Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

But no.

Modrie Reller and all of them, that’s what they want. They hope I’ll die of cold in here or else invent some way to hurry myself into death and save them the grisly task of venting me into the Void. I curse you, I think, and walk faster to keep my blood flowing to my fingers and toes, keep the tremors in my muscles at bay. I pull the cheap headdress from my hair and throw it. I won’t make my death easy.

But it’s cold. Layers of frost rime the marble slabs, leaving them glistening like an oil slick. No Mercies will come to save a girl like me. I’m on my own. My feet burn, my arms burn, my chest burns. Inside and out, the cold rubs me raw. I need warmth. I’ve heard a chill so deep can blacken a man’s fingers and toes, rot them from his body. At least my ears are warm, I think, and laugh aloud, bitterly, my breath cloudy in the faint blue light.

My ears. I bury my fingers in my hair. The cold eases so slightly I wouldn’t notice if I weren’t holding my breath. But it eases. I rip the copper bindings from my hair and unknot the braids. My hair hangs heavy, almost to my waist. I spread it over my bare shoulders and arms like a cloak. Not as cold, but not enough.

I search the room over, looking for something useful. Anything to draw the cold away from me. Anything to create warmth. Think, think. There has to be a fix for this.

At least they mean to bury you with the stars, I tell myself bitterly. It could be worse. My crewe could choose to bury me beneath the ground. But that’s only for the worst among us, the murderers and heretics whose souls might come back to haunt the ship if we let them loose in the Void. They say when a body is buried in the ground, its soul goes to dust along with its flesh.

I shiver and push the thought away. My soul isn’t going anywhere. It’s staying inside my body. I clink through the dioxide canisters in the corner and push aside a few frozen legs of goat swinging from hooks at the back of the room. Nothing. The broken crates are plastic and wouldn’t burn, even if I had some way of making fire. And open flame on a ship is the worst kind of disaster that can happen, short of a hull breach. It burns up the oxygen in the air and shorts out vital systems. With us still docked, it might spread to the station, gobbling up oxygen and destabilizing the older ships’ fission cores.

I rub my arms and spin in a slow circle. Metal door, metal walls, metal floors. I look up into the soft glow of the biolume. Small fish and krill, alight with their own body chemistry, circle in the thick nutrient bath filling the glass bowl. The mixture must protect them from the cold, insulate them somehow, or else their bodies would freeze and go out. I shove a crate underneath the bowl, climb up, and try to pry it from the ceiling. There are no screws or rivets around the biolume’s metal housing, but a thin gap runs along its perimeter where it meets the ceiling. If I could pry it down somehow . . .

Think, Ava. It’s only another fix.

My eyes fall on the heavy rings of copper circling my arm. Maybe . . .

I strip off the loops, pull a length of the wire straight, and wrap the rest of it tight around the straight piece so it won’t bend easily. Every few moments I pause to rub my hands together and stop shivering. When my makeshift fix is ready, I shove the thin tip into the seam between the biolume housing and the ceiling. With a grunt, I thrust it in deeper and pry down until a crack sounds inside the frame. One side of the biolume sags away from the ceiling. A trickle of nutrient oil rolls down the outside of the glass.

I work the wire lever around the frame. Soft pops echo in the room every time I free a section, until only a thin metal lip cleaves to the ceiling. I stand with my left hand balancing the slippery bowl, my right straining to pull down the last strip. With a shriek, it comes loose.

I waver on top of the crate. I drop my fixer and clutch the biolume to my breast with both hands. A wave of nutrient oil spills over my chest. Instantly, my skin warms, as if someone has pressed a hand to my breastbone. I gasp. I steady the bowl, climb down from the crate, and balance the biolume on one of the empty metal slabs. I dip in my hand. Warmth floods my fingers. The fish, cool and scaly, brush my skin. I slather the oil down my arm. It leaves my skin gritty with krill, but a pleasant ache spreads over me, soaks into my muscles.

I rub the oil over my neck, my face, my shoulders. My body shakes, not from cold, but with relief as the numbness creeps from my skin and crackling fires flare up inside me as my nerve endings reignite. I reach down to scoop more from the bowl and stop. The nutrient oil has sunk below the bowl’s halfway mark. The fish circle together around the bottom, their bodies twisted awkwardly to keep themselves submerged. If I take the oil I need, I’ll kill the fish. And once their bodies stop processing chemicals, their lights will go out. I’ll be alone in the dark.

Panic spikes in my chest, and a tiny sob breaks out of me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. Stupid, girlish, crying over fish. It’s not that I love them, really, the way Nan loves the bay cats, but their desperate writhings at the bottom of the bowl, the way they flop and crowd together, leave my heart ringing.

I scoop out a thin handful of oil and rub it over my right foot. Toe, arch, heel flare painfully back to life. The fish shift press against one another. They no longer have room to circle.

I take more and massage the feeling back into my left foot. The fish turn themselves flat on their sides to keep their gills away from the open air. The oil’s surface kisses their ventral fins.

I dip in my hand again. My skin brushes their slick bodies. I have to push them aside to draw out more oil. I close my eyes. Their tails slap and thrash against my skin.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. Hot lines of tears rim my eyes as I cover my sides with oil.

The fish twitch and gasp. Some have already stopped moving. The room tips closer to darkness as the light leaves their skin.

I rip two strips of cloth from the hem of my bridal skirt and wrap them around my feet. I pull myself up into one of the niches and lean forward, clutching my knees. I don’t know how long the oil will keep the cold at bay, but is seems wise to touch as little of the cold metal as possible. I watch as the light from the bowl dims and dims, until only one fish still glows underneath the bodies of the others. Shadows swallow the walls, the floor, the ceiling.

Don’t go out, don’t go out.

But then the weak blue glow falters and true black closes over me.

My mind drifts to Luck. Is he locked in some cold, dark room like me? Has his father beaten him again? Is he waiting for his own push into the Void? Or is he already dead? I imagine him holding me, his strong hands smoothing my hair. Lying beside him in the water. He can’t be dead if I can still remember him so clearly. He can’t be dead when I love him so. Please, I beg the Mercies. Please, let him live.

At first I think the creak of the door is part of a dream, but then light, bright harsh light, streams under my cracked eyelids. I sit up. Iri holds a flash lantern above her head. Her skin reflects the light like a bone moon.

“Stay away from me.” My voice is rough and raw from the cold. I stumble numbly out of the niche and back to the nearest wall. Iri. That betrayal hurts worst of all. Have the others sent her with some new punishment? Or is she here to do me a mercy and see I’m not breathing when I meet the Void?