Spyridon (The Spyridon Trilogy Book 1)

by Lillian James

  His jaw began to tick. “She asked for help. Just one word, and then this.”

  “No one could get close enough to do that—”

  “Unless she trusted him.”

  Leima looked up. “Him?”

  “She saw his reflection in the window,” Mikhél said, “just before he cut her. His face was distorted, but she could see his eyes. Eithné, he had blue eyes.”

  Eithné’s heart sank, but she told herself he was wrong. “Many crew members have blue eyes. Even Delthan has blue eyes. You cannot condemn the man upon eye color alone.”

  “Who else could get close enough to her to do this?”

  “There has to be another explanation. He wouldn’t do this, Mikhél. He’s been hurting, but he wouldn’t do this.”

  “You mean Valaer.” It was Leima who spoke, her hand holding Seirsha’s so tightly her knuckles had turned white.

  Mikhél’s face twisted and darkened. “She spoke to him just before the explosion,” he said. “She was already upset, but he made it worse. Then she left him and went to the entertainment level. She’d just arrived, and then this. Either she ran into the person who did this or he followed her there.”

  He stilled as Valaer approached the room. When a tone signaled an entry request, he looked at Eithné. She nodded and stood—and told herself this action would exonerate her friend.

  “Has something happened?” Valaer deactivated his bracelet as the doors closed behind him, and then he saw Seirsha and paled. “The Baanrí—”

  “Enough.” In one fluid motion, Mikhél threw Valaer to the floor and pressed his blade against the older man’s throat. “I’ve had enough of your lies. Speak another and you’ll die.”

  Silent, Valaer lifted his hands slowly in supplication and then held one out to Eithné.

  She pressed her fingers to her mouth as her lips wanted to tremble, and she told herself again that Mikhél was wrong. As she touched Valaer, a thousand memories of their friendship flashed through her mind. And she wondered how it had come to this. She’d never have guessed it would.

  When she made contact, Mikhél spoke. “Did you do this to Seirsha?”

  And blankness flashed through her mind.

  She frowned. “He’s confused. He doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Someone tried to kill her. They cut her throat.”

  When the image of a knife, wickedly long and jagged, shot through Valaer’s subconscious, Eithné’s hand shook.

  “He has a knife,” she whispered. “Mikhél, he got a knife from the Watchers.”

  “The Watchers.” Mikhél shook his head. “They murdered Bhénen. Why would you help them?”

  “I’m not helping them,” Valaer bit out. “I infiltrated them. I’m going to…” He looked at Seirsha again and swallowed. “I was going to kill the man they call Endetar.”

  “How did you convince them to give you a weapon? Did you tell them about her?”

  “No!” Valaer looked at Eithné. “I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t.”

  “No,” she agreed softly, and she pulled away. She’d seen enough. She pressed her hand to a stomach she thought might never settle and ached for the man she’d once called friend. “You promised to kill Mikhél instead.”

  Mikhél’s jaw went slack. “The Watchers want me dead. Why?”

  “They don’t trust you. They don’t trust anyone, but they especially don’t trust you.”

  “But I’m his son. If they don’t know about Seirsha, then why don’t they trust me?”

  Valaer gave a humorless smile. “Your father is Lhókesh, true. But your mother was Nhélanei. No matter where you turn, Endeté, you have no ally.”

  There was blood on the wall outside Valaer’s rooms. He’d been summoned to the generator level from the wall station nearby, though all the other summonses had originated near the generators themselves. They hadn’t found the detonator yet, but Mikhél had little doubt it was stashed in or near Valaer’s quarters. Eithné had confirmed Valaer’s innocence in the attack, but someone was trying to make him look guilty.

  The palletar’s own actions had certainly helped in that regard.

  Mikhél charged Valaer with the murders, and he added Seirsha to the list of victims. As he watched Bavoel take away the man he’d trusted with Seirsha’s life, he wondered how much time he’d bought them. He had to find her assailant before they arrived on Spyridon, or their mission would fail before it started.

