Starglass (30 page)

“Okay,” he said, and shrugged. “I tried.”

“You
did
,” I agreed. He lifted his lips in a tiny, feeble smile.

“You don’t have to do it,” he said. “You don’t have to k—”

I shook my head. “No, I do. You said it once: These aren’t people you want to cross. There’s no telling what they might do. Besides, I
want
to. Silvan’s dad killed my mother. I need to set things right.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”

Koen nodded finally, apparently satisfied. Without another word he started down the road toward his parents’ quarters, leaving the way he’d come. I watched him go. Then I opened up my sketchpad, scribbling hard across the page. I hoped to distract myself from the queasy
feeling in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that just wouldn’t abate.

Because the truth was, I
wasn’t
sure if I could kill Silvan Rafferty. I really wasn’t sure at all.

•  •  •

Silvan wasn’t like Koen. He had no patience for evening strolls through the dome or holding hands. He demanded that I meet him in his room every night after supper so that we could talk about our wedding. But we hardly ever talked at all.

Instead we rolled around on his wide bed, getting all tangled up in the sheets, mashing our bodies together. I laced my hands through his hair, and his fingers, hot and clammy, worked their way over my belly. With his body heavy on mine, I didn’t think about my father. I didn’t think about Momma. I didn’t even think about Benjamin Jacobi or all the people who were counting on me. It was just heat, mouths, skin, lips meeting lips until mine were raw and peeling. Those nights in his bed brought me closer to my dreams than I’d ever been. Sometimes, when we rolled away from each other, I’d touch his soft hands and think about how they must be the hands I’d been promised.

Silvan
, I thought, ignoring the ridges over his fingers, the long life lines on his palms,
my
bashert.

Did his parents know what we were doing up in his room at all hours of the night? They must have. I’d sometimes see them as I passed through their galley on the way to the stairs, and I blushed as I
followed Silvan to his room. But they didn’t say anything. They didn’t even say hello.

I knew why. Plenty of kids messed around before marriage. But there were unspoken rules. Couples went for walks when they needed to be alone. They hid in the tall rows of corn or out in the alleyways between the shops. They didn’t burn off young lust under their parents’ roof.

The only thing that saved me from feeling terrible about the whole thing—feeling anything, really, other than the white-hot burn of lust—was the way that Silvan always pulled away at the last moment, before we went all the way. He’d squirm away from my hands or arc his body away from mine. At first I worried that he might be like Koen. But he wasn’t—he
wanted
me, I could tell. So when he’d lie in his bed, breathing heavily and smiling at me, when he said, “You really should get going. It’s getting late,” I thought that maybe he was just trying to be good. To wait until landing. To wait until we had our own home.

Exhausted after our trysts, I headed to Mara’s quarters under the gray light of dawn. The early morning was dim and cold; my hot breath fogged the air. For a moment, just a moment, the ship seemed to have taken on a new clarity. I could see every crack in the old metal pathways. I could hear the birds calling to one another. It was so cold. It seemed like there shouldn’t have been any birds. But there were, and I thought that maybe, for the first time ever, they were calling to me.

Then one morning I stepped inside and saw Mara sitting at her galley table, a deep frown wrinkling her face.

“You’re still up,” I said, pulling my boots off, ready to duck up to Artemis’s room to sneak in a few precious hours of sleep. Mara didn’t smile at me. She didn’t laugh.

“You were gone so long,” she said, pushing up from the table, “that I thought you might have forgotten your work.”

She took something from her pocket. A bottle made of amber glass, filled with white powder. Then she set it on the table.

“I thought you were going to give that to the rebels,” she said.

I took the bottle from her, staring down at its red-gold glass. My mouth groped for words, but Mara didn’t wait to hear them. She only rose wordlessly from the table.

“You need to be more careful,” she said at last, clutching the banister beneath her hand. “There are children in this house. If one of them got into that—” Her voice gurgled strangely, a strained sound. It was the only sign I’d ever seen her give that she cared about her children.

“I’ll be more careful,” I promised, clutching the glass bottle in my fist. Mara nodded once, twice. Then she disappeared up the stairs and was gone, and I was alone beneath the buzzing galley lights.

