Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

I creep along the corridor toward Vina’s office, pausing to listen at every doorway. Nothing but silence. The boys and all the staff are long asleep. At least, I think they are. This place mimics a crewe ship in other ways; it might have its own Watches and night Fixes patrolling the grounds as well.

Before long, I come to the green door. I kneel and press my ear against the wood. No voices, no music, no clinking of cups and plates, not even the soft beeps and trills of a tablet or a crow. I reach up and try the knob. Locked.

Damn.

There has to be another way inside. There were other rooms in Vina’s house, but I only saw the kitchen and her office, both looking out on the garden and the greenhouses. . . .

The garden.

I creep back along the hallway, past the guest quarters, past the training rooms and the boys sleeping in their bunks, to where one of the greenhouses joins up with the rest of the complex. Inside, stark white lights hang over the rows of plants. I keep to the walls, out of the glare.

I am nearly to the door on the other side of the greenhouse when it bursts open and Hena and Howe tumble in. I duck below the nearest table, out of sight.

“I couldn’t wait to see you.” Howe’s voice. And then—kissing? “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

Hena laughs. “Me too. I was worried you weren’t going to come back from Vina’s alive.”

They stumble against one of the tables, and Hena stifles a shriek. “Careful.”

“No, you be careful,” Howe says. And then he gives a playful growl.

I twist around, searching for a way out. And then I see it. A long, low window built into the side of the greenhouse at the floor level. I push against the latch.

“What was that?” Hena says as I roll out into the night air.

I push the window closed behind me with a soft click.

“Probably just one of the cats.” The glass muffles Howe’s voice.

I pick myself up and shiver. Night creatures chirp and chitter in the grass. The moon is full, bringing out the harshness in everything’s shadow. I move from tree to tree.

A light shines in Vina’s window—buttery, low, not at all like the greenhouse lamps. I drag one of the wooden chairs beneath the window and climb up. Vina sits at her desk, poring over her tablet. Every now and then, she makes a mark in the book. As I watch, she pauses and rubs her hands over her eyes.

I jump back down and crouch against the side of the house, hugging my knees. After a time, the light goes out.

I count to one thousand and then climb back up. The window beside Vina’s desk comes up easily, thank the Mercies. I boost myself up into the opening and pause, listening. Silence.

I slide in headfirst and manage to make only a muffled thump as I land. I hold still, hidden by Vina’s desk, and count to five hundred. Still nothing. I peer out of her office into a sitting room at the front of the house. To one side, a staircase climbs up to a second floor. To another, a latch door leads out onto a covered porch, and then the moonlit wild.

Right so. First, Vina’s tablet. I find it on her desk, half covered by a file marked SUPPLEMENTARY FUNDING. At my touch, the machine springs to life with a faint chime. I stiffen and glance toward the sitting room. Nothing moves.

I turn back to the screen. A small box flashes in its center—PASSKEY CODE.

Nine hells. I look up. What would Vina keep as her code? I know nothing of her, except the work she does.

Khajjiar, I try.

INCORRECT.

I look for the right symbol for ther, but I can’t find it. Parastrata, I type instead.

INCORRECT.

Nau. Makkaram.

INCORRECT. INCORRECT.

Seed bank, I try, desperate.

INCORRECT. ACCOUNT LOCKED DUE TO MULTIPLE FAILED LOGINS.

I stifle a groan. There has to be something here. Some clue. Something, anything. If I can’t get into Vina’s tablet, at least I can go through the files filling the shelves behind her desk.

I pull down RESIDENT INDEX and hold it in the moonlight by the open window. I start from the beginning, scanning each page for any mention of the thers. Their crewe has left plenty of boys behind, but none in this past turn. I linger over the last boy’s name. ther Keep, age thirteen, left a little over a turn ago. Did Luck know him? Did he wonder where the younger boy had gone? Was he on landing party that left Keep, or was he back on the ship?

If he was on the landing party, did that mean he knew about leaving the boys behind?

No. Not Luck. He would never have stood for it if he’d known.

But even if he did know, what could he have done about it? another part of me asks. He couldn’t even stop his own father from leaving him behind, or worse. . . .

I don’t let myself finish the thought. I can’t think on Luck being dead, not when there could be a trace of him here in Vina’s papers. I leave the log open on her desk and pull another bundle of files from the shelf. BHUTTO TRANSFERS. SOCIALIZATION PARAMETERS. WORK-STUDY RELEASE. VOCATIONAL WORKSHOPS.

Nothing in any of them, nothing about Luck, anyway.

I pull more. REFERRALS. BEHAVIORAL THERAPY. PHYSIOLOGICAL REHABILITATION CHARTS.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Vina’s desk overflows with folders. In desperation, I pull down GRAIN INTAKE, even though I already know what I’ll find. Nothing but columns of numbers. I let the last file fall on her desk. But then I spot a thin book near buried beneath the mess. Hardly a book, even. A tiny paper thing, even smaller than the ones Miyole would pick out of the refuse piles for me to practice reading on. I fish it out. On the Cultural I . . . dio . . . syncra . . . sies of Trans-Celestial Merchant Tribes, by Dr. Vikram Hertz.

Vikram Hertz. That’s my grandfather’s name.

A stack of papers unsettled by my rifling begins to slip over the side of the desk. I lunge for them, but they slither to the floor with a thwap, thwap, thwap, like fish hitting a deck.

A light flicks on at the top of the stairs. “Hello?”

Vina. I freeze, and then bolt for the front door. I throw back the lock and plunge out into the darkness, out into the cold, the fear in my blood pushing me fast, faster. Past the greenhouses, past the pond, up the hill, into the utter darkness of the forest. It isn’t until I’m well down the footpath to town that I stop running and realize I still hold my grandfather’s book in my hand.

Soraya meets me on the train platform. The sky is hazy black beyond the station lights, and she wears a sober brown-and-blue striped scarf.

“Khajjiar,” she says. Her lips have all but disappeared in the firm line of her mouth. “They have a state home there for boys who’ve lost their crewes?”

“Right so,” I say.

Soraya nods. Her eyes flicker to the trains behind me, lost for a moment, and then find me again. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“I won’t.” All I want to do is sleep and sleep. Luck is gone. I don’t have any fight left in me.

“You had us worried sick.” She grips her scarf to keep the light wind from pulling it away.

“I know. I’m sorry, and true.”

Her face looks raw, vulnerable. “If you don’t want to live with me, Ava . . .”

“I do,” I say. “I only . . . I had to find out . . .” I stumble to a halt, on the verge of spilling everything to Soraya—Luck and the coldroom and Iri with blood on her teeth.