Heart of Gold

by Sharon Shinn

  Nolan glanced briefly around the room. “So are we done here? Haven’t we spoken to just about everyone in the room?”

  Leesa nodded, gesturing to the far end of the chamber where a small orchestra had just finished setting up. “I think it’s time for the music to begin,” she said. “Will you dance with me at least once or twice before I go off and do my social duty?”

  “I’d rather dance with you all night, but yes,” he replied. “I’ll take whatever time you can spare.”

  “Silly,” she said, and slipped into his arms just as the music started. It was an old song, a formal dance; they had learned it together when they were eight and ten. Nolan could not remember the number of times they had performed it together since then.

  Dancing with Leesa was like listening to his breathing or counting his heartbeat. He could do it unconsciously unless he was paying attention. Her arms, lightly laid on his shoulders, felt as familiar as his own bones. Her shape could have been his shadow, so nearly did it match him. He never danced well with any other partner, although he could do his part creditably. Only with Leesa did he exhibit any grace, and that was because he borrowed it all from her.

  “One more?” he asked, when the first number ended, and she broke into a smile and nodded. The second dance was much like the first, though a little faster, a little more modern. Leesa was slightly breathless as the music came to an end, and so he squeezed her tight a moment to accentuate her condition.

  “Stop it!” she gasped, laughing, and pushed him away. “If you aren’t good, there won’t be any more dances for you.”

  “My last chance,” he said. “Who will your next partner be?”

  She turned from him to view the crowd now disentangling on the dance floor. “I think—” she said, and then abruptly stopped speaking. As did everyone else. Profound and shocked silence fell over the room as if tragedy had suddenly walked through the door.

  What had in fact just entered the room was a sight even more appalling—a fashionable young indigo woman clad in a gold dress, her dark hair spiked with artificial swatches of blonde. Her skirt was cut away in front so that her fine knees peeked out of the sliced fabric; the sleeveless bodice showed off the shape and color of her arms. Those were transgressions enough, but nobody noticed them. Nobody saw the vivid color of her dress or the brassy style of her hair. All eyes were fixed on her escort.

  A gulden man.

  He looked to be about twenty-five, maybe a little older, in the absolute pinnacle and prime of manhood. He was easily the tallest man in the room, visibly well-muscled, moving forward with all the unconscious insolence of an athlete at the highest pitch of training. He wore some kind of flowing multicolored tunic belted over tight-fitting trousers, but his arms were bare, and his broad chest showed through the open buttons at his collar. His hair was a deep bronze, wickedly alive in the thousand lights of the room. The smooth amber of his skin exactly matched the hue of the woman’s gown.

  “Let me guess,” Nolan murmured in Leesa’s ear. “This must be the notorious Aliria Carvon.”

  But there was no answer from Leesa. He saw her eyes dart around the room, though the rest of her body was immobile, saw her assimilate the looks of horror and condemnation on the faces of the other women in the assembly. No one stepped forward to greet the new arrivals. No one appeared to speak, either to her partner or to her friends nearby. No one changed position by so much as an inch while the silence held and Aliria and her escort stood at the head of the room and, like the others, waited.

  And then the orchestra struck up the opening bars to yet another dance number. And Leesa melted back into Nolan’s arms without a word of explanation. And all the other women returned to the dance floor in the embrace of their last partners, and they all acted as if not a single thing had changed.

  What? Nolan wanted to demand. What happens now? You can hardly ignore someone you’ve known your entire life. But perhaps that was exactly what Leesa intended to do. Perhaps that was what they all intended to do. There was a code that every woman in the room understood, and it would govern all their behavior. They had telegraphed it from face to face in those few fleet moments while the orchestra rustled and the guests postured at the door. And it was inviolable, universal, and cruel, and Aliria Carvon had tested it too far.

