The Stars We Steal

by Alexa Donne

  “Well, I wanted to talk business,” I hedged.

  “Oh?” Her hostess’s veneer slipped. Freja smoothed her hands over the crisp pink sateen bodice of her ball gown, a subconscious gesture I’d seen her make with the fabric edges of her captain’s-uniform jacket a million times. “Still.” She coughed. “Call me Freja, even for business.”

  “Okay, Aunt Freja.” I followed her instructions but remained on guard nonetheless. “I wanted to talk to you about my water-filtration system again—”

  She cut me off. “I just don’t think it’s the most prudent course of action for us. The retrofit would be costly and time-consuming, and I just can’t get past the . . . urine thing.” She wrinkled her nose in disdain, as if I’d waved a urine-soaked rag beneath it.

  “It’s completely clean and safe,” I pleaded. “We’ve been using it on the Sofi for over a year, and my father and sister haven’t even noticed!”

  “You mean they don’t know?” The captain literally clutched her pearls. I had to pinch myself in the thigh to stop a giggle. “My dear, that’s precisely proving my point. You don’t want to reveal to them the source of their water, and I absolutely cannot and will not lie to my people.”

  I was naked, castigated under her piercing blue-eyed stare.

  “Only a small fraction of the potable water supply comes from the wastewater,” I mumbled, though I knew my pitch was done. The captain was family. If I couldn’t get her to buy into my filtration system, then I was doomed with other ships, wasn’t I?

  “I’m sorry, Leonie.” She gave me a patronizing pat on the arm and a halfhearted smile. “You’re so like your mother. A hopeless idealist. May she rest in peace,” she seemed to add perfunctorily. Come to think of it, it was the first time she’d mentioned my mom in years.

  “What are you sorry about, Mother?” Klara breezed in, sipping at her champagne in lieu of eating. I knew she rarely ate at these things. It was unseemly and would ruin her lipstick, she always said.

  “I was saying sorry that she hadn’t found a suitor yet,” Freja answered smoothly, making things both better and worse. She covered the embarrassment of my failed business venture but opened up a whole other can of worms.

  “Ugh, Mother, not everyone is gagging to get married,” Klara groaned. I nodded in agreement.

  “You’d do well to get comfortable with the idea,” Freja scolded her daughter. “I won’t live forever. You need a well-positioned spouse if you want to run for captain—at a future time of my choosing, of course. And Leonie has other concerns for marriage,” she added. Well, there it was. “I saw you rebuff the young count from the Sternshiff.” My aunt frowned at me, the spitting image of my father. Parental disappointment was a universal look.

  “We don’t have very much in common,” I said.

  “You rarely do.” Freja sighed.

  A loaded look passed between my cousin and me, both thinking of her father. He’d been a strategic Valg match, and, well, it hadn’t ended on the best terms. He’d left when Klara was twelve, off to parts unknown and a pregnant mistress, and my aunt had refused to talk about him ever since. How she didn’t understand why her daughter was deeply resistant to marriage was beyond me. Or she understood but didn’t care.

  “Well, it’s time for my speech,” the captain said, leaving Klara and me to find our seats.

  I groaned. “Another one? Or is it the same from last night, but she wants to get to finish it this time?” Unwillingly I flashed back on the show from last night. I pinched my eyes shut to clear the image.

  “No, not the same one,” Klara said. “It’s her candidate speech. She’s all full of vim and vigor, and will be kicking off the election Season early to coincide with the Valg. Aren’t you excited?” Sarcasm dripped from every word.

  “Seriously?”

  Klara nodded. “She’s capitalizing on last night’s interruption to galvanize everyone for a quick and uncontested reelection. Her words.”

  “But no one ever runs against her,” I said as we made our way forward to take our seats. We found two seats on the aisle in the third row. The plush settees that usually occupied the middle of the room had been pushed to the sides to make room for a sea of chairs. “It’s been just the Lind family going up for captain basically our whole lives.”

