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

by JC Andrijeski

  They set their team of beauticians to work on me with gusto as they retreated back into the racks to continue their work of designing and creating clothing and accessory combinations for me once they deemed my actual body presentable. I had my eyebrows plucked, my legs and bikini area waxed. I got multiple facials, a pedicure, a manicure, my hair cut and styled. I had about two dozen make up combinations tested and applied to my face, some of which I found positively frightening.

  In the plus column, I also got daily massages. I had my skin buffed and covered in towels and hot rocks by four different seers. I was scrubbed and moisturized and finally rubbed raw and set in a steam room for over an hour while another seer rubbed my feet.

  Then they returned me to wardrobe yet again.

  I suppose they all had their jobs to do.

  Pride and competition and saving face seemed as integral to the City as it was to anyone presenting their work on a runway in New York. They wanted the clients to at least be wowed by the presentation, whether or not they had their private doubts they’d be wowed by me. The problem was, they wanted an ecstatic, squealing, overjoyed client, and that just wasn’t me.

  Ironically, I instead found my mind aligning more with theirs.

  I looked at myself critically, standing outside of myself. I noted flaws, tried to decide if they would make me unique or be detracting. I tried to imagine the various reactions my appearance might evoke, depending on how I carried myself, how I held my arms and legs. I tried to predict how different styles might impact most male humans.

  I tried to see myself from a male seer’s perspective, as well––and a female seer’s.

  Imagining seer reactions was harder, though.

  I’d never known Revik’s thoughts on my looks really, except through observation. The Revik I married hadn’t said much, in terms of what attracted him to anyone, much less me. He told me I was beautiful once, but he’d also been trying to get me into bed. Syrimne had been more flattering, but that was all caught up in his myth of the Bridge.

  I knew he was attracted to me, of course, but I had no idea what happened within that spectrum, or where I fit overall.

  Anyway, I had no idea if he’d been attracted to me before we fell in love.

  I had less experience with seers in general, at least those who would tell me the truth. From what Ulai told me, seer reactions were invariably more complex anyway.

  In any case, I saw my body and face as props, and as I looked around at the other props in the warehouse, I realized I wasn’t in a very good state of mind when I didn’t feel like I measured up to most of them.

  Ulai told me I was being ridiculous. It actually seemed to anger him. He thought Revik had done a number on my self esteem.

  Eventually, one of the wardrobe seers seemed to pick up on how I was viewing the whole thing. A female named Wahlu, she began speaking to me almost as a colleague.

  The others followed her lead, and by the third day, I could ask any one of them questions about what they were going for exactly with a particular color or style, what order I should undress in, how to hold my arms or how to stand to show off certain aspects of my body through the clothes. I asked them what male seers looked for, in terms of physical characteristics, and whether it was roughly the same as human men.

  Wahlu spent hours explaining how they designed the looks of different costumes, which pieces I should leave on, when and where I should discard others, what colors to use near my hair and skin. She told me a lot about male seers, even going over my body specifically, telling me what they would appreciate about it most, as well as where I was still immature in some respects. She explained how to use that to my advantage or to hide it, depending on the particular male.

  She approached me where I was at, which was closer to how I approached the infiltration training. The truth was, I didn't really care how I looked, per se. I just wanted to hold my own, at least as well as I could. I knew part of the job was intimacy, or feigned intimacy at least, but that struck me as something that could be learned, too. If it wasn’t faking precisely, I could at least use my light selectively to evoke the illusion of feeling.

  Something about me made the other seers sad.

  I suppose it was the bond, what they could feel through me. I noticed it with Ulai first, but I saw it in Wahlu’s eyes, too, and even some of my classmates in infiltration class.

  At some point, they must have taken Revik out of the tank.

  The separation pain worsened gradually over the first two weeks I was there, until there was no way to hide it from the other seers. It got to the point where I was having trouble sleeping. I’d started dropping weight by halfway through week three. I could see from Ulai’s eyes, and even from a frown I caught from Voi Pai, that they’d started to worry.

  Then one morning, it eased.

  I could keep food down after that. My breathing improved, and my light seemed to remember it belonged to my body. I even overslept that morning, probably because for the first time in over a week, the separation pain hadn’t woken me up.

  My light grew easier to control again, which seemed to reassure Ulai. He told me afterwards that he’d been worried about whether I would be able to see clients at all in that state. He and Voi Pai met a few times to discuss what they would do, in the event I continued to get worse. They’d even discussed attempting to bond me to another seer, as that was the only partial solution they’d ever found to the problem.

  His last confession shocked me. I’d never heard of any cure when it came to a broken mate bond, so that was a new one on me.

  Ulai confirmed that re-bonding was risky as hell, and often didn’t take. Even when it did, it wasn’t always enough to keep the seer alive. They’d only ever attempted it when a bonded seer’s mate had actually died.

  Regardless, when the pain eased, everyone around me relaxed.

  The pain didn’t go away entirely, of course.

