Heart of Gold

by Sharon Shinn

  “I think he did the right thing,” Kit said in a low, stubborn voice. “And I want to find him before somebody else does—and lynches him on the spot.”

  Melina shrugged. “How can you help him? Do you have some safe place where he can hide out for a year? Or however long it takes?”

  Kit put her chin up. “As a matter of fact, I do. And I’m willing to take him there tonight if I can find him.”

  Melina met the challenging gaze with a cool, measuring one of her own. No fool, this woman; she was used to grappling with contrary entities, puzzling out their secrets, and rendering them powerless. But she could also tell which alien life-forms posed a threat and which might exercise a beneficial effect.

  “Julitta,” she said without taking her eyes from Kit, “I need the keys to your apartment. Give me a minute,” she said to Kit, turning away, “I have to get dressed. I’ll be right back.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It was a thirty-minute walk from Melina’s trendy neighborhood to the commonplace, featureless high-rise complex where Julitta had her small lodgings. But there was only sporadic public transportation running, and Melina didn’t want to hail a public limo driver, “who might remember something if my face ever appeared on the news next to Nolan’s.” Kit thought that very unlikely, but did not bother to say so. She was in an agony of excitement, uncertainty, and anticipation. She was on her way to see Nolan.

  “So he’s at your friend’s apartment?” she asked, just to have something to say, words to occupy her mouth, if not her mind. “How did that come about?”

  “He came to my place in the middle of the night. The night he went to the media, I guess. Told me what he had done. I knew—he knew—the instant his name was released that there would be no safety for him anywhere in the city. I thought about taking him out to my mother’s, but she watches the monitors, she knows what’s happening in the city. He wouldn’t have been safe there, either. All I could think of was Julitta’s place. She hasn’t lived there in more than a year, but she’s kept the lease. In case she ever gets mad and decides to leave me, I guess,” Melina added with a small smile.

  “Have you checked up on him? Made sure he has food—hasn’t gotten sick?”

  “I haven’t been out of the lab till yesterday,” Melina said gently. “I don’t know if he’s even still there. But I don’t know where else he could possibly go.”

  They entered Julitta’s apartment building and, in silence, took the elevator to the fifteenth floor. Kit had lost the ability to speak; her lungs had shrunk to the size of fists. Her veins ran with ground glass, spiky and fevered. She would see Nolan again …

  Melina knocked on an unmarked door down a long hallway of identical doors. Kit moved to one side, out of direct line of sight, and tried to persuade herself to breathe.

  There was a muffled noise behind the door. “Yes?” said a man’s voice. Nolan’s voice.

  Melina put her mouth to the door. “Nolan, it’s me. Melina. I’ve brought—” But before she could complete her sentence, the door flew open. Nolan stood there, ragged from sleep but otherwise whole. He did not look haggard or haunted or riven with regret. He did not appear to be suffering. Kit felt herself relax just the slightest bit.

  “Melina! What’s wrong?” he exclaimed. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that,” she said with a quick smile. “But I’ve been worried about you. I wanted to see if you were all right. And I wanted to bring you—”

  “I’m fine,” he interrupted. “I’ve gone out a few times. I cover my face with one of those masks, just like everyone else, and no one has recognized me. So far, anyway.”

  “You should leave the city.”

  He raised a hand as if in acknowledgement of an argument lost a long time ago. “When I think of a place to go.”

  Melina took a deep breath. “There may be a place,” she said. “I’ve brought someone to tell you about it.”

  And before Melina could turn to wave her forward, before Kit could take a step, Nolan’s eyes lifted and found her. He did not move a muscle, but his whole body reacted; he appeared to leap forward, to glimmer with incandescence. His hand on the doorframe tightened till Kit could actually sense the protest of the wood.

  In the silence, Melina’s voice sounded strained and artificial. “She came to my place looking for you. I believed her when she said she knew you. But if you don’t want—if you—say something, Nolan. Let me know if you want me to take her away again.”

