Quatrain (15 page)

The next few weeks were full of adjustments. Because the house was smaller than the sprawling home on Gold Mountain, they were always tripping over each other. The food markets were missing many essential gulden ingredients, so Tess constantly had to exercise creativity as she planned her menus. The seven-year-old fell ill with some virus and cried for three days, while the nine-year-old missed her cousins and cried for other reasons. Makk did not like his new school and came home twice bearing the marks of fights with other boys.

“You must win your battles,” was all Brolt told him. Kerk spent a couple hours working out with Makk in a small unfinished room in the basement next to the heating and water filtration systems. Kerk knew all about being the boy who was picked on because he was new or because his father was dead; he had turned into quite a brawler, particularly once he started bulking up. A man must fight honorably or be forever branded unworthy; but still, there were some tricks that could be used fairly that helped ensure the encounter would go your way.

The third time Makk came home bruised and bloodied, he was smiling. He never lost another fight, and he began to like school a little better.

Kerk sometimes felt he was in a different kind of battle altogether, being pummeled on a daily basis by new sights, new thoughts, new experiences. He wouldn’t cry, like the girls, but he wasn’t sure he should fight back, like Makk. He just tried to keep his balance as the city landed one blow after another.

They were not killing blows, he thought. They were more like the slap of irritated affection that a man might land on a brother’s face.
Why aren’t you paying attention? See what you have been missing?

Almost at once, he loved the city, despite its tall, formal buildings and its lack of color. He loved its energy, the constant pulse of excitement that ran through it like an overstimulated heartbeat. He loved the Centrifuge, a huge circular traffic tunnel that connected all the major districts. He loved the staggering variety of food—the restaurants that were open to any patron of whatever race—the news channels that broadcast from streetside monitors at every hour of the day. He loved the foreign, unfamiliar jumble of blueskins and gulden and albinos all existing side by side, mostly ignoring each other, occasionally challenging each other, sometimes sharing a joke or a meal or a cheer at a sporting event.

He loved living in a place where the rules were different. He had not fared so badly by gulden rules, but only because he had been lucky. He never forgot that, if not for Tess’s determination and Brolt’s kindness, he would be dead.

But even a fatherless man like Kerk could make his own way in the city.

Even a man like Kerk might find what he was searching for.

B
rolt was pleased with Kerk. The big gulden man sat at his desk, looking over Kerk’s report analyzing the company’s sales for the past three months. Brolt’s skin was a dark gold, almost a bronze; his hair was a deep auburn just now coarsening to gray. Brolt exercised faithfully every morning. Kerk was pretty sure the older man could still wrestle him to the ground in four falls out of five.

“So you think we would be more efficient to sell to the three or four top houses rather than distribute to all of the vendors we have used in the past,” Brolt said.

Kerk nodded. “That’s what the numbers say to me.” Kerk liked numbers; he always had. They made more sense than people did, as a general rule. “If you import from fewer sources and sell to fewer outlets, your savings in terms of transportation and logistics will be significant.”

Brolt nodded. Brolt traded for electronic components with three countries across the ocean and sold them to factories in Geldricht and the city. The fact that his city business had grown so lucrative had prompted the move from Gold Mountain. “I had suspected as much,” Brolt said. “But only a fool does business with a single man. For what if that man is a cheater? Or what if that man dies? Then the fool has no income at all.”

“You’re correct,” Kerk said. They were using bluetongue, a language that allowed more directness, and both of them were speaking plainly. At any rate, more plainly than usual. “And even though the profit margin is higher when you deal with blueskin corporations, you wouldn’t want to cut off all your dealings with gulden companies. That would make you unpopular with the merchants on Gold Mountain.” He hitched his chair closer and tapped on the folder he had given Brolt. It had taken him days to run the analysis. “But you could consolidate. If you chose, say, two gulden outlets and two blueskin outlets, you could reduce your supply-chain costs by thirty percent. You could then discount your offerings to the four outlets you chose—but only if they increased the amounts they order from you. I believe this would not only improve your profits, but the profits for your clients as well.”

“I will study your reports,” Brolt promised, switching to the more formal goldtongue. “But I commend you for your hard work and your good mind. I am pleased to have you on my payroll and in my family.”

Kerk bowed his head. “Brolt Barzhan is kind.” To use a man’s full name was to give him the greatest honor.

Brolt smiled. “And Kerk Socast is faithful,” he replied. “You have been working very hard since the move from Gold Mountain, and I’m sure you have not had much opportunity to visit the city where you now make your home. Take a couple of days and roam the streets. I think you will like what you see.”

Kerk lowered his head in another respectful bow. “Thank you, Brolt Barzhan. I will happily do so.”

He knew exactly where he wanted to go.

Brolt’s offices were deep in the commercial district that clustered around the Centrifuge stop labeled North Zero. It was an easy walk through the hazy autumn sunshine to the arched stone gate that led into the tunnels of the Centrifuge. Maybe fifteen ringcars were idle inside the tunnel, awaiting riders at this slow time of the day. Kerk stepped into the first one and strapped himself in before carefully pulling away from the landing and into the lower lane of slow traffic. Hax and his brother had willingly, if unenthusiastically, taught Kerk how to operate the ringcars, but he wasn’t quite up to their levels of speed or self-confidence and he preferred not to fly during the heaviest traffic hours. He accelerated a little as he followed the honey-colored walls curving endlessly to the left. Two cars swooped by overhead, buzzing quickly out of sight. The North One gate blinked by.

