“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.”
Eighteen
BARON NORTH WAS NOTHING if not civil to his tenants, but declined to stay more than a few moments at the party on the Boatwright lands. He paid his respects to Felicia Innovation and made arrangements for a more thorough meeting with the admiral the following day. Then he crooked his finger at Elliot, who’d trailed forward a few steps from the near-melee going on at the North Posts’ blanket. Had he seen what had transpired among his servants? Had he recognized Kai? Elliot got the distinct impression that she was very close to making a bad situation much worse.
“You will meet me in my office in half an hour,” said Baron North, in a voice barely audible over the few instruments still in use.
Elliot nodded. “Yes, sir.” But her father had already climbed back into his carriage. Elliot caught a glimpse of another male figure inside as it drove away. He hadn’t even offered her a ride back to the house. She should leave quickly, if she hoped to make herself presentable before she was required to meet with him.
“I’ll take care of Ro,” said Dee, coming up to her. “You should hurry.”
Gill and Kai were still glaring at each other as if they’d come to blows the moment she turned her back.
“I won’t let them fight,” Dee said. “Gill wouldn’t risk it now, anyway.”
No one knew what the baron might do, least of all Elliot. He couldn’t hold the concert against them, could he? They were merely listening to the music provided by the Fleet, Olivia, and the Grove Posts.
Elliot quickly took her leave of her hosts and turned toward the path leading home. If she ran, she’d have more time to prepare herself, but then again, she might be in worse shape.
What was certain, however, was that she had no time to think about Kai. She rubbed her hands over her wrists, which still tingled where he’d touched her. His grip hadn’t been hard enough to hurt, but it had hardly been tender, either. And his words . .
. she’d known he was angry, but now she wondered if he hated her. If he’d always hated her.
Had he hated her the day her mother died? Had he hated her the day after?
No. She refused to believe it. Hating her now was bad enough, but she could survive it. She’d been doing well these past four years, like a fallen tree that clung to the ground and continued to grow, despite all odds. Elliot’s roots were buried deep, and nothing Kai could say would convince her that the soil was any less solid.
The temperature had plummeted in the hours since the sun had set. They’d have a frost tonight. Above her head, branches waved in the autumn wind, sending dry, crackling leaves into the air, and swirling them into eddies and tiny tornadoes at her feet. She couldn’t see them well in the darkness, but she heard their crunch and whisper, and caught glimpses of their movement. They were lucky in the islands, she had always learned. Lucky to be free of wolves and bears and giant, fanged-toothed cats. There were rabbits, and possums, and egg-eating stoats, but nothing that could hurt a person. She’d read stories, growing up, where children were attacked by lions or eaten by wolves, but she’d never feared the darkness or the forest. The Luddites ruled the world.
Elliot was barely one hundred meters down the road when she heard the crunch of gravel beneath wheels. She turned, and saw a sun-cart gaining on her, its headlights unlit, even in the darkness. The cart pulled up beside her. Andromeda and Ro sat inside.
“Get in,” said Andromeda. “I’ll take you back.”
Absolutely not. “This isn’t necessary—”
“Of course it is,” the older girl said. “You’re terrible at protecting them, but you’re all they’ve got.”
Elliot climbed into the car. “I am doing this because the cart will get me back to my house more quickly.”
“I am doing this,” the Post girl said, her tone world-weary, “because I don’t think I’ve been entirely fair to you.”
That was putting it mildly. In the privacy of the darkness, Elliot thought it safe to roll her eyes.
“Yes,” Andromeda said, as if in agreement. “I don’t have too much pride to admit that.” She took off. Within moments, the sun-cart seemed to have reached full speed—or at least as fast as it went on reserve power. They whizzed past the shadowy silhouettes of trees and bounced hard over tree roots and dips in the trail. Elliot couldn’t even see the path in front of the wheels, but it didn’t seem to slow Andromeda down. At least she could be certain of reaching home in time. She might even catch up to her father.
“Besides,” Andromeda went on, “there must be some reason you can collect all these Post admirers. And I hear Ro here has excellent taste.”
In the darkness, Elliot squeezed Ro’s hand. How much of their conversation could the Reduced girl pick up? “I thought the prevailing opinion would be that someone Reduced doesn’t know any better.”
“My mother was Reduced,” said Andromeda. “Still had more sense than most people I know.”
She steered them around a corner at a speed Elliot found imprudent, given the darkness. She couldn’t see a thing ahead of her. “Don’t you want the headlights on?”
Andromeda grunted and flicked a switch. Elliot and Ro flinched in the sudden glare, but Andromeda didn’t slow down at all.
“Care to tell me what your father has against music?” Andromeda asked abruptly.
“It’s not music,” Elliot replied. “It’s control.” It was always control.
Three years ago, Baron Zachariah North had caught wind of the unofficial orchestra operating on the North estate. Where some of the estate lords would have taken advantage of the spontaneous resource—as if they’d come across a patch of natural gas or a seam of coal—Baron North had been displeased. He’d not authorized any such endeavor, and he wouldn’t have approved of it at any rate. Music was a distraction from his laborers’ duties, much like school or books or more than the allotted number of feasts. Things were bad enough on the estate already, and they’d been getting steadily worse since the death of the baroness a year earlier. Baron North had had far too many duties to take over and concerns to keep himself occupied with. If someone was going to get more leisure time, it would be him, not his servants.
