The Dark Lord's Vessel

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

We are not to simply bandage the wounds

Of victims beneath the wheels of injustice,

We are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

.

MIKHAIL

We move through the streets like a pack of hyenas; a single, carnivorous mind with a single goal: get revenge. Sweet old ladies and fresh-faced children pick up rocks and lob them at the Uruk prisoner's head. Nothing about the man bespeaks he is the son of a chief. His tattered shawl bears evidence of a mishap, his kilt is torn, and his wrists and ankles seep blood from his goatskin bindings.

"String him up!" the villagers shout.

"Kill him!"

"Bury him up to his waist so we can stone him!"

I curve my wing forward to protect my vulnerable left-hand side.

A small, wiry man steps forward and bows to the Chief. He has mismatched eyes and a sparse, dark beard that attempts to hide a badly-healed broken nose. He glances at me, his expression enigmatic.

"As I promised," Dadbeh says, "this man can tell us about our enemies."

One of the warriors kicks the Uruk prisoner in the back of his knees and shoves him to the ground. "Kneel, scum! And pay your respects to our Chief."

Tizqar's lips curl back into a dog-like sneer. Despite his sorry appearance, his teeth are all present and straight, slightly yellowed, but with little sign of rot. He spits on the ground close to Chief Kiyan's foot.

"When my father finds out who took me, he will raze this village to the ground!"

The Chief's expression remains impassive. He kicks a puff of dirt on top of the spittle.

"You are our guest, Tizqar. If you tell us what you know about them—" he jabs his thumb at the cage full of Sata'anic prisoners "—we will contact your father and ransom you for reparations for your crimes."

"What crimes?" Tizqar hisses. "We were invited into this village by your own son!"

A flash of anguish mars Chief Kiyan's brown eyes, but his expression remains neutral. He gestures:

"Give our guest some water."

A frail old woman, her face as wrinkled as the desert, offers the prisoner a water-filled goatskin. Tizqar gulps until the carrier is empty, and then throws it aside without a single word of gratitude. Old Behnam and Rakshan the Flint-Knapper both bend to pick it up. I suppress a snort. Tizqar is oblivious that Liwwiresagil is the newest member of our Tribunal.

Chief Kiyan gestures at the warriors. "Bring the other prisoner up!"

The warriors move toward six large, flat rocks that cover the pits where we keep our most dangerous prisoners. Muscles bulge as they strain to drag one aside. The remaining warriors encircle the pit with spears, including Firouz, Siamek's second in command.

"C'mon up," Firouz says. "And don't give us any trouble."

A clawed hand appears; an enormous Sata'anic lizard crawls up out of the hole. At five cubits tall, he's a terrifying monster. Judging from the scars which mar his tough, beige-and-green striped hide, once upon a time he was a skull-cracker like the others, but his movements remain measured, gruff but cautious. A chest full of medals proclaims he moved up in rank because of valor.

The lizard blinks until his eyes adjust to the sunlight. He turns toward Tizqar, and then he looks away.

"He recognizes him," I whisper to Immanu.

"How can you tell?"

"Look at the way he tastes the air." It is not the normal, instinctive double-flick, but a slower, more measured taste, skewed sideways to appear inconspicuous.

"Don't they always do that?" Immanu asks.

"Not like that. Look at how he stands diagonally shouldered to pretend he doesn't care, but out of the corner of his eye, he keeps glancing so he can see?"

I don't add that the sergeant stands the exact same way that Needa now acts around him, pretending to notice her estranged husband.

"Hey! You!" Tizqar shouts at the lizard in Kemet. "You betrayed us!"

The Sata'anic sergeant turns to face our newest captive, neither acknowledging him as an ally, nor treating him with disdain. His voice sounds gravelly and gruff, as though he is used to barking orders.

"We betrayed nothing," he says in passably understandable Kemet. "As you can see, I am as much a prisoner as you are."

A look passes between the three members of the Tribunal. This is more information out of the lizard than the entire five days he's been here.

