Spyridon (The Spyridon Trilogy Book 1)

by Lillian James

  The spark that had quickened her step faded, and he wished he knew how to offer her comfort. He glanced at the paintings and ran a hand through his hair. He wished he knew a lot of things.

  Eithné asked, “How do you explain the dreams?”

  He frowned. “Obviously I can’t.”

  “I mean,” she said delicately, “were you dreaming of the same places independently? Or were you sharing dreams?”

  He jolted as if he’d been slapped. It should have occurred to him, but it hadn’t. If they were sharing dreams…

  She said, “It would explain a great deal.”

  She was right. It would explain how he’d known to get Seirsha, how he’d known to learn English. It would even explain her miraculous cure the night she’d become overloaded. It hadn’t been a miracle at all.

  It had been him.

  “It isn’t possible,” he said. Except that it was. He knew for a fact that it was, and the strength threatened to leave his legs.

  “Endeté—”

  “Mikhél,” he broke in. At the look on her face, he said, “You called me by my given name a moment ago. Why stand on formality now?”

  “Mikhél. If you’re forming a nexus with Seirsha—”

  “We can’t be joined in that way.” He thought of the dream again and shook his head. “I won’t let it happen.”

  “It’s a biological imperative. I don’t believe you have a choice in the matter—”

  “I won’t let it happen, Eithné!”

  It was the first time he’d raised his voice to her. Probably the first time he’d raised his voice in years. He clamped his jaw shut and turned away, and for some reason he thought of what she’d said before. You love her. He shook his head as if to deny her words again and told himself that he was Seirsha’s devesh and nothing more.

  “What is it you fear?”

  “I didn’t see just Seirsha’s future,” he bit out. He turned around on legs that wanted to lock into place and forced himself to meet her eyes. “I saw mine. He kills me, Eithné.” As her irises paled, he pushed the last of it out. “Lhókesh will beat me to death when we return to Spyridon.”

  Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. She pushed the heel of her palm against her chest and shook her head. When her eyes grew wet, he wanted to close his own. “You don’t know—”

  “I saw it just as clearly as I saw what happens to her.”

  He could see the implications sink in. She took a step back. “If you and Seirsha become joined through a nexus…”

  “She’ll feel every bit of it,” he finished for her. “She’ll feel me die.”

  Jane nearly lost her composure as she walked through the residential level. Her heart was pounding, and she wondered which of the Nhélanei she passed could hear it. Her skin felt feverish, her head light. She wondered which of the Nhélanei knew and which were too young to have gone through the jagat.

  Her room was dark, like so much of this damned ship, and she called on the lights the moment she stepped inside. Her reflection snapped onto the window, crisp and clear against the impossibly smooth pane.

  For the first time in longer than she could remember, she looked at herself. She looked completely different from how she had on Earth. She’d known her coloring had changed, but she hadn’t paid attention to how much until she’d been struck by the realization that she looked just like her mother. And why couldn’t she find any comfort in that?

  She called off the lights with a voice that refused to smooth, and darkness fell again. But that was worse. Now the window showed what it was meant to. Space. The vacuum and the blackness of it. The sheer emptiness of light years between worlds. She’d looked out this window every day for the past twelve weeks and had seen endless possibilities.

  Now it felt like a trap.

  She couldn’t do this. Her breath started to come in small, uncontrollable gasps as she wondered how any of them thought she could do this. The room seemed to shrink, the air to thicken, and she had to escape. She wasn’t meant to be an empress. It was too much, and she had to get away.

  A tone rang through the room, and she jumped even as her sedfai flashed out. Leima stood in the hall, holding food and twitching at every sound. Jane put her hands over her face and forced in a slow, deliberate breath. And then another. She’d wait for Leima to leave. She couldn’t escape her future, but by God, she could take this one night for herself.

