by Sharon Shinn
Hoyla was unimpressed. “You might have been misinformed. He might have told you the explosions were planned for later in the week. You might have felt safe.”
“That doesn’t seem very likely, either,” Kit said boldly. “I’m sure you’ve heard gossip about my—relationship—with Jex Zanlan.”
“You’re his lover,” Hoyla Davit said flatly.
“That being the case,” Kit said, “why in the world do you think he would have allowed me to enter the Centrifuge that night if he knew a bomb had been planted?”
“He might have thought you planned to take a limo home.”
“He knows I never do.”
“He might not have noticed the time.”
“A man planning murder surely is paying attention to the clock,” Kit said.
Berkin Star stirred and for the first time spoke. “He might have wanted you dead in the tunnels,” he said in a nasal, swamp-country accent. “Might have wanted to be shed of you altogether.”
Kit stared at him; Hoyla stared at him; every mirror, window, knob, and painting seemed to grow eyes and focus them on Berkin Star’s unmoved face. Kit knew her expression was one of furious outrage, but the words had landed against her stomach with the force of a killing blow. Could it be true? Not possible. Could it be true? Could it be true?
Jex had called her there that day after weeks of silence. He was always granted a pass that lasted roughly an hour, and he had told her when to arrive. He had started no argument that would have sent her sooner from the room; he had made no move to keep her when she prepared to leave. He knew her route, he knew her habits, he knew her exit. If he also knew the timing of the bomb …
This was ice in her veins; this was the arctic season of the heart. She could not even ponder these things and continue to exist.
“Officer,” she said, and the winter in her blood chilled her voice to zero. “I will consider that remark unsaid.”
Hoyla Davit clearly realized that they had lost any chance they might have had of wringing admissions from this miscreant. She heaved her big body upright and, with a glance at her partner, jerked him to his feet as well. “All right, hela, I can see you don’t have anything left to tell us. If you remember something, you can find us over at the Complex. Always be glad to hear from you—if your concussion clears up, you know, and something else occurs to you. Thanks for your time.”
Kit did not even rise to see them to the door. She heard the servant Catie approach them in the hallway, heard the murmur of their voices fading as they descended the stairwell. She merely sat where they had left her, a statue of ice, afraid for Jex, afraid for herself.
* * *
* * *
When Sereva returned that night, she found Kit packing. “Kitrini! What are you—? Sit down right this minute! What do you think you’re doing?”
“Leaving. I don’t know that it will be any better at Granmama’s. Maybe I should get an apartment in the city. If anyone will rent to me.”
Sereva pulled at her shoulder, pushed her away from the bed where her piles of clothing lay. “Sit down! Talk to me! What in the world’s wrong with you?”
Kit hobbled back to the chair she had occupied during the police interrogation. “I had a visit today from two officers of the law. Asking about the explosions. Asking about where I’d been earlier that day. Asking me if I knew anything about the bombs—if they were in fact bombs, which so far has not been established.”
Sereva sank to the couch facing her, her expression troubled. “But—what could you possibly know?”
“I was visiting Jex that afternoon,” Kit said baldly. “And they know it. And they think he told me about the bomb. And that he set it.”
Sereva paled. “Oh, Kit—do you think that’s true?”
“That he knew about it? I think it’s possible. It’s not true that he told me, because—well, I would have done something, told somebody, I never would have— But that’s not what matters right now. What matters is that if these officers think I’m implicated, Ariana Bayless thinks I’m implicated. And what she knows, every high-caste blueskin in the city will eventually know. And that means you can’t possibly keep me in this house. You’ll be completely ostracized. It might be too late already. Sereva, I’m sorry, I never would have meant for this to happen—”
“Will you shut up?” Sereva demanded fiercely. “Do you think I will throw you out of my house now—when you’re sick and hurt and accused and alone? How dare you say that to me? Anybody with any sense and reason must realize you wouldn’t go headlong into a bombing you knew about! No one will believe you were involved in this! And even if they did, even if the evidence was piled up against you, how can you believe I would throw you out? How can you hurt me like that?”
“Sereva—I’m sorry—I’m just trying to protect you,” Kit stammered. “No matter what the truth is, the rumors will stick to me, and those rumors will hurt you. The truth is, I was with Jex that day. Whatever else they suspect about me, that they will know for certain. And that’s almost as bad, in their eyes, as conspiring to blow up the city. I can’t stay here. But I’m not sure where to go.”
“Well, if you leave me, it will be when you’re well enough to move,” Sereva said so firmly that Kit was taken aback. “If you leave me, it won’t be while you’re in trouble. Now you get back in bed while I put all your things away, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
She was too tired to argue—tonight, anyway. She knew she was right; she knew she could not stay here and taint Sereva’s reputation, harm her nephews’ chances to make advantageous marriages. She must leave, and soon. But she was too tired. She was too heartsick. Tomorrow, or the day after. She would be strong enough then.
* * *
* * *
But she did not actually leave the house for another two days, and that was in response to a summons from Jex.
