Read Online Salvage by Alexandra Duncan - Free Book Online Page B

metal.
    â€œWhere are we?” I whisper.
    He points to a lettered sign bolted to the door and grins.
    I look up at the sign. I know the letters for my own name, A-V-A , but beyond spotting two A s in the loops and lines on the door sign, I can’t figure it. I bite my lip and look at Luck. I shake my head.
    His smile dies.
    â€œI’m sorry.” My voice wavers. “I lied.”
    â€œDon’t worry on it now.” He smiles at me again, gently, and tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. My skin tingles at his touch. “We’re going swimming.”
    He leans against the door. It swings open on a dim, sloping room filled wall to wall with water. Light from bioluminescent fish and phosphorous deposits crusting the depths lend the water and air an uncanny glow. My mouth falls open. I know it’s only the Æther ’s desalination pool, but I feel as if I’ve stepped out of time, as if I’ve stumbled into the Mercies’ private realm.
    â€œIt’s beautiful,” I say.
    When crewes like ours come across a water-bearing planet, we mostly find salt oceans or ice. On the Parastrata , we leach most of our salt out in tanks, but before the water can go through the finer filters and come out potable, it rests awhile in a pond lined with scrubber fish and plants designed to nip out the extra sodium. The Æther ’s desalination pool dwarfs ours. It looks deep as two men and far enough across to swallow up the galley. Water weeds sway in the shallows.
    Luck strides down the gentle slope to the water’s edge and pulls his shirt up over his head. The lines of his shoulder blades cut sharp bows in his pale back. He turns and looks up at me, something a little wicked in his eye. “Coming in?”
    I shift my feet. Suddenly it comes to me how he’ll see the dull foreignness of me once I shed my shirt and skirts. He’ll see all of me.
    â€œYou’ll like it, I promise,” Luck says. “The salt’ll keep you from sinking.”
    â€œI . . . I don’t want you to watch me,” I say.
    â€œWhat if I look away till you’re in?”
    I rub one foot against an ankle beneath my skirts. It’s some hot here below the Æther ’s cool, civilized berth, and my skin itches with sweat. Half of me wishes Luck was only Llell or Soli so it would be easier to splash into the pool, but the part of me making my heart skip and my skin flush is glad it’s Luck.
    â€œAll right,” I say. My voice sounds dangerous, older.
    Luck kicks off his trousers and wades into the pool. I try not to look until he’s well beneath the surface, but that small seed of recklessness makes me glance up in time to see the full length of his back diving into the water.
    I tug the ties of my skirts loose and try to breathe steady. “Don’t look,” I yell.
    â€œI’m not,” he calls back. He dives and disappears in a flash of feet.
    I take a deep breath. He’s going to be my husband. We’ll be bound in a day or two anyway, so I might as well get over my shyness now. In one quick breath, I shed my skirts, strip off my shirt, wrap my arms across my chest, and rush into the pool, naked except for my data pendant and the copper bands. The water hits me with a warm slap, the tickle of sea plants slippery on the soles of my feet. I duck down to wet my hair and wade deeper. The water salts my lips and buoys me with each step, even under the added weight of the copper. My pendant floats, petal light, before me.
    Luck surfaces. The phosphorous and fish light him from below in shifting patterns, making him look like a creature out of the tales the wives told us as smallgirls while we helped them spin wool. I glance down at his body and then my own, distorted beneath the surface of the pool. Our skin looks near the same in the half light, near enough maybe it won’t make him stare.
    â€œYour hair looks darker when it’s wet,”