Modrie Reller lays her hands on my head.
“Come the last breath of stars,
Their dust fall
And make us all.
Come the last breath of man,
And dust give back again.”
The women repeat her words in whispers, and each leans in to kiss my forehead, to touch my hair one last time.
I’m going to die.
They lift me up on their shoulders and carry me from the cleanroom. I am floating again, not on water, but on a sea of hands as we flow out through the sleeping quarters, into the ship’s central corridor. The men stop their work and stand in silence to watch our procession.
I’ll never see Luck again. I’ll never be a true bride.
We pass the kitchens and the hydroponic gardens and the canaries. The small yellow birds hop frantically in their cages, alarmed by the voices and the charge in the air.
I’ll never have smallones of my own.
We empty out into the storage bay. The goats trot away from the gate and crowd together at the back of the paddock, bleating.
My hands will never weave again. They’ll never practice fixes.
The women press together, two abreast, as we file into a shadowed canyon formed by stacks of copper bales, crates of sand, and reams of fiberoptic cable. They lower me to my feet. I hug my arms over my bare chest to keep myself from shivering. This way they’re taking me, this is the path to the coldroom, where we store bodies until we can return to the depths of the Void to give them a proper burial among the stars. This is where my mother’s body lay until the so doctor’s daughter came to bury her. Anger sparks in my chest. I deserve to be punished, yes. But to die? I don’t want to die.
I won’t make it easy. I stop walking. My funeral procession shudders and jams behind me. For a moment, I think it’s worked, but then they haul me up with their work-hard arms and drag me to the front. I curse you with my death, I think.
Modrie Reller stops by the coldroom door. It stands ajar, seeping frost smoke into the warm bay. Thin blue light from a biolume bowl built into the ceiling bathes the floor, doing more to form shadows than to illuminate the empty crates and metal-slabbed niches where bodies are meant to lie.
The women release me at the threshold. Modrie Reller rests her hand on my head. “May the Mercies carry your soul to rest, Parastrata Ava.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER .9
The floor sticks to my bare feet when I forget to move. I pace from one end of the coldroom to the other beneath the twilight of the biolume bowl and its circling fish. The metal slabs are empty, thank the Mercies. If I were trapped in here with a body, I might try slicing open my own neck with the sharp ends of the copper wire around my wrists. That might be the smart thing in any case. I’d prefer the burn of metal opening my veins, the slow sleep falling over me as my heart fails.
But no.
Modrie Reller and all of them, that’s what they want. They hope I’ll die of cold in here or else invent some way to hurry myself into death and save them the grisly task of venting me into the Void. I curse you, I think, and walk faster to keep my blood flowing to my fingers and toes, keep the tremors in my muscles at bay. I pull the cheap headdress from my hair and throw it. I won’t make my death easy.
But it’s cold. Layers of frost rime the marble slabs, leaving them glistening like an oil slick. No Mercies will come to save a girl like me. I’m on my own. My feet burn, my arms burn, my chest burns. Inside and out, the cold rubs me raw. I need warmth. I’ve heard a chill so deep can blacken a man’s fingers and toes, rot them from his body. At least my ears are warm, I think, and laugh aloud, bitterly, my breath cloudy in the faint blue light.
My ears. I bury my fingers in my hair. The cold eases so slightly I wouldn’t notice if I weren’t holding my breath. But it eases. I rip the copper bindings from my hair and unknot the braids. My hair hangs heavy, almost to my waist. I spread it over my bare shoulders and arms like a cloak. Not as cold, but not enough.
I search the room over, looking for something useful. Anything to draw the cold away from me. Anything to create warmth. Think, think. There has to be a fix for this.
At least they mean to bury you with the stars, I tell myself bitterly. It could be worse. My crewe could choose to bury me beneath the ground. But that’s only for the worst among us, the murderers and heretics whose souls might come back to haunt the ship if we let them loose in the Void. They say when a body is buried in the ground, its soul goes to dust along with its flesh.
