Shadow (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #4): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  He’d done some of those things himself, of course, on the male side. But he’d never shown me anything about what I could do for him. I tried not to speculate about what that might mean, in terms of how Revik viewed me––assuming it meant anything at all.

  The longer I thought about it, the more my heart hurt.

  Some of my gaps in education I’d already figured out, of course, watching Revik with those prostitutes in the Barrier. But the reality of it hit me again, harder in some ways, in those few hours of being alone after Ulai and I finished.

  At the time, however, I was more stunned, I think.

  For a long moment, I just lay there on my side, trying not to think, still half in pain as Ulai caressed my back, running his fingers through my hair. I didn’t know how tense I was until Ulai pulled me against him. Glancing at him over my shoulder, I peered through the curtains.

  Relief rippled my light when I saw Voi Pai had disappeared.

  Ulai kissed my cheek, still massaging the front of my body.

  “She left, yes,” he said. “The preliminary bonding is mostly complete. The rest will happen tonight, while you are sleeping, and over the next few days.” I realized he was hard again, even as his hands roamed lower. “And yes, I want you again,” he said, softer.

  I felt my face warm. I knew it was stupid to blush at that point, but I couldn’t help it.

  “So,” I said. “Lay it on me. How bad was I?”

  I tensed when he paused before answering.

  Then he laughed, gripping my hair, tugging on it with one hand. Not answering me, he laughed again, pulling me against him, pressing his erection against the back of my thighs. His pain worsened as he did, and then he was kissing my neck, pulling me to my back, sliding a hand between my legs.

  “Your light is unbelievable,” he told me, kissing me. “Gods, Esteemed Bridge… learn to keep your light in control. Or we’ll have seers fighting over you, even humans.”

  “What about the rest of it?” I said, pushing at his chest.

  He waved a hand, dismissive. “The rest you’ll learn. The light part… you can’t learn that.” He kissed my shoulder lingeringly, caressing my breast. “Can I teach you more?” he said, smiling as he leaned on me. “I want to show you something else. I want to show you a couple of something elses’, if you’ll let me.”

  I fought not to care that he’d basically told me I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

  I’d already guessed that, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear. I felt another pulse of anger at Revik, but I couldn’t have articulated to myself why, so I forced it out of my light.

  The truth was, it didn’t really matter anymore, what I did.

  I couldn’t think clearly about what came after this––meaning after I left the Lao Hu. Images of myself waiting tables in Bratislava tended to come to mind. The thought of approaching Ullysa for a job didn’t exactly appeal to me, either.

  Hopefully, if I studied hard enough at the infiltration, and managed to earn even a low-level sight ranking, I'd have options.

  Eventually I would have to pick up the pieces of my life.

  But now wasn’t that time. I had a cool twenty-two million to work off before then. Given that I had no idea what that meant, in terms of either time or people, there was no point in getting worked up over what came after.

  Anyway, I’d finally done what I told Revik I didn’t know how to do.

  I’d had casual sex with another seer.

  When I looked at Ulai next, he was watching my face, that empathy shining once more from his blue eyes. I slid my arms around his neck, feeling him react as I did, pain rippling off him as he coiled his light carefully back into mine.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m ready. Teach me everything.”

  53

  NEW LIFE

  THEY DIDN’T LET me see any actual clients for another few weeks.

  That probably should have been a relief, but actually just stressed me out more, maybe because it built the whole thing up in my head.

  I tried to keep my mind in a non-reactionary place. I tried to just go with it, like I would with any new job or thing I needed to learn. I tried to just focus on the technical side of things, ignoring the rest. In particular, I tried not to think about my parents, or how my mom would probably cry for about six months straight if she knew where I was right now.

  Voi Pai seemed to find my reactions to the whole thing either childish, funny, painfully naïve, or “human-religio-prudish,” all in about equal measure.

  She at times resorted to ridiculing me to get me to cut it out. Once or twice my depression about my current situation even seemed to make her angry––or possibly offend her, if such a thing were possible. Oddly, the whole thing seemed to make her like me more, too.

  Maybe it was simply because she viewed me as one of “hers” now, and therefore falling under her protection.

  Most of my basic freedoms were returned to me within a week of my first being bonded with the Lao Hu. I was given access to a lot more of the construct––far more than I’d ever had as a guest––and Voi Pai assigned me my own living space, as well as giving me access to all of the gardens and open spaces, essentially treating me like any other resident of the City.

  There were exceptions.

  Most of those had little to do with me, and everything to do with either my new role for the Lao Hu, or the additional security measures required to keep me safe. No one, from the highest ranking members of the Lao Hu down to the lowliest human servant, had access to me without extensive security screens.

  I found this out by accident when I went for a walk in the Imperial Gardens. I happened to notice one of the human gardeners I recognized from before. Strangely happy to see the old guy, who’d always had a kind word for me, I waved in hello.

