For Darkness Shows the Stars Part 9

But Andromeda made no move to leave, and the others did not return to the cushions. As the night turned cold and violet around them, the musicians began to play a slow, mournful melody underscored by a drum that sounded like a beating heart.

"Oh no," Andromeda said softly. She looked about the crowd. "Do you see Felicia anywhere?"

Elliot shook her head.

"There's no talking to him," Andromeda went on. "He insists on singing it, even when she's here to listen . . ."

"Who?" But Elliot needn't have asked, as Donovan climbed the porch steps and began to sing.

My eyes open to the sun The brightness of a brand new world The wave of our tomorrow breaks Beneath our ships, our sails unfurled.

And yet a streak of darkness Swirls throughout this cloudless dawn And even my eyes cannot see Into the place where you have gone.

So I don't want to see anything now Not the sun or the sky or the distant sh.o.r.e I don't want to see anything new Because I can't see you anymore.

Your sightless eyes could always see To distances I could not reach Without you I am truly blind You've fled to sh.o.r.es I cannot breach.

You were the lantern in my heart You were the first star in my sky As far as I could ever roam You were the light that showed me home.

And I don't want to see anything now I am lost inside our yesterday I don't want to see anything new Now that you are gone away.

Sixteen.

A HUSH FELL OVER the crowd as Donovan's deep, clear voice faded into the gathering darkness. Elliot surveyed the lawn. Even Ro, still engaged with a few of the North Posts, looked subdued. She'd never heard a voice like that in her life. His lyrics might break your heart, but it was the pain evident in every note he sang that would grind all the shards into irredeemable dust.

Elliot turned to Andromeda in shock and under-standing. Now she knew why Donovan had been so cowed by Felicia's lecture in the sanctuary. "He's singing about Felicia's daughter, isn't he?"

Andromeda sighed. "Yes. Sophia Innovation died six months ago. She was sixteen. It has been hard on the admiral and on Felicia, but most of all on my brother."

That much was clear to every person in attendance. Donovan walked off the porch steps, and nearby Elliot caught sight of Horatio wildly gesturing to his sister, who looked near tears. Eventually Olivia took the stage and began to sing an old folk tune. The spell over the attendees broke at the more familiar sound, and a few even began to clap along.

"I am so sorry for their loss," Elliot said to Andromeda.

"All our loss. Sophia was . . . special. I don't expect you can imagine it."

No, Elliot was sure Andromeda wouldn't expect that.

"She was the first free Post I'd ever met," said Andromeda.

"You must have known her a long time."

"Three years," Andromeda said, shrugging. "When the Fleet was formed. She was the embodiment of everything we all wanted. She was the future. We all knew it. We all loved her."

"I can imagine that," Elliot said.

But Andromeda did not, for once, rise to the bait. "If you want to know why Felicia is always so motherly, now you do. She can't turn it off for anyone-not even-"

"Not even me?" Elliot finished, unable to keep her tone from turning snide. She could no longer bear the older girl's casual cruelty. Though her primary objective when visiting the Boatwright estate was avoiding Kai, she was going to have to start steering clear of Andromeda as well.

"Not even you," Andromeda said. "Motherless you, poor little rich girl you, the Luddite who gets her hands dirty in the mud, who plays at farming while she allows her family to let the farm burn-"

"Miss Phoenix," said Elliot, "I think you are done a.s.suming you understand anything about my life, no matter what you may have been told." If she was done putting up with abuse from Kai, there was no way she'd accept it from Andromeda. "In return, I will not a.s.sume that I can guess what it is you have against me."

"You know one at least."

"That I'm a Luddite?"

"No. That you betrayed him when he needed you most."

Elliot lifted her chin. No one, least of all this girl, would know what it had cost her. "Yes, I did. It was either him, or everyone else I knew."

Andromeda opened her mouth, then shut it again and stared very intently at Elliot. Even in the gloom of twilight, her eyes seemed more intense, as if she could see through Elliot's skin and divine the inner workings of her brain.

But Elliot had had enough. "If you can't be civil to me, Miss Phoenix, I wish you'd leave me in peace. I have never done anything to you, and if you seek to punish me for past misdeeds, there is nothing you can devise that I haven't already suffered." Four years of worrying about Kai, followed by all these weeks of having him back here, but hating her. Was that not punishment enough?

