I cut my eyes sideways to the cart.
“The towel.” She huffs. “Don’t they teach you people basic etiquette?”
“Oh.” I put the cup down on her desk and slide open the lid of my cart’s warming compartment to fish out a moist, neatly folded linen square. “Right so.”
She wipes her long fingers delicately and tosses the towel back at me. I catch it against my chest.
“Will there be anything else, missus?”
“Now I’ll have my tea,” she says.
“Right so—I mean, of course, missus.” I gesture to the cup I’ve already poured for her, waiting on her desk.
“No.” Her voice is sharp. “That one’s gone cold. I’ll take a new cup.”
I pick up the cup I’ve just poured. There’s no place to stow it except on the top of the cart, so I cram it beside the clean glasses, slopping sticky milk tea down in the process. My stomach knots up and my hands shake with the strange mix of fear and anger. I pour a fresh cup and try again. “Will there be anything else, missus?”
“No.” She flicks her hand at me, and for a moment I see Modrie Reller. All she needs is a fan. “That’s all for now.”
I push the cart around the room, stopping at each post. Not all of them are so awful, but they all want something.
“Take these cups downstairs, would you?”
“Could you see about getting me a mango lassi from that tapri around the corner?”
“You’re going by accounting on your way down, right? Would you drop this scanner back with Dipak and tell him thanks for me?”
“Do you have any caffeine pills on you?’
“And what about some pakoras if you can round them up?”
I try to scratch out everyone’s orders as best I can on the data pad, but by the time I round the last desk, my cart is littered with dirty cups, wrappers, a used finger bandage, and the uneaten edges of some fried, crusty bread, all swimming in a shallow layer of tepid tea.
“You know, you shouldn’t have started with Nandita,” the last man I serve says as I fill his cup. “She’s only been here seven months. You should start with the senior employees first.”
“I’ll try to remember, so,” I say politely, though by this time I feel close to screaming.
I truck the cart back to the lift and ride down to the kitchens, where Ajit is waiting for me.
“There you are.” He’s in the middle of inspecting two newly returned carts. “Try to pick it up a little next time. Your rating’s not too bad for the first day, but still. Try to pick it up.”
Then he sees my cart. “What’s this?”
“I . . .”
He snatches up a dirty glass, dripping with tea. “Why didn’t you stow this in the used glassware bin?” He picks up the crusty bread between two fingers. “And why didn’t you use the compost container?”
“I . . . I didn’t . . .” I feel myself shrinking again, all the strength the Gyre gave me gone. I’m back with my crewe, bowing my head and scraping and terrified. I can’t bring myself to look Ajit in the face. “I didn’t know they were there.”
Ajit laughs. “You’re kidding, right?” He presses a seam in the cart’s side. It swings open to reveal a sliding compartment perfect for dirty glasses. He pushes a button on the cart’s handle, and a compost chute slides out from the back of the cart. “Now you know.”
I wish the floor were water so I could sink down into it.
He turns to my data pad. “At least you took some orders while you were up there.” He squints at the pad, and then holds it out for me. “What does that say? M-A-G-O-L-A-S-I. Magolasi?”
“Mango lassi?”
“Not exactly the top of your class, were you?”
I stalk away. My eyes blur as I burst through the kitchen doors, into the hallway where I’ve stowed my things among the other chai wallahs’ crows and lunch bins. I sit down on the narrow metal bench bolted to the wall and drop my face into my hands.
A few moments pass, and then the door squeaks. Someone crosses the floor and sits next to me. “You okay, love?”
I look up. Doya smiles back at me.
“I mucked it all up,” I say.
“Don’t worry.” Doya pats my back. “It’s only your first day. No one’s first day is perfect.”
“I served everything all out of order, and one of the upstairs women yelled at me, and I used the cart wrong, and Ajit couldn’t even read my writing.” My voice breaks. For some reason that hurts worst, that my hard-won writing isn’t good enough.
“I’ll tell you something.” Doya leans back against the wall. “You know why they have us?”
