Heart of Gold

by Sharon Shinn

  “Oh, I imagine so.”

  They finished A Wanderer’s Tale the next morning and moved on to Corridor of Fire, a stately and tragic story of one man’s slow dissipation. This one had never come Nolan’s way, either, and he found the subject both depressing and distasteful, but the language was so beautiful that he kept pausing at the end of sentences just to recover from the intoxication of the words. It was strange to him that he would be reading one of his culture’s literary masterpieces while being held under guard in the palace of a foreign dignitary. But no less strange than anything else that had happened to him in the past few weeks.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Chay sent for them.

  When the guards appeared at the door, Kit was unprepared. She had dressed in some of the laundered indigo clothes she had purchased in the city, and she had not troubled to style her hair. “How do I look? Am I all right?” she asked nervously, though Nolan could not tell if she directed the questions at him or the guards.

  “You’re fine,” he said.

  “Maybe if I put a scarf on—”

  “He’s not calling us in to inspect your clothes.”

  They followed the guards down the sunny corridors, Nolan happy to be out of his quarters for the first time since their arrival. Kit seemed so tense that he wanted to take her hand just for reassurance, but he had no illusions that she would find this a comfort. The guards had said they were taking the prisoners to see Chay, but Nolan wondered. They could be heading straight for execution. He tried to summon dread but could not. On this trip, he had become a fatalist. What had been set in motion, even by his own hand, could not be altered now by his words or desires. He strolled through the passageways and felt remarkably calm.

  Once they entered Chay’s living quarters, they had to pass through a series of anterooms and sitting rooms, all of them empty. The last chamber they came to was airy, colorfully decorated with tapestries, rugs, and flowers, and clearly set up as a sickroom. For there was Chay, half-reclined on a lounge chair, bundled in robes and blankets against the slight chill of the outside air, and pale unto death. Despite the open window, the room smelled of potions and sickness. Even Chay’s gray eyes seemed siphoned of color, almost transparent. His golden skin seemed diluted, mixed with opaque white. His gestures were those of a man whose bones had grown frail.

  “Kitrini. Nolan Adelpho,” he greeted them, waving toward a set of chairs. “Sit down.”

  Kit sat, but she looked as if she would have preferred to fling herself to the floor before him. “Chay,” she said in a pitiful voice. “You do not look well.”

  The guldman smiled faintly. “No, and I have very little strength. But the doctors tell me I have stabilized for the moment. They do not know if I will next become much better or much worse, but they expect no change at all for a day or two.”

  Nolan sank more slowly into the chair assigned to him. “I would think it is a good sign to have arrested the development of the disease,” he said. “Are they hopeful?”

  “They do not want me to die,” Chay said, turning that smile on Nolan. “Therefore, they seem very hopeful indeed. They were interested in your information about the possible length of the recovery period.”

  Nolan shook his head. “As far as I know, no one has recovered from the infection before. So I don’t have any idea.”

  “Yes, that’s what I thought you had said before.”

  “What about the others? Who else has fallen ill, and who else is taking the drugs?”

  “As far as we know, about forty others have caught the infection. None became as sick as I did, and most of them seem to have recovered already.”

  “Excellent!” Nolan exclaimed. “And the vaccine? It has been distributed?”

  Chay nodded. “Here and in the city. I am a little concerned about the population in the city, in fact. So many of the gulden there have divorced themselves from utter fealty to me. They will listen to the news, but perhaps not act upon it quickly. And our system of disseminating information among the city gulden is not as good as it is on Gold Mountain.”

  Nolan’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. “Possible epidemic,” he said.

  Chay nodded. “We have alerted the gulden news media. The hospitals. The health-care workers. But we are worried.”

  “Surely, if someone falls ill and seeks out a doctor, the doctor will recognize the symptoms—” Kit said.

  Chay nodded. “We hope so. If the person seeks a doctor in time. He might not realize he is at risk.”

  “Every gulden in the city is at risk!” she protested.