He’d forbidden the concerts and practice sessions and confiscated the instruments from all the Reduced on the estate. Elliot could still see the bonfires—the flames that had once been a hallmark of harvest celebrations turned into pyres for the laborers’ only joy.
Yet the restrictions had had little effect. More pipes and string-boxes had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and the practice sessions had gone on in secret. When the baron discovered that his own daughter was helping his people in their treason, he’d finally had an object toward which to aim his wrath.
The first and only time Elliot had been glad that Kai had left was when the bad time came. Her father had come first for the Posts she’d liked best. Kai’s position on the farm had already been too precarious to have survived.
“You hear some pretty scary things about the North estate down in the Post enclaves.”
Elliot squeezed her hands together in her lap. “From him?”
“From everyone.”
Elliot grimaced. She could well imagine the stories that followed the affair. Reduced who disobeyed the baron’s orders were shown no mercy and no quarter. He extended the restrictions to the CORs, and when he learned that they were hiding their instruments, he dissolved the COR family housing units that had been in place as long as Elliot had been alive, and relegated all the CORs to single-sex, age-organized barracks alongside the Reduced. Children were taken from their mothers, common-laws were separated, and that’s when the real trouble started.
And Elliot couldn’t protect any of them. Not then, not alone. She’d messed up badly, and the estate was still paying for it. It wouldn’t happen again.
“Of course,” Andromeda said, “bad as you are, the estate where I was born was far worse.”
“You left when you were quite young, I understand.”
“Had to,” she replied. “Where I’m from, the lady of the estate believed all Posts were the product of . . . relations between the Luddites and the Reduced. We were made to bear the punishment for her husband’s sins.”
“That’s horrible!” Elliot cried. And of course, since her mother had been Reduced, she could hardly have protected them—not like Dee could protect Jef. “Was your father Reduced, too?”
Andromeda hesitated. “My father was the master, Elliot. Our lady wasn’t wrong about everything.”
Elliot was glad for the darkness, glad Andromeda couldn’t see her mouth hanging open. Such things did not happen on the North estate. Hadn’t happened since she was young and Benedict had been sent away. Her father wouldn’t have it.
“But even my father could not account for all the Posts that started crowding his estate. And you know Luddites. They wouldn’t do genetic testing to prove their theory one way or the other. My lady’s belief was that her God would never allow anything other than Luddite, Reduced, and the abominable combination of the two. To her, we were as abhorrent as a hybrid plant.”
Elliot stiffened. Why, of all comparisons, had the Post chosen that one?
“Here we are,” said Andromeda as she pulled up in front of the big house.
Elliot looked over at the Post girl, but now that they were bathed in the light from the house window, Andromeda had once again fallen silent.
“I am very sorry for what you were made to endure,” Elliot said at last.
“Don’t be sorry for me,” said Andromeda. “Be sorry for those who still live there.” She stared down at the controls in her hands. “I hate the estates, but you are no monster. As long as there are people under your care, I hope you will care for them.”
Elliot’s jaw tightened at her words. She didn’t need the blessing of this Post, no matter what Andromeda had been through. She’d known her duties since she could pronounce the word “Luddite.”
�
�Be strong, Elliot.”
Elliot didn’t respond, and instead turned to Ro. “Good night, Ro. I hope you enjoyed the music.”
Ro nodded and leaned over the edge of the cart to give Elliot a hug.
“She’ll show you where she lives,” Elliot said to Andromeda.
“I’m serious,” said Andromeda. “Everything . . . else aside, I am aware that you are all that stands between your Posts and your father.”
She was wrong. Elliot knew that now. The Posts themselves stood there. Dee stood, without her common-law. Gill stood, a forty-year-old laborer willing to fight a teenager for saying Elliot was useless. Or worse than useless—complicit. Thom and so many others had stood, willing to walk away from the farm rather than let Baron North continue with his reign of terror. She may have made those instruments, but it was the Posts who wanted to play them. It was the Posts who were willing to hide them, the Posts willing to defy her father as his punishments grew ever harsher.
No, she couldn’t protect them then. Not then, at fifteen, still reeling from the loss of her mother and Kai and trying to figure out how the baroness had managed her father with such finesse all those years. She couldn’t stop her father from putting Gill’s eleven-year-old daughter in the women’s barracks, from slapping Dee in stocks for two days after she was discovered sneaking instruments out to the Grove estate, or from beating Thom for trying to break Dee out of those stocks.
And perhaps she couldn’t protect them now either, but she’d learned something important back there at the concert. She might do her best to protect them—and fail—but she hadn’t realized until now they were also protecting her.
Dee chose to sneak those instruments. Thom chose to rescue the woman he loved. And then, when so many of the Posts left the estate, Dee and Gill and Mags and the others chose to stay behind. Maybe they chose like Elliot had one year earlier. They chose to save the estate, to protect the Reduced that had even less agency than they did.
For Darkness Shows the Stars Page 12
