For Darkness Shows the Stars (2 page)

E
LLIOT
N
ORTH RACED ACROSS
the pasture, leaving a scar of green in the silver, dew-encrusted grass. Jef followed, tripping a bit as his feet slid inside his too-big shoes.

“You’re sure your ma said the southwest field?” she called back to him.

“Yes, Miss,” he huffed.

She picked up her pace, hoping there was still time to save some of the crop. But she could tell it was too late even before she saw the stricken look on her foreman Dee’s face. “It’s all gone,” she said, meeting Elliot on the road. “I’m so sorry.”

Elliot crumpled to the ground and rough road gravel scoured her palms. She scraped her fingernails against the dirt. All her work had come to nothing.

Jef came running up behind them and grabbed the edge of his mother’s gray skirt. The woman swayed a bit, off-balance due to her rounded belly. At the end of the road, Elliot could just make out the figures of her father and Tatiana standing at the edge of the field and watching the Reduced at work.

“He moved fifty laborers over first thing this morning,” Dee was saying above her.

Of course he had. Ten or twenty would not have gotten the job done before Elliot had heard of it. If only she hadn’t locked herself in the barn loft at first light. If only she’d attended the family breakfast. She might have been able to talk him out of this.

Elliot took a deep breath and straightened, unclenching her fists at her sides. She couldn’t betray the extent of the damage to her family, but she needed answers.

Tatiana turned as Elliot approached, alerted by the sound of boots on gravel. Elliot’s sister was in slippers, of course, and a day dress, and above her head she twirled a shell-pink parasol with deeper pink fringe, despite the fact that there wasn’t even a hint of sunshine this morning. In all of Elliot’s eighteen years, she’d never seen her older sister in work clothes. The closest Tatiana ever got was a riding habit.

“Hello, Elliot!” she warbled, though her expression remained sly. “Have you come to see the new racetrack?”

Elliot ignored her and faced their father. “What’s going on here?”

Only now did her father turn, but his placid countenance betrayed nothing. “Ah, Elliot. Good to see you. You should have a talk with that COR foreman.” He gestured vaguely toward Dee. “She was a full ten minutes moving over the laborers this morning. Is she too far along in her pregnancy to be of any use to us?”

Elliot watched as the last of the green-gold sheaves were trampled beneath the feet of the Reduced and their plows. Most of the workers were now raking up the remains of the carnage, and the field was returned to a dull, useless brown. The culmination of two years’ work, destroyed.

“Father,” Elliot said, fighting to keep her voice from shaking. She couldn’t let him know. She had to treat it as if it was any other field. “What have you done? This field was almost ready for harvest.”

“Really?” He arched a brow. “The stalks seemed terribly short. Of course, I don’t have your way with wheat.” He chuckled, as if the very concept were preposterous. “And besides, this field was the best choice for the racetrack. We’re going to build the pavilion right over there, near the creek.”

Elliot opened her mouth to respond, then shut it. What was the purpose? The crop was destroyed, and no amount of pointing out the folly of the move would induce her father to consider his actions before repeating them. She could tell him the percentage of his harvest he’d lost, and what that would mean in terms of money at market or Reduced that would go hungry this winter unless he imported some of his neighbors’ grain. She could tell him how very near
they
were to going hungry given his lack of consideration to the farm. She could even tell him the truth; that the wheat he’d just plowed under was worth more grain than most in fields of this size. It was her special wheat.

It was important wheat.

Of course, that confession would come with even worse consequences.

So as always, she swallowed the scream building in her throat and kept her tone light. Helpful. Dutiful. “Are there any other of the planted fields you think you’ll have need of
before
the harvest?”

“And if there are?” Tatiana sniffed.

“I’d like to make sure you don’t suffer any more delays,” said Elliot, mildly. “I can arrange for the laborers very quickly.”

“So can Father, and so can I,” said Tatiana. “Or do you think you have some special pull with the Reduced?”

Only because they would recognize her on sight, and not Tatiana. But Elliot would never say that. It would only serve to dig her hole deeper. “I’d like to make it more convenient for—”

“Fine,” said Baron North. “This field will be sufficient for my needs. It was the only one I found”—he kicked at a stray stalk—“problematic.”

