Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

“Luck, tell me.” My throat stays tight. “What other things?”

At that moment, Soli and Llell return with a cold pitcher of rice wine and a tray stacked high with crisp cakes, soft cheese, and dried apricots.

“Does it matter?” Luck laughs. “Small things. Nothing to worry on. What’s important is, I’ve hammered out a peace with your father’s crewe again. We’ve written up new trade agreements, and now you’re alive. You’ll be my wife, Ava. Isn’t that all we ever wanted?”

“Your wife.” I roll the word around in my mouth. He’s right, isn’t he? It’s what we wanted. But something isn’t right. Crewes always seal a trade agreement with a marriage, and my betrayal with Luck was some gulf to overcome. It would have taken a grand gesture on his crewe’s part to bridge it.

“Your firstwife, you mean?” I ask, to be sure.

Luck hesitates. His eyes go back to Soli and Llell. And then I see it. My heart stops. The subtle round of early pregnancy buds out from the waist of Llell’s red dress. Her hair coils tight in marriage braids. She cuts her eyes up at me, and a tiny smirk twists the corners of her mouth.

“What . . .”

“Ava.” Soli steps in, her voice low and gentle. “There wasn’t any other way to seal the peace with your father. After everything that happened, Luck couldn’t afford to lose the crewe’s respect, not with his captaincy so new. And Llell helped us . . .”

Luck looks sick. “We can still make our life the way we talked,” he says. “You can learn reading and figuring, and when you’re not with child, you can be on Fixes. Or whatever duty you choose.”

“I don’t . . .” I frown.

I look at Heart in Soli’s arms. For a moment, the image of me in an ther-red dress flashes before my eyes, me lying in a birthing bed, a dark-haired child asleep on my chest, and Luck beside us, watching over us. But then I see my grandmother, young and pale, drunk on love, unaware of her own fast-approaching death or the fate the Mercies held for her daughter.

I take a deep breath. “I don’t know if I want to be with child. . . .”

A troubled look crosses Luck’s face, but he blinks it away. “I understand. You’ll need some months healing after what you’ve been through. I can wait, Ava.”

“No,” I say more firmly. “That’s not what I mean.”

“Did something happen to you down there?” He straightens. “I don’t care if the Earth made you barren, Ava. I want you still, no matter what.”

“No,” I manage. “It’s only . . .” Luck’s eyes search mine, and a part of me wants to collapse against him, give him everything, anything to make the hurt on his face go away. No matter that Llell is firstwife. He loves me. Isn’t that all that matters?

But Miyole and Soraya. And Rushil.

I imagine him waiting by the sloop. Waiting and scanning the crowd, and me never coming. You’re beautiful like this, you know? My old cord still tied around his wrist, the feel of his hands in my hair, our unhurried kisses, and nights under the Mumbai sky. How can I give up his love for Luck’s? How can I give up Luck’s for his? And smallones . . . my head skips back to the idea. It seems so much more a question now, not a certainty.

“I don’t know if I want smallones at all,” I say. “Not right now, anyway. Maybe when I’m some turns older.”

Luck looks as though I’ve put fire to everything he holds dear.

“But later.” He squeezes my hands in his. “You’ll want them later?”

“I . . .” My throat closes up. What do I want? The Æther under Luck’s captaincy is some freer, true. I can see that. But it’s not so changed in all. At least, not so changed as me. Would I ever get to see those worlds, the ones I’ve only ever hovered above? Would my limbs and lungs grow weak again, deprived of gravity? Would my mind lose its hard-won sharpness? Would working on Fixes and having Luck’s love make up for that?

Luck steps close so our heads rest together. “Are you worried about Llell?” He whispers. “You know you’re the firstwife of my heart, Ava, always.”

And I want, oh, I want to make him happy. I want to give him everything he deserves—love and children and all the years of my life. But I can’t.

“I . . .” How to make him understand? I move his hand from my cheek and take it in mine again. “I learned to pilot a ship, Luck. And figuring and reading. There’s so much more . . . And Miyole and Soraya, what about them?”

“Who?” Luck furrows his brow.

“Soraya, my blood modrie. And Miyole, she’s . . . she’s some like a sister to me.”

“I don’t understand,” Luck says. “Don’t you want me? Don’t you want to come home?”

Home. I close my eyes, and the image that flutters before me is of Rushil pretending to dump the whole sugar pot into Miyole’s tea, singing alongside Ankur in Zarine’s flat, Soraya poring over her lecture notes at the kitchen table, sneaking up the wobbling fire escape into the talkies, and my sloop skirting above the Mumbai skyline.

Sadness settles over me like burial finery. A life with Luck might swallow up some of my sorrows, but it would bring others, heavy as the ones it took away. I wouldn’t be the last wife Luck took. I would be secondwife, and someday there would be a third, and maybe a fourth, and then we would be the ones leaving other women’s children behind. The whole thing would start all over.

“Of course I love you,” I say to Luck. I turn to Soli with Heart clutched in her arms, and to Llell, too. “All of you. But this life—I’m not made for it anymore.”

“You’re every bit as worthy to be a captain’s wife as a girl who’s never touched the ground,” Luck says fiercely, gripping my hand.

“I know I am,” I say simply. I lean against him, taking in his warmth and smell—of grass and handmade paper, oil and air.

He drops his head. “They’ll forget all this, Ava. I’ll make them. It’ll be as though it never happened.”

“For you,” I say, and brush the dark bangs from his forehead. I look into his eyes and try to memorize their exact shade of blue. “But I can’t pretend it never happened. What I want, that changed when I changed. What I want now would only hurt you.”

“I don’t care—”

“But you will,” I say. “In a turn or two, when we have no smallones and the men are starting to mutter behind their hands. I’ll cave to please you, or it’ll eat you away. Then what will we have but guilt and regret?”

“Ava.”

“Luck.” I touch my forehead to his. “Promise me something.”

“Anything,” he says.

“Promise you won’t leave any more of the boys behind.”

Shame passes over his face.

“You know what I’m talking on,” I say.

“I . . . I won’t,” he stammers. “I never wanted to.”

“I know,” I say.

“Then stay,” he pleads. “Stay by my side. Help me remake this crewe.”

“I can’t.” I am crying now, and true. “I will love you and love you. You’ll always be my first love, but I can’t. Not any more than you can give up the Æther.”

“Ava . . .”

I turn away. Soli stands back, aghast, and even Llell looks shocked as I walk out through the great doors, head high, tears cutting bright lines down my cheeks.

I look back as the door starts to close behind me, and blink my tears away. Luck holds up his hand. Good-bye.