Among the Nameless Stars (7 page)

I don’t want anyone telling me what to do. Not Pen, not the Innovations, and not even you. I
want to be my own master. I want it more than velvet, more than riches, more than a real
name. I want to get away from this wretched island. I want to go someplace where no one
can ever tell me who I am again.

Kai knew he’d never send this letter to Elliot. He’d never send any of them. All his life, he’d believed that no one knew him better than Elliot, and vice versa. But that wasn’t true. More than time and distance separated them. She was a Luddite. She would never, ever know what it felt like to be born into Kai’s life, into Kai’s world. She would never understand what it meant for him to escape. People like the Norths, people who owned others, could never comprehend freedom.

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by Diana Peterfreund

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All his life, he’d thought he loved Elliot. But he never realized how little they knew of each other.

It was night now, and Kai sat in his corner of the storage box he shared with six other boys.

He sat on his pallet, scribbling away, not caring who saw. Pen had been beaten by those Luddites’

bodyguards and was still in confinement in his house. It would be a while before he would be able to mete out any punishment of his own, though Kai wasn’t looking forward to that day.

“So you write, too? What a variety of talents you have for a slave.”

Kai lifted his head to see Mrs. Innovation standing in front of him, the hem of her purple skirt dragging on the grimy floor of the box. He opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

“Bess told me where to find you. That
was
what you were about to ask, wasn’t it, young man? Or were you planning on offering me a cup of tea?” She wrinkled her nose. “Or an old tin can of tea, I suppose.”

He scrambled to his feet, his letter still clutched tightly in his hands. “Bess. Where is she?”

“On her way back to her estate, I imagine.” Mrs. Innovation glanced around at Kai’s messy corner, at the papers and the gearboxes and the well-worn tools. “That wouldn’t have been my choice, given her delicate condition, but it seems she values the safety that distance from Pen can bring.”

“You freed her?” Kai asked incredulously.

“We don’t
own
people, Kai. That’s disgusting.” She eyed him. “More disgusting than cheating. But you know that already.” She continued her survey of his space.

Next to his bed was a tiny pile of books half concealed under a blanket. Some were borrowed from Bess’s stash, but the dangerous ones had been procured by Cleopatra, who occasionally got access to a Luddite’s home library. Kai moved to conceal them with his body, but Mrs.

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Innovation sidestepped him and bent to look more closely. She lifted the edge of the blanket with two fingers and read a few titles. “
Geography of the Southern Hemisphere
,
Beginner’s Celestial
Navigation
, and
Tales of the Conquistadors
? Bold choices.”

Kai swallowed. That last was Napoleon’s favorite.

“Aren’t you a curious one?” she said, straightening again. “I’m beginning to suspect things about you, Kai.”

“Ma’am?”

“My name is Felicia. Has been for the better part of twenty years.” Her gaze seemed to bore right through him, and Kai shrank back. This woman—this slight, pretty woman with her dark hair and her fine clothes— she was far tougher than Pen. “I gave some thought to what you said, and I think you may have a point. About the cheating.”

“I didn’t—”

“You didn’t end up in my pavilion by accident today, and you weren’t trying to cheat on behalf of your master,” she finished, though that wasn’t what Kai had been planning to say either.

Still, he didn’t correct her. She’d come to find him. That was enough.

“I was born on an estate, like you,” Felicia said now. “I was a skilled laborer, like you—but I was trained as a healer. I could have stayed there, helped my people, but Nicodemus and I, we wanted something more. For ourselves and for any children we might someday have. We didn’t want anyone ever to own us. Does that sound familiar, Kai?”

He nodded. His mouth had gone dry.

“But you are right. It’s hard to prosper in this world when the deck is stacked against you from the start. It’s stacked against every Post on this island. Some are born slaves; some have no choice but to become slaves to cruel and petty opportunists like Pen. I would be lying if I said
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that everything I ever did was aboveboard, beginning with running away from the estate where I was raised.”

“So, what are you saying?” Kai asked. “That you’ve thought about it, and it was okay for me to cheat?”

“For you, for me, for Bess,” Felicia said. “It’s impossible to play fair when the entire game is rigged. And it’s ridiculous to expect people to follow rules in matters of life and death, don’t you agree, Kai? This race today, it was a matter of life and death for Bess. So she cheated. She cheated Pen, and apparently, she cheated you, too. And I, for one, cannot blame her for it.”

“Good for you,” Kai grumbled. “You’re not the one stuck here.”

“No,” Felicia said. “But neither are you. I have a proposition. I am looking for someone like you. Actually, I’m looking for a few someones. People who are young and smart and not afraid to break a few rules to get what’s been stolen from all of us.”

Kai stared at her in wonder. Was she saying what he thought? “I promise,” he said quickly, before she changed her mind. “I’m actually a great mechanic. The machine would have worked if Bess hadn’t sabotaged me.”

Felicia chuckled. “I’m sure it would have. After all, Pen keeps you around for a reason. So are you in?”

He hesitated. What was the point of those promises he’d just made in his unsent letter to Elliot if he didn’t believe them? “Are you offering me a job or another bond?”

Her smile grew as large as her husband’s. “I’m offering you a chance at the future you’ve always desired. Tell me, Kai. You say you’re good at fixing boats. Have you ever thought about living on one? Of finding out what lies beyond these islands, once and for all?”

Beyond the islands, beyond the Luddites, beyond everything he ever knew?

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Kai looked down at the letter he was writing to Elliot. He crumpled it up in his hands and dropped it to the floor.

“Yes. I’m ready to leave now,” he said, and followed Felicia into a radiant new world.