What he was ranting about was a mixed race couple standing hand in hand a few yards from their window. The man, as Felder had noted, appeared to be a perfectly ordinary middle-aged blueskin; the woman was a gulden girl some years his junior. She wore the flashy clothes and elaborately coiffed hair that branded her a prostitute, but the expression on her face looked warmer and more tragic than the profession usually demanded.

“She looks like a nice person,” Hiram offered when there was a break in the tirade. “Maybe he’s just lonely.”

“A man doesn’t get that lonely. Not a blueskin man,” Felder said.

Sochin was laughing. “Oh, come on now. You’ve never seen one of those gilt girls walking by, her face all made up and one of those tight, tight skirts on, and wondered just what it might be like? You’re lying if you say you haven’t.”

“I haven’t,” Felder said stiffly.

“I have,” Hiram said.

Sochin nodded. “Of course you have. My first day in the city, I saw one of those girls, and I thought, ‘Whoa, now! That’s a package you can’t buy in-country, and I wouldn’t mind taking it out and trying it on for size.’ ”

“I trust you never did,” Felder said.

Sochin shrugged. “Not yet, but why shouldn’t I? What would it hurt? It’s not like messing with some low-caste indigo girl who thinks you’re going to marry her because you’ve felt her up behind her mother’s barn. The gilt girls know how the land lies. They don’t want your precious bloodline, anyway. All they want’s your money. That’s a bargain that makes sense.”

“Do you suppose it’s any different,” Hiram asked, “with a gulden woman? Do you think they’re—well—the same?”

Sochin was laughing again. “All women are the same. All men are the same. Makes it easy to tell apart the sexes.”

There was more in this vein, but Nolan tried to tune it out. He didn’t know which he found more offensive, Felder’s self-righteous prejudice or Sochin’s sly leering. Whenever he saw one of those so-called gilt girls working the richer districts of town, he was washed with a fierce and unexpected sadness. Those pale faces seemed overburdened, not enhanced, by the careful cosmetics; the bright, cheap clothes reminded him of the items a child would dress her dolls in. He always tried to avoid making eye contact with such women, but now and then he had been caught unawares, approached, and made an offer. Twice he had given the girls money and hurried away before they could question or thank him. He had been sure neither Leesa nor his mother would approve.

“What about you, Nolan? You fantasize about the gulden whores? Or are you like Felder here, you think they should be whipped off the streets and locked up for good?”