  When this third dance ended, Leesa spoke as if no great social cataclysm had occurred just ten minutes before. “Try to amuse yourself as best you can,” she said, patting him on the cheek as if he were a child. “I’ll catch up with you in an hour or so.”

  “Well,” he said, but she had twirled away. A few minutes later he saw her in the arms of a thin, nervous, awkward young man who must be the son or brother of someone who mattered. He would not be able to keep track of her progress for the rest of the evening, this he knew from long experience. It might be time to seek out Melina’s friend or sample the refreshments.

  But before setting out on either of those quests, he took a moment to look for Aliria Carvon and her ill-chosen guest. No longer standing proud and alone at the entrance, they had joined the others on the floor and were moving with a sinuous grace through the patterns of the latest dance. Aliria was gazing up at her partner, laughing as if he had just said something amusing. He was staring down at her with a peculiar and somewhat unnerving intensity, and he did not look as if he had just made a clever remark. The other couples around them took care not to come too close. Aliria and the guldman danced in a small deliberate bubble of privacy and may as well have been embracing in the unobserved seclusion of her home.

  Nolan pushed his way slowly through the crowd, nodding to the people he recognized, hoping he would not accidentally encounter Cerisa again. He had been here less than two hours, and already he was wishing the evening was over. He was relieved when he finally spotted Julitta, standing quite alone under the shadow of some impossibly contorted greenhouse plant.

  “I see my prophecy came true,” he greeted her. “Melina has abandoned you.”

  She seemed grateful to see him and gave a friendly smile. “She did warn me before we arrived. But I thought it would be fun anyway.”

  “And has it been?”

  “Not quite as much as I’d hoped.”

  He nodded. “It never is.”

  “Things are—livelier at the parties at my mother’s house. Not so much politeness and strict decorum.”

  “Has she taken you in-country yet? This is relaxed compared to some of the formal events there.”

  Julitta shook her head, the expression on her face somewhat alarmed. “No, but her sister’s engagement ball is set for next fall, and she already asked me—”

  Nolan laughed. “Oh, you should go. Just once. Just to see what it’s like. Stories to tell your granddaughters twenty years from now.”

  Julitta wrinkled her nose. She did not have quite the delicacy of bone structure that marked Melina, Leesa, all these Higher Hundred girls, but Nolan liked her quirky brows and wide mouth. “I guess this is why our mothers tell us not to date outside our caste.”

  “Ah, no harm in the dating,” Nolan said. “The real heartache’s in the marrying. I like Melina. She’ll be good to you.”

  “While she’s around,” Julitta answered in a low voice, so low that Nolan thought perhaps he had not heard her right. But he did not want to investigate; already this conversation was leading him into matters a little more personal than he liked to explore.

  “So! Are you still willing to dance with me?” he said, his voice just a shade too hearty.

  “Oh, yes, please! I thought maybe you’d changed your mind.”

  He was not used to blueskin girls who were so retiring and self-deprecatory. It made him the slightest bit uncomfortable. “No, of course not. I warn you, though, I’m not a very good dancer unless I’m dancing with Leesa. So be patient with me.”

  She gave him that small, grateful smile again, and
put out her arms for his embrace. “I’m sure you’re wonderful,” she said, and allowed him to lead her onto the floor.

  In fact, they made a passable pair, probably because they were both trying so hard not to take a misstep. Her face was furrowed in concentration, so Nolan quickly gave up any attempts at conversation, but that was fine, too. He was not good at small talk with strange women, though this one demanded less of him than almost any partner he’d had.

  When the music ended, she gave him a dimpling smile that lent her a momentary radiance. “That was fun!” she exclaimed. “Thank you so much!”

  He laughed and could not help but feel flattered. “Well, I enjoyed it, too,” he said. “Would you like another?”

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed, and made him laugh again. Really, this was almost too easy; none of Leesa’s friends had ever relished any dance with him this much.

  “Well, then,” he said, and took her back in his arms.

