by Sharon Shinn
“Where is he now? Solvano?”
“Died a few years back.”
“Did your dad go to the funeral?”
Melina shook her head, her eyes wide with more revelations. “He was buried on Gold Mountain. Well, of course, none of the indigo would attend such an event. I don’t even think the Solvanos went.”
“And Kitrini? What happened to her then?”
“I think she stayed in Geldricht until just a few months ago. I know Lorimela Candachi put a lot of effort into trying to make her come home. I don’t know why she decided to return when she did.”
“To see Jex in jail,” Nolan suggested.
“He’s only been here a month. She came back a while before that. Who knows? As I said, I’ve never met her, so I wouldn’t know why she would do anything. But she sure is interesting.”
“I would think,” Nolan said cautiously, “that she’d be ostracized. I’m amazed that her grandmother hasn’t cut her off. But with an upbringing like that—even if she wasn’t involved with Jex Zanlan, I would think the rest of the Higher Hundred would pretend she doesn’t even exist.”
Melina nodded seriously. “I think some of them do.”
“I mean,” he said awkwardly, “Leesa. I can’t imagine that she’d ever allow somebody like Kitrini Candachi to walk through her mother’s door. She’s very traditional.”
“I’m not sure my mother would welcome Kitrini Candachi, so you don’t need to apologize for Leesa,” Melina said gently.
“But—you seem pretty forgiving,” he went on, still feeling clumsy and confused, but wanting to know. “Why is that?”
“I’m a city girl,” Melina said softly. She glanced briefly out at the crowded skyline visible from her window. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m as blue as they come. I’m going to marry a man of my mother’s choosing and run the land the way my ancestors have run it for thousands of years, and I’m going to give my daughters every advantage my heritage allows. But … Living in the city changes you. It shows you that life can be different from the way you were always taught. It makes you a little less quick to judge.”
“My mother would never understand how I could feel so much respect for Pakt,” Nolan said.
Melina nodded. “And my mother would never believe that I could be friends with Colt. Actually like him, want to hear what he has to say, and trust his opinion. On some matters, anyway. So this is what the city has done for us.”
Nolan attempted a smile. “Ruined us for the lives we were born for.”
“No, no, no,” Melina said swiftly. “Made us part of the vanguard of change.”
“Our society will not change,” Nolan scoffed. “The blueskin world? It will go on for centuries as it has always gone on.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Melina said seriously. “Change may come slowly, but it will come. And it’s people like us who will allow it to happen.”
* * *
* * *
But Melina’s words rang hollow not three days later, when there was an incident over at the Carbonnier Extension. This was a strip of semi-mountainous land that had always belonged to the gulden. But then, the valley that contained the city had, a hundred years ago, belonged to the gulden, and so had the rocky but arable miles of farmland that extended for a hundred miles to the east of the city.
The indigo had gradually but implacably taken over that land, decade by decade, crowding the gulden back farther and farther toward the Katlin Divide and up to the edge of the Varho Sea. The battle for the valley had been protracted and bloody, and the gulden ruler of that time had vowed that the indigo would never advance another acre into gulden territory. In fact, treaties signed twenty years ago had spelled out that very provision: Here the indigo property ends, here the gulden land begins.
That was before the city had grown so crowded; that was before agreements with two continents four thousand miles away had turned the city into a trade center with an urgent need for growth. Hence, Ariana Bayless and her colleagues had commandeered a tract of land “for development” about fifteen miles west of the city. It was small by standards of indigo imperialism in the past, but it was still an unauthorized annexation; and Chay Zanlan had made it clear that he was not about to allow it tamely.
Negotiations between indigo and gulden had been heated, but cooled somewhat when Ariana Bayless began offering money for the land she had at first just blithely overtaken. Chay had seemed willing to entertain proposals, but many of the other gulden clan chiefs had expressed outrage and hostility at the idea of giving up another square foot of land to the indigo raiders, even for a hefty price. No one had protested more vehemently than Jex Zanlan, whose bombing of the medical center had been in protest of the plans for the Carbonnier Extension.