I shiver and push the thought away. My soul isn’t going anywhere. It’s staying inside my body. I clink through the dioxide canisters in the corner and push aside a few frozen legs of goat swinging from hooks at the back of the room. Nothing. The broken crates are plastic and wouldn’t burn, even if I had some way of making fire. And open flame on a ship is the worst kind of disaster that can happen, short of a hull breach. It burns up the oxygen in the air and shorts out vital systems. With us still docked, it might spread to the station, gobbling up oxygen and destabilizing the older ships’ fission cores.
I rub my arms and spin in a slow circle. Metal door, metal walls, metal floors. I look up into the soft glow of the biolume. Small fish and krill, alight with their own body chemistry, circle in the thick nutrient bath filling the glass bowl. The mixture must protect them from the cold, insulate them somehow, or else their bodies would freeze and go out. I shove a crate underneath the bowl, climb up, and try to pry it from the ceiling. There are no screws or rivets around the biolume’s metal housing, but a thin gap runs along its perimeter where it meets the ceiling. If I could pry it down somehow . . .
Think, Ava. It’s only another fix.
My eyes fall on the heavy rings of copper circling my arm. Maybe . . .
I strip off the loops, pull a length of the wire straight, and wrap the rest of it tight around the straight piece so it won’t bend easily. Every few moments I pause to rub my hands together and stop shivering. When my makeshift fix is ready, I shove the thin tip into the seam between the biolume housing and the ceiling. With a grunt, I thrust it in deeper and pry down until a crack sounds inside the frame. One side of the biolume sags away from the ceiling. A trickle of nutrient oil rolls down the outside of the glass.
I work the wire lever around the frame. Soft pops echo in the room every time I free a section, until only a thin metal lip cleaves to the ceiling. I stand with my left hand balancing the slippery bowl, my right straining to pull down the last strip. With a shriek, it comes loose.
I waver on top of the crate. I drop my fixer and clutch the biolume to my breast with both hands. A wave of nutrient oil spills over my chest. Instantly, my skin warms, as if someone has pressed a hand to my breastbone. I gasp. I steady the bowl, climb down from the crate, and balance the biolume on one of the empty metal slabs. I dip in my hand. Warmth floods my fingers. The fish, cool and scaly, brush my skin. I slather the oil down my arm. It leaves my skin gritty with krill, but a pleasant ache spreads over me, soaks into my muscles.
I rub the oil over my neck, my face, my shoulders. My body shakes, not from cold, but with relief as the numbness creeps from my skin and crackling fires flare up inside me as my nerve endings reignite. I reach down to scoop more from the bowl and stop. The nutrient oil has sunk below the bowl’s halfway mark. The fish circle together around the bottom, their bodies twisted awkwardly to keep themselves submerged. If I take the oil I need, I’ll kill the fish. And once their bodies stop processing chemicals, their lights will go out. I’ll be alone in the dark.
Panic spikes in my chest, and a tiny sob breaks out of me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Stupid, girlish, crying over fish. It’s not that I love them, really, the way Nan loves the bay cats, but their desperate writhings at the bottom of the bowl, the way they flop and crowd together, leave my heart rin
ging.
I scoop out a thin handful of oil and rub it over my right foot. Toe, arch, heel flare painfully back to life. The fish shift press against one another. They no longer have room to circle.
I take more and massage the feeling back into my left foot. The fish turn themselves flat on their sides to keep their gills away from the open air. The oil’s surface kisses their ventral fins.
I dip in my hand again. My skin brushes their slick bodies. I have to push them aside to draw out more oil. I close my eyes. Their tails slap and thrash against my skin.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. Hot lines of tears rim my eyes as I cover my sides with oil.
The fish twitch and gasp. Some have already stopped moving. The room tips closer to darkness as the light leaves their skin.
