Starbreak (25 page)

“I’ve been doing this longer than you,” Rebbe Davison said. His voice had gone chilly, stern. I clutched my gun against my breast, holding the cold metal tight. But then I exhaled, relenting.

“Fine.” I paused as the lights flickered above. “But you don’t know Silvan like I do, Rebbe.”

The corner of his mouth ticked up. “I know. But I know our people better than anyone else. Anyone left alive, at least.”

I gave my head a slow shake. “I hope you’re right,” I said.

•  •  •

At first we stuck together as we roamed through the streets, taking in the broken glass and the windows boarded up with rotting, reclaimed wood. Solar lights flickered, making the whole street jitter and shake like an ember dying in a fire pit. It wasn’t just that the world of the
Asherah
seemed meager after the splendor of Raza Ait; our society had, in fact, been crushed by the riots. Once, the lift would have opened to the bustling commerce district, where the perfume of food and wine, where the sight of fine silks and sturdy wools, would have greeted us. We would have heard the music of the barter, the clamor of a sale. Now there was only the smell of dust and the low, constant whistle of the wind—circulating from starboard to aft over and over
again, stirring the bare winter branches, rattling the shutters that hung loose on their hinges.

The faint glow of light in the dome meant that it had to be near midday—close to the thirteenth hour, when, once, children and workers would have all tumbled toward the districts for lunch. Now there were only a few timid eyes that peeked out from behind the curtains of nearby stores, then hastily hid again when we turned toward them.

“Where do you live?” I asked Ettie.

“Starboard. Ninth Street, between the vegetable garden and the—” But before she could finish, Hannah pushed by us, her boot heels hitting the cobblestone hard.

“I need to get to the bow,” she said in a low, nervous voice. “Find Ronen and Alyana.”

But Mara Stone called out to her. “Not so fast, Giveret Fineberg.”

Hannah stopped on the path, her eyes flitting left and right as she did.

“What is it, Mara?” she asked impatiently. I think my sister-in-law was done with rebels—done with us. Ready to rejoin her family, her people.

“I stopped by your quarters after the riots. Thought after she made her escape from her nuptials, I might have found my
talmid
there.”

Hannah clutched the gun tight. I could read the questions in her
eyes: Was Ronen all right? Had he survived the attacks? “And?”

“He’s waiting for you, both of you, in that dark little galley of yours. Suspect you’ll find him there, not with the Council folk.”

“He—” Hannah began, her features twisting. “He
waited
for me? But it’s dangerous! He should have been keeping Alya safe in the bow, not waiting for
me
!”

Mara gave a snort. “Best take that up with your husband, then.”

And with that, the botanist rested her gun on her shoulder and took off for the port districts. We watched her go, white lab coat disappearing in the early twilight.

“I can’t believe he’d do something so
stupid
,” Hannah said softly, shaking her head in Mara Stone’s wake.

“Ronen? Really? You can’t?” I asked, and couldn’t help but lift my lips in a wicked grin. Hannah glanced sharply at me at first. But then the smallest smile lit up her mouth too. She reached out and took Ettie’s free hand in hers.

“Come on, girls,” she said, glancing down the litter-clogged streets. Once, the cobblestone had been swept clean every night. Wood and metal and glass would have all been recycled, food thrown into the composters, not a single scrap wasted. Now boxes spilled out of the broken shop windows. What food hadn’t been pillaged had been left to rot. “Let’s get home before . . .”

She trailed off. The lights overhead flickered and blinked. There
was laughter in the distance, eerie and echoing. We glanced at one another, eyebrows raised fearfully. Then, without another word, we hustled off.

•  •  •

As we walked through the starboard district, silent save for the beatings of our hearts, we passed Rachel Federman’s house. Once, it had been the prettiest on its block, her mother’s garden full of blossoming flowers, their front windows bright with embroidered curtains. Now the flowers were trampled, the curtains gone. In fact, the front door hung open, showing a gap of black space inside. I asked Hannah and Ettie to wait on the curb, and I headed up the front stoop.

Be cautious,
a voice in my head warned. Not my voice. How strange to think he watched me even now, in this solitary moment, as the hairs on my scalp all stood up. But to be fair, if I closed my eyes, I saw him, too. He sat in the senate antechamber, arguing with a senator, pounding his long fingers down against the stone table over and over again.

