Heart of Gold

by Sharon Shinn

  “You look like your mother,” Granmama said, fingering the stiff folds of the gown in an uncharacteristic moment of sentimentality. “White was her favorite color.”

  “Sereva picked it out,” Kit said awkwardly.

  “It’s just the right thing,” her grandmother said, nodding vigorously and seeming to toss aside the tears. “Perfect color for you. How are your shoes? Comfortable? You’ll want to dance, you know.”

  Kit made a face. “So Sereva tells me. She’s made Bascom practice with me all week, but he’s much better than I am.”

  “She has a natural grace,” Sereva interposed. “She’ll do fine.”

  “And where’s Jayson?” Granmama wanted to know.

  Sereva laughed. “He declined the enchantment of the evening, as he put it. I know he hates these sorts of things, so I let him stay home. Just this once.”

  They took Sereva’s limousine to the house not six blocks away. The street was so thick with sleek automobiles that they could have walked in less time, though they would have ruined their elegant thin-soled shoes.

  “Is there anybody here I should particularly know?” Kit asked. “So I don’t embarrass myself?”

  “Well, the hostess of course, but she’ll be at the door. And her mother. I’ll introduce them to you. The others—you ought to recognize the family names of the Higher Hundred. Be nice to them.”

  “I’ll be nice to everyone,” Kit replied. Thinking, To anyone who bothers to speak to me at all.

  Inside, it was even worse than she could have imagined, a huge festive room crammed with people. Everything about the assembly seemed false to Kit—the proportions of the room, the colors of the flowers, the smiles, the voices. A congregation of hypocrites, she thought. Rich, smug, lethal hypocrites. She wished again she had not agreed to come.

  Sereva escorted her through the crowd, stopping now and then to make introductions and exchange quick, gossipy comments. Kit endeavored to keep a polite expression on her face and did not trouble to attempt conversation except in direst necessity.

  As when: “Oh, you’re Lorimela Candachi’s granddaughter! Have you met my cousin Emron? He works in the city, too, don’t you Emron?”

  “Yes, in the law offices just inside the Complex. I take it you’re a city commuter, too?”

  Then the desperate reply, for Sereva had not schooled her in this, and surely none of these people would be impressed that she worked in the gulden women’s ghetto: “Yes, I’m involved in some social charities. How long have you been in the city?”

  “Oh, let’s see, not quite two years now. Minus the time I’ve gone back in-country, of course.”

  “My aunt can’t stand to have him gone too long, you know.”

  “As a mother, I can perfectly understand that.” Sereva’s voice.

  Emron again. “I have bachelor’s quarters around the South Zero exit. I suppose you’re somewhere a little more upscale?”

  “Oh yes, I live with my grandmother. Not far from here, actually. But I still like to take the Centrifuge into work.”

  Uneasy laughter from everyone. “Do you?” Emron said. “It’s so rare that I see indigo women in the ringcars.”

  “I like them,” Kit said, and could think of nothing else to say. But Sereva changed the subject smoothly, and Kit was not required to speak another word, and soon enough they moved on.

  And had, essentially, the same conversation with a dozen others. It was beyond dull, it was horrifying, and even Sereva’s whispered commentary couldn’t spice it up enough to be tolerable.

  “Now Emron, he was betrothed to a Twellin girl, but she wouldn’t marry him. Says she won’t marry anyone, and she’s got her jahla girl installed with her on this remote piece of property that she inherited when her grandmother died. Such an awkward thing to have happened, because he’s a nice young man.”

  “A little vacuous, I thought.”

  “Kit! Well, nobody really scintillates at events like this. But his cousin says he’s very bright. You might like him.”

  “I like everybody,” Kit said mildly.

  Sereva made a ladylike sniff.

  Eventually, the music started, and to Kit’s surprise Emron wended his way to her side and invited her to dance. She accepted politely and did her part with all the grace she could muster, which was enough to keep them from crashing into other partners on the floor. There was little requirement to converse, which was a blessing, so Kit was actually grateful when Emron suggested a second dance. It was a way to kill another ten or fifteen minutes.

