by Sharon Shinn
He had been reading when she stepped through the door, but he flung himself to his feet at her entrance. “Kit,” he said and crossed the room in a few strides. The kiss was comprehensive and bruising. She felt her body break against his, her flesh tear across his, and yet it was not enough. She wanted to be closer, inside him, curled around his beating heart, protected by the canopy of his ribs.
When he broke apart from her as violently as he had embraced her, she felt a deep and wrenching sense of loss. It was always this way on their short visits. She would have been happy merely to sit beside him, pressed against his body while his arm crushed her against him, saying nothing for the full duration of her stay. But Jex was too restless. He was not a man to snuggle and coo for love.
“Have you seen my father?” he demanded, pacing the room. She took a few steps forward, for she had only advanced a couple of feet into the room. “He was here yesterday, lecturing me.”
“No—well, on the street for five minutes, if that counts,” she said, trying to still her protesting heart. She needed him to love her, but he needed her for a sounding board, a sieve that would sift apart his anger; that had often been true. “What did he say to you?”
He laughed shortly and tossed up his hands. He moved through the apartment like a fallen angel across unsanctified ground—graceful, feral, and lawless. His skin was the color of apricot, and his hair raged with the hues of flame, and he did not belong in this place, and it could not hold him. Kit watched him and felt again that rogue desire.
“He was furious about the medical building, for one thing. As of course I knew he would be! It was nothing but the same argument between us. I say he does not do enough to force back the blueshi bastards. He says I endanger everything with my wild tactics. If that was all he had to say, I wish he would have stayed home.”
“I think he came to discuss you with Ariana Bayless and see how he could get you freed from here.”
He had thrown himself against the wall and now stared at her moodily. Even from across the room, his eyes were an electric green, snapping with lights from those interior fuses. “He did not seem to think Ariana Bayless was in any hurry to let me go.”
And did you think she would be? Kit wanted to cry. Did you think you could attack her city, endanger her people, dare her to punish you, and then find her eager to set you back on her streets again? She understood Jex Zanlan right down to his toes, oh yes, and she knew what fevers drove him to shake his fist in the collective indigo face and scream out against injustice. But she could not agree with his methods and had said so. And received the full force of his fury in her turn. So she had learned to be careful about when she challenged him, though it cost her something to hold her tongue.
“Did he think he would be able to make a deal with her at all?” she asked neutrally instead.
“A deal,” he said scornfully. “The deal he should be making is telling her there will never be peace in this city until the indigo abandon all plans for this so-called Carbonnier Extension. What he should be telling her is, no matter what dire punishment she flings down on my head, the gulden will not yield another scrap of land to blueskin imperialism. He shouldn’t be making a deal for my freedom. He should be forcing her to withdraw her armies from gulden land.”
“I don’t think they’re armies,” Kit said. “I think they’re construction workers.”
“An advancing army all the same,” he said, and pushed himself restlessly away from the wall. Kit dropped to a seat on one of the chairs and watched him stalk through the room.
“So what else did your father say?” she asked, when it appeared he had no other conversation to offer.
“We didn’t talk long. I told him that Hecht and Shate had been to see me—”
“Hecht and Shate!” she exclaimed. “When did you see them?”
He shrugged irritably. “Last week, when I had a visitor’s pass. What I didn’t tell him was—”
“You had a visitor’s pass last week?” she interrupted. “But I thought—I hadn’t seen you for so long, I thought you hadn’t been given any passes at all!”
“No, not until last week,” he agreed.
“But—Hecht and Shate!” she repeated. She still could not believe it. “I thought if you only had one pass a week, you would send for me. I thought—Jex, I worry about you so much, I think about you all the time, I think, ‘Oh, if I can only see him an hour a week, then I can live on that.’ But you had the hour and you spent it with—with Hecht and—”
“Oh, spare me the tantrum!” he exploded, ramming away from one wall to practically plow into another. “Hecht and Shate can carry on my business for me while I’m stuck in here, which is something you can’t do, and wouldn’t if you could! Of course I had to see them! What can you do for me? You can’t get me out of here, and you won’t talk strategies with me, and you won’t even fuck me while there’s a camera in the wall, which—” He turned to shout at the discreet round eye sitting at the highest edge of the ceiling moulding in the corner facing the door. “Which there still is, isn’t there, Ariana Bayless? You watching the films every night, you stupid blueshi bitch? Would you like to see me fucking my girlfriend?”
He was laughing as he turned back to Kit, and he bounded to her side to pull her to her feet. “Now, that might just be worth it, a chance to turn the mayor’s face bright red instead of blue. Are you game, Kitrini? Want to help me give old Ariana Bayless a show?”
She was so shocked that for a minute she stood rigid in his arms, and then she shoved him away furiously when he tried to kiss her. He was still laughing, though he stumbled a little as she sent him backward. “Oh, come on,” he said. “It’ll be fun.”
