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before we’re bound?”
    I think on it. In another few months I might be weighted down with a baby like Soli and busy learning to manage the women at Luck’s mother’s side. But tonight, no one is looking for me. No one will notice I’m gone from my bed. It is the last night before I am fully a woman.
    And so I let him lead me from the garden.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
CHAPTER .6
    I follow Luck through a corridor that forks near the workrooms, and then down a laddered hatch into the hanging serviceways in the bowels of the ship. Heat rises on the wet air, reminding me of the dyerooms on the Parastrata . We walk single file above the humming tops of the generators, bathed in smudgy orange light.
    A man’s voice rings out in the echoes ahead. “. . . go and double back to get it.”
    Luck freezes in the middle of the gangway.
    â€œNight Fixes?” I whisper.
    Luck nods.
    â€œI thought you said—”
    â€œHsssh.” He pulls me after him, back the way we came. We round a corner, and Luck points soundlessly to a double-doored service locker built into the wall. I nod. He pulls both doors open with a faint squeak. Heart knocking, I step over a scatter of loose fixers and dead wires and wedge myself behind a crisscross of rebar, deep in the shadow of the locker. Luck jumps in after me and pulls the door closed. We crush together against the back wall.
    â€œStay still,” he whispers.
    His shoulder presses into my nose. He smells of pulped grass and faint sweat masked by soap, some kind of indefinable Luck smell that lights me up to my heels. I let my hand rest where it’s fallen on his chest and breathe slowly, trying to muffle the sound against him so the night Fixes won’t hear us.
    â€œ. . . point in him taking another wife, you know?” The voices grow louder.
    â€œTalk on,” a second man answers the first. “I’ve got some trouble what with only two.”
    Their steps ring close. Luck presses me against the wall. We both try to breathe shallow and slow, try not to shift our feet into the metal balanced precariously against the wall. Luck lowers his nose so it rests on top of my head. His breath is warm in my hair. I can make out every thread in his shirt, every lock of dark hair touching his neck, every pulse of blood working the veins under his skin. I should be worried about the Fixes, but all I can think on is the gentle bob of Luck’s Adam’s apple and the way his chest grazes mine.
    â€œYou see the bride they brought?”
    â€œYeh.”
    â€œShe’s got something odd to her, but I can’t figure it.”
    â€œDunno. To me, they’re all some odd with that hair and the way . . .” The voices fade below the generators’ hum.
    Luck and I stand fused in the back of the service locker. This is the last place I should feel safe, but I don’t want to leave.
    Luck steps back slowly, carefully. “I’m sorry,” he says, though I’m not sure if he means for touching me again or for what his crewemates said about me. He smiles nervously and pushes the doors open, holds out a hand to help me from the locker. “There’s only the one team of night Fixes. We shouldn’t see anyone else.”
    My heart is still skipping. I laugh, half from relief, half from giddiness. The sound fits strange in my throat, like it’s coming from some other girl. Maybe the girl I could be if I was Luck’s wife, without doors to lock me in at night. I grab his hand, and he pulls me into an almost-run. I feel as if the gravity’s low, as if my feet are barely touching the floor as we fly around corners and down a spiraling ramp.
    Luck skids us to a stop in front of a heavy, wheel-locked door. He sets his shoulder against the wheel and pushes until it gives with a brief shriek of