Procel turned pink at the mere suggestion. What was it with these Angelics? Were they all as sexually repressed as her husband had been before she'd taught him the ways of pleasure?
"Well the big oaf keeps flapping them all over the place," Ruax said. "'Cause that's what the Angelic chicks dig. So tell me, what are we supposed to do? Cut them off?"
"If you knew your species would be saved," Ninsianna asked, no longer flirting. "Would you do it? Would you leave this all behind if it was the only way our people would accept you?"
Procel looked horrified.
"N-n-NO!"
Ruax leaned against the empty food card, laden only with the empty trays from breakfast.
"Maybe," he said. He glanced over at his own favorite, the Uruk ringleader who was forever the bane of Ninsianna's existence. "Maybe not cut off my wings. But the only reason I serve Lucifer is 'cause a man like me, a man with a record and a past, there ain't no other place for us to go."
"What kind of black marks," Ninsianna blurted out before she could stop herself. Stupid! Stupid stupid stupid!
Ruax's expression hardened. He looked away, and for a moment she feared she had lost her chance. The female Uruk ringleader chose at that moment to stop hissing at them and regarded them with hostile curiosity.
"Bad things," Ruax said. "Real bad things. Things that didn’t mean much at the time, but as you get older, those things start to eat at you. The men ye killed, they start whispering to you in your sleep, tellin' you yer gonna get yours when you pass into the dreamtime."
"What about Lucifer?" Ninsianna asked.
That open, self-revelatory expression on Ruax's face disappeared behind a scowl. The room grew silent. Even the other women were intuitive enough to understand Ninsianna had stepped into quicksand.
"It's complicated," Procel said to break the silence. "Lucifer … let's just say sometimes we like him, and other times we just want to run away."
This complicated things. Just because she hated the man's guts didn't mean that they did. Oh! If only She-who-is was here to whisper how to make these men see that Lucifer was possessed by evil?
"I didn't mean any offense," Ninsianna said.
Procel tucked his wings against his back and handed Ninsianna the piece of fruit he'd brought for his favorite, the one the Anatolian woman had rejected.
"Maybe she'll take it if you give it to her," Procel said.
Ninsianna noticed the Anatolian woman was fixated on the fruit. She wanted it, even if she was too terrified to reach out and take it from the guard.
"Don't move," Ninsianna told Procel. She made a great show of accepting the fruit as though she was a priestess in the temple, accepting a gift of tribute from the Chief. She then brought the fruit over to the Anatolian woman and spoke to her in Kemet.
"Procel would like for you to accept this fruit as his gift," Ninsianna said. " If you like it, he will bring you more."
The woman met Ninsianna's gaze. Her lip trembled as she clutched at her own bicep, wanting to break free and take the fruit. Although Ninsianna could no longer see people's spirit-lights, that older gift, the one she had inherited from her mother, enabled her to feel the jagged edges of the woman's shattered spirit. Her mother often described what she felt as such; tactile terms, not the visual language that her shaman father used. And yet it occurred to her that her mother had been describing the same thing all along. Whether she could see the broken spirit-light, or only feel it, the methodology to fix the problem would be the same. Wouldn't it? Much more difficult because she'd be fumbling blindly in the dark. But the same remedy would work for the same illness.
Ninsianna laid the fruit carefully onto the bed. The Anatolian woman reached out and grabbed the fruit, clutching it to her breast, too frightened to eat it. She stared at Procel as she did this and not Ninsianna, making eye contact although she did not eat the fruit. So. The woman was cognizant enough to realize that Procel was her benefactor?
"See," Ninsianna whispered so she wouldn't startle the woman. "If you approach her carefully, after a while she will grow less fearful of you."
"How long?" Procel asked.