Kerk kept flying until he arrived at West Zero, then he carefully maneuvered the car over to the apron and stepped out. There was only one other ringcar waiting at this gate; clearly not a popular stop. Kerk had to hope there would be transport available when he was ready to go home.

He emerged from the darkness of the tunnel into a sere and broken landscape. Here, the afternoon sunlight was harsh, mercilessly playing across the whole squalid scene. The low buildings were all squat and devoid of beauty; some were starting to crumble and others looked like they had been deliberately defaced. The few patches of lawn or park acreage could scarcely muster the energy to nourish scrubby brown grass or the occasional misshapen tree, mostly bare at this time of year, and Kerk could not spot a flower bed or a fountain anywhere in his line of sight. A few blocks over, a handful of boys were playing an energetic game of baltreck, and he could hear the distinctive reverberation of the ball hitting one of the metal cones. He saw women quickly stepping down the street, shepherding girls before them or carrying limp bags of insufficient groceries. The whole place shrieked of poverty and despair.

Kerk couldn’t imagine that anyone would prefer to live here instead of Gold Mountain.

He couldn’t imagine how he would find one person huddled somewhere inside one of these dispirited houses.

But he was here now; he would try. He chose a direction at random and strode down the badly paved street, exuding a supercilious confidence completely at odds with his inner unease. He had learned very early to cultivate that air of self-assurance that most gulden men acquired practically as a birthright. They were lords in their households, demanding unquestioning obedience from all their dependents; they were aggressive negotiators in the business world, quick to capitalize on anyone else’s weakness. A gulden man who showed fear or indecision risked losing everything that mattered to him.

The street continued on for a few blocks before ending in a tumbledown collection of broken playground equipment, a few twisted metal bars and a shattered ramp that might once have been a slide. Children were still playing in and around the ruins, laughing and shrieking, chasing each other around fallen rods and chains. Two gulden women sat together on a tilted bench, watching the children. Or, no, watching Kerk, their eyes wide and alarmed. Wondering, no doubt, who he was, why he had come to this part of town, what trouble he might bring.

He gazed at each of them coolly, too proud to show that their worried scrutiny made him want to crawl back down the street. One of them looked to be close to his own age—mid-twenties—while the other one was older, forty-five or so. She had golden-brown skin and soft brown hair pulled back in an unflattering bun. Her skin was lined with too much grief seen too early.

The right age to be his mother. The right hair color. The right expression. But the wrong face, the wrong shape. It was not the woman he wanted.

A moment longer he kept his eyes on them, just so they would not think they had routed him, then he turned smartly and strode back the way he had come. In front of the Centrifuge gate, he hesitated, then turned to look in first one direction and then the other. Where should he go next? How could he possibly find the person he sought?

A voice behind him asked almost the same question in the coldest possible voice. “What are you looking for here in the Lost City?”

He spun around to see that a blueskin woman had emerged from the Centrifuge gate and was staring at him with every bit as much cool arrogance as he had mustered for the gulden women. He had never been this close to a blueskin woman before and he couldn’t help staring. Her skin was a deep cobalt, a color so rich it was almost tactile; her glossy black hair was shoulder-length and simply styled, though the clip holding it back on one side was surely pure gold. Likewise, her clothes were of plain design but expensive materials, and diamonds glittered casually around both her wrists. None of these clues was necessary to tell him she was one of the high-caste indigo women; her haughty tone and confident stance instantly conveyed that message.

When he did not answer, she went on in the same tone. “Gulden men are not welcome here in the women’s ghetto.”

Only then did he realize that she addressed him in perfectly conjugated goldtongue, though she did not even attempt the proper subservient tone. Just to be difficult, he replied in the indigo language. “I understand this is a place where gulden live, so I cannot imagine blueskin women are any more welcome than I am.”

Her thin, elegant eyebrows rose—at the reply or at the choice of language, he couldn’t be sure. She answered in her own native tongue. “I at least offer the residents no threat of violence,” she said.

“Neither do I,” he said swiftly.

She surveyed him deliberately, her black eyes taking in his confrontational stance, his broad shoulders, the hands that he had balled into fists. “You do not look,” she said, “like a harmless man.”

He narrowed his eyes and took a step closer. “If I am dangerous,” he said, his voice soft, “you are careless to put yourself in my path.”

Her hands had been hanging down at her sides, but now she lifted her right arm and revealed a neat weapon: a can of volatile chemical spray designed to incapacitate an assailant from a short distance. “I am never careless,” she replied.

He laughed and twisted his left hand so he could show her a weapon of his own: a dagger quickly shaken out from a sheath on his forearm. “I can fling this so fast and so accurately that it would be buried in your heart before you could react,” he told her scornfully. “And I would wager I’ve had more experience than you’ve had winning a fight one-to-one.”

For some reason, that didn’t seem to frighten her; she looked intrigued instead. “Then why haven’t you knocked me down already?”

“I didn’t come here to hurt you,” he said shortly. “I didn’t come here to hurt anybody.”

“Well, you still haven’t answered my question,” she said, and now she sounded more exasperated than haughty. “Why
did
you come here? Because most gulden men just show up in the Lost City to bring grief.”

He lowered his hand and looked around him, once again taking in the ugly street, the uglier buildings. “That’s what you call this place? The Lost City? The name certainly seems to fit.”

She was still watching him. “To some women, it is paradise,” she said steadily. “Compared to where they have been.”

Now his chin came up in defiance. She should not be allowed to insult Gold Mountain. “Geldricht is a place of great beauty and strict order,” he said. “A woman living in Geldricht knows where she belongs and—”