Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

I look across the crowded galley and spot Luck at a table with a group of other young men. His friends are laughing over some joke, but he’s staring straight at me, a small, warm smile playing at the corners of his mouth. A welcome fire runs through me. I duck my head, but the feel of his eyes on me is irresistible. I have to look again.

That smile of his tugs at my own lips and fills me with a glow. I imagine the smooth skin of his inner wrist flush with mine, the binding ribbon winding around and around, trapping and sanctifying the heat between us. After the rite, we’ll be alone in the marriage chamber, and he’ll comb my bride’s braids loose with his fingers. His hand will travel from my neck to my shoulder, and then unsnap the clasps of my shift. . . .

A sharp rap from Hannah’s fan lands on my knuckles. She doesn’t have to say a word. I’m being undignified, smiling like an idiot for the whole galley to see. I rub my hand and wrestle my face back under control. But even the threat of my great-grandmother’s fan doesn’t keep me from stealing glances at Luck until it’s time to clear the table.

I don’t see Soli until after dinner when the ther women usher us into a visiting room piled thick with woven rugs. I kneel alongside them. Soli sits on the other side of the circle, but I only recognize her by the way her face lights up when she catches sight of me. She’s near tall as her brother, but she’s hidden her ears behind her long hair, done up in marriage braids. Her own pendant hangs around her neck—black, but with a shifting sheen that changes colors, like a drop of oil. She grins and mouths something. We need to talk.

Hannah and Iri and the Æther women produce collapsible looms from their inner pockets and begin setting up their weaving. A bubble of panic rises in my chest. Modrie Reller said nothing on bringing a loom, but of course now it seems clear she shouldn’t have to say something so simple to me. I feel in my pockets, as if by some miracle one might appear. Nothing.

“Ava,” Iri says lowly. She has been sitting beside me all this time, slowly unwinding a skein of algae-green wool.

I look up. Iri silently holds out the pieces of an extra loom for me. The tight feeling in my chest eases. I don’t know why Iri looks out for me, except she never did have smallones of her own before my great-grandfather died, and none of the men aboard the Parastrata have tried to take her as a wife, maybe out of respect for my great-grandfather. I nod my thanks, quickly snap the frame together, and reach into the common thread basket for a skein of my own.

“Our colors please your eye, then, Parastrata Ava,” Soli’s mother says without looking up from her own weaving.

I glance down at the yarn in my hand. The thread is the Æthers’ smooth red silk. It shows bright against my dark green skirts. “Yes,” I say. “It’s. . . it’s some beautiful.”

“Beautiful, she says.” Soli’s mother smiles to the women beside her, then turns back to me, her face suddenly solemn. “But if you use it long enough, you might start to think it dull.”

I recognize some kind of test in that, even if I don’t know what it is exactly.

“Never.” I lock my spine straight and look at her evenly, drawing on my imitation of Modrie Reller. “Firstwife Æther, I’m not some changing girl. I won’t go shifting on you and yours.”

She watches me with eyes half lidded. All around us the looms clack softly, and the other women peer sideways at us over their handwork.

Finally Soli’s mother nods. “Right so, then.”

I let the air out of my lungs. I’ve passed. The other women return their attention to their weaving and murmured conversations. Soli rises and picks her way to me. My jaw drops. Soli’s long red skirt swells over a soft, rounded lump at her waist. She’s gotten herself pregnant.

“Soli, when? Who?” I grab her hand as she eases down beside me. I want to throw my arms around her, I’ve missed her so, but the older women wouldn’t stand for such a display. I settle for squeezing her hand tighter. “Tell me everything.”

“Let me hold your thread for you, sister,” Soli says aloud, but her face is bright to bursting with news, her cheeks flush. She leans close as she unwinds the skein. “His name’s Ready, the requisitions officer. We had our binding close on half a turn past.”

I glance down. I’ve seen lots of women pregnant on the Parastrata, and even some births. Soli looks too far gone for half a turn. “That’s some fast.”

Soli giggles, sounding a moment like the smallgirl I remember. “But I got my pick, didn’t I? That we have to talk on later, without all these stuffed-up oldgirls hanging round.”

“He’s nice?” I ask. I stop my weaving and look up. “He’s not old, is he?”

“Nah.” Soli shakes her head. “Only five turns older. Perfect.”

“Oh.” I look down.

Soli nudges me. “Don’t chew on it. Talk I hear says you’re getting an even younger one.” Soli’s eyes shine so I almost think they’re wet.

“How’d you . . . ,” I start to ask.

“Come, Ava, it’s clear as empty you’re still sweet on Luck,” Soli says. “And he’s sweet on you, too. Couldn’t stop staring at you on the dock today.”

That rush of heat sweeps through me again, and I fumble with my thread. If only my bridal bands weren’t making me so slow and clumsy.

“Think, you’ll be my sister and our babies can play together.”

The warmth changes to pure fire in my cheeks. They say a baby makes a new, small world all your own, and then the Earth will stop calling to you. That’s what I want, but . . . But I’ve only begun fixing the idea of being a wife in my head, trying on Luck’s face as the man snapping the coins from my bridal veil, the inside of Luck’s wrist bound to mine. And now babies. Of course I knew that would come. It’s what my body is made for, but . . . Soli’s belly stares at me. It’s one more piece too real. And it makes me some uneasy the way things are raveling up exactly how I dreamed, and so fast. It makes me worry I’ve left something out.

Soli and me lie face-to-face on her bunk in the women’s quarters. It’s not something married girls usually do, but all the Æther women know we were friends as smallgirls, and what with me about to be married, they’re willing to let us pretend we’re children a few nights longer. The air blows cool and fresh through the vents, and the dimmers carry us gently into ship’s night.

“Ready’s some strong,” Soli whispers under the blankets. She lies on her back with her head turned to me. “He can pick me up, even with the baby, and he’s always slipping me nice things from requisitions. Like the other day, he gave Hydroponics some extra grams of nutrient soak, and they held back an orange for him, so he gave it to me.”

I suck my bottom lip. My father gave me a slice of orange once when I was a smallgirl, and even now I can taste the sweet bite under my tongue. “Did your father pick him for you?” I ask.

Soli shakes her head and grins. “Ready and I picked each other.”

I raise my eyebrows and open my eyes wide, trying to make out her face in the near dark. Crewes hardly ever let a love match through, especially when it’s the captain’s daughter up for marriage and her husband might end up heir to the captaincy.

“How’d you fix it?” I ask.

Soli runs a hand over her belly. “I let them catch me.”