I rip two strips of cloth from the hem of my bridal skirt and wrap them around my feet. I pull myself up into one of the niches and lean forward, clutching my knees. I don’t know how long the oil will keep the cold at bay, but is seems wise to touch as little of the cold metal as possible. I watch as the light from the bowl dims and dims, until only one fish still glows underneath the bodies of the others. Shadows swallow the walls, the floor, the ceiling.
Don’t go out, don’t go out.
But then the weak blue glow falters and true black closes over me.
My mind drifts to Luck. Is he locked in some cold, dark room like me? Has his father beaten him again? Is he waiting for his own push into the Void? Or is he already dead? I imagine him holding me, his strong hands smoothing my hair. Lying beside him in the water. He can’t be dead if I can still remember him so clearly. He can’t be dead when I love him so. Please, I beg the Mercies. Please, let him live.
At first I think the creak of the door is part of a dream, but then light, bright harsh light, streams under my cracked eyelids. I sit up. Iri holds a flash lantern above her head. Her skin reflects the light like a bone moon.
“Stay away from me.” My voice is rough and raw from the cold. I stumble numbly out of the niche and back to the nearest wall. Iri. That betrayal hurts worst of all. Have the others sent her with some new punishment? Or is she here to do me a mercy and see I’m not breathing when I meet the Void?
“Hssh.” Iri holds out a hand to quiet me and squints into the dark room. Her eyes go wide when she sees the biolume dead on the table. She looks at me in an appraising way.
I peer past her. She’s alone. No Modrie Reller or Hannah or any of the other women. My mind clicks over slowly, still thick with sleep and panic, as I try to piece together what it means.
“Ava.” Iri holds out her hand to me. “Come on.”
I stand locked in place. I know there’s something I ought to ask her, but my mouth hangs open, and no words come.
“Hurry on, girl.” A twitch of annoyance crosses Iri’s face. “It’s only an hour till newday.”
I peel myself away from the wall. Iri turns and sweeps out of the coldroom. I follow in a fog. The air of the bay clings heavy and beautifully warm on my skin. I half wonder if I’m still asleep and this is a dream.
Iri stops to seal the door to the coldroom behind us.
“What . . . ,” I whisper.
She cuts me off with a sharp motion of her hand. She presses her forefinger to her lips.
I follow her through the dark canyon of stacked cargo, out into the livestock bay. Only the steady pat of our bare feet on the floor and the rustle of our skirts disturb the silence. The goats look up as we pass, but they flap their ears and settle back into sleep on the hay. Even the chickens keep silent for once. Thank you, Mercies.
Iri pauses inside the outer bay door. She pulls a small square of fabric from the belt of her skirt and hands it to me. “Put this on,” she whispers.
I unfold the fabric. A worn green shirt, patched and rubbed thin in spots. She must have rescued it from the rag pile. I look up at her.
“You can’t go out of the ship like that.” She nods to my chest, then glances down to the torn hem of my skirt and the rags around my feet. “I would’ve brought shoes, but I couldn’t without Firstwife Reller noticing.”
I pull the shirt over my head and cinch its frayed laces so it fits me. “Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“There are some of us didn’t want a hand in what’s to be done with you, Ava.” Iri speaks low. “There are some what say, there but for the Mercies go I.” She reaches up and activates the bay doors.
This close, the shriek and rumble of the doors vibrates through my whole body. My heart throws itself against my chest.
“What are you thinking?” I shout to Iri over the deafening roar of the bay doors rolling open and the pneumatic thunk of the ramp descending to the station floor.
“It’s the only way out,” she shouts back.
I glance behind us. Any second, my brother or Modrie Reller or someone is bound to come. There isn’t any way no one heard the doors, even at this hour, and the Watches are sure to see the outer door’s been activated. Even now, silent alarms are flashing in the watchroom.
The ramp hits the floor with a rattling thud, and the pneumatics whine in relief.
“Come on.” Iri charges down the ramp, skirts swaying around her ankles with every long stride.
