Silence again, then sleep. Nolan woke several times in the night as the train came to a ragged halt, panted for a few minutes outside some garish station, then strained forward again till it hit its usual steady pace. Now his mind, which had been split into three equally desperate parts, subdivided again. Up till this point, his attention had leapt fitfully from horror at what he had learned, to panic at the thought of confronting Chay Zanlan, to infatuation with the girl beside him (a compartment of his brain that seemed to grow with each passing hour, despite the fact that the other two sections did not in any way diminish). Now, he had opened a fourth door and found another equally awful vista: the image of Colt as terrorist and killer. Like the others, it was too terrible to look upon for long—but anywhere he turned was a view equally as disturbing.

It was no surprise he could not sleep. No surprise that his skin felt as if it had been injected with acid, one single, liquid layer between the muscle and the flesh. It would be more of a surprise if he survived this adventure with any of his sanity intact.

And what then—?

He watched dawn idle over the landscape, spilling forward from behind them as they headed west. Now, they seemed to pass through nothing but city, one row of spectacular houses after another, a little more thoughtfully constructed than the country homes but still built with a pleasing motley and an air of self-satisfaction. They were in the heart of Geldricht, in the gentle foothills before Gold Mountain. Indeed, the sublime and jagged silhouette of the great peak dominated the land from every viewpoint, and they appeared to be headed straight toward it.

Chay Zanlan did not live on Gold Mountain, of course, though that was what everyone said. He lived in a palace at the base of the mountain—or at least Nolan had always assumed it was a palace. He’d seen pictures in the news monitors, and it looked almost as big as the Complex. Now, having traveled through the gulden countryside, he thought it might just be a larger version of the sort of building all the gulden called home.

Plenty of room there to incarcerate a visitor who came bearing strange news. No one in the world knew where Nolan had gone. No one would be able to find him if he suddenly disappeared.

He shook his head vigorously. Last night, Kitrini had told him that they should arrive at Zakto Station sometime after noon. A public conveyance would take them to Chay Zanlan’s palace—and then who knew how long before the great leader would agree to see them? Nolan had thought Kitrini’s company would buy him an instant entree, but she said no. Well, then. He would wait till he was invited in. All day, if necessary; all week.

And what then—?