Among the Nameless Stars

years.

    Kindness? No. Generosity? No, not that either. It sounded too … grateful.

    Dear Elliot,
    Though it has been a long time since I’ve thought of myself as the boy who lived in your barn, I feel duty bound to repay you for the things you did on my behalf in those days. Thus I have sent with this letter

    What? A cup carved of jade? A bolt of real silk? A pair of opal earrings as big as plums?
    What would he send her once he had money? What would he send her just to show that he could?

    Among the Nameless Stars by Diana Peterfreund
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    Maybe, once he reached Channel City, he’d learn there were even more wonderful things than those. Things neither he nor Elliot had ever heard of, growing up in the far north.
    Channel City. The very name gave him shivers as he drew closer, day by day. It was the only city in the islands that hadn’t been destroyed by the Wars of the Lost. He’d heard many of the buildings remained from the old days, massively tall or astoundingly opulent or even just oddly shaped. The Luddites occupied the nicer parts of the city, but Posts had made communities of their own, on the outskirts and in the run-down areas, and they were slowly rebuilding, sometimes with permission of the Luddite lords and sometimes in spite of them. The Luddites had held power too easily, and for too many generations, without the slightest bit of struggle.
    Now that the Posts had emerged from the wreckage of the Reduction, Luddites—both on the estates and in the cities—didn’t know quite how to handle them. Were Posts slaves, like their Reduced forefathers, or were they fully human, capable of autonomy, of freedom, of forming their own society where they no longer had to live by the Luddites’ technophobic laws and their dark-age protocols?
    That’s what Kai had left the North Estate to find out. That was what he’d hoped Elliot would wish to discover at his side. But in the end, Elliot had made it perfectly plain. He’d never forget what she’d written in her last letter to him.

    I will always be a Luddite. I was born this way. I’ll die this way. I cannot turn my back on it.
    Without us, the world would have burned, and all of humankind would have been destroyed. I cannot ignore that. I cannot forget who I am. But you are not a Luddite. And that is why I cannot go with you.

    Among the Nameless Stars by Diana Peterfreund
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    Kai would never let himself forget it either. Elliot chose the North Estate over him. She chose her position, her power, over the promises they’d made to each other. She chose the world of the Luddites over the wider world, the one they’d talked of exploring together.
    He’d never forgive her. Never. And if he was rich one day, he wouldn’t send her diamond earrings either. That night, he renamed the evening star again. If Elliot didn’t deserve diamonds, she certainly didn’t deserve to have a star named after her. Even in his head.
    The next morning, he saw Channel City for the first time.

    Among the Nameless Stars by Diana Peterfreund
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Four
    People. More people than Kai knew existed. And almost all of them Post. Post or Luddite—one couldn’t tell in Channel City. Posts and Luddites alike in carriages and on horseback and wearing fancy clothes. Sometimes he couldn’t even define their caste after meeting them, for here in Channel City, Posts and Luddites alike had long names and surnames, quoted books and poetry, donned jewelry and perfume and bright colors. He’d never seen such bright colors outside of flowers and sunsets. And here, people wore them.
    Clothes were how he found his first job. Right there, in the window of a tailor’s shop, sat a sign. Mechanic Wanted . Wary of Jin’s warning about giving too much information about himself to strangers, he walked in, hands deep in pockets, and asked if they were looking for any workers.
    “Why?” A girl in the corner tittered. “Do you sew?”
    He did, as it happened, but he wasn’t great at it.
    “Sorry, son,” said the man in the front, who Kai quickly guessed was in charge. “We don’t need any more laborers.”
    This wasn’t proceeding according to plan. “I saw a sign in the window … thought maybe it was a Help Wanted sign—”
    “That’s for a mechanic,” said the head tailor. “They’re tough to get around here, but our carder’s been broke for the better part of a month.”
    Finally . “I don’t know what a carder is, sir, but if it’s got an engine, you should let