Cagebird

by Karin Lowachee

  A month into it and Elder Sister Hestia took me into her quarters. She reclined on the small couch there, her thumb and forefinger caressing the smooth pink thumbnail on her opposite hand, and motioned me to sit on the bed. So I did, bouncing a little. It was very soft.

  “You like Estienne a lot, don’t you.”

  I nodded. Liked him in lots of ways, which I thought she meant.

  “Good. You’ll enjoy learning from him. But you know some things he can’t teach.”

  She waited, so I said, “Like what, Elder Sister?”

  Her teeth were straight white when she smiled, prettily contrasted to the dark of her skin. “Women, for one.” Then she stood with smooth purpose and began to disrobe, sliding the long material off her shoulders. “You do the same, Yuri.”

  There wasn’t the same kind of warmth in her tone, but that was all right. I didn’t expect it. For a second I didn’t move, just stared at her as she revealed her body. It was dark everywhere, and when I reached out my hand it looked pale and sickly against her skin.

  When we were both undressed she joined me on the bed and took my hand in both of hers. She was warm and I was cold. And when she placed my hand on her breast I was shaking. It was hard to breathe just like when I stood too long outside in the winter on Colonial Grace. The air took away my breath.

  Here in her quarters, the rich sweet scent of her skin made it difficult.

  But her voice and her movements were easy with me.

  It was regular with her for a while, but completely just training. Women needed to be handled differently from men, she said. People, she said, liked to homogenize the genders. Whatever a man could do, so could a woman. And vice versa. And while that was true in some cases, she said, it was idiotic to believe that men and women were just the same. With all of her instruction though, she never encouraged me to stay longer than it took, so I still bunked with Estienne in off shifts, either in his quarters or my new one.

  He helped me organize and dress up my new cabin so it was all shades of green and blue, with little sparks of orange. I thought Dexter liked it. It wasn’t too soft or dark like Estienne’s space and it wasn’t going to stay quite as neat, because I just couldn’t seem to keep things that straight, but it was colorful when all the lights were up, and when they weren’t it felt like a jungle. Mostly we just slept, pressed up against each other in the black. He’d touch me and cuddle and once in a while he got me off just by that. But nothing more. Maybe he didn’t want to interrupt what I was learning with Elder Sister Hestia, but as the weeks went I could feel it, every sleepshift, building.

  I wanted to, with him.

  Too slow, it seemed. With thoughts of dance and words and song, I wanted to know everything he could teach me, everything that complemented what I was learning elsewhere. Everything I learned I showed him in private, except for sex, and he’d test me on the mundane things, and he was testing me with this because all the affectionate touches he had didn’t stay my curiosity.

  What else? I wanted to shout. Show me.

  I didn’t go much into the other parts of the ship anymore, everything was in the Hanamachi, our Geisha Quarters, except for when Marcus called me down for meetings or more training in things like drive basics and flight, things geisha didn’t know and didn’t have to know, but protégés did. After the first month he invited me for a private dinner in the captain’s mess, just me and him, and he gave me a hug when he met me at the hatch.

  “You’re looking well.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled at him and went to the table, waiting for him to sit before I pulled out my chair and followed suit. The steward brought the first course, a spinach leaf salad with what smelled like raspberry vinaigrette. The wine was light. I sipped as he did. Our cutlery flashed under the half-cast lights.

  “Your Elder Brother and Sister are really pleased with your progress,” he said, leaning back as he chewed. He picked up his crystal water glass. “How are you about the things they’re teaching? Comfortable, uncomfortable?”

  I swallowed, took a sip of the wine before responding, putting my hands in my lap. “I was uncomfortable in the beginning but…it’s better now.”

  “How is it better?”

  “I understand it now. It’s like a game, but not… I don’t mean like some fight contest. It’s conversation. It just uses everything, not just your speaking voice. And it’s fun on that level. Knowing all the levels when most people don’t.”

  His eyes appraised me. I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know already—not just the meaning of what I said, but that I said it at all. Estienne and Hestia were reporting on me all the time. They never said so, but of course they would. Before I was theirs, or a geisha, I was a member of the Khan. And all of this was Captain Falcone’s idea.

  “How is Estienne?” he said, changing the subject. But not really. He was dropping lines to know what I’d cast back.

  “I like him,” I said, with a smile.

  “He likes you,” Marcus said.

  “I know, he told me.”

  “When do you think you’ll be ready for your first assignment—as a geisha?”

  “Whenever he tells me.”

  “But you might have to tell him. Do you think you’re ready now?”

  I hated to admit it. “No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  I resumed eating. The steward brought the soup, a creamed broccoli. I waited until he’d left and sat quiet for a second, not wanting to just blurt out a deflective answer. That wouldn’t work in this room, at this table with the captain.

  “I don’t know how I’d like having someone touch me like that. All the other stuff, even the killing, I think I’m fine with. But Estienne touches me, and I like that. I even like it when Elder Sister Hestia does it. I like it when I like the person. What if I don’t like some client?”

  “But it’s not about like or dislike,” Marcus said. “Not with a client.”

