Spyridon (The Spyridon Trilogy Book 1)

by Lillian James

  “We’re fighting a war,” Valaer roared. “You would have been an acceptable casualty.”

  “Enough,” Mikhél said quietly, and silence fell. He turned to Jane. “Valaer is right. This is a war. People began dying before you escaped, and they’ve been dying every day since. Every decision we’ve made has been to save Nhélanei lives. We came for you because we believed you can help.”

  “Do you believe I am an acceptable casualty?”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it and looked away. After a moment his jaw set, and he turned back to her.

  “This discussion is a waste of time,” he said. “You can’t change what you are. There’s no point in wondering what might have been.”

  And that’s when she realized the truth. She was a means to an end. She was here to stop Lhókesh. She meant just that much—and just that little.

  Something inside her broke away, but her back stiffened, and her face went carefully neutral. She said to Eithné in a voice gone flat, “You think I have a prophecy gift. That I have been seeing the future in my dreams. That’s what the paintings show.”

  “Yes. You wouldn’t have seen all of these things in the language program, and you couldn’t have seen them before you escaped the war. If you saw these parts of Spyridon, then you saw your future.”

  “Our future,” Jane corrected dully. “You and Leima will be there too.”

  “Only Leima and I?”

  “Yes. We will be alone.”

  “Where will the Endet be? Or Valaer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She looked at Valaer, and he looked away. Mikhél was staring blindly over her shoulder, that muscle working so hard she thought his jaw might unhinge. Did he understand what she was saying? She’d spent hours with him every day since she’d awoken on this ship, and she realized now he’d become a part of her daily existence. She expected him to be there. She even looked forward to seeing him. She’d thought him—almost—a friend.

  And he was going to disappear at some point in the near future. Did he care? Did she?

  She couldn’t answer the first question, but the answer to the second swept through her on an ache that had her turning away. Her gaze landed on the paintings, and her pulse began to throb in her temple. And she told herself she was done with naïveté.

  “What is a Baanrí?” Jane asked. Eithné hesitated and then glanced at Mikhél, and Jane’s blood boiled. “He doesn’t decide everything in my life. I am asking you a question I could answer for myself the moment I leave this room. I am giving you the chance to be honest with me. You should take it.”

  Eithné seemed to wilt. “Where did you hear that word?”

  “Does it matter? You have been hiding things from me. That ends now.”

  Valaer bristled. “We told you what you needed to know.”

  “You lied to me!”

  “Valaer,” Eithné said when he opened his mouth again. “She deserves to know.”

  He shut his mouth, his fists balling at his sides. Eithné turned to Jane.

  “I want you to understand that we kept this from you to keep you safe. The prophecy…it was a burden. An expectation that you would save a world you hadn’t known existed. You have to understand, we weren’t even certain the woman from the prophecy was you until now.”

  Jane tried to hold on to her anger, but she saw herself as they must have seen her that night, and her shoulders drooped. She’d been terrified and defensive and half convinced she was losing her mind. If they’d told her about the prophecy then, she would have thought them as crazy as she’d thought herself. She sank onto the edge of the bed with a sigh and rubbed at her aching temples.

  “I understand, but I want no more secrets. What is a Baanrí?”

  Eithné drew in a deep breath. “The closest English translation is empress.”

  CHAPTER 22

  “You have got to be kidding me.” She almost laughed, but none of them was smiling. “You get how that sounds, right? I’m royalty and there’s a prophecy about me? It’s like something out of a bad science-fiction novel.”

  “Inakhí,” Valaer snapped, and she realized she’d slipped into English.

  “Believe what you will,” Eithné said. “But the truth holds. You are the Baanrí. Even if the prophecy were false, we still would have come for you. Our mission was never about the strong one. It was always to return the rightful heir to the throne.”

  “But…I am not royalty. I cannot be. I am just Ja—” She sputtered over the name. “I am just Seirsha Enan.”

