by Sharon Shinn
Kerk kept flying until he arrived at West Zero, then he carefully maneuvered the car over to the apron and stepped out. There was only one other ringcar waiting at this gate; clearly not a popular stop. Kerk had to hope there would be transport available when he was ready to go home.
He emerged from the darkness of the tunnel into a sere and broken landscape. Here, the afternoon sunlight was harsh, mercilessly playing across the whole squalid scene. The low buildings were all squat and devoid of beauty; some were starting to crumble and others looked like they had been deliberately defaced. The few patches of lawn or park acreage could scarcely muster the energy to nourish scrubby brown grass or the occasional misshapen tree, mostly bare at this time of year, and Kerk could not spot a flower bed or a fountain anywhere in his line of sight. A few blocks over, a handful of boys were playing an energetic game of baltreck, and he could hear the distinctive reverberation of the ball hitting one of the metal cones. He saw women quickly stepping down the street, shepherding girls before them or carrying limp bags of insufficient groceries. The whole place shrieked of poverty and despair.
Kerk couldn’t imagine that anyone would prefer to live here instead of Gold Mountain.
He couldn’t imagine how he would find one person huddled somewhere inside one of these dispirited houses.
But he was here now; he would try. He chose a direction at random and strode down the badly paved street, exuding a supercilious confidence completely at odds with his inner unease. He had learned very early to cultivate that air of self-assurance that most gulden men acquired practically as a birthright. They were lords in their households, demanding unquestioning obedience from all their dependents; they were aggressive negotiators in the business world, quick to capitalize on anyone else’s weakness. A gulden man who showed fear or indecision risked losing everything that mattered to him.
The street continued on for a few blocks before ending in a tumbledown collection of broken playground equipment, a few twisted metal bars and a shattered ramp that might once have been a slide. Children were still playing in and around the ruins, laughing and shrieking, chasing each other around fallen rods and chains. Two gulden women sat together on a tilted bench, watching the children. Or, no, watching Kerk, their eyes wide and alarmed. Wondering, no doubt, who he was, why he had come to this part of town, what trouble he might bring.
He gazed at each of them coolly, too proud to show that their worried scrutiny made him want to crawl back down the street. One of them looked to be close to his own age—mid-twenties—while the other one was older, forty-five or so. She had golden-brown skin and soft brown hair pulled back in an unflattering bun. Her skin was lined with too much grief seen too early.
The right age to be his mother. The right hair color. The right expression. But the wrong face, the wrong shape. It was not the woman he wanted.
A moment longer he kept his eyes on them, just so they would not think they had routed him, then he turned smartly and strode back the way he had come. In front of the Centrifuge gate, he hesitated, then turned to look in first one direction and then the other. Where should he go next? How could he possibly find the person he sought?
A voice behind him asked almost the same question in the coldest possible voice. “What are you looking for here in the Lost City?”
He spun around to see that a blueskin woman had emerged from the Centrifuge gate and was staring at him with every bit as much cool arrogance as he had mustered for the gulden women. He had never been this close to a blueskin woman before and he couldn’t help staring. Her skin was a deep cobalt, a color so rich it was almost tactile; her glossy black hair was shoulder-length and simply styled, though the clip holding it back on one side was surely pure gold. Likewise, her clothes were of plain design but expensive materials, and diamonds glittered casually around both her wrists. None of these clues was necessary to tell him she was one of the high-caste indigo women; her haughty tone and confident stance instantly conveyed that message.
When he did not answer, she went on in the same tone. “Gulden men are not welcome here in the women’s ghetto.”
Only then did he realize that she addressed him in perfectly conjugated goldtongue, though she did not even attempt the proper subservient tone. Just to be difficult, he replied in the indigo language. “I understand this is a place where gulden live, so I cannot imagine blueskin women are any more welcome than I am.”
Her thin, elegant eyebrows rose—at the reply or at the choice of language, he couldn’t be sure. She answered in her own native tongue. “I at least offer the residents no threat of violence,” she said.
“Neither do I,” he said swiftly.
She surveyed him deliberately, her black eyes taking in his confrontational stance, his broad shoulders, the hands that he had balled into fists. “You do not look,” she said, “like a harmless man.”
He narrowed his eyes and took a step closer. “If I am dangerous,” he said, his voice soft, “you are careless to put yourself in my path.”
Her hands had been hanging down at her sides, but now she lifted her right arm and revealed a neat weapon: a can of volatile chemical spray designed to incapacitate an assailant from a short distance. “I am never careless,” she replied.
He laughed and twisted his left hand so he could show her a weapon of his own: a dagger quickly shaken out from a sheath on his forearm. “I can fling this so fast and so accurately that it would be buried in your heart before you could react,” he told her scornfully. “And I would wager I’ve had more experience than you’ve had winning a fight one-to-one.”
For some reason, that didn’t seem to frighten her; she looked intrigued instead. “Then why haven’t you knocked me down already?”
“I didn’t come here to hurt you,” he said shortly. “I didn’t come here to hurt anybody.”
