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stay you can visit our COR healers and teach them a thing or two. We’ve been at very loose ends since our doctor passed away.” Which he’d done before Elliot’s birth, Elliot thought wryly.
    “And maybe you would be so kind as to look in on my grandfather,” Elliot said.
    “The Boatwright?” asked the admiral, sitting up in his chair. “I was wondering, given the . . .”
    Given the fact that Baron North controlled the shipyard.
    “What is the nature of his infirmity?” Felicia asked quickly.
    “A series of strokes, starting from when I was a very young girl,” Elliot replied. “No one has been able to do much for him.”
    Felicia nodded gravely, and an uneasy silence hovered in the room. Once, much had been done for stroke victims, but the Reduction had changed all that. The mind of man was not meant to be rebuilt, even if broken.
    “Oh, that would be lovely if you could find a way to help the old man,” said Tatiana. “Provided you remain within the protocols, of course.”
    “Of course,” said Felicia, exchanging a small glance with Andromeda, who merely sipped her tea.
    Brazen, these Posts, with their flippant little glances. Elliot had never seen anything like it, even in the North Posts’ most unguarded moments. The protocols had defined the Luddite way of life since the Reduction. It was simple: genetic enhancements had destroyed humanity. Advanced technology in the ensuing wars had nearly destroyed the world. The Luddites restricted both, and rebuilt. Elliot had long wondered if the Luddites’ strict rules had managed to atone for humanity’s sins all these years later. Was the rise of the Posts the result of their adherence to the protocols?
    And if so, what had she done by experimenting with the wheat?
    Tatiana’s words had been a test, and Felicia’s response neither as emphatic nor as automatic as Tatiana was used to seeing. It must come of the fact that these people owed nothing to the Luddite lords and therefore had nothing to fear from them, either. This behavior from one of their own servants would have sent Tatiana through the roof several minutes ago. But no, her sister seemed preoccupied with the weave of the tassels on Felicia’s shoulder epaulets.
    “Ah, here he is,” said the admiral, bounding from his chair to the window. Two figures in free Post dress were coming up the steps of the porch. “Miss Elliot, I’m excited to introduce you to the pilot of the ship we’ll be building here, to the captain of the Argos —”
    But Elliot saw him clearly through the window. She needed no introduction.
    No midnight blue jacket, no new, longer haircut, no strange, noble bearing—nothing would serve to disguise him to her eyes. She had only a moment to compose herself and then he walked into the room. Into her house, for the first time in years.
    “Miss Elliot,” said the admiral, as she staggered to her feet. Out shot her hand, reluctantly, mechanically, obeying a courtesy so ingrained as to be unconscious. He was taller now. Taller than her. And though he turned in her direction, his hand did not rise to meet hers, and his eyes remained fixed on the mantel beyond her head. “May I present Captain Malakai Wentforth.”
    “Hello.” His voice was the same. It rang through Elliot’s body like a thunderclap announcing a storm.
    “Hello,” said Elliot, for parroting him was all she could trust herself to say, there in her old, worn clothes, with her braids all mussed; there, in the same room with the same furniture and the same fire and her hand floating in the air between them, curling out into space like a misguided vine, yearning desperately for him to reach across the distance and touch her again.
    Hello, Kai.

F OUR Y EARS A GO
     
    Dear Kai,
    The sun is probably streaming in through the big barn windows now, which means you’re awake. And if you’re awake, it means you’re wondering where I went.
    I haven’t run away from you, I promise. But I knew that today of all