Among the Nameless Stars

wouldn’t she be the envy of every Luddite in the neighborhood if he sent her a velvet dress? Violet, maybe. Or midnight blue.
    Or maybe he’d send her something in the most unflattering shade ever, just to spite her.
    That’s what you get, Elliot, for abandoning me.
    Of all the wonders of the Post enclave, the oddest of all, and the one that took Kai the longest to adjust to, was the lack of Reduced. Where he’d grown up, on the North Estate, Luddites and Posts together were completely outnumbered by the Reduced labor force. Not a day in his life had passed without seeing them around, mute and simple and helpless. Broken inside, for all that they looked like normal humans. Now that he was in Channel City, Kai had to rid himself of the habit of assuming everyone he saw was Reduced. People took offense if you made any of the Reduced hand signs at them, but after a lifetime of doing so, he often had to clench his hands at his sides to keep from making them as he first spoke.

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    But there were no Reduced in Channel City. He supposed here, where all the Posts had escaped to live, it was just as easy to hire Posts for scant pay as it was to keep a Reduced decently clothed, fed, and sheltered. If a Reduced servant had a baby, its master was obliged to care for it, but if a hired Post servant had a baby, well, that was the Post’s own responsibility.
    So many Posts had migrated here, hoping for something better than they’d had back on their estates. How many found it? Some, of course, had come from appalling places like the Miner Estate. But Kai had always had enough to eat growing up. He’d always had clothes on his back and a warm place to sleep. His father had taught him to read, and Elliot, the lord’s daughter herself, had given him books. Elliot had been his friend. A month ago, they’d imagined living here together.
    Now, he couldn’t picture it. Elliot, living in a single room that smelled of fish? Elliot, eating nothing but bread and bean butter, and cheese if they could get it? Elliot helping him limp up and down the streets and the stairs to their tiny flat—tinier even than the loft above the North barn?
    Elliot, in the same dress, day after day, working for ten hours sewing clothes like the girls in Bartholomew’s shop? Elliot, with no servants and no family and no one even knowing that her father owned half the farmable land north of the ruins? No, it was impossible. She never would have fit in here.
    Kai told no one in his new life about the Luddite girl he’d once loved more than any other person in the world. No one would believe it anyway.

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    Five

    Dear Elliot,
    I thought I’d left you behind me. I haven’t written you a letter, even in my head, in months.
    But I don’t know what else to do. I’m afraid, and I have no one to turn to. Maybe writing it down will help me. Even if you aren’t ever going to read this, thinking that we’re still in it together, figuring out solutions—maybe that will be enough.

    It had started when Kai was working on some improvements to the loom and was heading out on his lunch break. When he came into the front part of the shop, he saw a strange man in the center of the room, arms crossed over his chest as he surveyed all the workers. Bartholomew, standing behind the counter almost as if it was a shield, glanced in Kai’s direction and gave a quick, almost imperceptible shake of his head.
    “Who’s this?” the stranger asked.
    “New sweeper,” Bartholomew mumbled. “Pretty lazy, actually.”
    The man snorted. “Lazy, huh? Don’t oversell him.” He beckoned to Kai. “Come here, boy.”
    Kai stepped forward, but remained out of the man’s arm span. He didn’t like the way he was standing, didn’t like the way every worker in the shop was keeping one scared eye on him. It reminded Kai of how the Reduced acted whenever Baron North was close, how the chickens in the barnyard behaved whenever the cat came near.
    “Name’s Pen,” said the man. “Heard of me?”
    As it happened, Kai had. He nodded.
    “What’s your name?”

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    “Kai.”
    “And you’re a sweeper here? On your feet all day with that leg?”
    Kai looked at Bartholomew. There was a reason his employer had lied about him to Pen, and Kai was pretty sure he knew what it was. “Yes.”
    The bigger man leaned forward, letting