Spyridon (The Spyridon Trilogy Book 1)

by Lillian James

  “Could someone else…” Jane’s voice trailed away. The night before, she’d been convinced Mikhél had helped her. But now that she understood the mechanics of the process, she had to admit that was impossible. “Never mind.”

  “In every Nhélanei, the jagat follows a specific pattern. The heart increases blood flow to the jagatai organs. They begin to send signals to the brain. The body becomes feverish, the mind disoriented. Most try to sleep through it. Upon waking, the sedfai has developed. Over the days or weeks that follow, a jagatai ability begins to emerge.”

  “What’s your ability?”

  “That, child, has become a personal question since the arrival of the Meijhé. It is a question you must never, ever ask.” She glanced at her link and sighed. “We are nearing the fellen pass. Endet Niyhól is nearly here. I let you sleep long today. There will not be time for that in the future.”

  Jane knelt to help her tidy the orbs at her feet, but she couldn’t stop her gaze from straying to the wall of light. “Mikhél’s coming here?”

  Eithné stilled. “You feel comfortable with him.”

  “Sure. I guess.”

  Eithné glanced at her link again with paling eyes, and then she looked at Jane. “There is another expression among our people that perhaps you should learn now. ‘Know well the footsteps you follow.’ It means you should understand the person who leads you so you might know where he or she will go. The phrase has…deepened in meaning for us since the Meijhé arrived. There are many who cannot be trusted, Nhélanei and Meijhé alike, and authority does not guarantee integrity.”

  Jane glanced at the wall again, but she couldn’t yet hear the click of boots against the slick floor. “Are you telling me not to trust Mikhél?”

  “I am telling you to place your trust carefully. And he is Endet Niyhól to you. There can be no exception.”

  “Endet is his title,” Jane realized, “not his family name. I can’t use his given name because of his rank.”

  “You cannot use his given name because of everything that Spyridon has become. Endet Niyhól is your superior, on this ship and on Spyridon. You must treat him as such. Am I clear on this matter?”

  Jane nodded, but her headache raged. She’d come from a life characterized, in its own way, by a type of anarchy. To live without relationships was to live without politics.

  And she’d been thrust into a world mired in them.

  CHAPTER 14

  Mikhél strode through the library in the dark, his sedfai keen to the ambient light filtering down from the third level. The floor absorbed the sound of his footsteps, converting the vibrations into energy. Of course that energy was diverted away from this part of the ship. Learning was no longer a priority for the Nhélanei.

  Or, rather, informed Nhélanei were not a priority for the Meijhé.

  He ignored the fatigue that threatened to slow his steps. He’d dreamed of the island again, with its twisting tree and rocky cliffs—the dream that always woke him with his palms sweating and his stomach in knots, as if there were a lurking danger he felt but could not see.

  And he’d dreamed of the woman. Lavender eyes and silver smoke. Any dream she plagued haunted him into waking. She was on his mind now, distracting him so he didn’t notice that the conference light had gone out until he’d rounded the last curve in the staircase.

  It was a shock to his system to see Seirsha at the top of the steps.

  She seemed surprised to see him too, as if she hadn’t felt him coming. She stopped and watched him, those huge eyes drinking in everything she saw. In the light of Eithné’s link, it seemed as if they weren’t muddy but shadowed. For a moment he imagined they were shaded with amethyst. Then the moment was gone, and he pushed the dreams from his mind.

  “Alna Dhújar.”

  “Endet Niyhól.”

  Eithné’s gaze lingered on him, and he thought she might refuse to leave Seirsha alone with him. But then she offered a tekvar and walked away. Seirsha watched her go and then turned back to him, her fingers plucking at the baggy legs of her uniform. Then she twitched and offered her own stilted tekvar.

  “Endeté.”

  However poor her use of the gesture, her accent was nearly flawless. That, at least, was a relief.

  “The tekvar is used only upon departure. And never address me first. If I do not speak to you, remain silent.” She sighed and nodded, and her fingertips went to her temple. He turned to descend. “With me.”

  He strode through the darkened corridors, sedfai opened to the rooms around them. There was no one within his range, but that did not mean the level was empty. The last thing they needed right now was a witness to her ineptitude. He chose a lift small enough to prevent any crew from slipping in as the doors closed, but he couldn’t relax even after he’d called out their destination. Then the floor plummeted, and she gasped and clutched his hand.

  And it felt as if his skin went up in flames.

  His senses flared as the essence of her blasted through them: the sound of her breath, the warmth of her skin, the rapid rhythm of her heart, the muddy dark of her eyes, now locked onto his as if she’d been singed by the fire that had so inexplicably consumed him.

  He started to pull away from her—had to pull away—when a sound of rushing air rose up around them. The elevator slowed, and she let go. At once he could breathe. His lungs filled with the scent of her, and he gritted his teeth and willed the door to open.

  When it did he said sharply, “Come.”

  He located the maintenance panel and called it open, and then he turned to find her staring at the floor. Pulses of color bloomed and faded on the other side of the clear, thick polymer in red, gold, violet, and more. They shone against the black of space as if to greet the passing ship and then disappeared almost as quickly as they’d come. Seirsha knelt and touched the floor as the light bounced off her face in a silent dance.

