“All right,” Pakt echoed her. “Now. Everybody back to their offices. No gathering around gossiping. It’ll just make things worse. If I see any two of you talking together for more than a few minutes, I’m going to break it up. For as long as the curfew lasts. We all just need to do our jobs, and try to get through this.”

Silence followed his words. No one knew what to say or who to look at. Then Melina shrugged, nodded, and walked out the door. The blueskins followed her, the albinos behind them, and the guldmen in the rear. Nolan hurried to his office, head down, thoughts spinning through his brain in a rushed, unsettled whirl. This was bad, as Melina had said. But it seemed a sloppy misstep on a ladder suspended over terrors. All his instincts screamed that somehow it could all get worse.

CHAPTER FIVE

When Kit got the message from Jex, she felt her heart start its stupid, painful pounding; her breath instantly felt sharp and spiny in her lungs. She had not expected to be allowed to see him while Chay was in town. What few hours he would be allotted for visitors must surely go to his father—that only made sense—and so she had steeled herself to the knowledge that she would not see him again for a week at least, maybe two. His captors were capricious. They had no discernible schedule of visitation.

But here was the note in his usual peremptory hand, telling her to come to his prison that afternoon, for he had been granted an hour. She could hardly think. An hour. What should she wear, what picture could she make to sustain him through the bitter, colorless days of his confinement? She must return to her grandmother’s, where her few fancy clothes were stored. Sereva’s, where she had stayed the past few nights, held only her drab workaday outfits, and those clearly would not do.

“I must leave for a few hours,” she told Del, for the note had come to her at the charity bank. “I’ll be back this afternoon.”

The guldwoman nodded indifferently and went back to her financial accounts. Kit could not shake off the feeling that Del did not care one way or another if this high-caste blueskin ever again stepped across the threshold into her line of vision. It was discouraging. Kit wanted so much to make a difference, enact dramatic changes in the lives of the suffering city gulden, and as far as she could tell, none of them even noticed her presence—or if they did, viewed her with an exhausted suspicion.

But she would change all that. Surely with time, persistence, and victories, she would be able to make some small difference in their lives.