It came in the morning, carried by Shan from the charity bank, who stood on the front porch and would not even step into the hallway when Catie dubiously invited her in. Kit limped down the stairs, clinging to the bannister, because this was not an event she had expected any more than Catie had: a guldwoman calling at an indigo door.
“Yes, Shan, what is it?” Kit said, hopping out onto the porch. “What’s happened?”
Shan glanced at her and looked back down at her feet as if even Kit’s common face was too glorious to look at in this setting. She was dressed in the usual gray drab of the ghetto women, but her long curly hair was held back with a red ribbon that gave her a somewhat festive air. “While the indigo lady is not with us, news comes sometimes, and letters,” Shan replied in a low, almost inaudible murmur.
“You have news? What’s happened?”
“And perhaps it is not the place of the gulden to track through the property of the indigo. But perhaps the letters are urgent.”
“Wait—you’ve gotten letters for me? At the charity bank?”
Shan nodded. “Three of them. It is hard to know what might be important.”
“Did you bring the letters with you? May I have them?”
Shan handed them over, three slim folded sheafs of paper. Kit felt her heart swell up to fill her entire rib cage. Messages from Jex. “When did these arrive?” she whispered.
“The days are hard to tell apart,” Shan replied. “But this morning I saw one of the letters in Del’s hand.”
The Centrifuge had been damaged six days ago; two of these could have lain unopened at the charity bank all this time. If Jex had written to inquire about her safety, he must be mad with worry by now.
“Thank you for bringing them to me,” Kit said, keeping her voice gentle. She knew Del well enough to guess that the older woman would have let the letters lie there till the city burned around her. Shan must have lobbied heavily for the right to do this task. “How can I show my appreciation? Will you allow
me to send you back in a limousine?”
“Feet serve me well,” Shan said, turning to go without any more conversation. “No thanks required.”
“Shan—” Kit called after her, but the guldwoman was already on her way, walking through the strange, fabulous neighborhood with her head down to avoid catching a glimpse of seductive marvels. Kit watched her a moment in silence, then slumped down to the porch and ripped open the envelopes, one by one.
By chance, she read the most recent one first. “I have an hour’s visitation today at three. Come if you are well enough. If not, write. I must know you are well.” Which sounded anxious but hardly frantic.
She opened the other two in order. The first one said, “Kit—Were you in the explosion? If you went straight home, you must have been. I cannot have visitors for another few days, but send me a note to reassure me.” Ah, that sounded alarmed; that was, for Jex, a tone of unreasonable concern. The second, written two days later, was actually calmer: “I have heard that you were harmed but alive. Gulden doctors spread that news to my friends. What a relief! If you are not too hurt, write me.”
She had not written, of course, and he had become worried enough to write her a third time, to ask after her health yet again. And he wanted to see her. Today. In five hours’ time.
She should not go. Wracked with doubt and horror as she was, terrified at the thought that he might have planned the explosion—convinced as she was that he was capable of it, whether he was responsible for this one or not—how could she consider going to him, how could she long, so suddenly and so violently, for one more moment in the catastrophic sun of his presence? But the brief words of invitation woke an irresistible, primitive desire in her muscles and bones. She could feel the magnetic drag of his presence like gravity or a vacuum. It was unopposable; her body bent in his direction no matter how she placed her feet or clung to an iron support. If he called her name in the middle of a crowded night, while cacophony raged above her head and voices vied with each other for volume, she would hear him; she would go to him; she would fight demons real and imagined to run to his side.
And so she would see him at three o’clock on this very afternoon, and she would learn if there was a reason to go on living.
* * *
* * *
The limo deposited her at the door of the Complex, but there were still many, many steps to take on a damaged ankle. She glided across the marble floors in the lower corridors, then stood panting in the closed elevator, willing the pain to subside. Her headaches were completely gone by now, and her wrist only required a simple, tightly wrapped bandage, but it seemed likely her ankle would never recover. She should have brought a cane.
The guard was new and did not seem interested in her arrival. A clock somewhere in the building was just chiming the hour as he unlocked the door, and she stepped into the apartment and into Jex’s arms.
“Oh, Kit. Oh, I have been so worried,” he murmured into her hair. He had gathered her against him much more carefully than was his wont, as if he actually remembered her bruised bones and battered head. She pressed against him, feeling, as she always did, a chemical need to soak up his scent, his textures, the rhythms of his blood. She had used to think, when she first loved Jex, that in time she would saturate; she would absorb enough of his essence to be satiated and content. And then she had realized Jex would never sit still long enough to allow her to perform that transfusion—she would never get enough of him. And then she had realized that it was not a resource that could be stored or archived; like food, like breath, it alchemized within her system, her body used it up. It constantly required more, which meant she had to be near him always.
And without this contact she was starved, as she had been starved for weeks, for months, as she might be starved for the rest of her life.
She pulled herself away—not too far away—and gazed up at his face. “Jex, what happened?” she asked in her most solemn voice.
