“Shut up.”
He ruffled my hair, hard, so I dodged my head. “How’s Dexter?” he said.
“I let him out in your quarters.” I grinned.
“No you didn’t!”
I grinned. “No I didn’t, but I got you.”
He laughed again. “Demon.”
We went back up to the sequestered deck where his quarters were, and my new one. He said, “These are the Geisha Quarters. So you know. We call them the Hanamachi, from the old name of the geisha districts in Earth Japan. Flower towns. It’s kind of pretty, the name.”
“It’s just you and me in this whole section?”
“No.” He smiled. “There are others. You’re going to meet them now.”
“But I’ve never seen them around here…”
“They stay hidden rather well.” His smile had secrets, but he gave my shoulders a squeeze and took me through a hatch I’d always passed but never entered. Inside was a wide lounge with painted brushed-gray panels on the walls, lined by thin columns of lights so that the ambience was soft white and close. Streams of the same pale color fluttered from the ceiling to the floor, which was carpeted. Surprisingly. In the shadows it looked blue, like water. Dark couches circled a bottom-lit table. There were tall drinks laid out, and people seated around them. Five in all. A drink per person. They all stopped talking when we entered and looked over.
Three girls and two boys. I thought. They were all very pretty.
Estienne put his hands on my shoulders and guided me closer, walking behind me. “Hey everyone. This is Yuri—finally.” And to me, “They’ve been all curious to meet you.”
“Yeah?” I tried a smile and a small wave. “Hey.”
“Yuri,” Estienne said, gesturing with one hand to the leftmost person, a black-haired girl with skin almost the same shade, so deep and smooth that the light made her seem metallic. “This is Hestia, your Elder Sister. The rest are your sibs. That’s how we refer to each other here. Hestia and I are your Elder Sister and Elder Brother, and the others you call just by their names. Rika—” He nodded to a brown-haired girl sitting beside Hestia. Then continued around the couch, “Yasmin, Ville, and Jonny.” The last two were the boys.
Jonny shifted closer to Ville to make room on the end of the couch crescent. “Have a seat, Yuri.”
They were both dark-haired, the boys, almost black, with pale eyes, but where Ville had a vague arrogance in the set of his mouth, Jonny’s smile was quick, without edges. I sat beside him, and he smelled a bit like sweet musk. Estienne joined me and spread his arm along the back of the couch.
“Yasmin is our dancer, she’ll show you those moves with the fan that you saw earlier. The others…well, you’ll get to know what they do. Sometimes we’ll meet like this but one or the other will be absent. That’s because of clients.”
“What do you do for the clients?” I had to ask it before Estienne rolled over the issue. Now that I was here, in this circle, he couldn’t just avoid it.
“Have sex with them,” Hestia replied, leaning forward to pick up her drink, which she sipped briefly. “Or just talk. Or rather, get them to talk. Sometimes when the captain has meetings he wants us there to relax the situation, and we don’t do anything but play music and dance for them, or serve them drinks and food.”
“Like real geisha, you mean?” I’d long ago read about it, but I hadn’t thought there were many similarities except in the name.
“Something like that,” Estienne said. “The clients are all people who do business with us. The ship. So it’s business, always. You understand?”
“Even the sex, you mean. Like bedbugs.”
“Well, not even. Less than bedbugs. These people aren’t our friends.”
I nodded. I was starting to get scared of the idea.
Ville said, “Don’t worry, it’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds. Mostly you just put your mind elsewhere.”
“But the perks are good,” Jonny said. “Some of our clients really give us lots of stuff. And that makes the captain happy too.”
They weren’t helping to calm me down. I looked at Estienne.
“It’s okay.” He could read me easily. “By the time you’re ready it won’t sound so bad. That’s why you’re here. We’re going to train you. Mostly me, but your brothers and sisters too.”
When he said it I thought of Isobel suddenly. And Jascha. And I had to bite my lip, hard, to stop any more images that way. They were all silent, staring at me, maybe seeing through to my thoughts. They had eyes like that, like they knew all your little movements and gestures, things you weren’t even aware of.