He turned then to his eldest daughter and began pointing with his walking stick to illustrate the boundaries of his proposed racetrack. As he wandered off, Elliot did a quick calculation of how many laborers and how much money he’d no doubt require for that project. They’d have no extra grain to sell this fall, and hardly enough money to buy what they needed to make it through the winter. But her father wouldn’t see it that way. He deserved a racetrack more than his Reduced laborers deserved bread.

Elliot slid between the crossbars of the split-rail fence and into the field. Moist, freshly turned earth crumbled beneath the heels of her boots, and here and there in the deadened dust she could see flecks of gold.

“I’m so sorry, Elliot,” Dee said, joining her. “They were growing real nice, too.”

“There was nothing you could have done.” Elliot’s voice was flat, but she spoke the truth. Any delay on the foreman’s part would only have incited her father’s anger—and his need for retribution.

“What did your da— What did Baron North say about me?” Dee’s eyes were filled with concern. “I know he—”

“He’s not going to send you to the birthing house.” He’d probably already forgotten the Post’s existence. Dee was nothing more to him than a tool, one he could use to direct the Reduced laborers . . . or punish Elliot.

“Because there’ll be no one to care for Jef if—”

“Don’t spend another moment worrying about it.” Elliot cast a glance at the older woman’s stomach. “You have more things on your mind.”

“I only have to deal with two mouths to feed this winter,” Dee replied. “I can see on your face that you’re worried about a hundred.”

“Not ‘worried.’ Disappointed that my project won’t be tested for another year, but—” Her brittle smile cracked. Another year! Another year of rations, another year with no harvest festival, with watching the Reduced children grow thin and sickly when the weather got cold, with enduring the pointed stares of the few remaining Posts on the property as Elliot struggled to fairly allocate every sack of grain. This field could have saved them.

“Are things really so bad?” Dee’s voice filled the space Elliot had abandoned to silence.

“And what would you do if they were?” She knew what she’d do in the woman’s place. Pack up Jef and depart for whatever points unknown Dee’s common-law, Thom, had gone to two years previously, during the bad time when so many of the Posts had left the North estate.

Legally, the Post-Reductionists still held the lowly status of their Reduced forefathers. They were bound to the estate on which they were born. But lately, even that system had been breaking down. There was no way to police the movement of Posts who wished to leave the estates they were born to, and no incentive to try if you were a wealthy Luddite who attracted skilled Posts to your estate at the expense of your neighbors. Year after year, Elliot watched helplessly as the North estate emptied of its skilled labor force. But how could she begrudge them their chance to look for opportunities elsewhere, for possibilities her father would never allow? There were even whole communities where—Elliot had heard—Posts lived free. But up here in the north, the only
free
Posts Elliot had ever seen were beggars desperate for work or food.

She worried that was what had happened to Thom. She worried that was what had happened to . . . everyone who’d left.

“I would find a way to help you,” Dee said. “Like you’ve always helped everyone here.”

“Yes. I’ve been so good at helping them,” Elliot said ruefully. She knew Dee must see Thom occasionally. Her pregnancy confirmed it. But the older woman had never told her where he spent most of his time. Dee didn’t even trust her enough for that, though Elliot had long ago shared with Dee the shape of her own heartbreak.

Elliot couldn’t afford any more Posts leaving the estate. She was already too much alone here.

Dee gestured to the field. “I know you wouldn’t have done this if things weren’t desperate, Elliot.”

That went without saying. She was, after all, a Luddite, and while what she’d done was not strictly against the protocols, it was at the very least in the gray area. She looked out over the savaged field. Perhaps this was a divine warning—maybe her whole experiment was a mistake. After all, if her father suspected the truth, she was lucky that all he’d done was plow the wheat under.

It was always hard to tell with Zachariah North. What some men might do as an act of deliberate cruelty, her father was just as likely to do out of laziness and caprice. His comments had been just ambiguous enough to scare her—another talent at which the baron excelled.

“You’ll figure it out,” Dee said. “Don’t be brought low by a setback. Not when your goal is so . . . high.”

The Post’s hesitation said it all. Elliot’s goal was high indeed. It belonged to a realm that the Luddites had long ago abandoned. What she sought was nothing short of a miracle.

Dear Elliot,

Thank you for coming over yesterday, and for bringing the new books. I hope you liked lerning about the thresher. It was a good idea to come in those old
close
clothes, even though I almost didn’t recognize you!

