For Darkness Shows the Stars

by Diana Peterfreund

  I hope your grounding ends soon. I miss you.

  You’re right, it’s very confusing. I asked my da what he thought and he just stared at me for a really long time without saying anything, then told me to go clean out the stalls. I hate cleaning out the stalls. I’d far rather work on the machines than with the farm animals.

  But what you wrote made a lot of sense to me. After all, God never tells us what he’s thinking. At least, he never tells the Reduced or the Posts. I think that’s supposed to be part of our punishment, right?

  It’s really unfair, I think, being punished for something I didn’t do. If I was going to have to be punished, I’d at least like to have the fun of being fast and never tired and having superhuman eyes and super smart brains and everything first.

  DON’T TELL ANYONE I WROTE THAT.

  Your friend,

  Kai

  Dear Kai,

  Your secret’s safe with me. But I’m glad you sent this one through Mags and not through Benedict. Mother tells me I’ll be done with my grounding next week. Please find something fun for us to do. I’m going crazy stuck here in the house.

  Your friend,

  Elliot

  Three

  ELLIOT BOATWRIGHT’S HOUSE WAS located on the border between the Boatwright lands on the tip of the island and the North estate. It was covered in flowers during the spring, but now dying russet vines crackled in the breeze as they crawled up the eaves and arched over the door. She’d hoped to make some improvements to the place before the Fleet’s arrival, but time had been in short supply recently. Harvest was coming on, and even with the influx of money from the Fleet’s rental of the Boatwright estate, it was vital that she produce as much grain as possible.

  Perhaps the Innovations and their staff would consider these unruly vines pleasingly rustic after their years spent in the Post enclave down in Channel City. This was the home where Elliot’s mother, Victoria, had grown up, and she always liked to remember the way her mother had cared for the garden, pruning the hedges and trimming the flowers twining over the railings of the porch.

  The Boatwright had three nurses to tend to his needs. They were all Reduced. A few years ago he’d had a Post housekeeper as well, but now they didn’t have enough Posts to spare for the care of Elliot’s grandfather. Once there had been fifty, but ever since the bad time, there were scarcely ten adult Posts to share between the two estates. Still, she knew her grandfather preferred this state of affairs to moving in with her father and Tatiana. Elliot liked to think that he wouldn’t have minded so much if it was just her.

  The Boatwright himself was seated on the porch now, and his good eye narrowed as she came up the path to greet him. “Good morning, Grandfather,” she said. “This is the day, you know.”

  He grunted at her and seemed to sink down into his chair. Elliot sighed. So it was to be an obstinate morning.

  “We talked about this, remember?”

  The good side of his mouth frowned, and he did his best to look confused, but Elliot was not taken in. The strokes had destroyed his body and his speech, but not his memory.

  “You know we’ve rented the house to those shipbuilders.”

  He stamped his good foot against the floorboards of the porch.

  “Grandfather, you can’t stay here. They need the room.” And we need the money. She almost added it aloud.

  But Elliot Boatwright was no fool. He made the sign the Reduced used for “father” and then the one for “mistake.” She cringed. Luddites did not sign to each other—it was a mark of the Reduced. For her grandfather to use signs in reference to Baron North was as good as an epithet in the mouth of a man who could speak.

  “My father did not rent out your house,” Elliot said, even if he had made it necessary. “I did. If you want to be mad, be mad at me.”

  The good side of her grandfather’s face smiled and he shook his head. No, he’d never be mad at her. She did what she ought, just as her mother had. Which was all well and good, but it still meant that her ailing, aged grandfather was losing the only home he’d ever known.

  She brushed past him into the house, where, sure enough, she found his trunks waiting by the door, just as she had instructed the Reduced nursemaids to do several days before. The house had been cleaned and aired, and vases of fall flowers stood everywhere, ready to welcome the Cloud Fleet. Elliot took a quick tour of the house, checking to see that all the linens were laid out on the beds brought down from storage, that the larder was stocked with food quite as good as the kind they had at the big house. Her father had been insistent that the visitors would not think the North estate lacking in opulence, even as he loudly complained about sharing his supplies “with CORs.” He’d even had ice delivered. Ice, this late in the fall, while Elliot was worried about how to keep the laborers in bread and coal this winter. She shook her head.

