Starglass (3 page)

Liberty.

I heard loping footsteps on the path below. At the sound—heavy, uneven—I stiffened. I knew those footsteps. I’d grown up with them echoing on our stairwell and thundering in the bedroom down the hall. I scrambled for an overhead branch and then settled into the shadows cast by the budding leaves. Maybe if I sat back, with my sketchbook clutched to my chest and my breath shallow, he wouldn’t notice me.

I watched as my father’s bald head passed below my feet. He’d stopped just under my tree, one thick hand resting against the bark.

Walk on. Walk on
, I thought. The pubs were still open in the commerce district. He had every reason to continue on his journey home, every reason to head for the lift.
Just keep going.

I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to look. That’s when I felt his hand close around the heel of my boot.

I was tall—the tallest girl in my class. But my father was still taller than me, bigger and stronger. His arms were lean and strong from
years of ringing bells. He moved up through the branches like it was nothing, gripping my calf and pulling it hard. I knew that I should have just climbed down, keeping my chin against my chest and my gaze contritely away. But anger rushed through my body. It overwhelmed my good sense, like it always did.

“Terra, get down!”

“Leave me alone!”

He balanced on the branch now, his eyes level with mine. They were clear and brown, sober. And they fixed on my sketchbook.

“This again?” he asked, tearing it from my arms. “I told you not to waste your time with this.”

He cast it at the forest floor below. It drifted down like a handful of autumn leaves. The colors scattered in the twilight.

This was why I never drew at home.

I scrambled down after it, plucking it out of the mud. The pages were rumpled. One or two drawings of flowers had gone soggy in the rainwater. But it wasn’t
too
bad. Still, my father gazed at me, a victorious smile smoothing his lips. He was
so
self-satisfied. It made me want to scream at him. My temper was a white-hot ball, sticky in my chest.

“Is everything all right here?”

We turned. A guard had stopped on the path, all dressed up in her woolen uniform blacks. The red rank cord stood out on her shoulder,
twisted with Council gold. Her hand rested on the hilt of her blade as if to warn us.

My father came to stand beside me. He put his hand on my shoulder, giving it a clean thump. It was meant to be a friendly gesture. He was telling the guard that everything was normal, that
we
were normal. But I stayed frozen, my gaze blank. I couldn’t even make myself force a smile.

“Everything is fine,” my father said. “My daughter, Terra, receives her vocation tomorrow. She was worried about her assignment. Weren’t you?”

“Worried” wasn’t the right word. When it came to my assignment, I was resigned to whatever fate the Council doled out. But I spat the word out anyway. “Yes,” I said.

The guard’s eyes, small and close set, narrowed on me. “Every job is useful if we’re to achieve
tikkun olam
.”

“That’s what I told her,” my father lied. I cast my gaze down. My cheeks burned with anger. I could feel how happy this conversation made my father—how noble he was feeling, how righteous. He loved any opportunity to spout Council rhetoric. He thought it made him a good citizen, no matter how many nights he lost to the bottle.

“You’d better move along,” the guard finally said. “I’m sure your girl needs her rest for tomorrow.”

“Of course,” my father agreed. He gave me a little shove forward.
I took small, shuffling steps. Not because I was afraid, but because I knew it would bother my father. And he wouldn’t be able to say a word under the guard’s watchful eye.

“Terra?” she called, her voice slicing through the cooling evening. I looked up over my shoulder. Her hands were balled into fists at her sides inside her leather gloves.

“Mazel tov,” she said. I didn’t answer at first. But then my father flicked his finger against my ear.

“Say ‘thank you,’ ” he growled. I rubbed at my earlobe, trying to smother the pain.

“Thanks,” I said at last.

•  •  •

That night, as Pepper hungrily looped around my ankles, I sat at the galley table and watched my father pace.

“If only I could get you to do something
useful
with yourself,” he chided, his hands clamped tight behind his back. The harsh overhead lights reflected against his bald head. My father had lost his hair early, one of the few genetic flaws the doctors didn’t bother to breed out of us before we were conceived. It made him look much older than he was. Or maybe he had just gotten old lately, what with the hours he worked, and the wine he drank, and the number of nights he stayed up yelling at me. “They’re always looking for volunteers at the granaries.”

