I chewed the inside of my cheek. “Well…” I hadn’t either.
He looked at the walls.
“I’m sorry too.” For the fact we’re not friends anymore. But maybe this was what happened when you grew up. One incident and you became awkward around each other and it was never the same.
But he came toward me then, looking somewhere at my feet. He put his arms around me and pressed his nose into my shoulder.
I should’ve set him back, because it didn’t feel like he meant it. This robot wasn’t the same Bo-Sheng who used to chase me down the shore in the Camp. But maybe it was that memory that made me return the hug.
I felt his chest pushing against mine as he breathed. I tightened my arms.
“I’m sorry,” he said, muffled in my shirt.
“You already said that. Don’t worry about it.”
“For bringing you here.”
He was warm and small in my arms. Felt narrow and slippery, so I squeezed. He was older, but I was the captain’s protégé. Ships had rank, and I’d stepped over Bo-Sheng. “I’m not sorry about that.”
He didn’t answer.
I pressed my fingers into his back. He didn’t squirm this time, but his body was tense. I tried rubbing his back like Estienne did with me, eventually moving one hand up to his neck, feeling for the pulse.
“How have you been?” he asked, in that close silence.
“Good,” I answered, even though I wasn’t thinking of answers at all. “You?”
He didn’t speak. His heart ran, I felt it. He was feeling it. It was like candy, but better. I moved my cheek from his hair and rubbed it against his temple.
He stepped back with a little shove, breathing in as if he’d been burned.
“I’m—going,” he said, making for the door.
“What’s your problem?” I could’ve hit him for that. My skin tingled with it. Heat. And now irritation.
“I can’t do this, Yuri.”
“Then when?”
He paused at the hatch, a hand pressed against it, and looked back at me. I started to smoke the forgotten cigret again. It was almost burned down anyway so I dropped it on the floor and toed it out. Scowled.
“When?” he said. Stupidly, I thought.
“Yeah, when. When can we spend time together? You weren’t this way when we got on board. And suddenly you don’t want anything to do with me?”
“I do,” he said, glancing at the walls. Afraid to look me in the eyes, maybe. “I was worried.”
“I told you there was nothing to worry about. We haven’t seen each other in ages, and I want to—” My teeth clenched. “I like you. I’ve always liked you. Why don’t you like me back?”
“I like you,” he said. But he refused to look at me. His fingers picked at the scars on the hatch.
The heat had traveled to my head. The room felt tight, the floor too sunken. The color of humiliation was a bruising red, and it filled my sight.
“Just go,” I said.
I wanted him to stay and knock me over like he used to do when I got an attitude.
But he just left, quietly.
I waited enough time until I was sure Bo-Sheng would’ve got in the lev, then I went back next door, to Estienne. I kicked and pounded the hatch until he opened it, swearing at me.
“Some other people on this deck are in their sleepshift, you—”
I shoved by him and went to Dexter and picked up the cage.
“What’s wrong?” Estienne said from behind. “Didn’t you like your—?”
“Some gift! Thanks a lot! Bo-Sheng’s all weird with me, and I don’t even know why you bothered!”
“Bo-Sheng wasn’t the gift,” Estienne said. “Well, not only. I thought you’d want to see him. Why, what’d he do?”
Dexter set up a squall. He flew from one corner of the cage to the other and punctured the air with his cries.
“Dammit, Yuri, you better teach that bird to be quiet. I don’t know why the captain would give you such a noisy pet.” He rubbed the side of his head. “It echoes in this ship.”
“I like him, so shut up!”
“What’d Bo-Sheng do, Yuri? He wasn’t the gift, I just thought you’d like to see him. The quarters were your gift. New quarters. And I’ll help you outfit them, however you want. Won’t come out of your pay.”
I was at the hatch. I paused and turned. Dexter stopped squawking and rustled beneath the paper at the bottom of his cage. The tiny shape of him moved around under the cover, like he was hiding from something.
