“I don’t know about Geldricht,” Melina said, “but in the city, if he’d murdered that girl, he’d have been dead himself inside of fifteen minutes. Would that have made you any happier?” Colt gave her a quick frowning look, for he plainly did not like the question restated in that way. “I would not have been pleased with that outcome, but nothing about the story pleases me,” he said curtly. “She should not have exposed him to humiliation that way.”

“I agree. She’s a bitch. But he agreed to go with her, and he must have known he wouldn’t be welcome there. What were his motives? Did he think he’d be able to humiliate the Higher Hundred just by showing up at the door? That’s what I think. Which makes me think he may have gotten a little of what he deserved, too.”

“He in good faith accepted an invitation extended by a woman he presumed to be honorable,” Colt said coldly. “If he—”

“If I invited you to my mother’s house for the spring holidays,” Melina interrupted, “would you go with me? Knowing what you know about my mother, and my family—and me? Wouldn’t you wonder why I’d invited you? Wouldn’t you think I only brought you along to create a stir in my mother’s house? Wouldn’t that give you a moment’s pause?”

Colt looked stormy for a moment and then broke into an unexpected, though somewhat alarming, smile. “If I went to your mother’s house,” he said, “she and her sisters would run screaming through the doors, shouting ‘Barbarian!’ ‘Savage!’ ‘Save yourselves!’ ” Colt said disdainfully. “Even if I came with you clinging to my arm.”

“Exactly,” Melina said. “So why would this guldman expect anything different? He didn’t. He knew what he was in for, and he went anyway. I blame Aliria, but I wonder about him.”

“It’s the curfew,” Pakt said quietly.

“What?” the other three said in unison.

“The curfew,” Pakt repeated. “It’s made all the young guldmen edgy. Spoiling for a fight. I think he was looking forward to having a chance to disrupt an indigo household. I’m just glad it didn’t turn more violent than it did, or we’d be seeing a lot worse than the curfew. We’d be seeing arrests and executions.”

“Surely not,” Melina said.

Pakt nodded. “It happened twelve years ago. An altercation on the street. Who knows who said what first? But the indigo girl claimed that the guldman touched her hand. Touched her hand, mind you—he didn’t strike her or hurt her in any way. She screamed assault, and twenty guldmen were rounded up. She chose one at random, for even she admitted she couldn’t identify this man she called her ‘attacker.’ She picked a man, and he was put to death.”

“I don’t believe it,” Melina said.