She hadn’t become a woman. She’d become a shade with bile for blood and a well of shame in her heart. The only thing that had kept her from falling down that well was knowing that Clementine needed her.
Aster hadn’t thought it was possible to feel more helpless than she had when that first man laid his hands on her. She was wrong. This was worse.
“I would say you owe me an apology, wouldn’t you, Aster?” Mother Fleur went on, clearly unsatisfied. “Or do I need to have a word with Dex?”
The head ravener.
Aster uncurled her fingers.
“Beg pardon, Mother Fleur,” she murmured. “Clem’s right. I just haven’t been up this early in a while.”
Mother Fleur gave her a cold, knowing look, but she let it go. “Well, those lazy mornings are one of the many privileges of being a sundown girl that Clementine can look forward to,” she said, with a forced breeziness. “Now, I’m needed downstairs to open the house. But I trust you can finish getting your sister settled in?”
“It’d be my pleasure.”
Mother Fleur held her glare for a moment longer, then turned and flashed Clementine a bright smile.
“Well, then, happy birthday, Clementine,” she said grandly. “I will see you both at breakfast.”
She left them.
As soon as Mother Fleur was out of sight, Clementine let out a whoop and jumped backwards onto the bed, the skirt of her yellow day dress flaring around her like a bell.
“By the Veil! This room is fit for a princess. I reckon it’s even bigger than yours.”
Aster grinned despite her misgivings. She crossed her arms. “Yeah? I don’t see any windows like mine’s got. Bet you’re right this room’s bigger, though. Spoiled.”
In truth, Aster would have taken even the smallest room if it’d meant she got to keep her window. She loved watching the sun rise over the mountains in the morning, light spilling like liquid gold into the valley where Green Creek slept. The welcome house was near the center of town, which gave Aster a view of just about everything, from the tidy shops that lined Main Street to the deadwall that surrounded the town, its mortar mixed with theomite dust to keep vengeful spirits away.
That view was an escape, the only one she had.
“Spoiled, my hide,” Clementine went on. “I worked hard for this room. And this bed. Look, even the pillows have pillows.”
“Better than those piss-smelling cots upstairs?” Aster said.
“Much better.” Clementine sat up, a shadow passing over her face. “But then, I guess it’d have to be.”
A cold, slippery feeling trickled through Aster’s gut. “Never mind all that for now,” she said, pulling Clem back to her feet. “Let’s go get all your stuff, make this place feel like home.”
Clementine’s excitement returned. “Right, if we hurry we can catch the others before they have to get to the kitchen.”
The “others” were Tansy and Mallow, Clementine’s two closest friends. They still lived up in the attic along with all the other girls who hadn’t yet turned sixteen. Until today, Clementine had been on the kitchen crew with them.
“Does it feel strange not to have any chores to do?” Aster asked as they made their way down the hall.
“Well, I sure don’t miss it, if that’s what you mean,” Clementine snorted. Her smile faded. “I will miss Tanz and Mal, though.”
“They turn sixteen in, what, three and four months? They’ll be sundown girls soon enough,” Aster reassured her.
“Right. And I’ll still see them around some, so there’s that,” Clementine added.
Aster paused. “Right, there’s that.”
But, of course, it wouldn’t be the same, not at all. Sundown girls and daybreak girls lived separate lives, and when they did cross paths, there was an unspoken barrier between them, like the Veil between the living and the dead. Clementine wouldn’t be allowed to talk about the work with the daybreak girls—but for the sundown girls, the work was all there was.
Aster had been told, many times, to be grateful for that work. Good Luck Girls never went hungry, always had a roof over their heads, saw the doctor and the dentist twice a year. Entertaining the brags meant they got to wear the kind of clothes other girls could only dream of, too, and enjoy an endless supply of Sweet Thistle.