  Her father had kept her tutors until she was sixteen, just as he had with Tatiana before her. They’d received the standard Luddite curriculum: history, music, literature, religion, and art, but as to what she’d need to know to keep the estate on its feet—that was trial and error. That was luck. That was whatever she could scrape together on the side.

  Perhaps it would have been different had her father been raised to take over the estate, but it was her uncle who was supposed to be Baron North. Elliot’s father had never liked anything but horses and the comfortable trappings of the Luddite lifestyle. The North estate had been paying for his disinterest ever since her uncle’s death. Elliot’s mother had done what she could when she was alive—raised a Boatwright, she had her father’s work ethic—but she’d died four years earlier.

  At the time, Tatiana had mourned the fact that her mother’s death prevented them from traveling to Channel City for her debut, but Elliot feared worse than a deferred holiday. Her mother’s death left two estates in peril: the one belonging to Elliot’s invalid grandfather and the one her father had never bothered to maintain.

  Elliot had been fourteen. She hadn’t even been finished with school, but she had learned enough to know that only one thing mattered: the hundreds of people—Luddite, COR, and Reduced—who depended on the estates to survive.

  Down on the porch, the Reduced were fighting to get the Boatwright loaded into the litter that was to take him to his new home, and he swatted at them with his cane. Elliot stood by the window and shook her head. She hated removing him, but this was the only house on the estate suitable for someone of the admiral’s station. They could hardly put the Cloud Fleet in a Reduced cottage, and Elliot shuddered to think of the daily indignities they would be forced to suffer as guests of Baron North. Elliot’s father would not care that these were free Posts, nor that they were paying him good money to rent his land and labor. Station was station to Zachariah North. He’d refused even to stay and greet the Fleet, but had instead left those duties to Tatiana and Elliot, while he rode out the “indignity” of being paid and saving his workers from starvation with a prolonged visit at the estate of one of his Luddite friends.

  So much the better. Though Admiral Innovation’s letter had been all that her father deemed proper, Elliot hoped to see the Fleet settled here before Baron North returned and was forced to deal with the reality of Posts over whom he did not have complete control.

  Elliot placed her hand on the yellow plaster walls. This house needed people again. The admiral was bringing his wife and a large staff: shipwrights and metalworkers and captains of the Cloud Fleet. She hoped they would enjoy this house; enjoy the vines and the bright, sunny rooms; the shiny, worn wood floors and the creaking staircase. Elliot wondered what they were like, these free Posts who’d found success beyond the confines of the indentured estates.

  For four years she’d waited for Kai to come back, too, but he never had. Nor had he ever sent word of his whereabouts. In her dreams, she liked to imagine he’d ended up like one of the admiral’s men, content and employed. With his mechanical talent, he’d have made an excellent skilled laborer.
But she’d heard too many stories of the things that happened to Post runaways. She’d heard of the dangers in Post enclaves. The brothels and the workhouses, the organ trade and the people who sold their bodies for illegal experimentation.

  Elliot let her hand drop and curl inward. She brushed her left fingers over the back of her right hand, touching each knuckle, tracing the path of each vein. She couldn’t bear to think of Kai like that. She would stick to her fantasy of him being a safely employed mechanic somewhere—though that was a hope she kept to herself. She hadn’t even shared it with Dee. After all, Thom was out there, too, and he was Dee’s common-law and the father of the woman’s babies. Kai was only a friend. Nothing more.

  One of the Reduced nursemaids appeared at the door. The Boatwright was ready to go. Elliot nodded. Somehow she’d make it work. She always did—she managed the farm, she managed her family, and she managed her own heartbreak.

  But perhaps . . . perhaps some of the Posts coming here were runaways who’d found a place of their own. Perhaps one of them had heard something of Kai and could tell her at last where he’d gone. Perhaps he was somewhere in the world, safe and happy, somewhere where a girl like her was straightening a picture frame or smoothing a bedcover in hopes of making the Post that slept there feel more at home.

