Spyridon (The Spyridon Trilogy Book 1)

by Lillian James

  They were a new army, a nightmare army.

  A child army.

  She woke with a great, wrenching gasp then coughed convulsively, as if she still inhaled the stench of the dream. Folding over, hands fisting into the coarse blanket, her lungs seized. She ripped off the mask and took deep, shuddering gulps of toxic air as the cría brushed against her arm.

  She surged toward the balcony on trembling legs. She needed to look outside, to see for herself that the fighting had been only in her dream.

  The stars were alien in the night sky, but the horizon had already become familiar. She shuddered and waited for the dream to pass. The cría wound around her ankles, and she pulled him to her chest and buried her face against his neck.

  When Mikhél stepped onto his balcony, she didn’t move. She felt his eyes on her, felt his heart race in time with hers. He hesitated, and she thought he would leave her alone. And she realized that was the last thing she wanted.

  She’d missed him.

  “Stay,” she said, and she looked up.

  His brow furrowed at the sight of her, but he lifted a hand to her cheek. Her breath caught when his thumb brushed against her skin, and all thoughts of the dream fled. “Seirsha,” he said. “Why are you crying?”

  She realized he was only wiping away tears, and her face went hot. She stepped back and swiped at the moisture with the heel of her hand. “I didn’t know I was.”

  “Was it a dream?”

  There was something strange about the way he asked, but she couldn’t pinpoint what. When she said yes, he took a deep breath. But he didn’t relax.

  “Tell me.”

  “I was in the middle of a war.”

  He turned and gripped the railing, his gaze on the night. The muscles in his back bunched under his scars, and she paused. He’d seen enough war in his lifetime to make her fears seem infinitely childish, and she wished she hadn’t spoken.

  But then he said, “Tell me the rest.”

  She pressed her lips together, but the words spilled out anyway. “There was blood everywhere. Children fighting. And there were…there were bodies. They were burning.”

  Her gorge rose, and she swallowed over quick, shallow breaths. She had to remind herself that the faint stench on the night air was only the odor of the mines.

  “It was a vision,” he said, his voice rough.

  “Yes.” She shuddered again. “But I don’t know if it was past or future.”

  “Does it matter?”

  She turned to him, and the rage she hadn’t even known was in her boiled out of control. “Of course it matters. It all matters, doesn’t it? Every vision matters, but most of them are lost because I didn’t even know I was having them until I saw the paintings. I’m only just now figuring out the difference between vision and dream, but I still don’t know what they mean. I don’t remember them half the time. I don’t know when they’ll happen—or if they already have.” She stopped, her chest heaving against the cría. “I don’t know how to prevent what I’ve seen.”

  He faced her, his eyes haunted, and said, “You can’t prevent everything.”

  She knew he spoke from experience, and she told herself to stop talking. But she couldn’t. “People are going to die, and I can’t do anything to stop it.”

  His jaw clenched, and he said, “That’s right. People will die, and you won’t be able to save them. You can’t claim responsibility for every life in this war, Seirsha. There are some you’ll have to let go.”

  “Can you?”

  He paused, and then his voice softened. “Maybe you’re not supposed to prevent what you’ve seen. If you know what’s going to happen, you’ll know how to prepare for it. Maybe that’s all you need to know.”

  “Even if that’s true, I still have to remember what I’ve seen.”

  “Or to recognize it when it’s happening. Your instincts are strong. It might be easier to do than you realize.”

  The suggestion rang true, and her shoulders began to loosen. She let out a breath and tried for a smile. She guessed by his face that she didn’t quite make it, but still she said, “My gratitude, Endeté.”

  He twitched at the title, and then he shook his head. “I’m not your commander. When we’re alone, you have no need to refer to me as such.”

  “My apologies, Ende—Mikhél.”

  His eyes lingered on hers, and she could have sworn their color deepened. She became acutely aware of the short, filmy nightgown floating around her thighs. Of the weight of her hair, loose and tousled, tumbling down her back in a way it never did during the day. Of the warm night air on her bare legs.

