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in my slow moments waiting for bread to come out of the machine or lifting and agitating lengths of wool in the dye bath, about what it would be like to be Soli’s sister, to learn fixes and real figuring, to talk on things with Luck and wear neat-trimmed clothes every day.
    The chemical smell of dye cuts the air. Modrie Reller’s fingers dig into my scalp. Now Luck will be going on nineteen turns, the right age for taking a firstwife, and me to be married. To someone in the Æther crewe , Modrie Reller said. Perhaps to someone in the captain’s family, if my father matches our stations in the usual way.
    â€œWill I be a firstwife?” I ask Modrie Reller. My heart beats so hard I can almost taste it. Let it be Luck. Please let it be Luck .
    â€œYour father will have it raveled,” she repeats. She pushes my head down over the sink again.
    The dye burns. I close my eyes tight and grip the sides of the utility sink. To keep the pain at bay, I think on how it will be to be a bride. How the women will wash me with real, cool water, braid skeins of copper into my hair and slip bracelets over my wrists, fasten my birthright pendant around my neck, and solder coins to my bridal headdress. They will bind my hand to my husband’s at the wrist, and then . . . My imagination falters. After that, they’ll give me over to my husband’s crewe, and I’ll only ever see my ship and birthcrewe at runend meets. It’s too much, like the thought of stepping purposefully from the airlock into the cold nothing of the Void. My half-formed fantasies about Luck and Soli turn to vapor. My legs tremble, half at the thought of leaving my crewe, half from the strain of kneeling over the sink so long.
    â€œThere,” Modrie Reller says. She drops a cooling cloth over my head and neck. Iri helps me stand and wraps it in a turban. They have me sit and wait while the cloth does its work, taming the harshness of the dye and unbrittling my hair. When it’s done, Iri unwraps the turban and my hair falls in rust-red waves to my waist. For a little while, at least, I am still one of my crewe.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
CHAPTER .3
    M odrie Reller sends me off to oversee the smallgirls on kitchen duty. The narrow room is a bustle of hot pans and girls edging past one another with bowls of batter for the eggcakes we’ll bring to the meet. I divvy up the cooling cakes onto platters as they come out of the ovens. Kitchen duty is my favorite. It takes figuring and counting, which I am best at of all the women, better even than Modrie Reller, though I know enough not to say so.
    â€œCareful,” I call to Eme, a child of maybe seven turns, the daughter of my father’s fourthwife. She smacks an egg against the side of the bowl, dripping sticky white all over the table and flecking the dough with shell.
    â€œHere.” I swallow my annoyance. Seven turns is plenty long to learn how to crack an egg. I take one, rap it sharply against the counter, hold it over the bowl, and use my thumbnail to finish the job. “Right so?”
    Eme nods. I watch her take an egg, tap it more gently, and carefully empty its contents into the mixing bowl.
    â€œHow many did you put in?” I ask.
    â€œSix, like always,” she says.
    â€œBut we’re tripling the recipe,” I say. “So you need . . .”
    â€œSixteen?” she guesses.
    â€œNo,” I say. “Try again.”
    She counts silently to herself. “Eighteen?”
    â€œRight so,” I say.
    Modrie Reller appears in the doorway. “Ava,” she calls over the banging pans and sizzling oil. She looks sharp at me, and I know she’s seen me showing Eme figuring, which is dangerous close to flaunting. “Where are those cakes?”
    â€œNear done,” I call back. “Ten cooling, two cooking, two