Among the Nameless Stars (4 page)

“What are you doing here?” the woman asked, narrowing her sunken eyes.

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“I—” He looked at the girls on the porch, at the one in front of him. “I was looking for work, actually.”

She laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “There’s only one kind of work on this street.”

Understanding swept through Kai. “I didn’t come here … I didn’t know. . . .”

“No?” she said. “Well, then, you’re more stupid than you look.”

“I was just trying to help your son with his string box—”

“My
son
!” she cried. “How old do you think I am? That’s my
brother
!”

Kai backed away a few steps, his mouth open in dismay. “I’m sorry. I —” What? He was too hungry to see straight? He was too famished to pay much attention to what she looked like? His legs would probably give out underneath him if she gave him so much as a halfway decent push?

Suddenly, the air was filled with the sound of a string box chord. Both Kai and the girl looked down at the little boy, who had finished stringing the rest of the box and was playing. The sound was heavy and blunt from the thickness of the strings, but the boy played well despite it.

He looked up at Kai, his smile the first true one Kai had seen in days. Possibly longer. “I fixed it!” the boy exclaimed. “Thanks, mister.”

The girl stared at him, and her expression softened just a tad. “Do I really look that old?”

Kai shook his head. “No.” Now that he had a chance to look, he could see that she was probably no more than a year or two older than he was. “I’m just not thinking clearly right now. I haven’t eaten in a while.”

“Hmph.” She regarded him for a long moment, then sighed. “Come back tonight, after sunset. I’ll meet you by that tree.” She pointed. “But get out of here now. I’ll get in trouble if I talk too long to anyone who’s not a paying customer.” Then she put her hands on the boy’s
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shoulders and steered him back toward the house. The kid held tight to the string box, still playing.

Kai felt the eyes of every girl on the porch boring into his back as he walked away.

Dear Elliot,

I’m beginning to wonder if there are worse things that could happen than working for Pen.

Starvation’s the one I think about the most, but I know there are others. I ate tonight, because
a girl that’s worse off than me gave me some food. In five minutes of talking to her I knew
that she was smart, she was caring, and she was way better than what she’s doing for a
living. But it doesn’t make a difference. Once, she was desperate, too, and now she looks on
every new day with dread. And she can’t run either. She has a brother to look after.

Do you know what she told me?

She said she envies me. If I take the job Pen offers, I’ll be a mechanic, which is a good job,
an honest job. Even if it’s for Pen. This girl never had a choice like that. Not when she was
on her estate and not now.

I’ve been worried that if I take this job, I’d lose myself. But today I saw what losing yourself
looks like. She lives for her brother now. Who will I have if I lose myself?

So I think she might be right. I’m good at the job Pen wants me to do, and it’s one I’ve
always liked.

If I remember that, perhaps I’ll be all right.

But I’m still glad I’ll never send you this letter. I’m glad you’ll never know.

Yours,

Kai

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If Kai had money like Pen, he’d live in nicer quarters than Pen did. He’d surround himself with fine art and comfortable furnishings. And books. Miles and miles of books. From what he could tell of Pen’s gloomy house, there were no books at all.

Perhaps the bully couldn’t read.

He was ushered into a large room where many Posts milled around, some playing cards or talking, others being served drinks and food by children Kai recognized from the metal-box village.

At the head of the room, in a great chair Kai guessed Pen wanted to look like a throne, sat the man himself. Kai did his best not to limp as he crossed the long room to stand before him, and to show no reaction at all to the slow, vicious smile that spread across Pen’s face as he approached.

“Ah, the mechanic. Come at last.”

“Good morning, sir,” said Kai, his head held high.

Pen snapped his fingers in the air. “What do you want, boy?”

“I’ve come about the job you offered me.” As Kai watched, a young woman approached Pen’s chair, holding a sheaf of paper in her hands.

“Yes. The job.” Pen’s smile widened. “How many days ago was that?”

Kai swallowed. He was so hungry. “Ten, sir.”

“Ten.” The man stood and came close to Kai, looming over him. Kai refused to shrink away.

“Ten wasted days. What a shame, don’t you think?”

Kai nodded.

Pen’s fist connected with Kai’s jaw.

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He was thrown to the floor, landing hard on his sore knee. His vision went fuzzy, but he swallowed his gasp of pain and blinked away the tears swimming in his eyes. As soon as he could, he stood again.

And again, Pen knocked him to the floor.

This time, Kai stayed down, coughing and rubbing his jaw. Pen hauled him up and punched him again. Kai dropped like a stone, and Pen kicked him hard, twice in the stomach, and then, when he rolled into a ball, on his back, on his legs, wherever he could reach. Kai cowered, covering his head with his hands.

The room was silent. Blood roared in Kai’s ears, and he fought to keep from crying, or grunting, or screaming for mercy. He’d never been beaten before. Once, he was kicked by a horse in the barn, but no foreman and certainly none of the Norths had ever lifted a hand against him. He was not prepared for this.

He was not prepared for any of it.

After a long time, Kai heard Pen’s voice again, but this time from a distance, so he knew the man had returned to his chair. “Ten strikes, boy. One for every day you defied me. I hope I won’t have to repeat it.”

Kai unrolled himself and struggled to stand. It took longer than he would have liked, and when he did, he saw that every eye in the room was upon him. He opened his mouth to reply, and pain shot through his swollen, bleeding jaw. “No, sir.”

Pen gestured to the woman at his side. She was young and slight, and she stood hunched over the paper she held as if she, too, would be beaten if she moved a muscle without Pen’s say-so.

“This is your contract. You can sign it with an X if you can’t write your name. We have plenty of witnesses.”