She was so upset, so angry, so hurt that she was actually in tears. “How could you?” she choked out. “Talk about such a thing—joke about such a thing—even think about making love to me as a way to revolt Ariana Bayless—”
“Well, I admit that would be my primary motive, but I think I could enjoy some secondary benefits as well,” he said, coming closer again, dropping his voice into amorous accents. “It’s been a long time, and I surely do miss holding on to you.”
His arms were around her again, once more he bent to kiss her. This time she hit him in the chest as hard as she could and scrambled away before he could react. His smile changed in an instant to a snarl. “You might not want to play, but you better be careful how you say no,” he said in a low voice.
She was trembling now; she felt the loose wobble in her knees and arms and shoulders. “I thought you wanted to be with me,” she said, and even the words sounded pitiful and shaky. “I thought you loved me.”
Again, he threw his hands in the air; it was his frequent expression of exasperation at the ridiculous, incomprehensible world around him. “What does that have to do with anything? Why are you fighting with me? All I did—”
“All you did!” she exclaimed. She heard the shrill note in her voice, but she couldn’t erase it. Her words tumbled out disordered and incoherent. “All you did was want to see anybody except me—and tell me I don’t have anything to offer you—and then insult me by—by—How can you treat somebody you love that way? How can you treat anybody that way?”
He raised his hands again and turned his back. “Fine. If that’s how you feel, don’t come back and see me again.”
She ran for the door before he could realize she was headed out. Her tears nearly blinded her. She tripped once and heard him turn to watch her. “Kit—” he said, but she had reached the door and flung it open.
“It’s how I feel, so don’t ask me back,” she said over her shoulder and stumbled across the threshold practically into the arms of the astonished guard.
Jex called her name again, but if he had any other words to offer, they were cut off by the door closing. Kit was running out of the room, running down the hallway, running down the deserted marble stairs b
ecause she could not bear the wait at the elevator door. She was sobbing so hard she could not draw breath. At one point, she had to come to a dead halt on the stairwell—bent half double like a woman pummeled in the stomach—and try to force the air in her lungs. She could not take a deep breath, and the short shallow sips of air would not give her enough to live on. She didn’t want to live. She wanted to curl up right here and die.
More slowly, she continued her descent, clinging to the bannister for both support and guidance, since her eyes were blinded by tears. What would she do, where could she go, what possible small fragment of her life had any meaning if she could not love Jex and be loved by him in turn? She had not felt so abandoned or adrift since the day her father died. That was the day she had known, in her blood cells and her bones, that the world was an empty place echoing with ghostly winds. But nothing could have prepared her for the shock and devastation she felt now.
She stumbled down the stairwell and stood for a moment in the great, empty hallway, unable to think or move. She had told Patrin to come back for her in an hour, and of course she had been with Jex only ten or fifteen minutes. She must be here when he returned—and anyway, she did not think she could, in her present state, negotiate the streets or the trolleys or the Centrifuge. She must find someplace to sit, to collect her thoughts, to regain her strength.
There was nowhere. She didn’t care. She staggered toward the nearest wall, laid her back against it, and slowly sank to the floor. Drawing her knees toward her chin, she put her face down and let herself sob.
How could he have done such things, how could he have said them? She had been shocked first at his cavalier announcement that he had chosen to visit with his friends instead of her—something incomprehensible to her. Had she been the one in prison, she would have schemed and lived for another minute with Jex, to the exclusion of any other human being, she would have counted the minutes, crammed the hours with activity just to make them fly past. How could he wish to see anyone else? Where did she fall on his list of imperatives and desires?
And then—and then—The unpardonable joke, the parody of love … That he could think it, say it, seem to mean it … She could not get her mind around it. She could not believe it had happened. She could not imagine forgiving someone who had made such an offer.
She could not imagine her life without the great luminous excitement that was her heart whenever she thought of Jex.
She did not know how to walk back from this point. She did not know how to move forward. Her blood screamed in her veins, dragged its nails across the interior walls of her arteries. She ground her cheeks against her knees and wept, and knew there was no hope or comfort in this world.
The voice startled her as much as the touch on her shoulder. A man had come up to her so quietly she had not heard his approach. “Hela? Can I help you? Can I get you anything?”
Surprise for the moment dried her tears, gave her enough strength to jump gracelessly to her feet. She stared at him, noting nothing but the blue skin and the sweetness of the nondescript face. His voice became more insistent. “Are you all right?”
No, I’m dying, I’m betrayed, there is no love in the world at all, she found herself thinking, but she could not say such lunatic things. She had to pull herself together, show that iron will that she had inherited, surely, from her grandmother, though her grandmother would not have been in just this situation no matter how oddly the world turned. As coldly as she could, she said, “Yes. I’m fine. Just go on.”