  “Braillen,” Eithné added. “That’s your family name. And you got the order wrong. You are Braillen Enan Seirsha, daughter of Baanrí Braillen Mhíalei Dhémar and Baanret Brijad Dhéren Simhíon. You are the only living heir to the throne and the Baanrí of the Nhélanei.”

  They were serious. She looked from one face to the next as if one of them might say, “Just kidding!” But of course they didn’t. They just expected her to accept this newest ball of crazy as if she’d known it all along. As if it was no big deal to be the empress of an entire planet. A planet enslaved and tortured by a man she was supposed to stop.

  A planet she’d basically seen only in dreams.

  Then Eithné said, “Image Baanrí Dhémar,” and Jane’s gaze shot up. A face projected into the air from Eithné’s link, the image damaged and twitching, of a woman with golden-brown skin and Jane’s eyes. Jane’s hair. Jane’s smile.

  “This is Braillen Mhíalei Dhémar,” Eithné said. “She was the Baanrí before you. Seirsha, this was your mother.”

  Her mother. Of course. Looking at her picture was nearly like looking into a mirror. A whiff of something floral washed over Jane, and the sound of a murmur, the warmth of soft, cuddling skin against her own. And Jane’s eye’s filled.

  “She loved you,” Mikhél said, his voice harsh.

  “I know. I remember.”

  And that was when she knew it was true.

  She was the empress of Spyridon.

  She touched the image, and her breath hitched when her fingers slipped through the hologram. “What was she like?”

  “She was gentle of heart,” Eithné said, “and strong of spirit. She was a wonderful Baanrí. But she…”

  Her voice trailed away, and she looked down and plucked at her tunic with narrow fingers.

  “What?”

  Eithné hesitated and then shook her head and looked at Jane. Her eyes were iced. “She was well respected among the connected worlds for most of her reign. But in the years leading up to the war, her behavior grew erratic. There were rumors about her mental health. I cannot tell you if they were true.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “I met her once when she toured the university. I’d heard the rumors and didn’t know what to expect, but she was lovely. Professional, with just the right blend of formality and warmth. I decided the stories were ridiculous. And then she said something strange. She said that some lives are more than just a string of events. That for some of us, each experience is a piece of a larger puzzle. That it might take time to figure out how all the pieces fit, but once we do, we can accomplish things others don’t dare dream of.

  “At the time I thought she referred to the rumors. But a few months later, the war started. And then I wondered if she’d seen it coming.”

  The hair on the back of Jane’s neck rose, and she looked at the paintings. “Maybe they were a message from her.”

  Valaer shook his head. “Baanrí Dhémar was not involved in the art world. I would have known.”

  “Perhaps Lhúk painted them in secret,” Eithné said.

  “Not his style.”

  “It can’t be a coincidence that they were hidden with Da-Faen’s portrait.” She turned to Jane. “She was your mother’s gardó. It’s a position of high honor, a companion of sorts. I had hoped she would serve the same function for you, but she felt she was too old. She thought Leima knew enough of the position to serve in her stead.”

&nbs
p; Jane glanced at Leima, and the younger woman bowed her head. And for the first time, the gesture had weight. It wasn’t just another attempt to protect Jane’s cover.

  But it wasn’t anything Jane deserved, and she looked away.

  “Tell me about my father.”

  “Baanret Simhíon was a scholar before he met your mother. A historian, and by all accounts highly intelligent and perceptive.”

  She called up his image. This one was intact, and Jane supposed no bootlegged version had been necessary. Her father had possessed a kind face, pale skinned and unassuming, with features that might easily have been forgotten if not for his eyes. They held a striking ripple of gold and brown that mimicked movement, so it almost seemed as if he glanced around the room to study them while they studied him.

  “What happened to them?”

  “They fought to secure your escape.” Eithné said gently. “They didn’t survive the fight.”

  They’d died for her. And she supposed she’d known that too, though her heart wrenched to hear the words. With everything he’d done to the Nhélanei, Lhókesh would never have spared their rulers.