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Kai took a deep, painful breath, hoping he hadn’t refractured his ribs. “What does it say?”

Pen sneered. “The usual. You work for me and only for me until I say otherwise.”

The woman approached, holding out the papers to him. Kai glanced down. That’s not all the contract said. It also specified that he’d live in the housing Pen owned and buy his food from the shops that Pen’s workers ran. He would bet that the prices were higher than the normal, if not higher than his salary, which—Kai checked—was not, in fact, the same as what he’d been paid by the tailor.

But what good did knowing that do him? Kai had zero negotiating power. He was starving.

He was weak. He had never learned to fight, had never needed to. Even if he did tell Pen he knew the contract was unfair, he had no ability to get it changed. The fact that he was literate was the only secret Kai had left. He wasn’t going to reveal it unless he had to.

“I’m sorry,” the girl whispered to him as she handed him a pen. She held her other, ink-stained hand protectively over her belly. Now that she was close, he could see the roundness she tried to hide beneath her clothes. She was pregnant.

A pregnant scribe, working for Pen. What were the odds?

“Are you Bess?” Kai asked softly.

She blinked in surprise. “Yes.”

Kai closed his eyes for a long moment. So there was no escape. Not even if he wanted to go back home, like Bess had once hoped to. If Pen wanted him, Pen would have him, or he’d end up dead, like Sid.

“Your letter got to Jin in the fire fields,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

Then he signed the contract with a large black X.

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Dear Elliot,

You were right. You were right all along, and I hate you for it.

I thought I was miserable on the North Estate. When I heard of Posts leaving their estates, I
thought it was for the same reasons I wanted to leave. Freedom and the chance to make a
better life. But now I see what they’re really running from, and what brand of “freedom”

awaits them in the enclaves.

I thought I was clever, but I don’t have any of the skills I need to get by here. I’m not tricky
enough. I’m not strong enough. If only my father had taught me how to fight instead of how
to fix a tractor. If you were here, could you have stopped me from being so foolish, so rash?

Could we have figured out an escape together?

But I forgot. For you, there was always an escape. You needed only to tell a passing Luddite
who you were, and they would save you. They take care of their own. But we—we free Posts,
who are so reckless as to leave the protection of our estate? We deserve everything we get.

Kai

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Dear Elliot,

It’s spring again. I imagine you’re busy with planting, and I hope you’re doing what you can
to keep that tractor in working order. I’ve written you so many letters in the past few
months—mostly in my head. It would look too suspicious if I bought paper, not that I have
much money to spare. Pen makes sure of that. No money to spare for extra food or lessons or
savings of any sort. No money to spare, or then we might escape. But I can’t seem to break
the habit of writing you letters, even if I don’t write half of them down and would never send
those I do put on paper.

I think of you constantly. Not just you but everyone on the North Estate. I can’t help it. It’s
the only thing that’s gotten me through this winter. The people here, especially Pen’s people,
are so different. Sometimes I talk to Bess, but only when we’re sure no one can hear us, since
we usually talk about books. She would be beaten if they thought she was teaching me to
read.

The real secret is much more interesting. Because I’m the one teaching people to read. It’s
the only escape I have left.

Kai slid the paper beneath his toolbox as he heard footsteps behind him, and just in time, too, as Pen’s voice boomed through the warehouse. “Kai! Stop wasting time on that stupid fishing boat. I’ve got a more important job for you.”

“Right away.” Kai straightened, wincing slightly. His leg was better now, the limp not quite so noticeable, but Pen’s healer had warned him it might never vanish completely. At the time,
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Kai had shrugged the diagnosis off. What did it matter if Pen’s pet mechanic had a permanent limp?

Behind Pen, a bunch of workers were hauling in a large speedboat on a wheeled trailer. As it neared, Kai gave a silent groan. He had no idea where Pen had unearthed the antique piece of junk, but he knew precisely who would be expected to restore it to pristine condition.

Next to Pen, Bess stood silent. She was enormous now. Kai expected her to go into labor any day. He knew Bess lived in terror of what Pen might do to the baby. Kill it? Sell it? Or, worst of all, keep it as another of his slaves? She didn’t dare get on his bad side now—not that any of them ever dared. She never complained when, because of some imagined mistake, Pen tore up letters she painstakingly transcribed for him. Pen insisted on examining every document, as if looking at the pages would convince people he could actually read them. But when they were alone, Bess was savage toward the man who’d killed her Sid and was keeping her prisoner.

“It’s not that he won’t get lessons either,” she’d whispered to Kai once. “He
can’t
learn to read—something’s wrong with his brain. It mixes up all the letters. He doesn’t want anyone to know. Puts him one step closer to the Reduced.”

“I never knew a Reduced as mean as him,” Kai had replied. He’d thought of his new friends, the brother and sister he was secretly teaching to read. The process was slow and frustrating, but it was moving forward. How awful would it be if you could never learn at all?

But he wouldn’t feel sympathy for Pen. The man was a murderer and a tyrant.

He limped his way over to where they were waiting. Pen slapped the side of the machine and grinned with pride. “What do you think?”

“This is quite the contraption,” was all Kai could bring himself to say. “What do you plan to do with it?”

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“Race it, of course!” Pen said. His expression turned hard. “Got a race planned at the end of next week, against two Luddites from the Channel and that damned explorer. This beauty is going to win me a lot of money. At least, it had better do, or I’ll know who to blame.” He pointed a meaty finger at Kai and stalked off.

Kai swallowed thickly and stared up at the old boat. Threats from Pen were nothing new, and this latest one barely penetrated, as a single thought crowded out all the others in his mind.

Explorer?

“Can you do it?” Bess asked. She’d lingered behind, and her expression was grim. “Looks pretty bad.”