He was high-caste; no doubt about it. She recognized the medallion against his shirt and the formality of his clothes, but even had he been dressed in gulden rags, there would have been no mistaking the breeding in his face, his voice, and his expression. She had always had a quick contempt for most of the indigo men she had met; they had all seemed—compared to the virile, volatile gulden—ineffectual and tame. But there was a gentleness to them, or at least to this one, that was in stark contrast to the violence of mood she had just left behind. And a certain kindness that appeared almost stubborn, for he still would not leave.
“I can take you to a doctor if you need help. Or I can fetch you a glass of water—”
“I’m fine,” she said, interrupting. She could not allow him to succor her. What kind of end would that be to this horrific day? She had no need of help from chance-met indigo men. She did not even like them. “Thank you,” she said austerely. “You’re quite kind. But please leave me.”
He seemed reluctant, but he responded to the note of command in her voice and turned away. She remained upright, propped against the wall, learning that she had remembered, during this exchange, the proper way to breathe. She watched him walk away, saw him joined in a few moments by a blueskin woman who glanced back at Kit with knowing, scandalized eyes. Fine; let them gossip about her. She cared little about what the Higher Hundred thought of her antics. She did not belong to them—would not go to them even if they invited her.
But she did not belong with the gulden either—or not with the gulden she had loved her whole life. That much seemed plain. Slowly, because her legs would no longer hold her, she collapsed to the floor again and laid her cheek across her up-drawn knees. But this time she did not cry. She would wait here till Patrin returned, but she would not cry.
* * *
* * *
Sereva commented that night on her unusual quietness, but Kit had regained enough poise to merely shrug. This was not something she could discuss with Sereva, with anyone. She had inherited self-control from her Candachi forebears and learned silence from the gulden matrons. She knew how to keep her own counsel and guard her sorrows.
Two days later, she returned to her grandmother’s house, where it was even easier to brood in secret. She still had not decided what to do, what to say to Jex if she ever saw him again (though surely she would; surely this cold stone that had become her heart would thaw and flutter again). She moved through the days automatically, thoughtlessly, and shut down her interior vision because she could not bear the view.
Two days after the debacle at the Complex, a note came for her at the charity bank. She knew before she opened it that it was from Jex, and her heart began that painful, noisy pounding that made it hard for her to hear. “Thank you,” she said to the courier who had brought it, and took it to a corner of the room where she could face the wall in case she could not school her expression.
The note was brief. “I have an hour visitor’s pass for tomorrow at noon,” Jex had written in bluetongue. “Come see me.” There was no apology. There was no word of affection. No indication that they had quarreled and needed repair.
She found a pen on Del’s desk. “I can’t,” she wrote on the outside of the note, and signed it. “Could you take this back to Jex?” she said to the courier in a colorless voice. “Thank you.”
And she worked the rest of the day blindly, bloodlessly, feeling the heavens rage soundlessly about her head. Del asked her once if she was feeling all right (“Many women, some times of the month, they grow dizzy and strange” was in fact the guldwomen’s comment), but she replied that she was fine.
When she returned to her grandmother’s that night, she went straight to the bathroom and began to vomit. She was sick for the next two hours, until one of the servants found her and discovered she had a fever. Her grandmother, the last person Kit would have chosen to see right then, was interrupted at her dinner and brought into Kit’s room.
“Let me see, let me see,” the old woman murmured, laying cool hands on her granddaughter’s forehead and patting the hot flesh along her throat and collarbone. The fierce blue eyes stared down at Kit, boring through the forehead to investigate the brain. No one would be able to guess what the sickness actually was, Kit thought, least of all her grandmother, but the old woman’s eyes narrowed and her head snapped up.
“Bring me some of that miraleaf potion. In the blue bottle in my room,”
Granmama said to one of the hovering servants. In minutes, Kit was being urged to drink a mixture of miraleaf and hot tea, and for a moment she thought she would start throwing up again. But soon enough, she felt her whole body relax. She had not even realized how tense she was until she felt the knotted muscles grow lax and compliant. Her eyes closed against the onslaught of her grandmother’s gaze, and she could not open them again. She could not think or grieve. She slept.
She slept nearly two days straight, waking only at intervals when someone brought her food, water, or more of the miraleaf potion. This is pointless. Nothing will heal me, she thought once as she obediently sipped another glass of the mixture, and yet each time she woke she felt a little less despairing. It occurred to her to wonder how her grandmother knew how to diagnose and cure the most severe forms of heartache. It would not have been a skill she would have attributed to Lorimela Candachi.
The third day when she woke, she felt light-headed but functional. Her body was stiff from too much sleep, and her eyes felt unaccustomed to vision, taking in everything as if it were new, but she felt somehow refreshed and made over. Her heart still hurt with an actual pain and her thoughts skittered away from examining, again, her last scene with Jex and the note of refusal she had sent him a few days ago. She still could not imagine either how to repair the breach or how to exist without him. But at least now she felt that she had the strength to consider her options.
Her grandmother bustled in, attired in full formal dress and obviously on her way to some event. “Well, you look halfway human again,” was the acerbic greeting. “Do you think you might be getting up someday? The servants would like to clean your room.”