I scowled. I had no desire to spend my nights shucking corn just so that the Council could be impressed by what a good citizen I was. Abba leaned his hands against the table, staring down at the splayed-open pages of my sketchbook.

“Have you told anyone about this rubbish?” he demanded, paging through it. His movements were brusque. I watched the pages bend beneath the force of his fingers, nearly tearing from the spine. I wanted to dart my own hands out, to grab my book and hold it to my chest. But I knew that it would only cause me more problems.

“No,” I said, and hoped he didn’t sense my lie. In truth, it had been only a month before that I’d sat with a trio of counselors in a windowless schoolroom. They’d stared me down as I’d stammered through my rehearsed monologue. I had repeated all the things that my father said were important to people like them. About how I’d do my duty, work hard at any job, find a good husband, be a wonderful mother. I went on and on. The only sign they gave that they were even listening was the way that one woman’s mouth twitched when I finally mumbled myself into silence.

She leaned forward. “Now, Terra,” she said. “That’s all very nice. But please tell us what you’d really like to do.”

My heart thundered in my throat. I glanced down at the schoolbag that sat open by my feet. Then I bent over and pulled out my sketchbook. I held my breath as I passed it to her.

They all leaned in, their expressions blank as they leafed through the pages.

Hardly anyone knew about my drawings. My father always told me it was a waste of time. Art was a luxury. It did nothing for our lives on the ship. It wouldn’t help us once we reached Zehava. I was doing nothing for
tikkun olam
. And sure enough, my first efforts were terrible, the pencil all smeared, then erased, then heavily layered in again. But over time I’d gotten better. The lines were looser now, more expressive. I’d learned to block in broad shapes first before squeezing in the details. Now when I sketched out the crocuses that poked their heads up through the snowy ground, or the vines that twined through the oak trees beneath the dome, the final outcome actually looked close to what I’d intended. But the counselors didn’t seem to notice my improvement. They stared straight down at my drawings, their mouths tight.

“Thank you,” the woman had said at last, and handed the book back to me.

“No,” I said again to my father now as he stared me down. “No, I haven’t shown anyone.”

“Good,” he said, and shoved the book at me. “Keep it that way. I won’t have anyone thinking that my own daughter doesn’t know how to be a good Asherati.”

For what felt like the longest moment, I didn’t move. Part of me
wanted to argue with my father. After all, art wasn’t
totally
useless. There was even a portrait gallery in the ship’s fore, where oil paintings of all the high-ranking families sat beneath dusty velvet curtains. But I knew it was no use. He’d already gone to the cupboard to uncork an old, cloudy bottle of wine. I grabbed my sketchbook, tucked it under my arm, and rose from the table.

At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped, turning toward him. “Will you be coming to the ceremony tomorrow?” I asked, not even sure what I wanted the answer to be. My father squared his shoulders.

“Of course,” he said. “It’s my duty.”

I trudged up the stairs.

•    •    •

Lately all of my dreams embarrassed me. They’d start out normal enough. I’d be in school, or walking through the atrium, or killing time while Rachel shopped in the commerce district. All of a sudden Silvan Rafferty would appear, speaking in low tones. His breath, hot and wet, fogged the cool spring air. He’d press my body to the nearest wall, slipping his tongue into my mouth. I drew him to me—the very thing my father had told me never to do. Then I woke up, my heart beating wildly. In the endless dark of my room, I was terrified that someone would somehow know what I’d been dreaming about.

Years ago, before Momma was even sick, I could count on her to wake me up in the morning. Her knock was only a little rattle of
sound, knuckles on the wooden door. It was just enough to get me out of bed. Of course, I couldn’t count on my father like that. I would have bought an alarm clock, but when I asked Abba for the gelt, he scoffed.

“What, and have the shop owners think I can’t be bothered to get my own daughter to school in the morning?”