Tell me about my wife? I want to scream.

"Tell us about the white-winged demon?" Liwwiresagil asks.

Tizqar scans the crowd, and then his eyes settle on me. His lips curl up to expose his teeth.

"You mean the Príomh-Aire?" He uses the Galactic Standard word for Prime Minister. "He said he wished our help to bring that criminal to justice!"

A sense of unreality makes the crowd sound far away.

"I don't believe you!"

"Well he believes in you."

Liwwiresagil's voice is soft-spoken and inquisitive.

"Tizqar? Can you describe what this white winged Angelic looks like?"

"He is as tall as that one." Tizqar jabs a finger my way. "With hair so flaxen it is almost white, and eyes the color of a silver necklace."

The crowd sways, or perhaps that's just my knees giving out? That was how the villagers described the Angelic who flew in to carry out a body, only they never saw his eyes.

"Why?" My voice warbles. "Why would Lucifer take my wife?"

Tizqar's lips curl up into a snarl of disdain.

"Because she carries within her belly the last of an accursed bloodline!"

Rage slams into my veins. My field of vision narrows until all I can see is him.

In the doorway, the silhouette of a fat lizard blocks the sunlight. He points a claw at me. "Kill the little bastard."

Shadows creep into my peripheral vision until all I see is his neck at the end of a short, dark tunnel. The steel shivers as I slip my sword out of its sheath. I flare my wings. My muscles bunch as I swing up and begin the downswing.

*THWANG!*

A sword blocks mine before I can decapitate him.

"Argh!"

My vision turns black. I will kill whoever comes between me and my prey. I yank my sword up, but the way is blocked by another sword.

"Mikhail! Please?" A girl cries out in the Cherubim language. "The prisoner is unarmed!"

I pant through a sea of shadows so dense I have to force myself to see my fairy general, knocked down onto one knee. Our swords remained locked, hilt to hilt. Had the Cherubim battle energies not flowed freely through her veins, it wouldn't have been just Tizqar's head I lopped off, but possibly Pareesa's.

Oh gods, Oh gods! I pant to fight the flashback.

The scent of excrement fills the air.

"Hey!" the warriors slap one another on the back. "Mikhail just made the bastard s**t his loincloth!"

The villagers laugh. A rock comes out of nowhere and hits the Uruk prisoner off the side of his face.

"Tell me where my wife is," I hiss, "or I will dismember you one limb at a time."

Tizqar cowers, his hands over his head.

"I don't know!"

"Then tell me where the base is?"

"I don't know that either! All I know is Lucifer bragged he'd taken her from you."

He presses his face into the ground, now soaked with his own urine and feces, and weeps. Chief Kiyan tosses his shawl over his shoulders and gestures towards the hole the lizard just vacated.

"Since our esteemed guest does not wish to cooperate with this investigation, please show him to his bed."

The warriors pick him up and drag him toward the pit.

"You're not going to put me in a hole?" Tizqar grows wild-eyed as he teeters at the edge of the pit. "You people are barbarians! She buried me alive and told me she would leave me!"

Me, the Chief, and Immanu look at one another.

"She?" we all speak at once.

"That black-eyed b***h who killed my cousins!"

All eyes turned to Dadbeh. The thin man wears a hooded gaze.

"I was on my way back here when I saw the sky canoes attack the village," Dadbeh says, "so I buried Tizqar in a cave. When I went back three days later to dig him out, he kept screaming he wasn't there alone."

"I'm telling you it was her!" Tizqar screams. "Gita helped him capture me!"

I glance at Chief Kiyan. He looks away and avoids my eyes.

A voice, singing…

A hand that will not let go of mine...

Tear-filled black eyes, come to greet me at the entrance to the Dreamtime…

Grief claws at my throat as I try to grab her hand and fail.

Dadbeh puts a knife to Tizqar's throat. A small trickle of red slides down his jugular. I watch, fascinated, repulsed, detached.