  Klara leaned in close, her voice carefully low. “And Mother would like to ensure that doesn’t change. Apparently the Madsens were making some bold statements last night after the attack, and she’s antsy.”

  “There aren’t enough Danes on board to swing it their way,” I reasoned.

  “True, but you know their son Theo is participating in the Valg, along with Asta. Mother has forbidden me from considering him. She’s afraid they’re angling for a political marriage so they can sneak in through me.”

  “How are you feeling about the election? What does it mean for you?”

  Klara sighed back into her chair. “It is what it is. Mother’s buying herself a few more years in the position, since elections can’t be held less than three years apart. I’ll have to be patient.”

  “Would you run against her?” Anyone directly connected to the royal families on board was eligible to become captain. We had had “elections,” of sorts, to determine who held the role going back about a hundred years. Even I could run if I wanted to, since my mother was a Lind. But I had zero desire to go up against my aunt, let alone captain a ship this big.

  “Without a political marriage in place? Nope. Which she’s headed off at the pass by doing it simultaneous with the Valg. Clever. Anyway, I saw you talking to Elliot back there.” She expertly changed the subject.

  “Not exactly. It was more of a super-awkward group-chat kind of thing. Elliot has no interest in talking to me. Yelling at me, yes. Talking, not so much.”

  Klara raised an eyebrow. “He’s still mad about the engagement?”

  “Apparently.”

  “And how are you feeling?”

  “Annoyed,” I said, for lack of a better word. Klara gestured for me to go on. “It’s fine,” I hedged. “I’m so over him, I don’t even have an issue with him and my sister openly flirting.” If I said it out loud, perhaps that would make it true? Klara laughed.

  “Carina and Elliot? That’s a terrible idea.”

  She didn’t bother to keep her voice low now, and to my mortification, my father, Carina, Elliot, and his friends moved to sit in the row in front of us. Hopefully, they’d heard only the tail end of what she’d said. Elliot and Carina sat directly in front of us. I hunched down in my chair and inched closer to Klara. Then her mother started her speech.

  It was long and over-the-top. The words terrorism and security were used no fewer than five times each. She didn’t mention people starving, or really anything that might force us to think about our position in the fleet. How we wined and dined while people were dying.

  Then, finally, Captain Lind introduced the Klaviermeister, taking care to remind us that, as our captain, she was responsible for booking such excellent entertainment at regular intervals. VOTE FOR ME, she practically screamed.

  The Klaviermeister sat down at the piano to play. It was one of my favorites, a score by Philip Glass, somber and longing and wistful all at the same time. Elliot shifted in front of me, leaning forward in his chair, settling elbows on knees, as if to get closer to the music. He, too, loved this piece, I remembered.

  I tried to get lost in the music, closing my eyes to isolate my senses, purposely refraining from leaning forward too. I was my own person, dammit. We weren’t that alike. Not anymore. But then I heard my sister giggle in front of me and, cracking an eye open, saw her tap Elliot on the shoulder, wresting him back up so she could whisper in his ear. I was unable to pick up the words, but her tone came through. Carina asked him a question, playful, earnest, and I watched with both horror and fascination as he turned, pressing his lips close to her ear, and answered. I caught a few words from his husky baritone. Favorite. Melancholy.

  I looked pa
st their heads, trying to ignore their whispering, but it went on. Carina was clearly not interested in the concert at all, and Elliot kept indulging her. She probably didn’t remember how close Elliot and I had been. I had certainly never told her about the engagement. That explained her actions, but not his.

  A quick check of the time told me it had been ten minutes. I couldn’t bear another forty. I needed air. One piece ended, everyone clapped politely, and I took my chance to slip away.

  I made my way through a maze of drawing rooms until I hit the outer corridor. While it was cooler out here and Elliot-free, it wasn’t enough, so I headed up one deck to the uppermost deck’s promenade. The next song from the Klaviermeister played from the sound system, so it was like I wasn’t missing it at all. I’d emerged on the Earth side of the ship, and the melancholy Glass score seemed appropriate. I gazed down at our former home planet, reflecting white up into the black vastness of space. I’d learned all about it in Earth History; we’d watched dramatic reenactments of the supervolcano exploding, setting off a chain reaction that led to an ice age. The music swelled, a discordant minor melody filling me with a distinct sadness for all the people who had been left behind. Who had perished.

