Heart of Gold

by Sharon Shinn

  At first Sereva did not believe the story. Could not believe it. “But Ariana Bayless—Cerisa Daylen—I know those women. Such a thing is not possible,” Sereva said more than once. But she looked a little less certain each time she said it. Kit guessed that she was remembering casual conversations, offhand remarks, maybe even whispered comments that she had heard over the years, small details that dove-tailed with the accusations Kit was making now.

  “And haven’t there been stories,” Kit pressed gently, “alerting the gulden to a virus spreading through the city? Nothing too alarming, just a warning to seek out a doctor if certain symptoms appear?”

  Sereva nodded, deeply troubled. “I heard something about it, but I didn’t pay much attention. There are no gulden in my office, so news like that rarely trickles in. I didn’t think—” She shrugged. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me—”

  “It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone,” Kit said. “Not even Nolan. Even when he came across proof, he didn’t believe it at first.”

  But she had pronounced that name once too often. For a moment, Sereva was able to shake off her profound unease and concentrate on matters closer to hand.

  “This Nolan,” she said, watching Kit closely. “You seem to have grown fond of him. During this trip. I admit, if he did what you say, he must be an amazing man, though it’s still hard to believe—So tell me about him. What’s he like? What’s his family?”

  Kit couldn’t help laughing. “Adelpho,” she said. “Fine enough even for you, I would think.”

  Sereva’s eyes widened. “That’s Higher Hundred,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Not only that—” Sereva searched her memory. “If he’s the branch of the family I’m thinking of, one of them is betrothed to Analeesa Corova. They’re to be married this winter.”

  “That would be Nolan,” Kit said quietly.

  Sereva’s eyebrows rose. “As usual,” she said dryly, “you show your exquisite taste in hopeless men.”

  Anger seemed the safest response; Kit let hers fire up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, if I didn’t know you were in love with the terrorist son of Chay Zanlan, I’d say you’d fallen hard for this quixotic young indigo man who has just done the most incredible thing.” Kit came to her feet, too agitated to sit calmly. “Jex is—I’m not in love with Jex anymore. I am—he is—there is too much about him that I cannot love, that I—that I actually abhor. I know he was responsible for the bombs in the Centrifuge, I know it. And—there are other things. I never thought I would be able to cut him out of my heart, but he has done the cutting for me.”

  “Making room, then, for this Nolan.”

  “Who loves someone else,” Kit said. He had said he did not, but he could have been mistaken; Leesa might be more a part of him than he realized.

  “But if he did not? If Analeesa Corova discovered his crazy adventure and said she wanted no part of him? What then? Would you marry him, if he asked you? Would you love him?”

  Kit spun around to face her. “How could I do that?” she demanded, almost in tears. “I have spent my whole life denying the importance of, the existence of, the Higher Hundred. I have fought against prestige and family connections—I have disdained everything the high-caste indigo stood for. How could I suddenly say, ‘I’ve changed my mind. This is what matters to me after all. I want to be safe within the society I have mocked.’ I don’t think my conscience would let me do that, no matter what my heart desired. It would be like, after all this time, letting Granmama win in the end.”

  “Do you really think,” Sereva exclaimed, “that Granmama would be pleased to see you marry a man so outrageous that he would investigate the leader of his own city, collude with the ruler of the gulden, and threaten your life—all before breaking his engagement with a wonderful girl merely to take your hand in marriage? Do you think she would consider a man like this an improvement? She wanted you to marry some boring, brainless high-caste second son who fit her notions of propriety and decorum. This Nolan person would not have pleased her at all. Don’t let the fear of Granmama’s approval keep you apart from a man you love.”

  The sarcasm made Kit blush; she was not used to such a tone from her cousin. “He still represents everything I have consciously rejected in my life,” Kit said defensively. “It is not Granmama’s approval I have to worry about, but my own opinion. I swore I would never marry an indigo man, and my reasons were good. How can I break that promise? How can I allow myself to change so much?”

  “Well, if you plan to marry—or not marry—for political reasons, then you are just as bad as any blueskin heiress who plots with her grandmother, looking for a mate,” Sereva said flatly. “I thought your high ideals would save you from that mistake, at least. No one who marries for love marries for her principles at the same time.”

  Kit turned away, feeling suddenly exhausted and shrunken. “You don’t understand,” she said in a small voice.

  “I understand, all right,” Sereva said. “You’re afraid.”

  Kit laughed shortly. “Of everything you can think to name,” she said over her shoulder. “That at least shouldn’t make me unique.”

  Sereva came up behind her and gave her another hug. “And you’re tired. And your way has been very strange. Go to bed. We’ll talk some more in the morning.”

  * * *

  * * *

  But the morning brought its fresh shocks. Or the afternoon, really, since Kit could not manage to drag herself from her room till well past noon. She had slept and woken, slept and woken, so many times that she lost all sense of time and could not tell if she had been in this bed for days or merely hours. When she finally rose, she was starving, but she felt so grimy that she had to take a long, thorough bath before she would let herself go downstairs in search of food.