“Rachel?” I called, pushing the door open. “Mar Federman? Giveret Federman? Hello?”

I peeked in, but in the murky daylight, all I saw were fine vases, smashed, and the walls, once covered in paintings and hangings, now stripped bare. I rushed back down the stairs, shaking my head to Hannah and Ettie.

“No one,” I said. “There’s no one there.”

Hannah’s answer came perhaps too quickly. I saw her give Ettie’s arm a tug as she hustled her down the street. “I’m sure she’s
fine
, Terra,” she said, looking pointedly toward Ettie. She didn’t want me to scare the girl. Fair enough—but Ettie had seen much scarier in the past seven days than an empty house full of pottery shards.

“I’m sure she is too,” I said quickly. Ettie shook her head. That’s when I knew the little girl didn’t believe it. I felt the possibility settle over me like winter’s first frost. What if something
had
happened to Rachel? I’d last seen her on her wedding day, just before she was to marry Koen Maxwell. Had their marriage been sealed? Had they made it out of the clock tower alive? I winced, trying to push the thought away.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” I said again, but this time the words were meant for me and no one else.

•  •  •

Ettie’s home, at least, was in better shape. Though the flower beds had been turned over for winter, a faint light still glowed in the front windows. This time it was my turn to wait on the curb while Hannah led Ettie up the stairwell. They knocked together, waited. At last the door opened a slender crack. It was an old woman—too old to be Ettie’s mother.

“Bubbeleh!”
she cried, and scooped the girl up into her arms as
though she were little more than a toddler. Hazy eyes pressed into Hannah.

“Where
was
she?” she asked, faint accusation ringing. But Ettie pulled back from her grandmother’s grip, her toes touching the concrete step again.

“I was on Aur Evez,
Bubbe
.”

“Aur Evez?”

“Zehava,” I said quickly. “Mar Schneider took her on one of the shuttles.” I braced myself, drawing in a breath. I’d never been the bearer of bad news before—and definitely nothing like this. But somehow Ettie’s grandmother knew without my saying. She drew a wrinkled hand to her mouth.

“Oh, Abraham,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. Her hand fell against her thigh and she let loose a ragged laugh. “He always said he was going to live to see that damned planet. Oh, I hope you’re happy,
bashert
.”

I didn’t know what to say, but then I didn’t have to say a word. Ettie answered for me.

“Don’t be sad,
Bubbe
. Please don’t be sad. We said the kaddish for him and
everything
.”

Giveret Schneider smoothed down her granddaughter’s hair. “I’ll do my best,
Bubbeleh
.”

“Besides,” Ettie said, “soon you’ll be able to say good-bye to him
yourself. Terra says we’re going back there, so I can find my boy.”

“Your . . . your boy?”

“My
bashert
. The one I keep dreaming about. Hey.” Ettie glanced over her grandmother’s shoulder, into the warm light of the galley beyond. “Where’re Tateh and Mama?”

Ettie’s grandmother let out a long sigh. She glanced up at us—silent, grown-up conversation traveling through the artificial wind.

“We have a lot to talk about,” she told Ettie, leading her inside and closing the door behind her.

•  •  •

“Poor kid,” I said as we hustled down the empty street toward my brother Ronen’s house. I’d once been where Ettie was—small and scared and confused, no parents to guide me. And my dreams had offered no escape, only mounting darkness and confusion. Even if they gave temporary respite—me hidden away in the dreamforests, his body’s love soothing the parts of me that were wounded and raw—I’d wake up every morning and be all alone again in the universe. But Hannah didn’t understand. Of course, she’d never been there herself. As we walked, our heels striking the cobblestone sharply, she narrowed her gaze on me.

“Yeah,” she said. “Poor kid, and poor Terra, and that poor alien she ran off with.” She reached out, touching the silver folds of my Xollu robe. “Do you intend to tell me what happened down there?”

I stopped, standing in the yellow light cast down from a nearby streetlamp. It was so
dark
, despite the early hour. Hannah gazed expectantly at me.

