Salvage (41 page)

“How do we . . . ,” I start to ask, but Rushil grabs a hand crank built into the side of the platform and turns it in a slow, smooth circle. The platform shudders and lifts from the ground.

“Zarine and some friends put in drywall and plumbing and all. It's apartments now,” Rushil says, looking up at the base of the warehouse as he rotates the winch. We rise level with building, and the noise builds to a steady hum of voices and music. As Rushil locks the platform in place and secures us to the side of the building, the door flies open, letting out a wave of lamplight and high, twanging music.

“Rushil, you made it!” A tall, curvy woman with a wild toss of hair leans across the gap between the platform and the doorframe to hug Rushil. A black dress hugs her waist, and round brass earrings as big as fists dangle from her ears. Everything about her seems scaled for giants, her hair, her eyes, her legs. Behind her, a kitchen separates us from a warmer room where a small crowd lounges on floor pillows, couches, and round, shell-like chairs, talking and sipping beer or tea in glasses. A handsome, dark-skinned young man with a sitar balances on the back of the nearest couch, cradling the neck of his instrument and picking its strings absentmindedly as he talks to the couple across from him.
Ankur
, I realize.

“Hey, Zarine.” Rushil hugs her back.

“You must be the one Rushil was talking about.” She takes my arm and helps me across the gap. “Ava, right? Who rescued that little girl?”

Her words knock me shy and off-balance. Does she mean Miyole? But that wasn't rescuing. “Oh, no, I . . . I'm not . . .” I try to say, but the rush of voices in the neighboring room drowns me out.
Is that who I am?
I look at Rushil.
Is that how he sees me?

“You want a beer?” Zarine shouts. “Or some tea?”

“Tea,” I say.

“Go on, help yourself to a cutting.” Zarine waves a bangled arm at a clutter of cups and pitchers covering the blocky table in the center of the kitchen. “Rushil?”

“I'm good, thanks.” He throws a look at me. “I was telling Ava you had some tubing for us. . . .”

Zarine sighs and feigns hurt. “I swear, you only want me for my spare parts. You have to promise to stay and at least have some tea after.”

Rushil grins. “I promise.”

Zarine flashes her teeth in another smile. “Come on, I've got that tubing downstairs in the utility room.”

Rushil leans close. “You want to come with us?”

A burst of laughter breaks out from the sitting room behind me. I look over my shoulder. Young men and women, all my age or a little older, sit mingled together, easy with one another. I've never been in a place like this.

I turn back to Rushil. “I think I'll stay here.”

“I'll be back in a minute.” He squeezes my arm briefly and follows Zarine around the crowd of people and out another door. The room suddenly feels dimmer without her, as if a lamp has gone out.

I pour myself a glass of tea and sit cross-legged on the outskirts of the sitting room crowd. Everyone around me is dropped deep in conversation, talking on music and who's setting up a gallery show and who's been off planetside and how long, only none of it's anyone I know.

“Hey, Ava.” Ankur drops down next to me, sitar in hand. “Fancy meeting you here. How do you know Zarine?”

“I don't.” I take a sip of tea. “Rushil brought me.”

Ankur gestures to the doorway Rushil and Zarine disappeared through. “I lost my muse. You want to sing with me?”

I nearly choke.

“I don't know.” I swallow, buying time. “I'm not from here. I don't think I know any of your songs.”

“Not even ‘Melt It Down'?”

I shake my head.

“Or ‘Burn, Sita, Burn'?”

I shake my head again.

“‘Droughtsick'? Everyone knows ‘Droughtsick.'”

I shake my head a third time.

Ankur picks at the sitar's strings. “Well, why don't you sing something from where you come from, and I'll try to play along?”

A nervous current zings through me. Panic. “I can't.”

“Come on.” Ankur smiles his perfect smile. “Nobody here's going to bite. I'll tell them not to trap it for their pages, huh?”

“It isn't that.” I rest my empty teacup on the floor.

“You one of those shy girls never does anything but listen in on other people talking?” Ankur teases.

