Spyridon (The Spyridon Trilogy Book 1)

by Lillian James

  The Strong One indeed.

  He called down the volume until the noise was a muffled whisper and said, “Our language is called Inakhí. You will learn it here.”

  But not with him. He could think of little more grating than watching her struggle to understand the culture she was supposed to rescue. He turned to check the program settings before taking his leave.

  “This is how you learned English,” she said. Then she frowned. “But how? I mean, how does it know English?”

  Valaer’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t have the authority to ignore her question. “Transmissions sent through space do not stop unless they hit an object, and even then they usually just bounce and shift direction. Before it was corrupted, La’Fek placed receptors and transmitters throughout the surrounding galaxies to help detect signs of readiness for inclusion. Mikhél appropriated some of the discarded machines to send us transmissions from Earth.”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to call him that.”

  She’d stepped back. Her voice was quiet, but she didn’t shy away from his gaze. That she would have the nerve to chastise him for a breach in protocol she’d just discovered betrayed an arrogance she didn’t deserve. “I call him what I wish. You may tattle if you would like.”

  She bit her lip, but she still didn’t drop his gaze. Perhaps her cowardice extended only to incorporeal images of light. He smirked and turned away.

  “What’s La’Fek?”

  “Almost,” he muttered, and then he turned around. “La’Fek governs interplanetary interactions. Wars, economics, communications. They decide when intelligent civilizations will be approached for inclusion into the connected worlds.”

  “How was it corrupted?”

  Every question she asked highlighted her ignorance, and his blunt nails began to cut into his palms in his effort not to put her in her place. “La’Fek is made up of bureaucrats. Bureaucrats fear the Meijhé, and the Meijhé did not want La’Fek to exist. So they compromised. La’Fek would leave the Meijhé alone, and the Meijhé would not attack any of the connected worlds. Except for Spyridon.”

  “They sacrificed you? How could they do that?”

  You, she’d said. Not us. She didn’t see herself as one of them. They’d given everything to find a woman who wanted to hold herself apart. His shoulders sagged, and his fists loosened. This fight was already lost. He’d known it from the moment they found her, but hearing the proof of it in everything she said made it hard to even look at her. All he wanted was to go to his quarters, stare at the jumplight, and hold on to all that he had left of his mate. He said, “That is something I cannot answer for you.”

  She fell quiet. Grateful for her silence, Valaer finished setting up the language program and called open the door.

  “Wait. Please,” she added, her voice subdued. “I have only one more question.”

  He sighed. “What?”

  “There are thousands of languages spoken on Earth. How did you know to learn English?”

  “Ask Mikhél. He picked it.”

  Mikhél lay on his bed, unable to sleep. When he sensed Seirsha in the hall outside his quarters, his body tensed. But of course she wasn’t coming to him. She was following Leima to her own rooms next door.

  His sedfai stayed on her as she stood in the center of the room, presumably studying her new living space. He thought she might explore or perhaps cling to the communicator and gríth he’d left there for her. But she collapsed on the bed that shared a wall with his, and he knew by the pattern of her breathing that she was asleep almost instantly.

  The workload they’d set forth for her would have broken some Nhélanei soldiers. He wondered if she’d be strong enough to handle it, and then he remembered how hard she’d worked. Every time he’d thought she’d give up, she’d looked at him and then pushed on. She had something to prove, he thought. And that would only help him.

  He just wished she didn’t have to prove it here. This would have been dangerous enough if Betha had lived, but at least then Seirsha would have been prepared. She’d have known who she was and the extent of the danger she faced. She’d have been ready to do what needed to be done. Instead they had to tiptoe around the truth while they tried to instill in her a mere foundation of the skills she would need.

  It had been one cycle. There were over two hundred left to go.

  How in hell was she going to survive this?

  Endetar ran a finger over the meager contents of a library shelf. He wondered which of the tomes had been melted down and recycled for Meijhé purposes and which ones still remained. Would the books of his childhood still be here? Or the stories about family treasured by his mother, or the tales of adventure and space travel smuggled in to him by his uncle?

  Did it matter if they were? There was no one left to read them now.

  When he sensed Naiya round the corner, he crooked a finger and led the way to the third floor. The grid was dark, but it was a simple matter to determine the last space used. Endetar called up the workstation and looked through the system’s history with a series of practiced gestures.

  “She sensed you this prime,” Naiya said.

  He didn’t look away from the projection. “Impossible.”

  “But she stopped walking and turned around. The hall was completely dark. She couldn’t have seen you, but she knew you were there.”

  “She just felt that someone watched her. It’s not uncommon, and it means nothing. No one has ever sensed me before. She will not be the first.” He let out a frustrated sound and turned away from the computer. “They wiped the history.”

  “They have something to hide.”

  “Without question.” He shook his head. Whatever they’d discussed during the prime shift, there was no record of it now. “There’s nothing left for you to do with her. She’s no longer dying. She won’t be returning to the medical center.”

  “So we’re done? We can’t have lost our chance.”

  “We’re not done. You still have your other task.” Even as he spoke, the agent stepped through the light. Endetar nodded at Naiya. Taking his signal, she offered a tekvar and then left. “You have news?” Endetar asked.

