“Hart, did you have something to do with my being assigned here?”
“Lord, you’ve gotten over your standoffishness in a hurry. I’d almost have thought you were avoiding me, the way our Iolanthe had to go in and drag you out by your collar.” Hartley Quince stood and looked Will’s uniform up and down. “And just see what you’ve made of yourself. Most of Sangaree thinks of nothing beyond this year’s survival and making a buck, and here you are— alive, out of the section, and with a berth in the City Guard. I’m proud of you, Willie.”
It was impossible to tell from his tone whether he was serious or sarcastic. Will took the safer road and made no answer.
Hartley said, “Tell me, when I left Sangaree, did you ever think you might see me again?”
Entire nights had been given to it. “Yes,” said Will. Hartley laughed. “I suppose you pictured me in jail, or a holding cell on the way to the pens.”
“No,” said Will honestly. “I imagined it would be something like this.”
The amusement drained from Hartley’s eyes. For a brief second, he looked like a man who’d taken a step that wasn’t there. Then he smiled. “God, but I’ve missed you. You’re not quite as talkative as you used to be, though. We’ll have to work on that. How’s your sister?”
“Fine.”
“And the job?”
“Fine.”
“How’s your mother?”
“Fi— Hart, you know my mother is dead.”
The sound of a door closing in the interior apartments suggested that Iolanthe and Vivian were on their way. Will stepped closer to Hartley.
“You didn’t have anything to do with my being assigned here, did you?”
Hartley Quince raised one perfect golden brow. He was good at that. Will recalled seeing him practice it in a mirror at the age of twelve. “What for? We haven’t exactly been in touch, Willie.”
“I know.” And you haven’t exactly answered the question. Damn! Being around Hart was like being around an Oracle, only more unsettling.
The door to the sitting room opened, and the two Pelagia ladies entered. Hartley took Vivian’s hand with a possessive air, and Will moved unobtrusively to the other side of the room, where he practiced blending in with the piano and artwork. It was no small talent in a man of his size. Vivian’s light, excited tones filled the sitting room, the verbal equivalent of a bunch of spring flowers. Like any well-brought-up gentleman, Hartley solicited replies from Iolanthe as well, and a lively conversation commenced among the three of them. Will’s face was professionally blank, but he promised himself several good beers just as soon as he could manage it.
Chapter 4
Keylinn O’Malley Murtagh:
After my sixth birthday, when I rejected my older brother’s quite accurate description of sex with the righteous scorn I felt it deserved, I resolved I would never make a fool of myself again. As you and I well know, this was a resolution doomed to failure. It’s in our genes, it’s in every society we fashion, it’s scrawled across our foreheads in glowing green letters: If you’re a human, you’re socially awkward. I don’t care how charming you are or how often your audience applauds; there comes a day, and more than one at that, when you know yourself to be standing there naked with the shivery winds of cold observation blowing over you, all four comers of your idiocy exposed.
When I was nineteen, I made a slight mistake. We can skip past the details, thanks; but my elders and betters at the Academy got together and decided some sort of notice had to be taken. I really can’t blame them; my mistake had been rather flashy. So flashy that I became the first Graykey in a hundred and ten years to be exiled off-planet. Not that they did it in any nasty way, mind you. I was quickly promoted to GK Seventh and put under contract to an offworlder, Cyr Elizabeth Vesant, for the standard period of seven years.
I still remember how she looked at me when they brought me in. Elizabeth Vesant was an Empire citizen, forty-six Standard, who wore clothes that could have paid all the teacher’s salaries at the Academy for more than one semester. She was a trader who knew she was in a superior position to trade and didn’t trouble to keep that knowledge from the slight curl of her lips. She didn’t speak to me at all, just turned to the Dean of Students. “I brought you eight crateloads of pure powdered antitoxin and instructions on reconstituting it. I’ve saved your fucking lives, is what I’ve done. Weren’t you people dying, or was that bullshit?”
Her Empire accent sounded strange in the little room with its wooden floor and desks.
“We’re very grateful,” said the Dean in his usual toneless voice.
“I didn’t want to come here, you know. You asked me. You couldn’t meet my price in units, or I’d’ve taken units, all right? I told you what I wanted—a Graykey of my own. A Graykey of my own, like some fucking storybook, since you couldn’t give me money, and what do you bring me? A girl. How old is she, anyway? Seventeen?”
“Nineteen,” said the Dean of Students.
“Nineteen! She has student written all over her! What kind of thanks is this? And why can’t I get a male? Where are your other people?”
“She’s a full Graykey,” said the Dean calmly. I’d been promoted the night before, in what I can only describe as a rather hurried ceremony. “And she’s willing to go with you. I would advise you, for your own safety, not to try to make your own choice.”
If you’d heard his voice when he said that last sentence, it would have given you pause, too.
Cyr Elizabeth Vesant blinked. Then she gave what I later came to know she referred to as her “country girl smile,” and said, “Well, sure, my friend,
