For Darkness Shows the Stars

who we are born to be, Kai. The Reduced are Reduced. They will always be Reduced. And I will always be a Luddite. I was born this way. I will die this way. I can’t turn my back on that. Luddites were handed a sacred trust—we are the caretakers of humanity. Without us, the world would have burned, and all mankind would have been destroyed. I cannot ignore that. I cannot forget who I am.
    But you are not a Luddite.
    That’s why I cannot go with you. And also why I can’t ask you to stay.
    God be with you.
    Yours,
    Elliot

Twenty-six
     
    ELLIOT HAD ALWAYS HATED the birthing house. Of all the indignities the Reduced were forced to endure on the North estate, this was the worst. Left to their own devices, too many Reduced women harmed themselves or their unborn babies during the final stages of pregnancy. Many, following some sort of primal, animal instinct, wandered off the estate and hid when they went into labor. Without assistance, they didn’t survive the birth. Afterward, it was no easier—both Reduced mother and baby needed special care. Long ago, it had been deemed necessary to literally confine mothers for the months before and after birth, which came with its own troubles, especially when there weren’t enough caretakers on the estate.
    Eighteen years ago, the mothers of Ro and Kai had died in the birthing house when the estate’s healers had been called to Victoria North’s bedside to deliver Elliot. They’d died helpless and alone, and it was a miracle that they hadn’t taken their newborn infants with them.
    And now Dee was trapped here, with a single Post nurse to watch over her and all the pregnant Reduced women and their babies. Elliot could hardly contain her dismay when she saw her friend among the cots, surrounded by bawling infants and their exhausted, hollow-eyed mothers. The windows had been shut to keep out the cold, and the smell of sour milk and soiled baby clothes hung in the stale air.
    “Don’t feel bad for me, Elliot,” Dee said, her tone more cheerful than it had any right to be. She was knitting despite the gloom. It was winter, so there weren’t even any fresh flowers Elliot could have brought in to relieve the drab daub walls and everyone’s plain gowns. She needed to recruit Ro and her house-grown blooms. “I’m experienced at this now. And I have the opportunity to help these women get the hang of things.”
    Around them, the Reduced women in the other beds lolled, staring dumbly at the ceilings and occasionally moaning with discomfort. The ones in the latest stages of their pregnancy were even secured to their beds to keep them from wandering off. Elliot abhorred the practice, but there was little choice in the matter—there weren’t enough people to watch over them. Several of the women in the beds nearest Dee were Elliot’s age, or even younger. Elliot balled her hands in her lap. Ro would wither here. These other Reduced girls must be miserable.
    “How’s Jef?” Dee asked, her bright tone not fooling Elliot at all.
    “Staying with Gill and Mags,” said Elliot. “He’s helping Gill in the dairy today, but he said he’d be by this afternoon.”
    “I’m glad there are still Posts on this land to take care of him in my absence,” said Dee. “He’s not old enough to be on his own, as Kai was when Mal passed.”
    “I don’t know if Kai was old enough to be on his own, either. Maybe he wouldn’t have run away if he was placed with a Post family instead of left alone in the barn.”
    “And then where would he be?” asked Dee. “Things seemed to have worked out for the best.”
    He’d still be human, for one thing, thought Elliot. It had been a week since the disaster on the cliff, a week since she’d fought with Kai in the barn, and she hadn’t seen him since. Olivia still hadn’t woken up, either, and reports placed her devastated brother and equally devastated admirer, Captain Malakai Wentforth, at her bedside night and day.
    Elliot had been too scared to visit Olivia and risk running into Kai, but she reasoned that if the girl was still in a coma, she wouldn’t notice Elliot’s absence. And while she waited, she couldn’t stop thinking about her argument with Kai in the barn. She’d been foolish, she’d been hasty, and, most of all, she’d been too unguarded with her feelings.
    “Dee?” she asked. “Would it be wrong to accept money for something you were planning on doing anyway?”
    Dee narrowed her eyes. “You’re asking the