  One of the servants met her in the dining room, inquired what she wanted for a meal, and added that hela Candachi wanted to see her as soon as she was ready. So Kit ate quickly and joined Sereva and an unfamiliar woman in Sereva’s sitting room.

  “Good morning, Kitrini. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t be among us again until tomorrow,” Sereva greeted her. “Angeline, this is my cousin, Kitrini Candachi. Kitrini, this is Angeline Marcosa, Granmama’s lawyer.”

  Angeline Marcosa nodded and assessed Kit with one quick glance. She was a middle-aged, self-possessed woman who looked efficient and professional; mid-caste, Kit guessed, but intelligent and hardworking enough to make herself both powerful and dangerous.

  “We were just going over the terms of your grandmother’s will,” the lawyer said in a cool voice. “She was, as you probably know, quite fanatical about the upkeep and disposal of her property, and she rarely let a month go by without consulting me on some small change or bequest she wanted to make.”

  Kit nodded tranquilly. None of this mattered to her since not an acre of her grandmother’s property would go to her. A personal bequest, that would be nice, maybe even a small legacy, but the bulk of the property would go to Sereva and the rest to a few other relatives.

  “Granmama liked to keep her hand in,” Kit said equably.

  Angeline Marcosa consulted her notes. “About three months ago, when she called me in, she made a few substantial changes in regards to two of her smaller properties. The last time I saw her—which was only two weeks ago—she went over every item in her will again and approved them each individually. So it is my professional opinion that this final will stands as the last record of her intentions.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Kit said.

  “Kitrini, she left you Munetrun,” Sereva broke in.

  “She what?” Kit said faintly.

  “And the city house,” the lawyer added.

  “She left me Munetrun? But that’s her—I mean, I know it’s small, but that was her favorite property. She told Bascom. I heard her.
”

  “Munetrun, the city house, and enough annual income to keep them both up in handsome style,” Angeline Marcosa said. “Appearances always were important to her, you know.”

  “Yes …” Kit said absently. She was staring at Sereva. “But why would she do that?” she asked wonderingly. “We never had five words together without getting into an argument. There was nothing about me—nothing!—that made her proud or happy. I wasn’t even good to her. I never thought—Munetrun!”

  “There’s more,” Sereva said gently. “A bequest. An annuity to your charity bank in the Lost City. A pretty good sum, too.”

  Angeline Marcosa examined her papers again. “Well, the exact annual figure can’t be known until we’ve calculated the death taxes and the city taxes and—”

  “But a lot,” Sereva interrupted. “I think that answers the question of whether or not you ever made her proud.”

  “But I—” Kit said, and then shut her mouth hard. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think about it, or she would start crying again. These days, it seemed that the unlikeliest people loved her and the obvious ones did not care for her at all. How would she ever sort it out, how would she ever learn whom to trust and whom to love?

  “Yes, well, the disposition of Munetrun and the city house are really the smallest details of the will,” said Angeline Marcosa briskly. “There’s Govedere and Fairenen and Glosadel, as well as the farmlands, and I think it would be just as well if we went over those now.”

  “Of course,” Sereva said, and Kit nodded, but she didn’t pay any attention to the rest of the lawyer’s words. In fact, she might as well not have been in the room at all. She was remembering the wild green tangle of woods that formed the southern border of Munetrun, the dense interwoven branches that built a mysterious, inviting castle of living forest. She had spent one whole summer there, when her father left her without explanation with his dead wife’s relatives. She had been miserable when he left, inconsolable, actually, until Granmama took her to Munetrun. But she had loved that verdant estate, overrun with wildlife and impossible to tame into any semblance of lawn or garden. She had loved it, and so had Granmama, and now it was hers. She shook her head and tried to listen to the conversation again, but her thoughts would not stay on the spoken words. Another strange twist to her life; this was not a map she would have sketched in no matter how wild her imagination. Quietly, so they would not notice, she began crying again anyway.

  * * *

  * * *

  Sereva wanted Kit to journey in-country, to look over her new property as soon as possible. “I’ll go with you,” Sereva said. “I can help you make an inventory. I don’t even know how many servants there are on the place, though I’m pretty sure the steward is reliable. Well, he must be, or Granmama would not have left him in charge for so many years.”

  “I’ll go,” Kit said. “But in a week or so. I’m so tired of traveling. I need some time to rest.”

  “Munetrun is the most restful place I know,” Sereva said with a smile.

  “Yes,” said Kit, but she still made no plans to travel.

  She made no attempt to return to the charity bank, to take up the threads of that life. She refused to go with Sereva to the various social engagements her cousin attended during the next few days—“banquets, balls, and breakfasts,” as Kit scornfully termed them—even though Sereva assured her she’d be welcome.

  “You’re now a woman of property,” Sereva said with a laugh. “Think how well you were received at Corzehia’s party when you had nothing to recommend you but your bloodline. You would be so popular now!”