  “Seirsha.”

  His voice moved like velvet over her skin, and her breath hitched and shallowed. She felt as if time suspended, as if there were no barrier between them.

  As if he might touch her again.

  But his hands flexed, and he looked away. “Bring the cría with you tomorrow.”

  She shook her head to clear her thoughts and wished she could as easily dispel the heat beneath her skin. “Are you sure? Someone will see him.”

  “You’re a khénta. They’ll assume he’s to help with your next mission.”

  She glanced down at the creature and smiled. “My gratitude, Mikhél.”

  She thought he might say something else, but he turned and walked into his room. It was only after his door closed that she wondered how he’d happened to wake at exactly the same time as she.

  Fifty-two days till arrival

  She named the cría Kai, the Inakhí word for ghost. He watched her as she packed, his long, green tongue sliding over his fur in smooth strokes. He’d already grown since they’d found him and would likely triple in size before they reached Spyridon. He would crowd her quarters, but she didn’t care. She wanted something of Vorhódan with her when she left. She’d been safe here in a way she hadn’t been elsewhere in a very long time.

  In a way she could never be on Dhóchas.

  When she opened the door to walk to the shuttle, she found Arhúd waiting on the other side, his wide, dirty hands wringing an old rag to tatters.

  “Baanríté, my apologies for intruding on your time.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  She smiled as she let him in, and he paused. “You look just like her.”

  She stopped. “You mean my mother. You’ve seen her?”

  “An image. Mikhél smuggled it on his link once. She would have been proud of you.”

  Her eyes pricked, and she blinked away the moisture. “That is kind of you.”

  His gaze darted around the room. Over her shoulder, at the bags on her bed. Then he glanced at his hands, flushed, and shoved the rag behind his back, as if he’d just realized he held it. He looked at her again, swallowed, and then knelt at her feet.

  “I would swear my allegiance to you, Baanrí Seirsha.”

  She stepped back and shook her head. “Arhúd, you don’t need to do that.”

  “Please.” He looked at her again, and the calm of his gaze silenced her protest. “Every Nhélanei who follows my orders does so because I do not yet fight for their freedom, but I bear this shame gladly because our cause outweighs my honor. And you are our cause, Baanríté. You are our freedom. You are our future. The moment you require it, I will trade tool for weapon and fight beside you. I pledge this to you as I pledge you my loyalty in all things.”

  Her heart began to pound, and she looked away, miserably aware of how pale her eyes must have gone. Kai growled at her side, and she murmured to him through a throat gone dry even as she wished she too could disappear.

  Arhúd stood slowly, his palms up. “I meant you no insult.”

  “I know that. Of course I know that.”

  He hesitated and then turned as if to leave. Then he pivoted on his heel and said on a rush of air, “There’s something else I’d like to say. With your permission.”

  “You don’t need my permission.”

  He nodded, but his face told her he didn’t a
gree. “You don’t have to do this alone. Niyhól Mikhél is a good man. I vow that you can trust him. He’s nothing like his father.”

  Jane frowned. “Who is his father?”

  Arhúd’s skin whitened beneath its perpetual burn. “You don’t know.”

  Her heart sank, and she closed her eyes. When she opened them, she didn’t bother to hide their hue.

  Mikhél had kept more secrets from her. And she realized now that he probably always would.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “My apologies, Baanríté,” Arhúd said weakly. “It was not my place. I…it was not my place.”

  And then he left. She stared at the door for a long time after he’d gone.

  As the miners loaded the transport, Jane’s gaze strayed to the desert. Though her senses wanted to linger on Mikhél, she pushed them out toward the lakes instead. She closed her eyes to savor the feel of the lens shimmying through the cool cavern air. She committed the sensation to memory and told herself she didn’t wish she was there again, filled with music and wonder.

