Free For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund Page A

again. “Why, because they come from Reduced stock? That’s silly, Elliot. You’re either born Reduced or you’re not. These people know what they are.” She dropped her voice again. “ If your image doesn’t give you fright, Then you are a true Luddite. But if the glass shows you a haze, Reduced you’ll be for all your days —”
    “I said stop,” Elliot hissed, and she swept off the bench and away from her sister, shivering a bit in the chill of the cavern. This dress wasn’t warm enough for the sanctuary. She’d worn a sweater over it at her mother’s memorial service four years ago, but that sweater had been long since relegated to the rag bin.
    There was hardly enough light to see her way as she walked deeper into the star cavern. Horatio stood with one lantern and whispered near a stone painted yellow, while at a corresponding yellow stone across the way, Felicia and Donovan listened intently. The whisper zones were ancient, too. Her ancestors had to have something to entertain themselves with other than scary nursery rhymes during their years spent in the dark.
    She walked around in a little circle, rubbing her arms and looking up at the stars in the roof. When she was younger, she’d dreamed about sneaking Kai in here to see them. Now he was here on her sister’s invitation, and he was remarkably unimpressed.
    “Miss Elliot,” said a voice in the blackness, and out stepped Andromeda.
    Elliot stopped short and pressed her hand to her chest in shock. “I didn’t see you.”
    “I know. Luckily, I saw you.” Andromeda’s eyes looked even more odd in the distant, dim glow from the few lit sconces, their daytime glittering blue nearly swallowed completely by her dark pupils. “Are you going somewhere in particular?”
    “Just wandering. What did Mrs. Innovation mean back there? Was she talking about the admiral? I’m sure if he wishes to see the sanctuary, my sister will oblige him—”
    “No,” said Andromeda stiffly. “She doesn’t mean the admiral. She means her daughter.”
    The Innovations had a daughter? “Oh. Where is she?”
    “Dead.”
    Elliot swallowed. “Oh, I’m sorry—”
    “I think the Grove girl is down there with Wentforth,” Andromeda said quickly, gesturing further into the sanctuary. “How old is she, by the way?”
    “Fourteen,” Elliot blurted.
    “Fourteen.” The Post nodded. “He’s eighteen. Four years is a long time, don’t you think, Miss Elliot? It makes for many changes.”
    “Please, call me Elliot.” What was she getting at? At its surface, only the age difference between Olivia and Kai. But Elliot was quickly learning that nothing this Post girl said possessed only one meaning.
    “Of course, Wentforth has always had a rather foolish preference for Luddites. I’d thought he’d grown past it. Excuse me, Miss Elliot.” She brushed by and away.
    Elliot stumbled forward into the darkness. So Andromeda, at least, knew of her former closeness to Kai. It was clear from the Post’s attitude that she didn’t think much of Elliot, either. Elliot wondered what Kai had told her.
    “—stuck in the past.” His voice stopped her dead on the path. For so many years, it had only existed like this—disembodied, solely the product of memory. It was hard to believe he was here again, even though he was more distant than ever.
    “Not all Luddites are,” Olivia’s voice joined his, low enough to be a whisper.
    Elliot put out her hands and turned around in the darkness, but she couldn’t see them at all.
    “My brother and I are very interested in the new Post technology. We have sun-lamps in our home, and Horatio wants a sun-cart, depending on how much we make from the harvest.”
    “I’m sure I could give you a discount,” Kai replied with a chuckle that seemed to go straight through Elliot’s soul. Since Captain Wentforth had discovered the cache of sun-carts, Kai owned every single one of them. Kai’s voice sang through her nerves, making her hair