Quarters next to Estienne. It dampened my temper. My embarrassment at Bo-Sheng’s reaction to me. But I didn’t say thank you.
Estienne said, “What happened?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. He’s just all different and weird. I don’t wanna see him again. It was obvious he didn’t wanna see me.”
“Aw, Yuri.” He came toward me and extricated the big cage from my grip. He set it on the floor carefully then hugged me to his chest.
I pulled away.
“Now what,” he said. “I swear you have more moods than a girl.”
“Shut up.”
“See?”
I looked at him from behind my hair, murderous. But he never took that seriously. He knew it would pass. He knew I couldn’t stay mad at him, especially when he grinned at me. He said, “Next shift is geisha training. And you’re tired. We’ll move you over to your new digs too. But for now, if you don’t want to go back down to your old q…”
I looked at him full in the face.
He smiled. “Go get ready for bed.”
My heart was trotting. I went into his bathroom and brushed my teeth, because he always kept toiletries for me in there since I stayed over a lot, and Marcus was big on me keeping good teeth. By the time I emerged again Estienne was already tucked in his bunk with the sheet and blanket pulled up. But his shoulders were bare. Which was different.
I tried not to breathe as loud as it sounded in my head.
I remembered vids and talks with Piotr and joking with some of the other younger crew. Images and words all mingled in my mind. But they were distant things.
I didn’t feel so distant, looking at him. I was still wearing my party clothes, my good sweater and pants, but I sat on the bed and took off my sweater at least and threw it at the desk chair where it sloppily hung. I started to tuck under the blankets but Estienne said, “You’ll ruin your pants.”
Ruin? With wrinkles, maybe, which laundry could press out anyway. But he gave my back a little push so I slid off the pants and tossed them after the sweater, then hurried up and tucked under because it was cold when all you wore was underwear that cut above the knees.
He wasn’t wearing anything but underwear either. Our legs grazed as I stretched out, and I swallowed. His had short, almost wiry hairs. Maybe they were even as pale as the hair that fell into his eyes. I lay on my back and didn’t move because this was different from hugging with all your clothes on. Different from even wanting to be kissed. And I liked it when he kissed me, but this wasn’t it.
It was one thing to know the mechanics and to laugh at the vids from embarrassment, and then be in the situation. It didn’t matter how many things I’d seen. Just then I didn’t know what to do. My curiosity got trumped by nervousness.
I knew he was watching me, but I stared at the ceiling. The lights were still on and I wished they weren’t.
“What’re you thinking about?” he said, quiet.
“Nothing.” My voice seemed too loud. But I couldn’t seem to make it soft. “I mean…um. How come you’re not one of the captain’s protégés?” I just wanted to talk.
Estienne propped his head on his hand and fingered my shoulder. “I don’t have…well, I don’t want the command responsibilities that you’ll eventually have.”
“Why not?”
“Yuri…let’s not talk about this now.”
I kept staring at the ceiling. “I wanna talk about it. He said I’m going to be this thing, and I wanna know
what it all means.”
“You’ll find out what it all means.”
“Why protégés? Why’s he got this—system.” Not that I minded, but it wasn’t anything nonpirates did as far as I knew. I pulled the blankets tighter against my body. It made him move his hand, and he sighed.
“You know how in the military people go to academies and get training, and if they want to do like specialized things or get on the command track, they take extra training that’s harder and more focused? Well that’s the idea. Marcus used to be in the EarthHub Armed Forces. He grew up in that system, I think his whole family served. But instead of applying all that training stuff broad like that he wanted to do something more personal. Because he believes it’ll create better captains. Ones that would be loyal to each other because they had this special thing in common. Ones that would be most loyal to him because he set the bar and trained the first.”
I listened. It was his vision, then. Like the govies talked about their vision for a safe Hub against the strits. Marcus had a vision for his crew and the ships we ran with. “Do all of them have protégés? All of our allies?”