  When he returned to his rooms, he found Eithné alone with Seirsha.

  “I sent Leima for medical supplies,” she said softly. “I need to—” Her voice broke. “My deepest apologies, Endeté. I recommended him for this mission. It’s my fault that this happened.”

  “Apologies are not necessary. He was your friend. You had no reason not to trust him.”

  She pressed her lips together and nodded. “He didn’t do this to her.”

  “I know. I trust your judgment on that. It’s the only reason he’s still alive.”

  She turned back to Seirsha, and he realized with a pang how much older Eithné looked. This trip had aged her in a way that life in Lhókesh’s Spyridon had failed to do.

  “I’ve known him since before the war,” she said. “He and Bhénen were students of my mate, Cyd. He loved them so. They were like the sons we were never able to have. When he didn’t come home after the war, I knew he was gone. Valaer and Bhénen got me through it. But when Bhénen died…”

  She shrugged, and her eyes spilled over. He crossed to stand next to her and hesitated. Then he realized she was almost as alone as he, and he put a hand on her shoulder.

  She started and looked up, and her eyes were horribly pale. But she gave him a wobbly smile and patted his hand.

  He asked, “What did he teach?”

  “Art,” she said, and then she gave a watery laugh. “He always hated it when I said that. He said I was simplifying a complicated subject. He taught intergalactic styles of imagery. Although paint was always his favorite, ancient as it is. Leima’s father, Lhúk, studied with them too. He and Valaer were artists before the war. Did you know?”

  Mikhél sat and ran a hand over Seirsha’s hair. They needed to move her, and soon. “No. Was Bhénen an artist too?”

  “No, he was a doctor.” She looked down at her hands and laughed again, a self-deprecating sound that it hurt to hear. “A real doctor, with training and years of experience. How did it come to this, Mikhél? We weren’t these people. I never wanted to be this person.”

  He had no answer for her, and at first he wasn’t going to respond. And then he found himself saying, “She was trying to save me.”

  Eithné frowned through her tears. “What?”

  “That’s why she was there. We dreamed about my death, and she thought she could find a way to prevent it.”

  Eithné sniffed and dabbed at her cheeks. “Always fighting for everyone else. It’s a good quality for a Baanrí to have.”

  “And a difficult one. She can’t save everyone.”

  “No,” she murmured, her eyes on him. “She can’t.”

  “We have to move her. If she stays here, someone will sense her.”

  “You’re right. But I don’t know where to take her.”

  “I found something on the ship’s layout that might help.”

  He called up the map on his link and honed in on the storage level two floors below residential. After a moment Eithné cocked her head and pointed to a set of rooms near the hull.

  “Is that plumbing?”

  “Strange, isn’t it? The room is directly below the royal quarters. You can get to it from the maintenance shaft.”

  She frowned. “It looks like that’s the only way to get to it. There are no doors to the hall. It seems like a safe place to take Seirsha, but I don’t understand why it’s there in the first place.”

  “I think Seirsha’s parents had a safe room installed for the royal family. There might be a door to the hall, but it wouldn’t be mar
ked.”

  “How do we get her there? We can’t wait for her to wake up and climb down the ladder herself. It’s too narrow for you to carry her.”

  He almost smiled. “I’ll take care of transport.”

  It was indeed a safe room, fully furnished and once fit for a Baanrí. Now it was covered in decades of dust, the colors dulled by time and abandonment.

  When Mikhél arrived, Seirsha draped sleeping over his arms, he could only stand and stare.

  The walls were like ivory, gleaming where the dust had been stirred by his arrival. Recessed lights glowed gently on furnishings made of old, faded wood and opalescent stone. A vanity graced one wall, the lines fluid and unmistakably feminine. The bed was as large as his and covered with what looked to be old Einaran silk, the wide window draped with it. Royal trappings were everywhere, once decadent, now decaying. But it wasn’t the neglected luxury that caught his attention.

  It was the painting over the bed.