  We were alive only because our ancestors had known the right people, had had enough money. And we continued to let money and status dictate who lived well.

  I let out a deep sigh.

  “Everything okay?”

  I whirled around.

  “Elliot, what are you doing here?”

  “You ran out like there was something wrong.”

  “You noticed?”

  “It was hard not to.” He pointed to my feet—heels. Of course. The whole audience likely heard me click-clacking out of there.

  “Well, I’m surprised you care. Since I’m so ruthlessly pragmatic.”

  He looked at me askance but appeared anything but contrite.

  “Aren’t you, though?”

  “You know it was more complicated than that.”

  There it was, the thing between us. I was a bit shocked at myself for having brought it up first, even if obliquely. But, hey, what better time to hash it out? We could say our piece and then avoid each other entirely for the next month.

  “I didn’t think it was very complicated at all.” Elliot shrugged. “Money or love. You chose money.”

  Half a dozen retorts flashed across my mind, all the nuances and complicated reasons that he was wrong, but all I could force out of my mouth was “And now you’re rich too. So I guess money isn’t important at all, huh?”

  My face heated at my own stupidity. What a flaccid argument.

  “Of course you wish I’d stayed poor and downtrodden. That’s what you all want. The rest of us under your heels, staying out of the way while you stuff yourselves.”

  “That’s a mischaracterization, and you know it. I’m not like them.”

  “Aren’t you? Just ’cause you’re maybe not as bad doesn’t mean you’re absolved. You used to talk a big talk, agreed with all the things I said, about things needing to change. But have you done anything to impact that change since I left? I see the same rigid class system as before. You’re complacent and complicit.”

  There he was, the Elliot who clearly thought I was the very worst kind of person. A spoiled princess hardly worth his time. This Elliot made it easier, and the anger that boiled up from my stomach and turned to acid on my tongue was the very thing I needed to get over him. We would spar, and I would learn to hate him, too.

  “And what are you, coming over here to participate in the Valg? Doesn’t that make you just as complicit?”

  “You don’t know me anymore, Leo, or what I want.”

  “Likewise,” I spat back. “Why did you even come up here? You don’t care about me. You were just spoiling for a fight.”

  “Maybe I want to see you suffer a bit.”

  It was as if he had struck me in the face. My whole body began to shake—with rage, devastation. I clenched my hands into fists, locked my knees, anything to control myself in front of him. And then I let loose.

  “Well, congratulations. The universe has taken care of that for you. My ship is falling apart, we’re inches from complete financial ruin, my father and sister are useless, and I’ll be married off to the highest bidder in a matter of weeks, kicking off a lifetime of unhappiness. Enjoy the show. Now, good night.”

  Just then, Klara rounded the corner. “I wondered where you two had disappeared to!” Her wide smile promptly faded when she got a proper look at the two of us, stiff as boards and clearly sparring.

  “I was just going.” I cast Elliot my most saccharine smile. “Enjoy your stay, and the Valg. I hope you get everything you want.”

  With that, I whipped around and headed for my quarters, having had the last word but leaving with the heaviest of hearts.

  Six

  I translated my anger into action, writing letters to every captain in the fleet about my water-recycling system, begging for a meeting. Every time I flashed back to Elliot’s wish to see me suffer, to Captain Lind’s disdain, I found someone else to write to. All I needed was one ship to take a chance on my idea.

  This way, I was working on three potential scenarios, each increasingly less pleasant. Ideally someone would agree to be the pilot ship for my system, and I could use their startup investment to fly to the Olympus and file my patent. Otherwise, I would suffer Elliot’s presence for the next month but happily collect the Orlovs’ weekly rent, which I would use to take care of the patent then. But that would bring me perilously close to the end of the Valg Season and the worst-case scenario, with Father breathing down my neck to marry to save the family. He just didn’t understand that I was trying to do that already, but in a way so that the price wasn’t my own happiness.

