Spyridon (The Spyridon Trilogy Book 1)

by Lillian James

  And the voracious skin of the sculpture consumed the shadow that moved over her head.

  The roar of the processors assaulted fully developed Nhélanei with a constant barrage of sensation. The pump of pistons the size of trees; the gush of boiling water and its billowing emissions; the dull, heavy slide of vinyatha, mined from vanquished worlds. Fuel processors bore the lowest rank on the ship and as such were afforded minimal protection in an environment that would render their sedfai useless in a matter of years.

  Mikhél typically pulled Nhélanei fresh from the centers for the job. They were too young for the sedfai that made the task nearly unbearable and would often move up in rank before their development was complete. But he’d had no choice with this mission. He’d required speed, and Dhóchas had docked for a fuel delivery exactly when Mikhél had been looking for a ship, with most of her crew healthy enough for another flight.

  So the Nhélanei surrounding Mikhél flinched under battered helmets, their bodies cloaked in tattered layers, their faces black with the sludge of dust and sweat.

  Leima walked past, her unusual eyes bright against her grimy skin. She glanced at him and then quickly away as she hurried back to her station. The filth didn’t detract from her beauty, but he felt no urge to let his gaze linger.

  His mind was on Seirsha.

  For the first time since they’d brought her aboard, he’d gone the entire cycle without seeing her. But his senses searched constantly for her: a hint of her scent, the curve of her cheek, the swift clip of her stride. The flash of triumph in her eyes when she dominated a new challenge.

  He’d become inured to her presence, and her absence was like a weight on his lungs.

  When he heard her voice, a whisper under the cacophony around him, he told himself it was his imagination. Still, his sedfai flared in response and then withered under the onslaught of the machines. She was nowhere near, so he checked his link and found her on the entertainment level.

  Running, as if chased by the monsters of Masbareth.

  Jane pulled the last shard of the statue from her hand and stood, blotting bloodied palms against her thighs as the burn of healing sang through them. She started to make her way to the maintenance shaft, stepping cautiously over the rubble.

  And then she heard the sound of shattering glass.

  More of a clink than a crash, the faint echo could have come from anywhere. She stilled and pushed out her sedfai, cursing her fatigue. Her senses trembled in protest, an odd shimmering she felt at the edges, and her headache roared. Still, she forced them to stay open. She heard nothing for a moment and then, in the shop behind her, a heartbeat.

  The faint whisper of friction, as if a boot had slipped on the floor.

  She spun around and peered into the store, but something blocked the jumplight. The shop’s contents were almost entirely obscured.

  “Shózhé?”

  There was no response to her greeting, but her wavering sedfai detected another heartbeat. The hollow sound of breath slid through parted lips and then something else.

  Metal sliding on metal.

  She backed up, and her foot struck rubble. A cross section of the broken statue, the disc rolled heavily across the floor, sending dazzling colors into the store. A ripple of pure cerulean glinted off a chair, flowed over a small table. Citrine hues graced the delicate curve of a wraithlike figurine in the corner.

  Shades of lilac flitted over a pair of boots, slid upward over muscled thighs. A wide crimson glow brushed against a man’s cheekbone and illuminated one wide, staring eye.

  Her first thought was of Mikhél, a half-conscious wish for his presence. And then she turned and ran. She might have soon slowed, for it was foolish to run from a man who’d conveyed no desire to be found.

  But then he followed her.

  Suddenly it wasn’t a strain to hold open her sedfai. Panic sent it spreading around her in a thin, tremulous film. But it showed her too much, the sensations blurring together in a dissonance of scents, sounds, and textures that conveyed no discernible meaning.

  She passed the maintenance shaft without a second glance. She’d be better able to lose him in the twists and turns of the corridors. Bounding over the stars, she raced. Her legs burned, and her lungs protested, but she didn’t stop. Every so often she heard a pant behind her, and she could have sworn she felt the breath hot on her neck. Each moist burst of heat spurred her on.