  I knew it would probably remain about the same amount of bad indefinitely, at least if our previous periods of separation were any indication. It might even get worse, depending on what he started doing with his light.

  It did stabilize, though. I could even control it when I concentrated.

  That also meant I was given the okay to start working.

  54

  WORKING

  THEY STARTED ME off with a human.

  Which made sense, when I thought about it, but it surprised me. After the seers I’d trained on, facing a human struck me as almost anticlimactic––but I suppose that was kind of the point.

  His name was Yin Bao Xi. I only found out while he was being announced in the main hall that he was also the current President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China.

  Maybe that shouldn’t have surprised me, either.

  It did surprise me, though. In fact, it completely threw me once I heard his name spoken, and as I watched him walk towards me, smiling. I’d seen his picture on the feeds, of course, in avatar form, anyway, but the avatar resembled him closely enough that I fought a fresh attack of nerves as they escorted us back to my assigned working room.

  He was surprisingly charming though, and not very demanding, in terms of the sex itself. The most difficult part had been holding him off. I got the impression he wasn’t used to seers, maybe not even to prostitutes, because he got so excited once I started taking his clothes off that most of my light was spent keeping him from climaxing before we’d done anything.

  Afterwards, he was all smiles, and bowed to me so many times I had to fight not to smile.

  He flattered me with his words, and also with his unwillingness to leave––and finally by asking my permission if he could submit his name to Voi Pai a second time.

  I told him sure, and I meant it.

  All I could think was, if every time was like him, I could definitely handle this. Maybe not forever, but long enough to pay off what Voi Pai decided I owed her.

  I saw Ulai wink at me fro
m the doorway as I finally showed him out.

  From the dense flush of pride and other emotions I felt in the warmth Ulai sent me way, I had to assume, at the very least, I hadn’t embarrassed him.

  Two days later, I received a bouquet of hothouse flowers.

  With it came a long velvet-covered box containing an emerald bracelet that probably cost more than my mother made in a year, working for the Post Office in San Francisco. Hell, it was probably more than I made in two years waiting tables at that crappy diner. It also included a note offering me a house in Beijing, if I ever grew tired of being a consort of the Lao Hu.

  The whole thing kind of freaked me out.

  Even knowing it had more to do with what I was, not who, it just struck me as the most bizarre form of make-believe imaginable. The guy didn't know me at all, and he was trying to buy me houses. I couldn't even get Jaden to do the dishes when I had a cold.

  Voi Pai seemed satisfied, though.

  She gave me access to the indoor pool in one of the buildings outside Meridian Gate, and offered me a horse of my own, a pure-blooded, white Arabian stallion named Ri, which I was told meant “intelligence.” It was the most beautiful horse I’d ever seen in my life. I didn’t hide my disbelief when they led him out of the barn and put him through paces in front of me.

  Again, this new world struck me as a bizarre light show of delusion.

  Still, people paid well for their delusions, I guess.

  I knew I had it easier than probably anyone in this line of work on the planet, seer or human, but it didn't change the fact that I was letting people have sex with me for money. They could try and make it seem like some expensive “date” and ply me with million dollar horses afterwards, but it didn't change the reality.

  Anyway, that kind of thing had never really worked on me, the whole “wow her with money” thing. Everyone expected me to be wowed, though, so I found myself acting even when I wasn’t working, feigning enthusiasm for things that struck me as almost childishly shallow.

  Just having to be that “on” all the time was exhausting.

  As soon as I was alone, I was the puppet with cut strings. I’d just lay there, usually without bothering to turn on the lights, relieved at the silence.

  While I knew I had it easy compared to most unwillings, I envied the other Lao Hu consorts at times. With the exception of their regulars, most of the other consorts only brought their clients back for sex after they’d been chosen from a lineup, a ritual that often took place in a larger audience chamber. Further, if they weren’t chosen, they either waited for the next round, or went home for a few hours to chill out and live life.

  Not so with me.

  I had no regulars. I also didn’t get picked from a choice of other consorts.

  I saw clients by appointment only.

  As all of my clients were also heavy hitters in some way, either politically or economically, they also expected more of an overall “experience.” This meant foreplay was often scripted to be more like a date. I was expected to serve tea and entertain them, give them an opportunity to talk to me, ask me questions, and just spend time with me in the pre-show sense.

  I also followed the client’s timeline, at least within reason.

  As a result, I usually spent around half a day with each one.

  I think my shortest was three hours. The longest was closer to seven. I knew they paid handsomely for the privilege, but it wore me out by the time they left. It also often meant no infiltration training that day, which frankly bothered me a lot more. I got catch up sessions sometimes, from Cilap and some of the others, but it wasn't the same; I wanted to be with my class, with the other students.

  Given my unique set up, I also had to learn more than just sex. For the tea ritual alone, I’d spent a few hours every day for weeks learning all the forms. Even then, Ulai badgered me about elements of my delivery not being “traditional” enough.