“No. Just certain captains that Marcus handpicked, who he thinks could actually train one properly. Like Captain Townsend on Shiva. I mean, it’s a long-term thing, right? To train someone from when they’re a kid. Marcus is kind of thinking about it in generational terms. He wants his business to last. And it starts with you.” Estienne smiled a little. I heard it in his voice. “Or the others. But I guess it took a while for the captain to get it right, it’s not like math or something. But you’re doing well. You have what it takes to do what the captain does, eventually. You’ll see.” He slid down and tucked against my arm, his head near mine on the same pillow. “Now can we stop talking about it?”
I couldn’t think because his breath was warm against the side of my face. I’d run out of questions anyway.
“Don’t you like this, Yuri?” he said.
I wanted Dexter to make a noise, but I thought he was asleep. He didn’t peep. And I thought about crawling out except Estienne put his arm over me then, like he usually did when we were both in sleepclothes and just went to sleep. That was all it had been before. But now my eyes weren’t shut, and I knew his weren’t either.
“Do you like this?” he asked again.
“Like what?”
“This. On your birthday. When you’re going to get your tat tomorrow of the Khan, and be a real part of the Family. And everything else.”
I dug my fingers into my forearms. His arm lay across my neck, warm and defined. I was getting muscle from all the training, but I was still girl-thin and unmarked. He had nine years on me. He was adult.
But so was I, wasn’t I? What did time and standard dates mean to deep spacers on ships? I’d killed a strit when I was ten. I knew how to shoot a gun and I had a knife.
His hand slid down and caressed my arm. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “You’ve been wanting me to do this for a while, haven’t you? When you left earlier you wanted this. It’s going to be okay.” Then, “Lights, fifty.”
They softened to shadows and glow. The red fabric canopy looked like a sunset. And I was almost sleepy from the way he touched me, all slow and light, and the feel of his breath on my cheek.
Almost.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
No. Yeah. I couldn’t decide. It was hard to think. But he was familiar. And he stopped the caresses and just hugged me, like we always did, except as I rolled into his arms, I felt how warm his skin was, and smooth, and how some parts of him were soft and others were not, because of his muscle. He wasn’t bulky, but it was there. Just—more. Than me.
It didn’t take much. He must have felt how rigid I got, all over, but he didn’t say anything. His leg moved, his knee slid a bit between mine, then up, and I made a small sound and tried to pull away, because now all the heat in my body was moving fast to just two places—my brain and below my waist—and, even though I’d seen vids, this wasn’t a vid, it was me, and he was going to laugh or something.
“It’s all right,” he murmured, a hand on my back. “Yuri, it’s all right. This is supposed to happen, I don’t mind.”
Maybe I minded. Except—it felt nice. And scary. And nice. I ached. And I wanted to roll over and hug the pillow and stop feeling down there. Or something. But I didn’t.
His knee moved again. Not an accident. And he was soothing me with his voice and his hand on my back, so I started to move against his leg, I didn’t know, it was an awkward little dance, and it didn’t last long, I couldn’t help it when all the suns in the galaxy seemed to die behind my eyes, flood my limbs, and burn me to the core.
And afterward, the cold of space.
Except he hugged me, even though I wriggled, and I was damp and weak and embarrassed.
I couldn’t think past that. He held on despite my struggling, until I hugged him back, just fit against him like a familiar sweater. I didn’t want to move.
“You’re fine,” he said. “It was fine.” Rubbing my back.
And it felt so good, just like that. It felt so good that I was guilty.
When I woke up he was gone. As soon as I climbed out of the bunk Dexter squawked a greeting. So I went over and poked my finger through the black bars, and he fluttered up to it and nibbled. There was a feed cone hanging in the cage, so I gestured to it. “Breakfast, go on.” Eventually he got it, or he got bored of me, and went to it. I checked my tag for messages, and Estienne had left a short one: Go to medical.
I was sticky in my underwear from last shift, and it made me glad he wasn’t around. Medical for that? What were they going to say? It had happened because of Estienne instead of just during sleep, but was that such a big difference?