  When he returned her to Sereva’s side, her cousin wanted to know everything Emron had said to her. “I think it was ‘Would you dance with me once more?’ and ‘That was very pleasant,’ ” Kit recounted. “Neither of us appear to be talkers.”

  “Well, he’s a nice man,” Sereva said again. “Maybe I should have him and his cousin over to dinner one evening.”

  The whole possibility that she could ever be married off to some eligible blueskin beau, discarded though he may have been by someone far more desirable, seemed so remote to Kit that she didn’t even protest. Instead, she wanted to know exactly what information she was allowed to give out about her current employment. “What I meant to ask you,” she began, but did not have a chance to finish her sentence. The whole room grew taut with incredulity; the force of three hundred stares turned Kit’s head toward the door.

  “Oh, no,” she said involuntarily.

  “Unbelievable,” Sereva breathed. “Aliria Carvon is wild as they come, but what an insult to Corzehia!”

  “That poor man,” Kit said.

  She received Sereva’s scorching look. “That poor man? What is he doing here? How dare he walk into a house like this?”

  “How dare he—” For a moment, Kit’s anger was so hot that she felt it sizzle past all her bones. She paused, pressed her lips together, tried to be rational. “She invited him. How would it have occurred to him to come here on his own? How could she do such a cruel thing?”

  Sereva waved her hands as if to say, I don’t want to argue about this. “This is real trouble,” she said in a worried voice. “I can’t imagine—This will ruin the whole evening for Corzehia.”

  “Maybe they’ll leave early,” Kit said.

  “That would be best.”

  But the miscast couple stayed for the next hour, and the next. Everyone watched them even when they appeared not to. Even as Kit’s hand was solicited for three more dances by young men whose names she could not recall, she could not completely drag her attention away from the gulden man and the indigo woman. How had he learned these indigo dances? For these were not performed in Geldricht. Aliria Carvon must have taught him over the past week or so; she must have been planning to bring him to the party for some time. Which made her actions now even more reprehensible.

  Kit felt herself growing more and more tense as Aliria Carvon spent less and less time with her consort. She knew the temper of gulden men. They did not like to be ignored or ridiculed, and they were unlikely to take either action lightly. But what would he do, could he do, in an indigo stronghold such as this? He could make a scene, of course, but there were plenty of servants to throw him out and prevent him from growing violent.

  But she watched him watching Aliria Carvon, and she grew afraid.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about Aliria if I were you,” said a voice in her ear, and she looked up to find herself accosted by a young woman with a friendly smile and an intelligent expression. “She lives to be outrageous. The party wouldn’t be any fun for her if people weren’t talking about her when it was over.”

  “They might be talking about her corpse,” Kit said shortly. “That wouldn’t be much fun for her either.”

  The woman turned to survey the guldman, once more standing alone on the edge of the room. “I don’t doubt that he’d love to strangle h
er, but I can’t imagine he’d have the chance.”

  “More likely to cut her throat,” Kit said coldly. “He could do it faster than she could draw breath to scream.”

  The blueskin turned back to survey Kit with interest. She wore her hair cut close to her scalp and jewelry from a jahla lover, so she clearly considered herself both fashionable and rebellious. But Kit was not impressed. Her Higher Hundred breeding molded her cheekbones and settled across her shoulders like a shawl; this was not a woman who strayed too far from the common road. “To slit her throat,” the woman said, “he’d have to be armed. And surely, at an event like this—”

  “He’s got a knife,” Kit said. “I guarantee it.”

  “Maybe somebody should warn Aliria, then.”

  “I think that would be an excellent idea.”

  The woman held out her hand. “I’m Melina Lurio, by the way,” she said. “You weren’t introduced to me when you came in, but I know your cousin by sight.”

  “Kitrini Candachi.”

  Melina smiled, an unexpectedly engaging expression. “Yes, I knew that,” she admitted. “I thought it was awfully brave of you to come here.”