  Chay nodded again, but his eyes were on Nolan. “Tell me, Nolan Adelpho,” he said. “Does an individual have to be a full-blooded gulden to be affected by this disease? If a child is half-indigo, for instance, or even one-quarter, might that keep him safe from infection?”

  Nolan frowned. Beside him, Kit grew very still. “I’m not sure,” he said cautiously. “I wouldn’t think it would be a major problem. There are so few interracial couples that mixed-breed children are almost nonexistent.”

  “But there are some,” Chay said. “And if they can catch the disease, or spread it—”

  Nolan nodded. “Well, the infection attacks a specific combination of molecules in the gulden bloodstream,” he said. “There’s certainly a one-in-two chance that a mixed-breed child would carry those molecules. So then I would say, yes, those individuals are at risk. But the same antidotes and the same vaccines would keep them safe.”

  “Then we need to make sure the media and the hospitals have that information,” Chay said. “I will see to it.”

  “Once news of the epidemic becomes public knowledge,” Nolan said, “Cerisa will have to react in some way. She will at least have to pretend to be looking for a cure.”

  “We have informed the doctors and the news media that our own pharmacists have come up with medicines. I hope this does not disappoint you.”

  Nolan laughed. “Certainly not! I’d rather not be given credit for this particular breakthrough.”

  “Though if you are willing,” Chay added, “I would be interested in hearing from you about Cerisa Daylen’s reaction. What she says and how she behaves.”

  “In hearing from—but I—am I to be sent back to the city, then?” Nolan stammered. “I thought—you seem to be so dangerously ill—and you said before—”

  Chay nodded. “I have reconsidered. If I die while you are still here, your life will be instantly forfeit. No matter what orders I leave to the contrary, I am afraid you will fall under suspicion and mysteriously disappear. Even if your drugs do not save me, it is clear that they will have saved countless others—a whole nation—and I do not want to repay your generosity in such a dishonorable way. Therefore, I am sending you back to the city on tonight’s train.”

  Nolan came to his feet. “But I don’t want to go back,” he said urgently. “I want to stay here—and do what I can for you—and for any of the gulden. I want—”

  “There is nothing else you can do for any of us,” Chay said. “And now I want you safely away.”

  Nolan turned to look at Kit, sitting carved and immobile in her chair. Her gaze was fixed on Chay; she had not moved or spoken for the past several minutes. “Does Kit come with me? If you die, I don’t want the wrath of the gulden to fall on her.”

  “I want to stay,” she said instantly.

  “Kit, I believe, is safe,” Chay said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “She is too familiar to my family and my people to be at risk.”

  “Well, I am not so certain of that,” Nolan said stubbornly. “I would feel much better if she was allowed to return to the city with me.”

  Chay smiled, and this smile was both stronger and edged with malice. “I realize that,” he said, “and that is why I want her with me. I still do not entirely trust you. Forgive me for that.”

  The
words made little sense. Nolan glanced at Kit, then back at Chay. “What?” he said.

  Chay spread his hands. “You have brought us timely warnings. You have brought us miraculous cures. Even I may live. For that we are profoundly grateful. And yet, this disease may turn on us still. Your cures may not be effective. Your vaccines may be useless. All the gulden may still be at risk. I think we can trust you more if we know you have left behind with us something you value greatly.”

  “He does not value me,” Kit said quickly.

  “Oh, yes, he does,” Chay answered. “It is obvious the man is in love with you. It was clear to me the day you arrived on my doorstep. I will keep you at my side—not because I adore you as I do not adore my own daughters—but because he will not do anything foolish while you are in my power and at risk.”

  “You just told me,” Nolan said in a low voice, “that she was safe here. That your family and your friends would guard her. Do you tell me now that you lied? A man of honor such as yourself?”

  Chay smiled; he seemed to appreciate Nolan’s inept attempt to use the gulden’s chief weapon against him. “Not at all,” he replied calmly. “She is safe from physical assault. But is she safe from your manufactured disease?”