It was far more than most folks could expect in Arketta, especially out in the Scab, the ragged line of mountains that cut through the middle of the country. Its wind-torn wilderness was where, in the long-gone days of the old Empire, anyone the Empire deemed criminal had been banished to work in the mines. Some had been captured in Arketta on the battlefields where they’d fought against the Empire’s onslaught. Others had been sent to Arketta on reeking prison ships from the colonies. Dustbloods, they were called. They looked just the same as ordinary, fairblood folks, except that they couldn’t cast a shadow. The first dustbloods had had their shadows ripped away as part of their punishment, and their children had been born without them. A dustblood’s debt could never truly be paid. If at first you owed ten eagles for stealing, then by the end of the year you’d owe ten thousand, for everything from the moldy bread you were rationed to the leaking roof over your head.
Now, some two centuries after the Empire’s fall, there were more dustbloods living in the Scab than ever. Enterprising businessmen had bought up the land and taken on the dustbloods’ debt in return for their labor—an arrangement that became known as the Reckoning. The Reckoning promised fairbloods the opportunity to become wealthy landmasters and live among Arketta’s elite, while it promised dustbloods the opportunity to work away generations of debt and finally earn their freedom from the Scab. And it had worked out well enough for the landmasters, but the miners never ended up with anything to show for it but broken bodies and empty bellies. Disease took them, or they disappeared down the gullet of a mountain, or a vengeant ripped them open with its invisible claws. There was no escaping the Reckoning, the law had made sure of that—Arketta’s border with its industrial neighbor to the north, Ferron, was protected by its finest armymen, and no one without a shadow got out.
That was how the welcome houses got girls to work for them in the first place. Scouts found desperate families with young daughters and offered to take them away for a modest compensation. Girls worked as the help until they turned sixteen, then serviced guests until they aged out at forty. They didn’t have to pay for anything, but they didn’t earn any wages, either. It was a bitter compromise, and everyone knew it. But when there were one too many mouths at home to feed, when an accident underground left parents unable to work, when the alternative for a girl was a life of suffering cut brutally short, the welcome house remained the only option. At least her belly would be full at night. At least her medical needs would be seen to. Indeed, the landmasters argued, these girls were lucky to live such pampered lives.
The only problem was, Aster had never chosen this life.
None of them had. And none could ever truly leave it. Not when their favors marked them for what they were even after they’d aged out. As much as the brags liked to talk about how great the Good Luck Girls had it, they never seemed to mention how most girls died on the streets, as beggars. On the extremely rare occasion, a wealthy brag would buy a girl from a house outright, to have for his exclusive use. But this was hardly preferable: once purchased, she never aged out at all—she was the brag’s property for life.
Aster’s hand wandered up to the side of her throat, where a chain of thin-petaled flowers mottled her skin like bright black starbursts. She had thought about running away. It was impossible not to. But a favor didn’t just mark someone as property of a welcome house—it was bewitched, too. If a girl covered hers up, with makeup or a dustkerchief or anything else, the ink would heat and glow like iron in a fire. Red, first, then orange, then yellow, then white. The pain was enough to bear for a few minutes, but eventually it would bring even the strongest to her knees, and it took hours to fully subside.
T
hey couldn’t hide their favors, couldn’t remove them. They couldn’t even get past the front door. Dex stood guard in the foyer, watching all the comings and goings with eyes the color of rust. He was supposed to be there for their protection, but everyone knew any girl who tried to slip past him would be hunted down and dragged back for a prolonged execution.
Aster used to think she would become accustomed to the welcome house eventually, maybe even learn to see the glamor of it all, the way many girls did. The delusion probably made it more bearable for them. But for Aster, no amount of time was going to turn this barrel of piss into wine. The only good luck she could see was that she and Clementine still had each other. Most of the girls never saw their families again.
Ahead of her, Clementine reached the stairs at the end of the hall and took the steps two at a time, swift and silent. Aster followed, muscle memory guiding her over the creaks beneath the carpet. They rounded the corner and passed the third floor, home to Mother Fleur’s private rooms, and continued upstairs to the unfinished attic.