"You baffle me, Miss Elliot," Andromeda replied in the same high-wrought tone. "I can't reconcile the young woman I see before me with the reports I have had."

What lies had Kai been spreading abroad? "I'm sorry to hear that, but it's none of my concern. I am the same person I've always been." She turned her face away from Andromeda, away from the crowd and from Kai. "Maybe you should ask yourself why, if I am the person you've been led to believe, someone would put their faith in me at all?"

"People are foolish when it comes to love."

Elliot hadn't been. She'd been rational, logical, reasonable, prudent. She'd been cold and cruel and disloyal and distant.

She hadn't been foolish.

She'd been the most foolish girl on the island.

Olivia's song ended and behind her, on the porch, Donovan reemerged, carrying his fiddle. He started playing a familiar song, and the other musicians took up the tune on their pipes and string-boxes. Olivia kept singing, but Donovan easily outshone her voice, and everyone else's playing, too. Elliot had never heard music like that. The finesse and precision she'd witnessed in these Cloud Fleet explorers came across in his musical abilities. His rhythms were complex but perfectly controlled, and he somehow managed to weave in any misstep of the other players. It was a good thing Tatiana wasn't here to listen or she'd be green as gra.s.s.

"He's amazing," Elliot said, mostly to herself.

"Yes." Andromeda shrugged. "He's got a special talent. And he's been funneling everything into his music, lately. It's the only thing left that gives him any peace."

"Was Sophia sick for a long time?"

"Always," Andromeda replied. "She was born blind, and she had a weak heart. Had she not been born a free Post, she probably would not have survived at all. The Innovations were able to properly provide for her. Whatever medical attention she needed, Felicia would find it. If it didn't exist, Felicia would create it."

"Create it?" Elliot asked. That wasn't a word she heard often.

For a split second, Andromeda appeared discomposed. "Does that word frighten you, Luddite?"

Elliot bristled. "Create" might not frighten her, but the way these Fleet Posts used "Luddite" as an epithet was beginning to. If only Andromeda knew what a bad Luddite Elliot was. "No."

"But you believe in the protocols."

"Of course I do." Spoken like any good Luddite who didn't have notes in the barn detailing the steps she'd taken to create some rather troubling wheat. She'd say nothing else-and certainly not to Andromeda Phoenix. Instead, she recited the lines given by every teacher she'd ever had. "They are there for our protection. Without them, humans would risk trying to become G.o.ds."

"And what if breaking them would have saved Sophia's life? What if they'd save your grandfather's?"

At that moment, Elliot hated Andromeda. She hated being forced to play devil's advocate for, of all things, the Luddite protocols! "Is there an answer here that wouldn't bolster what you've already decided about me?"

"Which is?" asked Andromeda with an evil glint in her odd eyes.

Elliot wasn't going to spell it out.

Olivia's song ended, but Donovan merely turned his music into something wilder, a more obvious dancing tune. A cheer went up from the a.s.sembled crowd. Several couples even rose from their picnic blankets to dance beneath the glowing lanterns. Kai gave his hand to Olivia to help her down from the porch steps. She tugged him toward the dancers, and after a moment, he joined her. Elliot stared down at her lap.

"Aren't they a lovely couple?" Andromeda said.

"Please go away."

"As you pointed out, Miss Elliot, we rent these lands. We may do as we please."

Yet Elliot was not forced to remain, and she highly doubted that Felicia had invited her to the party that evening merely to receive sarcastic remarks from Andromeda. The older Post might imagine they could be friends, but Elliot knew better. She'd had a lifetime of experience learning how few people she could count on to be her friend.

She rose and went over to the blankets occupied by Ro and the North Posts. Judging by the number of empty plates and mugs strewn about, they were enjoying the party immensely.

Here, at least, were some true friends. "May I join you?"

"Certainly!" Dee was sitting cross-legged, cradling her belly in her lap and keeping her eye on Jef, who was twirling with a few of the young Grove Posts several yards away. She lowered her voice and leaned in to Elliot. "I caught a few words of your talk with that Fleet girl. She's not very fond of you, is she?"