  Four

  ELLIOT WALKED BESIDE THE litter that carried her grandfather back to the great house. Behind them, two Reduced pulled a cart holding all of the Boatwright’s personal belongings. He’d attempted to argue with anyone who’d listen during the whole four-kay trip, but the Reduced were trained merely to nod, and Elliot pretended she couldn’t understand his mumbled complaints. It signified nothing, at any rate; her grandfather must be moved from his house, and the Posts must be installed there, for the good of both estates. He might be ornery, but she knew he understood that.

  As they reached the great house, Elliot quickened her pace. There were two horses on the lawn, giant, chestnut-colored things with glossy black manes and powerfully muscled legs. So these were the Innovation horses Elliot had negotiated for on top of the rent money in order to sweeten the deal for her father. Each horse was tethered to a strange, three-wheeled contraption the likes of which Elliot had never seen except in drawings. They must be the famous sun-carts, for each sported a pane of shiny, golden mirrors on the back. The Post housekeeper, Mags, was waiting on the porch, wringing her hands as the horses trampled the grass.

  “Miss, they came early. They’re already in the parlor.”

  “Thank you, Mags,” said Elliot, bounding up the steps two at a time. “Take care of Mr. Boatwright, please. I have to go in to my guests—”

  “Miss Elliot,” said Mags, laying a hand on her arm as she passed. “Perhaps you’d like to go change first? Put on a nice dress?”

  Elliot stopped and looked at the Post in confusion. Were these Cloud Fleet people so very fine? Were they out exploring the wilderness in lace?

  “It’s just that—” Mags looked pained. “In the parlor—”

  But time had run out, for a man appeared in the doorway and filled the air with his booming voice. “Did you say Elliot? Is this Miss Elliot North?” He stepped into the light and Elliot resisted the urge to step back. Every bit as giant as his horses, the admiral was red all over, from his thinning, combed-over ginger hair to his ruddy complexion to his deep scarlet coat. Elliot had never seen such a color on a piece of fabric. It looked like the flowers in Ro’s garden.

  “I have been looking forward to meeting you, my dear girl. Nicodemus Innovation, at your service.” He inclined his head in a move that was almost, but not quite, a bow.

  “Admiral Innovation,” she said, collecting herself. It wouldn’t do for a North Luddite to be rendered speechless by a Post’s jacket, no matter how red it was. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you. I’ve been making the final preparations to your lodgings—”

  He waved his hand. “Don’t worry a bit. The sun-carts make great time when the weather’s as clear as today’s. Even my horses could hardly keep up. We haven’t seen a flicker of your father yet, but your sister Tatiana’s been, ah, entertaining us while we waited for you.”

  Elliot could only imagine. Well water perhaps, from tin cups? She wouldn’t put it past her sister.

  “Come in and meet the Fleet,” he said, bustling her into her own house.

  “The whole Cloud Fleet is in my parlor?” Elliot asked with a smile. “Very impressive, sir.” In the hall, she could smell freshly baked cream biscuits and peach and chamomile tea. If this was Tatiana’s doing, it was also very impressive. Perhaps she owed her sister an apology.

  “Nah, not all of them,” said the admiral. “Just the ones I like best, you know.” He laughed and pushed open the door. “My wife, here—Felicia.” The woman was as tiny as her husband was giant, with black and silver hair that curled around her freckled face. She nodded to Elliot and opened her mouth as if to speak, but the admiral was already steering her away. “And over there you’ve got the Phoenixes—captains both.”

  He gestured vaguely to two blond young people who were sitting near Tatiana with cups of tea in their hands. They looked over at her, and Elliot found her steps faltering under the intensity of the girl’s gaze. The female Phoenix—Andromeda, the admiral was telling her—looked to be about Tatiana’s age and had the most unusual eyes she’d ever seen, a light, glistening blue, like sunlight on seawater, and so clear it was as if Elliot could make out each speck in her iris despite the shade in the room. The male Phoenix—Donovan, according to the admiral—had eyes that matched, but he was younger, perhaps only in his mid-teens. Elliot was surprised that the famed “captains” of the Fleet could be so young. She was expecting grown-ups, not teenagers. The Phoenixes must be siblings, with their corresponding eyes and last name? Elliot wondered if they were born with the name, or if they’d grown up on an estate and adopted it later, as the Innovations had done. It had become fashionable these last few years for free Posts to change their names when they left their estates—to adopt new first names in the long, ornate style of Luddites and surnames of their own creation.