He lifted his hands to either side of her face and gazed down at her with complete earnestness. His eyes were so bright they canceled the lamps in the room. “Kit, I did not plan the explosions in the Centrifuge six days ago. I swear that to you on my father’s life. And had I known—had I known such a thing had been planned for that day—I would have found some way to ensure your safety. The second I heard the blasts—when I realized where you must be—Kit, I cannot tell you the agony I endured. I did not sleep for two days, until word came that you had survived. And even the news that you had been hurt—”
He seemed unable to find words dreadful enough to complete his thought. He dropped his hands, put his arms around her waist again, more urgently this time but still with a certain caution. Kit felt her whole body turn to smoke and vapor, weightless, unafraid. Of course, he could not, before Ariana Bayless’s cameras, admit he had planned a bombing, but Jex was not the man to lie outright. He would not have sworn—on Chay’s life!—to be innocent if he was not. And he had been sick with fear for her, and he had agonized until he knew her fate, and he loved her. The world was a spangled place, full of warmth and miracles, and Jex Zanlan loved her.
* * *
* * *
They sat for the next hour nearly immobile on the sofa, Jex cradling Kit’s body against his own and murmuring endearments against her cheek. She thought surely she must be dreaming; Jex had never been so tame. They talked in soft, almost idle voices about Geldricht, the games they had played as children, the people they remembered from their childhood, things Chay had said to one or the other of them.
“Your father will not let you stay with me, you know,” she said finally, something neither of them had ever said aloud. “He wants you to marry a gulden girl and have a family, and the sooner the better. And once you do that, I can’t stay with you. I won’t ever be able to see you again—it would break my heart.”
“It’s a long way off,” he said in a faraway voice, stroking her arm with a slow, absentminded motion. “So much could happen before the day my father presents me with his chosen bride. Nothing we have to worry about now.”
“Certainly, nothing we have to worry about while you’re in prison,” Kit said, laughing a little.
Jex tickled her briefly in the ribs. “Is that why you still come visit me? Because you know here I’m safe from other girls?”
“Oh, yes, I’m the reason you’re still in jail. I told Ariana Bayless, ‘Keep that man right there for the rest of his life. I want him all to myself.’ ”
More of this nonsense—sweet beyond telling—and the hour rushed to its impossibly rapid close. The guard was pounding on the door, calling “Time’s up!” and they were still kissing good-bye. Kit did not think she would be able to tear herself away—literally did not think she would be able to unwrap her arms, shift her weight, see Jex’s body as something distinct and separate from her own—but he came to his feet, and suddenly she was just herself again without her conscious volition.
“I don’t know when I’ll have another pass,” he said, pulling her upright and giving her one final, painfully tight hug. “Where shall I send a note? To the charity bank or your cousin’s?”
“I don’t know. The charity bank. Maybe not. I don’t know.”
“I’ll send letters everywhere. One of them will find you.”
“Time to go!” the guard shouted through the door.
“I can’t leave you,” she said.
“I’ll send you a message,” he said, and helped her to the door.
And two minutes later, she was outside, and he was inside, and she felt like her body had been flayed from heel to temple. Dazed and disbelieving, she hobbled from the room, giving her head small, swift shakes to try to reorient herself. The elevator creaked slowly down its shaft, then deposited her on the bottom story. She made her way carefully across the marble floors, once more employing that cautious glide and shuffle, and pausing several times to lean against the
wall and give her aching foot a rest.
It was during her third such break that a strange indigo man approached her at such a fast pace that she felt a moment’s panic. She straightened against the wall and tried to assume a forbidding expression, and she was astonished when he grabbed her arm. His eyes were wild but hooded, as if he gazed at interior horrors; his face seemed ravaged by some disaster.
“Kitrini Candachi,” he said, and it frightened her even more that he knew her name.
“Yes,” she choked out.
“If you don’t come with me now, I’ll see to it that your gulden boyfriend dies. We have to leave instantly—you and I—for Gold Mountain.”
CHAPTER TEN
The transmetropolitan trolley, which cut east-west across the city, could be caught three blocks from the Complex and deposited travelers half a mile from the West Two gate, nearest to the wealthy gulden residential district. From there, buses took travelers up and down the main residential roads. Oddly enough, there were no existing public transport routes—except the Centrifuge—which would efficiently take commuters from the north side of the city to the south, though Ariana Bayless was working on temporary ways to correct that omission. But, for the time being, the majority of business commuters who were stranded in the city were indigo.
Pakt had offered his house to any of the Biolab employees who wished to stay with him until the Centrifuge reopened—or bus routes were installed to the southern sector of the city. Cerisa, of course, who took a limousine to and from work, had no need of such offers; and since Melina and Varella lived within a few miles of Cerisa’s home, the two young blueskin women had accepted transport service from her for the duration. A few of the other biologists had also found alternate places to stay or methods of transportation, but Nolan, Hiram, and Sochin gratefully accepted Pakt’s offer.
