For Darkness Shows the Stars

carried in a litter if you cannot walk on your own feet.”
    The Boatwright’s expression softened, and he directed his next gestures at Felicia. You. Pain. Fix.
    “Yes, I am a healer.”
    The Boatwright began to make another sign, then sighed and shot a look at Elliot.
    Felicia turned to her. “Perhaps, dear, you’d like to wait in the hall? I think it would be easier for your grandfather to speak to me without you present.”
    Elliot did as she was told. When Felicia emerged, several minutes later, Elliot jumped out of her seat and turned to her in anticipation. “Well?”
    She smiled. “That man is very proud of you.”
    Elliot shook her head. “You can’t get that from Reduced signs.”
    “You’re right about that.” The woman’s salt-and-pepper curls were escaping from their braid and frizzing in a halo around her head. Her freckled face bore an expression of almost motherly concern. Elliot recoiled by instinct, and Felicia definitely noticed. She withdrew the arm she’d already been reaching in the girl’s direction. “But he says you have his daughter’s heart. I extrapolated.”
    “You were here to see about his health.” Elliot didn’t need this woman’s pity.
    “It’s very bad, Elliot, but this is no surprise to you. He sleeps, I think, because he has strokes all day long, every day. Thousands of tiny strokes that snap the neurons in his head. He’s dying.”
    Elliot nodded miserably.
    “There are medicines we can give him that will ease his pain, stop the palsy, and maybe even slow the progression of his descent, but you cannot fix it. Not with the means we have at our disposal.”
    The rest was clear. The protocols were killing her grandfather, just as they were strangling the life out of this estate. No wonder the Lost had been so tempted! No wonder Elliot had been.
    “Come. Don’t be sad. Your grandfather is an old man, and he has lived a great life. If you are alone this evening, then you should come back to the Boatwright house with me.”
    “No, thank you,” said Elliot, though she kept her tone mild. She had no desire to go to the Boatwright house. Not with Kai there. Yet she knew Felicia was only trying to be kind. The Boatwright’s illness was not her fault, and as Felicia had said, Elliot’s grandfather had lived a long life, unlike Felicia’s own daughter.
    “Then how about a tour?” Felicia asked. “Your sister showed me the house and the star cavern. Why don’t you show me the fields? We can take the Innovation horses. I’ve missed riding, since we brought no horses of our own.”
    “I’m a poor rider.”
    “We’ll go slow.” Felicia was determined, and Elliot had run out of excuses.

Twelve
     
    ELLIOT SWAYED UNEASILY IN the saddle. This was not like Tatiana’s pony, on which she’d learned to ride, nor like the chestnut mare her father had bought her sister after their mother had passed. Mounting the Innovation horse, even though it was a mare, felt more like climbing on the back of an elephant.
    She understood now why the Innovation horses had made their masters such an enormous fortune. The Innovations had a monopoly on them; they only sold geldings and mares, and thus far, the attempts to breed the mares with normal horses had not yielded out-of-the-ordinary results.
    Elliot’s mare was named Pyrois, while Felicia rode on the back of the other mare, Aeos. “The horses of the sun,” she said as they rode out past the fence that encircled the barn.
    “Indeed,” Felicia replied. “Unless your father sees fit to rename them.”
    Elliot laughed. “My father is not the most inventive man, even when it comes to names. Tatiana was the name of my mother’s mother, and Elliot my mother’s father.”
    “Did you ever find it strange,” said Felicia, “that they gave you the name of a son?”
    “My mother knew she’d never have one,” Elliot said. She led them into a fallow field to cut across to the woods. “There were . . . complications during my birth.” But they were edging perilously close to ground Elliot feared to tread. She didn’t want to talk to this woman, this healer, about how Elliot’s mother had survived the day of Elliot’s birth when Kai’s and Ro’s mothers had not.
    “Did you name these horses?” she asked quickly. “I have long been a fan of Greek mythology.”
    “I did. I am fond of it as well.” Felicia coaxed Aeos into a trot, then leaped over the split rail that bordered the field. Elliot gritted her