Jenna Starborn

by Sharon Shinn

  I smiled a little and nodded, for I did indeed know. “I forgive you, Aunt Rentley,” I said. And Betista nodded, and patted my arm as if I were again a child and had learned the most difficult lesson of all.

  Two days later, my aunt died. I was sleeping in her room, as I had promised her I would, and I was roused from sleep by one great cry. I leaped to my feet and was instantly at her side, to see her eyes wide, terrified, fixed on some visitor imperceptible to my eye.

  “Jenna!” she cried, clutching at my arm with a strength I could not believe she still possessed.

  “Yes, Aunt, I am here.”

  “Jenna, they want you!”

  “No one wants me, Aunt. I am quite safe.”

  “They do, they do, they asked me for you, but I would not give you over to them,” she said, moving her head imperiously on her pillow. “Oh, Jenna, I am so sorry! I have treated you so badly! But you were so hard to love—so hard, and dark, and small, and I wanted something soft and beautiful. Why could you not have been soft and beautiful?”

  It is no easy thing to be called unlovable even by someone as pitiable as my aunt, and I felt a small part of my sympathy leak away. “I am who I am, born that way, and will die that way,” I said, though I was instantly sorry to have brought up the topic of death. “It does not matter now that you could not love me then. I do not hold it against you anymore. I have made my own life, and I am stronger for it, and I forgive you for any sins you think you may have committed.”

  Her grip on my arm grew even fiercer to the point where I almost could not tolerate it. “You forgive me? All of it?”

  “Every slur,” I said, smiling. “Every crime.”

  “But I-I should have—”

  “Yes, but it does not matter now. Go in peace.”

  She opened her mouth as if to speak again, but the words eluded her. Again, she tossed her head on the pillow; her eyes pinched shut and she seemed to be concentrating now on interior visions. I waited for her to speak again, but she did not. Her grip on my arm loosened, and she seemed to sigh. A long time later, she sighed again. I realized she had not breathed once between those intervals.

  Two more sighs, after long, long intermissions, and she took in no more breath. Her hand was still curved over mine, but its desperate pressure was relieved. Her whole body seemed caught in one moment of apprehension, the shoulders hunched forward to ward off blows, the knees slightly updrawn to protect the abdomen. But there were no more blows to fall, no more damage to be done. The PhysIV began a small, steady keening, so soft I would not have heard it if I had not been so close. The sound was so plaintive that I thought to myself, The machine is grieving. I was glad that something in the room, in the house, in the universe, would make the effort.

  I had planned to leave the very day my aunt died, but the following morning, I discovered there was too much to do in the house for me to reasonably leave it all to Betista. So I agreed to stay two more days, but no longer, and I booked my return passage on an outbound cruiser. Then I joined with the housekeeper and the lawyer in tying up the details that even the tidiest soul leaves undone.

  It was on the afternoon of this second day that I thought to check my stel-mail, which I had neglected for the whole of my visit. I never received a great volume of correspondence, it was true, so the fact that I had overlooked it for the better part of a week was not a particular sin. And it might not have occurred to me even now had I not been working on my aunt’s computer, trying once more to find Jerret and send him the sad news. But terminals could be used for more than seeking out negligent sons, and I logged onto my own account to see what messages might have accumulated during my period of inattention.

  In fact, there was only one post directed at me—but this one held a world’s worth of shock and woe. It came from Mrs. Farraday and was dreadful indeed.

  “Oh, Jenna, I do wish you were here,” it began without preamble. “Janet Ayerson has run off with Joseph Luxton.”

  I looked up from the screen and tried to assimilate the words. Impossible. No one would be that foolish! Perhaps I had read the words wrong. My mind still in a state of incomprehension, I struggled through the rest of the missive.

  The whole party was scheduled to break up three days ago, and they all planned one last outing to town. Janet told me privately she would stay late, for she had some shopping to do, so I was not worried when she did not return with the others. And I thought nothing of it when Mr. Ravenbeck told me Mr. Luxton had stayed on to confer with his bankers! But the last shuttle came in, and neither of them was on it, and his friends began to ask for him at dinner. No one but me knew that Janet was missing also.