  He approached me, smiling, holding a trowel––that is, until six Lao Hu guards appeared, aiming guns at the poor guy. They forced him to his knees on the stone path while I watched in horror. After conducting multiple, invasive scans of his light while I yelled at them to leave him alone, they finally let him go. I couldn’t help noticing the old guy had peed himself, he’d been so afraid of the Lao Hu guards.

  After that, I didn’t wave to people.

  During those first few weeks, I spent the majority of my training time with Ulai. He ended up sleeping at my place a lot as a result. He had me practice on a few others as well, letting me take my pick of a group of infiltrators who apparently volunteered.

  Voi Pai had a few other female consorts spend time with me, as well.

  Unlike with Ulai, she didn’t specify how I was supposed to spend that time, but I suspect she mostly wanted me integrated into her team. Maybe she even hoped I’d make friends. Being around them was a lot like hanging around any other group of female seers, only the consorts were a lot friendlier than the majority of infiltrators I’d met.

  Two of those consorts decided to adopt me.

  They started coming by my place just about every morning to hang out. Within a few days, they were also inviting me out for walks, meals, winter garden parties of various kinds, even to see a movie in the main theater of the Imperial Residence.

  I picked up quite a bit from listening to them talk.

  “Charlie” spoke nearly perfect English. She had a Chinese name, too, which I heard Ulai mention, but no one seemed to use it.

  Charlie was cool, but definitely quirky. Her hair hung long down her back, framing a face as flawless as Voi Pai’s, but significantly less Asian-looking. She didn’t wear her hair up in any of the traditional styles used by a lot of the other girls, and her make up and clothing were generally Western. Her eyes were green with flecks of gold and red. They stood out in her slightly tanned skin, large and innocent-looking inside a baby-round face.

  She had a pet snake named Gulag that a human servant carried around for her. “Gulag” maxed out at around fourteen to sixteen inches in diameter at his fattest part, and looked capable of swallo
wing small children.

  I never asked her what she meant by its name.

  Most of the time when we hung out, Charlie wanted me to tell her all about the United States. She was obsessed with American movies, male action stars in particular. She also liked pro-wrestling, which she grilled me on endlessly, no matter how often I told her I knew nothing about it.

  Miao, Charlie’s best friend and sometimes-girlfriend, was quieter, but had a great sense of humor. She had a cultured quality that contrasted well with Charlie’s gregariousness, and yet her light was more open, so in some ways it was easier to get a feel for her. Small and elfin in appearance, she looked very Chinese.

  Funnily enough, Miao, rather than Charlie, was the favorite of American men who came to China for commerce or government business. She did a better job of playing exotic other, she told me matter-of-factly, adding with a wry wink that she had a stable of regular clients to whom she gave the “Ancient China treatment” on a regular basis.

  Although seer prostitution was technically illegal in China, it was considered a “favor” or “gift” from the Lao Hu to offer a consort as a token of goodwill. Because of the interdependent relationship of the Lao Hu and the Chinese Communists, they often extended these “favors” to persons deemed important to the Chinese government.

  In return, they were compensated well by the government for the service.

  It was also considered “impolite” for those receiving such a gift to not provide some measure of compensation directly to the Lao Hu, as well. Part of this was meant to indicate that the particular gift had pleased whoever it was. But, more importantly from the Lao Hu’s perspective, the client’s compensation served as a gesture of respect. The Lao Hu, as well as the Chinese humans themselves, were extremely sensitive to any hint that this gift had not been freely given, or that it resulted from some version of seer slavery that even remotely approximated the Western version.

  The whole thing was laughable, of course.

  Like a lot of things in the City, I couldn’t help but see it as an elaborate cover for business as usual between seers and humans. It disappointed me, I admit, given the reputation of the Lao Hu and the Chinese in regard to how seers were supposedly viewed in the more enlightened East.

  Like most myths, there was also some truth to it, though.

  I was the only consort I ever saw collared. In fact, I was the only seer I ever saw collared, anywhere in the City, and the reasons for me being collared were pretty obvious given the telekinesis. I also heard Miao and Charlie talk about refusing clients.

  The refusals occurred for different reasons, but the fact that they could do it at all struck me as significant. Consorts or no, they still had some discretion around who they let into their bed. Their handlers did, as well. They didn’t even have to give the client a reason.

  A no was a no from the Lao Hu.

  Ulai told me he would likely refuse some clients for me, too, either for security reasons (the security protocols around me were ridiculous when it came to clients), or because he picked something up in their thoughts that made them “unworthy.”

  He said I, too, could refuse clients, so long as I didn’t abuse the privilege.

  I couldn’t help but find it gratifying when I heard Miao talk with enormous distaste about a client who’d been permanently banned, with no rights to re-petition. Apparently, her handler caught him thinking about female seers in subhuman terms, and fantasizing about raping them. After my experience in the White House, it was nice living in a place where being a racist, female-hating jerk was enough to get you the boot.

  Despite everything I was learning about being a consort in the City, I spent most of my time those first few weeks working on my new infiltration lessons.