“You’re very sweet-looking,” Hestia said. “Like an angel, really, with those eyes and lips. The ones they paint on churches.”
“A cherub,” Yasmin said suddenly, very quietly.
I didn’t know much about all of that, but I said, “Thanks. I guess.”
Jonny laughed, and that seemed to break the muted pauses. “He doesn’t even know when he’s paid a compliment, Elder Brother. We really have our work cut out for us.”
And they did. I thought I knew stuff, but when Estienne told me what the six of them did—and me, seven—it was clear that I didn’t know much at all. I knew guns and fighting (which Estienne said was still good to know, because sometimes Marcus sent the geisha to kill betraying clients) and how a ship basically ran, and stuff about the Hub and other kinds of slate-learning, but geisha life was different. Geisha knowledge was…gentle and brutal. And they talked about it all, especially Estienne, with a frankness that shocked me.
Dancing, he said, came in all forms. You danced just to dance for someone, to tease them or to begin something. Or you danced with words and songs. You danced with touches too, danced with bodies in a bed. Or you danced with weapons. Like the captain’s tattoo, the woman with the knives and the hands hanging from her belt.
Ultimately it came down to one thing—what was best for the ship. That was the captain’s bottom line, and if you kept that in mind, he rewarded you, like this whole section of the deck to keep his geisha apart from the rest of the crew, because they were apart. We were apart. We were special, privileged, soft-edged with art and perfume and expensive clothes, and sharp with words and eyes and the freedom to kill other captains, politicians, and officials. Those people were all some of the Khan’s clients. And Marcus repaid betrayals.
Silk and steel, Estienne said. That was our world. That was my world at last, and once I’d learned it no one would ever hurt me again. Not without consequence. And I’d deal it myself, with skill. I’d end the dance myself, he said, one way or another. Geisha always did.
The fan was our symbol.
At the end of the shift, after dinner and after Estienne had helped me clean my new quarters of dust and grit, then moved my few belongings, he promptly took over my shower to wash himself of the sweat and dirt. I sat on the floor and twitched my fingers at Dexter, who didn’t seem to care that he was in a new place, I guessed, because he was still in his little cage. Dexter burrowed beneath his paper, and when I stuck my finger in and pushed at it he darted forward and tried to bite me. It reminded me of Seamus for some reason and I laughed.
Then Estienne came out, completely without clothes on, and I saw the fan tattoo just below his navel, spread there like an open eye, except it was red and gold and black, with the chevron end pointed down. And then I wasn’t looking at the fan at all.
I was looking at Dexter. Fast.
“Yuri,” Estienne said. I heard his voice but didn’t see him. I didn’t see anything, I was so fixed on not looking anywhere, even with both eyes open. “Yuri, this is training. I want you to look. You have to learn to look.”
But the shift was over, we were still training? I asked him that, absently poking through the cage.
“Yes,” he said. “Once I say so, we are. No matter the hour. So look at me.”
And I had to. So I did. I saw him like that, naked, for the first time, head to toe, but I didn�
�t much look into his eyes. I was too embarrassed. And I couldn’t, even then, seem to move my gaze from his privates anyway. Even though that was far more embarrassing a thing to look at. But there it all was, all of him, and he was older, I knew, and bigger.
I wanted to shut my eyes, but this was work.
The hairs on his legs were just like on his arms. Sparse and pale and soft-looking.
It didn’t feel like work when he came over and slid his hand into my hair.
“You really are sweet,” he murmured, “like Hestia said.”
Dexter started to toss up a ruckus for no apparent reason, but he was a loud bird and probably didn’t need any. I looked at him and patted the cage. “Dexter, sshh.”
But Estienne pulled me to my feet. “Leave your pet, he’ll be fine.”
“You said you don’t like how he screams.”
“I don’t care now, he’ll settle down in a bit I’m sure.”
I stood, not knowing where to land my gaze.
