Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Read Online Free PDF Page A

All-that-is. "I hope he gets these mutual aid agreements from the other chiefs so we can spend more time at his sky canoe."
    She envisioned what it felt like to fall asleep in Mikhail's arms, his hard body, his soft wings, and the oh-so-tender heart he hid beneath an unreadable expression. Mikhail had been an answer to a prayer, a winged god who had fallen from the sky after she'd pleaded with the goddess for an alternative to forced marriage to Jamin. And soon … together they would have a child. She ran her hand over her growing midsection, sensing the child who grew there was special, and pictured what it would be like when Mikhail finally held his son.
    She paused to listen for wisdom from the goddess, but for the past few days, the She-who-is had felt oh-so-far away. She rose from the river, dried off, and grabbed her stone blade from the basket and slipped it into the rawhide which held up her loincloth. Wrapping her long, fringed shawl around her waist and belting it to remake her dress, she struggled up the embankment carrying her wet basket of bandages, her legs sinking into the yellow ochre that was prized by potters for many miles around.
    She realized as she struggled up the hill that someone stood at the crest, patiently waiting for her to ascend. The moment she recognized who it was, her eyes turned copper with anger.
    "Did you need something, Shahla?" Ninsianna's voice dripped venom. "Or have you come to tell me that Mikhail's baby spoke her first words?"
    The child in question did not exist. The village harlot had become pregnant by goddess-only-knows which warrior and, when her plan to entrap the Chief's son into marriage failed, she had turned her viperous tongue on Jamin's chief rival to claim Mikhail had fathered the child instead! Jamin had been so incensed that he had beaten the woman until she had miscarried, a violence which had resulted in his banishment from the village. So now Shahla wandered the village, hair matted and clothing torn, carrying a rag doll she claimed was Mikhail's daughter and telling everyone who would listen that someday he would carry her into the heavens to be his queen.
    Hmpf!
    "Be kind to a bird with a broken wing," Mama had scolded her when she'd said one day she'd like to use dark magic to strike the woman dead. "Even the most darkened creature has a role to play in the game of All-That-Is."
    Shahla grabbed the basket out of Ninsianna's hand.
    "Siamek sent me to fetch you." Shahla said. "Tirdard fell down some rocks while hunting a gazelle and broke his leg."
    “Mama is better at that kind of thing than me.” Ninsianna sniffed. “Go fetch Mama and offer to help her carry her supplies.”
    “No!” Shahla grabbed her arm. “Siamek asked me to fetch you. It will be dark soon. If you don’t set the bone, Tirdard will have to spend the night out in the desert.”
    There was no way Ninsianna would ever trust Shahla at her word, but as the Chosen of She-who-is, there were ways to peek into another person's sprit light and ascertain the truth, ways she had learned from her father. Ninsianna softened her gaze until she could pluck out of Shahla's mind the images of what truly troubled her. What she saw were not the usual disjointed daydreams of men with wings or rag-doll babies, but a gruesome image of poor Tirdard laying in a pile of rocks, yelping with his leg-bone sticking through his skin.
    “Okay,” Ninsianna sighed. “I will do for him what I can.” She pulled her red wool cape across her shoulders, thankful she had brought it to fend off the autumn chill. It had been a gift from a far-off tribe, elaborately embroidered, and was a deep shade of scarlet no Ubaid dye had ever achieved. There was none like it in the entire village, and when she wore the coveted gift, it marked her as a very high-ranking woman indeed.
    "This way!" Shahla called. She carried Ninsianna’s basket upriver, winding through the levied fields and date-palm orchards where dirt had been piled to