Ninsianna felt along the jagged edge of the woman's spirit light. To her imaginary hands, the sensation felt like shards of broken pottery. Mama had always referred to this process as 're-shaping the clay.' Papa, on the other hand, spoke of 'soul retrievals' to snatch broken spirits away from demons. She had never been trained to perform either gift, disparaging broken-spirited people with the same profound disgust that she'd always viewed the spirits of the dead. Oh, what she wouldn't do to have that knowledge now?
"My Papa," Ninsianna lied. "He taught me how to fix such things. But it takes time. And I need help. To fix a broken spirit light, you need a sponsor, somebody who will loan them some of their spirit protection until the sick person becomes strong enough to finish healing on their own. Can you do that, Procel? All you have to do is keep visiting her and teach yourself to not appear so terrifying?"
"Just tuck my wings in," Procel said. "Just like the military guys do. And after a while, the girls will begin to like me."
Ruax snorted and grinned.
"Doesn't sound too hard. We gotta do that anyways whenever we're around Zepar."
"Come back tomorrow with extra fruit," Ninsianna said. "And tell the other guards, the ones smart enough to keep their mouths shut, to come in here quietly with their wings tucked against their backs and if they favor one, I'll try to help them get to know her."
The two Angelics finished up their duties and then wheeled out of there, discussing which human female was the favorite of which guard. Ninsianna had met many of the guards, but according to Apausha, there were sixty-three Angelics on this ship and so far she'd only met around a dozen. Counting Lucifer, Zepar, and the two 'goons' she'd met thankfully only briefly, that left 59 Angelics she might be able to corrupt.
Plopping down upon the Anatolian woman's bed, Ninsianna closed her eyes and began to sing a shaman's chanting song…
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 68
January: 3,389 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Mikhail
Mikhail felt just well enough to drive himself crazy, ruminating about ways to steal a space shuttle. No matter how many times he plotted out maneuvers in his mind, the Assurians always came out the losers. Primitive weapons were a poor defense against modern weaponry.
'And what if you send out your distress call, and the people who respond aren't the people you -hope- will answer, but this white-winged Angelic who kidnapped Ninsianna?'
He shoved the thought aside. He would deal with that eventuality as he gained more intelligence. He thought over Qishtea's description of the Sata'anic shuttle which had transported Jamin when he had blasted down a portion of Nineveh's wall. Which class of space shuttle was it? What weaponry did it carry? Which weak spots could he use to take it down using the limited resources he had at his disposal?
He picked the straw out of his mattress and shoved the strands up in between the feathers of his outstretched wing, using it to compute all the ways different primitive weapons might fare against the clumps of emmer and einkorn when Needa walked in and bagged him in the act of using his thus-decorated wing as a troop movement board.
"What in heaven's name do you think you are doing?"
Mikhail gave her a sheepish grin.
"Planning?"
"Planning what?"
"Planning how I'm going to get back your daughter."
Needa gave him a weak smile. She set down a ceramic bowl of steaming water and a basket filled with healing supplies, some primitive, other items things from the first responder kit in his shuttle. Whether or not he was supposed to give these people technology, the truth was, he'd already given much of it to them.
Needa pulled up a stool and began to carefully unbandage his chest, pausing when the linen tugged against a scab, causing him to inhale sharply. She stared at his injuries, never meeting his eyes.
>
He studied how thin his mother-in-law had become. Where once upon a time only a peppering of grey hair had marred her tresses, now a good half of her hair had gone white with worry. Her eyes appeared sunken with dark circles around them, and as she cut his bandages, he noted her hand had developed a tremor.
"Are you okay, Mama?"
"I just want you to get better so you can go and fetch my daughter."
Mikhail didn't take offense. Needa had always spoken exactly what was in her heart. He preferred her straightforward brusqueness to the disingenuous exaltations of a sycophant.
She finished unwrapping his bandages, wrinkling up her nose at the terrible odor. He had shed the necrotic tissue which lined the wound, but his chest kept spewing out puss as his immune system purged the poison.
"That smells bad," he said, the silence so awkward that even he felt compelled to fill it.
Needa snorted. "That's nothing. You should have seen how bad it got a couple of days before you died."
