It made me smile. It was a good thing to think about and not the fact Estienne hadn’t visited before her.
“I’ll come back in an hour to take you to Medical,” she said, standing again. “And don’t worry, it does get better.”
In general or with him?
But I didn’t ask that. She wasn’t the one to ask.
Doc Wachter said I was dehydrated (because I’d been throwing up most of the shift), so he told me to drink lots of liquids and gave me an injet of something, then he examined me and did something with a bot-knitter spray and told Rika to bring me back at the end of the shift. I didn’t see Estienne for the entire shift. And I had to go stand on the bridge for two hours right after medical for my regular training watch, with my envelope of water. I had to pay attention to what was going on so I could see all the things Marcus had made me study about bridge command.
Except I didn’t pay attention to any of it, not even Caligtiera and his looks. All I thought about was Estienne.
After another checkup I skipped dinner in the Hanamachi mess hall and just went straight to quarters.
And Estienne was in there. He held out his arms as soon as he saw me, and I hesitated.
“It hurts,” I said.
“I just want to hold you,” he said. And, “I’m sorry, but you need to know, Yuri. That was work. And now I just want to hold you.”
And he looked so sorry. So I dropped my slate on the desk and went to him, and he hugged me just like that for the rest of the shift.
We worked in his quarters. We played in mine. He was normal Estienne in my quarters.
He told me I was going to get my geisha tattoo after my first client. He asked me one sleepshift if I was ready, with months of work and play making my body grow in ways that I couldn’t see when I looked in the mirror, but it was there, I felt it inside. And I told him, “I’m scared.”
“I know,” he said. “But after the first it’s easier. Trust me.”
This made it better, he said. When we came home to this, just him and me and the ship. After shopping runs to station or even when I went as a protégé with Falcone to other ships like Shiva, checking up on their operations. My brothers and sisters all told me the same—you came home to the Khan. And I couldn’t keep putting it off, so one shift I just told him, “Yes, I’m ready.” Because I’d learned where to put my hands, my mouth, what words to say and how to say them, how to move and how to defend myself, and this was my work now.
This was work.
6.19.2190 EHSD—Debut
The party for my debut as a full-fledged geisha took place on Chaos Station. Geisha from Shiva as well as our own Hanamachi were all going to be there, with our captains and a bunch of clients. Marcus said the clients were arms dealers and sympathizers—humans who sided with the strits. He was helping them get together because the sympathizers wanted better weapons for the war, and the arms dealers needed to unload their stash somewhere, to someone. Marcus knew a lot of arms dealers, and he’d lately been in contact with some symp leaders from the other side of the Demilitarized Zone.
“Why are we helping the strits?” I asked, there in the captain’s office as he explained the situation. As his protégé I was going to be by his side. For this meeting he didn’t want me to circulate that much. He was going to assign me the client himself.
He said, “Nothing in this war is black-and-white.” He scrolled his comp for a minute, sitting behind his granite gray desk, then paused and looked up at me. “Are we going to have a problem?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“I’ve sent a file of dossiers to your comp. Memorize them, they’re the information on the dealers and the symps. And you’ll be wearing this.” He took a commstud from one of his drawers and flipped it over to me. “You might not be directly beside me in the room, and I’ll want to talk to you. Gather at the main airlock in twelve hours, we dock in ten.”
Estienne watched me dress. He was already in his geisha black, a stiffer shiny material this time that made his silhouette as sharp and dark as a blade. My black had tiny crystals embedded in the fabric, so I glittered like a jewel. Tama, Estienne said. The euphemism for payment. Geisha wages, in the old days. That was how they were counted, when you were sold. Jewels.
Except I wasn’t going to be sold. The transaction wouldn’t be that cut-and-dried.
“He’ll save you for an important client,” Estienne said. “I have an idea who, but…he wouldn’t want me to say until he does. But this one likes them new.”
I tried to ignore that. I was getting good at it, all the talk and thoughts of working with someone other than Estienne or Elder Sister Hestia. So I turned around from the mirror and smiled. “My eyes don’t look right.”
“I’ll do it.” Estienne unfolded from my bed and came over to take the red inkpen from my fingers. He held my chin to keep me steady, and murmured, “Look up.” So I did, and he carefully ran the pencil around my eyes, making a smooth catlike upsweep past the corners of my lids. Still gripping my chin he leaned to the desk and took the red shadow, rubbed the pad of his forefinger in it before filling in the lines so my lids were the same nebula crimson. He dusted the indents at the corners with some star black. Then he took the gloss stick and rubbed the sponge over my lips. “Clear,” he said, “because your lips are just naturally all bitten up and pink.”