“Happy Lucky Night, Clementine!” a younger girl chirped as she passed them on her way down. Two other girls followed, nearly knocking Aster over in their hurry.
“Oh—sorry, Miss Aster,” one of them stammered. She probably hadn’t been expecting to see an older girl up here. Aster winced at the deference in her voice, as if she herself hadn’t been one of them just a year ago.
“It’s fine,” she mumbled. And don’t call me “miss,” she wanted to add. But of course they were just doing as they were told. Aster eased by them.
The attic served as a makeshift bunkroom, and it had none of the luxury of the rest of the welcome house, bare floors bristling with crooked nails and cold morning air seeping through the walls. A string of mining lanterns offered sickly, flickering light. A dead scorpion nestled on the windowsill. At night, when all was still, you would hear a creak in the rafters where a girl had hanged herself with her bedsheets thirty years ago, and if you were fool enough to open your eyes you would see her moon-pale remnant, too.
But it was morning now, loud and full of life, and some two dozen daybreak girls bustled back and forth, getting ready to go to work. They hurried their friends along, made their beds, and changed into their maids’ dresses—stiff green linen under a crisp white apron. Though they all wore the same uniforms, their bodies came in every size, shape, and color. It was common knowledge that a welcome house that offered a variety would get more customers.
Aster felt a swell of sympathy as she passed between the cots. Most Good Luck Girls were dustbloods like her and Clem, and they came to the welcome house hollowed out and hungry, without even their own shadow to keep them company. The youngest, only ten, still had that lean look about them. As they got older, though, they grew fuller and sleeker with health. But they were all hogs being fattened for a slaughter, and most of them didn’t even realize it yet.
Don’t think about that, Aster reminded herself. Smile. For Clementine. She exhaled and relaxed. She angled towards the lone mirror in the corner, where Clementine was showing off her outfit to Tansy and Mallow. The inseparable pair had always been opposites—Tansy with her wild, sandy hair and white, freckled skin; Mallow with her warm, brown skin and straight, cropped black hair. At fifteen, they were among the oldest in the attic, both of their favors nearing full bloom. Clusters of round flowers dotted Tansy’s neck like tufts of cotton, while Mallow’s favor was as dainty as she was coarse, each flower unfurling into five heart-shaped petals.
“This isn’t what I’ll be wearing tonight, of course,” Clementine was saying as Aster approached. “I’ll get changed after the auction. But my wardrobe is already full of new delights like this.”
“Are you nervous?” Tansy asked, fretting with the end of her fraying pigtail.
Clementine hesitated, the answer plain on her face, but then Mallow gave her an encouraging shoulder-shove.
“Of course she’s not, she’s about to get out of this shithole for good,” Mallow said, glancing around the bunkroom. Clementine flashed her a look of relief.
“Yeah, whatever happens tonight, I figure it’ll be worth it to start living like a sundown girl,” Clem said.
Aster hung back, watching them, a tug in her chest. Unlike Clementine, she had never gotten close with any of the other girls. It was better that way. She couldn’t lose people she didn’t have.
Could’ve used a friendly face or two after my Lucky Night, though, Aster thought. Clementine and the others seemed to think things would be better after they came of age. Aster couldn’t bring herself to tell them it would be far worse.
Instead, she summoned her smile and joined them. “Come on, Clem, we have to be downstairs for your breakfast banquet in a few minutes.”
“Oh, hey, nice to see you, too, Miss Aster,” Mallow said, with none of the reverence of the girls on the stairs.
Tansy snickered. “Promise you won’t get too good to say hello to us, Clem.”
“Miss Clem,” Clementine sniffed.
Aster huffed. “Listen, I’m just here to tell you all that being grown won’t stop Mother Fleur from giving you hell if you don’t do what she says. And she said to get settled in your new room before breakfast. Now where’s your stuff?”
Clementine sighed dramatically, but she led them over to her cot. A simple trunk stood at the end of it. She wouldn’t be needing the old clothes anymore, so they only salvaged her more precious possessions. Notes and drawings she’d collected from other girls over the years, a jar of rock candy leftover from Reckoning Day, a dusky red feather she’d once found while sweeping a chimney.
