Quatrain (20 page)

“I have plenty to occupy me here,” the old woman said dryly. “But I hope you both enjoy yourselves.”

Two hours later, Kerk had to say that he, at least, had obeyed Del’s injunction. He couldn’t speak for Jalci, but he’d had a splendid time. The boys had been wildly excited to see him again, and he had had to be very stern to get them calm enough to pay attention, but they’d had a fruitful session of coaching followed by a fast-paced game. It was clear they’d all been practicing madly since he’d been here last, because the level of play had gone up almost across the board. Quint alone had improved substantially; he even managed to make a pass around Kerk’s outstretched hands and scored twice on what should have been impossible shots. Kerk tried to be sparing with his praise, but he could not help shouting out approbation at the second electrifying goal. Even some of the defenders cheered.

“Here are more exercises you can practice in the next few days,” he told them once the game was over. They watched him with famished attention; he imagined that every move he made was imprinting on their memories to be constantly replayed. “If you had extra equipment, more of you could practice at the same time.”

Someone laughed and said, “I think Helten stole one of these balls from a store in the city.”

“I didn’t
steal
it. It was lying in a park.”

Kerk ignored this exchange. “And, if you want, you can play a version of baltreck with only four players. Scoring is harder, but it gives you a workout on both offense and defense.”

None of them had ever tried to play on such minimal teams before, so he called out Quint and Shoev and Helten, the three best players, and joined them on the court to demonstrate the abbreviated version of the game. He couldn’t help showing off a little; four-man play heavily favored the best athlete, and baltreck was Kerk’s game. Everyone on the sidelines was yelling as he made score after score. Even young men who had not been on the teams were watching—even a few women. Kerk made a final shot, which rattled with a satisfying clatter in the metal cone, and risked a quick look at the spectators. Jalci was cheering just as loudly as everyone else.

“That’s all I can show you for today,” he said, jogging off the court and reaching for his duffel bag. He had come prepared this afternoon, bringing gym clothes as well as appropriate shoes.

As expected, the boys wailed loudly when they realized he was leaving, but they quieted soon enough when he promised he would return. “Three days from now,” he said, though Del had not specified such an interval this time. He would have liked to shower before changing back into his clothes, but the gymnasium didn’t offer many amenities. In what passed for a locker room, he was able to strip to the waist and scrub off the worst of the sweat before getting dressed again and heading out the front door.

Jalci, of course, was waiting for him outside, and they walked toward the Centrifuge through a slowly layering dark. It was colder than yesterday and the threat of winter hung glumly overhead.

“Are you as good at baltreck as you seem to be, or is it just that I’m not very knowledgeable about the game?” she asked, once the last trailing boys had dropped behind them.

Kerk laughed. “A man does not boast of his accomplishments,” he said.

“So you are. Could you have played in one of the professional leagues?”

“Maybe,” he said.

She appraised him. “And why did you choose not to? From what I can tell, the players lead pretty sweet lives. A little adulation might be just the thing a fatherless boy would need to make him forget his lousy childhood.”

He shrugged. “Maybe,” he said again.

“I think I want a better answer than that,” she said.

They were at the Centrifuge by now. There were three cars clustered at the gate, but, without even discussing it, they both headed to the first car in line. “It’s complicated,” he said.

“There’s a new restaurant off of East Two that’s been getting raves,” she said. “Owned by an albino couple, but the chef’s gulden, and half the patrons are indigo. Let me treat you to dinner and you can tell me some of your secrets.”

“I don’t tell anyone my secrets,” he said, amused. “That’s how they stay secret.”

She had settled into the driver’s seat and barely waited for him to close the door before she zoomed away from the landing. “Then tell me whatever you feel like sharing.”

The restaurant was a strange but pleasing place, Kerk thought. The main dining room was low-ceilinged and paneled with material that looked like seaweed or some kind of dried greenery; the muted lighting filtered out from behind translucent shades of watered pastel. The chef might have been gulden, but the items on the menu were eclectic, borrowing spices from Inrhio and countries across the ocean. The clientele was decidedly mixed, and the atmosphere was both relaxed and a little jazzed, as if the customers were excited to be in a place that they liked very much.

Kerk agreed with Jalci’s plan to order and share a variety of items, though such an idea would never have occurred to him on his own. He declined to sample any alcoholic beverages, though. More and more these days, he was feeling as though he needed to keep his wits about him. It seemed like it would be too easy for him to be thrown off balance.

“So why didn’t you try out for a professional baltreck team?” she asked, once they were settled at their table and had given the waiter their order.

“There’s a pretty small window of time for going pro,” he answered. “Most teams recruit seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds. By the time you’re twenty, you’ve passed your peak and it’s rare that a team will even give you a chance.”

Jalci sipped at the drink that
she
had not been too cautious to order. It was lime green and bubbly, and Kerk thought it looked lethal. “So what was happening to you when you were seventeen?”

“Tess’s third child was born and Tess was very sick,” he said.

Jalci’s eyes widened. “And you stayed in the house to care for her?”

He shrugged. “There were nurses to do that, and women from her family. I wasn’t needed in the sickroom.” Though he’d spent plenty of time there, mostly at night, reading to Tess when she couldn’t sleep or just watching her face when she could. “I was of more use to Brolt Barzhan, for I had been working in the company for five years already and there were tasks I could do for him that eased his way.”

“Well, I hope they appreciated your sacrifice!” she exclaimed.