“No,” I say, even though he's probably right. “It's . . . I'm not supposed to.”

“Not supposed to?” Ankur says.

“Sing.” It feels strange to say, especially here, now.

Ankur stares at me as though I've said I'm not supposed to breathe or grow fingernails. “What, is it going to send us hurling ourselves into the trainway? Is it that bad?”

I open my mouth to answer, but then I realize I don't really know what will happen if I sing. Something bad, something to catch the ears of bad spirits, or so the story of Mikim and the corsairs would have it. But now, I don't know. Miyole was right. Now that I know more of how the universe works, Mikim's story makes some little sense. And besides, all the verses in the Word about what befalls a woman in the Earth's grip, those were only part true. I may be tarnished, but I'm still whole. So maybe nothing will happen if I sing. Maybe no harm will grow from it at all.

“Right so.” My voice croaks. I clear my throat and say it stronger. “Right so.”

“Okay then.” Ankur adjusts his strings. A few of the people around us hush, then others turn their heads our way. “When you're ready.”

Ankur picks out a single, soft, vibrating note. Another cluster of people go quiet. At that moment, I spot Rushil standing in the doorway, a bundle of plastic tubing under his arm. I close my eyes to block out all the faces looking my way, sink anchor deep in myself, and let out one of the songs I've heard through the walls, one I've sung inside my head at night in my bunk with my sisters warm at my sides. Saeleas's song of mourning, the song she sang through her tears as the Earth slipped away, those thousand-some turns ago.

“Farewell to rock and tree and vale,

Farewell to birds high-flying,

For duty calls me far away,

So sing my heart through sighing.”

Ankur strums to match my voice, soft at first, then louder as he catches the scheme. The whole room has gone quiet.

“Pick up, pick up this heavy thread,

Quiet, child, your laughter,

For we must leave this world we know,

And wander e'er hereafter.”

I open my eyes. Rushil stands still past the sea of heads, looking at me as though my song has run him through. I raise my voice and sing Candor's answering verse to his wife. Ankur doubles the tempo to meet my urgency, his strumming fast. It molds together into something new, something both of this world and not.

“Think not on rock and tree and spring,

Think not on birds high-flying,

Our freedom calls us high away,

For here were our hearts dying.”

My voice breaks and the room blurs, but I blink away the salt from my eyes and fix them on Rushil.

“Mourn not for what you've lost, my love,

Think not on what you're leaving,

Let all your heart and mind hold fast,

This new life you are breathing.”

As the last line rings out of my chest, I let go. Let go Luck, let go my crewe, let go what might have been. Rushil holds my eyes, and I stand empty and clear, ready to be filled with what my life might yet be.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

I
creep back to Soraya's in the dull gray of morning. The house welcomes me with a low beep and a click as the door seals itself shut behind me. I pull off my boots and tiptoe to the stairs, thinking of nothing but soft pillows and the dark comfort of my bed. But then I turn the corner to mount the stairs, and run headlong into Soraya. She loses her grip on the full metal ewer she has balanced in her arms. I stagger forward and manage to catch it before it clangs across the floor, but not before it sloshes cold water down the front of my shirt.

I freeze, soaked through. “Sorry,” I gasp.

Soraya stares down at me, lips parted in surprise. She's draped a pale blue scarf over her head in preparation for her morning prayers. She looks like some kind of holy woman, clean pressed and fresh from sleep. I'm all too aware of the dust and dried sweat stiffening my clothes and the sour taste of a night without sleep in my mouth. My face goes hot as I remember how I left. Shouting like a spoiled smallgirl.

I shift the ewer in my arms. “You want me to carry this for you?”

Soraya's breathes out. “Yes, please.”

I haven't seen her use it before, but I know the water is so Soraya can wash her hands and face and feet before her morning prayers. I've seen the ewer newly emptied by the gray-water sink and sitting by her bedside in the evenings. I carry it to the corner of the common room where Soraya keeps her prayer mat rolled and pour the water into a basin.

“Thank you.” She casts an eye at my wet shirt. “Why don't you go and change, and then we'll talk?”

