He actually smiled—a ferocious expression, true, but still a smile. “It would be good,” he said, “to make the blueshi women relax from all thoughts of danger.”

“Perhaps if you danced,” Kit said.

He nodded once and shook his dagger back into its hidden sheath. Without asking permission, he put his arms around her and pulled her onto the dance floor. Nothing like dancing with the polite indigo men, not this; he held her hard against his body and tugged her any way he chose. As he had done when he danced with Aliria, he bent his eyes unwaveringly on his partner’s face, but Kit could tell he was straining all his senses to gauge the crowd around them. Surely everyone was staring at them. She did not have the heart to look. Surely Sereva would never speak to her again.

On the bright side, Emron would no doubt rethink that invitation to dinner.

There was no need to attempt conversation. They had nothing to talk about and the gulden was, though he appeared oblivious, tracking Aliria’s movement within the crowd. Kit concentrated on keeping a pleasant, unconcerned look upon her face. Dancing with a gulden man at an indigo ball. Oh, of course, I do this every day. An ordinary occurrence. What could she possibly tell Sereva? That, she supposed, depended on whether or not Aliria Carvon was alive when the gulden left the room.

She lifted her eyes briefly to his face, wondering who he was and how he had met the blueskin girl. Not a city man; no gulden who had been in the metropolis more than a month would have accepted such an invitation. Perhaps he had come in Chay’s train and stayed on to see the big town. If he had been part of Chay Zanlan’s retinue, Aliria Carvon could have met him at any of a dozen functions. For all Kit knew, Aliria worked in the mayor’s office and had spent the past two weeks in this man’s company, squiring him to elegant dinners, entertaining him while their bosses talked politics, seeing him at his best and most dangerous—

The gulden wrenched free of Kit, spun on one heel and flung himself a few paces away. Dizzy and thrown off balance, Kit missed most of the motion but heard the single frenzied cry followed by hoarse screams of outrage and a general crashing and stomping throughout the room. She righted herself and whirled around, taking in sights and details: the gulden man sprinting for the door, outstretched hands and blocking bodies powerless to stop him; the roomful of shocked aristocrats, staring, pointing, and covering their mouths with their hands; and Aliria Carvon, stripped of her golden gown, standing naked and shrieking in the center of the fashionable ballroom.

*   *   *