“I cannot change my mind on that, you know,” he said in a serious voice. “There is much I have been able to do that runs counter to traditional gulden thinking, but I could not countenance a marriage between my son and an indigo woman. It would not be acceptable to any of the clan leaders—and it is not acceptable to me.”

Kit took a deep breath. “I do not desire to marry your son,” she said. “And I am willing to renounce all ties to him except those caused by the affection I feel for you.”

Chay’s gray eyes narrowed; he watched her with a close attention. “Then I must suppose it is true,” he said quietly at last. “That my son was responsible for the explosions in the Centrifuge.”

“As far as I know,” Kit said, “they have not yet determined the cause of those explosions.”

“They have now,” Chay said. “Two bombs. A third one was supposed to go off but somehow it malfunctioned. They found the whole of it in the rubble.”

“That is terrible news indeed,” she said. “But how can you think they will look to Jex? He is still in an indigo prison.”

“Do not be coy with me, Kit,” he said, switching to the more forceful indigo language. “Jex has friends, and many of them are in the city. They all would carry out any request he cared to make. If he asked them to, they would destroy the world.”

“He swore to me that he did not plan any bombing for that day. And Jex does not lie.”

“But Jex knows how to carefully select his words. He is only as honest as it suits him to be.”

“A fine opinion to have of your own son.”

“I have loved him even longer than you have,” Chay said, and his voice sounded tired. “And I know him far better. Tell me truly, Kitrini Solvano. Do you believe he caused those bombs to be set that killed all those blueskins in the Centrifuge?”

She was silent a long time. She had never heard Chay ask his wife’s opinion, or his daughters’; she had never heard any gulden man consult with a woman on any important topic. She was different—because of her blue face, because of her father, because Chay loved her—but she was still a woman. He must be powerfully uncertain and disturbed to ask her such a question, and to wait with such strained intensity for her reply.

“I do believe it,” she said quietly. “And it has broken my heart.”

Chay nodded slowly and turned his hands palm outward, as if absorbing the poison of her words through the porous membrane of his skin. She did not know how he would react to this lethal dosage, the second one he had been administered in a few weeks. She did not know which one might kill him the quickest.