Salvage

by Duncan, Alexandra

  I pace the garden slowly. This is Soraya’s world—flowers and books and decorative glass. Why should she care about anything outside it? Would she even understand what it has taken to come this far, to find her? Why should she help me?

  I hurry from the garden. Better to finish this, once and for all. Better to get it over with and go back to Miyole. I walk fast, head down, avoiding the gazes of students passing me on the path. I look up only to check for the yellow building the woman in the book room told me about.

  As I round a corner, I nearly collide with a pale-skinned, sandy-haired boy.

  He darts out of the way just in time. “Oh. Sorry.”

  I think nothing of it, forge ahead with my head down, but then he calls to me from behind.

  “Hey, um . . . miss? Excuse me?”

  I turn.

  He holds something cradled in his palm. “I think you dropped this.”

  My pendant? But no, it’s still fast around my throat.

  “I don’t think—”

  But he’s already walking to me. My hand opens without me, and he drops two round metal coins into it.

  I look down at them in confusion. “I don’t think these are mi—”

  “Hey, a rupaye’s a rupaye, right?” He winks at me and shrugs. “Bad luck to leave them lying around.”

  “You don’t want them?”

  He laughs. “What am I going to do with that? Buy a cheap curry?” He shakes his head turns to walk away.

  I stand frozen in the middle of the path, not understanding. Is this enough to buy a meal? Who would sniff at that? But I know, don’t I? The same kind of people who would use their precious ground for roses.

  The Wadla Building sits solid and plain faced at the end of the path, its only decoration the shimmering solar panels on its roof. I skirt the cluster of students in the foyer and duck down the nearest hallway. Blue glass doors look in on rooms full of tables with tablets built into them. I check the plaques beside the doors. Room 124, 126, 128 . . . the hall ends in a stair.

  Room 203, I remind myself, and climb.

  Quiet reigns on the second floor. I try to walk softly, but the soles of my shoes beat out a heavy rhythm. Room 226, 224, 222. My breath comes shallow.

  What if she doesn’t believe me about who I am? What if she doesn’t want me?

  Why should she care for you? Even if she does believe you, she’ll know what a nothing you are. She’ll know your own crewe cast you off. She’ll know you must have done something terrible to deserve such a fate.

  I try to push Modrie Reller’s voice to the back of my mind, but it follows me down the hallway. My heart beats faster with every step.

  Room 216, Room 214, Room 212.

  You’re nothing. You’re muck. You’re dead to us.

  Room 210, Room 208, Room 206.

  You don’t deserve grace. You don’t deserve mercy. You’re worthless.

  Room 204. I stop. Room 203 stands across the hall, its door open. A woman wearing a blue headscarf sits at a desk with her back to me, staring into a wide, bright screen. My breath comes loud and harsh. I try to swallow it, but that only fills my lungs with fire.

  Room 203, Wadla Building for Linguistic Sciences. This is it. All I have to do is reach out and knock on the doorframe, speak her name.

  So why can’t I raise my hand?

  Soraya pushes back her chair and stands. Any breath now she’ll turn around. She’ll see me. My modrie Soraya, she’ll see me, and then I’ll have to explain. I’ll have to spill everything out to her—my crimes, my shame, my failure. I can’t do it. I spin on my heel and flee, down the hall and the stairs, through the foyer, past the buildings new and ancient, and the beautiful, useless roses.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER .22

  The sky has gone purple by the time I make it back to the Salt. Soft orange lights buzz on above me, one by one, as I thread my way through the patches of people drinking on street corners and leaning against storefronts, tinny music blaring from the bright, wide-open doors. My stomach growls. I haven’t eaten since sunrise. I’ve spent most of the day riding the trains, too shamed to go back to the shipyard and face Miyole, too fearful to return to Kalina and try again with my modrie. But now the sun is setting, and I have no room for shame. Miyole will be hungry and worried, waiting for me. I dodge a man riding a bicycle one-handed while talking on his handheld, and duck into the nearest doorway that smells of food.