  Then the tone sounded again, and a memory rose unbidden: Jane as a child, knocking on the door to the neighboring room in one of a string of group homes. She couldn’t remember how old she’d been. She couldn’t even remember the name of the girl she’d wanted to know. But she remembered exactly how she’d felt when the door had remained closed.

  She cursed and shook her head, but she called open the door with a tired voice. Then she called up the lights and shut the window blind. She didn’t want to see the stars anymore tonight.

  Leima stepped inside, tray in hand, and glanced around the room. “I thought you might be hungry.”

  Jane wasn’t at all, but it was a thoughtful gesture. And then it occurred to her that Leima wasn’t being nice. Maybe she, like everyone else, was just doing her job. Jane took the tray and set it on the bed with a mumbled offer of thanks, and then she waited for Leima to leave.

  But the younger woman didn’t move. “I owe you my gratitude,” she said. “It means so much to me to have a piece of my father’s work. To be able to see my mother as he saw her.”

  So Mikhél had given her the painting after all. She wished he was as unkind as he wanted others to believe. She wished she didn’t care that he wasn’t. But all she said was “I am glad.”

  Leima paused, and Jane thought she might say something else. But then she offered a tekvar and murmured, “If I may take your leave, Baanríté.”

  Baanríté. My empress. “Please don’t call me that,” Jane said. Her voice held an edge she’d never heard before, an edge she didn’t like at all. Softening it, she said, “Call me Ja—call me Seirsha.”

  “May I leave?”

  “You don’t need my permission,” Jane insisted.

  “Yes, Ba—of course.”

  Leima turned to leave, and Jane put her hands over her face to stifle a scream. She wanted to hit something, break something. Or maybe just run until she didn’t feel like anyone was chasing her. And then Leima turned back.

  “I didn’t want to be here either.”

  Jane looked up. “What?”

  Leima’s pale eyes darted away and then back. She licked her lips and took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to do this. My mother wanted me to come. I wanted to stay where I was.”

  “It isn’t safe here,” Jane murmured.

  “No, but it isn’t safe there either. No one is safe on Spyridon. Not really. What you said earlier…you were right. Spyridon hasn’t had a Baanrí for my entire life. There’s no one to stand up for us. There’s no one for us to believe in. I wasn’t safe, but at least I was with my family.”

  “And your mother made you come anyway?”

  Was that what mothers did?

  “No.” Leima shook her head, her face earnest now. “She didn’t make me. But she thought it was my destiny, and I didn’t want to let her down. And I’ve been angry with her every day since I boarded this ship. I didn’t understand how she could rather I be here, in this horrible place, than with her. But today I realized it wasn’t about Dhóchas at all. Maybe it wasn’t even about you.”

  “Then what was it?”

  Leima’s eyes darkened, and her lips curved. And Jane saw a hint of the power that had shone through her when they’d shown Jane the prophecy. “She thought I could help save the world.”

  “Save the world?” Jane wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “Leima, I can’t save the world.”

  “I understand how you feel that way. I don’t agree, but even if you’re right, maybe it can still be saved. And maybe I can help.”

  And this was where a lead
er would have said something inspiring. Something to make Leima feel like she could do anything for home and country. Or was it home and planet? Whatever the case, Jane was no leader. She had no words of wisdom to offer. And she had no inspiration to jump into this war.

  “Maybe,” she mumbled, and then she wondered how any of them thought she could be anything more than what she was.

  Leima’s face fell. “You think we’ll lose.”

  This time Jane did laugh, a tight, bitter release of air that pushed up her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “I don’t even know who we’re fighting with. There are five of us on a ship of over three hundred Nhélanei who are loyal to Lhókesh—to the death, I might add. And I haven’t heard of anyone who supports us on Spyridon. I mean, what’s the plan here? What’s—”

  “My apologies,” Leima cut in, wincing. “I don’t understand the English. I…can you speak in Inakhí?”

  English again. Jane pinched the bridge of her nose and wondered if her headache would ever ease.

