Shades of Grey (41 page)

“I didn’t want to seem a braggart,” I replied, regretting that she had been there to hear me speak of it. She moved to kiss me again, but I didn’t want this to get out of hand. “What about Doug? I understand you and he are on a half promise?”

“Doug is very sweet,” she conceded, “but he’s likely only a fifty-percenter. It wasn’t a
true
half promise, anyway—more of a default position on my part. Do you
really
have Alpha Redness?”

“More or less.”

“If that is the case,” she said with a smile, “I’m going to speak to Mummy and Daddy about altering my marriage plans. If they agree, I’d be more than happy for us to be wed as soon after our Ishihara as possible.”

“Violet,” I said, beginning to see that this was getting monstrously out of control, if not a little scary, “I’m very flattered by your interest, but I’m on a half promise to an Oxblood back in Jade-under-Lime.”

“Tish!” she replied with a smile. “Conjoining with a Purple is
considerably
better than with an Oxblood. How many people get to trade their surname up five steps in one hit? Edward deMauve
.
Sounds kind of classy, doesn’t it? And what’s more,” she added with a giggle, “my dad’s rolling in cash. Your father should demand at least ten grand for you. I’ll have my father speak to your father, and we’ll announce it just as soon as everything is set.”

She leaned over and kissed me again, smiled and whispered in my ear, “There’s more where that came from.
Much
more. Did you know that deMauve girls have a reputation for insatiability regarding the procreational arts and a one hundred two percent feedback rating?”

“I wasn’t aware of it.”

“Well, we do. I’ve gone to considerable lengths to prepare myself for my wedding night, and in respect of this, I don’t mind if you want to practice with a Grey so everything is functioning perfectly. I have an egg chit ready and waiting. You can impregnate me on our wedding night, so I’ll be with child by the spring—we can call her Crocus. Won’t that be simply glorious?”

“No,” I said. “In fact, not at all. Not one little—”

“Hush!” she said, placing a finger over my lips. “You’re a passenger now, my dove—no worries from here on in.”

She sighed happily, and then a cloud passed over her features. “Oh!” she cried, placing a hand to her mouth as a sudden thought hit her. “We’ll have to get a postponement on your High Saffron gig, at least until you’ve got me pregnant. That way it won’t matter so much when you don’t come back.”

“I can’t marry you until I’ve got residency, Violet, and that’s even if I wanted to, which I don’t.”

“Love will find a way,” she said cheerfully, “and what love can’t provide, my father’s wallet certainly will. We should meet for a romantic walk and discuss my future this evening—shall we say at lamplighting tonight, next to Munsell’s twice-lifesize bronze?”

“I’m busy.”

“Of course you are—with me.” She laid a hand on my cheek. “I’ll make a few notes about the guest list and the menu for you to agree with. But to show that you can also bring some input to our relationship, I will permit you to choose our pet names. I’m so happy we were demerited together—otherwise we’d never have met and fallen so wonderfully in love.”

She blinked at me and smiled, then asked what was on my mind. I think she wanted me to tell her how ecstatic I was, but all I could think of was how I could use this nightmare to my advantage.

“Do you have any loganberry jam?” I asked, thinking of the Apocryphal man and his gateway to knowledge.

“A jam connoisseur, eh? You and Daddy are going to have
so
much in common. I’ll check the cellar. Do you want a spoon as well?”

“Just the jam.”

“Loganberry it is. Until this evening, gorgeous.”

She gave me another smile and skipped off down the corridor and out of the Council’s Chapter House.

I watched her go with a feeling of dread, and cursed myself for my weakness. I should have just told her to get knotted, but up-color girls seemed to have a tongue-tying effect on me. Besides, Violet was probably not the sort of person to accept a “get knotted” answer to anything she had set her heart on. I walked slowly back out into the daylight. Although I did not know it, the yateveo that would eventually devour me was suddenly three large paces closer.

I
found Tommo waiting for me outside, sitting on the wall of the village’s color garden. The yellow had run out sometime overnight, and the grass was now a sickly shade of blue. The pump would have been switched off, but the remaining color would take a few days to leach through. I wasn’t feeling that well disposed toward him, so I just walked off in the direction of home.