  Until she barreled around a corner and slammed into Mikhél.

  He steadied her and then thrust her behind him, drawing the thick, four-barreled gun strapped to his side. She turned on burning legs until she and Mikhél stood back to back and pushed out her senses, but they gave one last shudder and fell quiet. He spoke into his link: “All crew location.” She glanced over her shoulder to see a map project into the air. Tiny red dots moved about the levels holding the fuel processors, but only two stood still on the entertainment level.

  “You can see all of the crew?” She turned and studied the map. “I didn’t know we could do that.”

  “You can’t,” he said and called off the map. “You are hurt?”

  “No.” She shook her head and then put a hand to her temple, as if that could quell the throbbing. “Just a headache.”

  He ran his gaze over her as if to verify her words, and then he started back down the hall he’d come from. When she struggled to keep up, he put a hand on her back and matched his strides to hers. “What happened?”

  “There was no one there, was there?”

  “No,” he said. “Should there have been?”

  “Someone was chasing me.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “A man.” Her headache roared, and she wondered why she’d thought this a better idea than taking the day to lounge around in bed. “I think it was a man. I’m not sure. Whoever it was he was big.”

  He muttered, “All the Nhélanei are big to you.”

  He was right, but he didn’t sound happy about it. She shot him a look out of the corner of her eye. “How did you know?”

  “How did I know what?”

  “That I needed help.”

  A muscle in his jaw began to tick. “I didn’t,” he said as they reached the lifts. “This was a coincidence.”

  She stopped and turned to face him, but he was staring at the lifts. She wondered if he was annoyed that she’d needed help or even upset that she’d been chased. It was difficult to tell, because his eyes never seemed to change. She’d become accustomed to the involuntary barometer everyone else displayed, and Mikhél’s constancy, which had once seemed so relatable, was now a thing of mystery. Did he feel less than everyone else? Or was he just that much better at controlling it?

  “There were others,” she told him after the lift doors closed. She watched for any reaction, but his face barely changed.

  “How many? Where were they?”

  “Fifteen men and women coming from all over the ship. They all ended up in the second ring.”

  “The man who chased you was with them?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Show me.”

  She called up the map on her link and pointed out the theater. When the doors opened, his face shuttered. No one who passed them would have guessed that only minutes before he’d used his body as a shield to protect her.

  “You’re dismissed,” he said.

  Offering a tekvar she murmured, “Endeté.”

  Then the doors closed again, and he was gone.

  Mikhél returned to the entertainment level, his weapon drawn. She’d been followed after sensing a gathering that was in direct violation of his orders. The implications were unmistakable.

  Less obvious was the reason he’d come here in the first place. He’d told her it was a coincidence, but he didn’t think she’d believed that any more than he did. The truth was he’d sensed her fear. At some point he’d have to figure out how. But he had to secure her safety first.

  He found the theater
she’d pointed out. It was empty, its occupants long gone. His footsteps rang through the space, carried by acoustics to reach all recesses of the audience. His light glowed around him, a halo for a devil.

  Because it was impossible to determine when the rows of seats had last been used, he went directly to the hover stage. Empty, the floor was covered in a delicate layer of dust.

  The film coated the surface evenly, undisturbed, except for the single set of footprints that crossed the stage.

  CHAPTER 20

  One hundred and fourteen days till arrival

  Eithné had long ago learned the art of the serene, long-legged stride that appeared sedate but kept her moving quickly. The trick was in the upper body. If your shoulders were tense, if your eyes darted around, if your arms didn’t swing just so—people noticed. Even in Lhókesh’s Spyridon, where Nhélanei had made an art of staring at the ground, people noticed.

  So she kept her face calm, her shoulders relaxed, and her gaze forward. It had always worked in the past, and it would work now. Still, she couldn’t fool herself. The tension burned in her gut. If crew members were gathering in secret, it could mean just one thing.

