For Darkness Shows the Stars (14 page)

Dear Elliot,

Last night I went with some other Posts to the Grove estate to hear a traveling musician. It was fantastic. I’d always thought that music was something that you or your mother or Tatiana played on your instruments, but at the Grove estate, several of the Posts have string-boxes or pipes, and they all play together.

I wish you could have been there. The Grove Posts talk a lot about the free Post settlements. Apparently they’re allowed to visit family and such that have left for there. They don’t make it sound half so scary as the beggars who’ve come to the North estate do.

They say other things I believe even less. They say Baroness North used to visit the Grove estate quite often. I thought none of the Norths spoke to the Groves.

Your friend,

Kai

Dear Kai,

I’m so jealous! Were the Luddites there, too? I have never met the Grove children. I believe there are two—a boy several years older than us, and a little girl.

I don’t know the precise nature of my father’s argument with Mr. Grove but I think it’s gone on longer than Tatiana and I have been alive. I think it must have something to do with a land dispute of some sort. It is too bad, really. If they were on speaking terms, it’s likely Tatiana and I would have had the children as playmates. As it is, she hasn’t had a true friend since Benedict left the estate.

But I don’t need to travel to another estate to find a friend. I have our gliders, I have our barn-wall knot. I have you.

Did anyone show you how to make a string-box? I think we should make one and play it for Ro.

Your friend,

Elliot

Dear Elliot,

I’ve included the list of Posts who have ordered string-boxes. I can’t believe how many people want one now. I’m not sure we’ll have to paint them all the way we did for Ro. It will slow the process a lot, and besides, people might want to paint them themselves.

Your friend,

Kai

Dear Kai,

I managed to make three over the weekend and put them in the usual place. But I’m out of the silk fiber we were using for the strings. I stole it from the hem of one of my mother’s old shirts. I don’t know what else we can use.

Your friend,

Elliot

Dear Elliot,

I believe these wires will work well. It changes the tone of the instrument, but not in a bad way. Thank you for doing this. I hope your mother doesn’t miss her hems. I know how hard you’ve been working to make sure the boxes are properly tuned . . . so I know you won’t resent it when you see this newest list of requests?

Come on. For me?

Yours,

Kai

Dear Kai,

Your wish is my command. I mended my mother’s shirt with hemp thread and she didn’t even notice. By the way, the wire works beautifully. The new sound is very different, but you’re right, it will just add to the richness of our little orchestra. I can’t wait to hear them!

Yours,

Elliot

Dear Elliot,

I’ve never been tempted to show our letters to anyone until now. But “your wish is my command”? Those are some dangerous words for a Luddite to write to a Post.

Yours,

Kai

Dear Kai,

Are you planning on telling on me?

Yours,

Elliot

P.S. Made five more.

Dear Elliot,

It depends. Will you make boxes for this new list?

Yours,

Kai

“Y
OU LOOK RADIANT
, D
EE
,” Kai said. “I’m so glad you could make it tonight.”

He looked radiant, too. Smack in his element, decked out in an oxblood jacket that soaked up the light from the lanterns and set off the darkness of his black hair. In these colors, he stood out from all the other partygoers, but then again, Elliot might have thought he stood out anyway. She drew her knees up to her chest. She wore her old black dress with a lavender sweater over it. It didn’t hold a candle to the Post clothes, but it was the brightest color she owned. Now, she didn’t know what she’d been thinking. Trying to emulate the Post style of dress did nothing to make her fit in. It only served to highlight her shortcomings.

“I’m happy to see you, too, Malakai,” said Dee, stressing the last syllable. “I have heard some disturbing things. Perhaps you wish to clarify for us—”

“I’d be happy to, later,” said Kai. “Right now, I need to dance with Ro. She’ll think I’m snubbing her.” Ro looked up at the sound of her name. “Dance with me, Ro?”

The girl hopped up and right into his arms. Kai laughed and spun her away. Elliot tugged at the fraying cuffs of her sweater and tried to forget how well she knew that laugh.

“Try as I might,” Dee said, “I can’t hate him completely, Elliot. He hasn’t forgotten where he came from.”

“I wouldn’t want you to, Dee. You’d be no better than Andromeda if you did.” The jig went on and on, and Donovan’s music became more frantic and frenetic by the moment. As mournful as his last piece had been, it was utterly eclipsed by the melodies reeling off his fiddle now, as if he could exorcise his pain if only he could find the proper chord progression. The music was overwhelming in its intensity. Donovan must be some sort of prodigy—even Luddites with a lifetime of training didn’t possess such talent.

