Spyridon (The Spyridon Trilogy Book 1)

by Lillian James

  He still longed for Bhénen. He was not so foolish as to hope that vengeance would heal anguish. But now he welcomed the grief. It let him know he was still alive, and life was necessary for what he had planned. After he was done, he could join Bhénen and leave the misery of this life behind.

  If a small voice whispered that Bhénen would not want that, he could ignore it. This was the path he’d chosen, and he would embrace it.

  Some distance from the lifts, he left the lighted path and moved into darkness, the trees blocking the light from above. He moved through the shadows of the tikka trees until he reached the rendezvous point.

  The Watcher arrived shortly after. He called himself Lagun, but Valaer had looked him up in the crew’s manifest after their last meeting. His registered name was Kest Rhíd Thénet. He was a fuel processor, his rank too low for even a title. The name Lagun must have been given to him by the Watchers. It meant steady.

  He seemed surprised to find Valaer already there but not displeased. He asked, “Do you know the truth of him?”

  Valaer’s gut twisted, but he kept his voice even as he gave the traditional Watchers’ response. “He is Myrna’s gift to Spyridon.”

  Lagun inclined his head in respect of the words, and then he got down to business. “You have more information?”

  “They can’t be trusted. They have a connection—an attraction of sorts. She makes him weak. Her conviction is not what it should be. Too much time on other worlds.”

  “It’s the danger of the position of khénta. You’re certain you can get close enough?”

  Valaer tensed. This was what he’d been working toward. He could make no misstep. “He would best me in hand-to-hand combat. I need a weapon.”

  “The Nhélanei are not provided with activated weapons. This is true even for the Watchers.”

  It was a lie. They both knew it, but caution reigned in such discussions. And perhaps, Valaer thought, so did payment. “I have vinyatha.”

  “This is a vinyatha processing ship. I have only to enter a storage facility to find the ore.”

  “Refined?”

  “How do you have access to such a thing?”

  Valaer shook his head. He hadn’t told the Watchers about his gift. It was his only advantage.

  That and the fact that he worked so closely with Mikhél.

  “You don’t need to know how I got it. All you need to know is that I have it and that I can get more.”

  Lagun looked off into the distance. Just when Valaer was sure he’d decline, he nodded. “It will be done.”

  “When? We arrive in three weeks.”

  “It takes time. Steps must be taken to ensure it isn’t traced back to us. We don’t have Endet Lhókesh’s sanction for the elimination. It would be better if it looked like an accident.”

  “He’s too smart for that. Better that it happens without witnesses. The Meijhé will assume it was a Nhélanei, non-Watchers will be punished, and the Order of Myrna will be safe. Give me a weapon.” Valaer stopped, softened his voice. “If it is Endetar’s will—”

  “It is. The weapon will be available within the week. When it can be done safely, it will be delivered to your room.”

  Valaer went carefully still. “I thought Endetar might give it to me.”

  “Endetar wishes distance from this action. If you would meet with him again, you must first show success. Kill Niyhól Mikhél.”

  With that he was gone. Valaer stood still, his uniform damp with sweat. He was going to succeed. He would have a weapon soon, and then it was just a matter of time before he caught his quarry unaware.

  Bhénen would finally have justice.

  The lift doors opened, and Valaer dropped to the floor. When he saw Seirsha through the trees, he cursed under his breath. He stood, a lie ready on his lips, but she didn’t look his way. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought she didn’t sense him. Niyhól emerged from the same lifts a moment later and strode toward her.

  Valaer took a step closer and then another, but even when he was close enough to hear their words, they remained oblivious to him. They were too wrapped up in each other, he thought, to notice anyone else.

  They took their matehood for granted. Keeping their distance, reveling in their independence. They were squandering a gift that could be lost without warning, and that, he decided, was proof enough that the gift was undeserved.

  His fists clenched at his sides, but he shook his head. He had to leave. He had work to do, plans to perfect. He had no time to waste on their petty problems.

  But then they started talking, and he was drawn in despite himself.

  Jane paced after Kai, her movements rushed and jerky. She rolled her shoulders and then let down her hair, but her back remained stubbornly tight. Her training was done for the day, but she couldn’t seem to relax.

  Every time she blinked, she saw the boy, and she didn’t know how much longer she could hold the memory at bay.

  When she sensed Mikhél behind her, she said, “I wish you’d let it go.”

  She could feel his conflict. He wanted to do as she asked. She’d learned over the last few weeks that, in his own way, he respected privacy as much as Eithné. Or perhaps it was more that he respected the need for secrets.

  But either way, until she had better control of the nexus, her pain was his pain. And holding back the memory hurt.

  “You know I’ll find out eventually,” he told her. “If it’s important enough to hide, then we’ll dream about it. You won’t be able to control it in sleep.”

  That’s exactly what she was afraid of. Jane touched the scar that ran along her wrist and wondered how much heinousness he could accept of her.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to dream about it. I don’t want to relive it at all.”