  “Perhaps something’s gone amiss in town,” Mr. Ravenbeck said as they finished up their meal. “A fire or some disaster. I’ll take the Vandeventer in and see. Anyone care to join me?” Bianca Ingersoll immediately volunteered, but then her mother claimed to need her help on some project back in her room, and I had a chance to get Mr. Ravenbeck alone.

  “Janet is still in town as well,” I whispered to him. “Look for her too—I am afraid something dreadful has happened to her.”

  He looked thunderstruck. “Janet Ayerson and Joseph Luxton both missing!” he exclaimed. “Then it is even more dreadful than I supposed.”

  “Surely there can be no connection between their absences,” I said, for it had not even crossed my mind. “Unless they both have been caught in an accident.”

  “Oh, it is no accident that has befallen them,” he said so grimly that I trembled. “Damnation! I have worked so hard to avert this!”

  I was still bewildered and tried to question him, but he strode away from me, into his study where the terminal is always turned on. I followed him, for I did not know what else to do. He quickly called up his messages, and sure enough, there was a new one posted that very afternoon from Mr. Luxton. He had taken his personal cruiser and fled with Janet. He did not say where they were going or when they might return—or anything—and Jenna, Mr. Ravenbeck was in such a rage that I almost forgot my own sadness and horror.

  “Mrs. Farraday, we must not breathe a word of this to anyone,” he said to me without even looking in my direction. “No one must hear of it, do you understand? If we can retrieve her, we may yet save her reputation. If we can discover where they have gone, I can go after her. She will be safe here, as she will be safe few places.”

  “Oh, but Mr. Ravenbeck, what does he intend?” I cried. “Janet is a good, moral girl—surely she would not have left with him if he had not promised marriage and citizenship!”

  “He may have promised it, but he will not perform,” the master said, still in that deadly calm voice. “This is not the first half-cit girl he has charmed from a decent situation, then cast off when he grew bored. I dare not think what may happen to her, on some strange planet, with no friends, no funds, no references—no hopes. We must find them somehow—and we must keep her secret.”

  As you can imagine, I was happy enough to promise the latter, though I had no idea how to help with the former. He bade me tell the others that he had received a message from Mr. Luxton, saying he had been called home on urgent business, and he settled himself in at the monitor like a man with great purpose. I believe he was trying to contact the central control tower to find if Mr. Luxton had filed a flight plan, and he may have been attempting other methods to follow the cruiser. I did not stay—I do not understand computer tactics. I went to the library to pass on the false story.

  But I should have saved my effort. Mr. Luxton had also sent a message to Mr. Fulsome, who had shared its contents with the rest of the company. They were speaking of it excitedly even as I entered. Oh, the awful things they said about poor Janet! Their cruel comments about greedy half-cit girls and foolish wealthy men! Mrs. Ingersoll declared that the whole thing was Mr. Ravenbeck’s fault for allowing his staff to mingle with his guests; she declared that the classes should be constantly and irrevocably separated to prevent such misalliances. And they all co
ndemned our dear Janet, every one. Not a one of them realized that her life was ruined, that she was a lost girl now—realized nor cared.

  They all left the very next day, and I at least was relieved to see them go. Mr. Ravenbeck left with them, apparently off on the hunt to find the runaways. He says he will be back, no matter what he discovers, but I have not heard from him since. The household has fallen into stark disarray. I am completely incapable of functioning, and Ameletta roams the grounds at will, frightened and unsupervised.

  Oh, Jenna, come back to us! We need you so desperately.