  “No,” he said, and nothing else.

  There was another moment of complete silence, while Kit and Nolan stared at each other and Melina waited for instructions. “Well, then,” Melina said finally, “I guess I’ll be going. If you leave the city, Nolan, please let me know where you go. I’m glad you’re all right. I’m glad you—” Her voice trailed off. No one said anything. Melina’s laugh came, soft as a whisper. “I’ll be on my way, then. Goodbye, Nolan. Goodbye, Kitrini.” And she edged away from them and down the hall. And they were left alone, face-to-face.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Nolan,” Kit said.

  He nodded, the first time he had moved since he had glimpsed her. “Come in,” he said. “No one’s supposed to see me.”

  She crossed the threshold and glanced around blindly before her eyes went back to him. “You’ve been all right? You’ve been safe here?”

  “So far. But I’ve watched the monitors. People are looking for me.”

  Kit nodded. “Reporters.”

  “And some government authorities. And angry indigo who would like to see me murdered in the street.”

  “Melina’s right. You should go away. Hide someplace.”

  He shrugged, then smiled, making no direct answer. “How did you find me?” he asked. “How did you find Melina?”

  “Saw her on the news. I remembered that you’d mentioned her name. I thought she might know where you were.”

  “And why did you want to know that?”

  “Because I wanted to tell you—”

  He waited while she searched for words. “Tell me what?”

  She spread her hands; all-inclusive. “Tell you everything,” she said at last. “Jex is dying, I think.”

  “I know. They would not have released him otherwise.”

  “And the whole world has changed.”

  “I know,” he said again.

  “And Chay is not the man I thought—and you are not the man I once thought—and even my grandmother is different than I believed—”

  “Would you like to sit down?” he interposed. “I could get you something to drink.”

  She shook her head. She had crossed her wrists and drawn her fists up to her collarbone; she was having difficulty with the very concepts she was trying to put into words. “I don’t know how you ever know what to cling to,” she said at last. “How you ever know what to believe in. How you ever know if what you’re doing is the right thing and if who you’re loving is a good person. How do you know that?”

  “You make your best guess, and you act on it,” Nolan said. “And if you find out you’re wrong, you try to make amends. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’ve just done it for the first time myself. And almost everyone in the world will tell you I was wrong.”

  “I think you’re the bravest person I know,” she said.

  “Is that why you came here?” he asked. “To tell me that?”

  “No,” she said. “I came to offer you sanctuary.”

  He smiled, genuinely amused. “Last time I heard anything about it,” he said, “you didn’t have much of a haven for yourself, let alone anyone else.”

  “I’ve become a woman of property,” she said. “My grandmother died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too. But she left me a legacy—a house in town, and
an estate in-country that is so isolated no one can find it without directions. I think you should go stay there. You’d be safe.”

  Nolan looked at her for a moment, unmoving, then turned sharply away to pace the room. “I can’t run away from what I’ve done,” he said over his shoulder. “A great thing—a monstrous thing—however it’s judged, I did it, and I would do it again, and so I must stand by my actions. Leaving the city would not change that. I cannot hide away for the rest of my life. I don’t want to.”

  She watched him closely. “Not the rest of your life. A few months—a year—however long it takes for the maelstrom here to die down. Soon enough, you’ll be needed back at the Biolab, haven’t you realized that? Do you know what demons Cerisa Daylen has unleashed? Your friend Melina said that to the reporters yesterday. Now that we know how to kill each other with disease, what other powerful viruses might we invent? What other kind of invisible wars might we learn to wage on each other? On the albinos? On foreign nations? We have entered a new era. And you are one of the few people who understands how to navigate through its mazes. They’ll realize that soon enough. And then you’ll have to return. But for now—”

  He stopped striding around the room and passed one hand over his face. He looked suddenly exhausted. “For now,” he said quietly, “I would so much like a place to rest. A place to sort out my thoughts. A place to recover.”