•  •  •

Before we set a date for our marriage, we needed to schedule a time to get our bloodlines checked. I mentioned it to Silvan in bed one
night as his hand skimmed over my bare hip. We’d already tumbled away from each other. My body was spent, tired—but still responded to his touch like it always did. Goose bumps lifted over my arms.

“We need to make sure we’re not related, don’t we?” I asked. He smirked at me.

“I’m sure we’re not. I know your family has risen up in the ranks only recently.”

“So?” I said, feeling his fingers trace gentle circles on my thigh. “How do you know my great-grandma didn’t wear a gold cord? Maybe we’re distant cousins.”

“Terra, I would know if that were the case.”

“How?” I demanded.

Silvan gave his muscular body a twist, springing on me, grabbing my hands in his. He pressed my body to the mattress. His lips formed a toothy grin.

“I can tell,” he said. “It’s the way you walk, swinging your hips like a common girl.” He pressed his stubbly chin against my neck, leaving a trail of rough kisses on my throat.

“Besides,” he said, barely lifting his mouth from my skin, “it’s not as if it matters.”

I squirmed away from his kisses. “What do you
mean
?”

“The bloodlines are a farce,” he said. “You
must
know that already. We make our children in a lab. If they have any genetic flaws, we select
out for them anyway. What would it matter if cousins married cousins?”

I struggled to sit up. “But then why read the bloodlines at all?”

“Because it lets us ensure that only the
right
families marry into one another. If the Council decides it’s not meant to be, then we falsify the results. If you ask me, it’s a bit unfair. People should marry whoever they want—within reason, of course. I might even change things once
I
become captain. But Abba says that it’s the best way to ensure that commoners stay in their place. Of course . . .”

He hesitated. I finally sat up, gawking at him. “Of course
what
?” I demanded.

Silvan looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he gave his head a shake. “Nothing.” He scooted close, kissing the corner of my lips. “Come on, Terra,” he prodded. “Surely you realized all this?”

I hadn’t. I should have, but I hadn’t. I swallowed hard, forced a smile. “No,” I said smoothly. “But it makes sense.”

Silvan eased my body down into the bed again. I turned my head away from him, to the pile of clothes on his bedroom floor. The bottle of poison was buried in one of the pockets. Waiting for Silvan. Waiting for me.

•  •  •

In the genetic archives neat volumes lined the shelves on the walls. I couldn’t help but wonder now if all the books on the shelves were just for show—or if, perhaps, the words inside were nothing but lies
cooked up by the Council. Still, the woman who sat behind the curved desk didn’t look much like a Council stooge. She was short haired, plump with middle age. She smiled up at me.

“Good evening,” she said. I set my hands awkwardly on the desk.

“Hi,” I said. There was a long cricket of silence. Her smile grew just a little—thin lips belied her amusement.

“Can I help you?” she offered. I let out a coarse laugh.

“I need to make an appointment for me and my intended to have our bloodlines checked.”

“Mazel tov!” the woman said. “And what’s your name?”

“Terra Fineberg.”

Her trim nails clacked against the keys. “Let’s see . . .,” she began. But then her expression changed. “Your bloodlines have been run already. A match between you and a Mar Maxwell.” She hit a button, and a noisy printer at the end of the desk began spewing pages.

My throat tightened. That must have been my father’s doing. “The match was never made,” I said. “We broke our engagement.”

The woman stared down the desk at the scroll of pages unfurling from the printer. “That’s strange.”

“What is?”

“Our records indicate that someone came to collect the record. An Arran Fineberg.” She walked over and tore the pages off. Then she set them on the counter between us. “Usually if an engagement
is broken before the contract is signed, we simply discard the results.”

I gawked down at the printout. “My father,” was all I could manage to say.

“Yes, well.” A furrow had deepened between the woman’s eyebrows. “He must have been quite excited about your match.”

I stared at her bleakly.

“Ah.” The woman forced a breezy tone. “I suppose it’s for the best, if a new love has found you. What’s the name of your intended?”

“Silvan Rafferty.”