  Antoinette Farraday

  Could a letter ever have been so unwelcome? I read it with my heart climbing up in my throat, and my hand clenched over my mouth to keep that organ from escaping. Janet! Lost! For Mr. Ravenbeck’s words were true. Without references, no half-cit girl could get a job, certainly not as tutor to a small child. If Mr. Luxton did not marry her, or make some sort of provision, she would starve to death on whatever city street he abandoned her. Unless she had relatives who would take her in, unless she was not too proud to return to Thorrastone Manor where—I was encouraged by Mr. Ravenbeck’s behavior to hope—she would be received again with loving, forgiving arms.

  I dropped to my knees on the floor, my hands resting on the edge of the computer desk, my eyes still directed at the monitor, though my gaze was unfocused. This, then, was the culmination of the sidelong looks and halting conversations I had witnessed between Janet and the handsome Joseph Luxton. This, then, was what Mr. Ravenbeck—in his guise as fortune-teller—had warned the tutor against, when he looked into her future and saw her following a course she would regret. She had met the man before, she had told me so herself. That must have been the beginning of their illicit relationship, though I could not guess how far it may have proceeded at that time. But from this point, there was no walking backward, no retracing of steps, no undoing of actions. Unless, against all odds and all personal history, Mr. Luxton truly loved Janet, she was as good as lost to us forever.

  “Dear Goddess, great Mother, take her to your heart now and cradle her,” I whispered, the words barely forcing their way through my frozen lips. “She has committed no sin in your eyes, only the eyes of society. Now it is up to you to love her and protect her as mortal beings cannot. Give her courage, give her strength, give her hope, give her love. Let no harm come to her through anything she may have done.”

  As I spoke, I knew I prayed not just for Janet, but for myself. For what one weak girl could do, might not another? Who was watching over me, caring for me, keeping my blistered feet on the steep and stony path of righteousness? Could not Jenna Starborn become just as easily Jenna Errant? Who would love me if I faltered or failed? Who would save me if I stumbled?

  I dropped my hands from the desk, hung my head low over my chest, wrapped my arms around my body, and rocked where I knelt. “Watch over us all,” I whispered. “Amen.”

  Three weeks later, I disembarked from the commercial shuttle into the small spaceport on Fieldstar. I had been gone barely eight weeks, yet it felt like eight years. I kept glancing up and down the crowded streets, noticing buildings I had not seen before and faces that were wholly unfamiliar, hoping against hope some favorite storefront would be found to be still standing, as though I feared that, during my absence, some physical or financial disaster had brought about its ruin. In short, I behaved like some kind of prodigal returned after a long separation, both glad to be home and dreading the consequences of my arrival.

  I had missed the noon airbus, so I shopped a bit until it was time for the evening run. I had picked up a bottle of aprifresel wine for Mr. Ravenbeck on Baldus, and some seeds for Mrs. Farraday, who liked to grow her own spices for the kitchen, but I had not found anything I particularly thought Ameletta would like. She was not especially demanding; any trifle or toy would do, and I could as easily find something here in the spaceport as in any commercial venue across the universe. I bought her some hair ribbons in a little shop and considered my mission done.

  I still had some time to pass, but less energy to waste, so I sat in the shuttle station for another hour and merely let my mind wander. As always these days, my thoughts turned swiftly to Janet Ayerson. Mrs. Farraday had sent me daily updates, but there was no real news. Mr. Ravenbeck had traced the runaways to Corbramb, but could not induce either of them to return his messages, and he was fairly certain if he traveled all that way to confront them, they would be gone before he arrived. He had contacted Mr. Luxton’s family, who refused to discuss the situation with him; even so, he tried to make plain to them that he would bear Mr. Luxton no ill will if he would only pass along to Janet the information that she had a refuge, should she need one, at Thorrastone Manor. He also contacted Janet’s family, giving this same information, but was coldly informed that they had no daughter, no sister, by the name of Janet, and they therefore could pass along to her no news at all.