“What did you get?” he asked, trotting to catch up.

“I didn’t
get
anything,” I replied. “I lost eight hundred.”

“Wow,” said Tommo, visibly impressed. “Not even I’ve lost that many in one hit. Never had that many to lose, actually.”

“And I’m leading the expedition to High Saffron.”

“You’re insane. And I’m not sure they can do that as a punishment.”

“I volunteered—in return for six hundred merits.”

“Not
quite
so insane but still amusingly irrational. But with a one hundred percent fatality rate, it will be difficult to draw up odds on this one. Unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“Never mind. Violet was grinning fit to burst when she came out. What was that all about?”

He’d doubtless hear about it in due course, and I’d rather he had the correct story from me so I explained what had happened.

“Congratulations,” he said, “I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”

“Happy?”

He shrugged. “It’s a relative term. If you’ve got that much red,” he added, “you’re going to be prefect.”

“Perhaps, but not here. I’ve got an Oxblood to marry and a stringworks to inherit.”

“That will all change when Violet gets weaving on her father. You’re Chromatically made for each other. Violet is way down the blue end of Purple and your Red plums are just the thing to keep the family at the pointy end of the Chromatic Hierarchy.”

He smiled and put a hand on my shoulder. “Eddie, my friend, you are in a uniquely strong bargaining position. Do you want me to negotiate your dowry? The deMauves are pretty oiled. I’ll only charge ten percent.”

“You drive a hard bargain—five percent, then.”

“No.”

“Two?”

“I mean I’m not marrying Violet.”

“You’ll come around to it.”

I accused him of attempting to profit from my enforced marriage, but he didn’t even bat an eyelid.

“Listen,” he said, as though I were the one being unreasonable, “I need that commission if I’m to avoid Reboot on Monday. Could you have that on your conscience?”

“Easily. I thought you said Violet was ‘the most poisonous female in the village.’ ”

“I must have misspoken. And listen: It wasn’t all bad news on the playing field this morning. Lucy let me hold her ear while she waited to have it stitched. Then, rather than telling me to go youknow myself, as she usually does, she thanked me quite sweetly.”

He looked at his bloodstained hand reverentially. “It was this hand. I’m never going to wash it.”

“I didn’t think you ever did.”

“Perhaps not, but now at least I have a reason. I’ll see you at lunch.”

 

I went and had a bath. Although Violet’s unwelcome attentions, the loss of nearly eight years’ worth of merits and the lack of a ticket home were matters of some concern, there was still plenty of room in the Eddie Russett worry pot: There was someone in the village who could see at night, Jane was up to something regarding Ochre and Zane, my father was seeing Mrs. Ochre and, incredibly, the Gamboges had killed Travis. All, however, were eclipsed by the fact that I would be traveling to High Saffron. The survival rate was so poor, in fact, that even Tommo wasn’t willing to lay any odds. But I wasn’t
that
worried. If Violet had her way—and I think Violet generally got her way—she could have the trip postponed forever.

I climbed out of the bath, dried, dressed, carefully parted my hair, tied my tie in the prescribed half-Windsor, then walked downstairs, where I found Dad waiting for me in the hall.

“Let’s walk together,” he said, for it was still ten minutes until lunch. I agreed, and we stepped out the door.

“This Tommo Cinnabar fellow,” he murmured as we walked across the square, “can we trust him?”

“Not even the tiniest bit,” I replied, “but I’ll admit he’s shrewd. Why?”

“He’s offered his services to negotiate the dowry we should charge for you to marry Violet deMauve.”

It was lightning-quick work on Tommo’s part.

“I don’t want to marry Violet, Dad.”

“Perfectly understandable,” he said. “She’s frightful. More important, I’ve not yet been approached by the head prefect, so nothing’s official. I just wanted to make sure we were singing from the same song sheet. Tommo seems to think we can get ten grand for you.”

“Dad!” I said, shocked by the notion that he might decide to sell me without consultation. “I’m up on a half promise to Constance, remember?”