  Wet trickled down her cheeks, but she didn’t bother to brush it away. Here was her family at last. Here was her past reclaimed. Here was her home.

  She swallowed the tears on another hitching breath. “The woman who brought me to Earth. Betha. Who was she?”

  “The sister of my mother,” Mikhél said.

  His aunt. Jane thought of her sad, toffee eyes and closed her own. Betha had left everything behind to save Jane, and then she’d lost the rest when they’d reached Earth.

  Another death that could be laid at Jane’s feet.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I…” Her voice trailed away, and she realized she didn’t know what she’d planned to say. Really she had nothing to offer but a pitiful expression of sorrow and regret. Mikhél didn’t respond, and she found herself dropping his gaze.

  “You see now,” Eithné said, “why we’ve been so worried to learn there are Watchers aboard. If they find out who you are, they’ll stop at nothing to take you to Lhókesh. Or they’ll kill you themselves and reap the benefits.”

  Watchers. Jane scrubbed her hands over her face and suppressed the urge to scream. Of course it all came back to the war and the constant threat that wouldn’t even let her fucking breathe.

  “How could they not know who I am? I look just like her.”

  “They think you’re dead,” Mikhél said. “Killed in the womb. Your mother hid your birth from all but your father and Da-Faen, and eventually my mother and me. After you were born, she feigned her pregnancy until her death.”

  A chill rippled through her. “Why would she do that?”

  “Because Lhókesh was coming to Spyridon, and she didn’t want him to know about you. She thought he’d kill you if he had the chance, and she was right.”

  “Why would she tell you? You had to have been a child yourself.”

  “I saw you by accident,” he said. “When they realized, they brought me in. They called my mother in too. They explained what they’d done and swore us to secrecy. And then they made me your devesh.”

  “Devesh?”

  “He’s your top guard,” Valaer said. “Every Baanrí has one.”

  Security detail. Mikhél worked so hard to keep her safe not because he cared about her but because it was his job. And she was only just beginning to realize how much she’d read into that.

  “You can see how the crew doesn’t know,” Eithné said. “Still, the resemblance is strong enough to make some wonder.”

  Jane felt as if she was back in the med room, reliving her first night awake on the ship. It seemed like everything she learned about herself was one more reason someone else wanted her dead. “So we’re back to square one. I have to hide who I am.”

  “Inakhí,” Valaer said again, and she gritted her teeth.

  “And it’s more than that,” Eithné added. “You have to hide your gifts. If Lhókesh discovers that the rightful Baanrí of Spyridon survived the war, he’ll seek to suppress you for political reasons. But Seirsha, if he finds out you’re the strong one, he’ll destroy you in order to survive.”

  Exhaustion settled over her like a fog. It was too much to handle. She needed rest, and she needed—for a while, at least—to pretend this day had never happened.

  “I would like to go to my room now. I need to lie down.” And sleep, mercifully free from dreams.

  Eithné looked as if she wanted to say something else, but then she nodded. “Of course. We’ll resume your training next cycle. It is more important than ever now that we know the prophecy is accurate.”

  And if ever a statement deserved to be ignored, it was now. Jane sighed and started for the door. Behind her Mikhél said, “Leave the paintings. I’ll keep them in my quarters.”

  Jane stopped and turned. “Except for the portrait of Da-Faen. Leima should keep that.”

  Leima’s gaze darted to Eithné, but the old woman said, “Seirsha, we should keep them together—”

  “We have electronic copies. Why would we need the physical painting?”

  “It’s a message. There might be something in the structure of the thing that’s important to us.”

  Jane shrugged, impatient to be gone. “So Leima will keep it safe. It’s a picture of her mother, painted by her father. She’ll take more care with it than any of us. She should keep it.”

  “Is that a command, Baanríté?” It was Mikhél who asked, a sardonic tone to his question that could so effectively put a wayward Nhélanei in their place.