  “It feels more stupid than brave.”

  “But you’ve done so well! Emron Vermer is something of a catch, you know. He doesn’t have any sisters, so all his mother’s property will go to his wife.”

  Kit could not help staring in indignation until she caught Melina’s laughing expression. A joke. “My cousin Sereva is already planning to invite him to dinner.”

  “I can’t tell you the number of eligible men I’ve been introduced to in the past three years,” said Melina. “All completely insufferable, although I know that someday I’ll have to marry. I keep waiting to find the least offensive of the lot before I agree to anything. Actually, I’d probably marry Nolan if he’d have me. I can’t imagine anyone easier.”

  “Nolan?” Kit asked politely.

  “Oh, a man I work with.”

  Ah, not only a jahla but a career woman. Perhaps Melina was a bit more outrageous than Kit had thought. “And where do you work?”

  “The Biolab. I’m a research scientist. Working on discovering cures to all the worst diseases of mankind, although so far we’ve just managed to isolate a few viruses here and there. But it’s wonderful work. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to give it up.”

  “Then don’t. Marry this Nolan and stay in the city your whole life.”

  “Nolan’s betrothed.”

  “Well, someone just like him, then.” Kit could hear the boredom creeping into her voice and hoped Melina didn’t notice. But how could she possibly care about the lives of these total strangers?

  Melina grinned again; oh yes, she had noticed the boredom. “Good plan,” she said. “I’ll keep my eyes open. Well, it was charming to meet you. I hope you’re able to enjoy the rest of the evening.” And with a few more casual words, she left.

  Sereva returned moments later, apologizing for abandoning Kit so long, and swept her off to the dinner buffet. They were joined by Emron Vermer and his cousin, so there was more torturous talk that led eventually to the dinner invitation. Which was quickly accepted. Kit kept her gaze on her plate so her combination of panic and disbelief could not shine out from her eyes. Worse and worse. She would be engaged to the man before the evening was ended, and she had not yet said more than a hundred words to him.

  Nor would she, if she could help it.

  Sereva murmured some excuse, and left Kit with the Vermers at the dinner table. But this Kit could not allow. “I’m sorry,” she said with a wide false smile. “There’s something I need to take care of.” And she jumped to her feet and hurried back into the ballroom to look for the least accessible corner in which to hide herself. She would stay here half hidden by a towering topiary plant for the rest of the night, if need be. She was not exchanging one more word with Emron Vermer.

  In a few minutes, her eyes were drawn back to the gulden man, standing as solitary as she but far more visibly at the edge of the ballroom. His eyes were on a knot of indigo women a few feet away from Kit, and his look was coolly assessing. Kit spared a minute to glance at that small group—yes, that appeared to be the miscreant Aliria safely folded into their midst—and then turned her eyes back to the gulden man. He seemed completely unaware of anyone else in the room. He might have been in one of the rough forested tracts on the boundary of Geldricht, stalking wild boar for his evening meal, so completely was his attention focused on his prey. As Kit watched, he gave a short, swift twist of his right wrist.

  And invisibly shook a dagger into his hand.

  Without thinking, Kit stepped from her concealment and glided across the room, dodging past dancing couples without seeing them. He would wait a moment more, plot his route across the room, she had a minute, maybe two … Once he was set in motion, there would be no deterring him. He would dart across the floor so swiftly no one would see him move …

  Her hand on his arm made him start so suddenly she thought he would bury the dagger in her throat. The blazing gold eyes fixed on her almost unseeingly; it took him thirty seconds to cool his rage enough to take in anyone, anything, except Aliria Carvon.

  “Don’t,” she said in a low voice. “If you kill her, they will kill you. For absolute certain.”

  He was still seething, but he had calmed just enough to take in fresh details. The shape of her face, for instance, which so many guldmen knew; the fact that she was speaking in gold-tongue. “Anton Solvano’s daughter,” he said, and she nodded. Every indigo identified her by her mother’s bloodline, every gulden by her father’s name. He added, “And that might be a surprising thing, that the child of such a man would care about the fate of such a woman.”