  Watchers.

  To think she’d convinced herself there were none aboard. She should have known better. They were always near. And soon they would begin to suspect Seirsha’s true identity.

  She should have planned for such an occurrence from the beginning. And she supposed she would have had Seirsha not been so sick. But when they’d found her, her skin had been clouded, her hair and eyes discolored, her flesh melted away. There’d been no way to know she’d look so very much like Dhémar. Now she looked more like her every cycle.

  The Watchers would identify her soon, as long as they were willing to believe in the impossible. They would offer her up gladly, and then thousands of Nhélanei would die. Mikhél’s true allegiance would be revealed and the Baanrí destroyed. Their cause would be lost.

  They were trapped on this ship for one hundred and fourteen more cycles. It was a long time to keep a poorly concealed secret.

  As she’d lain awake through the night, her sedfai refusing to relinquish its hold on her surroundings, she’d begun to wonder what she hadn’t been told. She knew she wasn’t privy to all of the Endet’s secrets or plans—no one was. She’d believed, however, that he’d told her everything vital. But now she doubted.

  It was Mikhél who had suggested they learn the girl’s language when there had been no predictable need for such a thing. Mikhél, even, who had initiated the trip to collect Seirsha. His timing had been excellent. A few days later and she would have died from a simple protein deficiency. A few days earlier and she might have run from them. The timing seemed too precise to be a coincidence.

  She glanced down at her hands. She had ways of discovering secrets. It would be easier if he told her what he knew, but she was beginning to suspect that wouldn’t happen.

  As she turned down the hall that held Mikhél’s rooms, the hair on the back of her neck rose. Her breath grew short and thready. Heat settled heavily between her shoulder blades, and she knew she wasn’t alone.

  Without slowing she let her sedfai unfurl. The man in the room to her right moved about his quarters, oblivious to Eithné. The woman across the hall sat on her bed, weeping.

  And…was that someone behind Eithné? A man perhaps? He seemed to be keeping pace with her, but she couldn’t hear him. His footsteps must have been muffled by the flex of the floor.

  But it wasn’t just that. She couldn’t quite feel him either. She felt…something. A presence. The vague pressure of a veiled eye. But beyond that nothing.

  As she neared Mikhél’s rooms, she realized she shouldn’t be witnessed seeking out the Endet. She was about to take the next hall when Bavoel left Mikhél’s quarters and turned toward her.

  She stopped and pressed her back against the wall. Head bowed, she said, “Endíett Bavoel” and offered a tekvar as he passed. But her mind was not on his strange dead eyes, which always made her skin crawl. She used the moment to glance surreptitiously down the hall, toward that hidden presence she’d sensed. There was no one there, but Bavoel looked back at her. When she saw him looking, she averted her gaze and gripped the wall until he was out of sight. By the time he rounded the far corner, the feeling of being watched had faded. Still, she waited another moment before moving, and she couldn’t quite warm the clammy chill working its way along her back.

  Mikhél must have sensed her, because the door to his quarters was still open. Since she was alone again, she slipped inside. When he called closed the door behind her, she crossed to the window, her arms crossed over her ribs. She told herself to relax, that she’d done this countless times before. But her fingers clutched at her elbows, and her shoulders held rigid. Because the truth was she’d never done this before.

  “You have something you wish to discuss?”

  Her palms grew damp, but she drew in a fortifying breath and turned to face him. “Why did we learn English?”

  He frowned, and she knew she’d struck a nerve. She couldn’t remember the last time his expression had been anything more than flat. But he said, “It was a matter of courtesy.”

  Her brows shot up, and a snort rose with them. “Courtesy? My apologies, Endeté, but it took us the entire trip to Earth to master the language. Leima never did. We rounded the passes on it every cycle. Just to be polite?”

  “What would you wish for me to say, Alna Dhújar?”

  Her formal title. He used it to remind her of the precariousness of her position. It should have cooled her ire, but instead it inflamed.