  A line of people wait by the serving counter. The rest of the small room is crammed with families and workers squashed together around tables, all shouting to be heard over the din. I take my place in the line and close my hand tight around the coins the boy at Kalina gave me.

  The glow board above the serving counter crawls with cramped letters and prices, but everyone seems to be asking for the same thing, anyway.

  “A curry, please,” I say when I reach the counter, parroting what I’ve heard from the people ahead of me.

  The woman behind the counter drops my coins in a jar and fills the bottom of a container with rice, then slops in a delicious-smelling mixture of meat, vegetables, and yellow-gold broth after it. She folds the container closed and pushes it across to me.

  “Next!” she shouts.

  As I step out of the shop, a boy shoots by, nearly knocking into me and dodging around a crushed ice vendor. I flatten myself against the building.

  “Stop him! Thief!” a woman shouts as she puffs after him. “Rukho! Chor!”

  The entire street pauses as she barrels after the boy, skirt hiked up around her knees, dust flying in her wake. They both disappear around a corner, and the street jostles into motion again.

  I walk the rest of the way to the shipyard with the food held tight. If someone snatched it from me, I don’t think I’d have enough fight in me to chase him. I might just sink down in the dirt and stay there. As I push the gate closed behind me, I spot Rushil up on his roof doing something with one of the receiver dishes. He waves, and then goes back to whatever fix he’s trying to make. Pala gallops up to me, sniffs at the curry, and licks his chops.

  “Sorry,” I tell him. “Not today.”

  He drops down on his haunches and whines.

  “Pala!” Rushil whistles for him. “Leave Ava be.”

  I make my way to the sloop and mash the hatch controls with my elbow. They start up with a healthy hum, but then a rattle clicks loose somewhere inside. The pneumatics shudder and shriek to a halt. A burned chemical smell wafts from the half-open hatch.

  “Miyole?” I call up into the dark interior.

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Miyole?”

  Still nothing. I settle the curry box carefully on the ground and spin the hand crank to open the hatch manually. The door ratchets down with a noisy, metallic ca-chunk-ca-chunk-ca-chunk.

  “Miyole?”

  I’m getting ready to boost myself up into the darkened berth when she appears, ghostlike, in the open hatch. Her hair and clothes are rumpled from sleep, and her eyes look feverish.

  “There you are.” I try to smile for her. “Are you hungry? I got some curry for us on my way home.”

  “You eat it.” Miyole stares blankly at the dirt behind me. “I’m not hungry.” And then she turns and disappears into the dark.

  “Miyole, wait. Come back!” I call after her. I need to tell her I’m sorry. I need her to be herself again. But she’s gone, swallowed up in the dark again.

  I stalk out from underneath the ship and kick a pile of scrap rubber as hard as I can. “Nine hells!”

  “Bad time?”

  I look up. Rushil stands a few wary feet away. His glasses reflect the streetlamps’ orange glow.

  “No.” I clutch my arms to myself, suddenly embarrassed. “It’s just . . .” I gesture back at the ship. “She won’t eat.”

  “She’s been through a lot
, huh?” Rushil says, but it isn’t so much a question.

  “So,” I agree.

  “She’s kept herself locked up inside all day.” Rushil frowns. “It’s got to be hot in there without the ship’s environmentals running. I thought maybe you were trying to bake her.” There’s reproach under his teasing, not too harsh, but it’s there.

  “I know.” I rub my eyes, exhausted. “I didn’t mean to be so long.”

  “Did you find her?” Rushil asks. “Your aunt?”

  I have my lie at the ready. “No.” I sigh. And then a truth, of a sort. “I don’t know if I can afford to keep looking. We have to eat.” I think about that man I saw at the train stop earlier, and the boy at Kalina pushing the coins into my hand. That’s not who I want to be, living off other people’s scraps.

  “I can help with that, you know.” Rushil looks down and shuffles a foot in the dirt.

  “No,” I say quickly. He’s already helping enough, waiting for our payment.