Even after Jex was imprisoned, there had been disturbances over the land marked for expansion—two minor explosions and one fairly spectacular brawl between indigo laborers and gulden protestors. No one had been seriously hurt in any of these instances. The rebels seemed more interested in drawing attention than inciting widespread violence. Though that didn’t make them any more popular.
This time, the incident was a little more serious. It occurred on a day when several high-level city officials went to tour the construction site, bringing maps and timetables of their own to compare against the progress made so far. Two members of the delegation were from Ariana Bayless’s office. They were joined by bankers, city planners, and news reporters.
And while they were touring the only completed building at the construction site, they were firebombed.
As the wood and stone of the building melted into ecstatic flame, indigo workers dashed for the conflagration and sent out calls to the city for emergency help. But the guldmen who had thrown the bomb raced out past the blazing structure to prevent rescuers from reaching the scene. There was a sudden and bloody struggle in the muddy ground under construction. Cinders and burning splinters drifted over the heads of the shouting combatants while the fire leapt and writhed nearby. The gulden had strength and skill on their side, but the indigo had numbers, which were shortly reinforced. Screaming sirens heralded the approach of city security, and most of the gulden scattered at the sound. The one who remained was facedown in a shallow ditch, and upon examination, he proved to be dead.
The construction office itself had been engulfed in flames so hungry that the building had been totally consumed. Most of the mayor’s delegation had managed to scramble to safety when the first explosions bloomed into fire. When the security forces arrived and accounts were being taken, it was learned that one of the bankers and one of Ariana Bayless’s assistants were missing. Volunteers cautiously entered the smoking shell of the building and began searching through the wreckage. The banker was found, unconscious, pinned under a fallen beam and almost unrecognizable with soot. She was freed and carried to safety.
Ariana Bayless’s aide was not so lucky. She appeared to have died of smoke inhalation, for there were only minor burns on her chest and none of her clothes had been charred away. When her body was discovered, the other delegate from the mayor’s office, a young man fresh up from the country, grew so upset he had to be sedated. The other representatives appeared to be incapacitated by shock.
News of the tragedy seemed to sweep through the city like a treacherous storm. It had occurred a little after noon; by two P.M., there was no one in the whole city who had not heard the details. Work at the Biolab halted completely, as all the blueskins huddled together in Melina’s office and the guldmen found themselves standing silently in Pakt’s. Violence between races had been a common thing generations ago, but Ariana Bayless and the mayor before her had enacted and maintained strict laws of nonaggression. There were bitter words, sometimes, and quick, hot arguments in the streets; but no guldman had died at the hands of an indigo vigilante in ten years, and certainly no blueskin had been killed by a gulden man in that same
length of time.
Response from Ariana Bayless’s office came down within a few hours. Curfew for all gulden males lasting from sunset to dawn every day until further notice. Any gulden male in company with more than one other gulden male would be subject to arrest or interrogation. Any gulden male within two miles of the Carbonnier Extension subject to arrest or interrogation. Conditions to be in force until further notice.
“This is bad,” Melina whispered as, with the other technicians, she watched Ariana make her announcement over a tiny news screen Pakt kept in his office. The albinos and the guldmen had joined them, though they had all unconsciously gathered into groups divided by race. “This is only going to make things worse.”
“This is what you’d expect from lying blueshi women who don’t respect treaties and then blame others for breaking the peace,” Colt said in a hard voice. Varella turned toward him angrily, but Pakt stepped forward, practically shoving Colt aside.
“Don’t,” Pakt said sharply. “If it means we have no conversation between races at all, I don’t want to hear a single insult, not even the smallest joke. Do you all understand me? Colt? Do you understand me?”
