Salvage (6 page)

A young man stands behind Æther Fortune. He is a head taller than me, with thick black hair cut close to his head and irises the blue of ozone burn. He keeps his hands clasped behind him. Like a magnet finding its match, his eyes lock on mine.

Luck
. My heart skitters. Luck, grown, as I am. I would drop my gaze if I could. No proper so girl should stare at a man like this. But his look holds me as steadily as the hand beneath my chin.

Æther Fortune releases his grip. I fade gratefully down into a curtsy, the platter of eggcakes still held out in front of me. My fingers tremble.

“This is my eldest son, Æther Luck, heir to the captaincy,” Fortune says to my father and brother.

I inch my eyes up above the stack of cakes. Luck executes a small bow. He flicks a brief smile at me, and I duck back behind the platter. My heart pumps heat into every corner of my body. It is in my breasts and my toes, and suddenly I am aware of hidden corners of myself I never knew existed. Luck, heir to the captaincy. And me, a bride.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

T
he
Æther
is vast compared to the
Parastrata
. Its ceilings rise a good meter above our heads and the rooms circle off one another in a labyrinth. But at least the gravity is back to bearable. The Æther crewe eats with men and women separate, like we do, but their galley is so large they don't need to eat in shifts, men and boys, then women and girls. Little bowls of real salt and oil rest in the center of the galley tables, and the thers make free with them.

“Luxury,” Hannah sniffs, but I see her sprinkle a heaping pinch of salt over the sticky pearl rice the Æther crewe favors.

I look across the crowded galley and spot Luck at a table with a group of other young men. His friends are laughing over some joke, but he's staring straight at me, a small, warm smile playing at the corners of his mouth. A welcome fire runs through me. I duck my head, but the feel of his eyes on me is irresistible. I have to look again.

That smile of his tugs at my own lips and fills me with a glow. I imagine the smooth skin of his inner wrist flush with mine, the binding ribbon winding around and around, trapping and sanctifying the heat between us. After the rite, we'll be alone in the marriage chamber, and he'll comb my bride's braids loose with his fingers. His hand will travel from my neck to my shoulder, and then unsnap the clasps of my shift. . . .

A sharp rap from Hannah's fan lands on my knuckles. She doesn't have to say a word. I'm being undignified, smiling like an idiot for the whole galley to see. I rub my hand and wrestle my face back under control. But even the threat of my great-grandmother's fan doesn't keep me from stealing glances at Luck until it's time to clear the table.

I don't see Soli until after dinner when the ther women usher us into a visiting room piled thick with woven rugs. I kneel alongside them. Soli sits on the other side of the circle, but I only recognize her by the way her face lights up when she catches sight of me. She's near tall as her brother, but she's hidden her ears behind her long hair, done up in marriage braids. Her own pendant hangs around her neck—black, but with a shifting sheen that changes colors, like a drop of oil. She grins and mouths something.
We need to talk
.

Hannah and Iri and the Æther women produce collapsible looms from their inner pockets and begin setting up their weaving. A bubble of panic rises in my chest. Modrie Reller said nothing on bringing a loom, but of course now it seems clear she shouldn't have to say something so simple to me. I feel in my pockets, as if by some miracle one might appear. Nothing.

“Ava,” Iri says lowly. She has been sitting beside me all this time, slowly unwinding a skein of algae-green wool.

I look up. Iri silently holds out the pieces of an extra loom for me. The tight feeling in my chest eases. I don't know why Iri looks out for me, except she never did have smallones of her own before my great-grandfather died, and none of the men aboard the
Parastrata
have tried to take her as a wife, maybe out of respect for my great-grandfather. I nod my thanks, quickly snap the frame together, and reach into the common thread basket for a skein of my own.

“Our colors please your eye, then, Parastrata Ava,” Soli's mother says without looking up from her own weaving.

I glance down at the yarn in my hand. The thread is the Æthers' smooth red silk. It shows bright against my dark green skirts. “Yes,” I say. “It's. . . it's some beautiful.”

“Beautiful, she says.” Soli's mother smiles to the women beside her, then turns back to me, her face suddenly solemn. “But if you use it long enough, you might start to think it dull.”