  What was Mikhél hiding?

  The question was on her mind as she boarded the shuttle and secured Kai, as she strapped herself in. It was on her mind as she watched Arhúd’s face disappear behind the closing doors. As Mikhél pulled away from the mines of Vorhódan, she considered him through her sedfai and wondered. But she couldn’t bring herself to ask.

  She told herself she’d ask before they reached Dhóchas, but time seemed to race, and the giant ship loomed before them the moment they cleared Vorhódan’s atmosphere. Before she knew it, they were in one of the landing bays on Dhóchas, and she hadn’t asked him about his father. She didn’t understand why until she got to her room, but the answer was simple. She was afraid of what he would say.

  And she was damned tired of being afraid.

  Mikhél could feel her in her quarters, statue still in the center of her room. She’d been silent since they’d left Vorhódan, watching him in that quiet way of hers that always made him want to know her thoughts. But, of course, he hadn’t asked.

  He had to find ways to distance himself.

  When she left her room, he let out a breath and turned to unpack. She’d take Kai up to the growth deck for food, or she’d go visit Eithné or resume her training. At the moment he didn’t care much where she went, as long as it was out of his sense range.

  But then she came to his door and hesitated in the hall. He thought of the last time she’d stood there. Had it been only a week ago?

  If he hadn’t opened the door then, would things be different now?

  Whatever the case, it was too late to go back. But he could make a change moving forward. He kept his back to the door as he called it open, and when it closed her in, he said only, “Khénta.”

  “Who is your father?”

  Everything inside him went still. He couldn’t look at her, could barely draw in a breath. He’d had so many opportunities to tell her before now, and he cursed himself for ignoring them. He’d told himself he couldn’t protect her without her trust, but Vorhódan had proven his motives to be far more selfish.

  Something soft slid against his skin, and he realized he still held a shirt in his hands. He focused on that shirt: the texture, weight, color. Black and gray, the colors of command within the Meijhé hierarchy. The brand of his betrayal of the Nhélanei race.

  He forced himself to meet her eyes, to hear her heart, to face the way her fingers twisted together. And he braced himself.

  “Lhókesh.”

  CHAPTER 27

  “No.” Jane pressed her fingertips to her temple, but her brain refused to process what he’d said. All she could see was the exhibit in the museum downstairs, a cadre of Meijhé statues that were humanoid and yet utterly alien.

  “No,” she said again. “That’s not right. You’re Nhélanei. You’re a slave.”

  He stiffened, and her voice trailed away. And everything finally made perfect, horrible sense.

  “You’re not a slave. He put you in charge of the slaves. He gave you Vorhódan, this ship. You were never a slave, were you?”

  “No.”

  Her head went light. He stepped forward, and she flinched and backed away on weakened knees. He stopped, his hands up, but something in his eyes seemed to die.

  She steeled herself against that.

  “It was staring me in the face this whole time. Your height, your coloring. Your eyes never change. I thought it was because you control your emotions so well, but it’s just that they can’t change. Because you’re not Nhélanei. You’re Meijhé.”

  “Seirsha—”

  “Don’t. Don’t say anything. No more lies, no more stories. I can’t trust anything you say.” She started for the door and then stopped and turned back. “Did you help him kill my parents?”

  He looked as if she’d slapped him. “No.”

  She couldn’t look away from his face. She’d never seen him like that: open, bared. Honest, she thought, and pulled bitterness around her like a cloak.

  As she walked out, she told herself the burn behind her eyes had nothing to do with the hurt he couldn’t hide.

  She couldn’t escape him. No matter where she went, she felt him, still and silent in his room. She told herself she’d done nothing wrong, but she couldn’t shake loose the fist around her heart.

  She found Eithné in the medical center, discussing patients with her assistant. She strode silently past the pair, barely mollified when the alna followed her.

  She walked until the halls went dark and then slipped into a room at random. A moment later Eithné stepped in and called closed the door.

