by Sharon Shinn
Cerisa preserved her calm, but her eyes had taken on an icy intensity. “You’re right, that is quite a lot,” she said. “I’m impressed by your industriousness, but—may I say it?—disappointed at the direction your conscience has taken you. Has it occurred to you that Ariana Bayless and I may have had perfectly legitimate reasons for constructing such a virus?”
“No, not really,” Nolan said. “What would those reasons be?”
Cerisa rose to her feet. “The preservation of the indigo race! It is an assault on us from all sides by the gulden! They attack our buildings and our institutions, so that the city is not safe for innocent people to live in. They thwart our attempt toward progress, denying us the right to expand and grow. But worst—and don’t tell me you haven’t seen this!—they have begun to intermingle with our people. Twelve years ago, when my own daughter was approached by a gulden man, our government knew what to do to stop such outrage. But now? What do you see on the streets every day? Gilt girls walking hand in hand with well brought up blueskin boys—it makes me sick to my stomach to see it. There were fifteen interracial marriages in the city last year, did you know that? Fifteen! The year before that there were only three, and the year before that, one. Before that, none! It wasn’t to be thought of! But now, they grow bold and fearless. They think they can be just like us. They think they are as good as we are. They think they can make us just like them. But they’re wrong. And they must be stopped.”
“You’re the one who has to be stopped, Cerisa,” Nolan said. “You and Ariana Bayless and however many dried-up old fanatic hags there are like you in the city. If there’s two of you, there must be more. I hadn’t thought about that before. I guess I’ll figure out how to deal with the rest of them later, when I know who they are.”
She gave a laugh of pure disbelief. “Deal with them!” she exclaimed. “How do you think you’re going to deal with us?”
He took a moment to study her face. He had always thought she was the quintessential Higher Hundred matriarch, with the bone structure that had been copied over and over again onto the faces of all the women he knew. But now, he was relieved to see, he could note subtle differences. There were angles and secrets in her face that he had never seen in Leesa’s, never seen in his mother’s. She was not the prototype. She was the aberration.
“I’ve already dealt with you,” he said softly. “I’ve told my story to the gulden press. Your name and Ariana Bayless’s name will be on every monitor in the city tomorrow morning.”
For the first time, he had shocked her. She reared back in horror, and her blue face turned dark with anger. “You didn’t,” she said.
“Oh, I did. Names, dates, places. And a hard copy printout from your computer for proof. The GGP file. Gulden genocide plan.”
“You’re lying,” she said. Her hands had clutched, clawlike, on the arms of her chair. He took a brief moment to reflect that a mortal threat brought out the animal characteristics of even the most sophisticated woman.
“No, I’m not,” he said, still in that easy, unconcerned voice. “I expect tomorrow will be an interesting day for both of you.”
Now he had silenced her; she stared at him as if he were the face of evil itself. He waited a few minutes for her to speak, then shrugged and climbed to his feet. “So, that’s what I thought you’d be interested in hearing,” he said, ambling for the door. “Aren’t you glad I came by?”
“Get out of here,” she whispered. She was still clinging to the chair which looked, by some amazing alchemy, to have swelled around her to twice its original size. Or perhaps she was shrinking, her bones contracting and her flesh drawing itself close for protection. “You—you—”
He paused at the doorway. “Oh, and one more thing,” he said casually. “I gave Colt the formula for a new virus. But this one attacks indigo only. And so far I don’t have an antidote.”
Her mouth opened but no words came out; she had been robbed of the ability to speak.
“They might ask you to stay on at the lab until the cure is found,” Nolan continued conversationally. “Or they might like the irony of asking Pakt to find the antibiotic that will save the indigo. Although he might not be too keen on the task. He might be one of those who hopes we all succumb to infection and die wretched deaths. To save the gulden, you know, from our dreadful indigo taint.”
“You have betrayed your race,” Cerisa breathed.
Nolan opened the door. “No, Cerisa,” he said. “You have.” And he walked out the door, down the elegant stairway, and out into the spangled night.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Kit stayed in Geldricht for ten days after Nolan left, no longer as prisoner but as favored guest. She was not deceived, of course. She knew that Chay’s guards followed her anytime she left the mansion grounds, but she took every opportunity to leave anyway. Chay, who had always spoiled her, had given her a substantial gift of money. So she browsed the markets for a few days, mostly buying clothes, because she was heartily sick of the few outfits she had been revolving for the past weeks.
She also bought gifts for Rell and Chay’s daughters, and spent many enjoyable evenings with the women who had loved her even better than her own family had. Rell was wise, and the girls were loving, and Kit felt at ease with them as she felt with few people in the world. Not that she told them anything of her recent adventures. Not that she told them of Jex, or Nolan, or Chay. What Rell knew, Chay had told her, and the guldwoman would want to learn nothing important from any other source. So they talked of clothing, and the girls’ prospects for marriage, and the changes that new construction had brought to Gold Mountain, and the hours passed peacefully.
Kit had no desire to see Chay, and he did not send for her.