Dee still watched Kai. “But his behavior now is inexcusable.”

“He doesn’t want to be my friend. It’s his choice.”

“What choice did he give the Fleet girl, or did he simply poison her mind against you?”

“Drop it, Dee. This is the way it is. Like so many other things.” Elliot took a breath. “The way it is.”

Dee shook her head. “I refuse to believe that. Look at us, here. Together, listening to music on a Luddite estate. It’s like the old days, Elliot. And look at Kai, who went away and made something of himself. I want that for Jef. I want it for this baby, whoever he or she is. They have been born into a thrilling time. It’s even like that song Donovan sang—the world isn’t a certain way. We reinvent it, every day, something new. It’s changing around us, as fast as a weed taking root.”

And yet, Thom was still in exile. And her father had plowed under her wheat. And her grandfather lay dying in his room back at the house because treatments that could help him were illegal under the Luddite laws. This winter they had money and food, thanks to the Cloud Fleet. But what would become of the people on the North estate in the years to come? What else could they rent? How could they make do?

If things were changing, it wasn’t nearly fast enough to suit Elliot.

She watched Kai and Ro dance. Long after the song ended and another began, they remained out there. Kai danced with Olivia again, and Ro with anyone—Grove Posts, Jef, all by herself beneath the swinging lanterns. Part of Elliot wished to join her, but then she caught sight of Kai whirling very close, Olivia Grove held tightly in his arms, and her legs remained glued to the blanket. She could not dance on the same ground as him.

She shouldn’t have come tonight. She’d thought she could enjoy the company of friendly faces and ignore the ones who weren’t, but she couldn’t. Not until she could teach herself to stop looking for Kai at every chance.

The dancers whirled on inside their island of light. Above the bobbing lanterns, Elliot could see a few stars flickering in the sky—the Cross; the pointers; Scorpius, its tail slashed across the sky; and Antares glimmering like the red heart of one of Ro’s flowers. Most of the smaller stars weren’t visible in the glow of the sun-lamps. Elliot wondered if this is what the skies had looked like once upon a time, when there was so much light in the air that no one could see the stars.

“Are you here to keep the pregnant woman company?” Dee asked.

“I’m tired myself,” Elliot said, and hoped she sounded convincing. “It’s been a long week, and I still haven’t figured out what’s wrong with the tractor.”

“Don’t beat yourself up too hard, Miss,” said Gill, looking up from his third mug of cider. “We won’t need it again for another few months.”

“We could always have a visiting mechanic take a look,” Dee suggested, a mischievous smile on her face.

“Don’t you dare,” Elliot said. If it were spring, she’d consider swallowing her pride enough to ask Kai for help. But she had a few more months yet. The crops weren’t in any danger. She still had time to fix it without risking Kai illustrating her incompetence.

By now, many of the Posts not dancing had taken out their instruments and were adding to the din. There was still an undercurrent of melody, if you listened hard enough, but with dozens of string-boxes and pipes, with the drums and the fiddle and the voices and the hand clapping, it was difficult to identify exactly what the song was.

It was also growing harder and harder to hear the flow of conversation. Over here, a bunch of Grove Posts were talking about the likelihood of getting jobs and leaving with the Fleet. Over there, a knot of North Posts was discussing a drainage problem on the new racetrack.

Ro came rushing up to her and broke her from her reverie. The girl was breathing hard, her face flushed, her scarf askew. She held tight to Kai’s hand, but he was a few steps behind her, their arms outstretched to their limits. Dee regarded him coldly, and Elliot did her best to keep her eyes averted.

“Dance!” cried Ro. She held out her other hand for Elliot.

“No, I’m fine right here,” said Elliot. As Ro captured her hand, she squeezed back to reassure her, but refused to let the Reduced girl pull her to her feet.

Ro shook her head with gusto. “No! Dance!” She yanked on Kai’s arm to bring him forward, then tried to place his hand in Elliot’s.

For a moment their knuckles brushed, then they each pulled back.

“Ro, please don’t do that,” said Elliot. “I don’t want to dance.”

“And certainly not with me.”

Elliot’s gaze shot to Kai, but as usual, his face was unreadable. At least tonight he was looking at her, though she found herself fighting the urge to squirm beneath his gaze. His eyes had become so cold, so alien, in the past four years.

“Certainly not,” repeated Dee. “Not with the way you’ve been treating her ever since you showed up here.”

“Dee!” Elliot cried.

