I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t sensed it myself.
But maybe … maybe it did take years.
“When,” I whisper.
“Aurora?” Kal asks softly.
“Ah,” says his father. “At last, the child comprehends.”
“Kal,” I say. “We’ve—I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud, but I think we’ve … jumped forward … in time.”
He’s silent a long moment, his eyes darting back and forth between his father and me. But then, slowly, he nods. “The Eshvaren did have a different relationship to time from we who came after them.”
He agrees so calmly that I’m almost bewildered. But I remind myself Kal’s people are the oldest race in the galaxy—that they’ve always told stories of the Eshvaren. Stories so old, their origins are lost to history. If anyone was going to buy what’s happening right now, it’s a couple of Syldrathi.
“The Echo,” his father agrees.
“Half a year passed in no time at all,” Kal nods. “And when you first came into your powers, be’shmai, the night you pointed us to the World Ship, you spoke backward, as if time around you was twisting in on itself.”
“Precognition,” Caersan adds. “Time dilation. They knew more than we. I do not believe this conjunction was intentional, however. The Eshvaren did not anticipate two Triggers aboard their weapon simultaneously.”
“No,” I agree. “Because they anticipated that the first one was going to do his damned job.”
“They anticipated total self-sacrifice,” he agrees, lip drawing back into a sneer. “For their Trigger to die on their knees.”
“As opposed to taking this thing they left behind, the culmination of their entire species’ efforts,” I snap, “and using it to wipe out whole suns in the name of conquering the galaxy. Your own people, billions of them, so you could do what? Rule for the next few years until the Ra’haam bloomed?”
“We were born to rule!” He throws the words back at me like a spear, but it veers off course—it’s Kal who takes half a step back, his breath uneven. “And my people were cowards and traitors!”
“You had a chance!” My voice echoes off the walls of the crystal chamber around us. “You had a chance to catch the Ra’haam while it was sleeping, and instead, you did this!” A wave of my hand takes in the floor around us, littered with the bodies of his people. They’re probably the lucky ones—they didn’t live to see the Ra’haam takeover that must have followed our disappearance.
The Starslayer doesn’t spare his dead prisoners a glance. The anger inside me thickens, and I shift my weight, because I swear there is nothing in this time or any other that would be as satisfying as getting my hands around his throat. But Kal’s mind brushes against mine, violet twining around midnight blue, calming, quieting me. He finds me effortlessly now, something unlocked inside both of us. And he’s enough to bring me down.
“How did this happen, Father?” he asks.
Caersan turns away and navigates a path through the corpses carpeting the floor. When he reaches the wall of the chamber, he lays one hand on the crystal and glances up at the vaulted ceiling.
“It is unclear,” he says. “Psychic dissonance caused by the presence of two Triggers, perhaps. But if the Neridaa performed such an extraordinary act once, then I believe it could be replicated. I know this ship as well as my own self. The power that hums through it as well as my own breath. It is less a weapon to be fired than an instrument to be played.”
A sliver of hope creeps into my mind, like the smallest beam of sunlight breaking through the clouds. “You think we could play it again?”
He’s thoughtful. “I know the note of the song I heard as we moved across time. I could replicate it, with enough power. Your mind could provide the unsophisticated push, for want of a more precise term. I believe I could channel it into that same song and return us to the moment we left.”
“Aurora … ,” Kal begins, but I’m already laughing.
“It’s okay, Kal, I’m not volunteering for that.”
“Oh, but …” Caersan turns to me, hands over his heart. “You are the Trigger of the Eshvaren, Aurora! You have a chance to catch the Ra’haam while it sleeps! Is it not, as you so eloquently put it, your damned job?”
His mock sincerity drops like a mask, his hands to his sides.
“Not so eager to serve them now, eh? Now that you know what it will cost?”