  She stepped toward him, unable to smooth the grimace tightening her face. “Why did we leave when we did? She wasn’t supposed to go through the jagat for years. We weren’t supposed to retrieve her for years yet, but you changed the plans. Why?”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it. Then he shook his head, and his jaw tightened. “We left when we did because I commanded it. You require no other reason.”

  Her entire body began to tremble. This was the moment she had to decide: she could back down, or she could fight for Seirsha.

  “Eithné,” he said coldly, “this conversation is over. You are dismissed.”

  She’d thought of Seirsha and all she’d been through. All they’d yet to ask of her. She thought of Bhénen, dead on this mission, his mate left behind in unrecognizable parts. And she thought of her mate. Her Cyd, lost almost before the fighting had begun but unwilling to loose his hold on her soul.

  And she knew she had to fight.

  “No,” she ground out. She grabbed his wrist, her thin fingers digging into bone. “Tell me what you know of Seirsha.”

  And her knees nearly buckled as his answer flooded her.

  It was Seirsha, all of it, Seirsha. Her face, her smile, her eyes. Her courage in light of all they’d thrown at her. The way she pushed herself when so many others would have given up. Seirsha, running toward him in the darkness, the stars beneath her feet. Seirsha, her back pressed to his, determined to protect him as no other felt was needed.

  Seirsha. Eyes closed, skin soft. Lips curving gently as she opened herself to her senses once again.

  A surge of emotion shot through their connection and into Eithné. It filled her to aching, clenched her heart and left it weeping.

  “You love her.”

  The words were involuntary, her mind’s eye speaking a truth so rarely seen with such clarity. The sound of her voice broke the connection, and she yanked her hand away.

  “My apologies.” Her voice shook. “It was not my intention to—Endeté.” She wanted to reach out to him, to offer the comfort and acceptance that he was so sure would never be his. That she’d just realized he needed. But she could only say, grossly inadequately, “My apologies.”

  He stared at her, his jaw slack, his eyes open in a way she’d never seen them, and she could hear his blood rushing through his veins. He rubbed at his wrist where she’d gripp
ed him, and then his eyes jumped to the wall he shared with Seirsha.

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Of course, Endeté,” she murmured, casting her eyes down. But her palm throbbed. Her heart ached with the intensity of an emotion she’d never known by any other name. She looked down at her hands and wanted to weep at the horrible misuse of her gift.

  “I just wanted to protect her.”

  “I will not harm her.”

  His rapid response lent weight to her conclusion, but it would do no good to point it out. “I know.”

  He wouldn’t meet her eyes. He looked down at his hand and jerked it away from his arm, and his jaw set again. His eyes shuttered, and he was once more the Endet she’d always known.

  And yet he wasn’t.

  “We meet the others soon.” She was stating the obvious—they both knew it. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave.

  He needed them.

  He was completely alone. She’d never seen it before because she’d never wanted to. In Lhókesh’s Spyridon it was easier to suspect than to trust or care. But with five simple words, he’d made her care for him.

  I will not harm her. She knew now that he would protect Seirsha with everything he was. But who would protect him?

  He called up a chair, and she wondered if he thought it would propel her out of the room. She glanced at it and thought of all the other times he’d made the gesture. She’d always assumed it a reminder of his youth and power or, conversely, her lack thereof. Now she wondered whose ulterior motives she’d actually been detecting.

  She took the seat and pretended she didn’t notice the surprise that crossed his face. “Should we tell her?”

  He glanced at the wall again, his brow furrowed once more, as if he’d lost all control over the thing. “Tell her? You—” He stopped, took a breath, and called up his own chair. “You mean about who she is.”

  “And about the prophecy. She has a right to know. We might be getting to the point when it’s safer if she knows.”

  “What about your plan?”

  She stilled. “Plan?”

  “To prove to us that she’s the strong one.”