Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

Iri follows her gaze. “Ava, come.” She waves me closer, new hope simmering in her eyes.

I hug my arms across my chest, duck my head, and walk quick to Iri’s side. I scan the crowd for signs of the Watches and step light, in case I have to run again.

“This is Captain Guiteau.” Iri says. She puts her arm around my shoulders and speaks to the scarred woman. “You see, we’re neither of us much heavy.”

The captain hands the bundle back to Iri, but she keeps her eyes on me. “I don’t doubt it. But this is only a mail sloop, ladies. Now, if you’ve got packages, or you want me to take any of that down to the surface . . .” She nods at Iri’s armful of cloth. “That I can do. Certified delivery.”

When she speaks, only the right side of her mouth moves, the undamaged side. The corner sliced by the scar stays stiff, making her every word a grimace. It was some bad, whatever made this cut. I look away quick so she won’t see me staring.

“Please.” Iri tries again, quietly. “There’s a woman we know groundways what can give you more, if you only take us to her. Just a space on the cargo floor, that’s all I’m asking.”

Captain Guiteau shakes her head. “I can’t put live people in my cargo hold. It’s not temperature regulated, much less space tight. I’m not landing with two dead bodies mixed up in my delivery.”

“Please, so captain . . .”

The handheld clipped to the captain’s belt crackles to life. “Security alert . . .”

Captain Guiteau flicks her eyes down to the handheld. She looks at me and deliberately switches it off. “What’s down there you need so bad?” She folds her arms across her chest.

The words won’t leave my mouth. I look to Iri.

“Her . . . ” Iri searches for the word. “Her modrie. Her mother’s sister.”

My mother’s sister. I’ve never heard it put together that way, what the so doctor’s daughter was to my mother. My mind fumbles, trying to fit the words with my memories. My mother’s sister. My blood modrie. Maybe she come an’ snatch you ’way.

Captain Guiteau watches me. I look away and stare blindly at the crowd. Only a day or two ago, so many people pressed together made me feel near drowned, but now it’s easier to watch them flowing up and down both sides of the concourse, like fish moving together. I watch their heads bobbing. Bird’s-eye black and white and brown and red. I stop. Red. I try to tie my thoughts together. Red. A cluster of red hair surging along the edge of the crowd.

I clutch Iri’s arm. She follows my gaze and sees what I’ve seen. My father and Jerej, tense with purpose, and a whole party of flame-haired men fanning out through the crowd.

“Run, Iri,” I whisper. I grip her hand and tug.

“Wait!” the captain calls.

Iri hesitates.

No. Go, we’ve got to go. I pull her.

Captain Guiteau’s eyes flick from me to Iri, Jerej to my father, the Watches to me. I can see her mind making its final rotation, all the pieces falling into their lines.

In that moment, my father turns. He sees me, sees Iri. He shouts at Jerej over the steady shuffle and hum of the crowd. Some of the passengers slow and stare, more and more eyes snapping on to us. Any moment they’ll come shoving through the crowd and drag me and Iri back to the Parastrata’s coldroom, but Iri waits, her eyes locked on the captain of the mail sloop. Time slows. My father thrusts a gaping passenger aside. Jerej signals the other men with a wave of his arm.

The captain purses her mouth. Decides. “I can take one.”

Iri doesn’t hesitate. “Ava. Take Ava.” She thrusts the bundle of cloth at me and pushes me into the captain’s arms. “Run. Go now.”

“But—” I stare dumbly at the bundle.

Captain Guiteau locks a hand around my wrist. “This way.” She tucks her long knife inside her belt and pulls me after her to the latchdoor joining her ship to the station, wrenches it open. “Quick, now.”

I turn in time to see my father tackle Iri to the ground. Her chin smacks the floor hard, a sound like an egg cracking. “Soraya Hertz,” Iri shouts. Blood coats her teeth. “Your modrie, her name is Soraya Hertz. Don’t forget!”

The captain pulls me through the door. It swings shut and locks with a fisss, but not before I catch sight of Iri struggling on the floor beneath three men, while a crowd of open-mouthed travelers looks on.

“Iri!”

I nearly break free, but the captain is fast and stronger than me. “Come on, fi. There’s nothing you can do for her.”

“But . . .”

“She wanted this.” Captain Gitueau spins me around so our eyes meet. “You understand? She wanted you to get away. Now we’ve got to get away. So we run.” She releases my arm.

I run.

T he mail sloop’s gravity field is low. My stomach flips and my hair stands on end as Captain Guiteau veers out of the station’s orbit, toward the vast, luminous curve of blue. I hold on tight, strapped into one of the ship’s two narrow seats, as the entire cabin judders under the engines’ vibrations. I’m going to be sick. I clutch my stomach and close my eyes, trying not to think about the looming brightness below or the blood in Iri’s mouth or the fact that I am leaving Luck behind.

“It’s okay,” Captain Guiteau says. The ship’s burners whine down. “We’re out of it now.”

I open my eyes. Only a slim crescent of Void is visible in the viewport. The rest is bright, too bright, as if a ship’s solar sails are angled face-on at me. I squint and put up my hand to block the light.

“Who are those men after you?” Captain Guiteau concentrates on pushing down one of the levers on her console by its tape-wrapped handle. “You want to tell me?”

“My father.” I can’t look at her, can’t look out at the bright planet, can’t close my eyes without seeing Iri and Luck. I turn my head to the wall. “My brother, too.”

“What’d you do to rile them so? Steal something? Kiss a boy they don’t like?”

The teasing’s clear in her voice, but it cuts me too close. A sharp chemical burn arcs through my nose and eyes. I will not cry, not now.

“Something bad,” I manage. Something so bad even she can’t imagine it, this scarred, Earthborn woman who treks between Earth and sky without a man to guard her, who paints her ruined lips. So bad she’s the one pitying me.

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t worth what they had in mind to do to you.” Her voice dips quiet again. She makes a careful study of the flickering needles and signals streaming over the console.

“How do you know what they were going to do?” For the first time I notice something sad and soft in the corners of her fierce mouth.

“That look on their faces? I’ve seen it before.” She frowns. “It always means the same thing.”

I stare at her. I can’t put my mind around her brokenness and her boldness, how it can all be wrapped up in the same person.

The cabin wall behind her catches my eye. A host of flat metal figures hang from nails driven into the bulkhead—sunbursts and crowned snakes and roosters—all rattling in time with the engines.

“What are those?”

She glances up from the controls and smiles briefly. “Good-luck charms. My little girl makes them for me.”