For Darkness Shows the Stars (12 page)

T
HE WAREHOUSE OF THE
shipyard was closed up tight, and Elliot wondered how the builders had enough light to work by. And yet, she could hear the sounds of industry as she approached—strange whirrings and high-pitched whines and the clank of metal upon metal. The horses trotted up the beach, and Felicia waved to a knot of figures standing outside the building. Elliot shaded her eyes from the sun and tried to identify them. The admiral, Donovan, and Kai.

As they grew closer, she could see even more. They held long sticks in their hands and were scratching figures into the sand as they spoke. She watched as Donovan spun away from the group and began pantomiming whatever point he was trying to make by marching out the space on the sand. Kai threw back his head and laughed, then delineated his own version. They seemed to be arguing some element of design. Elliot marveled as she observed the same quick, precise movements she was beginning to realize all the Fleet captains shared. She supposed it was the result of their training, or the months they spent steering their ships. Perhaps they got used to perfect control, like the movements of a musician or a surgeon. Beside them, though, the old admiral seemed almost clumsy.

Elliot and Felicia were almost upon them, when from within the warehouse there was a deafening crash. The walls of the building shook and the ground shuddered beneath them. The horses reared and Elliot clung tight to Pyrois’s neck, hoping to keep her seat. The horse bucked beneath her, and for a moment all was topsy-turvy and the air was rent with horsey screams. Elliot squeezed her eyes shut as her grip gave way, and she braced herself for the fall.

But it never came. She felt her hand sweep the sand, heard hooves hit the ground close to her head, and then two arms clamped around her waist and she was placed on her feet.

“You’re all right.” Kai’s voice in her ear, very close.

He’d touched her.
He’d touched her
. Her skin buzzed like a wire, and her chest and face grew warm. She brushed her hair from her eyes, but he’d already let go, snapping away with that same unnerving precision, marking the space between them as if with a ruler. She took an unsteady step toward him, and his hand shot out again to bolster her by the elbow, and to halt her approach.

“Careful.”

She blinked, willing herself not to reach for him like roots after water.

Beyond, the admiral had caught hold of Pyrois’s reins and was soothing him, while Donovan was even now rushing into the building halfway across the beach. Everything must have happened in a second or two. But how? Surely Kai had been too far away to catch her in midair. He was always fast, but still . . .

Felicia remained on her horse, and watched Elliot and Kai with a concerned look on her face.

“Can you stand on your own?” Kai asked her now.

She nodded and he instantly left her side and headed into the shipyard warehouse. The admiral had somehow already tied up Pyrois and gone into the building. Felicia dismounted, led her horse over to the hitching post, and gestured to Elliot to join her on the bench.

“Please sit, Elliot. That was a nasty fall.”

No, but it would have been had Kai not been there to catch her. How had he reached her in time? Had he been watching her much more closely than he’d let on?

“What happened inside?” she asked instead. “Is anyone hurt?”

As if on cue, Kai appeared at the doorway. “One of the hulls broke free from its suspension,” he announced. “No one was injured, but we’ve lost several days’ work.”

Felicia shook her head. “What a shame.”

“All things considered, the admiral thinks it best if we cancel our plans for the evening. We’ll probably work through the night.”

Through the night? “You must have a hundred sun-lamps!” Elliot exclaimed. Otherwise how in the world would they be able to work in that dark warehouse?

Neither Post replied at first. “Yes,” said Felicia at last. “And speaking of, I’ll send someone to fetch a sun-cart to take Miss Elliot home. I doubt she wants to try the horses again so soon, especially if she’s to lead the extra.”

Elliot folded her hands in her lap as Felicia entered the building. She figured Kai would follow, but he remained still, standing over her like a guard. His shadow fell across her lap, and she traced its edges with her hands. The places he’d touched her—her torso, her chest, her elbow—still tingled. His words still echoed in her ears. He hadn’t spoken to her directly since that night in the barn. She soaked up every syllable like it was rain on parched soil.

You’re all right.

Careful.

Can you stand on your own?

They were as clear to her in her mind as the words he spoke now. “Are you recovered?”

She looked up, but his face remained turned toward the sea. “I’m better, thank you.”