She knew he was recovering, because Rell told her so, tears of happiness running down her fair cheeks. Once Kit would have cried like that, too, so joyous she could not express her emotion any other way, but not now. Not for Chay Zanlan. Not for the man who would have sacrificed someone he loved deeply merely to gain an edge with his enemy.
Or perhaps he had never loved her. How was it ever possible to tell when emotion was genuine, when it was false, and when it was summoned for a convenient purpose? It wasn’t just Chay whose feelings she doubted. Her own had been in such severe flux for so many weeks that she questioned the authenticity of any surge of passion.
Her love for Jex Zanlan, which had consumed her for so many years, had burned itself out in the inferno of horror. She could remember every contour of his body, every timbre of his voice. She could call up with an almost sensual detail the way her heart had reacted the first time he kissed her mouth. She had forgotten nothing, she would deny nothing; this was a man she had adored. But no more. That white-hot fever had charred itself to ashes. There was nothing left to rekindle.
Her love for Chay, always such a powerful, comforting thing, had chilled overnight to frost and shadows. He had deliberately risked her, and not to save himself, not to save anyone, merely to hurt someone else. He had always been a superb tactician—that had been his great strength as a leader—but she had not realized until recently how ruthless that had made him. She guessed now that, when he had been in the city making deals with Ariana Bayless, he had been willing to sacrifice his son to the communal goals, and that realization froze her soul even more. She could not live like that; she could not love like that; she could not forgive such calculated betrayals.
And yet these were two of the people she had loved most in the world. How then was she to trust her heart? It fluttered now like a shy, rapturous bird, caged with uncertainty but breathless with hope, and she could not help but believe she would be a fool to follow it. This same heart had taken her down grand, giddy paths before, leading her straight to devastation and despair. Why was she to think it was any wiser now? She was not one who could differentiate the noble character from the base; she could not discern the black lie threaded through the gaudy truth.
She could not love again; there was no safety in her judgment.
She would not seek out Nolan Adelpho once she returned to the city.
* * *
* * *
Nolan had been gone for ten days when Chay finally called for Kit again. The guard escorted her to one of the staterooms, so she knew before she saw him that he must be much improved. And indeed, once she stepped into his presence, she saw that he had begun a slow recovery. He was still unwontedly pale, and he seemed to have lost a good deal of weight, but the vibrancy was back in his eyes, his voice, his skin.
“Kit. You’re looking well,” he greeted her, gesturing for his guard to leave and for her to seat herself at a table laden with food. They both complied. Chay took a chair across from her. She thought that he had chosen this room for the audience because of its rich amber walls, which reflected extra color onto his cheeks and brow. He was still far from completely well.
“As are you, Chay Zanlan,” she said formally. He had spoken in goldtongue and she followed suit.
“And you have been well entertained in your visit here? My lady wife and my daughters have helped you amuse yourself?”
“They are, as always, charming and delightful.”
Talk continued for a while in this vein, the careful social indirections for which the gulden were famous. They each served themselves platefuls of food, and took small bites, and continued chatting, and nothing of importance was said for at least twenty minutes.
Finally, laying his napkin aside, Chay leaned forward a little in his chair. “We must talk, you and I, Kitrini Solvano,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows. “I thought we were talking,” she said serenely.
He smiled. “We can converse in bluetongue, if you prefer,” he said, switching to that language.
“Only if, in such words, you can tell me outright what you want me to hear,” she said, matching him again.
“It is a language made for plain speaking,” he said. “At times I envy it.”
“Then speak plainly,” she said.
“It is time for you to leave Gold Mountain,” Chay said.
She nodded. “I am glad to hear it.”
“And I would wish you to leave not hating me.”
Again she raised her eyebrows; this time she was truly surprised. “I would have thought that a man who could behave as you did would not care who hated him and who did not,” she said bluntly.
“It is one thing to behave a certain way. It is another to disregard the consequences.”
“At first,” she said, “when you bargained with Nolan Adelpho for my life, I was hurt to the core of my being. I thought, ‘He would never have betrayed his own son and daughters this way.’ And then I realized that—had it been expedient—you would have treated them just as badly, or even worse. What bargain did you make with Ariana Bayless when you sojourned in the city? Once I realized that any of us—all of us—are choifer soldiers on your game board, I stopped being hurt. I realized it was not that you loved me any less. It was that I had always been wrong in believing you were someone who deserved my affection to begin with.”
“I understand that you are angry, but I am surprised as well,” he replied smoothly. “Did you learn nothing from your father? He abandoned a family, a history, an entire culture, on principle. To prove a point. He made you a misfit in your natural environment as a sociological experiment. To see what the result would be. How is that any different from what I did, which was to use you as a shield to protect my own life?”
Kit came to her feet, not caring if he was ready to dismiss her or not. “My father believed indigo society was truly evil and that the only way to protect me was to raise me outside its boundaries. The difference is, he was trying to save me, and you were trying to kill me.”
“Not trying to kill you, Kit,” Chay murmured.
“Willing to,” she amended. “Just as bad.”
“I always thought you had a large and generous heart, Kit,” Chay said, now returning to the delicate, nuanced goldtongue. “But today it seems to have grown hard and knotty.”