  Ah, he was using the elliptical, impenetrable dialect; he planned to be difficult. “More surprising that I care about the fate of a guldman fool enough to allow himself to be tricked into such a situation,” she retorted, for the direct attack was all that would catch his attention at this stage of his fury. “How could you allow yourself to be brought here? Couldn’t you guess what reception awaited you?”

  “A man with honor expects honor,” he said. “A man who does not receive honor expresses his displeasure.”

  “Of course you cannot just walk out of here,” she said, thinking rapidly. “I understand that. That would shame you.”

  “There is no shame in a quick death,” he said.

  “It is stupid to die for a blueshi whim,” she said starkly, and that caught his full attention. “There is shame in being stupid.”

  “It would be interesting,” he said in an idle voice, “to know what such a woman values.”

  “She values her place in her society. She values her reputation,” Kit said. She could not come straight out and make the suggestion; he would never do what a woman told him. But at least he was listening. He would let her words spark his own imagination. “She would not want to stand naked before her friends and live to remember her mortification.”

  “A guldman is proud of his body and not afraid to show it to the world,” he said now.

  “Well, a blueskin woman is not. She hides that more faithfully than you would hide your father’s secrets.”

  He actually smiled—a ferocious expression, true, but still a smile. “It would be good,” he said, “to make the blueshi women relax from all thoughts of danger.”

  “Perhaps if you danced,” Kit said.

  He nodded once and shook his dagger back into its hidden sheath. Without asking permission, he put his arms around her and pulled her onto the dance floor. Nothing like dancing with the polite indigo men, not this; he held her hard against his body and tugged her any way he chose. As he had done when he danced with Aliria, he bent his eyes unwaveringly on his partner’s face, but Kit could tell he was straining all his senses to gauge the crowd around them. Surely eve
ryone was staring at them. She did not have the heart to look. Surely Sereva would never speak to her again.

  On the bright side, Emron would no doubt rethink that invitation to dinner.

  There was no need to attempt conversation. They had nothing to talk about and the gulden was, though he appeared oblivious, tracking Aliria’s movement within the crowd. Kit concentrated on keeping a pleasant, unconcerned look upon her face. Dancing with a gulden man at an indigo ball. Oh, of course, I do this every day. An ordinary occurrence. What could she possibly tell Sereva? That, she supposed, depended on whether or not Aliria Carvon was alive when the gulden left the room.

  She lifted her eyes briefly to his face, wondering who he was and how he had met the blueskin girl. Not a city man; no gulden who had been in the metropolis more than a month would have accepted such an invitation. Perhaps he had come in Chay’s train and stayed on to see the big town. If he had been part of Chay Zanlan’s retinue, Aliria Carvon could have met him at any of a dozen functions. For all Kit knew, Aliria worked in the mayor’s office and had spent the past two weeks in this man’s company, squiring him to elegant dinners, entertaining him while their bosses talked politics, seeing him at his best and most dangerous—

  The gulden wrenched free of Kit, spun on one heel and flung himself a few paces away. Dizzy and thrown off balance, Kit missed most of the motion but heard the single frenzied cry followed by hoarse screams of outrage and a general crashing and stomping throughout the room. She righted herself and whirled around, taking in sights and details: the gulden man sprinting for the door, outstretched hands and blocking bodies powerless to stop him; the roomful of shocked aristocrats, staring, pointing, and covering their mouths with their hands; and Aliria Carvon, stripped of her golden gown, standing naked and shrieking in the center of the fashionable ballroom.

  * * *

  * * *

  It had not occurred to Kit that she might become a heroine. Half the partygoers, it seemed, flocked instantly to Aliria’s side, but the other half surged around her, calling out questions and expressing their fury. Kit felt swamped and panicked, and looked around desperately for Sereva. Who broke through the crowd moments later to sweep Kit into an embrace.