  “Chay!” Kit cried, and leapt to her feet, her hands balled into fists, and her whole body strained with protest.

  Chay ignored her and continued speaking. “Because you said, did you not, that anyone with the smallest percentage of gulden blood was susceptible to this illness?”

  Nolan nodded, not even breathing. Kit, though she had once more turned to stone, seemed to writhe in acid agony within her marble shell.

  Chay’s smile widened. “Anton Solvano’s father took a gulden woman to wife,” the guldman said. “That he was allowed to do so was a high mark of favor from my father. But Anton himself appeared to be a pureblood indigo, a fact which amused him and which he learned, at a very early age, to use to his advantage. Very few people, I was told, knew of his mixed ancestry. Or am I wrong?”

  “No,” Nolan breathed.

  “So you see,” Chay said, reaching out a hand to Kit, who moved forward like a sleepwalker to take it, “if your drugs are not as effective as we hoped, the woman you have fallen in love with will die. You go. She stays. Only you know how confident you can be.”

  Kit was staring down at Chay as if she had never seen him before. “You used me,” she whispered. “You called me to your side these past few days merely to expose me to the virus. Knowing I was unprotected. Knowing I could die. How could you do such a thing to me?”

  “Because it is a war,” Chay said in a very gentle voice, “and I have almost no weapons to hand.”

  Kit turned to Nolan, who had not moved, not even to yank her hand away from Chay’s, as he so desperately wanted to do. He had traveled all this way, gambled his entire life, to save this man; and now all he wanted was to claw out the guldman’s heart with his fingernails.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Nolan. “I’m sorry for everything. I didn’t want to hurt you this way. I didn’t even want you to know.”

  “I knew,” he said, his voice no louder than hers.

  There was a moment’s complete silence. Chay, startled, had dropped Kit’s hand. She stared at Nolan with disbelieving eyes. The room seemed to have been sucked clean of air.

  “I knew,” Nolan said with renewed energy. “I heard the story of Casen Solvano’s life among the gulden. I wondered who he had found to bear his only son. There are not many indigo who would follow such a man to Gold Mountain—Roetta Candachi might be the only one in sixteen generations. So who was Anton Solvano’s mother if not a gulden woman?” He pointed an accusing finger at Kit, who stood with one hand pressed against her mouth, gazing at him. “I knew all along you were gulden, if that’s the secret you were afraid to tell me. It made no difference to me. I fell in love with you anyway.”

  “Nolan,” Kit said through her fingers, and shook her head.

  Chay recaptured her hand and did not look likely to let it go anytime soon. The look on his face was part anger, part determination. “Then we have no secrets between us anymore, which is best among civil men,” he said in a voice far less genteel than his words. “She is still my hostage to your medications.”

  Nolan laughed, surprising even himself. “Kit won’t fall ill, Chay Zanlan,” he said scornfully. “How stupid do you think I am? She’s had a full course of vaccines in the past nine days. I started dosing her before we left the city.”

  Kit’s hand spasmed in Chay’s hold, as if she would jerk herself free. The guldman’s grip tightened; the hostility in his gray eyes was impossible to miss. “Then she is only as safe as the rest of us,” Chay said. “And you, Nolan Adelpho, must be the judge of just how safe that is.”

  “As safe as I could make her. As safe as I could make any of you,” Nolan said. “I have no fears for her on that score. But I worry about her safety in the hands of a man who could use her as a choifer in such a mortal game.”

  “You have been playing choisin,” Chay said.

  “It is not a pastime I care for, frankly,” Nolan said. “I have no heart for attack and counterattack. I have no taste for betraying my longtime allies. I am a straightforward man, and a simple one. I have done what I can for you and your people. Now let Kit go. Let her return to the city with me.”

  “No,” Chay said.

  “Then I will stay and wait out your illness with her.”