"Why don't you tell him who else you saw while you were buried in that cave?" Dadbeh says. "Huh?"

Tizqar's eyes dart wildly from side to side.

"It was Shahla," he whispers. "She was with me the entire time."

A ripple of gossip moves through the curiosity-seekers.

"Shahla?"

"Shahla is still alive?"

"No. Shahla is dead. Pareesa shot two arrows into her heart."

"Is it possible the lizards brought her back to life?"

"No. She was dead."

"Did you see the body?"

"Yes. But the body was gone when we went back to bury the dead."

"Mikhail came back from the dead. Maybe Shahla came back, as well?"

My father-in-law's eyes glow copper red.

"Shahla is dead. If she's haunting our enemies, it's because she's been barred entrance to the Dreamtime!"

Dadbeh gives Immanu a look filled with fury. He wrenches Tizqar's head back.

"You are here to testify that Shahla was not responsible for her actions so she can rest in peace."

Tizqar laughs.

"Leave it to the little man to fall in love with a w***e!"

Dadbeh jabs his knife into his neck.

"Tell them! Tell the Tribunal Laum gave her tincture of ergot!"

Tizqar's eyes grow wild with hatred.

"The last thing Laum wanted was to marry his daughter off to a wheelwright's son! The only reason Shahla f****d you was because nobody wanted the bastard in her belly!"

"That's not true! The baby she carried was mine!"

Tizqar's cackle rises into a maniacal crescendo. "That baby belonged to Qishtea of Nineveh! Everyone knew it! After Qishtea's father told Laum to go to hell, he tried to pin it on that i***t's son."

The Chief's face darkens, not with anger, but guilt.

"Where is she?" Dadbeh kicks Tizqar in the ribs. "Tell me where she is buried so I can go and say the death-rituals!"

Tizqar taunts him. "The lizards chopped her up and ate her!"

The warriors prevent Dadbeh from stabbing his knife into the prisoner's throat. He yowls to finish the job, but is not strong enough to fight off the six warriors who haul him off the prisoner, each holding an arm or leg.

The Sata'anic sergeant tilts his head towards me.

"You know that is not true, Angelic," he speaks in flawless Galactic Standard. "Tell them Shay'tan forbids the desecration of the dead."

"I—"

That sense of tunnel vision closes in around me once again.

In the doorway, an enormous lizard wearing a too-small uniform blocks the sun. My mother screams. On my lip, I can taste my mother's blood…

Shadows detach from the mud-brick buildings. They swirl around me as if my rage poured out of my body and took physical form. I grip the clay bracelet Zakriti gave me. Right action. Always tell the truth. For every man you smite, you must save the lives of ten good men.

One of the beads has a badly-mangled symbol, one I never taught Pareesa, the one Jingu said belonged to her dear, departed husband. My lips form the prayer before my brain has a chance to recognize what it is.

Never summon the Guardian out of anger…

My voice warbles as I force myself to answer the lizard's question.

"I have seen things…"

The lizard reaches for the sword he's no longer allowed to wear.

"Tell them it's not true! We are not the monsters you tell these people we are!"

The shadows carry me into another time and place.

We get to the city after it was bombed from space. Death fills the air. Beside the rubble of a house, a child weeps for her mother.

"They chopped her up into tiny little pieces," Tizqar taunts in a sing-song voice. "And they ate her raw, without even cooking up her flesh"

Thousands of hovercraft lay abandoned, caught in rush hour traffic. Directly in front of us, a charred body reaches through a still-smoldering windshield, fighting for freedom even as he burned alive.

I lift my hands to my ears, unable to block out the screams which live inside my head.

"Tell him!" Sergeant Dahaka barks. "Tell him we are not butchers!"

A surge of power radiates into my veins, dark and terrifying, as my flesh trembles with the urge to destroy.

"I have seen what Shay'tan does when a planet won't submit!" I scream. "Millions dead! And I'll be damned if I let you do that here!"