“We won’t do anything much,” Estienne said, in his soft way, reading my mind again. “I just want you to get used to it. Go take your shower, then come on to bed.”
“Here?” It was hardly as nice as his quarters. Not yet anyway.
“Yeah, here. This is your place now. Where do you think?”
His voice had a hint of impatience, so I just went to the bathroom. I ran the water and stood under and looked at myself. Did he expect me to come out naked too? Well now I had to because I’d forgotten to take a change of clothes in with me, all I had was my dirty ones from the shift, and if I put on dirty clothes after taking a shower, he was going to frown.
I stayed in the shower for a long time, poking the cycler three times. Until a banging came on the door and Estienne opened it, and said, loud above the water, “You’re wasting it. Hit the dryer and come out here.” The door shut.
So I did come out, eventually, blasted dry, smoothing my hair and going straight to my locker where my sleepclothes were. He was already in the bunk with the blankets up to his waist. I was so aware of him I didn’t even need to look.
Dexter was silent. I glanced at the cage, and he was hidden again under the paper.
“Am I so awful to be around?” Estienne said. “You’re around me all the time during our goldshift. What difference does it make just because we’re not in clothes?”
I didn’t answer, just tugged on my pants.
“Leave the shirt,” he said, “and I want you to answer me, Yuri. I want you to think.”
“It’s different,” I said. Snapped. “Of course it’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because!”
“Don’t give me that,” he said, just as sharp. “You aren’t going to get away with little-boy answers anymore. Come here and sit your ass down.”
I went over and sat on the edge of the bunk, my arms folded and my back to him.
“Yuri.” His voice was soft. He could change it like that, in a second, and for the first time I wondered if that was part of being geisha too. His hand touched my bare back and moved around, light, in circles.
Without thinking about it, I let out my breath.
“Yuri,” he said.
“Do you even care about me at all?” I asked, still with my back to him. “Or is this all just part of—training?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
“I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”
His arm came around my stomach and gently pulled me back against his chest. “I think you know.” Somehow his nose found the side of my neck and it made my shoulder curl. “Sometimes,” he whispered into my skin, “we have to work. And other times we get to play. That’s just the way it is. But I like it better that it’s me training you, just because we’re like this, and it’s not somebody else. I want you to know what you’ll always come back to, no matter what clients you have or who else trains you. It’s always this, you and me. Do you understand?”
“But I’m thirteen, and you’re—”
His fingers dug. “I don’t want to hear that. Age means nothing here. Did it matter that you were only four when the strits blew up your home, and you lost your mama? People like to make such a big fucking deal about age and this separation of children from adults, but people like you and me, when were we children? When? If it’s so bad for me to love you just because of some number, then why’s it okay that my family died when I was five, all of them, the strits just blew our ship because we were in the way between a battleship and a marauder, and I spent a week in a pod waiting for someone to pick us up and you know nobody ever came? Nobody. Nobody until the Khan. So fuck it all. If they want to say some things are bad because of age, then everything ought to be, everything should be watched and listed and made better for kids, but they don’t do that, do they? They don’t fucking care. So we make up our own rules. And I love you, Yuri, this isn’t a weapon, I’m not killing you. I love you, and what’s so wrong about that?”
Nothing. Nothing was wrong. I turned around and hugged him because I heard the tears in his voice. And the rage. And I knew them both like we were family.
Yasmin taught me the dance with the fan, there in a special room with mirrors on the walls and a warm faux-wood floor. We had to watch ourselves, like Estienne had wanted me to see him, because you couldn’t be self-conscious about your body if you were going to use it. You had to be aware of how you looked and how others saw you, or you could never control what you said—with your body or your mouth or your eyes. She taught me how you could use your body to speak, to capture, and to control. If they were fixed on your body, they couldn’t see your eyes. If they were fixed on your eyes, they didn’t see your hands. When you knew your body and how it moved, you could move among people and not be noticed, or you could walk into a crowd and demand attention. I’d thought she was quiet and shy, but when she danced she seemed to hook me with a finger and pull me closer without taking a step in my direction. Her hair was wavy and long, like her body, and my eyes were fixed on it, her body with its softer curves and smoother skin. I wondered what it would feel like pressed up against mine, fitted into mine like I fitted into Estienne and his harder angles. And she caught me watching and laughed, pointing at my nose and giggling until I laughed with her. Because she had just proved her point.