His name changed the air in the archives. The silence felt sharp, electric. Or maybe it was just my blood pressure skyrocketing.

“You’re the girl . . .”

“Who is marrying the new captain,” I said carefully.

“Yes,” she said. Hastily she turned to her screen. “Well,
Talmid
Fineberg, if you come back in one week with your intended, we’ll have the research all done for you. Here’s a reminder card.”

She jotted the date down on a tiny rectangle of paper, then dropped it atop the printout. I scowled down at both.

“Oh,” she said. “I can shred the other report for you if you’d like. . . .”

“No!” I said. My hands darted out. They moved with a frightening hunger, grabbing the card and printout both. I clutched them to my chest. “No, thank you.” I felt myself blush as the woman regarded me.

“Of course,” was all she said.

I started to turn to leave. The woman’s voice reached out.

“Terra?”

When I looked over my shoulder at her, I saw that she’d lifted two fingers to her heart. “Liberty on Earth.”

I wondered how this woman knew. Maybe she was one of the rebellion’s leaders. Maybe she’d been the one who’d decided to push me down this horrible path. I heard myself answer her, but my voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else.

“Liberty on Zehava,” I said.

•  •  •

I sat beside Artemis on her bed, running my hands over the printed text.

“He did this for me,” I said to her. The child watched me with saucer eyes. “Checked my bloodlines to ensure we’d make a match.”

I looked down at the printout. It traced back Koen’s line and mine. The two threads went back and back but didn’t touch, not yet. And they wouldn’t, either. No matter what my father had believed on the day he’d . . .

“He wanted to take care of me,” I told her.

“Sure,” Artemis said. “I bet he loved you lots.”

I turned to her, considering her features. Her aquiline nose was her mother’s, but that was the only thing. Otherwise she was tall and strong-bodied like her father. Artemis was kind, but not particularly
bright. So why was I looking to her for answers? Habit, I guess. For years I’d turn to Rachel for help or to Ronen. When I saw Benjamin Jacobi die, I leaned on Koen. Even years ago, when Momma passed away, I’d reached out for my father, expecting him to comfort me. And where had it gotten me?

It was time to look for answers in myself.

“You know, he did love me, in a way,” I said. For the first time I spoke to her like she was the child—and I the adult. “But I don’t think that was the whole story. I was an obligation, too. My father valued nothing more than doing his duty. I was part of that. That’s why he pushed me toward Koen. He couldn’t leave until his duty was fulfilled.” I felt a lingering flash of anger as I said it. Left me. He’d
left
me. But I pushed that thought away. This was the
truth
. And my father was gone, and it wouldn’t do any good to be angry with him.

“I’m sorry, Terra,” Artemis offered. I smiled faintly, then looked down at the list of names. Just above my name was Momma’s. Alyana Fineberg. I touched the square letters and felt something go to stone inside me.

But my tone was gentle, for the girl’s sake. “That’s okay, Artemis,” I said. “That’s okay.”

I
told myself that Silvan knew only my body—that he didn’t know my true self, not really. I told myself that if he had, he would have known how I’d been transformed, how every part of me that had once been soft and gentle was going to concrete. I watched him press kisses into my collarbone, drawing his soft hands over me. He took my laughter and my goose bumps to mean something deep and loving and true. I told myself that the only emotion that ran beneath my pleasured skin was anger. Anger at him and the Council.

No matter how warm and urgent his fingers, I reminded myself of how he’d reaped the harvest of my mother’s death. Power, and lots of it. Silvan was complicit—wasn’t he?

Sometimes I’d gaze into his black eyes, find myself reflected back, and think:
You’re so stupid. You have no idea.
But deep down I knew that wasn’t fair. I’d always had secrets, and not just the poison I carried with me wherever I went. There were dreams, too, wine dark. They still came every night. When Silvan kissed me, I thought of snow and the wild perfume of summer flowers. I was always naming them in my head, even as I sprawled out by his side in his wide, luxurious bed—even as I let him whisper sweet words into my ear. I couldn’t hear them. All I heard was
Magnolia virginiana, Syringa vulgaris
, and the names of a thousand different species of rose.