“No,” I say into my hands.
“All those people upstairs, the ones you fetch things for, they aren’t allowed to leave their desks for more than a few minutes. They’ve got efficiency ratings to keep up with, too. Their bosses have us around so they can’t leave off working and run down the street for a nice beer or some tea. You understand?”
I nod.
“So every time one of them screams at me, I think, You’re stuck here with yourself all day, but in a minute or so, I can walk on.”
I nod again. “Right so.”
We sit in silence for a moment.
“Where are you from?” Doya asks.
I hesitate. “Come how?”
“That funny way of talking you have,” Doya says. “I know I’ve heard it someplace before, but I can’t place it.”
“I was born on a crewe ship.” The words are out before I can think on them too much.
“Ah.” Doya’s eyes light up. “The ones that run supplies out to the colonies and outposts?”
“So,” I agree.
“I knew it.” She frowns. “But you don’t look like most of the crewe folk I’ve seen. And I’ve only ever seen the boys.”
“The boys?” I repeat.
She nods. “My daughter, she’s an instructor at a state boarding school. They’ve got a whole wing of boys from crewe ships who’ve been dumped off on Bhutto station or left behind down here. Strange things. Pale.” She looks me over. “You sure you’re one of them?”
“Right so,” I say. “But . . . they got left behind?”
“Mmm hmm. My daughter says their old men marry up all the girls, and there isn’t anyone left for the boys, especially the ones from less powerful families. So they dump them off here. Awful.” She looks at me. “No offense.”
I shake my head. Some boys I knew died on their first journeys groundways, but Earth and its outposts could be dangerous places, like Modrie Reller and my father always said. And once Soli told me about a boy who had been banished from the Æther after some bad matter came over him and made him stab his friend. But nothing like that ever happened on the Parastrata. Surely that was never something we did. Was it?
A sick feeling creeps over me. “Do any of them . . .” I swallow. “None of them have red hair, do they?”
“Oh, sure.” Doya shrugs. “All colors. Red, brown, white, yellow, black.”
My head reels. I lean back against the wall. For a heartbeat, I’m back aboard the Parastrata, ten turns old and watching Llell’s mother sink to her knees before Modrie Reller. My Niecein. Couldn’t they bring back his body? That night I had laid awake, thinking of Niecein’s soul gone to dust and thanking the Mercies the men were the ones to brave the Earth instead of me. But now . . . Have all those dead boys been here the whole time?
And there was something else Doya said, something prickling at the back of my mind. Red, brown, white, yellow, black.
Black. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.
I sit up straight. “Are any of them my age?”
She frowns and leans back as if she can see me better from farther away. “Maybe,” she says uncertainly. “They’re mostly younger. Twelve to fifteen, maybe?”
“But mostly, right so? You said mostly.”
Doya tilts her head. “I guess. I mean, I only visit once a year for Holi.”
“So th
ere could be some older?” My skin is electric.
Doya frowns. “I’ve never seen any, but—”
“But maybe since you visited last, they found more boys.”
Doya purses her lips, and then nods. “My daughter says they’re always finding new boys, so I guess it’s possible. Maybe.”
“Where is this place?” I lean forward. “The one where your daughter works.”
“It’s up in Khajjiar, in Himachal Pradesh.”
Khajjiar, Himachal Pradesh. Khajjiar, Himachal Pradesh. I try to write it in my memory. “Is that far?”
“Why?” Doya raises an eyebrow. “You’re not thinking of going there, are you?”
“No,” I say quickly. As kind as Doya is, I’m not spilling all my sadness and shame for her. “I mean . . . I don’t . . . I was just wondering. I thought maybe one day I might. To see if I knew any of them.”
“Ah.” Doya shrugs. “It takes most of a day on the bullet train. Not too bad if you’re going to stay awhile, I guess.”
“Thank you, Doya.” I squeeze her hand and stand.
“You ready to go back to work?” she asks.
