Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

“You won’t come after us for more later?” I say. You won’t come looking for favors? You won’t chop up our ship and sell its bits?

“Of course not.” Rushil rolls his eyes. “Don’t listen to anything Shruti says. They had a break-in over there last month. Lost two craft to ship strippers, and now they can’t keep their clients, so he’s trying to pick off mine.”

I look from Miyole to Pala, and back to Rushil. Maybe this is the perfect fix.

Too fast, too raveled, a small voice says in the back of my head, a faint echo of what I felt before. But I ignore it.What choice do I have?

“Done,” I say.

“M iyole,” I try to shake her awake. Morning-blue light filters in through the sloop’s open hatch.

She rolls over and blinks at me. “What?”

“Time to get up.” After we flew the sloop to Rushil’s lot yesterday afternoon, he spent some time on his grimy old tablet, showing me how to get to Kalina. We’re going to find my modrie.

Miyole buries her head in her mother’s jacket. “I don’t want to.”

I rock back on my heels. She doesn’t want to?

“Mi.” I try again. “Come on. All we have to do is ride down to—”

“I said I don’t want to!” Miyole shouts. She shoots me an acid look and wraps her arms over her face, as if that will hide her.

I stand. “Fine. Stay.” If she wants to be a brat, she can be a brat alone. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Don’t go anywhere, right so? If you need something, tell Rushil.”

On the way to Sion station, a pair of men in white linen clip by on horseback, swishes of gold thread braided into their animals’ tails. I step aside, into the gutter. The more I see horses, the more they unnerve me. So far, I’ve seen no oil-fed groundcrawlers in Mumbai like there were in Mirny. It seems anyone halfway wealthy rides a horse or, more rarely, an elephant. Rushil told me they’re trained not to run over people on the street, but I can’t make myself trust them.

I ride the floating trains through south Mumbai, the annoyance trickles out of me, and guilt grows in its place. I shouldn’t have snapped at Miyole. She’s just lost her mother, her home, everything she knows. I should have spoken kinder. I should have given her more time.

I peer out and up at the skyline at our next stop. The buildings shoot up in spiraling confections of reinforced glass and sheer, stately reflective metals, so tall the streets would stand in twilight every hour but midday if it weren’t for the glow of smartboards. Glittering words and pictures span the sides of the higher buildings, and past them, the sky crawls with ships.

A man sitting on one of the concrete stairs between buildings catches my eye. Stringy gray hair falls over his ears, and his feet are bare and covered in sores. He holds a sign: HUNGRY. HELP PLEAS. DHANYAVAD. Even I can read it. But everyone on the street walks by all the same, as if he’s a ghost.

The man sees me staring and springs up. He dodges through the morning traffic and approaches my window, hand outheld. I start back. I have nothing to give him. Can’t he see that? Shame boils in me—for him, asking, and for me, with nothing. I shake my head. His face falls. He raises a fist and starts yelling something in that language I can’t understand, muffled by the window. He smacks the glass, and then, mercifully, a soft bong, and the train pulls forward again. He melts into the crowd as we pick up speed.

I sit down in one of the empty seats, shaken.

“You can’t let them know you see them, dear,” says a plump, middle-aged woman next to me. She looks me up and down. “Especially when you’re dressed like a tourist.”

I nod, too confused to argue. The train starts to fill with a younger crowd as we come closer to the Kalina campus. Young men and women sit quietly thumbing through their handhelds, or else laugh together. I shrink in my seat and stare out the window, willing myself invisible. I know they’re only a turn or so older than me, but somehow that feels like a gulf what can’t be bridged. Any breath now, one of them is sure to point me out for the fraud I am. She isn’t one of us. She doesn’t belong here.

But no one says a word. No one even seems to notice me as we pile off the train together at the university stop. I hestitate on the platform, unsure of where to go. The crowd of students flows around me, down the broad, shady paths to the buildings visible through the trees. Behind me, the train pulls away in a gust of hot air.

“Room two-oh-three, Wadla Building for Linguistic Sciences.” I recite the address Rushil found to myself. I take a few steps and stop. What if . . . What if this doesn’t work? What if Soraya won’t help us?

Come, Ava, courage. Perpétue is in my ear again. What choice do you have?

None, I know that. But what good will it do to arrive at Soraya’s door so nervous I can’t keep my tongue from stumbling? I should walk a bit, calm my head. Perpétue left Miyole alone for longer than this most days; she’ll be safe inside the sloop. I can steal a few minutes to give the ground time to firm up under me.

I follow the path under the trees. Students sit together on benches, or read on blankets spread out in the shade. A whole herd of young men and women jog along in a pack.

The sun has barely cleared the treetops, but the heat is already closing in. I follow a trickle of students to a weathered stone building with an immense, jeweled window set in its face. Ornamental spires rise from its roof. I can’t help staring up at the tinted glass until I pass beneath the stone arch, into the cool darkness.

A sudden hush descends inside the building. The only illumination comes from a series of lighted glass boxes along the walls. The nearest box holds what looks like a tablet, only larger, and encased in a bulky shell. It even has movable keys for clicking—a pretty thing, but not very sensible. Next to it, a book lies open on a red velvet stand. At least, I think it’s a book. It looks nothing like the thin scraps of bound paper Miyole scrounged from the kindling piles for me. It dwarfs the tablet beside it, and I can almost feel the weight of it through the glass. A deep ocher hide stretches over the book’s cover boards, and even the paper looks heavy—almost clothlike, with rough edges.

To my left, someone sneezes. I look up and see a stone arch leading to high-vaulted room dusted with sunlight. Long, dark wood tables run in two neat rows on both sides of a central aisle, and on the far side, someone mans a high, crescent-shaped desk. Two identical stairways curve up, leading to another level, this one lit by high windows. And all around, rows on rows of ancient, bound books paper the walls. The silence is so complete, I can hear a page turn, a muffled cough.

“Can I help you?” A quiet voice reaches out of the darkness to me.

I gasp and turn. A woman with dark hair and a gold-rimmed round of glass hung around her neck sits at a small desk behind me.

“N-no. Thank you, so . . .” But she’s already standing and walking around the desk to me. Her shoes make a sharp clack-clack on the stone floor.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” She smiles at me, but her words have a point to them.

“The . . .” I grope for something to say. “The Wadla Building. So doctor . . . I mean, Dr. Hertz . . .”

“Ah.” Her face softens into a genuine smile. “Are you a potential student? Considering Mumbai University?”