  I myself had tried to contact Janet via stel-route, for I had an old address for her that I believed was still active. I was encouraged in that my posts were not blindly returned to me, but if she received them, she did not reply. My messages were full of love and forgiveness and offers of charity, for I did not know what else to send, but I could not blame her for failing to answer. If she was still in love and happy, if Mr. Luxton had not yet cast her off, she would scorn to read such mail; she would laugh at us and think herself the luckiest girl alive. If she was already betrayed and solitary, she would be too mortified to reply; she would think herself so far below the notice of any moral person that she would not be able to accept the simplest expression of goodwill. And yet I wrote because there was nothing else I could do.

  Finally, after what seemed like years of waiting, the sundown shuttle pulled into the station. The driver, a strongly built young man, threw my bags into the storage compartment with so much ease that I was tempted to ask him, when we arrived at the Thorrastone gate, to walk me all the way to the door. Naturally, I said nothing of the sort. I took a seat, glanced at my dozen or so fellow passengers, and endured the trip in silence.

  I arrived at the Thorrastone airlock just as true dark was settling over the park and the artificial lights were coming on. I tried not to shiver, but something about that cold, unwavering illumination made the vista seem inhospitable and alien to me-seemed to throw the whole terraformed landscape into harsh and realistic relief so that I remembered, what was so easily forgotten, that we were grafted onto this place by sheer force of will, that we did not belong, that the smallest error could send us skating off into the black outer vacuum.

  I shook my head to dispel the thoughts and determinedly shouldered my bags. I had not packed any more than I could carry, but even so, I was not looking forward to the mile-long hike back to the manor house. I might rest on my way halfway there, under the oxenheart branches.

  I had not made it nearly so far when a slight noise and a sleek movement caught my attention, and I turned my head sharply to the left. Yes-a small hovercraft coming my way at a speed a little too great for our confined space. I dropped my bags and held my ground, for I was sure the driver had seen me, and I had a fairly good guess as to who the driver might be.

  Soon enough the craft came to a halt directly before me-indeed, deliberately intersecting my course so that, had I been attempting to walk forward, my path would have been impeded. Mr. Ravenbeck sat very still in the driver’s side, watching me seriously and making no move to step from the vehicle. I stared back at him, and refused to be the one to break the silence.

  At last he said, in a fairly normal voice, “Did it not occur to you that, if you had sent word of your arrival, someone would have come to the spaceport to pick you up? One of the servants could have been spared-or even I, busy man that I am, could have taken the requisite hours to see you safely to the end of your long journey.”

  I smiled under the peculiar light and felt the shadows play oddly across my skin. I was very sure that I looked gaunt or eerie or otherwi
se fey, but no matter how I tilted my face, I could still feel that unflattering light across my cheekbones. “I need expend very little effort to climb aboard a shuttle that will take me precisely to my destination. Why should someone else be inconvenienced when I face no hardship? Now, if it were a very difficult thing to make it from town to Thorrastone Manor, be sure I would have announced my arrival days ago and been imperiously demanding an escort from hangar to hall.”

  He smiled at this, and I noticed his own features looked more natural than mine felt, or perhaps it was the smile that eased them back into familiarity. “I wish I believed that were so, but, Jenna, your idea of what would inconvenience you, and my idea, are so radically different that I do not believe you can be entirely trusted to decide.”

  “Well, I am here now, and ready to be fussed over,” I said. “I will accept a ride to the manor, if you are willing to offer it.”

  “I have come this way for that very purpose,” he said, climbing nimbly from the car.

  “Oh? And how did you know I was to return this day?” I scoffed, clearly not believing him.

  He had hoisted both bags into an open trunk in the back of the hovercraft while I climbed as daintily as I could into the passenger’s seat. “I have come this way every night for the past two weeks,” he said, “timing my circuit for the arrival of the sundown shuttle.”

  This news caused my face to run with a rapid heat, though I hoped the color was not so visible under the bleaching light. I hoped this even more passionately when Mr. Ravenbeck came around to my side of the car and laid his hands on the edge of the door.

  “That was kind of you,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “Had I known you would go to so much trouble, I would have given you the details of my arrival, and spared you two weeks of aimlessness.”