  “She’s housed next to Endet Niyhól.”

  “That isn’t unusual. She holds the highest nonmilitary ranking on the ship.” He turned back to the computer. “Is that all you have for me?”

  “It has been only one cycle, Endetar.”

  “One cycle was all the Meijhé needed. It should be enough for us.”

  Behind him he sensed the agent’s hands ball into fists. But all he said was, “Yes, Endetar.”

  Endetar’s hands flew through a series of gestures until he had access to the ship’s navigation system. What he saw had him frowning. “We’ve changed direction. We go to Vorhódan?”

  “Endet Niyhól has business there,” the agent said.

  “What business?”

  “He did not share it with me.”

  Endetar ran a finger along the scar on his face, but his mind was not on the old mark of torture. Vorhódan was a mining planet. To his knowledge, it was the only one populated entirely by Nhélanei. Niyhól ran the planet from afar, so he’d already visited on their way to the scouting planet. According to Endetar’s sources, a second visit during the same trip was unheard of. And the visit had not been on the ship’s flight plan until after they’d picked up the khénta. Something about the girl had changed things.

  “Keep watch. Report anything unusual. But keep your distance,” he added as the agent began the tekvar. “If her actions require retribution, then I will be the one to deliver punishment.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Everything was different. Calendars, dates, times, distance, speed; the list of new things that Jane had to learn grew every day, and she never seemed to chip away at it. To think she’d been overwhelmed by the idioms. Now a turn of phrase seemed the easiest thing to memorize.

  The time really threw her off. Years, months, and weeks were all conce
ptually similar to what she’d known on Earth, although much longer. But when time was broken down further than that, she began to get confused. A day was a cycle—unless you were on planet, and then it was a day again. The prime shift was morning—sort of, and only on the ship. She had no idea what to call morning once she reached Spyridon, if anything. A cycle was shorter than a day on Earth by about two hours, if her calculations were correct. Except the Nhélanei didn’t use hours as a measure of time. They counted passes, which she’d first assumed to be the equivalent of a minute hand rounding a clock. But passes were shorter during the morning than in the middle of the night, and she still didn’t understand why.

  The lengthier year hadn’t seemed like a big deal until she’d realized that her age wasn’t what she’d thought. Spyridon’s orbit was about four months longer than Earth’s, which meant that in her twenty-five years on Earth, Spyridon had traveled around its sun only nineteen times. So technically she was still a teenager. As if she hadn’t felt awkward enough.

  And a teenager in grade school, at that. She had to learn Inakhí’s alphabet and numbers just to make her way around the ship, and until she gained some proficiency, she was essentially illiterate. And if that wasn’t enough to make her head explode, there was direction. The Nhélanei used a twenty-six-point directional system that included words for angled trajectories and straight vertical drops. But, as Valaer stated in what she was sure was an attempt to make her spontaneously combust, such a system was too simple for a ship of Dhóchas’s size. So she also had to learn the ring-and-sector system the ship was divided into, just so she could read the map projected by her wrist link.

  And everywhere she turned, there were Nhélanei who already knew this stuff. Who would think it strange if she had to stare at her map for five minutes—or whatever the hell they called it—just to find her way to the next sector. Nhélanei who would begin to watch her if she used the wrong gesture. Nhélanei who wouldn’t understand if she stumbled over the voice command for a different floor simply because she couldn’t remember the damn number.

  Nhélanei who could sense her nerves and frustration from twenty feet—no, a pellek—away just by listening to the rhythm of her heart.

  At the end of each day, she would lie down in her bed, huddled against the ship’s freezing atmosphere, and stare at the jumplight. She pretended the hum of the generators reminded her of the ocean, and she wondered if the only thing she’d learned that day was how much she still had left to learn. It took a little longer each night for the kaleidoscope beyond her window to lull her to sleep, and it took a little longer each morning to convince herself to do it all over again.

  But she had no choice. There was nowhere left to go. Staying on Earth had never been an option, and she wasn’t going to waste time wishing for the impossible. She just wished she could take a break. Just a day off from the training and the pushing and the stress, just to regroup and get her bearings.

  No, to pull in her limbs. No, wait. That wasn’t right either. What was the phrase? Whatever it was, she’d probably look it up and then forget it again at least three more times before she had it right. Just thinking about it was exhausting.

  In fact, all of it was fucking exhausting.

  CHAPTER 17

  One hundred ninety-two days till arrival

  Once Jane had regained some strength, Eithné took her to an empty section of the medical center. They stood in the center of a wide, bare room with metal walls and drains in the floor. When Eithné opened a drawer set into the wall and pulled out a scalpel, Jane lifted a brow.

  “Historically,” Eithné began, “jagatai gifts have fallen into two categories: projective and sight. Projective gifts are the most common. They allow the bearer to act upon his or her environment in some way, usually by moving objects through the air with thought. Some projectives have been able to render others immobile or speechless. I once heard of a woman who could transport objects through space instantly.”