Colt stared back at him, defiant and angry, but nodded slowly. Pakt looked over at the indigo women. “Varella? Melina? I want civility in this office, do you hear me?”
“If he doesn’t keep needling everybody,” Varella burst out.
Melina elbowed her in the ribs. “Be quiet,” she said to Varella, and then to Pakt, “We hear you. What do we do if somebody tries to start an argument?”
“Bring it to me. At the first word, bring it to me. All of you. You don’t want trouble to come to Cerisa’s ears no matter who you are.”
“All right,” Melina said.
“All right,” Pakt echoed her. “Now. Everybody back to their offices. No gathering around gossiping. It’ll just make things worse. If I see any two of you talking together for more than a few minutes, I’m going to break it up. For as long as the curfew lasts. We all just need to do our jobs, and try to get through this.”
Silence followed his words. No one knew what to say or who to look at. Then Melina shrugged, nodded, and walked out the door. The blueskins followed her, the albinos behind them, and the guldmen in the rear. Nolan hurried to his office, head down, thoughts spinning through his brain in a rushed, unsettled whirl. This was bad, as Melina had said. But it seemed a sloppy misstep on a ladder suspended over terrors. All his instincts screamed that somehow it could all get worse.
CHAPTER FIVE
When Kit got the message from Jex, she felt her heart start its stupid, painful pounding; her breath instantly felt sharp and spiny in her lungs. She had not expected to be allowed to see him while Chay was in town. What few hours he would be allotted for visitors must surely go to his father—that only made sense—and so she had steeled herself to the knowledge that she would not see him again for a week at least, maybe two. His captors were capricious. They had no discernible schedule of visitation.
But here was the note in his usual peremptory hand, telling her to come to his prison that afternoon, for he had been granted an hour. She could hardly think. An hour. What should she wear, what picture could she make to sustain him through the bitter, colorless days of his confinement? She must return to her grandmother’s, where her few fancy clothes were stored. Sereva’s, where she had stayed the past few nights, held only her drab workaday outfits, and those clearly would not do.
“I must leave for a few hours,” she told Del, for the note had come to her at the charity bank. “I’ll be back this afternoon.”
The guldwoman nodded indifferently and went back to her financial accounts. Kit could not shake off the feeling that Del did not care one way or another if this high-caste blueskin ever again stepped across the threshold into her line of vision. It was discouraging. Kit wanted so much to make a difference, enact dramatic changes in the lives of the suffering city gulden, and as far as she could tell, none of them even noticed her presence—or if they did, viewed her with an exhausted suspicion.
But she would change all that. Surely with time, persistence, and victories, she would be able to make some small difference in their lives.
Her thoughts slid most traitorously from her virtuous work among the women to a frank desire merely to see Jex’s face again. Her anticipation was so intense that it hurt; she felt her cheeks go taut with want. And even seeing him, even being allowed to touch his hand, would not be enough for her, though it was all she could have of him today. It had been six months since she had made love to Jex Zanlan, and every single day she had missed that great, simple pleasure.
Patrin greeted her at her grandmother’s door, and she made rare use of one of her aristocratic privileges. “Could you have my grandmother’s limousine ready to take me to the city in fifteen minutes?” she asked him.
He nodded. “Certainly, hela.”
“Thank you,” she answered, already bounding up the stairs.
Jex’s favorite color was red, but it made Kit’s cobalt skin look garish and overbright. Instead she dressed in a sunny yellow pantsuit, with a high collar that unfolded around her face like the petals of a proud flower, and a multicolored belt that accented her slim waist. She slipped on a dozen gold bracelets, all of them gifts from Jex or his father, and twisted her hands to make them chime together. She bothered, just this once, just for Jex, to make up her face with rouge and eye color, darkening her lashes, arching her brows, hollowing out the curve of her cheeks. She scorned the practice, she despised the women who felt they had to adorn themselves to attract a man, but Jex would appreciate the effort, she knew. She wanted to be beautiful for Jex.