  “Maybe next time,” Kit said, knowing that nothing would induce her to attend another such event. She did not care for parties; she did not care for the trivial interactions of these wealthy and vacuous indigo. Truth to tell, she did not care if she saw another gulden again as long as she lived, either, so what was the point in seeking out any society at all? She would be better off immuring herself in Munetrun, hiding there the rest of her life, seeing no one, speaking to no one, beating down her memories with ruthless fists until they could trouble her no longer.

  She should leave the city, but she could not, and she could not have said what tethered her there. Almost as if she was waiting.

  * * *

  * * *

  The letter came a week after Angeline Marcosa brought news of Kit’s inheritance. She instantly recognized Jex’s handwriting, though his letters were usually terse and this envelope felt thick and heavy. The gulden boy who delivered it stayed only to put it in her hand. When she tried to ask him a question, he shook his head and darted off the porch.

  Jex did not expect a reply, then.

  She retreated to her room to read the letter, closing the door so no one would disturb her. The goldtongue words seemed to have been written with care—not Jex’s usual hasty scrawl—and she read them as slowly as she imagined they had been committed to the page.

  Kit:

  Since your last visit, I have not had an opportunity to send for you again. My jailors have been whispering amongst themselves, and for a while I suspected they were plotting to find some ingenious way to dispose of me and then claim an accident had resulted in my death. I have been very careful of stray knives and unfamiliar foods, you can be certain! But now it appears that they had other gossip to convey to each other.

  I had a visit this morning from Ariana Bayless herself, telling me she has decided to set me free. I’m afraid I was very cool and insolent with her, which probably made her want to change her mind, but I cannot be otherwise with such a smug and self-satisfied blueshi. So I said, “I see your sense of justice has finally triumphed over your desire for vengeance.” But she is very cool herself. She said, “You are a choifer in a game much more complex than you know, and it suits me to release you.” Arrogant, yes? So I said in my turn, “We learn that no mere mortals know the position of every player on the board, and last time I checked, you were still one of them.” She actually laughed. I cannot recall anyone I have ever hated as deeply and unwaveringly as I hate her, but I have to confess I laughed as well.

  So—amazing news, is it not? I had begun to lose some of my usual optimism, for I have been here so long and heard no news. And I do know that much of the recent violence in the city has been laid at my door. Perhaps Ariana Bayless thinks I will be calmer once I am free again and that I will direct my efforts to more peaceful negotiations. What I know is that I will be more careful once I am released.

  And being more careful means restricting myself to the smallest possible group of confederates. I must not let anyone know where I am staying—not even my father. I have thought and thought, and I have been unable to devise a safe way to have you brought to me. I think it is possible that we may never see each other again.

  So the great love that has sustained me for so long comes to an end in this fugitive way. I tell myself that the times may change—governments may change—the world itself may change—and you and I will one day be together again. But my future looks blurred and uncertain, and I do not believe any of my own words. What can I say except that I will always remember you and always love you? You cannot reply, but I tell myself that you would say exactly the same words to me.

  Jex Zanlan, of the clan Zanlan

  For an instant, Kit could not breathe for the pain in her chest. She had told Sereva just the other day that she no longer loved Jex Zanlan, and yet this letter pierced her with arrows of longing, regret, and memory. She had tried to imagine what she would say to him the next time he sent for her—how she would tell him she could not accept his careless brutality and ruthless zeal—but in those mental conversations he had been the bloody revolutionary and not the tender lover. How had she believed she could so easily put aside those sweet memories, those desperate passions, the hurt and delight and confusion that were her relationship with Jex?

  And to ne
ver see him again? To not have a chance to say goodbye? To receive only this letter and then, for the rest of her life, to wonder where he was and how he fared? Who would know of him? Who would speak of him to her? Even if Jex communicated with his father, there was no guarantee that Chay would relay any information to Kit, if Chay himself lived, though it seemed he might—

  And then Kit had a thought that stopped her heart completely.

  She read the letter again. I had a visit this morning from Ariana Bayless herself, telling me she has decided to set me free. Why would Ariana Bayless make such a visit? Why would she come to such a decision? What master plan could she hope to accomplish by freeing Jex Zanlan?

  What other odd visitors had gone to Jex Zanlan’s prison cell in the past few weeks? What other strangers had come bearing remarkable gifts and seemingly joyful news? He laughed about being careful of weapons and meals, but Nolan had explained how easy it was to inoculate someone with this dreadful virus. Who had come calling at the Complex prison, and what had they used to infect the inmate?

  For Ariana Bayless would never release Jex Zanlan, healthy and vengeful, to wreak mayhem on her orderly city. But a dying Jex Zanlan, polluted with a disease he did not know about—now, that man she would be happy to set free among the city gulden. And he would surely be dying; the mayor had learned her lesson with the prisoner’s father. She would have kept him in his cell until the disease was uncontainable, beyond the reach of any fabulous antidotes. And then, for a few brief days, she would give him back his life.

  Kit sank to the floor, the letter still clutched in her hands. He was dying, and he did not know. He was dying, and she could not go to him. He was dying, and she could not save him. He was dying. Jex Zanlan was dying.