  She spoke into her wrist link, and images projected into the air: short, simple videos of Nhélanei using projective gifts. “Most of the men and women in our army used projective gifts in combat. They were quite strong and served as an excellent deterrent to those who might have thought to invade. That is, until the Meijhé.”

  “What happened?”

  “They brought children with gifts of their own. No one knows who they were or where they came from. One of them dissolved bones with a single touch. Another could paralyze a person with a look. There were others too, but our downfall was Avron. He had the ability to block projective gifts on a wide scale. His thoughts alone rendered much of our army helpless. Their weapons did the rest.”

  She fell silent, and Jane’s stomach began to churn as the link videos shifted into images of war and slaughter. Men, women, and children fell as one under the blade of the Meijhé, their deaths captured in bootlegged videos made by the few Nhélanei who managed to document the injustice.

  “I thought only the Nhélanei had gifts like that.”

  “So did we.” Eithné spoke again into her link, and the images disappeared. “Sight gifts are different and less common. Nearly all of the Nhélanei who do not possess a projective gift claim a sight gift instead. Sight gifts allow the bearers to know something about their environment. Most require the bearers to touch the objects they wish to understand.”

  She studied the scalpel for a moment and then called up a chair and set the knife upon it. “You once asked about our gifts. I will tell you about them, but first you must understand the trust I am placing in you. The jagatai gift has become something intensely private since the Meijhé claimed Spyridon. You see, the Nhélanei who survived the invasion were made to use their gifts to oppress their own people. Can you imagine what that was like for us?”

  Her voice trailed away, and she started to pace, her tunic twitching with each stilted step. “It occurs to me now that the projective gift is no longer the most prominent. In the early days, after the war was over, we were trying to find our place in the new Spyridon. They were studying our gifts, categorizing their usefulness. Learning how they might exploit them. And at first they decided the projective gift was something they could not trust. They could block it with ease, but they did not believe they could control it. So they began to kill the projectives.”

  She stopped, her gaze on the wall though she didn’t seem to see it. Tears began to spill over her furrowed cheeks.

  “I still see it when I close my eyes. Rows of people standing before the walls of Lan’Vercai, just waiting…forced to wait for their own murders. Blood wetting the dirt at my feet while they made me watch. And my mate—” Her voice caught, and she closed her eyes. And then opened them, as if the images she’d just described still danced along her lids.

  “They stopped eventually. I imagine our numbers became small enough that they thought we would not dare rebel. It occurs to me now,” she repeated, “that they might have forever changed the course of jagatai evolution. They certainly changed the way we think about our gifts.”

  She fell silent, and Jane fought the urge to offer comfort. Anything she said now would be a platitude. There were some tragedies for which sympathy was not enough. Some experiences required shared survival before solace could be obtained.

  Eithné shook her head and wiped at the moisture on her cheeks. She took a deep breath and then turned to Jane. And her eyes burned with secrets.

  “I lied to the Meijhé about my gift. I have a sight gift, but I could not let them know the extent of it. So I told them I see injury and illness. It was a dangerous lie, something I did not understand until I was told to heal a sick Meijhé soldier and had no idea how to proceed. He nearly died. And I was nearly executed as a result. It was dangerous, but I would do it again. If I had told them the truth about my gift, they would have used it to hurt my people. I could not allow that to happen.

  “I am called a truthseer.” She picked up the knife and sat down in its place. “It is something of a
misnomer. I do not see truth; I see knowledge. And knowledge is susceptible to interpretation. But in the hands of the Meijhé, knowledge has proven deadly.

  “Seirsha, you have the right to know that I used my gift on you when we found you. It was the quickest way to know what had happened to you and to find Betha. I saw things you might have wished to keep private. It was not intentional, but it could not be helped. I saw things…” She sighed, and her irises paled. “I can only offer my deepest sympathies. And vow that I will not share what I have seen with anyone.”

  It took a moment for Eithné’s meaning to sink in. When it did, Jane felt the blood drain from her face.

  Eithné knew.

  She’d seen the most abhorrent thing Jane had ever done, and somehow there was compassion in that lined brown face. As if Jane could possibly have deserved it. She looked away and grappled for a change of subject. She could talk about anything else, but she wouldn’t talk about that day.

  She wouldn’t talk about the boy.

  “What about the others?” she managed. “What are their gifts?”

  Eithné paused, and Jane wondered if she would push the topic. But then she answered Jane’s question instead. “Valaer also has a sight gift. His is limited to the understanding of electronic and mechanical devices. He was an artist before, but now he fixes machinery.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  Eithné nodded. “He had no need to lie. Leima has not yet gone through the jagat. She is slightly younger than you, and she will likely not develop her gift for years.”

  “And Endet Niyhól?”

  “Endet Niyhól has no gift. He has been off planet for much of his life.”

  And no one had ever gone through the jagat away from Spyridon—except for Jane. “What other gifts are there?”

  “Until recently, nothing. Then, in the last hundred years or so, a new gift began to develop. Your gift. We know very little about healing. The study of it was limited even before the invasion because it was so rare. Afterward, the Meijhé conducted all study of the jagatai gifts. Obviously I am not privy to any knowledge they attained. I do know one thing, however. Healing hurts.”