“Perhaps I do have a small heart, Chay. It is too full of other things to have room for forgiveness.”
“Perhaps, when you eradicate the anger, there will be a space yet for such a sweet thing.”
“When I dig up the anger and toss it from my heart, I will plant other flowers in that garden,” she said. “And they will blossom, and they will be beautiful, but they will not be for you.”
He had not risen when she did, and now he seemed to slump backward in his chair. But he raised his hand in a ceremonial benediction and spoke still in that same calm, affectionate voice.
“Then take your small heart, and leave me,” he said. “Travel in safety, live in health, rejoice in happiness. If I do not see you again, remember these as my last words to you.”
She wanted to, but she could not leave with a bitter farewell. She did not want to have to return someday merely to quiet her conscience with an apology. “The mirror catches all those wishes and returns them to you in silver,” she said, giving him the traditional gulden reply. “Be well, Chay Zanlan. I will not forget you.”
And she left him. And she found, not at all to her surprise, that the guards had already packed her clothes for her and purchased her a ticket for the evening train. There was time to say goodbye to Rell and the girls, but Kit did not attempt it. She wanted to leave Gold Mountain without crying.
This time.
* * *
* * *
But in the city, there was cause enough for tears. While Kit had been gone, her grandmother had died, and the whole family was in disarray.
It was the first thing Kit learned when, weary and travel-stained, she showed up on Sereva’s doorstep two days later. The butler merely gaped when he saw her on the porch, but Kit heard Sereva’s voice from the upstairs hall.
“Is that the lawyer?” Sereva called.
The servant did not answer, so after a pause Kit raised her voice. “No,” she said. “It’s me.”
“What? Kit? Is that you?” Sereva demanded, and came hurrying around the corner of the bannister to stare down from the upper landing. She was dressed in a gown of severe burgundy, the indigo color of mourning. Kit felt her stomach lurch with warning. “Where have you been? Are you all right? Why have you been gone so long?”
“It’s a complicated story,” Kit said, brushing that aside and running lightly up the stairs. Seen at a close range, Sereva looked as exhausted as Kit felt, though infinitely calmer. “What’s happened?” Kit asked. “Why are you dressed like that?”
Sereva stared at her. “You mean you don’t know? It’s been in all the media.”
“Granmama,” Kit guessed. “No, I hadn’t heard … What happened?”
“Her heart. She was fine one day. The next morning, she was dead. The servants have been hysterical. It only happened two days ago, so all of us are still in shock. I thought you must have seen—I thought that’s what brought you back.”
Kit shook her head, her throat too tight to allow words to pass. Two days ago, she had been leaving Chay Zanlan’s bright mansion. One week sooner, and she would have had another chance, a final conversation, a word of farewell for her mother’s mother. Yet one more charge to level against Chay, another reason to despise him.
But Sereva was mustering up some anger herself. “What am I saying? Of course that wouldn’t have brought you back. You didn’t care about Granmama, anyway. You hated her and everything that mattered to her. So why would you care if she died?”
“Sereva!” Kit choked out in protest.
Sereva turned away, pacing down the hall. Kit followed her to Sereva’s private study. “Well, it’s true,” her cousin said. “I can’t count the times you complained about her obsessions with bloodlines and family connections—”
“Yes—
I know—there was a great deal we disagreed about, but—Sereva, could you stand still for a minute? She was my grandmother. I loved her. She irritated me. I made her frantic. We were not always on the best of terms. But—but—if she’s dead—”
And suddenly it all caught up with her, the trip, the dreadful revelations, the sense of loss piled high upon loss, and she started sobbing. She put her hands over her face to muffle the sound, to soak up the tears, but nothing could stanch this terrible weeping. Sereva turned to stare at her in astonishment, but only for a moment; only for that long did her coldness last. She ran the few paces back to Kit and pulled her into her arms, hugging her and murmuring endearments. There was no safety in this world—Kit had learned that over the past few weeks—but this felt like comfort. This felt like home, and a place to rest. Kit turned within the circle of Sereva’s arms, and cried till her body held no more tears.
* * *
* * *
But it was hard, Kit discovered, to try to recount the events of the past few weeks. Sereva called to postpone the lawyer’s visit, and the two of them locked themselves away to talk for the next three hours.
“What I tell you,” Kit said, “you’re going to find hard to believe.”
“Your adventures always are.”
“And you can’t talk about it with anybody.”
“Again, your escapades are rarely things I want to repeat.”
“Oh, my part in the story is the smallest part of all.”
At first she could not think how to begin (“Ariana Bayless has tried to destroy the gulden!”), but finally she started with her visit to Jex and Nolan’s first wild approach. Sereva gasped in fear, but Kit laughed.
“Save your outrage,” she advised. “Nolan’s actions are the least frightening thing that happened.”
It was not hard to draw a compassionate picture of Nolan; it was harder to make him sound merely human. Kit could scarcely conjure up now that first wave of fear and desperation she had felt, when she had actually believed he had the will—and the ability—to destroy Jex. Now he seemed omniscient, virtuous, brave, magnificent. Those opinions were harder to conceal.