And in the heavens, we will make the world anew, I repeat to myself. We will make the world anew.
The roar of voices dulls as we leave the main concourse. We file through a dim, narrow hall, and stop suddenly.
“Are we there?” I whisper to Kamak. “Is it the Æther?”
She gives me a tight-lipped look that means I should know better than to speak.
Ahead, the rumble of a bulkhead door breaks the silence. Our little parade starts forward and stops again almost immediately.
My father’s greeting carries up the corridor. “So Brother Fortune.”
“So Brother Cerrec.”
Their voices drop so we can no longer hear. I shift from one foot to the other and wish I could lay down the tray of eggcakes. Sweat slicks my palms. The electric light grid above me snaps and clicks.
And then they are calling for me.
“Ava.” My great-grandmother Hannah snaps her fingers. “Come.” Her milky blue eyes magnify in the brittle pair of glasses she’s had to herself since my great-grandmother Laral died.
The women guide me forward. Somehow I manage not to drop the tray, although I’m sure my eyes are wide and rolling like a frightened goat’s. The men at the head of the procession part to let us through, and suddenly I am standing beside my father and Jerej, facing a man with black, laceless boots and a patriarch’s stole. In the split second before I remember to look away, not to look on his face, I see he is sharp jawed and handsome for a silver-haired man, despite a pocked field of radiation burns across one cheek. But his mouth is hard. Behind him, I catch a glimpse of a ship docked, its cargo bay open and filled with members of a dark-haired crewe. The Æther. My heart lifts.
“My daughter, Parastrata Ava,” my father says.
I dip my head and curtsy, holding out the platter in front of me as an offering. “Honored to come to your home, Æther Fortune.”
I feel his hand beneath my chin and the cool metal of his many rings. “Let me look on the bride.” He tilts my face up to his. I hold still as a stunned bird under his hand and cast my eyes to the side as he studies me.
A young man stands behind Æther Fortune. He is a head taller than me, with thick black hair cut close to his head and irises the blue of ozone burn. He keeps his hands clasped behind him. Like a magnet finding its match, his eyes lock on mine.
Luck. My heart skitters. Luck, grown, as I am. I would drop my gaze if I could. No proper so girl should stare at a man like this. But his look holds me as steadily as the hand beneath my chin.
Æther Fortune releases his grip. I fade gratefully down into a curtsy, the platter of eggcakes still held out in front of me. My fingers tremble.
“This is my eldest son, Æther Luck, heir to the captaincy,” Fortune says to my father and brother.
I inch my eyes up above the stack of cakes. Luck executes a small bow. He flicks a brief smile at me, and I duck back behind the platter. My heart pumps heat into every corner of my body. It is in my breasts and my toes, and suddenly I am aware of hidden corners of myself I never knew existed. Luck, heir to the captaincy. And me, a bride.
CHAPTER
.5
The Æther is vast compared to the Parastrata. Its ceilings rise a good meter above our heads and the rooms circle off one another in a labyrinth. But at least the gravity is back to bearable. The Æther crewe eats with men and women separate, like we do, but their galley is so large they don’t need to eat in shifts, men and boys, then women and girls. Little bowls of real salt and oil rest in the center of the galley tables, and the thers make free with them.
“Luxury,” Hannah sniffs, but I see her sprinkle a heaping pinch of salt over the sticky pearl rice the Æther crewe favors.
I look across the crowded galley and spot Luck at a table with a group of other young men. His friends are laughing over some joke, but he’s staring straight at me, a small, warm smile playing at the corners of his mouth. A welcome fire runs through me. I duck my head, but the feel of his eyes on me is irresistible. I have to look again.
That smile of his tugs at my own lips and fills me with a glow. I imagine the smooth skin of his inner wrist flush with mine, the binding ribbon winding around and around, trapping and sanctifying the heat between us. After the rite, we’ll be alone in the marriage chamber, and he’ll comb my bride’s braids loose with his fingers. His hand will travel from my neck to my shoulder, and then unsnap the clasps of my shift. . . .
A sharp rap from Hannah’s fan lands on my knuckles. She doesn’t have to say a word. I’m being undignified, smiling like an idiot for the whole galley to see. I rub my hand and wrestle my face back under control. But even the threat of my great-grandmother’s fan doesn’t keep me from stealing glances at Luck until it’s time to clear the table.
I don’t see Soli until after dinner when the ther women usher us into a visiting room piled thick with woven rugs. I kneel alongside them. Soli sits on the other side of the circle, but I only recognize her by the way her face lights up when she catches sight of me. She’s near tall as her brother, but she’s hidden her ears behind her long hair, done up in marriage braids. Her own pendant hangs around her neck—black, but with a shifting sheen that changes colors, like a drop of oil. She grins and mouths something. We need to talk.
Hannah and Iri and the Æther women produce collapsible looms from their inner pockets and begin setting up their weaving. A bubble of panic rises in my chest. Modrie Reller said nothing on bringing a loom, but of course now it seems clear she shouldn’t have to say something so simple to me. I feel in my pockets, as if by some miracle one might appear. Nothing.
“Ava,” Iri says lowly. She has been sitting beside me all this time, slowly unwinding a skein of algae-green wool.
I look up. Iri silently holds out the pieces of an extra loom for me. The tight feeling in my chest eases. I don’t know why Iri looks out for me, except she never did have smallones of her own before my great-grandfather died, and none of the men aboard the Parastrata have tried to take her as a wife, maybe out of respect for my great-grandfather. I nod my thanks, quickly snap the frame together, and reach into the common thread basket for a skein of my own.
“Our colors please your eye, then, Parastrata Ava,” Soli’s mother says without looking up from her own weaving.
I glance down at the yarn in my hand. The thread is the Æthers’ smooth red silk. It shows bright against my dark green skirts. “Yes,” I say. “It’s. . . it’s some beautiful.”
“Beautiful, she says.” Soli’s mother smiles to the women beside her, then turns back to me, her face suddenly solemn. “But if you use it long enough, you might start to think it dull.”
I recognize some kind of test in that, even if I don’t know what it is exactly.
“Never.” I lock my spine straight and look at her evenly, drawing on my imitation of Modrie Reller. “Firstwife Æther, I’m not some changing girl. I won’t go shifting on you and yours.”