I recognize some kind of test in that, even if I don't know what it is exactly.

“Never.” I lock my spine straight and look at her evenly, drawing on my imitation of Modrie Reller. “Firstwife Æther, I'm not some changing girl. I won't go shifting on you and yours.”

She watches me with eyes half lidded. All around us the looms clack softly, and the other women peer sideways at us over their handwork.

Finally Soli's mother nods. “Right so, then.”

I let the air out of my lungs. I've passed. The other women return their attention to their weaving and murmured conversations. Soli rises and picks her way to me. My jaw drops. Soli's long red skirt swells over a soft, rounded lump at her waist. She's gotten herself pregnant.

“Soli, when? Who?” I grab her hand as she eases down beside me. I want to throw my arms around her, I've missed her so, but the older women wouldn't stand for such a display. I settle for squeezing her hand tighter. “Tell me everything.”

“Let me hold your thread for you, sister,” Soli says aloud, but her face is bright to bursting with news, her cheeks flush. She leans close as she unwinds the skein. “His name's Ready, the requisitions officer. We had our binding close on half a turn past.”

I glance down. I've seen lots of women pregnant on the
Parastrata
, and even some births. Soli looks too far gone for half a turn. “That's some fast.”

Soli giggles, sounding a moment like the smallgirl I remember. “But I got my pick, didn't I?
That
we have to talk on later, without all these stuffed-up oldgirls hanging round.”

“He's nice?” I ask. I stop my weaving and look up. “He's not old, is he?”

“Nah.” Soli shakes her head. “Only five turns older. Perfect.”

“Oh.” I look down.

Soli nudges me. “Don't chew on it. Talk I hear says you're getting an even younger one.” Soli's eyes shine so I almost think they're wet.

“How'd you . . . ,” I start to ask.

“Come, Ava, it's clear as empty you're still sweet on Luck,” Soli says. “And he's sweet on you, too. Couldn't stop staring at you on the dock today.”

That rush of heat sweeps through me again, and I fumble with my thread. If only my bridal bands weren't making me so slow and clumsy.

“Think, you'll be my sister and our babies can play together.”

The warmth changes to pure fire in my cheeks. They say a baby makes a new, small world all your own, and then the Earth will stop calling to you. That's what I want, but . . . But I've only begun fixing the idea of being a wife in my head, trying on Luck's face as the man snapping the coins from my bridal veil, the inside of Luck's wrist bound to mine. And now babies. Of course I knew that would come. It's what my body is made for, but . . . Soli's belly stares at me. It's one more piece too real. And it makes me some uneasy the way things are raveling up exactly how I dreamed, and so fast. It makes me worry I've left something out.

Soli and me lie face-to-face on her bunk in the women's quarters. It's not something married girls usually do, but all the Æther women know we were friends as smallgirls, and what with me about to be married, they're willing to let us pretend we're children a few nights longer. The air blows cool and fresh through the vents, and the dimmers carry us gently into ship's night.

“Ready's some strong,” Soli whispers under the blankets. She lies on her back with her head turned to me. “He can pick me up, even with the baby, and he's always slipping me nice things from requisitions. Like the other day, he gave Hydroponics some extra grams of nutrient soak, and they held back an orange for him, so he gave it to me.”

I suck my bottom lip. My father gave me a slice of orange once when I was a smallgirl, and even now I can taste the sweet bite under my tongue. “Did your father pick him for you?” I ask.

Soli shakes her head and grins. “Ready and I picked each other.”

I raise my eyebrows and open my eyes wide, trying to make out her face in the near dark. Crewes hardly ever let a love match through, especially when it's the captain's daughter up for marriage and her husband might end up heir to the captaincy.

“How'd you fix it?” I ask.

Soli runs a hand over her belly. “I let them catch me.”

“What?” My voice rings out.

“Hsshh.”
One of the older women shushes from the bunk below us.

Soli drops her voice even lower. “I've seen girls do it before. I had already got the baby, and I knew some sure my father wouldn't drop me on a port somewhere or let me go around the ship unmarried. So the next time I was in the cleanroom, I let my mother catch sight of me and of course she went and told my father. He called us into the meet room. Then Ready, he confessed it in front of everyone, and they had us bound the next day.”

