For Darkness Shows the Stars

all—”
    He raised his eyes from the papers to meet hers and Elliot promptly snapped her mouth shut. “Tomorrow,” he repeated.

Twenty
     
    “YOU SHOULD LEAVE.”
    Dee blew some hair out of her eyes and exchanged the full bucket of milk for an empty one before leaning back under the cow. “And leave Jef behind? Your father wouldn’t like it either way, I’d wager. Nor me running off with one of his new Posts hiding in my belly.”
    Elliot had come to the new, makeshift dairy first thing that morning hoping to catch Dee before the shifts changed. Around them, the Reduced dairymaids were hard at work, but there were no other Posts within earshot when Elliot delivered her father’s decree. “My father hardly cares if Jef’s a Post, nor you, nor your baby. He wouldn’t be confining you to the birthing house if he did.” Elliot crouched down beside Dee. “You can’t stay there, Dee. You have a home . . . a family.”
    “But it’s okay for Reduced women to stay there for a year, confined to their beds like animals in a cage?” Dee didn’t look up from her milking. “The birthing house is torture for everyone, Elliot, not just Posts. You know that, too, or you wouldn’t have so carefully protected Ro all these years.”
    Elliot flinched. “You think I’m being cruel to the Reduced?”
    “I think the world is cruel to them,” Dee said. “Because the world is a cruel place. This estate is a cruel place, but there are other places far more cruel.”
    Like Andromeda’s old estate. Like the dangerous areas of the Post enclaves. Yes, there were places worse than the North estate, but many of the North Posts were willing to risk it, anyway. Why wasn’t Dee?
    Dee leaned back and puffed out a misty breath. The frost had come, late last night, blanketing the lawns and roofs of the estate in silver. The day promised to be gorgeous, but it was still too early for the sun to break through the mist. “Speaking of cruelty to the Reduced, what’s this I hear about Benedict North?”
    “He’s come back,” Elliot replied. “And father brought him.”
    “Will wonders never cease.” Dee’s eyes narrowed. “What do you think it means? Is your father planning on handing over his inheritance?”
    Elliot gave her friend a skeptical look. They both knew Baron North too well for that. But Benedict was aware of what he was owed. “Too early to tell what my father has planned.”
    Dee considered this for a moment. “Elliot, what if I did as he said? Go there for a bit, wait until his attention is elsewhere, come back? If we’re agreed that your father is only doing this because of the concert or because of our relationship . . . well, he’ll find something else to occupy his thoughts soon enough. It’s happened before. And if he’s concerned about Benedict, I don’t want my defiance to become a scapegoat for his frustration.”
    “Or we could tell him you went in, and really you could go . . . elsewhere.”
    “Else . . . where?”
    “The Grove estate. Or wherever it is Thom has gone.”
    “Elliot . . . ,” Dee said in warning.
    “Or what about asking the Innovations?” Elliot suggested. “We could talk to Felicia. I know she would help us.”
    Dee looked skeptical.
    “They aren’t all like . . . him.”
    “Oh, don’t you worry about Captain Malakai Wentforth,” said Dee. “He’s been all apologies this morning. Dropped by my cottage at dawn, and he’s been helping Gill with some of his mechanical difficulties for the past few hours.”
    “He’s been what ?” Elliot asked in disbelief.
    “Amazingly contrite. I think he knows he was over the line last night. Maybe he’d had too much cider.”
    “The Groves’ cider isn’t that strong.”
    “Well then, maybe he just realized it’s a good deal harder to defend his behavior in front of people who actually know you than it was to make up lies for that Phoenix girl. Either way, I expect he’ll be coming by to apologize to you any time now.”
    Elliot rubbed her wrists where Kai had grabbed her at the concert. “I think not.” He may have insulted the North Posts last night, but he had nothing against Gill or Dee personally. He was angry at Elliot.
    And he’d spent years with Andromeda Phoenix, who had a much more concrete reason to hate Luddites. Their friendship had fanned his anger into hatred.
    “As for throwing myself at the Innovations,” Dee continued, “that’s a nonstarter. We shouldn’t risk their