“Oh,” said Kai. “Have I been somehow remiss in my duties as a North Post? How rude of me. Guess it’s good I’m not a North Post anymore.”

Elliot closed her lips over a gasp.

“None of that, boy!” said Gill. “You’re not too old for me to turn you over my knee. Your da would expect me to if he heard you talking that way about Miss Elliot.”

“My father would be glad to know I’m no longer forced to pretend I’m happy with a slave’s lot in life.”

Her breath became choked in her throat. That couldn’t be true. He couldn’t have been her friend all those years simply because she was the master’s daughter. Not all those letters. Not all those hours in the barn. Not what they’d shared.

“If you are . . . ,” Kai said, and let his words hang in place.

“Kai!” Elliot cried, and stood. It was a lie. It was a lie because he was still angry at her. It had to be. “Stop it. Stop it right now. You can be as cruel as you want to me, and I’ll bear it with no complaint. But do not take your anger out on these people who have never done anything to you.” Andromeda might hate her because of how the Post girl thought she’d betrayed Kai, but it was Kai who’d left Elliot and the others alone on the estate. They had a right to anger as well.

“Protecting your CORs, how
noble
,” he replied. “And how effective it is—at least when your father’s not around.”

Elliot blinked, then blinked again, as her eyes began to burn. Ro started to whimper.

“Any Post who remains on this estate is a slave, and they know it. And if they are afraid to leave, that makes them cowards as well.”

“That’s it,” said Gill, standing and brushing crumbs of pie from his pants. “I’ve had enough lip from you—”

“You have no right to belittle the choices made by me and mine, Malakai Wentforth, or whatever you’re calling yourself these days,” said Dee, still seated. Her voice was calm, but then again, she’d been defending her choice to stay after Thom left for years. “Not when you’re off flirting with Olivia Grove all night. She’s a Luddite, too, don’t forget.”

“Olivia has no love for the estate way of life. She knows we’re the future and embraces it.”

“Easy for her to do, when she’s grown up in the Luddite lap of luxury,” Dee pointed out, her voice textured with the patience of a decade spent dealing with children.

The same could not be said for Gill. “You’re upsetting a pregnant woman, boy, and you’re disrespecting all the people who helped you get raised—including Miss Elliot here. And you’ll stop it right now or I’ll fight you and I don’t care if I’ve got twenty years on you . . .”

“Stop it,” said Elliot, holding out her hands between Kai and Gill. Nearby, Ro was openly weeping. These were her
friends
. Her true friends, not nice to her because she was a North, not nice because she might be able to help them. Kai could hate her now, he could even claim he hadn’t loved her at all, but he couldn’t speak for the rest of them. “There will be no fighting at the Innovations’ party.”

“Oh, yes, Miss,” Kai drawled in a mocking appropriation of Gill’s voice. “Whatever you say.”

“That’s it,” said Gill, and stepped forward. Elliot moved in between them.

“I said
stop it
!”

Kai grabbed her by the wrists. “You’ll fight . . . for her?” he asked them.

Elliot tried to move away, but his grip was too tight. Ever since the day on the beach, she’d wanted him to touch her again. But not like this.

“You’ll do anything . . . for her?” He shook their hands as Elliot struggled to get free. “And you don’t sit here and wonder why none of you have string-boxes anymore, why none of you have listened to a lick of music in three years?”

“Let go,” Elliot said. The folks on other blankets had begun to look over, despite the music and the revelry. Ro was tugging in vain at Kai’s sleeve. Gill’s face had turned crimson with anger. “Let go. Please, let go.”

“You don’t miss the people she’s responsible for driving away? Dee?
You
don’t?”

“I put the blame where it belongs, Kai,” was all Dee said. “Now stop making a scene. This is no example for my son.”

“Neither is living here,” Kai growled. “You’re idiots, all of you. Believe me. I thought that way once.” He drew her in and stared into her eyes. Elliot flinched. His gaze was dark, so dark. His eyes seemed filled with more stars than the sky above. Now she could see it was more than just a trick of the light. His eyes
had
changed in the last four years. She didn’t know such a thing was possible.

“I thought she could protect me, too. I thought she cared. But it’s all a lie.” He released her and she stumbled back, holding tight to her wrists and her tears. This was Kai. The Kai she’d loved from the moment she knew what that meant.

But she didn’t know him at all.

“Ma!” Jef came running up. “Ma—”

“Not now, Jef,” said Dee, standing and putting her arms around the boy. “It’s all right.”

“But Ma,” said Jef, as the music died. “It’s not all right. The baron’s here.”