  “Sorry. Shit.” Still English. She ground her teeth and dragged her mind back into Inakhí. “My apologies. I just said it seems like we are trying to save people who don’t want to be saved. It seems impossible, Leima.”

  Leima bit her lip and looked away. She stood stiff and formal in the center of the room, and Jane realized she probably wouldn’t sit without permission. Yet another thought that brought no comfort.

  And then Leima said, “Maybe we don’t have to save the world. Maybe we just have to convince enough people that the world is worth saving.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your mother couldn’t save the world. But she saved your life. And she saved mine.”

  Jane frowned. “I thought she died before you were born.”

  “She did. But she knew Lhókesh was coming when my mother was pregnant with me.”

  “She knew? Why didn’t she stop him?”

  “They all knew. It wasn’t a secret. He used standard jump routes and requested clearance for approach. They knew he was coming for a long time, but the council wouldn’t set up defenses. He’d never attacked a member of La’Fek before, and they didn’t believe he’d start with one of its founders. Your mother tried to convince them not to trust him, but they thought she was—”

  She stopped and dropped Jane’s gaze, her eyes blanching. And Jane knew what she’d been about to say. “They thought she was crazy.”

  Leima gave her an apologetic look. “Yes. They ignored her. So she sent my parents into the Other before Lhókesh arrived. Do you know about the Other?”

  Jane nodded. The Other was anything on Spyridon that wasn’t a land or water city. Mostly farms, forests, and mountains, unpopulated by law to maximize vegetation and decrease negative environmental impact. According to the language program, it was wild, dangerous, and uninhabitable.

  “How did they survive?”

  “They didn’t have a choice. The first night of the war, everyone in the Royal Tower was killed. Even if they’d lived through that somehow, I would have been taken from them as soon as I was born.”

  “Why?”

  “The Meijhé steal all the Nhélanei children and put them in places called centers. They’re tortured and brainwashed until they believe only what the Meijhé allow. That’s how Watchers are born. They’ve been told that Lhókesh is what’s best for Spyridon and that anyone who betrays him deserves to die. It’s not their fault, really. They’ve never had a chance to know anything else.”

  “You were raised in hiding,” Jane realized.

  “Yes. And we weren’t alone. There are ten times as many hiders as there are crew on this ship, maybe more. Some might even be your family. My mother always assumed the Baanrí smuggled out others. And none of them are loyal to Lhókesh. If we can find them, we can convince them to fight. It is not an impossible war, Baanríté.”

  Jane sighed. She doubted Leima had done the math. The current Nhélanei population was estimated at a billion. Of course there were other Nhélanei off planet. Expatriates who’d traveled before the war and then settled on other worlds, their wanderlust granting them the freedom that had been stolen from those on the surface. But they couldn’t be counted on to help. Which meant that at best, Jane was supposed to lead ten thousand untrained militia against nearly a billion fanatics. And that wasn’t even counting the Meijhé.

  But somehow Jane no longer felt like punching a hole through the wall. So she said, “Call me Seirsha. Please.”

  And Leima smiled. “Seirsha.”

  Endetar stood concealed, though he claimed the loyalty of most of the crew. He could hear nothing from the khénta’s quarters. She’d been closeted there with the fuel processor for over an hour, but they spoke in whispers. When Niyhól passed him shortly after the fuel processor left, a stack of paintings tucked under one arm, Endetar gritted his teeth.

  He had no doubt they’d met in secret, but he’d lost the khénta as she’d made her way to the meeting. He’d have to ask the agent about it and deal with the man’s increasingly volatile state. But he had little hope he’d find the information he sought.

  His agent was keeping secrets.

  It was a complication he couldn’t long afford. He was running out of time. They would reach Spyridon in less than a hundred cycles, Vorhódan in thirty. Endetar ran a hand over his scars as he made his way to his quarters. He’d never managed to infiltrate Vorhódan, despite repeated efforts. It would have been invaluable to have the largest producer of vinyatha in his corner, but the miners were tight lipped around strangers.