We glare at each other, blue eyes to reptilian green ones. Both of us lean towards one another, raring for a fight. The warriors rush towards him with the sharp ends of their spears. His long, forked tongue tastes the air. His eyes widen as he realizes I believe what I say.

He tucks his tail up along his side in a gesture of Sata'anic respect and turns to Dadbeh.

"Do not listen to him, friend of Shahla," Dahaka says. "The Prime Minister's wife was the bravest woman we ever met. We retrieved her body when we picked up our own dead—" he touches his clawed hand to his forehead, his snout and his heart "—and buried her with honor, saying the death-prayers the same as when we bury our own."

Sergeant Dahaka's words cut through my sense of unreality.

"Wh-what? Lucifer took Shahla as a wife?"

The villagers fall silent. All eyes turn to stare at me. This is the first time somebody has confirmed the dead girl's story.

Sergeant Dahaka tastes the air, realizing he just revealed far more than he probably should. He glances over at the eleven prisoners we detained above ground in a cage. Every one of them has their snouts pressed against the wooden bars, anxious to hear what their commanding officer has to say.

He lowers his dorsal ridge.

"I have two wives and thirty-seven hatchlings," Sergeant Dahaka says in Galactic Standard. "If I tell you anything, Shay'tan will cast them out into the street."

Tizqar shrieks maniacally as the warriors stuff him down into the hole. "When my father finds out you captured me, he will kill every man, woman and child."

The warriors heave the capstone back into place, transforming Tizqar's insults turn into a muffled, sobbing plea. Whatever phantasms visited the man after Dadbeh buried him alive in a cave, it pushed the Uruk chieftain over the edge of sanity.

I am suddenly freezing.

The wrinkled old woman who gave Tizqar the water picks up her goatskin and walks cautiously towards the lizard sergeant.

"Liwwiresagil," the Chief warns.

The old woman squints with that look most elderly have, but despite her fading vision, it is obvious she still knows how to see.

"Before Shahla died, she told me some things, most of which I'm certain only existed inside her own head. But you asked the Tribunal to adjudicate her innocence, so I wish to interrogate the last person besides them to see her alive."

She jabs her finger at me and then Pareesa, gnarled and bent from a lifetime spent working in the fields. If I didn't know better, I could swear the old woman is angry at us.

"He might kill you."

"I am an old woman." Liwwiresagil shrugs. "If he kills me, it will alleviate my grandchildren of the obligation to feed me."

She reaches into her basket to pull out a handful of dried dates. The lizard soldier's long forked tongue darts out, lingering as he picks up the scent. Many claim the lizards devour the dead, but the truth is, most of Shay'tan's lower-ranking castes are vegetarian.

"You speak Kemet?" the old woman asks the lizard soldier.

The sergeant tilts his head sideways so he can look at her without making direct eye contact, something the lizards consider disrespectful to a woman. He positions his ear-hole to hear what she has to say.

"Some."

"And how did you learn to speak our language of trade?"

The lizard sergeant tucks his tail tightly along his side.

"Our allies say it is a language most people here understand."

An odd trill of satisfaction ripples through my feathers. The base is within the network of Kemet traders. This rules out the east and reduces the location of the base from the entire planet to an area half the size of the moon.

Liwwiresagil holds out a single tiny fruit. The lizard carefully takes it from her hand and pops it into his maw.

The old woman reaches back into her basket and hands the lizard a second goatskin filled with water. She waits until he takes a drink, and then she accepts the goatskin back from him; within reach if the enormous creature tries to kill her, but not so close that the warriors can't kill him in return.

Sergeant Dahaka eyes the other dates in her hand. He makes eye contact with me as he recognizes this is an interrogation. His nostrils flare. This lizard isn't stupid. But the old woman appears to have him intrigued.

"What else do you wish to know?"

"The truth."

"The truth is always matter of which side tells the story."