  “You have need of me?”

  Jane stared at her, almost too disillusioned to ask the question. The litany of secrets had become more wearisome than mysterious, the demand of truth more obligation than self-righteous crusade.

  All she wanted was someone to trust.

  She asked, “Did you know about Mikhél’s father?”

  “What about him?”

  “Please don’t play dumb. Do you know who he is?”

  Eithné’s lips pursed, but her voice was even. “Of course I do. It is not a secret.”

  Jane’s mouth fell open, and then she gritted her teeth and tried for a calming breath. “It was a secret from me. When were you going to tell me?”

  “It was not my place to tell you, Seirsha.”

  “And just when would it have been my place to know?”

  “The moment Mikhél chose to tell you. So…now, I suppose.”

  Jane threw up her hands. “Do you hear yourself when you say these things? How could you do this?”

  “Seirsha, what is it you feel I have done? I have not lied to you. I have never told you he was something he’s not.”

  “But you didn’t tell me the whole truth. Again,” she added, and Eithné looked away. “Can you honestly say it was an accident? That it somehow just never occurred to you?”

  Eithné was silent for a moment. Then, “No. But it—”

  “Let me guess,” Jane cut in, holding up a hand. “It was for my own good.”

  “A valid reason, despite your derisive tone.”

  “Well, it’s starting to sound a little tired, Eithné.” Jane stopped and paced away. She stared at the broken viewing screen and wished the room held a window instead. “I thought we were supposed to be a team. But every time I start to feel like I belong here, I find out some new secret that everyone knew but me.”

  She turned to see that her mentor’s eyes had paled. Eithné sighed and called up a chair.

  “That is true, child. I can’t argue with it, and I can’t do anything to change it. We’re fighting a war we don’t know how to win, and we’re making the best decisions we can. Some of them are guaranteed to be wrong. Some of them will cause us pain. But the only way to avoid that is not to fight. And I’m not willing to give up, not even for you.”

  “I’m not asking you to give up.” Jane cro
ssed the room and took the seat Eithné had called for her. She touched the older woman’s hand. “I’m asking you to stop locking me out.”

  “Is that really what you want? Since we talked about your choices, you’ve cut off all mention of your role in this war. You can’t choose which secrets you’re ready to know.”

  Jane lifted a brow. “But you can?”

  Eithné let out a breath. “I was only trying to protect you. And Mikhél offers more protection than anyone else on this ship, perhaps more than anyone else on Spyridon, but he can’t help you if you don’t trust him. He would never hurt you, Seirsha.”

  Jane looked down and bit her lip. She thought again of his face as she’d walked out of his room, and she suddenly wanted to cry. “I know.”

  “Then why were you angry? If you don’t feel that his bloodline puts you in danger, then what is it?”

  “I…” Jane sighed and then forced herself to meet Eithné’s gaze. “I never guessed. I feel like I should have sensed it somehow, but I had no clue. I could see that he was different, but I still trusted him right from the start. If I can feel this way about the one person on this ship who has the most reason to see me dead, then what am I going to do when we get to Spyridon? When every person I meet could be a spy, and I have no idea who to trust?”

  “Seirsha.” Eithné shook her head, her face incredulous. “Why would you ever think Mikhél has reason to see you dead? Because of who his father is? If Lhókesh was your father, would you fight to help him or to stop him?”

  The question echoed off the cold, metal walls. Jane managed, “I’d fight to stop him.”

  “Of course you would. And that’s what Mikhél is doing. That’s what you sensed from the beginning. Your instincts are sound, child. And I know your ignorance of our world frustrates you, but it gives you an advantage none of us has. You see this war through fresh eyes. And you see each person in it without the bias of history. Take care with that. It is a gift that all too quickly falls prey to time.”

  Jane pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. She’d judged him for something that was completely out of his control. Jane Doe, reject, outcast, and the victim of unjust persecution for most of her life, had returned the favor to the person who least deserved it.