  “What are they?”

  “Stars.”

  She looked at him then, and the dim softened the angles of her face. The color bouncing off her cheeks hid the gray of her skin, and she looked young.

  And painfully ignorant of everything she needed to know.

  “How can stars look like that? What kind of stars are they?”

  He buried his impatience and crossed to her side. “Every kind. They look like that because we are in a jump. Light works differently at this speed, and it is difficult for us to process.”

  She splayed her hand against the glass, and her webbing glowed with the ethereal starlight of the jump. It didn’t retract, as Eithné had said. It was yet another reminder of how different she was from what had been intended. And it was a reminder that they had no time to waste.

  “Come,” he said again. “There is much to do.”

  He slipped into the maintenance shaft and waited in the narrow, lightless space. The floor here was solid, offering none of the beauty in the vestibule beyond. Seirsha folded her body in after him, muttering as her hair caught on the edge of the panel. She freed it and rose with a huff and a mumbled, “Sorry.”

  He barely heard the unfamiliar English. She seemed skinnier than he’d remembered, drowning as she was in the smallest uniform they could find. He called closed the panel and called on his link light, and her eyes bulged in the glow. She looked up the ladder to the grated platform above and then up and down the shaft, and he heard her heart pick up speed.

  She was afraid of him. Somehow, though she knew almost nothing of their world, she’d learned he was not to be trusted. And there was only one person who could have taught her that since he’d left her last cycle. Though he told himself that Eithné’s opinion of him didn’t matter, his voice was curt when he spoke.

  “Climb to the third platform and then return.”

  “Why?” Her gaze darted to his and then away. Then she swallowed and seemed to drag her gaze back. “I’m not in the habit of blindly following orders.”

  He lifted a brow. “I am not in the habit of offering explan
ation. But on this ship, only one of us has the luxury of following tradition. I will allow you a moment to determine who.”

  Her fingers tapped against her thigh, and her pulse fluttered and twitched. But she didn’t look away.

  Instead she said, “You put your hands over my ears last night, when I was having the gevenfaen. Why?”

  Her phrasing was off, and it was on the tip of his tongue to correct her: caught in the gevenfaen. But something in her stance had the instruction dying on his lips. This question mattered, he realized. Though he couldn’t have said why or how he knew, this question mattered. And so, though he was not in the habit of answering questions, he answered this one.

  “To dim the sounds you heard. They are said to be painful.”

  She cocked her head, and he knew she was trying to determine the truth of his words. He’d seen the look often enough before. Something must have satisfied her when anyone else would have been left in doubt, because her fingers stilled, and her pulse slowed. The line that had etched between her brows smoothed, and then she did something that made his breath catch.

  She smiled at him.

  It was the kind of smile that lit up her face, and he had the feeling he was seeing the real Seirsha for the first time. And he thought no one on Earth could have seen this smile, because no one would look at this warm, bright, likeable face and fear this woman.

  And then she said, “Good footsteps,” which made no sense to him, but before he could ask what she meant, she’d started to climb.

  The instant her hands touched the metal, dim yellow light filled the space. Small, evenly spaced bulbs offered meager light on either side of them, illuminating the passageway at least four stories up. She climbed quickly at first, and then he heard her heart begin to pound again. Her limbs trembled, and before she reached the first platform she paused and looked back at him. He thought she was ready to give up, and he took a breath to push her on. But then she set her jaw and kept climbing.

  Halfway between the first and second platforms, her foot slipped. She lost her grip and crashed onto the grated metal below with a cry that had him wincing. The metal here was not treated and offered no give under impact. The landing could not have been painless. Still, she lay on her side far longer than he would have expected for so short a fall. She held herself stiff and awkward, and then her hands began to twitch in a common Nhélanei response to intense pain.

  It was an overreaction that had him gritting his teeth. If she was this sensitive to injury, how would she manage any sort of combat? Even desensitizing her to the healing process would—

  He cursed himself and raced up the ladder. It wasn’t an overreaction, and, more than that, it was a complication he should have predicted. When he reached her side, the twitching had slowed, but she looked at him without turning her head.

  “It hurts to move.”

  Wet trickled down her cheek, and he realized some of it was blood. Cuts would have compounded the agony she must have felt.

  “The pain will fade,” he said as he pulled a protein supplement from his pocket. “Just relax and let your body heal.”

  She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing, and he saw the tension in her shoulders ease. It was good that she followed his advice, but he wondered how often she would be able to do so before she lost patience. How long could one endure pain before seeing the benefit it wrought?

  She sighed and turned her face to the metal, and then she started to push up onto her hands.

  “Easy,” he said and cupped her elbows to steady her. “Just sit. Breathe.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes. “It’s better, I think. I just feel…”

  Her face paled beneath the gray, and he pushed the protein stick into her hand. “You need to eat, or you will fall into dream.”

  Her eyes drifted to his as she took a bite. “Fall into dream. That’s a lovely way to say pass out.”