“If you are, then it’s best you try walking home, rather than wasting someone from the Fleet’s time by making them chauffeur you back.”

These words broke something inside her. Perhaps it was his touch, perhaps it was the fact that they were alone again, perhaps it was the way Felicia Innovation had spoken to her, like she at least wanted to be friends, or maybe it was the weeks she’d wasted hiding from these Posts because she was afraid of this very moment. But whatever it was, Elliot could not prevent the burst of laughter that escaped her lips.

Kai whirled around and his face was shadowed by the angle of the sun. Still, she knew his tone. Anger. “What’s so funny? That our project has been set back several days? That we’re stuck here longer? That you take a little spill from a horse and everyone wants to rearrange the world so you don’t suffer a moment of inconvenience?”

“No,” she said, and her voice was even. “That I would wait a month in agony just to hear you insult me. I’m a miserable girl indeed, don’t you think?”

He glared at her in stony silence, which only spurred her on. No more of this waiting and worrying. She might not deserve much from Kai, despite all the time she’d spent loving him, but she deserved this.

“I have gathered that you don’t want to reveal your origins to the Groves, or even to most of your friends, and that’s your choice, but I have a question for you. Andromeda knows, doesn’t she? She knows what happened?”

He said nothing.

“Please. I will tell you, and you will tell me, and then we can just go on ignoring each other afterward. Tatiana doesn’t know who you are, which is ridiculous to me. She’s as stupid as she’s ever been. I wanted to die, that day in the barn. Our Posts, of course, talk of nothing else, but they have no occasion to tell your friends if you don’t want it known on the Boatwright estate. They haven’t even bothered correcting my sister, not that she talks to many Posts outside the house servants like Mags and her maid. And Ro . . .” Here Elliot faltered, but only for a moment. “Every time I see Ro, she wonders why we haven’t come together.”

She thought she saw him flinch, but it was hard to tell in the light. She knew he visited Ro on his own. Did he get the same impression?

“Just tell me, so I can stop wondering if Andromeda’s contempt is for all Luddites, or for me alone.”

Kai was quiet, then said, “If you can stand on your own, it’s better that you walk back rather than making someone from the Fleet take you.”

Elliot rose, then swallowed the bile she tasted in her throat. “I have stood on my own for many years.”

He didn’t look away this time, and his eyes were like a stranger’s. “You’re not the only one.”

Anne did not wish for more of such looks and speeches. His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.

—
J
ANE
A
USTEN
,
P
ERSUASION

Dear Kai,

I wish I knew where to send this letter. I wish I knew where you were, or how you’re doing. I am glad now that you’re gone, that you didn’t have to live through these past two years with me, that I didn’t have to worry about you alongside everyone else.

So many of the Posts are gone now—gone who knows where. If they meet you, I hope they will write and tell me, but I don’t expect it. After all, you have never written me. After leaving this place, I doubt many will have the slightest interest in sending back word, and most especially not to me.

I have failed them, Kai. I have failed them all. I cannot step into my mother’s shoes. I cannot keep the farm running. I can’t stop thinking of those first weeks after Mal died and we were trying to convince everyone you could follow in his footsteps as mechanic. I remember the all-nighters we pulled trying to keep all the machines in working order. Of course, that time we had each other.

Now I don’t feel like I have anyone.

And that’s why I’m sitting here, writing letters to nobody. You’ll never see these words, but I can’t keep this to myself anymore. You are the person I’ve always told these things to. You’ve been gone for three years, and you’re still the only one I can trust. I sit in this room, surrounded by your letters and by even bigger secrets than those . . .

I made something, Kai. Something new.

The other Luddites would kill me if they knew. My father wouldn’t be able to protect me, but I doubt he’d want to. He believes in the protocols. Why don’t I feel terrified tonight? I’ve been terrified for so long—of how I was going to make it through the bad times, of how I was going to keep the farm going now that so many of the Posts have left, if I had any way to control what happened to me and those I love—to this place I love, despite everything.

I’ve been terrified for a year that I wouldn’t succeed. And now that I have . . . I’m not scared anymore. At least not tonight. I’m not scared that people will discover what I’ve done, because I know I did it for the right reasons. I’m not scared that we’ll all starve next winter, because I hold in my hands the instrument of our salvation.