“Wasn't your father angry?” I ask.

“Some sure.” Soli picks at the inside of the blanket. “He wanted to push Ready out the airlock at first, but then he decided he'd rather have a legitimate grandchild, so he only had him flogged after the binding instead.”

“Soli,” I whisper, not sure what else to say.

“I got my way, didn't I?” She turns her head to me.

I nod. Soli strokes her belly absentmindedly.

“What about Ready?” I ask. “What if he comes calling for you tonight?”

“He won't,” Soli says, eyes still closed. “Not till after the baby's born and I'm healed up.”

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

“What, having a baby? I'm guessing so from all the screaming the other girls do.”

“No,” I say. “The other thing.”

“Oh.” Soli rolls heavily on her side to face me. “At first, but not so bad if he's careful. And it's much better after that. Are you worried?”

I tuck my chin into my chest and hug my arms. I nod.

“Don't.” She rubs my arm. “When we heard you were coming as a bride, I figured you might be for Luck, so I told him how he'd better not hurt you or I'd break all his toes. He'll be careful. You'll see.”

I smile at her, even though we can barely make out the whites of each other's teeth in the close dark. Soli rolls on her back again, and I turn to the wall. She's asleep in a few slips, her breath falling slow and regular. I lie awake, rubbing the smooth surface of my data pendant. Iri and Hannah snore lightly in the bunk below us. Some of the smallgirls whisper and break out in patters of giggles, but those peter out too, leaving only breath and the lulling hum of the air scrubbers.

I sit up. The heat coming off Soli is too much, even with cool air wafting in on us through the ventilation slits. I slide to the bottom of the bunk and sit there, my legs dangling with the extra weight of my bands. The air is wonderful fresh. It brings me awake, makes me almost giddy. I glance around at the other women in their bunks. How can anyone sleep with the air so pure? How can they expect me to sleep? My new home is beckoning me. There are rooms to explore, corridors and serviceways to memorize. And as much as it shames me to say it, I want to put some distance between myself and Soli's belly.

I drop lightly to the floor. I leave my outermost skirt, with its clacking, flashing mirrors, but tie on my plainer inner skirts and move quietly to the door. Like all the doors I've seen aboard the
Æther
, this one shows a shaded view of its other side—an empty hallway. The door doesn't have a pattern lock, but it doesn't have a manual handhold for pulling, either. I feel along the door's edges and on the wall where a control panel should be. Nothing. I kneel. A thin, red-lined square glows where the handhold might be. I press my palm to it experimentally. The door slides up with a silent swish of air, and I jump back, stifling a cry. The Æther crewe doesn't even lock its women in at night. Strange.

I step into the hall and touch a matching square on the other side, sending the door hushing down behind me. An empty silence cottons the corridor, and deep in my veins I feel the familiar thrill of being the only one awake. I go left, away from the ship's galley and entryway, into a section of the ship I haven't seen yet. My feet
pat-pat
along the cool floor.

I pass a run of rooms lined with man-high tanks for trapping gas and tabletop centrifuges, miniatures of the one I've seen from afar in our engine room. I stand with my hand pressed to the waist-high glass, taking in the sterile order of the rooms. Diagrams crammed with mysterious writing paper the walls. I tiptoe on, past more workrooms. Then comes the men's training room, with all the weight equipment sleek and new, not rust-speckled and wrapped in brittle sealing tape like aboard the
Parastrata
. I smile. Won't Soli's mother be shocked when she sends me off on some errand and I already know my way?

Beyond the training room, the floor slopes up gently. The air thickens with humidity and the smell of earth. Hydroponics. But when I reach the darkened room at the end of the corridor, I hesitate. This is nothing like Hydroponics on our ship, squeezing as much produce from as little nutrients and water as possible. I peer through the clear insulating curtain stretched across the door. Fog lies over a carpet of tender grass stretching all the way to the back of a room near large as the
Parastrata
's outer bay. Dense shadows gather beneath the lemon trees staggered along the green. The far wall is one long window, looking out on the stars.