  “Munetrun,” she said. “We can be there tomorrow night.”

  “We?” he repeated. “You would come with me?”

  “You wouldn’t find it on your own.”

  “And then? Would you leave, or would you stay with me there?”

  Kit looked at the floor, a neutral collage of tiles in an uninspired pattern. “What does Analeesa think of what you’ve done?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I have not spoken to her since shortly after I returned from Geldricht. When I released her from our engagement and told her I was not the man for her.”

  “That must have been hard for her.”

  “It was hard for me, too. But I could not in good faith pretend to love her when I love you instead.”

  Kit looked up. “Is that still true?” she whispered.

  “What could have changed me?” he demanded.

  “Why does anyone change?” she countered. “Once you loved Leesa, too.”

  “Leesa was part of a way of life I loved. The only way of life I knew until now. And I have left that life behind. You are—you embody all the things I have come to admire and respect. Wondrous things and difficult things. Things I cannot put into words. I don’t know that I could ever have loved you before, being who I was then. Being who I am now, I don’t think I can ever stop. I don’t want to embarrass you or frighten you or make you angry. But I don’t want you to doubt that I love you.”

  “I have loved Jex Zanlan my whole life,” she said, in a slow, halting voice. “Both because of who he was and—and, I guess, because of what he represented. But I learned there are no boundaries in Jex. I learned that we do not have the same view of right and wrong—of good and evil. And I learned that I could not love a man who did not value the things I prize most. But it is hard to let go of an old love. And it is hard to trust yourself when you think you love again.”

  “Those things are both true,” Nolan said gravely.

  “Let me come with you to Munetrun,” she said at last. “I’ll stay as long as you like. I’ll teach you goldtongue. We’ll play choisin. We’ll read. We’ll talk. We’ll find out if we have really learned to read each others’ souls.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “I think I do love you, Nolan,” she said. “But I want to make different mistakes this time. Let’s stay in Munetrun until the city has forgotten about you—until we’ve forgotten about our old lovers—until we’re sure of everything.”

  “The world will end before we’re sure of everything,” he said with a slight smile. “But I will agree to stay until you’re sure of me.”

  “When can you be ready to leave?” she asked.

  “Anytime. Now.”

  “I have to tell Sereva where we’re going and arrange for a car to take us in-country. And it’s probably better if we leave at night.”

  “I can meet you somewhere. At the East Zero gate, maybe—that’s right on the road to Inrhio.”

  Kit thought it over a moment, then nodded decisively. “Good. Wait until full dark before you leave here. I’ll be there about an hour after nightfall.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  She turned toward the door, hesitated, and turned back. He stayed where he was, waiting. She took three quick steps to cross the room and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

  “Tonight,” she said, and not another word. But even as she left the room, he was with her; walking the silent streets, she felt him beside her. She saw the city, heard her own footfalls, with his senses; and she knew that would be the way of it from this day forward, no way to disentangle, no need to, no desire. The closer she came to Sereva’s house, the faster she went, till at the end she was almost running. It was not the distance she was trying to shorten, but the time. Nightfall was half a day away, and she could only endure the sluggish drag of the minutes if she whirled into frenzied activity. She must pack; she must arrange for transportation; she must secure funds, close the city house, talk to Sereva. Much to do and little enough time. She flung herself toward the appointed hour.

  About the Author

  Sharon Shinn is the author of the Elemental Blessings novels, including Jeweled Fire, Royal Airs, and Troubled Waters, as well as the Shifting Circle novels, including The Turning Season, Still Life with Shape-Shifter, and The Shape of Desire. Her first novel, The Shape-Changer’s Wife, was a nominee for Locus’s Best First Fantasy Novel of 1995. She has won the William L. Crawford Award for Outstanding New Fantasy Writer, and was twice nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She has also received an RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award and won the 2010 RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category. A graduate of Northwestern University, she has lived in the Midwest most of her life.

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.