  To my enormous relief, I didn't have to push Voi Pai for that part of our contract at all. A pair of guards showed up at my door my first morning there, and led me to my new class. When we arrived at the heated wood pavilion, Ulai uncollared me, and left.

  With the four- to five-hour classes taking place every day, I found my brain close to bursting by the end of the first week. Sitting with my classmates in a circle around our teacher, an old female seer named Cilap, was a little embarrassing at first, since most of the other students looked like kids compared to me. I stopped caring after a few days, though, as I focused on trying to keep up with the actual lessons.

  She started me off with tracking in the beginning, along with blocking and Barrier-sparring with other seers. The sparring proved to be fun, if difficult––closer to chess than sparring in the physical, even using sight tricks. The multidimensionality of fighting inside the Barrier both confused and fascinated me, forcing me to think with whole new parts of my light.

  The first time I tried an actual one-on-one sparring session, I got my ass handed to me by a kid who looked about thirteen. He looked a little sheepish when the fight ended so fast, but then both of us were laughing and I promptly asked him to fight me again.

  Within a few days, I was hooked.

  Through all this time, I tried not to think about Revik at all.

  It was surprisingly easy. Or maybe it was just easier than it had ever been before. From what I could tell, a big part of me had just closed up shop. It left me in an odd limbo when it came to sex, and even just everyday relating with the seers around me.

  That part of me just didn’t care. About anything, I mean.

  I knew I should care, that the numbness I felt wasn’t exactly healthy.

  The problem was, I didn’t really care about that, either.

  AT THE END of my second week, they told me I would begin work as a consort in four days.

  I think Ulai was more nervous than I was.

  Well, maybe not, but he hovered over me through the whole lead-up process, and informed me, more than once, that I would never be left alone, not even with a client.

  I spent much of that four days with the City’s wardrobe people.

  Funnily enough, that part of the process probably would have made a lot of my girlfriends back in San Francisco really happy. Personally, I hated it––especially in the beginning. That first day, I found myself looking at the ornate clock over the window approximately every thirty seconds, waiting for the few hours I would be released for infiltration training.

  The wardrobe team, which consisted of three female seers and two males, dressed me the way a child dresses a doll, or a store employee a mannequin. They put me in dresses and skirts and shoes and wraps and scarves and various kinds of underwear only to frown and take me out of them. They never once asked my opinion––but then, I doubt I did a very good job of hiding my indifference around their endless tugging and pulling and wrapping and tying and hooking and buttoning and knotting and untying and mussing and playing.

  I spent as much of that day naked as I did clothed, until I stopped caring about that, too. When it was clear they’d gone back to the drawing board for this or that, half the time I didn’t even bother to put the robe back on, which was hot in the heated room.

  Instead I just plunked myself down on a plush chair, legs crossed as I sighed as loudly as I could at the ceiling.

  Once they realized I didn’t give a damn, they talked amongst themselves more openly, discussing styles and colors that would flatter my body and face, mixed with what they knew of client preferences. They also discussed which clothes would be most compatible with the expectations of the sex itself, in terms of how they came off.

  Towards the end of that first day, I found myself listening to them, in spite of myself.

  By mid-morning on day two, I was fighting to understand this for real.

  Some of it might have been pride. Jaden, my boyfriend of six or so years in San Francisco, told me once that I had no awareness of the male fondness for female clothing. He accused me of being a bit of a killjoy around that, actually. I knew all about the stereotypes around women manipulating men with clothes, of course, but it was a power I’d never really learned how to wield
, one that I’d frankly never had anything but contempt for.

  But this was my job now.

  I could look down on it all I wanted, but the truth was, I needed to understand this, and to take it seriously if I was going to do this work for real. Maybe it was stupid, but I intended to not embarrass myself with my new crap job, at least no more than absolutely necessary.

  Anyway, it was easier to think of it as a job––like acting or waiting tables.

  Despite the part of me that listened whenever the information struck me as useful, when it came to watching them sew and assemble combinations of colors and swatches, I slumped back into boredom. I guess for a female, even a female seer, I really was hopeless.

  I tried not to let my mind draw the inevitable conclusions from that, either––or to think too hard about the fact that the only two serious boyfriends I’d had both cheated on me with women who understood those games all too well.

  The wardrobe team seemed as unimpressed with my indifference as I was with their artistic vision. Instead of dealing with me directly, they had servants ply me with tea and little noodle dishes, fruits and finger cakes, picture books and antique kaleidoscopes and virtual reality devices––just to keep me out of their hair, most likely.

  When I asked if I could work on infiltration, they all looked visibly relieved. The lead costumer even went personally to get special permission from Voi Pai to uncollar me for the duration of the fittings.

  They discussed me and my body without bothering to soften their voices, including what they saw as my “flaws” and my need for just about every beauty treatment under the sun. One of them seemed particularly affronted by my hair, which shouldn’t have surprised me, I guess, given my lack of any real haircut in the past year or so.