“If it was important for you to have the skill of reading,” said Sybil, “do you not think I would have ensured that you were taught? But you are not here to be educated. You are here because we have hopes of curing you. You are here to supply us with shell blood so that we might study your deficiencies and, perhaps, someday we will know how to fix you. When that day comes, you will be reintroduced as full citizens of Luna.” Her words turned sharp. “But until that day, you have no place in civilized society, and no purpose beyond the blood that runs through your veins. Reading is a privilege that you have not earned.”
She stopped in front of Cress and turned to face her. Cress cowered, though she wished that she hadn’t. There would be no medal of bravery today.
Reading was a privilege she had not earned. Except … she felt that she had. She had learned the language of computers and networks and she had learned the language of letters and sounds and she had done it all on her own. Wasn’t that earning it?
It didn’t matter now. Knowledge was something that Sybil could never take away from her.
“Crescent.”
She shuddered and forced herself to look up. She braced herself for a reprimand—Sybil certainly looked angry enough.
But instead, Sybil said, “You will have your blood taken first today, and then you will prepare for a departure. I have a new assignment for you.”
* * *
Cress held the bandage against her elbow as she followed Mistress through the underground tunnels that connected the shell dormitories to the rest of Luna’s capital city. The shells were kept separated from the rest of society because supposedly they were dangerous. They couldn’t be manipulated by the Lunar gift, which meant they posed a threat to the queen and the rest of the aristocracy, those Lunars who were able to manipulate the minds of people around them. It had, in fact, been an enraged shell who had assassinated the previous king and queen, leading to the banishment of shells in the first place.
Cress had heard the story a hundred times—this proof that people like her weren’t fit to be around other Lunars. That they needed to be fixed before they could be trusted. But still she couldn’t understand it.
She knew that she wasn’t dangerous, and most of the other shells were children like her. Almost all of them had been taken from their families when they were newborns.
How could someone as powerful as Queen Levana be afraid of someone like her?
But no matter how many times she tried to get a better explanation from Sybil, she was rebuked. Don’t argue. Don’t ask questions. Give me your arm.
At least, since Sybil had learned of Cress’s affinity for computers, she had started to pay a bit more attention to her. Some of the other kids were starting to get frustrated. They said that Cress was becoming a favorite. They were jealous that Sybil kept taking her out of the dorms—no one else ever left the dorms, and Cress had even gotten to go to the palace a few times, a story that the younger kids never tired of hearing about, even though Cress had only gone in through the servants’ passages and been taken straight to the security control center. She hadn’t seen the throne room or anything interesting like that, and she certainly hadn’t seen the queen herself. Still, it was more than most anyone else in the dormitories had seen, and they loved to hear her tell the tale, over and over again.
She suspected that Sybil was taking her to the palace again this time, until Mistress took a turn that she had never taken before. Cress almost tripped over her own feet in surprise. The guard, pacing an arm’s reach from her (because, again, she was dangerous), cast her a cool glare.
“Where are we going, Mistress?”
“The docks,” Sybil answered without pretense.
The docks.
The spaceship docks?
Cress furrowed her brow. She hadn’t been to the docks before. Did Sybil need her to program special surveillance equipment into one of the royal ships? Or update the parameters for the ships that could enter and exit Artemisia?
Or …
Her heart started to thump, although she did her best to temper it. She should not hope. She should not let herself be excited. Because the thought that Sybil might be taking her on a ship … that she might be going into space …
Her eagerness was almost too much to bear. She knew that she shouldn’t let herself wish for it, but she wished anyway. Oh, the stories she would tell. The little kids would crowd around her to hear all about her space adventure. She started looking around the corridor with new eyes, trying to mentally record every last detail that she could take back to them later.
But these corridors were so bland, with their polished-smooth stone walls, that there wasn’t much to tell. Not yet.
“Mistress,” she ventured to ask, “what will you have me do at the docks?”
Sybil was silent for so long that Cress began to regret asking. Maybe she’d angered her. Sybil didn’t like being asked rudimentary questions. She didn’t like it much when Cress talked at all, other than Yes, Mistress and Of course, Mistress and I would be happy to complete this task for you, Mistress.
And though Cress had never been fond of Sybil—had, in fact, been terrified of her since before she could remember—she still wanted Sybil to be fond of her. She wanted Mistress to be proud. She imagined Sybil bragging about her to the queen, telling Her Majesty of the young prodigy in her care, who could be so much more useful to the crown if she weren’t trapped in those awful dormitories all the time. Cress hoped that if she could impress Sybil enough, someday the queen would have to take notice of her. Maybe she would be offered a job and she could prove that shells weren’t dangerous after all. That they want to belong and be good, loyal Lunars just like anyone. Maybe, just maybe, the queen would listen to her.
“Do you remember,” said Sybil, jolting Cress from a daydream in which Queen Levana herself was praising Cress for her brilliance and essential service to the crown, “when I asked you about conducting more extensive surveillance on the leaders of the Earthen Union?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“You told me then that our current software was unsuited for the surveillance we had in mind. That the feeds were too easily disrupted or dropped. That the very act of obtaining live audio feeds from Earth would no doubt be noticed, and likely traced back to us. Is that correct?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
Sybil nodded. “Your work has been invaluable to me of late, Crescent.”
Cress’s lips parted. It was rare to hear anything remotely resembling praise from Sybil, and her chest warmed at her words. They turned a corner and the corridor ended at an enormous set of double doors.
“I believe,” Sybil continued, not looking at Cress as she pressed her fingertips to a scanner on the wall, “that I have resolved all of the dilemmas that were keeping us from achieving our objectives.”
The doors slid open. Cress followed Sybil onto a wide platform that encircled a cavernous domed space, filled with the shimmering white bodies of royal spaceships. The floor beneath them was glowing, casting the shadows of the ships onto black ceilings. At the far end of the dock, the massive barrier between the atmosphere-controlled area and outer space was sealed tight.
What was more—there were people.
Not many, but a dozen at least, mingling around one of the larger ships. They were too far to see clearly, but Cress could make out vibrant-colored clothing, and one of the men was wearing an enormous hat and—