“Well, you still haven’t answered my question,” she said, and now she sounded more exasperated than haughty. “Why did you come here? Because most gulden men just show up in the Lost City to bring grief.”
He lowered his hand and looked around him, once again taking in the ugly street, the uglier buildings. “That’s what you call this place? The Lost City? The name certainly seems to fit.”
She was still watching him. “To some women, it is paradise,” she said steadily. “Compared to where they have been.”
Now his chin came up in defiance. She should not be allowed to insult Gold Mountain. “Geldricht is a place of great beauty and strict order,” he said. “A woman living in Geldricht knows where she belongs and—”
“And who she belongs to,” the woman interrupted.
Kerk scowled. “And what shape her life is supposed to hold. A woman who comes to the city and finds herself on this misbegotten street—” He swept his arm to indicate the whole sad neighborhood crouched apprehensively before them. “Has traded beauty for ugliness, certainty for insecurity, plenty for—for what looks like starvation.”
“Slavery for freedom,” the woman returned calmly. “That’s why women run away from Gold Mountain. To be free. To choose their own lives. To escape cruel husbands and fathers. There may be very little here in the ghetto, but there are no daily beatings, no forced conjugal relations that are scarcely better than rape—”
He was so shocked he almost gaped at her; he had never heard anyone, man or woman, utter the word rape aloud. “You know nothing about life on Gold Mountain,” he said furiously.
“I have befriended countless runaway gulden wives,” she replied. “I know enough.”
They stared at each other another moment without speaking. His face, he knew, showed hostility, but her expression had turned curious. She was the one to finally break the silence. “Why are you here?” she asked again. When he didn’t answer, she added, “I might be able to help you. If I decide I want to.”
“I don’t need your help,” he said.
“Well,” she said, “I think you do.”
He glanced about irritably. “Where
is your husband or your brother?” he demanded. “Why are you out by yourself without a man to protect you and speak on your behalf?”
She made no attempt to restrain her laughter, and Kerk scowled again. “An indigo woman doesn’t require any man’s escort or interference,” she said. “If you have been in the city long enough to learn the language, you must surely have realized that.”
“I learned bluetongue back on Gold Mountain,” he said stiffly. “I am employed in a Geldricht firm that trades with Inrhio, and so I learned the language of the Inrhio people. Why do you know goldtongue?”
“I have an unconventional aunt,” she replied. “And I am inquisitive.”
“And why are you here?”
She glanced around, as if to remind herself exactly where she was standing. “I have an unconventional aunt,” she repeated. “And I am a little unconventional myself. I liked the idea of aiding impoverished women with whatever resources I could command. Which,” she added, although he had not been planning to ask, “include a certain amount of wealth, a passion for justice, and a stubbornness that makes my mother despair.”
“Aid them how?” he demanded.
“Train them. Help them find jobs. Help them find places to live. Help them educate their children so the next generation of gulden will be completely free of any debt to Gold Mountain.”
No gulden will ever be completely free of debt to Gold Mountain, Kerk thought. “That seems like a great deal for one woman to accomplish,” he said, his voice edged with sarcasm.
She actually grinned. “I didn’t say I was doing it by myself.”
Then he began to realize the magnitude of what she had just said. He fixed her with an unwavering stare. “So then,” he said, “if a gulden woman has come to this Lost Ghetto—”
“Lost City,” she murmured.
“You might know where she is now?”
Her answering stare was just as unblinking. “I might,” she said. “Who are you looking for? A runaway wife?”
As if any ambitious gulden would be willing to marry his daughter off to a fatherless man like Kerk. He shook his head. “My mother.”
Three
They sat in the window seat of a small café just off the North Three gate and talked for an hour. This was the restaurant closest to the Lost City, the woman explained to him, a quiet and rather run-down place where people just one step above real poverty could come for a meal or a drink. The other patrons were a mix of all three races, though gulden predominated. Not the kind of gulden Kerk was familiar with from Gold Mountain. These were tired men and fierce women who by turns ignored each other and watched each other and did not follow any of the complicated protocols that governed relations between the sexes back in Geldricht.
How did a man know how to treat a woman if he did not follow the rules that everybody understood?
Although clearly this blueskin woman didn’t know any of the rules and wouldn’t have abided by them if she did.
She had insisted on being the one to drive the ringcar almost all the way around the Centrifuge to North Three, the gate right before West Zero. During the flight, she had asked for his name and given him her own: “Jalciana, but a lot of people call me Jalci.” Even the diminutive was much more flamboyant than the meek names bestowed on gulden women, and Kerk repeated it to himself several times just because it was so new. He had to admit she was excellent at piloting the small craft through the curving tunnels, though she drove much faster than he had dared thus far—and with much less caution. He could not imagine Tess even attempting to take the controls in one of these vehicles.
Or approaching a strange man on the street and demanding to know his business.
Or taking refreshments with a strange man in a public place and paying for her own beverage.
Or turning to her companion and demanding, “Tell me your story.”