  It wasn’t a personal compliment, and still…She was smiling at him again in a way that made him want to show her the language she’d lost, not for learning but to see her pleasure in it. She flushed under his stare and looked down at the supplement, but her smile remained.

  And he had no business noticing such things.

  He pulled close the formality of rank. “Did the pain start when you fell or before?”

  She straightened and cleared her throat. He told himself he didn’t mind when her expression smoothed to match his formality. “When I was climbing. My arms and legs were burning, and I couldn’t hold on.”

  Just as he’d thought, and just what he should have foreseen. “You were building new muscle. It requires some healing of old muscle, and healing hurts.”

  He stood and held out his hand. Too late he remembered the rush of sensation that had flooded him in the lift. But she hesitated, and he realized she’d felt it too. And avoiding skin-to-skin contact with a woman he was planning to train in floor combat was not only ridiculous; it was impossible. So he gritted his teeth and lifted a brow. She took his hand, but there was no flash of power or heat this time. Instead, when her palm touched his, there was warmth, subtle and more enticing than he would admit. He pulled his hand away.

  “It won’t happen every time,” he said, softer than he’d intended.

  She flushed. “What?”

  “The pain.” He cleared his throat and turned away. “It should lessen as you grow stronger. And if we can prevent you from losing muscle mass when you heal, you will grow stronger much more quickly than anyone else would. You must eat a supplement before training and another during healing, so your body can pull the protein from food instead of muscle.

  “And do not fall again,” he added, as if she had done so intentionally the first time. “Unnecessary healing is a waste of resources you cannot afford.”

  Because descent would target different muscles, he gestured for her to follow him down. “You nearly reached the second level,” he said. “You will double that before you leave here.”

  She tripled it. On her last climb, she passed the sixth platform before she stopped. More nimbly than Mikhél would have thought possible just that prime, she jumped lightly from the ladder onto the platform below, easily avoiding the ladder hatch and landing smoothly on the grate.

  He could see her excitement as she made her way down. He could even admit that a fraction of it echoed inside him. He could have told himself it was just because she had progressed so quickly, but he was not in the habit of lying to himself. There was happiness in those muddy, bulging eyes. If she’d been healthy, they would have been dark with pleasure. And he’d helped her to feel that way.

  That wasn’t an accomplishment he could often claim.

  There was no time to discuss her progress, however, and he was not skilled enough to commend her on it. So instead he said nothing as he opened his sedfai to the rooms beyond the passage.

  They were on the entertainment level. The rooms here were abundant, filled with all manner of objects designed to entice the crew to peruse and explore. Wares from Spyridon and hundreds of other connected worlds rested a pellek from where he stood, broken, discarded, and long forgotten. And the crew they’d been placed here for was dead, replaced by Nhélanei too young to remember the war, too indoctrinated to fight. Or to explore. So Mikhél heard no footsteps beyond their hiding place save for the restless shifting of one man.

  CHAPTER 15

  Valaer paced, his large feet silhouetted against the pulse and fade of jumplight. He could just barely see into the rooms surrounding him. A scatter of colors illuminated the treasures long discarded and made him wish this level had been like the others, so it could have been converted and used to process fuel. So it would not remind him of Bhénen.

  Bhénen would have liked this level.

  He would have dragged Valaer down to explore, laughing at the dark and the quiet. He’d been able to feel joy, even under the rule of the Meijhé. So quick to find and give happiness. Perhaps because he’d had a purpose, because he’d believ
ed they would be saved.

  Or perhaps because he’d simply been better than the rest of them.

  Valaer’s fists clenched. Whatever the source of Bhénen’s hope, it was gone now, lost in the miasma of a war no one really understood. And the woman who was supposed to save them was in the walls. How that could help anyone, he couldn’t begin to understand.

  Of course, Bhénen would have understood, and the thought made him want to slam his fist into something.

  A swish behind him signaled the opening of the maintenance shaft. He blanked his features before he turned. When Mikhél emerged, Valaer bowed as though the gesture didn’t turn his stomach. And he reminded himself that every formality served a purpose.

  Seirsha slipped out behind Mikhél, her movements smoother than they’d been last cycle. He supposed she expected him to be impressed at so quick an improvement. Bhénen would have taken it as a sign of impending victory.

  Bhénen had not always been right.

  Valaer said nothing to her in greeting, nothing when Mikhél took his leave at the lifts. He could tell by the way she watched the man go that her eyes would have paled had they been healthy. She preferred Mikhél’s presence to his. He almost laughed at the irony.

  They stepped onto the lift without a word, shot up through the black in silence. Walked through the dim halls of the education level with only the sound of the generators for company. She began to lag behind, her heart picking up speed, her head darting from side to side as if to search for an escape route.

  She feared him, or at the very least, she didn’t trust him. He thought of all he had planned and wondered if he should fault her.

  He turned into the language room and called up the program he’d already set for her, almost unconcerned with whether or not she followed. The walls came to life just as she slipped inside, the polymer-coated screens filling with images of Nhélanei of all ages. They laughed, played, and worked in a collage of scenes from a Spyridon that no longer existed. He turned to see Seirsha jump when a hologram ran by her, and he gritted his teeth.