  I had a seer’s memory now, so that part didn’t worry me so much as the small talk required as part of the pre-game show. Both Voi Pai and Ulai warned me to be polite, but said otherwise, I could essentially be myself.

  The problem was, I wasn’t entirely sure they knew what this meant, in regards to me. Most of my social skills were learned in human bars in San Francisco, and while I adapted to Seertown and even older seers like Vash and Balidor, I still got a head tilt and puzzled looks often enough to know I didn’t act like your average seer.

  The Lao Hu, Voi Pai in particular, educated all of the clients to expect an American, and a young one to boot. Since that was part of my marketing appeal in many cases, no one expected me to know the traditional forms of conversation or etiquette like the other consorts.

  I still didn’t feel like I could exactly kick up my heels and just “be myself,” though.

  In the end, I just did the best I could with what I had. Apart from making Ulai laugh aloud at one of my comments to a tech mogul from California, I think I did okay.

  Of course, I’d mostly been given humans to entertain so far, so I could read them for when I stepped too far out of line.

  I didn’t find out until a number of months later just how much they charged for each of those little half-day visits, but even in the beginning, I suspected it was a lot.

  The order of my list changed almost daily, too.

  More important clients bumped down less important clients. Political situations shifted in the outside world; at times, my list followed, depending on who the Communists wished to please at any given time. No one came out and told me, but I felt the pressure of this through Voi Pai now and then. The vast majority of my clients were rich friends of the Chinese government, international business moguls and heads of state.

  Whoever came to my client room first had to go through about two hours’ worth of security protocols, sometimes more.

  Those were the “friends” of the Lao Hu, by the way.

  Strangers, which usually meant friends of friends of the Lao Hu, pretty much had to wait all day before seeing me sometime in the evening. That, or they went through security for most of the night to see me the following morning.

  According to Miao, the waiting list for me already numbered in the hundreds by the time I’d actually seen my first client. The original set of invites numbered only about fifty, but word spread fast that the Bridge was in the City and being auctioned off to the highest bidders. Within a week, according to Miao, that list ballooned into three times its original size. A few hours with me was apparently the new cachet, at least among those in the high-floating networks of the rich, unimaginative and chronically bored.

  None of this flattered me, by the way.

  From the very beginning, it was clear I was purely a trophy conquest in 98% of these cases, a check mark on some power-freak’s bucket list. Or, even more trite, dinner party fodder for their other rich friends, who of course then wanted their own names added to the list.

  Nothing in my basic routine changed until I got a good look at my third seer client.

  The first two seers I saw were pleasant enough.

  One, a high-ranking official in the Party, had left the Lao Hu’s formal ranks and lived full-time among humans. Having sex with him was strange only because he was a seer; he kept things light between us. I think curiosity about my Bridge status brought him there as much as anything, and other than liking the sex okay, he seemed disappointed I wasn’t more “mythic.”

  Still, he was polite. He also sent me a gift: a golden statue of the Bridge symbol that I plunked down on my bureau, unsure what else to do with it.

  The second of the two was a middle-aged infiltrator named Surli, and the first person I was with who didn’t feel so much like a client. He’d been put on the list as a reward for thwarting a massive cyber-terrorism plot, one that would have cost the state billions.

  He’d come in informally, wearing the usual infiltrator black, and glanced around like he was in a museum. Then, finding me with his eyes, he stared at me, seer fashi
on––then grinned so wide I couldn’t help but smile back.

  We only made it about halfway through tea before he asked me to take off my clothes and yanked me into his lap.

  Even so, I spent more time in real conversation with him than I did with perhaps anyone who’d ever come into that room, client or otherwise. He wanted to talk to me during breaks between sex, during sex, after sex. He even asked me out afterwards, wanting to know if I had free time to see seers socially, apart from clients.

  He was the only one to ask me directly about Revik.

  He wanted to know if I was still bonded to him, if the rumors about me killing him were true, why I was being unfaithful to him, and if that meant I was open to bonding to someone else. After stammering at him in shock for a few seconds, I tried to tell him I wasn’t really supposed to talk about any of that, but he pushed me until I told him more or less the truth.

  At one point, he made me cry, pushing me to open to him.

  We ended up having rough sex on the floor, him reading me while I fought my way through the worst case of separation pain I’d had since I’d gotten there. He’d wanted me to open my light, to call him by Revik’s name while he fucked me. I hadn’t been able to do the second thing––but he opened me enough that both of us lost control.

  Even through that, he was talking to me, cursing Revik even as he continued to try and get me to feel it, to move past the thing between us, maybe.

  I didn’t know how to tell him that that probably wasn’t going to happen.

  He left reluctantly, about eight hours later, and I found myself making out with him in the doorway, and telling him I’d try to find some way to see him again.

  When I asked Ulai, he’d seemed amused at first.

  Then, after reading my light, he actually got jealous.

  He did ask Voi Pai on my behalf if I could see Surli again, and she’d agreed to it with her usual dismissive wave, so long as it was on my own time and didn’t interfere with clients.