  They danced the next three numbers together, Nolan enjoying himself more and more as the evening progressed. Julitta’s naïveté was surprisingly refreshing, and she made no effort to disguise any of her reactions. If she liked the music, she said so. If she thought someone nearby had said something rude, she looked up expressively at Nolan and allowed herself to smile. She thought the food was exquisite. She pointed out the dresses that she liked best (including Leesa’s). She even admired the topiary, though she had some doubts about the blue roses.

  “But I’m sure they’re very fashionable,” she added hastily. “I just don’t think my mother would like them in her house.”

  She even had decided opinions on Aliria Carvon and her unexpected guest. For she and Nolan, like everyone else in the room, had kept a surreptitious eye on these late arrivals during the past two hours, and watched as Aliria seemed to grow more and more repentant of her outrageous act.

  “She’s going to dump him,” Julitta said to Nolan after their second dance together. “Watch her.”

  “She can’t. It would be too rude. She brought him here, and he doesn’t know a soul in the room.”

  “She will. She’s overstepped, and she knows it, and she’ll do anything to get back in the fold.”

  Nolan glanced down at her curiously, for that sounded like the voice of bitter experience. “Well, I’m sure she’s sorry, but—”

  “Watch her,” Julitta said again.

  Sure enough, twice in the next hour, Aliria left the guldman standing alone on the fringes of the room while she paused to chat with reluctant friends. Aliria never seemed less than animated and talkative, but the women she spoke to made cool and brief replies. Each time she left him, the guldman stood where he had been placed, arms folded across his chest, eyes impassively watching the crowd that made every attempt not to look at him.

  “I wonder what he’s thinking,” Nolan said once.

  “How to punish her,” was Julitta’s soft reply.

  That had caught Nolan completely by surprise. He glanced down at her again. “Really? If I were in his situation, I would be wishing I could die or grow invisible.”

  She smiled a little sadly. “That’s what you or I would be thinking. But a guldman has his own honor.”

  Nolan caught himself before he said “Really?” again, and tried to imagine Colt in such a situation. Yes, definitely, he would not melt quietly into the wallpaper. Thinking about Colt here made Nolan a little nervous.

  “Maybe someone should get him out of here before something happens,” he said.

  Julitta shrugged. “Maybe.”

  But Aliria was not ready to abandon her companion yet. She returned to him after the second extended absence, smiling up at him as if she had great news. The cool, considering look on his face did not change. He allowed her to lead him to the buffet table, and they picked among the offerings for their midnight meal. No one sat at their table while they dined. The guldman ate with a hearty appetite, but Aliria merely played with her food and seemed to lose some of that gaiety she had striven for all evening.

  “She’s going to dump him,” Julitta sang in Nolan’s ear. “Not very long now.”

  Indeed, half an hour later, as they watched, Aliria touched the guldman on the shoulder as if to signal that she would be gone for only a moment, and then strolled over to a group of young women on the other side of the room. For a moment or two, the indigo women stood reserved and judgmental, listening to some low-voiced commentary or plea; and then suddenly their blue bodies closed around the errant noblewoman, and she was locked in their protective circle. Almost immediately, Nolan lost sight of her flame-frosted hair and vibrant gown. Had she been swallowed up or had she voluntarily plunged back into that pure ocean of indigo heritage? Nolan wondered. He noted without surprise that Leesa was standing in the group that had reclaimed Aliria. He saw her blue dress, the color of her skin, indistinguishable from the hands and arms and faces of the women that surrounded her, so that they all seemed to meld together, all become a part of Leesa as he watched from across the ballroom. Into this primal vat of indigo heiresses Aliria Carvon had slipped without a ripple.

  “Told you,” Julitta said.

  “Yes, but what about the guldman?”

  “Maybe he’ll just go home.”

