Melina nodded. “And my mother would never believe that I could be friends with Colt. Actually like him, want to hear what he has to say, and trust his opinion. On some matters, anyway. So this is what the city has done for us.”

Nolan attempted a smile. “Ruined us for the lives we were born for.”

“No, no, no,” Melina said swiftly. “Made us part of the vanguard of change.”

“Our society will not change,” Nolan scoffed. “The blueskin world? It will go on for centuries as it has always gone on.”

“You’re wrong about that,” Melina said seriously. “Change may come slowly, but it will come. And it’s people like us who will allow it to happen.”

*   *   *

But Melina’s words rang hollow not three days later, when there was an incident over at the Carbonnier Extension. This was a strip of semi-mountainous land that had always belonged to the gulden. But then, the valley that contained the city had, a hundred years ago, belonged to the gulden, and so had the rocky but arable miles of farmland that extended for a hundred miles to the east of the city.

The indigo had gradually but implacably taken over that land, decade by decade, crowding the gulden back farther and farther toward the Katlin Divide and up to the edge of the Varho Sea. The battle for the valley had been protracted and bloody, and the gulden ruler of that time had vowed that the indigo would never advance another acre into gulden territory. In fact, treaties signed twenty years ago had spelled out that very provision: Here the indigo property ends, here the gulden land begins.

That was before the city had grown so crowded; that was before agreements with two continents four thousand miles away had turned the city into a trade center with an urgent need for growth. Hence, Ariana Bayless and her colleagues had commandeered a tract of land “for development” about fifteen miles west of the city. It was small by standards of indigo imperialism in the past, but it was still an unauthorized annexation; and Chay Zanlan had made it clear that he was not about to allow it tamely.

Negotiations between indigo and gulden had been heated, but cooled somewhat when Ariana Bayless began offering money for the land she had at first just blithely overtaken. Chay had seemed willing to entertain proposals, but many of the other gulden clan chiefs had expressed outrage and hostility at the idea of giving up another square foot of land to the indigo raiders, even for a hefty price. No one had protested more vehemently than Jex Zanlan, whose bombing of the medical center had been in protest of the plans for the Carbonnier Extension.