I’m not. I want to run out of here right now and climb aboard the bullet train, but I can’t. I have to stay here, be faster, do better. Ajit and the upstairs folk can shout at me all they want, because as soon as I’m paid up with Rushil and see that Miyole has what she needs, I’m taking that train to Khajjiar to see if Luck is one of the boys who was left behind.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER .25
Rushil crouches at my side below the sloop’s underbelly, box of fixers at the ready. “Is it that one?” He points to one of the blackened shield tiles and pushes his glasses up his nose.
“I think so.” I slide past him and run my fingers over the tile’s rivets. My attempts to keep him away while I fix the ship have completely failed. “Do you have something that will get these off?”
Rushil rummages in his box and pulls out a multitool with a flat-headed rod on one end and a power socket on the other. “Here.” He rolls it to me.
I unbolt the tile, fit the flat end of the multitool into the thin crack between the ship’s scales, and pry it down. All at once, a sticky gush of coolant pours out, spattering the pavement, and a burned-plastic smell chokes the air. Rushil hops back in time, but my legs ends up soaked in goop.
“Ugh.” I push a slick of it off me.
Rushil pulls a rag from his back pocket, utterly failing to hide the fact he’s trying not to laugh. “At least now you know what knocked out the door motors.”
I send a mock glare his way and reach up to wipe a glop of coolant from the sloop’s connectors with the rag. He’s right. The coolant leak has shorted out almost all the connections between the secondary power cell and the door’s motorized functions. The connectors are all bust, blackened and giving off the acrid smell of burned electronics. I cover my nose with my arm and finish cleaning them off as best I can. Rushil watches as I pop out the connectors what haven’t fused themselves to the backing panel, then chip out the ones that have. When I’m done, all that’s left are the ash outlines of the connectors and frayed sets of wires pigtailing out of their reinforcement tubes.
I slide back the panel leading to the coolant conduits. More of the viscous goop slops out. Maybe a break in the line, I think. I flip a switch on the multitool so it beams a blue-white circle of light and wriggle the top half of my body into the ship’s innards.
“What’s wrong? Can you see?” Rushil’s voice comes muffled from the other side of the hull.
I slide the beam along the conduits. Long splits and fissures glisten with leaking coolant all up and down the length of the lines. I let out an involuntary gasp, and then a groan.
“What is it?” Rushil asks again.
I run the light over the lines again, only half believing what I see. I’ve never seen anything so bust. Stress fractures split them like gashes down a man’s back. It must be from the ship’s inner workings changing temperature too quickly, too many times. I half remember Perpétue saying something about having to lay down a good sum to replace them again soon.
“The coolant conduits are ragged,” I call out.
“Here, let me see,” he says.
I duck out and hand over the light to him. His torso disappears into the ship. At last he speaks. “This is bad, Ava.”
“I know.” I give a short, hysterical laugh.
Rushil ducks out of the ship and crouches beneath it. “You’re lucky it didn’t choke and send you into a death spiral on the way over from the flightport.” He flicks his light up. “Can you fix it?”
I bite my lip, weighing everything. “I maybe could, but it would take forever. And the money for parts . . .”
I stare at Miyole, sitting in the shadow of Rushil’s trailer. She pokes at the dirt with a stick, Pala asleep beside her. I’ve managed to keep up my end of our curry bargain and even pay Rushil back some, but one ticket for the bullet train to Khajjiar costs more than my fake ID. And I’ve realized I don’t need just one ticket, I need two. It’s bad enough leaving Miyole alone while I work. It near kills me how much longer it means I have to wait, but I can’t leave her for two full days while I go chasing Luck’s ghost.
“You know, I might have some extra tubing,” Rushil says.
I close my eyes. “Stop. You know I can’t take anything more from you.”
“It’s really nothing, Ava.” Rushil gestures at the jumble of ship parts piled nearby. “Half my business is stripping old ships for resale parts. And I know a girl, my friend Zarine—she sells new components. She’d give us a deal on anything we couldn’t scrounge up here.”
