For Darkness Shows the Stars

don’t need to see the trail to know you’re at the end of it. My grandfather’s compass may not work, but mine is still true.
    Yours,
    Elliot
        
     
    E,
    Your da made me move to the laborers’ barracks. Find me there.
    K
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    I’ve sent this letter through the hands of Mags. I trust that it has come to you safely. Mags and Gill will offer you lodging in their cottage. You should take it. So far, however, I can do nothing about the work order. My father is being very unreasonable—there is no other Post on the estate as qualified as you to be his mechanic. I don’t know what he’s thinking!
    You don’t think Case said anything, do you?
    Don’t worry, I’m sure my father will come around. Eventually.
    Yours,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    I miss you. And I miss the barn. It’s not that fieldwork is hard, but it is so boring. Gill told me the tractor broke. He’s sneaking me into the barn tonight to fix it.
    Meet me there.
    Yours,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    I have wonderful news. My father’s record player broke tonight. He needs someone to fix it. I wonder who that could be?
    Yours,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    Another night in the barn . . . alone. There’s nothing to fix. There’s nothing to build. And you can’t come because your father is at home. I thought the fields were bad, but I’m here with my machines and I’m still bored out of my skull.
    Did you hear that Case has left for points unknown?
    Yours,
    Kai

Ten
     
    ELLIOT HOPED TO BE free of further interactions with the Posts after Tatiana finished her tour of the sanctuary, but she wasn’t granted the opportunity. As soon as Olivia was back on the surface, she started dropping heavy hints about taking a spin in the sun-carts, and before Elliot knew it, she’d been conscripted into a cart along with Tatiana and the Phoenixes. Kai drove the Groves and Felicia Innovation in the other cart.
    The carts consisted of three-wheeled platforms, with a long bench seat in front and two tiny bucket seats in back, right before the panel of angled, golden mirrors that supplied the carts with their power. Metal frames arced over their heads for support and handholds, but the carts were open to the air. The control panels, to Elliot’s eye, were no more complex than she might find on one of the estate’s ancient tractors.
    “If you’re planning a long ride,” said Elliot, climbing into the shotgun seat, “perhaps you can drop me off at the barn? There are some things I need to see to yet today.”
    “Certainly,” Andromeda replied. She signaled to Kai to take the road toward the barn. He frowned but complied, and they were off.
    Tatiana gripped the handrails firmly. “I have things to see to this afternoon as well. My hostessing duties have, I’m afraid, forced me to fall behind on some pressing household matters.”
    Elliot wondered what those could possibly be. New flower arrangements for the table?
    “Is that how you divide up your work on the estate?” Donovan asked. “You manage the household while Elliot takes care of the farm?”
    Had their duties been a topic of conversation among all the members of the Fleet?
    “My father, as head of our estate, manages the farm,” said Tatiana. “He controls all the movement of the workers and the crop planning.”
    To their detriment, Elliot wanted to add.
    “Elliot just likes to play at gardening. She’s much like our mother in that way.”
    Elliot looked out over the fields and toward the sea. Contradicting her sister would only embarrass them all.
    Up ahead, Kai had turned the controls of the sun-cart over to Olivia, and the machine noticeably slowed, moving in awkward jerks and jumps as the girl got a handle on its operation.
    Donovan sucked a breath in through his teeth. “Wentforth’s got to be going crazy watching her ruin the transmission like that. She can’t push the brakes at the same time as the accelerator.”
    “Perhaps,” Andromeda replied as they swerved off the road to pass the other cart. “He probably has more patience with the sister than he would with the brother, though.”
    “Knowing him,” said Donovan.
    Elliot grimaced at the Post’s words. Knowing him . When she had known him, he’d been nothing like that. Or had he? Did she just never notice because she’d been the recipient of his attentions?
    Elliot looked away from the other cart. It was silly to make anything of it at all, no matter what Andromeda had