Liwwiresagil hands the lizard man the second date. The sergeant savors it, chewing it for far longer than is necessary. As he swallows it, his snout softens into an expression of regret.

"I will not betray my god, good woman."

A whisper of surprise ripples through the warriors. We've interrogated this particular lizard many times. Not even under threat of death or torture have we been able to get Dahaka to say anything other than his name, rank, and the burial number on his dog tags. I wish he'd taunt me. Then I'd have an excuse, just like I did with Tizqar. Unfortunately, the Sergeant always follows the Galactic Rules of Engagement. A lifetime of behaving honorably doesn't go away just because I wish it would.

Liwwiresagil hands him the last of her dates. As she does, she lifts the scarf which covers her basket, revealing that, once this date is gone, she has no more gifts to give him.

"The truth has no master," she says softly. "When you speak it, there is no right or wrong. Only facts that everyone must deal with."

Her words give me a peculiar sense of déjà vu. The Cherubim Empress has a similar saying, that one must live by the truth, even when that truth is not convenient. I reach down to touch the prayer beads Zakriti made me and trace the one that symbolizes Truth.

The sergeant savors the final date until it is gone, and then he makes the Sata'anic prayer-gesture of respect.

"If there is a truth I can speak without jeopardizing my emperor, I will cooperate with your investigation into the death of the one you call Shahla. But only if you treat my subordinates as kindly as you have just treated me."

Immanu steps forward. "Never! You must make them tell you where they took my daughter, damn it!"

The Chief's arm shoots out to prevent my father-in-law from taking another step.

"Enough!' Chief Kiyan gestures to Liwwiresagil, Behnam the Carpenter and Rakshan the Flint-Knapper. "I have ceded investigation of Shahla's guilt to the Tribunal. However, at no time, Sergeant, will we relax our guard over your men."

The lizard sergeant's forked tongue flicks the air, no doubt tasting the villager's level of hostility. While there are still muttered threats of skinning the lizards alive, the villagers are now curious. They want to hear what the lizard has to say.

"It is my duty to escape. If I tell you otherwise, the Angelic will call me a liar."

His gold-green eyes meet mine. I nod. Were the situation reversed, it would be my duty to do the same.

"Very well," Chief Kiyan says. "I will put you in one of the cages. I'm afraid I don't trust you enough to assign you to a house."

"It will be my honor to be imprisoned alongside my own men."

My jaw tightens, causing the muscle in my cheek to spasm. That's what I'm afraid of. We'd kept the sergeant separate, hoping the lower-ranking men might slip-and-tell, but the five skull-crackers earned their place in the holes for their brutality, while if we put Tizqar in with the other lizards, he knows the layout of the land. The Sergeant will go along with things until the guards grow lax, but even if he does escape, he doesn't know how to get across the desert any more than I do.

The warriors herd the enormous lizard sergeant over to the hastily constructed wooden cage. They jab their spears at the other lizards as they open the door, and then tie it shut behind him.

"How long before we can make a better cage?" I ask Behnam, who is also the carpenter responsible for rebuilding the north gate.

"Do you have any hardwood lying around?" Behnam gives me a toothless grim smile.

"No."

"Get me something better than wood from a date-palm," Behnam says, "and I will build you a cage not even this dragon-god you speak of can escape from."

One by one, the villagers lose interest. Liwwiresagil approaches us, her demeanor respectful, for she has not worn the mantle cast-off by Yalda long enough to adjust to the fact that, technically, in this matter, she outranks even the Chief.

"Tizqar of Akshak just confirmed what Dadbeh claimed," Liwwiresagil says. "Shahla, daughter of Laum, was taken to wife by a white-winged Angelic, one who identified himself as that one's Príomh-Aire."

"This only proves what I have said all along," Immanu says. "That Shahla and her friend conspired against us."

Liwwiresagil's hand sweeps outward, towards the burnt-out houses.

"It proves," Liwwiresagil says softly. "That Mikhail's own chief wants him dead."