Kerk wasn’t sure Brolt had ever known of his dreams to be a professional player. Kerk had never been the confiding type. Until he met Jalci, anyway. “It was not a sacrifice,” he said quietly. “It is what any son of the house would have done. I was glad to be able to repay, in some small way, the generosity they had always shown to me.”

“But how long was she sick?” Jalci asked. “I mean, it couldn’t have been for years, could it? Surely there would have been time for you to go pro after she recovered.”

“By then, I had lost the inclination.”

“By then, you were thinking that you didn’t want anyone you loved to die while you were someplace else,” Jalci said shrewdly. “So you didn’t want to leave.”

Kerk shrugged again. “Maybe.”

Their food arrived, aromatic with unfamiliar scents, and they spent the next fifteen minutes tasting each dish and comparing their reactions. Kerk had formed the opinion that most blueskins had delicate palates and unimaginative preferences in food, but Jalci tried everything and liked everything, even the extraordinarily spicy meat dish that Kerk could barely tolerate. She did gulp down an entire glass of water after she’d finished it, though.

“I wouldn’t want to eat that every day,” she said, “but it’s very good.”

She got distracted while they split a couple of desserts, both too sweet for Kerk’s taste; her eyes kept going past him to a spot in the middle of the restaurant.

“What are you looking at?” he asked finally.

“There’s a young couple sitting a few tables behind you,” she said in a low voice. “Mixed race. She’s gulden and he’s blueskin. I don’t mean to be staring, but that’s such an unusual sight.”

“There’s you and me,” he said dryly.

“Yes, but they appear to be
together
,” she said. “Married, maybe. They’ve got a baby.”

That almost did make him slew around in his chair. “Really? I didn’t think that ever happened.”

“Well, it almost never does,” she said. “I think that less than one percent of the babies born in the city last year were to interracial couples.” She grinned. “I read that somewhere. I can’t remember why it stuck in my head.”

Casually he repositioned his chair so he could glance behind him to get a glimpse of the parents. They were young, neither of them over twenty by his guess, and they looked exhausted. The woman’s gold skin seemed a little dingy around the eyes, as if she hadn’t slept for about a week, but her blond hair frizzed around her face with a great deal of manic curl, and her weary smile was wide and genuine. The blueskin boy had night-black hair and the coarse features that Kerk associated with mid- or low-caste families, but he, too, was smiling. The baby sat in its mother’s lap and looked around with plain astonishment at the world. Its skin was a blue as dark as Jalci’s but its hair was a tightly curled yellow. The contrast was startling and seductive.

“There’s a child who is not going to have an easy time in either world,” Kerk remarked.

Jalci nodded. “Just what I was thinking. They’ll never be able to live in Inrhio or Geldricht. They’ll have to stay in the city forever. I wonder if his mother has disowned him.”

Kerk didn’t even have to wonder. “Her father has certainly cast her off,” he said, sitting forward in his chair again. “Unless she has no father. Unless she grew up in the Lost City. Even then, gulden men who see her in the street might feel free to express how much they disapprove of her choice.”

Jalci’s face was solemn. “Really? They might hurt her? The indigo might harass him, but I don’t think it would go any further than that.”

“And what would they say to you,” he said softly, “if they saw you out in public with a gulden man?”

Her head came up at that and her dark eyes gleamed. He imagined defiance was an old habit of hers. “I am from one of the Higher Hundred families, and only my female relatives may presume to comment on my behavior,” she said.

“And sometimes you like shocking them,” he said.

“That’s not why I’m here with you,” she said instantly. “We’re friends.”

“We don’t know each other well enough to be friends,” he said.

She put her head to one side. “Very well, then, you interest me,” she answered. “I would
like
to be your friend. But I’m not sure you ever let anyone get close enough for the word to apply.”

That was so true that he immediately stiffened up. “There are many borders separating us, Jalciana Candachi,” he said. “We have crossed a few of them, but I imagine the rest are impassable.”

“Then why are
you
out in public with
me
?” she demanded. “Since you don’t particularly want to shock anyone? In fact, the less attention you draw to yourself, the happier you are.”

Which was also true, and made him turn even more remote. “Because you can be of use to me,” he said coolly. “For the same reason I would accept a dinner invitation from one of the blueskin men who does business with Brolt Barzhan.”

That hurt her a little; her eyes darkened and her pretty face tightened. He was immediately sorry, but he didn’t have an apology in him. Nor did he have a good answer for the original question, and it made him uneasy that it had even been asked. Why
was
he out in this public place with a blueskin heiress whom he had no reason to want to know? What would Tess think if she saw them? What would Brolt say?

“I will strive to be as useful as possible, then,” she said, her voice as chilly as his. “I would not want you to complain of your treatment at the hands of a blueshi.”

He was shocked that she would use the word, which was as filthy an insult to the indigo as
gilder
was to the gulden. “You shouldn’t talk that way,” he said sternly. “If you dishonor yourself, others will dishonor you as well.”

For some reason, that made her laugh; the hurt look went away. “Very well, then,” she said, “I will draw on my reserves of self-respect and try to overlook the fact that you are trying very hard
not
to be nice to me. Even though I think you want to be.”

He didn’t have to try to find an answer to that because she was suddenly on her feet. He spun in his chair to watch her go over and speak to the interracial couple, who had gathered all their paraphernalia and were just about to leave the restaurant. He didn’t hear what she said, but she reached down to touch the baby on the cheek, and her words made the young parents beam with pride. They headed out the door; Jalci stepped up to the bar to place another order. When she returned to the table, she was carrying drinks for each of them.