Among the Nameless Stars

me take a look. My father was the head mechanic on the North Estate, and I apprenticed for him all my life.”

    Among the Nameless Stars by Diana Peterfreund
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    “The North Estate?” The man looked him up and down. “Never met anyone from that far away. You come here on your own, boy? On that leg?”
    “I can fix your machines, sir. I guarantee it.”
    “Break them for good, more likely,” said the girl, with a sneer at his worn, dusty clothes. She must be a Post if she was working as a seamstress, but she reminded Kai of Elliot’s older sister, haughty and cruel.
    The head tailor glanced at the girl, then focused on Kai. “You guarantee it? What’s your guarantee? You’ve got no references beyond your word. If you break my machines, you’ve got no money to replace them, and like I said, I don’t need any more laborers, lame or otherwise.”
    Kai looked over at the sign in the window, at the thin film of dust that lay on the top. He turned back to the tailor. “Your carder’s been broken for a month, sir. How many mechanics wander in here?”
    The man laughed then. “You have a point. What’s your name?”
    “Kai.”
    “Okay, then, Kai of the North Estate, you can give it a try. I’ll only pay you if you get it working, though.”
    Kai nodded. That was fair. Besides, he wasn’t scared of failing. His father had taught him well. “I’m not of the North Estate, sir. Not any longer.”
    The man smiled again. “Sorry. I meant Kai of the Post enclave.”

    Dear Elliot,
    You know what? I don’t think I will send you this letter. Why do you deserve to know that I have a job, a real job, for which I am being paid real money? You know what it’s like to hold Among the Nameless Stars by Diana Peterfreund
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    actual money, real coins in your hand. I didn’t—not for fourteen years. But I do today. And with this money, I’m not going to pay to post this note. I’m going to rent a room. A real room, my own room that’s all mine and that doesn’t smell like cow manure.
    So there.

    It didn’t smell like cow manure, but it did smell rather strongly of low tide, because the only room Kai found that he could afford was down near the water, by the docks and the fish market.
    He didn’t mind it as much as he thought he might, though, for even though it stank to high heaven, it was still his stink. His room. His own.
    Kai of the Post Enclave.
    He learned that his employer was named Bartholomew Corson, and that he was a second-generation Post who’d been living in the enclaves since he was a young boy. The mean girl in his shop was Carolina, his daughter, and she warmed up to Kai considerably after he fixed the carder, the sewing machine, and the large press. The shop was well-regarded in the enclave, primarily because it was the only place you could buy the fabric Bartholomew called “velvet”
    that was currently all the rage in the more fashionable districts in town.
    “If I’d guessed what I’d become known for,” Bartholomew said once as Kai repaired the loom where they wove the special tufts, “I would have given my family the surname of Velvet.
    Still might. Corson’s getting a bit common around here.”
    Kai nodded and went back to work. Corson was a surname he could take himself if he desired. It was popular among second-generation Posts like himself, to signify that they were, in fact, second generation. COR—Children of the Reduction—had been the term for Posts when Kai’s father had been young, the term for anyone born of Reduced parents. When those people Among the Nameless Stars by Diana Peterfreund
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    had started having normal, non-Reduced children of their own, the term began to sound stale, restrictive. It was a Luddite phrase for what they were. Children of the Reduction, hardly better than the Reduced slaves who’d given birth to them. Identifying themselves as Post-Reductionists—Posts—or COR-sons gave them a little distance from their origins, and a little more independence from the Luddites who’d been their masters for so long.
    But Bartholomew had a point. Corson was too common of a surname. And Kai Post didn’t sound right either. Kai didn’t want to rush into choosing a new name, anyway. He couldn’t imagine writing to Elliot as Kai Corson. After all, where was the imagination in that?
    Not that he was actually going to write her. Certainly not. Though if he did and if he sent along a present, just to show how rich and forgiving he could be,