  “I know, but…” I should’ve kept that quiet. That was the sort of interjection that got you nowhere and didn’t make anything happen in the conversation except let the other person know you were more undecided than you let on.

  “Estienne’s explained to you about work and play,” Marcus said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your body’s a tool, Yuri. It’s something you wield with skill, like a gun or a knife. In and of themselves those things are harmless. It takes someone who knows what they’re doing with them to make them dangerous. And my geisha are dangerous. That’s what I intend. You don’t have to hurt people to be dangerous. Giving other people an appearance of power puts you in control. When you sit with clients, or sleep with clients, whatever it is that you’ll have to do, they will all think that they are the ones with power. But you know what you’re doing when you let them touch you. It’s not love or affection. You’re not giving them anything that means a thing to you. They want the motions of it, and you give it to them, and if you didn’t, they’d be in want. And who then has the power?”

  I listened, hard.

  “So when you go to work,” he said, “you take your knives and your gun and your body, they’re all weapons. Do you understand?”

  I thought. He watched me.

  “What’s your question?” he said.

  And he did want to hear it. He wanted me to work it out. So I said, “But my body and mind are connected, and it’s my mind that wields those weapons. I choose to take up a gun or a knife, and I can put them back when I’m done. But I walk around with my body, it’s a part of me. When I look in the mirror I see it, and when people touch me it does things to me. How can I separate that from a client?”

  “Control,” he said. “Before you can properly control other people you have to learn to control yourself.”

  I thought about that. I ran his words through my mind, and he let me. We didn’t speak for the rest of the meal. But we didn’t need to. He’d said already what he wanted me to hear.

  Power and control. Two si
des of the same idea. Like a geisha and a protégé.

  I wanted to talk to Estienne about what Marcus had said, so I went to his quarters. It was already at the end of the shift, time to relax, roll into bed, and do nothing for a while. My head felt a little warm from all the wine, a glass only but I thought it was expensive stuff.

  I buzzed Estienne’s hatch and waited. He was usually in quarters by this time, catching up on comp work or reading or something. Sometimes we sat in his bunk and did individual work, propped up against each other with our backs to the bulkhead, and that was my favorite way to spend the end of shift.

  His hatch opened, and Taja stood there, looking just the same as she had the last time I saw her. On my birthday.

  I pushed by her into the quarters. Estienne was still putting on his pants. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his chest was ruddy and damp.

  “Hey,” Taja said.

  I turned around and shoved her out of the quarters.

  “Yuri!” Estienne said, reaching for my arm, but I darted away and followed her into the corridor.

  “What the hell—?” she said, putting her hands up to deflect my pushes. Trying to shove me back. “Stop it, you little weed!”

  “Get the hell out of my face!”

  “I’m not in your face!” She knocked my fist away, and her leg moved to trip me. I jumped to the side, hit her at the back of her neck. She fell forward.

  “Yuri!” Hands grabbed me around the upper arms, but I drove my elbows back. They met air, and I cut free. I turned, but Estienne dodged, and his hand shot out, grabbing me around the throat. He shoved me to the bulkhead. In his other hand a knife snapped up and pointed at my right eye. “Stand still,” he said.

  Hatches opened up in the corridor. My brothers and sisters and Elder Sister Hestia peered out at us. Quiet.

  I breathed. Shifted my gaze as Taja got to her feet and gestured at me. “That boy is crazy! You better train him, Estienne!”

  “Fuck you!” I yelled back.

  Estienne’s fingers tightened. I started to cough.

  “Go,” Estienne said.

  She stared at me, cheeks sucked in.

  “LEAVE!” Estienne said, at a level I’d never heard before from him.

  She went. Straight, without looking back. And he held me there, pinned, until the only sound in the corridor was my breathing.

  “Are you going to behave?” he said, in a normal tone. Still pointing the knife at my eye.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let go of me.”

  He did, slow. Snapped the blade shut and turned his back to me. Hestia looked at him, and maybe he looked back because she shut her hatch then, two down from his, and once that happened they all shut themselves in, and I was alone, watching him walk off.

  I rubbed my neck. I coughed and spat after him, “You defend her over me! Fuck your lies!”

  He whirled and came back to me at a clip, grabbed my arm, and shoved me into his quarters, right onto his bunk, with its soiled sheets from his sex with her. I tried to get up but he pushed me back down.

  “I told you long ago that she was nothing but a bedbug. What’s your problem?”

  I stared up at him, gripping the mattress. “Why do you need to shag her anyway?”

  “We just do it. You don’t have to be stupid about it. And before you think of attacking her again, she is the captain’s alpha right now, so you better not mark her up in any way. Pulling my knife on you was saving your ass.”

  “His what?”

  “Marcus screws her on a semiregular basis. He likes her, for what it’s worth. So messing around with her in a good way only helps on this ship. Messing with her in a bad way will get you brigged or worse. Even if you are his protégé.” Estienne set his knife on his desk. He hadn’t looked at me at all. “You don’t know everything yet, Yuri. Tread lightly until you do.”

  I watched his back, the fingernail marks on his shoulder blades. From her. And something coiled in me, black and thick and pitiless.

  “Fine. I’m going to quarters.”