Ville taught me music, singing, and soft guitar. Clients liked talent, they liked you to be in a room soothing them, making a nice background, and if you did that and listened at the same time, you picked up a lot. People were drawn in by song. People fell in love with someone who could make their voices soar and whisper in a heartbeat. My voice was undeveloped, but he said it was workable. I would never belt out an aria, he said, but enchantment came just as readily in rawness. Ville was so pale and his hair so black that he seemed to be a reversed sort of boy, half-there, with spirit gray eyes that made me think of those feral dogs I saw sometimes in the Camp, the ones even Seamus had avoided. But Ville was soft-spoken, despite the sullen set of his mouth and the way he grinned, teaching me, as if it fed him in some way to know that he knew more than me but was generous enough to let me in on it all.
Jonny taught me language, and the weapon of words, how to pick up on what people truly said despite the shape of what came out of their mouths. We watched vids of interviews, formal and not. We read reports. He explained how to pitch your voice to be pleasing or commanding, and when in pleasant conversation what sorts of things you had to say that would steer the other person to talk about what you wanted. And when not to speak at all. There were so many shades of it, but Jonny said not to worry. Soon I would see and hear it all without even knowing, and I’d respond to it the same way, like walking. Or breathing. Jonny had a gentle sort of accent and a fast smile. At some angles, as I watched him over the horizon of my compscreen, he seemed far too plain to be a geisha, far too thin and long-faced, too ugly to be a girl and too pretty to be exactly masculine. But then he smiled or his eyes focused on me with unblinking attention,
and the force of that was powerful, the way beauty was.
The second week of training he sent me a message on my tag that he couldn’t make it this shift because he had a meeting, and I caught him in the corridor heading toward the lev, in geisha black, shiny as ink, with his hair long about his shoulders, wet-looking, reflecting lights. And through the outline of black on his eyes, his stare was half-lidded, smoky blue, deep. In this role and in those clothes he even walked differently. It was true what Yasmin said.
Rika taught me the silent and subtle ways to incapacitate someone who touched you the wrong way. I knew some fighting but not the quick-and-dirty things she said you had to do sometimes to keep yourself alive. And where to put small weapons on your body or in your clothes so even if you were naked, you knew exactly where they were and how to get to them. How to be quick, and how to keep your distance. Rika didn’t smile much at all, and Estienne asked if she scared me even a little, and I said, “Yeah. A lot.” And instead of laughing, he said, “Me too.”
Elder Sister Hestia taught me about service, drinks and food, and if I had to sit with someone, how to be pleasant in movement and posture. The worst thing to do was knock over a glass in a client’s lap. That would end any deal right there, or just add stress to the situation, and it was all about flow. You should be so smooth they didn’t even know you were there unless they wanted to. Unless you let them.
They all knew these things, like I was learning all of it, but they were particularly good in one or the other, and so they taught. They were all older than me—I thought Hestia was the oldest, even more than Estienne—but none of them were more than twenty-five. Or so I guessed. Not that it mattered. I was the captain’s, and they didn’t treat me like a kid or haze me like a newcomer, and when we had our meals in our private mess hall in the Geisha Quarters they even let me pick the dessert first. Yasmin liked to poke me at unexpected times and for no reason. Jonny loved to hug me even though he never went further than that (“You belong to Elder Brother,” he said). Hestia watched me sometimes as if gauging just from my face if things were going all right. Rika and Ville didn’t say much, they seemed too involved with each other, and I asked Estienne one shift if Marcus didn’t mind that, and Estienne said, “Of course not. The closer we are, the better we work.”
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