Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

And there was something else Doya said, something prickling at the back of my mind. Red, brown, white, yellow, black.

Black. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.

I sit up straight. “Are any of them my age?”

She frowns and leans back as if she can see me better from farther away. “Maybe,” she says uncertainly. “They’re mostly younger. Twelve to fifteen, maybe?”

“But mostly, right so? You said mostly.”

Doya tilts her head. “I guess. I mean, I only visit once a year for Holi.”

“So there could be some older?” My skin is electric.

Doya frowns. “I’ve never seen any, but—”

“But maybe since you visited last, they found more boys.”

Doya purses her lips, and then nods. “My daughter says they’re always finding new boys, so I guess it’s possible. Maybe.”

“Where is this place?” I lean forward. “The one where your daughter works.”

“It’s up in Khajjiar, in Himachal Pradesh.”

Khajjiar, Himachal Pradesh. Khajjiar, Himachal Pradesh. I try to write it in my memory. “Is that far?”

“Why?” Doya raises an eyebrow. “You’re not thinking of going there, are you?”

“No,” I say quickly. As kind as Doya is, I’m not spilling all my sadness and shame for her. “I mean . . . I don’t . . . I was just wondering. I thought maybe one day I might. To see if I knew any of them.”

“Ah.” Doya shrugs. “It takes most of a day on the bullet train. Not too bad if you’re going to stay awhile, I guess.”

“Thank you, Doya.” I squeeze her hand and stand.

“You ready to go back to work?” she asks.

I’m not. I want to run out of here right now and climb aboard the bullet train, but I can’t. I have to stay here, be faster, do better. Ajit and the upstairs folk can shout at me all they want, because as soon as I’m paid up with Rushil and see that Miyole has what she needs, I’m taking that train to Khajjiar to see if Luck is one of the boys who was left behind.

R ushil crouches at my side below the sloop’s underbelly, box of fixers at the ready. “Is it that one?” He points to one of the blackened shield tiles and pushes his glasses up his nose.

“I think so.” I slide past him and run my fingers over the tile’s rivets. My attempts to keep him away while I fix the ship have completely failed. “Do you have something that will get these off?”

Rushil rummages in his box and pulls out a multitool with a flat-headed rod on one end and a power socket on the other. “Here.” He rolls it to me.

I unbolt the tile, fit the flat end of the multitool into the thin crack between the ship’s scales, and pry it down. All at once, a sticky gush of coolant pours out, spattering the pavement, and a burned-plastic smell chokes the air. Rushil hops back in time, but my legs ends up soaked in goop.

“Ugh.” I push a slick of it off me.

Rushil pulls a rag from his back pocket, utterly failing to hide the fact he’s trying not to laugh. “At least now you know what knocked out the door motors.”

I send a mock glare his way and reach up to wipe a glop of coolant from the sloop’s connectors with the rag. He’s right. The coolant leak has shorted out almost all the connections between the secondary power cell and the door’s motorized functions. The connectors are all bust, blackened and giving off the acrid smell of burned electronics. I cover my nose with my arm and finish cleaning them off as best I can. Rushil watches as I pop out the connectors what haven’t fused themselves to the backing panel, then chip out the ones that have. When I’m done, all that’s left are the ash outlines of the connectors and frayed sets of wires pigtailing out of their reinforcement tubes.

I slide back the panel leading to the coolant conduits. More of the viscous goop slops out. Maybe a break in the line, I think. I flip a switch on the multitool so it beams a blue-white circle of light and wriggle the top half of my body into the ship’s innards.

“What’s wrong? Can you see?” Rushil’s voice comes muffled from the other side of the hull.

I slide the beam along the conduits. Long splits and fissures glisten with leaking coolant all up and down the length of the lines. I let out an involuntary gasp, and then a groan.

“What is it?” Rushil asks again.

I run the light over the lines again, only half believing what I see. I’ve never seen anything so bust. Stress fractures split them like gashes down a man’s back. It must be from the ship’s inner workings changing temperature too quickly, too many times. I half remember Perpétue saying something about having to lay down a good sum to replace them again soon.

“The coolant conduits are ragged,” I call out.

“Here, let me see,” he says.

I duck out and hand over the light to him. His torso disappears into the ship. At last he speaks. “This is bad, Ava.”

“I know.” I give a short, hysterical laugh.

Rushil ducks out of the ship and crouches beneath it. “You’re lucky it didn’t choke and send you into a death spiral on the way over from the flightport.” He flicks his light up. “Can you fix it?”

I bite my lip, weighing everything. “I maybe could, but it would take forever. And the money for parts . . .”

I stare at Miyole, sitting in the shadow of Rushil’s trailer. She pokes at the dirt with a stick, Pala asleep beside her. I’ve managed to keep up my end of our curry bargain and even pay Rushil back some, but one ticket for the bullet train to Khajjiar costs more than my fake ID. And I’ve realized I don’t need just one ticket, I need two. It’s bad enough leaving Miyole alone while I work. It near kills me how much longer it means I have to wait, but I can’t leave her for two full days while I go chasing Luck’s ghost.

“You know, I might have some extra tubing,” Rushil says.

I close my eyes. “Stop. You know I can’t take anything more from you.”

“It’s really nothing, Ava.” Rushil gestures at the jumble of ship parts piled nearby. “Half my business is stripping old ships for resale parts. And I know a girl, my friend Zarine—she sells new components. She’d give us a deal on anything we couldn’t scrounge up here.”

I stare at him, wary. I want my ship fixed. Of course I do. Because then, forget the train, I could fly to Khajjiar. I could be there in an afternoon, and Luck would see my ship’s shadow on the grass and come running. Then I wouldn’t ever have to go begging to my modrie, because Luck and me, we could take care of Miyole ourselves. And then I might stop feeling like my heart is choking me.

“I don’t get much for scrap tubing. You’d be doing me a favor.” Rushil breaks my reverie. He examines his hands as he squats in the shadow of Perpétue’s ship, and then squints up at me. “I want you to have it.”

I smooth my data pendant with my thumb. The thought of Luck running to me makes my body ache, I want it so much. But then I count my debts—docking and the ID, coins for the screener and a hand with repairs, plus a thousand other small kindnesses, tea and blankets and bandages. I run a hand over the ship’s tiles. “Let me think on it.”

Rushil’s smile drops. “Sure.” He ducks out from beneath the sloop and glances at the time on his crow. “Sure. You know, I’ve got . . . stuff to do. Repairs. Anyway . . .”