Her hand shook as she realized what she'd just said.
"I'm not dead, Mama," Mikhail said. "And neither is Ninsianna."
"How do you know?" Needa's voice warbled as she spoke the words.
"Because I can feel her, Mama," Mikhail said. He touched his chest which hummed with the song he had carried out of the dream. "I can feel her. Right here. And I know you can feel her too. You don't need to see it to know what is in your heart."
Tears rose to Needa's eyes, but she looked away.
"How do you know the person you feel is Ninsianna?" she asked.
"Because I do," Mikhail said. "Amongst my people, my original people, the most sacred union is that shared between a husband and a wife. Nobody else could make me feel this way except for my one true mate."
Needa dipped her cloth into the hot water and dabbed his wound. The water had a pleasant scent, melted myrrh sap. It stung, but not horribly, more like the light disinfectant they used back on the hospital ship. Even with her primitive understanding of microbiology, Needa understood she had to boil the suckers to reduce the risk of infection.
"It's as though death, itself was in that blade," Needa said. "Have you ever seen such a wound before?"
"Yes," Mikhail said. "I have suffered such an injury before."
"You have?" Needa's eyebrows shot up with surprise. Whatever troubled her, it disappeared as curiosity lit up her eyes with interest.
"It's called neacróis," Mikhail said. "We, um, you don't quite have a direct translation for this word. It means death-venom."
"Gangrene?" Needa asked.
"More than gangrene," Mikhail said. "Gangrene is caused by lack of circulation, but neacróis can also be caused by the bite of an insect or serpent, or certain types of evil spirits that live in the water. The Eternal Emperor forbids it, but there are species who live in the réaltra, um, heavens who gather up these natural venoms and use them to poison their weapons."
"Just like Shahla did to you?"
"Yes," Mikhail said. He supposed he should feel angry about it, but the truth was he could remember precious little about just how he had gotten stabbed or what had happened after he had fallen. All he knew was that he felt a profound urgency to do something, but that something was conflicted, as if he was being torn in half, with one part of him shouting 'run this way' and the other half screaming 'no, this way is more important!' None of what he was feeling made any sense.
"How did you heal yourself the last time you were infected thus?" Needa asked.
"I didn't," Mikhail said. He pointed to a small, sunken scar about the size of a pebble just beneath where his combat boots usually laced up.
"That was a spider bite on 55-Cancri-f," Mikhail said. "A stupid injury. We're supposed to shake out our boots before putting them back on after bedding down for the night. We got into a firefight, so I pulled them on quick and paid the price. Lost half a week of my life in sick bay, hallucinating while they put me into a medical coma until they were able to reverse the damage."
He realized by Needa's blank stare that he'd slipped into speaking Galactic Standard. Previously when he'd had a memory, he would discuss it with Ninsianna, who thanks to her gift of tongues could help him translate it into words her people could understand.
Hadn't Ninsianna told him she'd lost her gift of tongues?
Mikhail frowned. He tugged at the memory, but as before, the memory sat beneath the surface but refused to come free. Whereas before he could remember the present, but nothing from the past, now he could remember the past just fine, or at least that part of it which started after he had gone to live with the Cherubim, but he couldn't remember the last six weeks, as if somebody had gone into his brain and hacked out those memories.
"Mikhail?"
"Sorry, Mama," Mikhail said. He gave her a guilty look, and then he translated what he'd just said into Ubaid, substituting simpler words for the technological terms his mother-in-law had no way of comprehending.
Needa pulled away the blackened chunks with tweezers he'd given her out of his ship's medical kit. He glanced at her black obsidian blade. He had given her the medical kit as part of Ninsianna's 'bride price' after witnessing Needa use that blade to scrape away the infected tissue of a man who'd developed gangrene. He reminded himself as Needa removed the necrotic tissue that this pain was a lot less severe than it would have been had he not given his mother-in-law Alliance medical technology.