He
couldn’t
be bothered, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. Still, I’d hoped that the day I received my vocation would be different. Maybe he would wake me early. Maybe we would eat breakfast at the galley table and then walk to the ceremony together like a normal family might. I’d made the mistake of getting my hopes up, and so when I woke in the darkness, breathing hard as Pepper walked back and forth across my chest, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

I grimaced and swatted the cat away. Then, stumbling to my feet, I remembered what day it was.

“You should have woken me sooner!” I scolded the cat. I began to dress, shoving my feet down into the cracked leather of my boots, pulling my favorite moth-eaten sweater over my head. I ran my hands over my long, rumpled hair—as if it made a difference. But it would have to do.

Downstairs the galley was already empty. Dirty dishes were spread out across the counter, collecting flies. The jar that my father had filled up with wine the night before had dried out. The glass was dark
as a jewel. I scraped some leftover meat into a dish for Pepper, then threw my sketchbook into my schoolbag and went on my way.

From the outside you wouldn’t have known the mess inside our house. Our pale curtains were drawn in the windows. The flowers, which had only just started to bloom in the early spring, were the same purple saxifrage and arctic eyebright that blossomed in every yard. Abba liked to keep up appearances, at least right up to the front door. Our home blended right in with the long row of town houses that filled our district, where specialists hung up white cotton curtains to conceal their supposedly orderly lives.

I entered the commerce district. The streets had already begun to flood with workers, and they shouted sales from the curb as they lifted their storefront shutters. But I had no gelt to buy anything, and no time, either. I ducked into the atrium, passing through the muddy fields and under the shadow of the clock tower. The bright clock face read five past nine. I wondered if my father was still up in the belfry, drinking behind his desk, or if he’d taken off for the captain’s stateroom already.

I heard his voice in my head.
Portrait artist isn’t even a specialist position. It would be a step down for us. You would be doing nothing for your people, your ship. . . .
As I crossed the pastures, then passed the school where I’d spent every day for the last ten years of my life, my father’s words thundered in my ears.

Do your duty, Terra. I won’t have you disappoint your mother’s memory.

What a joke. If Momma knew what I was like these days—a knotty-haired truant, always blushing and tongue-tied—she’d be disappointed for sure.

Sometimes I was glad she hadn’t lived to see what I’d become.

M
y classmates waited for me near the lift at the fore of the ship. They loitered around the paved pavilion, looking bored in their formal wear. Rebbe Davison had squatted against one of the stone curbs. He was young for a teacher—at six we’d been his first class of students—and had dressed smartly in a dark linen suit. The white thread on his shoulder stood out in stark contrast. I felt a twinge of guilt as I saw him lift himself up from the ground, mud on the hems of his pants and the seat of his trousers.

“Terra Fineberg,” he said, but not sternly—I don’t think he had it in him to be stern. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Sorry,” I said, shoving my heavy hair from my face as I hustled to stand beside Rachel. “I overslept and—”

Rebbe Davison waved his hand, cutting off my excuse. To be fair, he’d heard plenty of my excuses over the past decade. If he’d had his fill of them, I couldn’t entirely blame him. He looked out across the class, quietly taking a head count.

“That’s everyone, kids,” he said, and went to the lift to press his hand against the panel. My classmates began filing in, in scattered clumps of twos and threes.

Rachel and I lingered near the rear of the crowd. She turned to me, looking me up and down. Her gaze was pointed. I tugged on the hem of my sweater, trying to conceal the fact that I was wearing the same rumpled cotton shirt and pants that I’d slept in. She looked great, of course, in a tweed skirt, gray blouse, and dark red stockings. Her clothes were clean and new, like they always were.

“Late on Vocation Day?” she said at last, cracking a slight smile. “That’s bad even for you!”

My shoulders tightened. “Well,” I said, trying my best to look like I didn’t care what she thought. “It’s not like it really matters to
me
what assignment I get.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. She’d spent the past year fretting over her
future job. She wanted to work in one of the shops in the commerce district, channeling her fashion sense into something that would gain the approval of her own merchant parents. And she wanted me to work with her. I’d done nothing to disabuse her of this notion.