"Not that I can tell."

Dee chuckled. "Do I need to have words with her?"

"She'd probably think I beat you into it."

Dee put a hand to her heart in mock shock. "You beat your CORs, Elliot North?"

"Haven't you heard?" Beside them, Ro clapped along to the music, watching the dancers with delight. Elliot wondered if she should have brought the girl a string-box from the stash she still kept safely stowed away in the barn. But then, Ro's clumsy plucking might mess with the music, and Ro didn't seem to mind.

"Well, someone ought to enlighten her, and that's a fact."

"I don't care what Andromeda Phoenix thinks of me, Dee."

"And what of Captain Wentforth?"

Elliot hesitated. "What he thinks isn't likely to be changed, is it?"

"You did the right thing, Elliot. We all think so, and I've no qualms telling him as much, either."

"Please, Dee," Elliot begged. "Don't. We're long past all that now."

"Not if he's badmouthing you to the Fleet Posts."

"I don't need to be friends with Andromeda Phoenix." Elliot threw her hands in the air. "I don't need to be friends with Kai. I don't even need to be friends with the Innovations."

"But you want to be," said Dee.

"No, I don't," Elliot insisted. Whatever it took to keep her people fed, that's what she wanted. And for that, it wasn't necessary to make friends with these people. In fact, it was preferable not to socialize with them. Less danger, then, that she'd miss them when they were gone. "I want to take their money and let them build their ship and get them off my land. That's all I want."

"Good to know," said a voice above her head.

Elliot and Dee looked up, and there, shadowed against the light from the swinging sun-lamps, stood Kai.

FOUR YEARS AGO.

Dear Elliot, Last night I went with some other Posts to the Grove estate to hear a traveling musician. It was fantastic. I'd always thought that music was something that you or your mother or Tatiana played on your instruments, but at the Grove estate, several of the Posts have string-boxes or pipes, and they all play together.

I wish you could have been there. The Grove Posts talk a lot about the free Post settlements. Apparently they're allowed to visit family and such that have left for there. They don't make it sound half so scary as the beggars who've come to the North estate do.

They say other things I believe even less. They say Baroness North used to visit the Grove estate quite often. I thought none of the Norths spoke to the Groves.

Your friend, Kai Dear Kai, I'm so jealous! Were the Luddites there, too? I have never met the Grove children. I believe there are two-a boy several years older than us, and a little girl.

I don't know the precise nature of my father's argument with Mr. Grove but I think it's gone on longer than Tatiana and I have been alive. I think it must have something to do with a land dispute of some sort. It is too bad, really. If they were on speaking terms, it's likely Tatiana and I would have had the children as playmates. As it is, she hasn't had a true friend since Benedict left the estate.

But I don't need to travel to another estate to find a friend. I have our gliders, I have our barn-wall knot. I have you.

Did anyone show you how to make a string-box? I think we should make one and play it for Ro.

Your friend, Elliot Dear Elliot, I've included the list of Posts who have ordered string-boxes. I can't believe how many people want one now. I'm not sure we'll have to paint them all the way we did for Ro. It will slow the process a lot, and besides, people might want to paint them themselves.

Your friend, Kai Dear Kai, I managed to make three over the weekend and put them in the usual place. But I'm out of the silk fiber we were using for the strings. I stole it from the hem of one of my mother's old shirts. I don't know what else we can use.

Your friend, Elliot Dear Elliot, I believe these wires will work well. It changes the tone of the instrument, but not in a bad way. Thank you for doing this. I hope your mother doesn't miss her hems. I know how hard you've been working to make sure the boxes are properly tuned . . . so I know you won't resent it when you see this newest list of requests?

Come on. For me?

Yours, Kai Dear Kai, Your wish is my command. I mended my mother's shirt with hemp thread and she didn't even notice. By the way, the wire works beautifully. The new sound is very different, but you're right, it will just add to the richness of our little orchestra. I can't wait to hear them!

Yours, Elliot Dear Elliot, I've never been tempted to show our letters to anyone until now. But "your wish is my command"? Those are some dangerous words for a Luddite to write to a Post.

Yours, Kai Dear Kai, Are you planning on telling on me?

Yours, Elliot P.S. Made five more.