  “You’re already reliving it every day. I know you started dreaming about it a week ago.” Her gaze shot to his. She hadn’t known he’d seen the start of those dreams. “It’s happened at least three times since then. You’ve managed to wake up each time, but you’re hurting yourself when you do that. You’re hurting yourself now just trying to block the thoughts from me.”

  “Please, let it go.”

  “If you tell me, it might help you to heal.”

  “It won’t.”

  But her resolve was weakening, and she knew he could feel it. He softened his voice, a gentleness she doubted anyone else on this ship had witnessed. “Tell me about the boy in the street, Seirsha. What happened to him?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would hold in the truth, and then she saw it happen all over again.

  And the words just spilled from her.

  “I killed him.”

  Something loosened—whether in her or in him, she couldn’t tell. He led her to an alcove closeted in trees. Branches draped with flowering vines canopied a curving, filigreed bench. All around them the lhóramels danced. Insects with translucent wings the span of Mikhél’s hand, they fluttered above the walkway in hues of violet and amber, casting colorful shadows along the glass.

  He sat on the bench and then looked at her patiently. When she let out a breath and sat beside him, he said, “It was an accident.”

  “Of course. But it was foreseeable, and that makes it unforgiveable.”

  “Tell me.”

  She hesitated, but further delay was pointless. He was right; he’d find out eventually. And she had no right to hide in the safety of dreams. She deserved the penance of voicing her sins.

  “It was three and a half years ago. I was still going outside then. I had decided to see a doctor who…who helps women have children.”

  She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, her face growing warm. And though she told herself she owed him no explanation, she gave one anyway.

  “All I ever wanted was a family. When I was a child, I thought maybe one would find me. Later I thought I could have one of my own. But after the boy…I realized I could never have children. Even if
they weren’t afraid of me, everyone else would be. What kind of life would they have? It never would have worked.”

  She wondered if he would offer platitudes or false reassurances. But he said, “No, it wouldn’t have,” and she realized she should have known better. Somehow his honesty gave her the strength to continue.

  “I was on the sidewalk. He was standing next to me, holding his mother’s hand. The valfaen wasn’t as strong then as when you found me. But it had been getting stronger, and I knew that. I should have known what would happen.”

  “He ran away,” Mikhél guessed.

  “Not at first. He smiled at me.” She could still see it. The sweetness of the smile, the guileless blue eyes. “And I thought…I was so stupid. I thought it was changing. That maybe he wouldn’t be afraid of me. That maybe, somehow, I was getting better. Then someone pushed me into him. I grabbed his arm to keep him from falling. And it happened.”

  “The valfaen.”

  “He was happy one moment and terrified the next. It was the strongest I ever saw it.” And that made it so much worse. The valfaen, she now knew, was the strongest in people with a greater capacity for empathy. “He ran out into traffic. His mother was watching the light; she didn’t see him until it was too late. And a truck came from out of nowhere, and…”

  She couldn’t finish it, but even without the words, the image flashed through her mind. The old red truck, paint rusted out. Country music, jarringly out of place in Midtown Atlanta. The shock on the driver’s face as the child ran in front of him.

  The horrifying thud of metal hitting flesh.

  The screams of the mother and Jane, blending together to create one terrible sound of grief and fear.

  “I ran home. I couldn’t let it happen again. Once I was inside…” She ran her fingers over the scar. “I couldn’t let it happen again.”

  He tensed beside her, and she knew he’d guessed what had happened next. She could stop talking now and consider the story finished. But she’d come this far.

  She took a deep breath and pulled up her sleeve. She showed him the scar, let him see her memory of taking a knife into her bathroom. “I could make only one cut before I passed out. Hours later I woke up, weak but alive. And I decided it was a sign.

  “I think if I’d been human, I would have died. The cut was deep enough, and I didn’t try to stop the bleeding. But our anatomy is different. I didn’t understand why I’d survived, but the why didn’t really matter. All I knew was I couldn’t risk hurting anyone else. I had to lock myself away, so I did.”

  “Until we took you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Seirsha, it wasn’t your fault.”

  “I knew people feared me. I should have known it was a danger. Common sense should have told me it would happen sooner or later.”

  Mikhél lifted a brow. “You should have known that someone would have run to their death to escape you? Had you ever encountered fear of that depth before the boy?”

  “No, but—”

  “Is fear not an emotion designed to ensure self-preservation? Should you have expected it to lead instead to danger?”

  “You’re simplifying—”

  “Seirsha,” he said quietly, and her voice trailed away. “What would you say to me if our positions were reversed?”

  She’d spent the last two weeks seeing his most horrible acts and absolving him every time, because his intentions were as true as his heart. And that, she realized, was where they differed.

  “It’s not the same. I wasn’t trying to help anyone but myself.”

  “But you weren’t trying to hurt anyone either. You’re not perfect, Seirsha. You’re extraordinary, but you’re not perfect. It’s time to let yourself be flawed.”

  From behind the tikkas, Valaer watched Mikhél walk away. Seirsha stayed on the bench, clearly lost in thought. When he heard the lift doors close behind the Endet, he backed away toward another set of lifts. Though she still didn’t seem to sense him, he kept his movements as quiet as possible. He didn’t want to explain his presence here any more than he wanted to explain why he’d listened to their conversation.