  Rushil flinches, and I realize the word came out harder than I meant.

  “All I mean is, I don’t want to be in anyone’s debt,” I explain.

  Rushil nods. “I get that.” He looks out over the yard. “You have no idea how much I get that.”

  A snuffle and scuff come from behind me. I turn and find Pala sniffing the curry container.

  “Pala!” Rushil and I both shout at the same time.

  The dog hops back and gives us a guilty, pleading look.

  “No way.” Rushil shakes his head and points at the trailer. “You have your own food.”

  Pala’s tail droops, and he slinks off into the dusk.

  I pick up the container. “Do you . . . I mean, would you like some curry?”

  “Yeah?” He raises his eyebrows.

  “Right so.” I can feel the heat rising in my face, and I’m glad of the darkness. I don’t want Rushil to think I mean anything more than to return the kindness he’s done me. “I mean, Miyole doesn’t want any, and there’s too much for me alone.”

  “I never turn down free food.” He glances over his shoulder at his trailer. “Let me go get some spoons.”

  I watch him jog back to his house, and then I climb inside the sloop. Miyole huddles in a corner, on top of several of the snow jackets Perpétue kept in storage. I kneel next to her and brush the sweat-soaked hair from her face. I’ve never seen her look so small.

  “Miyole?” I whisper. “Are you sick?”

  She burrows deeper into the coat.

  “Miyole . . .”

  “No.” She opens her eyes and rolls over to glare at me. “I’m not sick. Leave me alone.”

  I sit back, stung. “I’m sorry,” I say, and then I notice the fresh white bandages wrapped around her hands. “Who did this?”

  “Rushil.” She closes her eyes. “Can I lie back down now?”

  “Course,” I say. Rushil. First feeding us, then waiting on our payments, now this. How am I ever supposed to repay him when he keeps doing so many kindnesses for us?

  When I drop back out of the hatch, Rushil has dragged over his two folding chairs and positioned them next to each other beneath one of the sloop’s wings.

  “She okay?” he asks.

  I hand him the curry box and collapse into a chair. “I don’t know.”

  Rushil sits in the other chair. “You said her mum died?”

  I look at him, and my face must show how I feel.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s none of my business.”

  He opens the curry. “This smells amazing. Where did you get it?”

  “One of those little places across from the station.”

  “Chander’s? Grand Tasty?” He takes a bite and his eyes go wide. “Mmm. Not Durga’s, is it?”

  “I don’t think it had a name.” I turn the spoon over in my hands. “I don’t mind, you know . . . if we talk about Miyole.”

  Rushil goes quiet for a moment, digging around in the curry.

  “My mum ran off when I was around her age,” he finally says. He takes a huge bite and hands the box back to me. “That’s when I came here to live with my uncle.”

  “The one who died?” I ask.

  Rushil swallows and nods.

  “I’m sorry.” I take a bite and hand the box back to him. “You don’t have much family, then?”

  Rushil shrugs and takes another bite of curry. “I do okay.” He holds the box out to me. “What about you?”

  I nearly drop my spoon, startled. “What about me?”

  “D’ you have any family other than that aunt of yours?”

  My eyes stray to the sky, but the city is so bright, I can’t see the stars. Anger streaks through me. “Do you think I’d be here if I did?”

  Rushil lowers the box. “Point taken.”

  “Sorry. I just . . .” I look up at the ship. “All I have is Miyole.”

  Rushil lays a hand on the arm of my chair, more serious than I’ve ever seen him. “I meant what I said. Any way I can help, I’m in.”

  I stare at his hand a beat too long, those scarred knuckles, and then look up and clear my throat. “What I need is work. If the ship weren’t so bust, I could do runs. . . .” I shake my head and sigh.

  “Maybe I could help you patch it up.” He cranes his neck back at the wing above us, adjusts his glasses, and grimaces.

  I laugh. “Does it look that bad?”

  “What? No! I didn’t mean it like that.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “Okay, it’s a little rough,” he says. “But I’m sure it’s got good bones.”