The car was waiting for her when she ran back downstairs. During the whole drive to the city, all she could do was think of Jex. She had loved him for almost as long as she could remember. He was the embodiment of the gulden ideal: the lordly young prince, handsome, charming, self-assured, dangerous. He had been a man groomed for power, and it made him lethal and irresistible; just the turn of his head betrayed his utter self-confidence, his cool knowledge of his worth. All the gulden girls were mad for him, and Kit was as besotted as the rest.
But she had not showed it at first. When he came to visit his mothers and sisters in the women’s quarters of the Zanlan palace, when Kit happened to be there, she would ignore him. She would read magazines until he was done teasing his sisters. She would watch the news monitors while he debated family matters with his mother. On the state occasions when Chay invited Kit and her father to banquets and festivals, she would give Jex the required formal greeting and then go stand in the back of the crowd. She would not gaze at him doe-eyed like all those other girls. She was too proud for that.
But Jex Zanlan was a man drawn to the unattainable and piqued by the extraordinary. He began to include her in conversations when he visited the women of his family; he asked her questions until she responded. And then his face went blank in astonishment when she fired off one of her father’s radical theories or offered him her own analysis of some political event that had transpired on Gold Mountain. She caught his attention. And when Jex Zanlan focused his attention on a person or an idea, everything else faded away.
They became lovers the summer she was twenty-one. She had resisted that long because she knew, it was so obvious, that once she surrendered to the inferno of her infatuation for Jex Zanlan, she would be consumed. She would melt into a blue puddle of ecstasy and desire. And it was also obvious—impossible to avoid knowing—that they were meant for lives with anyone but each other. He was the gulden heir and fated to take some carefully chosen pureblood as his wife. She was a strange, displaced foreign woman, born to a hostile race, with no real position in his society and only a tenuous one in her own. They could be lovers, but not for long. Whatever they meant to each other now would one day be erased by the inexorable demands of their conflicting worlds.
Perhaps it was that which made Kit cling to Jex all the more tightly as the years progressed and their ideologies began to force them apart as surely as their heritage did. She had strongly disapproved of his trips to the city and his bitter protests staged in the crowded streets. She had been profoundly shocked when she learned of the bomb set at the medical building, an exploit he passionately defended. She deplored his action—but she understood his motive—and whatever he did, she could not unlove him. He was Jex. Half the cells in her body seemed inscribed with his name. The gravitational pull that drew her to his side seemed stronger than the one that anchored her to the world.
And she had not seen him in weeks and weeks. And she was on her way to see him now.
She was nervous and unsteady as she stepped from the car and hurried up the stone steps to the Complex. She went through the high-ceilinged corridors, up the creaking elevator to the fifth floor, and showed her identification card to the guard outside the door. She was a Candachi, her grandmother would say; every man, woman, and child in the city should recognize her face, there should be no need for picture I.D.s. But Ariana Bayless had done away with that special privilege for the Higher Hundred ten years ago, and it was one of the few things the mayor had done that Kit actually approved of. Make them all equal in the eyes of the law, blueskin, guldman, and albino. The first step to true parity.
“Kitrini Candachi,” she said to the guard, reinforcing her name, trying not to sound breathless. He was a blueskin, as all the Complex security forces were, and he looked disgusted at her request for admittance to Jex Zanlan’s cell. But she was authorized, and he let her in.
“Cell” was the wrong word, of course; it was a plush apartment, two rooms as well as a bathing chamber, and it offered a wide variety of comforts. There were chairs, sofas, mirrors, books, and news screens, as well as a small kitchen area holding a selection of food. Kit had even been here when Jex served her liquor left over from a dinner meeting he’d had the day before with some of the city officials. There were no windows, of course, and a guard outside, and to someone with Jex’s expansive, impatient temperament, lack of freedom was almost equivalent to death; but Kit had been to real prisons, and she could not help thinking he was being very well-treated.