  When the lift doors closed around him, he stood silent for a moment. Then he called out the number for the level holding the language program.

  Jane sighed and let her sedfai unfurl into the space around her. The growth deck was a marvel to her every time she came here. Trees with graceful, draping boughs arched protectively over bushes blanketed in blossoms. Vines crawled over trunks and dripped from branches. The intoxicating scent of flowers mingled with the tropical bouquet of fruit, the subtle hint of vegetables, and the rich, heady aroma of soil.

  Downy blankets of moss rippled and swayed in the still, dry air. Near her feet thin tendrils of the stuff drifted out and delicately touched the cold glass of the walkway and then pulled back, as if the temperature was too cool for their liking. Leaves strained toward the light with disconcertingly observable movements that made it seem as if they had conscious thought, though she knew better.

  Kai stalked toward her, visible now that he was done hunting. More than twice as large as he’d been the day she’d found him, his haunches reached her thighs. His fur had grown sleeker, the fluffy undergrowth of babyhood nearly gone. His bold blue eyes stayed on hers as he climbed onto the bench. Then he stretched out and laid his head on her lap, an odd mixture of the feline and the canine combining in a breathtaking display of grace and power.

  She ran her fingers through his pelt and thought about what Mikhél had said. He’d surprised her when he’d told her to accept her flaws. She’d never thought of herself as a perfectionist, but she wondered if he was right. If she was somehow unreasonable in blaming herself for what had happened.

  Or perhaps, she thought, his point wasn’t that she didn’t deserve the blame. Perhaps it was that she could claim the mistake and still forgive herself for making it.

  Even as part of her wanted to believe such a thing was possible, the rest of her knew it would never be so easy. She’d taken a life through carelessness. She had no idea how to forgive such a thing. All she could do was hope to learn from it.

  When her stomach rumbled, she pressed a hand to it. She hadn’t had an appetite in days. From the moment this memory had begun to emerge, she’d spent so much energy forcing it back she hadn’t had any left over for anything else. At least now that Mikhél knew what she’d been trying to hide, she could let go of some of the tension.

  She walked to a set of lifts to her left, avoiding the ones Mikhél had used out of habit more than conscious thought.

  “Keirené.”

  The deep rumble of the male voice sounded from behind her, and she jolted and turned, stunned to find someone there when she’d been so certain she was alone. But she sensed him now as easily as she sensed everything else, and she wondered if she’d just been so caught up in her own thoughts she’d somehow missed his presence.

  “My greetings,” she replied.

  He was as tall as Valaer, with skin like night and a large, mottled scar rippling down the side of his face. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d seen him before.

  “You joined the ship after we left Spyridon, yes?” He shifted closer. “I haven’t spoken to you before. I would have, if you’d been with us at departure.”

  “Yes,” she replied cautiously. “I’m a khénta. I was scouting the destination planet.”

  He nodded slowly, his golden eyes fixed on hers. Then he took a step toward her, head cocked as if searching for something. She realized he’d spoken first. It was an impertinence no one else dared—except, of course, for Eithné and Leima. The hair on her arms stood on end, and nerves slid icily through her stomach.

  “You remind me of someone,” he said. “A woman I saw once, when I was a child.”

  She could think of nothing to say in response, her pulse quickening as he studied her with an intensity that bordered on rudeness. His eyes roamed her face, her hair, took in her small sta
ture and slender, firmly muscled limbs. Under his scrutiny her hands wanted to fist, and she considered sending her thoughts to Mikhél.

  Then his gaze came to rest on hers, sharp and intent, and she feared he could see all of her secrets.

  “You train with Endet Niyhól, yes? I’ve seen you on the generator level.”

  A tingle moved over her as she remembered him. He’d been working on a generator the day Mikhél had taught her how to access her sedfai. He hadn’t been so bold then, she thought, in the presence of the Endet.

  But Mikhél wasn’t the only one of high rank on this ship. While her status as khénta didn’t grant her any type of practical authority over the crew, it did command respect. She drew her shoulders back, firmed her stance. Though he towered over her, she must have projected an impression of power, because he stepped back a pace.

  “I train with him,” she answered, her cover story falling smoothly from her lips. “My next posting is a dangerous planet, and I have need of skills of self-defense. He’s the most qualified aboard the ship to provide my training. It is at the will of Endet Lhókesh.”

  The moment she said that name, she knew it was a mistake. Valaer had told her once that no one used it. It surely wasn’t a name khénta would drop so casually.

  The man moved closer one step and then two. At her side Kai trembled, camouflaged, hackles raised. She kept her hand on his head to calm him, immensely grateful for his presence.

  “Do you know the truth of him?”

  Baffled enough by the question to forget her fear, Jane frowned. “Who? Endet Niyhól?”

  Or did he mean Lhókesh?

  But he didn’t answer. He just studied her, his mesmerizing eyes beautiful and piercing. Then he backed away to a respectful distance and inclined his head to a degree appropriate for crew member to khénta.

  “My apologies, khénta. I have work. My gratitude for your time.” And with that he left, and the bizarre encounter was over.