Kerk sipped at his drink, which was hot and aromatic and like nothing he’d ever had on Gold Mountain. “My mother left my father seventeen years ago and came to the city with my baby sister. There has been no word of her since. I thought, since I was here, I would seek her out.” He shrugged. No more to say.
Jalci, it seemed, thought there was plenty more for him to relate. “Seventeen years ago? How old were you?”
“Seven.”
“That would be a hard age to lose your mother. How well do you remember her?”
Kerk took another swallow. “What is this drink?”
“Mocha,” she said impatiently. “How well do you remember your mother?”
“Her face, very clearly. Her voice, as if I heard it speaking yesterday. I have a few memories that are detailed and specific, like the day we sat on the floor together, building houses from toy bricks. But much of the rest of it is lost.”
“What was your impression of her? Was she happy, sad, afraid, rebellious? Was she loving or was she cold?”
Kerk had never tried to resolve his hazy memories into such defined terms. “She was quiet,” he said at last. “She rarely spoke when my father was in the room. I don’t think she was rebellious. I remember how surprised everyone was to find out she had gone.”
“Why did she leave your father? The usual reasons, I suppose?”
He gave her a cold look. “What would those be, in your opinion?”
She waved a hand. “Cruelty, abuse, starvation. Was your father a mean man?”
Kerk narrowed his eyes and did not answer. A gulden man did not disparage his father, not to anyone, even if his father was dead. Kerk would never speak a word of his father’s rages, his screaming fits, the beatings he had administered to his wife and his son.
“I gather he was,” Jalci said shrewdly. “And maybe he got meaner once your sister was born. Maybe he was disappointed that his second child was a girl, not a boy.”
Kerk considered that. “Every man wants sons,” he said at last.
Jalci leaned her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “Was your sister in danger from him, do you think?” Jalci said. “Did he maybe threaten to kill her, and that’s why your mother ran away?”
Kerk shrugged. “She was just a baby. Not even a person.” But he thought Jalci might be right. His father’s fury had seemed to double once the infant girl was in the house. One of Kerk’s very specific memories involved his mother shrieking in terror after his father had jerked the baby from her arms and flung the little girl across the room. But the baby hadn’t been hurt—or, at any rate, she had been robust enough to wail at the top of her little lungs.
Which, as Kerk recalled, had just infuriated his father more.
He firmly turned off the rest of that memory.
Jalci was staring at him. “Just because she’s a baby doesn’t mean she’s not a person,” she said.
He shrugged. “Perhaps things are different in Inrhio,” he said. “In Geldricht, children do not have any legal status until they are twelve. Until they reach that age, their father can terminate them—”
“Murder them,” Jalci interrupted.
“And be considered within his rights.”
“I thought Chay Zanlan had outlawed that practice,” she said.
At first he was surprised to hear Chay Zanlan’s name on a blueskin’s lips. But this indigo, obviously, knew much more about Geldricht than he knew about Inrhio, and she had clearly made it a point to learn who governed Gold Mountain and what some of his policies were. “Chay Zanlan has discouraged that practice,” Kerk replied, “but it continues on, even in the wealthiest gulden households, and no one is astonished or outraged. It is just the way things are.”
“And the way things are in Geldricht is the reason women escape to the city every chance they get,” Jalci said with heat. “I am hardly surprised to learn that women run away from Gold Mountain. I am more surprised to learn that any of them stay.”
“It is not so easy to leave,” Kerk said quietly. Even for a young man who could travel alone, speak to strangers, carry his own money, and negotiate hi
s own terms, it was not easy to leave. If a man left the household he had been born into—or adopted into—who would have him? If he went to the city, what would he do? Where would he live? What place could he find? People might chafe at the restrictions of life in Geldricht, but everyone had a defined place; everyone knew who had responsibilities and who had allegiances. It was the perfect life as long as everyone performed as expected, as honor demanded.
Of course, some people behaved without honor. . . .
“No,” Jalci echoed. “It is not easy to leave Gold Mountain. But your mother did it, seventeen years ago. You think she came here and took haven in the city? You never heard from her again?”
“No.”
“Did your father? Or any of her relatives—her father, her brother, her mother?”
Kerk shook his head. “If they did, they did not mention it to me.”
Her chin was back in the palm of her hand and she was watching him again. Her dark eyes were amazingly dense; they were difficult to look away from. “So what happened to you after she left?” Jalci asked in a soft voice. “Did your father turn his rage onto his seven-year-old son?”
Yes—sometimes—brutal beatings that had left a couple of scars that Kerk would carry his whole life. But for the most part, his father had left him alone, being completely uninterested in his son’s existence. Kerk remembered how much he had longed to hurry time along until his twelfth birthday. How much he had wanted to be a man so that his father would notice him. “A gulden man rarely concerns himself with children,” he answered, his voice starchy again. “He has other matters to occupy his time.”
Jalci rolled her eyes. “Gulden men deserve to be smacked in the head, but that’s a conversation for a different day,” she said. “I’m still trying to figure out what happened to you. You’re the least forthcoming person I’ve ever met.”