“And what about…?” Tansy asked at last, holding up Clementine’s rag doll.
Aster glanced at Clementine, whose expression broke for a brief instant. But then she set her mouth and shook her head.
“A fine fool I’d look explaining that old thing to some brag,” Clementine said. “The last girl who had this cot left that doll here for me. I’ll do the same and let the next girl have her.”
The next girl, Aster thought grimly.
Always a next girl.
2
The dining room was one of the finest rooms in the welcome house, from its gleaming marble floors to its gold tile ceiling. Every plate had been piled high with food: corncakes topped with whipped cream and jam, spiced hog sausage, scrambled eggs and skillet potatoes, fresh fruit carved into flowers. While the daybreak girls ate yesterday’s leftovers in the kitchen, the sundown girls, along with any brags who stayed for breakfast, enjoyed a meal fit for a timberman. Idle chatter flowed between the tables like the murmuring of a creek.
Aster sat with Clementine and four other sundown girls, none of them older than twenty. Lily, Marigold, and Sage were all acquaintances Clem would remember from growing up together—Good Luck Girls tended to stick with people near their own age.
To Aster’s great annoyance, this meant that their group also included Violet, Mother Fleur’s apprentice and favorite little pet. Unlike the rest of them, Violet had been born in the welcome house to one of its former sundown girls, which she seemed to think made her a damn princess. Even now, somehow, she had managed to make herself the head of the table, despite the fact that it was a circle.
“The brags have until noon to clear out of here,” she was saying to Clementine. Violet was the only fairblood girl in the welcome house, her shadow trailing out behind her like the train of a dress. She always spoke with a superior tone that grated against Aster’s ears. “Most men can’t afford much more than an hour or two with us,” she went on, “but if you get an overnighter, it’s your duty to keep him company in the morning. Then, from noon to four, you’ll be expected to bathe, groom yourself, tidy your room, and so on. I have a list of the expected duties, and while they’re certainly more of a treat than the maid work, they’re no less important: Green Creek represents the height of polish and professionalism. Then, at four, we open house again for the next round of guests—”
; Aster curled her lip. “By the dead, Violet, will you let Clem enjoy her corncakes?”
Violet turned to her, narrowing her cold blue eyes and tucking a stray lock of black hair behind her ear. Her favor, with its elegant, teardrop-shaped petals, had the dark iridescence of a raven’s wing. “I just want your sister to be successful, Aster,” she said. “Don’t you?”
“I just want her to finish her ripping food before it gets too cold.”
“Foul language is strictly forbidden during work hours,” Violet added to Clementine.
Aster gritted her teeth. Usually she was better at holding her tongue, but she didn’t know how long she could take this celebration of what would happen tonight. It reminded her of how she always felt on Reckoning Day, the Arkettan holiday when dustbloods were supposed to celebrate their “good fortune” and landmasters were celebrated for their supposed beneficence. The holiday always made Aster sick. Today was even worse.
Breathe. Smile.
Next to her, Clementine had begun busily drinking down her milk to avoid talking to either of them.
Lily laughed. “Come on, Violet. Aster’s right. It’s a lot to take in at once. What questions do you have for us, Clementine?”
Clementine finally set her glass down and licked the milk moustache off her lip. She glanced at Aster. “Well, um—I guess—what’s the auction like? Do I really only stand there for a few seconds?”
Aster’s grip tightened around her fork.
“Oh, don’t worry yourself over that,” Marigold jumped in. “It’s quick, quiet. The brags aren’t allowed to talk. Like Violet said, Green Creek’s a nice place. None of the nastiness they get at some welcome houses.”
“You’ll be blindfolded, too,” Lily explained. “It’s tradition. Bad luck to see the brag before sundown. So you just stand there and look pretty, really. Nothing to it.”
The Good Luck Girls Page 2