I talked to my da about the words we were fighting over. He says that your people call people like us CORs because it means Children of the Reduction. There is another word, but my da says we would be in trouble for using it in front of you. It’s called Post-Reductionist. My da and his friends call themselfs Posts. Except you are my only friend. There are no other
Posts
CORs on the North estate who are my age—or even anywhere near seven years old, and none of the Reduced children can read.

I hope I don’t get in trouble for telling you that word. Da says the Luddites don’t like it because it means the Reduction is behind us.

Your friend,

Kai

Dear Kai,

Your new glider is the best ever! It even does loops!

If your da’s friends call him a Post, then I will call you that too. Because I want to be your friend. I have herd the word before, from the CORs that work in the big house, but they would never tell me what it ment. Now I know why. But it makes more sense to me than calling you a COR. After all, you are not a child of someone Reduced. Don’t worry, I won’t use it in front of my family.

I was worried maybe you were mad at me for asking all those questions about the Reduced. It is just that you are the only
COR
Post who will talk to me. Did you know that you and I were born on the same day? That’s how I knew who you were, because the CORs in the big house were always talking about us both. There is also a Reduced girl born on our birthday. Do you know who she is?

Your friend,

Elliot

R
O LIVED ALONE IN
a cottage at the far side of the Reduced block. She’d once shared it with two other Reduced girls, but they’d borne children and removed to barracks nearer the nursery. Ro appreciated the extra space, and filled the cottage with her precious pots. Elliot had given her even more on their eighteenth birthday a few months back. Her presents had grown a bit more indulgent in these past four years, since it was just the two of them celebrating now.

Ro had been on dairy duty that morning, and hadn’t been one of the laborers to help destroy the wheat crop, so Elliot had come to Ro’s for comfort. Tatiana and her father might prefer the darkness of the star-cavern sanctuary, but there were only two places on the North estate that Elliot considered a refuge, and the barn loft was too crowded with notes about her wheat to be a comfort today. Yet here, for a few precious minutes, she could be silent and fill her hands with soil and pretend that there were no worries that awaited her beyond the confines of this sun-drenched hut. It was pointless to dwell, anyway. What good would it do?

Ro was already digging among her flowers when Elliot arrived. She dripped mud across the unfinished planks of the floor as she crossed the room to greet Elliot.

“Good day, Ro.”

The girl’s green eyes—so unusual, even among the Reduced—searched Elliot’s face, and she frowned.

“Yes, I’m sad,” Elliot admitted. She’d never successfully lied to Ro. Reduced her friend may be, but not insensitive. Elliot had been taught as a child that the Reduced could sense your emotions, like dogs. Over the years, she’d begun to wonder if their general lack of speech made it all the more important for them to read faces.

To some Luddites, the Reduced were children, fallen and helpless, but still human. To others, they were beasts of burden, mostly mute and incapable of rational thought. Elliot’s mother had taught her that they were her duty, as they were the duty of all Luddites. Cut off as the population of these two islands had been since the Wars of the Lost, they might be the only people left on the planet. The Luddites, who had kept themselves pure of the taint of Reduction, therefore had the responsibility to be the caretakers not only of all of human history and culture but of humanity itself.

It had been generations since any Luddites had tried to rehabilitate the Reduced. Mere survival had taken precedence. But Ro was more than Elliot’s duty. She’d become Elliot’s friend, and sometimes Elliot even dared wonder what Ro could be—what any Reduced could be—if the Luddites had the resources to try.

Ro brightened and took Elliot’s brown hand in her own reddened, muddy one. She pulled Elliot over to the pots, grinning, and Elliot allowed herself to be pulled. She knew what was coming. Ro’s pots had been yielding the same profusion of blossoms for the last four years, but Ro still greeted every one with squeals of delighted surprise.

Ro led her to one particular group of pots set apart from all the others and Elliot’s eyes widened in shock. These flowers were different from any she’d seen before—not red or yellow or purple or white, but a pale violet with streaks of scarlet running in veins along each petal from the depths of a deeply crimson heart.

“They’re beautiful, Ro!” she blurted, while inwardly, she tried to work out the genetics. A simple cross-pollination perhaps, the purple flowers set too close to the red ones . . .