  Chay gestured, and two guards entered the room. “No,” Chay said again. “Your luggage is in the hall. You will be escorted to Zakto Station within the hour. You will be accompanied on your journey back to the city, and for that trip you will be quite protected. But enter Geldricht again without an invitation, and I do not believe you will go unmolested. My people have been told that the indigo grow treacherous, and they will look with suspicion upon any of your race.”

  The guards had hold of Nolan by both arms. He would not let them drag him from the room. He would walk out with what dignity he could manage. But he backed out slowly, his eyes never leaving Kit’s face. Chay he ignored; Nolan had spoken his last words, given his last aid to the guldman.

  “Kit,” he said, coming to a halt at the threshold. “I love you. Come to me when you return to the city.”

  “She may choose not to return,” Chay said.

  Nolan ignored him. “I love you,” he said again. “Come to me.”

  “Nolan,” she said, and not another word. The guards pulled him from the room, and the door shut between them. The march down to the front gates took nearly twenty minutes. In the grand hallway, his guards collected his suitcase, and they were on their way to the train station. Back to the city. Back to Inrhio.

  Back to a world that no longer existed.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  As far as traffic was concerned, life in the city was almost back to normal. The Centrifuge was still under reconstruction, but a fleet of buses and trolleys had been installed to carry traffic to every possible destination, and so the daily commute was again possible. Nolan assumed he would find this very handy if he still had a job.

  He had been gone from the city nearly two weeks, and away from his apartment for even longer. Entering it now, mid-afternoon on an uncomfortably hot day, he found that it smelled dusty, stale, and unfamiliar, but not as bad as he had thought it might. No rotting trash, no unfortunate plumbing leaks left unattended too long. Still, there was something peculiar about it, stranger than the smells of emptiness and neglect, and he moved from room to room trying to identify what.

  Color.

  He had been too long among the gulden, first at Pakt’s merry house, then in Chay Zanlan’s glorious palace. His eyes had become accustomed to riots of blues and purples and passionate pinks. He expected tapestries, rugs, stenciled walls, painted mouldings. Here everything was neutral, subdued, elegant, and steril
e.

  And sound.

  Pakt’s house had been alive with children laughing, voices calling, furniture being shoved from one side of the room to the other. And in Geldricht he had only been alone for those brief times when Kit had been called away to Chay Zanlan’s presence. Of course, there had been many times during those days when she did not speak to him, but still, she had been a presence there, moving about in the other room, her personality so compelling it had seemed to shout to him even through her determined silence.

  But here there was nothing. No commotion, no signs of life. Nothing to remind him that he was not alone in the world.

  He went out at dark to forage for food. He bought prepared meat and dried fruit at the corner grocer; he didn’t think he could remember how to cook a meal. There were half a dozen other young men about his age picking out menu items in the other aisles. He recognized all of them by sight, even knew some of their names. A great loneliness washed over him, and he felt an almost irresistible desire to go up to one and say, “Hey, come back to my place for dinner. You wouldn’t believe the adventure I have just had.”

  But with whom among his friends or acquaintances could he share this story? Not even those closest to him would understand or approve. He left the store by himself, having exchanged only three words with the clerk. He wondered if he would live in unbroken silence for the rest of his life.

  Back in his apartment, he consumed his meal while standing over the counter, flipping through his mail. Bills, magazines, letters from his mother and Leesa, notices about neighborhood sales and citywide events. He would have expected something more drastic, after such a long absence, but none of these missives stirred him to frantic action. He did sit down and write quick notes to Leesa and his family, blaming the Centrifuge and the disrupted city life for his failure to respond more quickly.

  There would be more, at some point, to tell Leesa. But he could not envision how that conversation would go. He could not, at any rate, put what he had to say into a letter.

  That night he lay in his own bed for the first time in weeks, staring at the well-known patterns on the walls and ceiling. Nothing could have felt less familiar. It was as if his body, not his heart, had undergone the radical change, so that shadows fell with unaccustomed harshness on his foreign eyes, and the fibers of personal items rubbed on a borrowed skin. He did not belong here. This was not his place. These were not his things. He was the imposter.