Among the Nameless Stars Read Online Free PDF Page B

I say otherwise.”
    The woman approached, holding out the papers to him. Kai glanced down. That’s not all the contract said. It also specified that he’d live in the housing Pen owned and buy his food from the shops that Pen’s workers ran. He would bet that the prices were higher than the normal, if not higher than his salary, which—Kai checked—was not, in fact, the same as what he’d been paid by the tailor.
    But what good did knowing that do him? Kai had zero negotiating power. He was starving.
    He was weak. He had never learned to fight, had never needed to. Even if he did tell Pen he knew the contract was unfair, he had no ability to get it changed. The fact that he was literate was the only secret Kai had left. He wasn’t going to reveal it unless he had to.
    “I’m sorry,” the girl whispered to him as she handed him a pen. She held her other, ink-stained hand protectively over her belly. Now that she was close, he could see the roundness she tried to hide beneath her clothes. She was pregnant.
    A pregnant scribe, working for Pen. What were the odds?
    “Are you Bess?” Kai asked softly.
    She blinked in surprise. “Yes.”
    Kai closed his eyes for a long moment. So there was no escape. Not even if he wanted to go back home, like Bess had once hoped to. If Pen wanted him, Pen would have him, or he’d end up dead, like Sid.
    “Your letter got to Jin in the fire fields,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
    Then he signed the contract with a large black X.

    Among the Nameless Stars by Diana Peterfreund
    | 35
    Dear Elliot,
    You were right. You were right all along, and I hate you for it.
    I thought I was miserable on the North Estate. When I heard of Posts leaving their estates, I thought it was for the same reasons I wanted to leave. Freedom and the chance to make a better life. But now I see what they’re really running from, and what brand of “freedom”
    awaits them in the enclaves.
    I thought I was clever, but I don’t have any of the skills I need to get by here. I’m not tricky enough. I’m not strong enough. If only my father had taught me how to fight instead of how to fix a tractor. If you were here, could you have stopped me from being so foolish, so rash?
    Could we have figured out an escape together?
    But I forgot. For you, there was always an escape. You needed only to tell a passing Luddite who you were, and they would save you. They take care of their own. But we—we free Posts, who are so reckless as to leave the protection of our estate? We deserve everything we get.
    Kai

    Among the Nameless Stars by Diana Peterfreund
    | 36

Eight
    Dear Elliot,
    It’s spring again. I imagine you’re busy with planting, and I hope you’re doing what you can to keep that tractor in working order. I’ve written you so many letters in the past few months—mostly in my head. It would look too suspicious if I bought paper, not that I have much money to spare. Pen makes sure of that. No money to spare for extra food or lessons or savings of any sort. No money to spare, or then we might escape. But I can’t seem to break the habit of writing you letters, even if I don’t write half of them down and would never send those I do put on paper.
    I think of you constantly. Not just you but everyone on the North Estate. I can’t help it. It’s the only thing that’s gotten me through this winter. The people here, especially Pen’s people, are so different. Sometimes I talk to Bess, but only when we’re sure no one can hear us, since we usually talk about books. She would be beaten if they thought she was teaching me to read.
    The real secret is much more interesting. Because I’m the one teaching people to read. It’s the only escape I have left.

    Kai slid the paper beneath his toolbox as he heard footsteps behind him, and just in time, too, as Pen’s voice boomed through the warehouse. “Kai! Stop wasting time on that stupid fishing boat. I’ve got a more important job for you.”
    “Right