  But she did not believe it, and, still thinking of Colt, neither did Nolan. No one else in the room seemed to give him a second thought. He stood by the pot of blue roses, arms still crossed on his chest, hooded eyes still watching the assembled company, and seemed to grow more fierce and more silent as the next hour passed. Perhaps he thought this was another one of Aliria’s brief separations and that the indigo girl would return to him with some light apology and a request for another dance. Perhaps, as Julitta thought, he was thinking of revenge.

  And then, as Nolan continued to watch, another amazing thing happened—something even more amazing than the daring act that had brought this guldman through the door to begin with. A blueskin woman shook herself free from the indifferent crowd, approached the gulden man, and put her hand on his arm in a gesture of affection or supplication. There was—although the whole crowd had appeared oblivious to the man’s existence just a moment before—a collective holding of breath, a dumbfounded moment of silence into which the orchestra’s brisk music made a brassy intrusion. The guldman nodded once, sharply, and swept the blueskin onto the floor for the dance.

  Julitta was shaking her head, disbelieving. “That cannot have just happened,” she said. “Who in the world could she be?”

  But just then the figure of the dance turned the couple around, and Nolan could see the woman’s face. Oh, she was as proud and defiant as any indigo heiress; she was a daughter of the Higher Hundred who would not be intimidated by scandal, insult, or ostracism.

  Nolan’s voice was low and just a little admiring. “Kitrini Candachi,” he replied.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The last thing in the world that Kit wanted to do—literally the last, coming even after walking naked through the Complex during the noon lunch break—was attend some awful party at Corzehia Mallin’s. She had declined the invitation when Sereva first asked her to go and declined again when her grandmother made it clear that she would like Kit to attend the event. It was only Sereva’s flare of anger, two days before the party, that made Kit grudgingly change her mind.

  “Do you suppose it costs Granmama nothing to keep you beside her, odd and disgraced? Do you realize how many women just like her would have refused to take you in when you returned to the city? You may despise her way of life, you may scorn everything she believes in, but you owe her something, after all. It would please her to see you make the smallest effort to take your rightful place in society. Would it hurt you so much to attend one party? Would it kill you to smile and make polite conversation? She’s an old lady, Kit. How would it compromise you to try to make her happy?”

  And there was no good response to that ar
gument for, put in human rather than sociological terms, Kit’s refusal was nothing but rude. She suspected that Sereva and her grandmother had secondary motives for getting her out of the house, as well, hoping that a little activity would nudge her from her depression. She had tried to conceal her low spirits. She had been gracious and responsive when anyone spoke to her, and she had even managed to initiate a conversation or two on her own. They were not deceived, of course. She was heartbroken, and that was something it was impossible to hide. But their manners forbade them to comment.

  She had not seen Jex, would not see Jex, had not been importuned by Jex. The world was over. She might as well go to this wretched ball.

  Sereva and Granmama had tertiary motives as well for sending her to Corzehia’s party, Kit realized later. Unattached indigo males were rare in the Higher Hundred—most were paired off before they were twenty—but there were still a few decent matches to be made, to third and fourth sons, widowers, and recalcitrant young bachelors who had for some reason ruptured their engagements and were living defiantly on their own. Of the three categories, Kit was sure she would prefer someone from the third. No well-bred, well-mannered, compliant, bloodless blueskin boy would do for her.

  As if any blueskin man could suit her. Or she him. She was as unlikely to make a match among the Higher Hundred as she was to wake up one morning and find her cobalt skin dyed alabaster. Cruel though he was, indifferent though he now appeared to be, she would love Jex Zanlan till she died, and that was the end of it.

  But she had agreed to go to this stupid party, and so she may as well appear to advantage.

  She allowed Sereva to dress her in a gown of embroidered white. She wore her grandmother’s triple rope of pearls, and pearl bracelets so wide and stiff that she found it hard to bend her wrists. They had arrayed themselves at Sereva’s house but stopped by Granmama’s to show themselves off to the old woman before they left for the party. Granmama, to Kit’s astonishment, appeared for a moment as if she might cry.