Ro bounced and clapped her hands. She pointed at the red and purple flowers planted nearby and then at Elliot herself. Elliot narrowed her eyes, remembering evenings Ro had spent by her side in the barn loft.

No, it was impossible. She was Reduced.

A few words, a few signs, and simple, repetitive tasks were the most the Reduced could handle. They were capable of being trained, but not for any skilled labor. And they required close observation. The young, the sick, the pregnant, and the elderly had an odd propensity for self-violence, which is why the Luddites were forced to confine them. The birthing house that Dee had feared was an unfortunate necessity for Reduced women, but torture for a Post like Dee.

But Ro was nodding eagerly, miming picking flowers then pressing her palms together. “Ro wheat,” she said, in the awkward monosyllabic speech that was all the Reduced could manage.

Ro wheat. Ro’s special wheat. It was impossible. A Reduced could never comprehend what Elliot had been working on in secret, could never re-create the grafts herself. Ro was Reduced. It was impossible.

But no repetition could truly banish Elliot’s suspicion. “Ro,” she said, “you mustn’t show these flowers to anyone, do you hear?”

Ro frowned, her pretty, freckled face wrinkled with confusion.

“I love them, I do!” Elliot took the girl’s hands in hers. “They are beautiful flowers and I’m proud of you. But it must be a secret, right?” She pressed a finger to her lips. “Shh.”

“Shh,” Ro agreed, muddying her mouth with her forefinger. Elliot wished she could be sure the girl was doing more than just parroting her. But this was the way it was, the way it had always been, ever since the Reduction. Each generation of Luddites would care for the Reduced and their offspring. They’d tend the land, obey the protocols, and keep humanity alive.

Then came the CORs.

Some reckoned there were four generations of them now, though others claimed only two. There were more every year, though, as if the human spirit itself had risen from the ashes of the Reduction. CORs—or Posts, as now almost everyone but holdouts like Elliot’s father had taken to calling them—came from Reduced ancestry, but they were born and developed completely normally. Posts were as intelligent and capable as any Luddite. They’d been rare in the time of Elliot’s grandfather, but now people said one in twenty babies born to a Reduced was a Post, and a Post parent never produced a Reduced child.

Posts quite naturally stepped into positions of power on the Luddite estates. By the time Elliot was born, it was a given that the Luddite farms, instead of being overseen by the actual Luddites as they had been for generations, would instead be manned by a staff of Post foremen, mechanics, chefs, and tailors. The Luddites themselves presided over all in a life of relative leisure.

When Elliot was younger, she’d asked her tutor why, if the CORs were as capable as the Luddites, did they still have the legal status of the Reduced? The conversation hadn’t gone well. No one could deny the existence of the CORs, but it was still taboo to deviate from the Luddite way. No one had even studied the origin of the Posts, nor tested their genetics. It was not for Luddites to question the will of God or the nature of man. Such thoughts had led to the Reduction, and by their piety alone had Elliot’s people been saved.

What, Elliot wondered, would her teacher think of her Luddite piety now? She knew her wheat was a sin, but what choice did she have? The North estate could not go hungry.

These flowers, though—they were something else. There was no reconciling it. She knew what everyone else would see. A creation of frivolous beauty, made by a Reduced who’d aped Elliot’s crimes. It was insupportable. Unforgivable.

It was also pure Ro. She loved pretty things, which was why she grew flowers, and she loved Elliot, which was why she tried to do everything just like her. And she was Reduced, which meant she bore the punishment for the hubris of her ancestors. Ancestors who had held themselves higher than God, and had been brought lower than man.

If Elliot wasn’t careful, Ro would suffer punishment for a sin of Elliot’s making, too.

Ro began to shuffle the pots, burying the hybrid blossoms among the others. “Shh,” she said. “Shhh, shhh.” But she couldn’t be trusted to keep the secret. Not like Dee or any of the other Posts.

Elliot plucked a single bloom and rubbed the petals between her fingers. They were so small and perfect, so alive and vibrant. How could such a thing, such a tiny, beautiful thing, be a sin against God? Surely a sinful flower would wither and die, but look how these prospered under the care of the most humble of creatures. Whatever else this meant, the existence of these flowers, on this day, told Elliot one thing: Let her father trample what wheat he may—Elliot would not give up.