  Perhaps he could get the agent on the team that would shuttle to the planet. If not, the man was of little use to him.

  Face dampened with tears and sweat, Jane moaned in her sleep and fisted her hands in her sheets. But in the dream, her eyes were dry as her hands dug into the damp crush of leaves and soil. Her lungs filled with crisp morning air, and she tried to convince herself that it was a welcome change. The box rested in her lap, wooden, old, decorated with only a carving.

  Three flames.

  A rumble sounded to her left, the low growl of a sleek, white creature like nothing she’d ever seen. It stalked toward her, silent on the forest floor, until it stood before her. Then it nudged her cheek with its head, a silky slide of fur on skin, and stretched out at her side with a sigh. She ran her hand down its flank and pressed her lips together when they wanted to tremble.

  And she swore to herself she wouldn’t cry.

  A rustle sounded behind them, and the animal disappeared from view, his hidden flesh still warm and solid beneath her hand. When Eithné’s feet appeared before her, she looked up and then away. She couldn’t bear the pity in the old woman’s pale eyes.

  “We must move,” Eithné said. “It’s not safe for us to stay here.”

  Jane fought the urge to argue. When they left, Mikhél would be alone. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that, but they had no choice.

  Forcing in a breath, she handed the box to Eithné and said, “I don’t understand any of this.”

  Eithné ran her palm over the etching and then opened the lid to study the contents. “Neither do I.”

  The animal stood and popped into view. It nudged Eithné’s thigh as she held her hand out to Jane. “Come,” she said. “We’ll join the others.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “Where else? We’ll make our way to Habika.”

  PART III

  CHAPTER 23

  Seventy-eight days till arrival

  “Now the cities,” Eithné said.

  Jane closed her eyes and tried to think through the fire in her leg. “Lan’Vercai, Anhókei, Einara—”

  “Einara is in the southern continent. What else in the north?”

  She gritted her teeth. “Tsourmalhín—”

  “Tsourmalhín is in the south. Concentrate, Seirsha. The Baanrí should know this.”

  “Yeah, well, no other Baanrí has had to learn geography with a knife in her leg.”

>   “Inakhí,” Eithné said. “You’re strong enough in the language now to have no need for English.”

  Jane muttered, “Give me a fucking break.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Elestra—”

  “Is in the south. There’s one left. What are you missing?”

  Jane took a breath and tried to think, but the fire was building. Her body was trying to heal around the metal. “I need to take out the knife.”

  “You need to work through the pain.”

  “Like this? You think I’m going to leave a knife in my leg in the middle of a fight?”

  “You might not have a choice. Last city.”

  She growled and tensed against the pain, and that, of course, made it worse. “Give me a minute.”

  “Inakhí, Seirsha.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, just give me one goddamn minute! I’m only human!” As soon as the words left her mouth, Jane’s jaw snapped shut. But it was too late to take them back. Eithné’s face fell. Jane’s eyes burned, and she pushed the heels of her hands against her lids. “You know what I mean.”

  “My apologies,” Eithné said quietly. “I do not. You’re not human, Seirsha.”

  “It’s an expression.” Jane yanked the scalpel out of her thigh and threw it across the room. It landed with a clatter and a splash of blood, and she couldn’t seem to look away from that pattern of red on silver as her leg healed. When her eyes were dry, she made herself look at Eithné. “It means I have limits, just like everyone else. You want too much. I can’t do this.”

  Eithné held her gaze for one long breath and then nodded. And then she crossed to the room to clean up the blood.

  Jane sighed and knelt beside her. “Let me do that.” She cleaned the floor and the wall and then tossed the rags into the incinerator. “I’m sorry. I mean, my apologies,” she amended in Inakhí.

  “You’re under a lot of pressure. This is not an easy thing we’re asking of you.”

  Jane snorted before she could stop herself. “That’s the thing. You’re not asking. Asking implies I have a choice, and that’s not really true, is it?”