“I could, but I will not,” Granmama said, interrupting again. “Because I do not believe any of those things. Once you compromise your values, you begin to lose ground. The things that matter to you get worn away—or wrested away. You must fight every day to hold on to what matters. And you will see. I am right. Ask Bascom, forty years from now, when he is married and living on his wife’s estates and sees how good his life has been. I will not be here, but you will. Ask him then what he regrets, and I can tell you now what the answer will be. He will regret nothing.”

He will regret all of it, Kit thought, but she did not say so. How could she be sure? How could Granmama? “I won’t have to ask him,” she said over her shoulder, because she had come to a halt looking out one of the curtained windows. “Because you will surprise everyone if you do not live forever. You can ask him yourself.”

Granmama was tricked into a laugh. “Then in forty years, I will ask you the same question. And I will expect an honest reply.”

Kit smiled at the green draperies, then pivoted to share the smile with her grandmother. “Agreed,” she said, crossing the room to kiss the old lady on the cheek. “Good night, hela Candachi. I will spar with you in the morning.”

“And in the evening as well.”

One hand on the door, Kit paused. “No—not in the evening. I’ve told Sereva I will come spend a few days at her house.”

Granmama nodded. “That will be good for both of you. Tell her to invite me to dinner one night while you are there.”

“All right. I will. Good night.”

And she escaped from the lovely, suffocating room. If only it were as easy to escape from the suffocating life that her grandmother was determined to have her live.

CHAPTER THREE

Kit was awake with the dawn, and ready to leave the house thirty minutes later. As always, she wasted little time on her appearance. That, of course, was more a rebellion against the gulden than the indigo, for among the guldwomen, elaborate dress and cosmetics were essential; only a beautiful woman would attract a virile man. There were detailed, torturous rituals the unmarried women went through every day to make themselves look desirable. Not until she had come to the city had Kit ever seen the bare face of a gulden woman.

Kit herself only bothered with a quick shower and throwing on the most casual of clothes. The most tedious part of her toilette consisted in toweling dry the thick, unmanageable mane of black curls and then, once she’d run a comb through it, clipping back the whole mass at the nape of her neck.