And most of all, I’m no longer scared that I made the wrong choice three years ago. Whatever it meant for us, I know that I was meant to stay here. For them. For this wheat. For the future.

Even if I never see you again, I remain,

Yours,

Elliot

A
S THE AUTUMN DREW
to a close, bringing with it swifter sunsets and frigid days, Elliot was glad her duties kept her far, far away from the shipyard and Kai. He’d made his position clear at their last meeting. She saw no reason to try to speak to him again. But there was plenty of work to be done, especially since her father still hadn’t returned from visiting his Luddite friends down south. She had to prepare the Reduced barracks and the Post cottages for winter, she had to throw a harvest feast for all the laborers on the estate, and she had to make all arrangements for the food they’d be importing to tide them over to spring. Elliot found that sometimes a whole afternoon would pass without her thinking of Kai—much as it had been before he’d returned.

But she dreaded the coming dark months. For the past two years, she’d spent the depth of winter reading or working on her experiments. Now that her experiment had succeeded, she wasn’t sure what she’d have to occupy her time, other than thoughts of the boy staying on her grandfather’s estate and internal debates about whether she should risk replanting the wheat she’d worked so hard to develop.

Late in the season there was a break in the weather, a mild spell, like autumn’s last gasp of warmth before winter took charge. And in the midst of the mild days and nights, an invitation arrived on the North estate to a party. Both of the Miss Norths were invited, but when Tatiana heard that every Post on the North estate was invited as well, she declined. At that point, Elliot thought she had better go, lest the Innovations think her absence was due to the same reason.

“They say he may marry Olivia Grove,” Dee told her as they walked through the woods on the way to the Boatwright house on the night of the party. They brought Jef and Ro with them, though the young Post boy was growing frustrated with Ro’s regular detours off the path in search of remaining fall leaves. He’d complained twice to his mother, who’d just shrugged and smiled. He’d learn patience with the Reduced. He’d have to, to work on the estate.

“I believe you’ll find that rumor originates with Tatiana’s housemaids.” Elliot’s sister had grown obsessed with the notion, probably because of how much it terrified her. Elliot would allow no other possibility, not even as she noticed how Tatiana had begun incorporating stronger colors into her wardrobe and had even added a braided gold fringe to her fall jacket. That a Post would marry had been Tatiana’s first shock; naturally it would give way to the fear that a Post would marry into a Luddite family.

“Oh, no,” Dee said. “It’s all the talk among the Posts at the Grove estate.” Dee pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. She grew larger by the day, and Elliot wondered how long it would be before she was unable to perform her duties. Her father would surely force Dee to be confined in the birthing house then. “Apparently he and the other two Cloud Fleet captains are over there constantly. They say Miss Grove is in love with him.”

“Since when does being in love with someone mean you get to marry them?” Elliot asked. “Olivia Grove is fourteen years old. She’s not marrying anyone.”

“You only say that because you’re a Luddite,” Dee replied. “I was fourteen when I met Thom, and we had Jef a year later. Things work differently for Posts.”

Elliot brushed her fingers over the back of her hand, remembering being fourteen. Not so differently. Of course, things hadn’t worked out so well. “What makes you think that a rich free Post could love a Luddite?”

Dee gave her a look. “I have heard of a poor bonded Post doing so.”

“That’s different. The poor Post”—this hypothetical poor Post who might have once, long ago, loved some hypothetical Luddite—“would have something to gain.”

“I don’t believe it,” Dee insisted. “And there’s something to gain even for free Posts. They’d bring money to the estates in return for a raise in stature and Luddite rights for their children. But with . . . him—” Dee had the same problem calling Kai by his new name as Elliot did. The words Malakai Wentforth felt wrong in her mouth, though it was probably because she couldn’t connect the boy she knew to the person who now preferred that name.

“With him, he would have nothing to gain by returning here,” Elliot finished. “And no interest in an estate.”

Ro paused again on the trail. “Kai?” she asked hopefully.

