The captain pulls me through the door. It swings shut and locks with a fisss, but not before I catch sight of Iri struggling on the floor beneath three men, while a crowd of open-mouthed travelers looks on.
“Iri!”
I nearly break free, but the captain is fast and stronger than me. “Come on, fi. There’s nothing you can do for her.”
“But . . .”
“She wanted this.” Captain Gitueau spins me around so our eyes meet. “You understand? She wanted you to get away. Now we’ve got to get away. So we run.” She releases my arm.
I run.
CHAPTER
.11
The mail sloop’s gravity field is low. My stomach flips and my hair stands on end as Captain Guiteau veers out of the station’s orbit, toward the vast, luminous curve of blue. I hold on tight, strapped into one of the ship’s two narrow seats, as the entire cabin judders under the engines’ vibrations. I’m going to be sick. I clutch my stomach and close my eyes, trying not to think about the looming brightness below or the blood in Iri’s mouth or the fact that I am leaving Luck behind.
“It’s okay,” Captain Guiteau says. The ship’s burners whine down. “We’re out of it now.”
I open my eyes. Only a slim crescent of Void is visible in the viewport. The rest is bright, too bright, as if a ship’s solar sails are angled face-on at me. I squint and put up my hand to block the light.
“Who are those men after you?” Captain Guiteau concentrates on pushing down one of the levers on her console by its tape-wrapped handle. “You want to tell me?”
“My father.” I can’t look at her, can’t look out at the bright planet, can’t close my eyes without seeing Iri and Luck. I turn my head to the wall. “My brother, too.”
“What’d you do to rile them so? Steal something? Kiss a boy they don’t like?”
The teasing’s clear in her voice, but it cuts me too close. A sharp chemical burn arcs through my nose and eyes. I will not cry, not now.
“Something bad,” I manage. Something so bad even she can’t imagine it, this scarred, Earthborn woman who treks between Earth and sky without a man to guard her, who paints her ruined lips. So bad she’s the one pitying me.
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t worth what they had in mind to do to you.” Her voice dips quiet again. She makes a careful study of the flickering needles and signals streaming over the console.
“How do you know what they were going to do?” For the first time I notice something sad and soft in the corners of her fierce mouth.
“That look on their faces? I’ve seen it before.” She frowns. “It always means the same thing.”
I stare at her. I can’t put my mind around her brokenness and her boldness, how it can all be wrapped up in the same person.
The cabin wall behind her catches my eye. A host of flat metal figures hang from nails driven into the bulkhead—sunbursts and crowned snakes and roosters—all rattling in time with the engines.
“What are those?”
She glances up from the controls and smiles briefly. “Good-luck charms. My little girl makes them for me.”
I mean to ask if they work, but Earth swells in the viewport and my mouth goes dry.
“Buckled in?” the captain asks. And then an afterthought. “You ever been planetside?”
I shake my head.
She casts a worried look at me, but it’s too late. We’re going in. “Hold tight,” she says. “The gravity’s going to hit you bad.”
Vibrations pick up all along the sloop’s body as we breach the atmosphere, building until the ship rocks beneath us. I cling to my crossed shoulder straps with both hands.
A flare of light explodes across the viewport, and something kicks me in the chest, hard, knocking all the wind out of me. I try to draw breath, but my lungs won’t listen. They hang heavy, as if they’ve been dipped in lead. The ship plummets, speed pushing me into the seat. Darkness speckles my vision. I gasp. Is this it? Is this what the oldgirls meant when they warned us of the Earth’s touch? Is this how it feels to have your soul shucked from your body? The muscles in my legs, my hands, my head, my eyelids, all of them weigh on me. My skin has turned to a shell. My heart labors against my chest, aching with every ragged beat.
“Hang in there,” Captain Guiteau shouts over the clamor. “I’m taking us lower. Once we’re down, we can drop speed and lose a few Gs.”
I can’t make sense of her words. Everything moves slow, slow, with the beat of my heart. I don’t know this woman. She could do anything to me and no one would ever hear of it. Panic pierces my fog, pulls me up sharp enough to force my eyes open on the blazing white cloud tops.
“Close your eyes,” the captain says. “Keep your mind on your breathing. We’re almost there.” As she says it, the burners whine back and the rattling steadies to a soft chak-a-chak-a-chak. The weight on my body eases some, enough to let me breathe shallow and clear the spots from my eyes.
Captain Guiteau snaps several switches on the console. “What was your ship’s gravity rating?” she asks, not looking at me.
Gravity rating?
“I don’t . . .” But then I remember the training room and how the men on groundways duty prepare themselves before they go down. They strap on weighted belts and run to keep their hearts and bodies used to the strain of the Earth’s pull.
“Long-range ships mostly don’t go below point six-eight Gs,” the captain says, thinking aloud. “You’ve really never been planetside before? What were your people, traders?”
“Merchant crewe.” I stop, breathe. The effort of talking is burning through all my energy.
“I know folk buck that ninety-days regulation, but I’ve never heard of anyone going their whole life without touching down planetside unless their ship’s rated a full one G,” the captain mutters. “Your people kept you on a cardiovascular conditioning regimen at least, right?”
I don’t know what she’s saying, but it doesn’t matter. “Women of the air, stay aloft,” I whisper, and smile bitterly to myself.
The captain shoots a glance at me. “You okay, fi?”
I shake my head and let my eyes close. My body feels old and crushed with pain. “I’m dead.”
“Dead?” she asks carefully, as if she thinks I might be dream talking, half gone with pain and fatigue.
I nod. The sun’s glare sweeps over my face as the ship ducks out from beneath a cloud, turning the world inside my eyelids red. “Dead.”
CHAPTER
.12
Heat. Clinging, humid, the kind that leaves my lungs boiled and limp. The kind I woke to each newday on the Parastrata. For a moment, I think I’m back, back home, with Lifil curled beside me, Iri and Luck both safe. But then I work my eyes open and the light floods in, heavy and gold, like the whole world is drowned in cooking oil. A smallgirl of maybe eight turns leans over me. Short black braids spring out below her ears. She looks at me with wide eyes a deep honey-amber, some shades lighter than her dark brown skin.