  “And then—but we’re missing someone.” The admiral’s heavy brows knit together. “I thought I brought three of you.”

  “You did,” said Andromeda Phoenix. “Wentforth is out seeing to the horses.”

  “The horses?” Now the admiral appeared even more confused. “Wentforth?”

  Andromeda gave Elliot a small, inscrutable smile. “Yes, very curious.”

  “Donovan,” said the admiral with a sigh, “go drag him from his sudden fascination for animal husbandry and bring him in to meet Miss Elliot. I’m sure the horses will be very well looked after in the baron’s stables without Wentforth’s help.” He turned to Elliot as Donovan snapped to do his admiral’s bidding. “No introduction would be complete without my star pilot.”

  Andromeda helped herself to more tea and sat back in her chair, that same small smile playing about her lips. She was dressed in a most peculiar fashion, as were all the Posts. Fabrics like Elliot had never seen, soft and almost fuzzy, shimmered in the light from the window in dark, rich colors that stood out in the room like Ro’s flowers hidden in a bed of fading autumn leaves. Andromeda and her brother were dressed like the admiral, in trousers, tall boots, and long, full jackets in purple and teal. Though Felicia Innovation looked slightly more traditional in a deep green dress, it featured none of the lace or embroidery on Tatiana’s pink creation. Its only decoration was a pair of golden shoulder epaulets accented with braided tassels. The coats of the other Posts were similarly ornamented.

  Elliot tugged the edge of her dirt-brown sweater down over the waist of her slate-gray trousers. Perhaps she should have taken the housekeeper’s advice and changed, even if it was only into a dress. Luddites tended to wear only the faded, drab colors that could be derived from natural dyes. It had been their tradition long before the Reduction, and of course it had been necessary in the days of scarcity. Elliot suppo
sed these new colors were common in the free Post enclaves.

  Tatiana turned to Felicia. “Are you much involved in the operations of your common-law’s business?” she asked mildly.

  Felicia paused with her teacup halfway to her lips. “Nicodemus is my husband, Miss North. We are free Posts and do not subscribe to the restrictions the Luddites place on their servants.” But she said this all without a hint of malice or defensiveness, and it took a moment for Tatiana to collect herself enough to look offended.

  And Felicia did not allow the feeling to take root. “I am not involved in the operation of the Cloud Fleet, no,” she said. “I am not much of an explorer of the beyond, I’m afraid. Not when there are still so many mysteries to solve here at home.”

  “Mysteries?” Tatiana asked with a raise of her eyebrows. Elliot marveled at the woman’s behavior. Were all free Posts so open with heretical talk like this? Luddites held that nature’s mysteries were meant to remain unsolved. Attempts to improve upon nature had led to the Reduction.

  “Mrs. Innovation is a physician,” Andromeda broke in. “She trained as a healer on the estate where she grew up and has been studying in the field for decades.”

  “My wife is brilliant,” said the admiral. “She’s saved dozens of lives.”

  “Really,” said Tatiana. “Perhaps during your stay you can visit our COR healers and teach them a thing or two. We’ve been at very loose ends since our doctor passed away.” Which he’d done before Elliot’s birth, Elliot thought wryly.

  “And maybe you would be so kind as to look in on my grandfather,” Elliot said.

  “The Boatwright?” asked the admiral, sitting up in his chair. “I was wondering, given the . . .”

  Given the fact that Baron North controlled the shipyard.

  “What is the nature of his infirmity?” Felicia asked quickly.

  “A series of strokes, starting from when I was a very young girl,” Elliot replied. “No one has been able to do much for him.”