  It was a landscape, almost certainly a place on Spyridon, but he didn’t know where. He’d never been able to recognize the island. It was night but not dark. There were huge golden clusters of stars in the sky, accented by a trio of red moons. A single blue-black tree stood in a field of greens, blues, and violets. And the light from the stars illuminated everything in the picture in a kaleidoscope of colors, so the tips of the exotic flowers glowed with crimson, gold, and umber.

  He’d dreamt of Seirsha in this place. In his dream she’d been there in the light of day, but he knew this painting showed her future.

  As he sensed Eithné and Leima draw close, Kai on their heels, he moved toward the painting until he could see the signature in the corner.

  Three simple flames, just like the others.

  Had Seirsha been right? Was this the clue they’d been missing?

  While Mikhél held Seirsha close, Eithné and Leima stripped the bed and then prepared to clean the Baanrí. He could hear them murmuring to one another, but they might as well have been light years away. Seirsha’s eyes shifted under their lids as if she dreamed, and he closed his own to try to see what she saw. For the moment it was just color, a collage of different shapes and shades forming, shifting, and reforming.

  He opened his eyes and studied her face, its golden undertones waxy under the strain of healing and framed with her own drying blood, and he vowed he would discover who’d done this to her. He wouldn’t rest until the man was dead.

  “Mikhél,” Eithné said with a gentle touch on his arm. “We’re ready for her. Leima can clean her while I prepare this room. I have to hurry. They’ll need me in surgery.”

  He nodded. There were things he needed to do too, but first he gestured to the painting. “Do you recognize that?”

  She gave it a cursory glance and then looked more closely. “I don’t know the place, but that’s the same signature as on the other paintings. Has she dreamed of this place too?”

  “Yes. I can’t place it within the context of the other dreams. But look at the moons.”

  She did, and her irises paled. “The denyíra. That’s almost a year from now. Will we be searching for the stones for so long?”

  “They’ve been hidden for thousands of years. In the great scheme of things, a year isn’t so long to wait.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Twenty-seven days till arrival

  Sensation returned slowly: a sound, a scent, a texture. They filtered through the black until the black became gray, and the gray was run through with color. Then sensation melded into dream, and dream became nightmare, so she thought she was still there, in the blood and the airless dark.

  She woke sucking air through a throat fully healed with lungs convinced they were dying.

  “Easy. Easy,” Eithné said softly. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the covers away from Jane’s neck. “You’re safe, child.”

  “Mikhél.” It was the only coherent thought she could form, the only sound she could make.

  “He’s fine. He’ll be here later.”

  “Someone cut me.” She put a hand to her neck and felt the skin there, warm, dry, smooth. “I thought…What happened?”

  “You were attacked. Mikhél found you and brought you here.”

  She grabbed Eithné’s hand. “They didn’t hurt him? They hurt only me; they didn’t hurt him.”

  “No, child, they didn’t hurt him.”

  “But they will.” Her eyes filled as the dream came rushing back. “Eithné, Lhókesh is going to kill him.”

  And she pressed her face to Eithné’s knee, and she wept.

  Mikhél felt her wake, and he rose to go to her. Then he felt her weep, and his body sank back down of its own accord. She wept for him. She grieved for him, and there was nothing he could do to take away her pain. And going to her now would only worsen it. She needed time and, more than anything, distance.

  He forced his attention back to his work. Before him spread the pitifully thin information he had on the attack. Most of it had come from Valaer, corroborated, of course, by Eithné. He’d planned to murder the Endet of the Watchers. And then, the idea so foolish it made Mikhél laugh, he’d thought to end Lhókesh or die trying.

  It didn’t take a sight gift to know which outcome would have occurred.

  Valaer swore he hadn’t intended to hurt Mikhél, and Eithné corroborated his claim. Still, Mikhél wasn’t inclined to restore trust so carelessly destroyed. Valaer’s blind quest for revenge had put all of them at risk, and Seirsha wasn’t the only one who’d paid the price.