O
N SUMMER AFTERNOONS,
B
ARON
North and Tatiana made a big show of descending into the star-cavern sanctuary for Luddite services. Their piety waned in the winter months, however, when the ancient refuge was less a cool retreat from the sun and more the frigid, punishing darkness that their ancestors had endured only because the wars had driven them underground.

Elliot didn’t begrudge them their activities, though. She used the time to have uninterrupted access to her father’s study, so she could deal with his correspondence. Once, the job had been her mother’s, and so by rights it should now be Tatiana’s, but Elliot’s sister showed the same interest and head for numbers as their father—which was to say, very little at all. Left to them, the desk would collapse beneath the weight of unanswered requests and unpaid bills—mostly the latter variety of late. Then again, people stopped asking for favors once they knew you owed money all over. Even if your name was North.

When her mother was alive, there’d been economy in their house. Economy and industry both, to balance out her father’s worst tendencies. His older brother had been raised to manage the farm, not Zachariah North. Elliot’s uncle had died before Elliot’s parents were even married, leaving behind an infant son too young to take over and Zachariah, who hadn’t been fit to lead but became the baron nonetheless. The North estate had never been the same. Elliot’s father possessed the Luddite sense of superiority, but without its corresponding call to action. And ever since his wife died, he deeply resented anyone who made him remember it—by, say, suggesting that one’s debts ought to be repaid.

Most days, that was Elliot. She had to be very careful with the bills now, or risk lectures from her father on the honor due to Baron North. They were not even ordinary Luddites, the Norths, but one of the last great baronic families who had preserved the world in the wake of the Reduction. Their ancestors had led the remnants of humanity out of the caverns. They had held their land for generations.

Hard to remember all this family honor when Elliot spent every day staring into the eye of a cyclone of debts called due.

Her wheat could have saved them, kept the estate from needing to import food this winter. Even allowed them a surplus for the first time in Elliot’s memory. But it was not to be this year. Her father would rather build a racetrack for horses he could barely afford.

One of the letters caught her eye. An unfamiliar correspondent, and a Post by the look of the address. Elliot opened it.

Most Admirable Baron Zachariah North,

Forgive me the trespass of writing this letter. I have never had the honor of being introduced to such a lofty person as you. Most likely, you do not know me, nor of my reputation amongst your illustrious fellows. I am an explorer in the service of my Luddite lords, and in the past ten years my activities have brought great distinction and wealth to my patrons, who include the honorable families of Right, Grace, Record, and Baroness Channel. For my references, you may apply to any of these families.

I have learned that you are currently in control of the shipyard belonging to Chancellor Elliot Boatwright. If the facility is not in use, I would be interested in renting it from you, as well as some residential properties and the use of some of your labor force while my shipwrights work. I seek to build a new ship, one much bigger than any of my current facilities can handle. I am told that Boatwright shipyard is the best in the islands, and I am sure we can come to an agreement that is profitable and advantageous to us both.

I remain your ever-humble servant,

Nicodemus Innovation, Admiral of the Cloud Fleet

Elliot had heard of the renowned Cloud Fleet. There weren’t a lot of seaworthy vessels on the island—at least, not since her grandfather’s shipyard had shut down before her birth. And since the wars had rendered magnetic compasses useless, very few braved the trip out of sight range of their shores. Was the Cloud Fleet, staffed entirely by free Posts, attempting an overseas journey? Elliot’s heart raced at the very thought. It had been ages since she’d allowed herself to dream of that. Not since Kai had gone away.

Of course, she did her best not to think of him, either.

As far as anyone knew, there was nothing left of the world but these two islands, these quarter of a million square kilometers, these people and these mountains and these animals and this society. Admiral Innovation might change all that. His Fleet had first captured the population’s notice when one of his exploratory trips to nearby islands had brought back a breed of horse not seen for generations. Sturdier, taller, and faster, the Innovation horse had quickly become the preferred means of transport on the trade routes. Another one of his expeditions had resulted in the rediscovery of a wild game hen that produced twice as many eggs as the standard estate chickens. Even Baron North had filled his henhouses with them. Most recently, Elliot had read of a Cloud Fleet expedition, one run by a Captain Wentforth, in which he’d found another island and a cargo hold full of salvaged, solar-powered vehicles in near-pristine condition.