“He’s meeting us there,” Elliot replied, wishing it were true. But it made Ro smile. She adjusted her scarf and took off, half skipping and half running. Dee gestured to Jef to keep an eye on her, and he groaned and ran to catch up.

Elliot was pleased to see that the Reduced had already switched to their winter clothes. A few years back, when they’d lost so many Posts, no one had been assigned to the duty, and as temperatures dropped, many of the laborers had fallen ill. One even lost a foot to frostbite after it was discovered she’d been wandering around all winter in her summer sandals. Elliot made sure it had never happened again.

She’d learned a lot in four years. The mistakes she’d made at fifteen that had led to the bad time would not be repeated. The mistake she’d made this summer of not doing a better job hiding the wheat—that would never happen again either. Four years ago, she’d never have been able to cajole her father into renting out the Boatwright estate to the Fleet. Things would get better.

They had to—otherwise, what had her sacrifice been worth?

Elliot was tired of hiding from Kai, of turning down invitations to the Boatwright house for fear of seeing him. Tonight’s party would be large enough that she doubted they would be forced to cross paths. Elliot would stick close to Dee and the other North Posts, and leave Kai to spend time with the Fleet . . . or the Groves.

As they arrived, Elliot saw that the space above the lawn of the Boatwright house had been strung with paper lanterns, though the light burning inside was too white and steady for candle flame. Sun-lamps, then. How many did they have, if they were able to work by night in the shipyard and still have dozens to string up on the lawn? More lights bedecked the porch, and there were blankets and colorful cushions strewn about the lawn for seating. The arrangement brightened up the browning winter landscape and made even Elliot’s careful decorations for the North estate’s harvest feast look dim and old-fashioned. What were a few candelabras and some jugs of fall leaves to compare to a patchwork of blankets in Post-bright colors and brilliant, sun-lamp–bedecked ribbons crisscrossed against the sky?

The Groves’ wagon was parked at the perimeter, and Elliot wondered if Tatiana would regret not coming along. Her sister had said that she’d already attended the harvest festival for the North laborers, and that she’d had quite enough for one season of picnics and peasant food.

“You go if you wish,” she’d told Elliot. “I’ll attend the next time the Innovations choose to throw a dinner party or something more civilized.”

So much the better. She doubted the North Posts would be able to relax much if their mistress was present. And every North Post, from the housekeeper Mags to the youngest children, had turned out for the party. There were also more than a dozen Grove Posts milling about the cider kegs they’d brought in carts at the corners, and half a dozen more tending to a giant kettle of soup. It was a marvel to see so many Posts working in unison—it reminded her of the old days on the North estate.

Was this what it was like in the Post enclaves? Was this what it would be like everywhere in a few generations?

Felicia Innovation waved to Elliot from a cushion near the porch. She was surrounded by Olivia and Horatio Grove, both decked out in Post fashions, and Kai, who was reclining nearly in Olivia’s lap. Elliot grabbed onto Ro’s hand tightly as they approached.

“Elliot,” Felicia said. “I’m so glad you could make our little party. Who is this you’ve brought?”

“This is Ro,” Elliot said, as Ro buried her chin in her chest and drew back.

“Ro!” Felicia waved at the girl. “I am Lee. Nice to meet you.” That was the Reduced name she was born with, the one she’d mentioned to Elliot on their horse ride. Elliot thought it suited her very well. She wondered if Felicia was as strict about using her new name as Kai was.

“What a pretty scarf you have.” The woman gestured to Ro’s hair.

Ro smiled. “Kai,” she said, and pointed.

Felicia faced him. “Malakai? Do you know what she’s talking about?”

Kai shrugged. “Her hair was in her face.”

“Hmm,” was all that Felicia said.

“I’m going to see if Donovan needs anything.” Kai jumped to his feet and left.

“Oh good, now there’s space for us all.” Olivia scooted over. “Sit here, Elliot.”

Elliot sank into the spot Kai had vacated. It was still warm with his body heat. She found herself staring at the swirling patterns on the thick hem of Olivia’s red skirt. He’d touched that skirt. He’d been lying with his head on her knee.

All of Elliot’s pretty words to Dee went straight out of her head. There was no point in denying it.

Kai was in love with Olivia Grove.