“Slang,” Raphael said. “He noticed an unusual uptick in Sata’an shipping a few months ago. Ships funneling goods towards the tip of the Sagittarius Arm. The kind of goods you might use to outfit ships before launching an armada.”
It was adorable, the way the Alliance's highest-ranking general chewed her lip, weighing how that tidbit of information could be significant. Oh, how he had dreamed of kissing those lips again ever since the mating appointment which had gifted them with Uriel. He realized those luscious lips were moving to create words, not just entice him to daydream.
“How does Re know what was on those ships?" Jophiel must have noted the enigmatic smirk which threatened to betray what he and the fierce Leonid general had been up to. "Oh, never mind! Don’t tell me … I don’t want to know.”
A dimple appeared on one cheek to match the devilish twinkle in Raphael's eyes. Plausible deniability. Jophie had given him a job to do. How he did it, or how many ships he busted under the ruse of health and safety inspections, was up to him. All she cared was that he got results without ruffling too many important feathers.
“I will contact General Re Harakhti and compare notes right away,” Jophiel said. “Good work. Remember … this mission is eyes only. If word gets out before we know exactly what we’re dealing with, it could cause bigger problems than we already have."
"But Mikhail has brought us hope!" Raphael exclaimed.
Jophiel's face waxed wistful, as though she anticipated the question running through his mind and wished to head it off.
"Things are wound so tight right now that I fear the Alliance will fracture,” Jophiel said, her expression worried. "There are things the Emperor has not told me … and things he has. We will discuss it the next time you visit Uriel."
He suspected the information was classified and something gave her reason to worry this was not a secure channel. He would see her in a few days, when he hopped a needle to visit their son on her command carrier, the Eternal Light.
"I understand,” Raphael squelched the urge to blurt out another marriage proposal by reminding himself a video conversation was unromantic. "When will the Emperor brief the generals?" He was anxious to compare intelligence with his superior officers.
Jophiel squirmed in her seat at the other end of the galaxy.
"He won't," she said softly.
"What?"
"He was gone for more than 200 years," Jophiel said. "When he came back the Seraphim were gone, his son was a stranger, and he didn't know which of his generals he could trust. It's why he elevated me to act as a barrier between him and them."
Raphael was horrified at this revelation.
"But how will we find the unicorn planet without ships to search for it?" Raphael exclaimed. "The Orion-Cygnus spiral arm is huge."
'Unicorn planet' was the official military code-word for the human homeworld, 'holy grail' was humans, and 'searching for the holy grail' was the official classification for this mission. The 'holy grail' was the mythological chalice She-who-is offered to mortals she wished to elevate to the status of demi-god.
"I've been unable to sway him." Confusion marred Jophiel's beautiful features. "He has become paranoid, afraid there's a bogey-man lurking behind every shadow."
"More like Emperor Shay'tan!" Raphael knew Jophiel could not answer a direct question, so he asked it indirectly. "Does this have anything to do with the destruction of a certain homeworld?"
"I don't know," Jophiel's brow furrowed with worry. "Whatever it is, he won't talk to me about it … and that is rare."
Jophiel was young in Angelic lifespans for someone who had achieved her level of command, Raphael younger still, nearly half her age. Neither had been in a position of power when Mikhail's people had been exterminated. Someone, who had never been apprehended, had known exactly how to hit Hashem in such a way that the after-effects would ripple through the Alliance over a period
of decades, exacerbating the hybrid infertility crisis without creating a single event citizens could rally around and say, 'this was the cause of our problem.'
It was the act of someone who intimately knew the Alliance's weaknesses … and measured their progress in decades, not years.
"You don't think…?" Raphael did not finish the thought, but his face betrayed the fear which suddenly leaped into his mind. "He said … he always said he didn't think it was Emperor Shay'tan."
If not Shay'tan … then who?
"Someone doesn't want us to reproduce," Jophiel said quietly. "Someone willing to exterminate an entire civilian population. The Emperor … I think he fears it might happen again."
Mikhail was on a planet. A planet somebody might want to wipe out. All to get at them? All of a sudden, the Emperor's paranoia made sense. The prospect of finding his friend suddenly seemed very far away.
"Where will you find me ships?" Raphael asked.
"We'll be briefing the Prime Minister and generals about a fictitious mission to rout out piracy," Jophiel said. "I'm hand-picking which commanders I think I can trust."
"What do I say if General Abaddon recalls me," Raphael said. "I do still officially report to him, you know?"
"For now, make it look like you're still doing exactly what you've been doing all along until we can cull enough resources," Jophiel said. "I'll take care of General Abaddon."
She was handing this mission to him? Black ops? A fifth branch of the military that did not officially exist? What right did he have to be put in command of such a fleet when Abaddon had served the Alliance for more than six hundred years?
Favoritism?
He glanced at the woman on the screen, chewing on those luscious lips he longed to someday kiss again, and not simply because he had been ordered to fill their ranks. Not favoritism. Fear. Whatever had Hashem spooked, it had her spooked as well. How he wished he could be there in person to gather her in his arms and shield her from her worries the same way Jophiel shielded the rest of the Alliance with her powerful white wings.
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 17