I rush after her, afraid to look back. We pass the gravity shift—I feel a sudden thump in my chest—and reach the latchdoor to the concourse. Iri unrolls a scrap of paper from her skirt pocket. She bends close to the pattern lock to compare the symbols she’s copied to the ones on the door’s lock grid.
Behind us, a single shout echoes from the open bay.
“Hurry, Iri.” I glance at the symbols on the grid. There are only ten of them, but they’re as foreign to me as they must be to Iri. She presses a halting finger to the first symbol in the sequence, a sharp one with two open tines on top.
More shouts.
Iri punches the second symbol, an easy one, a simple line.
The men come into view at the top of the ramp. The Watches, and among them, Jerej. He spots me. Something awful races across his face, and I know if he catches me, it won’t be the coldroom I go back to.
“Iri, please.”
She falters on the last symbol. Her finger hovers over the keypad. It’s a tricky one, a rounded symbol with a tail, and there’s another like it on the grid, only flipped. I pray to the Mercies and mash the final key for her.
The latchdoor releases. We run full tilt into the concourse. The vendors are rolling up the metal grates covering their storefronts to begin newday. I smell baking bread and the sharp twinge of ozone. The station’s Cleaners have swept the floor of all its late-night filth, and our bare feet slap the shining floor panels as we push through the gravity.
The latchdoor bangs open again at our backs. “Stop them!” Jerej shouts, but the vendors ignore him, and the few early morning passengers only turn their heads to stare after us in a daze. Jerej breaks into a run, the other men chasing behind. They don’t strain under the gravity as we do. With every step, they gain on us.
Iri and I dart around a corner, onto a broad, open causeway, longer across than the Parastrata and Æther put together, and domed in glass. The whole Void opens up above us. I gasp. Crowds of people shuffle across the causeway like bees on the face of a hive. Iri tugs my hand. We plunge into the thick of the crowd. I match her step and we lift our knees, run faster than any girls on any crewe have ever run. My lungs are tight and fighting now. My palm sweats in hers, but I grip her harder so we won’t slip apart.
At the far end of the causeway, a series of black-sheened doors leading to tiny, glowing-white rooms slide open and shut. As we close in, I see one door seal closed over a woman in a clinging black bodysuit with an orange robe draped over her shoulder, then open in a matter of heartbeats to reveal a man with skin as leached of color as his hair. I pull Iri’s hand, slowing us.
“It’s only an elevation shaft, Ava.” She says it soothing, like I would talk to the goats, and her tone unknots my snarl of panic enough t
o keep me running.
We race to the doors. I push myself faster, air coming hard. The nearest door must sense our weight on the floor tiles and begins to slide open. Iri and I turn our bodies sideways to fit through and careen into the tiny room. I spin. Jerej and the Watches shove through the crowd and bear down on us. The doors pause, sensing their weight.
I look up. There—a grid pad beside the sliding doors. It’s larger than the pattern lock on the latchport, its symbols a snarl of lines and curves all pressed against one another. And then above the grid, a panel with an orange-yellow line of light shining around its edges, some like the one inside the women’s quarters aboard the Æther. I slap my hand against it just as Jerej reaches us. He shouts, but the door slides closed, cutting off his cry. My stomach drops as we shoot up the shaft.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER .10
Our first blind trip up the shaft takes us to the repairs tier, where carracks and frigates and barques lie with their innards spilled open, solar sails tattered and rent, hulls hefted up on lifts, while sparks rain down around them. We try again, and the shaft dumps us out in a long, narrow hallway somewhere in the depths of the station, lined with greasy windows. Barracks for the station’s crews, I guess, or those wanting a cheap bed between ship transfers.
We duck under lines of damp laundry strung across the corridor. A thickset girl with a metal barrel balanced on one shoulder nudges her way through the tangle. We press flat against a wall to let her pass. An older woman with lank hair and sores clustered around her mouth stares at us from one of the doorways, a grubby-faced baby toddling across the cramped room behind her. Farther on, another door swings open behind us. A pink-faced man with rotten teeth leans out.
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