I took my time in his shower, and looked in the mirror afterward with my hair damp and combed back. Of course I didn’t seem any different. Maybe I needed a haircut, but I liked how Estienne played with it, and he couldn’t do that if it was too short. Maybe he wanted me next door because it made things like this easier? I knew he was going to teach me about geisha duties, but I always thought he liked me best. And not just because I was the captain’s protégé. He didn’t need to like me for that since Marcus treated him special too. And he’d said that girl Taja was just a bedbug. I wasn’t just a bedbug.
My tag beeped. I palmed it, and it was Estienne.
“Medical, Yuri. Now.”
“Okay.” I smiled. His stern voice.
I landed up there, and both Estienne and Marcus were waiting for me, wearing their work faces. So I straightened my shoulders a bit and swept my eyes around. Doc Wachter wasn’t in sight, but there was a small girl sitting beside one of the examination tables near Estienne and the captain, her head bowed as if she was looking at something in her lap. Medical was an oval room, smooth surfaces splattered with arthritic-looking scan equipment that clawed and poked you when they used it. Pitiless doctors and medtechs. Whether a flu or a broken bone, they seemed to think it was all your fault. It was plenty of incentive for me to remain healthy and unmarred, so I didn’t have to see them except for annual checkups.
Marcus motioned me over to the table now.
Closer, and the girl looked up, the long black hair parting away from her face as she tossed her head. Her face startled me so much that I stopped. It was covered in tattoos, right down her neck to the collar of her shirt. What exposed skin I saw on her hands was also inked. It was such an enmeshed puzzle of images that I could only make out familiar shapes here and there that created something identifiable—a bird, a gun, a sword, flames…words in stylized red or blue or black lettering that made cryptic statements like “truth is beauty” and “eimi hosti eimi.”
When she smiled her teeth made a white line across a colored landscape, like a scar.
“This is Mnemosyne,” Marcus said. “She’s going to give you the Khan’s tattoo.”
“My name means ‘memory,’” she said, “and you’re not gonna fo
rget where you come from. Take off your shirt.”
I did so, rolling it in my hands, and smiled at Estienne to say hello. He smiled back, but with reserve, and patted the examination table. “Lie up here.”
I hauled myself onto it and lay back, tilting my head to the girl. Reading her skin. Mnemosyne swung over a tray with little bottles and what looked like a needle gun. I sat up.
“No injet?” Nobody used needles to ink tats. That was old. And it looked like it hurt. A lot.
Marcus pushed me back down, not hard enough to bruise but firm enough to keep me there. He didn’t smile like Estienne had. He hovered in view, blocking Estienne behind his shoulder. “This ship is your Blood now,” he said, “and you’re going to feel it.”
Genghis Khan’s symbol was a black horse reared on its hind legs, with red flaring hooves and red eyes. Marcus said the ancient Mongols were great horsemen, and Genghis Khan spread his empire from the back of the horse. He told me to read the history, so I did eventually, and even though the tattoo hurt, it was good. The pain kept me alert, and the color on my chest was a mark of my new status. In Captain Falcone’s fleet. That was what he meant by network. And empire. He had a fleet, of sorts, of ships that weren’t going to let the Hub tell them what to do, and didn’t have to hand over aliens in this war. Marcus said the Khan was lying low for a while, but it didn’t mean we weren’t going to work. It was the perfect time, he said, for me to learn.
Even though people couldn’t see the tat beneath my shirt, I thought they saw it on my face. I kept my Serate handgun tucked in my backwaist and walked those corridors with Estienne to begin my first shift as a geisha and a protégé. We weren’t going to his quarters. He said there was a room.
I glanced up at him as we walked. He saw me looking, smiled, and slung his arm around my neck.
“Ow,” I said, because even a little movement stung.
“Ah, you can take it. I can’t wait ’til it’s all healed up.”
“Why?”
“So I can touch it.” He grinned.
I blushed. I felt it to the roots of my hair. And he laughed, but not meanly.
“Don’t you want me to touch it?” he said in a sly voice.
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