  I left, and he didn’t stop me.

  I didn’t go to quarters. I went down the decks to the forward crew, with my Serate and my switchblade. The curves and angles here were all dark, imploded, sharp night on a ship that knew no day in the first place. But the rib-cage arc of the corridor made you feel like you were inside something that might just belch you out if you disagreed with it. The rumble and scream of the drives sounded louder there than in the Hanamachi. The walls were scarred.

  I had the ship specs memorized by now and made my way to the lounge. It was noisy and crowded, smelled of caff and smoke and bodies. Blue haze hung above the people, lights or stale air or something of both. I looked around but didn’t see her in the shadows or the blue. So I pushed my way in, ignored the looks, and unclamped one of the empty seats in the corner. I climbed onto it.

  “Anyone know where Taja is?” I yelled.

  Talking stopped. Faces turned up to me. A blunt silence.

  “Taja,” I said again.

  “What d’you want with her, kid?” a man said, and I tried to see who it was, but bodies shifted, and it was impossible to tell. Three men approached my seat. None I recognized offhand from my training.

  “That’s my business,” I said.

  I heard someone say, “That’s the captain’s boy.”

  Good. Now they’d know not to touch me.

  But one of the men suddenly grabbed my legs and jerked me from the chair. I fell to the deck with a yelp but managed to kick myself free. I rolled over and sprang up, hobbled a bit toward the wall with my gun in my hand.

  “Touch me again,” I said, aiming at the one who’d grabbed me. Blurs of faces, dark eyes, dark skin, paleness and ink. They kept their distance, but I was sure they all were armed. “Now where is she?”

  “Just tell him,” some girl said, “before he peashoots us to death.”

  “Put him to use. Our crew needs culling.”

  “Berth 20C,” another voice said. With laughter. “Go there. The captain will thank you.”

  “He wouldn’t thank you for coming down here with a gun and your little threats.”

  Untethered voices floating from the mash of faces and the smoke.

  But it didn’t matter. I had a number. I walked to the door.

  “Pissant.”

  No such silence and respect, as I’d got when I was new, but then I never went to the crew decks, and I hadn’t been a geisha. Maybe on the captain’s orders things had changed for them, maybe not. Pirate crew. They must’ve known I wouldn’t go running to Marcus.

  “C’mere and say it.” I looked into the crowd, kept my back to the wall just right of the exit. “Come up, unless a kid with a gun’s got you all anonymous and brave.”

  A man stepped out. Old, rangy, his arms just taut flesh over whipcords. He said, “Don’t waste our time.”

  I shot him. Twice. One in each leg so he tumbled to the deck.

  I heard guns being gotten all through the room.

  But I walked out. And gambled that nobody would fire.

  And nobody did.

  Berth 20C. I buzzed the hatch and held my wrist behind my back, the free hand holding the Serate. I wasn’t going to kill her, of course, but she could back off Estienne, I didn’t care even if she was the captain’s wife. How did she manage to be alpha anyway? She wasn’t even that pretty. And the fact Estienne didn’t do anything but defend his actions made my insides burn. Maybe I should’ve gone back up and shot him instead?

  The hatch opened, and Bo-Sheng stood there.

  I blinked. We stared at each other before I said, “Taja’s shagging you too?”

  “What?” He squinted at me. His lips looked parched, his hair tousled as if he’d been sleeping.

  “What’re you doing in Taja’s quarters?” I said, trying to see over his shoulder. I gave up and just shoved him back, going in myself.

  “Taja? These are my quarters.”

  And they were. It was obvio
us a boy lived here, one bunk with clothes strewn on it and a mess of what looked like electronic supplies. His work?

  Damn adults played me. Our crew needs culling. They wanted to put my gun and temper to use. On Bo-Sheng.

  I turned around and looked at him.

  “Why do you have a gun?” he asked slowly.

  I remembered it, tucked it into my waistband. “Never mind. I’m—”

  He looked scared. His arms wrapped around his body and he kept blinking at me, rubbing the side of his face.

  I was sober enough to know when someone else wasn’t. “Are you high?”

  “No.” He scowled.

  I moved him aside and shut the hatch. “Bo-Sheng, you can’t be high. The captain doesn’t like that shit.”

  “You come all the way down here from your high mountain just to scold me? Screw you!”

  Maybe I should’ve been angry. But instead I said, “What’s happened to you?”

  He snorted. “Oh, that’s a jewel coming from you.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Look at you!” His hand jerked in my direction before tucking back against his body. “You’re the captain’s whore, they all talk about it.”

  My teeth pressed together. “I’m not his whore, I’m his protégé. He’s never touched me. For your information.”

  “Well it isn’t like he hasn’t before.”

  “Before what?”

  “With his previous ‘protégés’…or whatever you call it. He likes to fuck kids.”

  I reached to him and shoved him against the bulkhead, my fists in his shirt. He didn’t struggle, just stared at me with wet, black eyes.

  “Who’s saying those things?” I pushed my face into his. “What’re their names?”

  “Like I’m gonna tell? They’ll kill me.”

  “I’ll kill you!”

  He didn’t answer. And my words rang.