  The Valg kickoff complete, the social-events calendar had been paused while the majority of parents returned to their ships. That meant a forty-eight-hour reprieve before the tug-of-war with my father began in earnest.

  I busied myself with unpacking, tidying our temporary apartments, balancing our new and slightly improved budget. Another reason I hoped for some other ship’s buy-in was so that I could use the Orlovs’ rent to make improvements rather than bank it all for the patent fees.

  On the day after this all-too-brief reprieve, my wrist tab and personal tab began to chirp repeatedly and annoyingly in unison. I glanced down at my wrist to see an insistently flashing rose-entangled V. I tried swiping it away, but the noise didn’t stop. With a huff, I woke up my personal tab and tapped to open the Valg app. Finally, both devices quieted, now that I’d locked eyes with today’s scheduled event notification—there was a pool party starting in half an hour.

  I ignored the other half-dozen blinking notifications—I needed to fill out my profile, take the dating personality quiz, RSVP for the next event, browse profiles. My fingertip was hovering over the skip button for today’s event, but then Carina appeared.

  “Don’t tell me you’re doing budgets again,” Carina scolded, pausing at the living room entrance. I looked up from my tab, blinking hard before confirming that, yes, my sister was wearing next to nothing and had a towel slung over one arm.

  “I’m not going,” I said.

  She gave an exasperated sigh. “Leo, you can’t hole yourself up in here doing work the whole time. The Valg Season is supposed to be fun.”

  I bristled. “Maybe I was reading, which is fun.”

  “Father said you have to go with me to Valg events or I can’t go. Please? I want to go swimming. I won’t make you socialize or swim, but come. You can read by the side, and maybe some similarly antisocial boy will also be reading, and you can bond.”

  “Fine.” I pulled myself up. “I’ll go, but only for a little while.”

  I swiped away the Valg app and pulled up my favorite book, trudging after Carina. At least this was a daytime activity and not one of the faux-romantic nighttime ones. I would get one event out of the way and limit Father’
s complaining for a few days.

  Carina insisted we travel by lift pod instead of foot, despite my protests. The lift unsettled me more than a little bit. It felt as if we were hanging off the side of the ship, nothing between us and the vastness of space but a bit of glass. It was heavily reinforced, I knew, but logic didn’t save my stomach from doing somersaults as we glided parallel the Scandinavian’s side. I let out a relieved breath as we came to a stop all the way aft, the lift doors sliding open, spilling us out into an alcove off the promenade.

  The pool occupied prime real estate on the uppermost deck where the ship’s backside curved in an elegant arc and, as on the promenade and bridge, sprawling windows were prioritized over more practical appointments. We had to key in with our bio-signatures, as the pool was accessible to the general public on board only on Mondays. The rest of the time it was private-access only, to maintain an air of luxury. Crowds would dampen the mood. And everything in the pool area meticulously cultivated a mood.

  The large entranceway door slid open at our touch, and we stepped into the oblong-shaped lobby. Immediately I was engulfed in low, sultry lighting and the smell of tropical fruit. I drew a deep breath. Pineapple. They pumped it through the air vents, a different scent every few hours.

  Mingling with the seemingly distant echo of lapping water and chatter were mellow chimes, the preferred soundtrack of the spa, located to our left. To the right was the all-gender locker room, where Carina deposited her shoes and shucked off the thin tunic I’d made her put on before we left. She frowned at me.

  “You’re really only going to read? No bathing suit?”

  “I’m not wearing one,” I reminded her.

  “You can buy one here . . .” I shook my head. She rolled her eyes. “Then at least take off your shoes so you’re not totally out of place.”

  I indulged her, throwing them into a locker with her things.

  “Hey, can I ask you something?” Carina glanced around, checking that no one was there.