“And that would
cost
me three grand,” he said. “Children are so ungrateful. Why the puce didn’t you tell me you were potential Alpha Red?”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t sure—and I didn’t want to be a braggart.”

“Very noble of you,” he replied sarcastically, “but if I’d known, I could have offered you for less or nothing to the Oxbloods, and spent the money on a hardwood conservatory instead.”

“Roger’s potential Alpha, too,” I said a bit uselessly.

Dad shook his head and lowered his voice. “I’ve seen his parents’ charts, and they don’t make exciting viewing. Josiah Oxblood is a strictly dynastic man. He’d have Constance marry a can of paint if it would enRedden the line.”

“That’s not a very good idiom, Dad.”

“It was the best I could come up with at short notice.” He glared at me and I fell silent.

To be honest, I hadn’t really considered the consequences of keeping my bestowal a secret. Usually a Chromatically arranged marriage was simply a source of gossip and a cheap laugh at someone else’s expense. When it happened to you, it suddenly seemed, well, a bit
crummy
. The higher-hued you became, the less choice of life partner there was. This kind of garbage never happened to the Greys.

“If this Tommo fellow is correct and the deMauves are both stinking rich
and
hue-desperate, we can probably get a preemptive bid or go to auction. Plus,” he added, as though to try to soften the deal, “I’d be happy to split the dowry with you. We’d walk away from the deal with both our pockets comfortably full.”

“That’s the difference,” I said. “I
don’t
get to walk away. I get to stay right here. And be married to Violet.”

“Is she really so different from Constance?”

“Not at all,” I replied. “But at least Constance was
my
decision.”

“Choice is overrated,” said Dad, quoting Munsell, something he rarely did. “I’m sure you’ll warm to her, given time. You’ll be Red prefect as soon as you’ve taken your Ishihara, and with deMauve as father-in-law, you’ll eventually run the linoleum factory.”

“Dad, we always agreed to talk this through before a decision was made.”

“We’re talking it through now, aren’t we? Besides, you’ve only yourself to blame, blurting out your bestowal—you see what happens to those who shamelessly boast? Like that Carrot fellow. What was his name again?”

“Dwayne.”

“Right. Dwayne Carrot. Exactly.”

We stood on the steps in silence as the other residents streamed into the town hall. They were chattering volubly, and paid us little attention.

“How did the hearing go?” he asked at length.

I told him about the eight hundred demerits, which he didn’t seem so annoyed about—presumably because it increased the likelihood of my going the deMauve route. He asked me why so many, and I explained about the rabbit. He shook his head sadly, and said that he always knew the rabbit would be trouble. I then took a deep breath and told him I’d offered to go to High Saffron to earn the merits back.

“You did
what
?”

“High Saffron. For six hundred merits.”

“What if you don’t make it back? What if night falls?”

“Night
always
falls, Dad.”

“With you inside it, I mean.”

“Dad,” I said more forcefully, “I’ll be fine, really. All the missing were feckless Rebootees who took the opportunity to leg it and are now probably running around in a loincloth with uncombed hair and poor table manners. I’ll be fine.”

“You might have consulted me before you took this rash decision. I have a twenty-year stake in you, too, you know.”

“In volunteering for tosh squads,” I replied, “the Rules do
not
require me to seek your permission.”

But he knew this.

“I suppose it
might
improve your leadership skills,” he grumbled, “useful if you
do
become a prefect. When is this to be?”

“If the deMauves have their way, not until we’re wed and their grandchild is in the bag. Who knows, if Violet gets to like me, she could postpone the trip indefinitely.”

“That would suit all concerned.”

He was partly right. Dad would get his ten grand, Tommo would get his commission, Violet would get a Purple child and deMauve would secure his dynasty. The only beneficiary missing from the list was me.

But Dad was nothing if not fair, and after thinking for a moment, he relented. He sighed, patted my shoulder and said, “Listen, I can’t force you to marry Violet with a half promise to Constance on the table, but as the sole supplier of your dowry, I think my arguments might at least count for something.”