  Valaer had met with two contacts within the Watchers: a man the Watchers called Lagun and Endetar himself. His description of Endetar was maddeningly limited to voice and height. The man had an uncanny ability to conceal himself within the shadows of the ship, even when face to face with his company.

  Lagun had required no description. He’d turned up dead, his throat spread wide to the stale, metallic air of the ship. One of the victims of the attack, his body had been hidden with another in an empty room near Valaer’s. It was his blood smeared on the wall outside Valaer’s room.

  The bodies were a clue he couldn’t figure out. A fuel processor and a navigator, both off duty. Stationed in different parts of the ship, living quarters five sectors apart. All that they had in common, as far as he could tell, was that they’d both been raised in the centers, and they’d been assigned to the ship two flights ago. They were likely both Watchers too, but Valaer couldn’t confirm the second man’s involvement. But even if they were, that didn’t explain why they were killed.

  Valaer thought the Watchers were behind the attacks. Mikhél had agreed at first, but he’d begun to question the assumption. It wasn’t the fact that they’d killed one of their own. The Watchers he’d encountered in the past would have found Lagun a more than acceptable sacrifice.

  What bothered him was the timing.

  The Watchers would have attacked Seirsha only if they knew she was the Baanrí, a secret he’d thought they’d suspected more than eight weeks ago. If they’d known her identity all this time, why wait until she was strong and healthy to attack? Had it just been a matter of opportunity? Or was something else at play that he didn’t yet understand?

  He examined again the list of crew who’d been off duty at the time of the attack. Fifty-five men, forty-three women. He could discount the women. Seirsha hadn’t been able to sense much before she’d been cut, but she’d certainly sensed a male presence. Ten of the fifty-five men had blue eyes. And then, of course, there were other crew members who’d been working close enough to the entertainment level to cut her and return to their posts before anyone noticed they were missing. Not to mention anyone on the generator level who might somehow have used the distraction to get to her. It seemed unlikely that anyone there would have been able to move faster than Mikhél, but then, he’d have had forewarning of the explosions. He wouldn’t have been slowed by surprise.

  It didn’t help that the Nhélanei made it a study not to notice the at
rocities around them. He’d once heard a man say, “A Nhélanei who keeps his head down is a Nhélanei who keeps his head.” Even if someone had noticed something strange around the time of the explosion, they’d never report it.

  He scanned the information again, but he suspected he wouldn’t make any more progress right now. He was missing something, and he wouldn’t have a clue as to what until he could talk to Seirsha. He needed to know what, if anything, she remembered.

  She was sleeping again, her dreams gentle for the moment. He’d stay with her through the mid, as he had the last two cycles, and in the prime they’d talk.

  He could only hope she was ready.

  A change in the air pulled Jane from sleep enough to have her stare, heavy with slumber, at the form before her. Her senses recognized him first, the man whom the deepest, most basic part of her knew as her mate. She murmured, “Mikhél” as her eyes drifted closed once more.

  He touched her cheek, the rough calluses on his palm as soothing as a down blanket. “Sleep,” he said, and the velvet of his voice lulled her back to dreams that, for once, gave respite. “I’ll be here when you wake.”

  Twenty-six days till arrival

  Mikhél dreamed of cool, misted air against his bare skin. He dreamed of blood rushing through his veins, of secrets and fire and a sense of home. Of a woman, warm and firm and naked in his arms.

  He dreamed of Seirsha.

  He woke to find her sleeping, Kai stretched along the length of her atop the covers. He went into the bathroom to gather himself and let his body settle. And he wondered if she’d shared in the fantasy that still had his heart racing. It hadn’t felt like a dream. Though he knew better, he couldn’t shake the conviction that what he’d seen was more premonition than yearning.

  Such was the power of wishful thinking.

  When he returned to the room, she was sitting up, her face buried in Kai’s neck. He took a moment to drink in the sight of her, alive and well despite everything. Then he crossed to the chair beside her bed.

  “You should eat.”