  But Jane only laughed, a brittle, hollow sound.

  “You do realize that is an empty title, don’t you?” She swung her arm in a wide arc. “Look around you. Every other person on this ship serves Lhókesh. If they discover who I am, they will either kill me themselves or turn me over to the Meijhé and kill me by proxy. They don’t want me.” She shook her head, weary to her core. “Spyridon has no Baanrí. It has not since my mother died.”

  In the stunned silence that met those words, she called open the door and walked away.

  Eithné stared at the closed door long after Seirsha left. “Well.”

  “She needs time to adjust,” Valaer said.

  Mikhél would have been surprised by the understanding the words conveyed, but he heard the ice in Valaer’s voice. In a way he hadn’t since his mother died, he wished for trust. He trusted only two people on this ship, and one of them had just walked out the door. The other stood by the window looking older and more fragile than he’d ever seen her.

  “Dismissed,” he said to Valaer.

  The palletar hesitated and then offered a tekvar and walked out. Mikhél picked up the painting of Da-Faen and handed it to Leima. “Keep it in your room at all times. Dismissed.”

  Her irises darkened to mercury. “My gratitude, Endeté.”

  And then finally just Eithné remained. He called up a chair for her as much out of habit as concern. She studied him for a moment, and he wondered if they were back to their old patterns. Then she sat with a sigh and said, “You have something to say about the paintings.”

  He didn’t ask how she knew. She hadn’t survived this long through a lack of insight. “Yes,” he began, and then he realized he didn’t know quite how to explain. Perhaps because he couldn’t explain it to himself. Finally he said, “I don’t have a sight gift.”

  She lifted a brow. “I’m aware of that.”

  “Good.” He studied the paintings once more. What he’d once believed impossible now stared him in the face. What he needed most was to understand it. “I dreamed of these places. I dreamed of Seirsha in these places.”

  Eithné frowned and cocked her head. “But these are Seirsha’s visions.”

  “I know.”

  “She has the gift of prophesy. These are images from her future.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s not possible for you to see such things.”
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br />   “I know,” he said again. “But I did. I have been since before we left Spyridon. Eithné, you asked me why I decided to get her when I did. I made the decision at the same time I started having these dreams. I didn’t realize then that the two were linked, but I believe now that they were.”

  “Mikhél, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “For the same reason we didn’t tell her about the prophecy. I didn’t know it was real.” He pointed to the silver smudge on top of the waterfall. “I saw her like this. I thought she was a figment of my imagination. I thought it all was.”

  “Clearly you were wrong.” She bounded out of her seat and crossed to kneel before the paintings. Some of the weariness had left her face, and he might have been relieved at the sight if not for the dream running through his mind. The one he couldn’t ignore. The one the paintings didn’t show. “Do you recognize these places? Nhóstravai and the Appalaeds I know, but the others…”

  “The outskirts of Habika,” he replied, pointing to the fountain. “And that is Masbareth.”

  She studied the image of the fire and the thick foliage surrounding it, and he knew what she was thinking. The danger of the Masbareth jungles was second only to that of Nhóstravai Falls.

  “How can you be sure? Over seventy percent of the land on Spyridon is forest. This could be anywhere.”

  “Eithné,” he said, drawing her gaze to his. “I’m sure.”

  “You and Valaer aren’t in Seirsha’s dreams. Where will you be?”

  He hesitated. “I’m still working on that.”

  It wasn’t exactly a lie.

  “This is all over the globe. Why would we go to all these places? And how? Nhélanei are not permitted to fly.”

  “You walk it. From Lan’Vercai to Tsourmalhín. You cross the Nhí-Gan split on foot. How, I don’t know. I didn’t think it was possible. But you will.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. To walk so far, through such dangerous territory, hiding from Watchers and the Meijhé. It would take months. Why would we do that?”

  “To find Lan’Gemhína.”

  “Of course,” she murmured. “Of course. She’s the strong one. What else would she do?”