  “The best.” I smile.

  His eyes meet mine. They are wide and black-brown, the rich color of the soil where the ther’s lemon trees grew. Something passes between us for half a breath—a flicker of energy. And then it’s gone, leaving me uneasy. What was that? We stare at each other awkwardly under the shipyard’s perimeter lights. I can’t quite grasp the rules here. What is safe? What is proper? Back in the Gyre, I thought I was learning the way this world worked, but things are so different in Mumbai. I have to start all over.

  I remember myself, remember his offer. “No. I can do it on my own. Thanks.”

  “Oh, come on.” He nudges me, all teasing again. “Don’t be like that. It’d be fun.”

  “No, truly. I can’t let you.”

  He cocks his head to the side, as if he can’t figure whether I’m joking.

  “I mean it,” I say.

  “Okay, how about this?” He leans forward in his chair. “I show you where to find a job and you bring home some more of this curry for us to share. Because—chaila—it is the best I’ve had in a long time.”

  I bite my lip and look up at the sloop’s wing, thinking. The sooner I find work, the sooner I can pay our own way. And the sooner I fix the ship, the sooner I can make a life for us, Soraya or no Soraya. I guess food would keep us even in the meantime. Besides, tonight marks the first time I’ve smiled since we spotted the storm over the Gyre. It feels good to talk to someone. It feels good to talk to Rushil. I wish it didn’t, but it does.

  “Ugh, that was a terrible idea,” Rushil says. “Never mind. You shouldn’t listen to me.”

  “No. I mean, I’d like that.”

  “Yeah?” A lopsided smile breaks out over his face. It’s an odd thing, that smile. It changes the whole look of him.

  “Right so,” I agree.

  Rushil drops his spoon in the empty curry container and leans back in his chair. “What kind of work do you want?”

  “I don’t know.” I look at the ship again. “Flying, maybe?”

  “Sure, as long as you can show your license.”

  “License?” I say.

  “Your piloting license.”

  I shake my head.

  “You don’t have a piloting license.” He leans forward in his chair and sighs. “Okay. What else can you do? Bookeeping? Data entry?”

  “I can fix things,” I say, uneasy. “And I was on livestock duty.”
<
br />   Rushil looks at me blankly.

  “Chickens and goats,” I explain.

  He looks pained. “Anything else?”

  “I s’pose . . . I can clean.” I make a face. Who would want to go back to that drudgery after the thrill of flying a ship? “And cook a little.”

  “Maybe . . .” Rushil perks up. “There’s a labor placement office near Sion station. All you have to do is show them your ID and . . .” He stops. “You don’t have an ID tag either, huh?”

  “Is that the same thing as papers?” I say, thinking back on how expensive it was to get past the flightport without them.

  Rushil nods.

  “Damn.” I want to kick the empty curry container across the shipyard.

  “I’ll take it that’s a no.”

  “Isn’t there any way to work without a tag?” I pick at the hem of my shirt. It would be better that way. No records of me, no danger of my father and Jerej finding the smallest thread leading here.

  Rushil looks at me, all traces of humor gone. “You don’t want that kind of work. Believe me.”

  And I do. The chill that passes his face tells me everything I need to know.

  Rushil stands and paces to the nearby fence, and then back again. He frowns, sits down, stands again, and stares out at the street for so long I think he’s forgotten me.

  “Rushil?”

  He doesn’t answer at first, but when he does, he forces a smile. Not the easy one I saw some minutes ago. This one doesn’t reach his eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, but there’s something in his voice that makes me think I should do exactly that. “I know someone who can fix that for you.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER .23

  “We’ll just go in and out.” Rushil’s eyes dart across the rooftops. Nothing moves up there except laundry baking dry in the midday sun. The buildings in this part of the Salt form a windowless corridor of rusted metal corrugate, splashed with painted words and symbols. The streets are eerily quiet. At a time of day when the rest of the Salt is full of foot traffic and vendors shouting and smallgirls selling flowers at the train station, this neighborhood feels empty.