I nod and slink away to the stairs, but something makes me look back as I reach them. The sun tips pink light through the glass doors on the east side of the house. Soraya unfurls her prayer mat and eases herself to her knees. She holds her hands together before her and murmurs into the early morning light. I duck my head and disappear up the stairs. If I were her, I'd want to be left alone to my praying.

I look in on Miyole, fast asleep in the rosy darkness of her room. Her breath comes even and her face is peaceful, free of the little furrow that appears between her brows when she's been worrying. I change my shirt in the close quiet of my room. I spend a long moment contemplating the bed, but I shake myself awake. I owe a talk to Soraya, and better sooner than later.

By the time I shuffle down, the ewer and basin stand empty at the sink again. Soraya has tea going. She sits by a collection of cups, spoons, and saucers laid across the table, waiting for me. She waves a hand at the chair opposite her. I sit.

Soraya pours a cup of tea for me. “I was worried about you.” She speaks quietly to match the early hour. “Where did you go?”

“Walking.” The word comes out scratchy and raw. I sip my tea and try again. “I went down to the ship.”

“The ship?” Soraya sets her own teacup down, surprised. “Miyole's mother's ship? How did you get in?”

“I have the keycode,” I say. “From back when me and Miyole were living there.”

Soraya frowns as if she'd rather not remember where she found us and drops a sugar cube in her cup. “That ship is important to you, isn't it?”

“It is,” I agree.

Soraya heaves a sigh. “You know how I feel. The Salt isn't a safe place to go wandering around at night.”

“You don't need to worry, I was with Rushil the whole time,” I say, and wish at once I'd kept my mouth shut.
Stupid, stupid
.

“Rushil?” Soraya says.

“Rushil Vaish,” I say. “He owns the lot where we have the ship docked.”

Soraya looks sharp at me. “That young man? The one with the glasses and all the tattoos?”

“Right so.” My voice goes small. “That's him.”

Silence grows around us. Soraya pours herself another cup of tea. “And what did you two do all night?” There's another question buried in there. Her eyes shift past me to the antique books behind my head.

“Talk.” I look down. Even if I'm not lying outright, I can't look at her when I'm not saying the whole truth. “And we went over to his friend's house.” I don't want to tell her about the singing, or the electric burn of his lips. I want those memories to myself.

Soraya sighs and pulls the scarf from her hair. It lies in rumpled swaths around her neck. “You know, I can send you back to the doctor, if that's what you want.” She closes her eyes and rubs the bridge of her nose. “There's a shot they can give to keep you from conceiving.”

I sit straight in my chair. Heat rushes to the tips of my ears. “But I'm not . . . We didn't!”

Soraya raises her eyebrows at me.
Truly?

“We didn't,” I say again.

Soraya taps her fingernails softly against her teacup and nods to herself. “I believe you.” She fixes me with her big, dark eyes. “But if you ever think you're going to, promise me you'll come talk to me first. Promise you'll take care of yourself.”

I nod, face raging hot.

“Children are so much . . .” She trails off and smiles sadly. “I only want you to be able to be a girl for once. I want you to have that chance.”

“But I'm not a girl,” I say. I haven't been for turns.

“A young woman, then,” Soraya says. “All I mean is, your life doesn't have to be so heavy. There's so much out there for you, so much you can do.”

“I know. I'm sorry, and true. I didn't mean to worry you.”

Soraya sighs. She looks tired, face thin. “I only want to protect you. I know I'm not your mother, Ava, and you're nearly an adult. But if anything happened to you . . .” She jostles the teacups as she reaches out and clasps my hand. Her fingers are cold, all tendons and bones.

“I don't think the way my father did, Ava. You aren't research. You're my only living blood. If something happened to you, I . . .” She stops, lets out a sharp breath, and composes herself. “You can't know what it's like to have a family again after all this time.”

“You'd have Miyole,” I say.

“Yes,” Soraya says. “But I wouldn't have you.” She leans back in her chair and holds a hand over her eyes. “Please, Ava. You have to stop running.”