I stare at him, wary. I want my ship fixed. Of course I do. Because then, forget the train, I could fly to Khajjiar. I could be there in an afternoon, and Luck would see my ship’s shadow on the grass and come running. Then I wouldn’t ever have to go begging to my modrie, because Luck and me, we could take care of Miyole ourselves. And then I might stop feeling like my heart is choking me.
“I don’t get much for scrap tubing. You’d be doing me a favor.” Rushil breaks my reverie. He examines his hands as he squats in the shadow of Perpétue’s ship, and then squints up at me. “I want you to have it.”
I smooth my data pendant with my thumb. The thought of Luck running to me makes my body ache, I want it so much. But then I count my debts—docking and the ID, coins for the screener and a hand with repairs, plus a thousand other small kindnesses, tea and blankets and bandages. I run a hand over the ship’s tiles. “Let me think on it.”
Rushil’s smile drops. “Sure.” He ducks out from beneath the sloop and glances at the time on his crow. “Sure. You know, I’ve got . . . stuff to do. Repairs. Anyway . . .”
“Rushil, wait.”
He stops and turns back to me. We stare at each other, the awkwardness growing. I don’t know how to say what I mean—that his kindness is making me uneasy, even if it’s well meant.
“Can I show you something?”
I climb into the sloop’s hold and mount the ladder to the cockpit. Rushil follows me silently.
Dust has settled on the controls, and the air has gone stuffy and still. I move aside so Rushil can see the cockpit walls, covered floor to ceiling in Miyole’s metal art. The fish-tailed women and roosters and boats ripple in the afternoon sun, muted colors surfacing in the brown and gray metal, like the rainbow in an oil slick.
Rushil comes to a stop in the door, mouth open. I recognize the look that crosses his face—surprise, confusion, slow-dawning delight. It’s how I felt the first time I saw all of her creatures gathered together this way.
“What are they?” he asks.
“Miyole makes them.” I swallow a lump in my throat. “Made them. Before.”
Rushil touches one of them, a flaming heart, gingerly. “They’
re beautiful. She could sell these down by the station.”
I shake my head. “She made them for her mother.”
“Oh.” Rushil winces. “Sorry. Foot in mouth.”
“When we lost her . . .” I stop and clear my throat. “They said it never stormed there, but there was a storm. And Miyole’s mother, she had me fly the ship while she went down to the rooftop. . . . ”
I stare straight ahead at a sun radiating wavy lines. “Sometimes I think, It should have been me. I should have gone down to get her, and then Perpétue would be alive, and Miyole wouldn’t be like this. They would both be alive.”
“But you wouldn’t be,” Rushil says quietly.
I shrug. “What difference would that make?” If I weren’t in the world, who would even know? Wouldn’t Perpétue have been of more use alive than me?
“Don’t talk like that.” Rushil’s voice is low, but there’s a tremor to it. “You don’t know . . . you don’t know how it would have been different.”
“I’m sorry.” I sink down in the captain’s chair. “I just . . . I don’t want her to be like this anymore. I want her back to herself.”
“I know.” He takes the other seat, putting us knee to knee. “It’s only . . . you never know who’s going to need you. Or want you here.” He reaches out and squeezes my hand.
I freeze at his touch—he’s a boy, a man, a strange man—and then the gentle pressure on my palm sends a tender warmth through me, from my heart to my fingertips. I near shiver with it. How often has someone touched me kindly?
I meet his eyes. I never thought a boy—a man—would be the one to understand me, or even want to try. Rushil leans forward, as if to say something.
But Luck. I close my eyes. How can I forget Luck, even for a breath? I pull my hand from Rushil’s.
He clears his throat. “So how does she make these?” He twists around to look over Miyole’s collection.
“Scrap,” I say. “And a metal burner.”
“Maybe she could make some new ones.” He turns back to me. “Give her something to do, instead of lying in the dark all day.”
I shake my head. “We lost her burner.”
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