At last she took out the small beige jug which Mikhail always dreaded. Oh, how he loathed this potion, which burned far worse than the most sadistic ship's surgeon's disinfectant!
"Fixate on something pleasant," Needa said as she uncapped the vial and prepared to pour it generously over his chest wound.
Mikhail stared on the red cape which Needa had hung back on the wall as she splashed the alcohol liberally onto his chest. He let out a strangled whimper which sounded remarkably like a duck having its neck wrung.
Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it...
"Ow!!!" He let out his breath with an explosive exhalation, his feathers shuddering with his suppressed cry of pain
Damantia that hurt!
Needa picked up the little pieces of straw which had fallen from his wings like raindrops as he'd thrashed in pain.
"You lost your little playthings," Needa said.
"They weren't playthings," Mikhail said through gritted teeth. "It was a resource map. I was planning how to fend off an eachtrannach (alien) invasion."
While not a smile, Needa's grim nod indicated she found satisfaction with his plan. The warriors who poured into Assur since he'd woken up were highly motivated to learn more than simply hold a line of scrimmage. If he was to keep their trust, he needed to come up with a plan, fast, ask to steal a Sata'anic spaceship right from underneath their noses.
Needa finished binding his chest. Mikhail stared out the window at the sun he hadn't seen in weeks.
"Get some rest," Needa ordered.
"I want to go outside."
Needa gave him her sternest, most non-nonsense glare, the one she used instead of speaking, the one which said it all.
“I’ve been in bed for almost two months,” Mikhail protested. He held up a pale, thin arm that had lost a significant amount of muscle tone. “I need to build up my strength!”
“It’s been little more than a week since you woke up,” Needa said. "It’s all you can do to use the chamberpot. Either you stay in that bed, or I shall barricade you inside your room.”
“I’ll just fly out the window,” Mikhail said. A smirk twitched up one side of his mouth.
“You’re too big to fit,” Needa said. “And you’re so weak you’ll plop right down into the mud. Then you’ll be recovering from broken bones in addition to everything else.”
Mikhail sighed. For all his complaining, he knew Needa was right.
“Could we put a chair outside in the sun?” he asked. "Please. This room still smells of death. I’d really like to go outside.”
N
eeda scrutinized his progress. He knew she could feel the echo of other people's life energy the way that Ninsianna could see things about people's health. How could he explain to his mother-in-law that, yes, he was weak, but a step outside was one step closer to resolving the clamoring inside his heart which demanded he go in two different directions at once?
“I think it would be good for you to get outside for a little while,” Needa finally said. “It is sunny and not too cold today. We’ll bundle you up and you can get some fresh air.”
He flashed his mother-in-law the smile which had always turned Ninsianna’s knees to jelly. He remembered now that he was from a race of beings that rarely showed emotion, but these people had adopted him and, honestly, it felt less awkward than always suppressing his feelings.
His good-naturedness disappeared.
“Could you please ask the warriors to help me get outside? If I have to spend another moment in this room, I think I will go insane.”
Several warriors appeared a short time later to keep him steady as he navigated his way to a chair set up outside in the sun. He felt embarrassed to need so much help, but the warriors lifted his wings out of the dirt, which hung limply from his back like a soggy brown cape, and chattered about the advanced training Pareesa had taught them. Mikhail's chest swelled with pride. He didn't have the heart to tell them that, against Sata'anic spaceships, a sword would never be enough.
Finally Needa reappeared and chased them back out front to guard the entrance to the house. The mid-winter sun was bright but chilly. He welcomed Needa's blanket, but still complained about it … just because it gave him something to focus on besides the infernal itching of the dead tissue sloughing off of his chest.
“I’m not an invalid!"
“Whining is a good sign,” Needa said. “It means you’re starting to get better.”
“I’m not whining,” Mikhail whined.
Needa fixed upon him her sternest gaze.
“Get your sunshine and fresh air," she said. "I’ll check back on you in about an hour.”
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 68