She will not understand,
Vadix warned. But this was Hannah—sweet, tender Hannah, my brother’s true love. She used to try to talk to me, to give me the advice I’d missed because my own mother had died. I had to try.

“You said it yourself,” I began, choosing each word carefully. “We’re the same, Vadix and me. We carry our sadness with us, and—”

“A crush, Terra? He’s not
human
.”

“It doesn’t matter if he’s human or not,” I said. “He’s
like me
. More like me than anyone I’ve ever met on this ship!”

I indicated the solar lights, flickering overhead, the rattling tree branches, the concrete fronts of every identical town house.

“I wasn’t going to find anyone here. Look at me. You know it’s true.”

She did. Hannah stared and stared, her mouth firm.

“But Koen, and Silvan—”

“Just distractions,” I said, giving my head a sad shake. “We were never meant to be together. Not really.”

I gazed at my sister-in-law, standing there in her rank, dirty clothes. And then I saw the flash of a memory: Hannah on her wedding night, her slender body swathed in gold silk. Her olive skin had been clean.
There were flowers in her hair. But most of all I remembered how she seemed to glow, her eyes and teeth and laughter radiating love as she bound herself to my brother.

“I was only twelve when you and Ronen got married,” I said. “Momma had just died, and Abba treated me like I was invisible. But for all my self-pity, all of my doubts, there’s one thing I never questioned. You were meant to be with Ronen. No matter how much I hate him sometimes—my stupid brother, the same one who used to pull my hair and pinch me and call me names—it was obvious when you looked at him that you had the same heart, the same soul. And I couldn’t help but think, ‘Oh, how lucky he is.’ ”

Hannah rolled her jaw. I could see that she was fighting off a smile as she glanced back to the road beyond—where her husband and her daughter waited.

“But Ronen and I grew up together. You’ve only just met the alien.”

“That’s okay,” I said, calmly at first. “We have time. Assuming Silvan doesn’t do something rash. Assuming I can get us back to that planet.”

Hannah pressed her lips together. I saw then that she didn’t
want
to return. She wanted to stay here, where it was familiar—even if it was no longer safe. I didn’t know what to say to change her mind, so I said nothing.

“We should go,” she said. “Ronen and Alyana are waiting for me.”

I looked at her and pressed my lips together too. Together we headed down the empty street.

•  •  •

The tiny front plot of my brother’s home was all trampled, and it sparkled with broken glass like a whole new sky. There was paint on the front door, red letters that seemed to have dribbled and dripped onto the stoop like blood.

TRAITOR,
it said, the word jagged as the breath that I heard Hannah suck in as we stood on her front walk. And then a second hand had added, in smaller, squarer script.
COUNCIL SCUM.

She was stunned, frozen in the middle of the slate pathway. I let out a sigh and pushed past her, then rapped my knuckles against the old, familiar slab of cedar wood.

I heard everything go quiet in the house—footsteps paused, hesitant, on the precipice. So I knocked again, harder this time.

“Damn it, Ronen, let us in!”

The door swung open. My brother stood there, his tiny daughter slumped and sleeping in his arms.

“Terra?” he said, his face lighting up brightly. And then he looked past me, to where his wife still stood in the middle of the walk, surrounded by her annihilated flower beds. Hannah began to cry, and the baby woke, hiccuping tears, but it didn’t matter. Ronen rushed past me and down the steps.

I would have felt odd, ill-fitting, at the sight of their perfect family reunion if I hadn’t had my own old friend waiting for me just past the open door. There was a small, furry shadow there. The cat arched his back, letting out a curious meow.

“Pepper!” I cried. I moved past the doorway, feeling almost like my body floated several feet off the ground. I swept my cat up into my arms and buried my face in the warm fur between his shoulder blades. He smelled the same as he always did, like old fish and dust bunnies and dead mice. But I didn’t care. I clutched his purring body against me, pressing kisses between his ears.

“I’m glad to see you too, Sister,” my brother said, watching me over his wife’s shoulders. But I didn’t care. I snuggled Pepper to me, laughing through tears.

Because if my cat had survived these long, strange days without me—survived the riots, survived the tumult of my whole world falling apart—it meant there was room for light in all this darkness.

It meant there was room for hope.