“Shut up.” I gave his chest a shove.
He laughed and tossed the makeup on the desk. “And your skin is so pale, you don’t need powder at all.” He patted my cheek.
I snapped my teeth at his fingers.
“Vicious,” he said, pulling his hand away, still smiling. Trying to put me at ease. I went along with it, because I wanted to be, even though the gnawing in my gut told me otherwise. “Look.” He turned me to the long mirror on the wall.
I reached up to move the hair from my face, but he swatted my hand down.
“Let it fall.”
In my eyes and down in soft spikes on my cheeks. My hair was a darker blond than his, and while his eyes were fogged black on the lids, I had the maiko red. Apprentice until after this party.
The last thing I did was slide my switchblade up my right sleeve into the little pocket I’d sewn there, then held it in place with a pullable tab.
“Ready,” I said. A lie.
“Beautiful,” he said, which wasn’t.
All seven of us waited at the airlock. All in black, all carved with makeup around the eyes and powdered to a perfect sheen. Hair was glossed, tied back except for mine, as polished as our nails. Jonny smiled at me. “You’re like a murdered angel,” he said, which made me frown, and Estienne squeezed the back of my neck. “Don’t make a face,” he said. “The way you look now can break a body.”
So it began. And while we stood waiting, I saw their expressions form. Become silent and still and unreadable.
I tried not to fidget, pull at my forearm sleeves, or shift on my feet. Estienne kept his arm loosely around my neck and smoked a cigret. I bummed one off him because I’d left mine back in quarters. Of all the times to forget my cigs.
Soon Marcus walked up with Taja and a male crewmember I didn’t recognize. Taja. She looked at me but didn’t say anything, and I just blew smoke at her. I hadn’t seen her around Estienne since we fought, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been with him. They just didn’t let me see now. Marcus moved in front of my line of sight, putting her behind his shoulder, and his eyes grazed me. I looked back. He wore a tailored dark suit, the first time I’d ever seen him in anything so expensive. The lines made him seem taller and accentuated a feral leanness that I’d never really noticed before even when he was shirtless. His hair was combed back from his eyes and his eyes—chemical blue.
“Good,” he said, as he watched me. “Good.”
It wasn’t approval; it was assessment.
The seven of us and his two guards followed him out the airlocks and down the ramp, merchant crew off to a party. The IDs he presented to Chaos Station
Customs said we were legal, and what else were merchants going to do when they docked and emerged in party finery?
They waved us through and by the time we got to the high doors of the inner station, my cigret was smoked down to its filter.
The gathering was in the VIP lounge of a club and den called Tartarus. It was a dark décor with embedded floor lights of gold and orange, tattooing the room with flames. Aside from our group of ten from the Khan, Shiva came with their captain, their captain’s protégé, a couple of guards, and three geisha, dressed similarly to us except their predominant color was red (with the black). Our clients were already circulating when we got there, served by the Shiva geisha. A quick count came up at twenty. I recognized faces from the files. Ten dealers and ten symp buyers.
Estienne squeezed my hand then headed off with everyone else in our Hanamachi to work the room, leaving me with Marcus, who strode over to the Shiva captain. So I followed. I recognized her protégé from my first visit to their ship. He looked older, naturally. His hair was longer. But his face was still sullen, and he looked right through me.
“How do they seem?” Marcus asked the other captain.
“Cordial,” she answered. She wore a form-fitting white suit and held a tall glass of a pale green drink. “But nobody’s going to break out in a firefight with Marines on station. At least the symps have that much common sense.”
“Don’t say that word too loudly,” Marcus said. “They’re touchy about it.”
I listened with one ear and scanned the room. Already half the eyes were straying toward the captains, and consequently toward me and the other protégé—Evan, I remembered. He wasn’t in geisha attire, and I didn’t think he recognized me, years removed and with my different look. I turned away from him when I caught movement on my left—one of the arms dealers approached us, drink in hand. A short man with eyebrows too dark for the rest of his hair, which was a sienna brown. Gregory Arnell, or so his file had said. Ex-Army colonel with a penchant for young things. I didn’t say anything as he scanned me with a stare.
“Captains,” he said, holding out his hand. Earth-raised.
“Good to see you,” Marcus said, taking it. They exchanged boring pleasantries even though they all had guns inside their clothing. Then Arnell turned to me, an afterthought since he was already paying attention to me with everything but his eyes.
“He’s new,” he said to Marcus, but facing me.
“Yes, this shift is his debut,” Marcus replied.
“Oh?” Arnell smiled at me. “That’s why he’s so serious.”
I supposed that was what superiors did—talked about me when I was standing right there. As a reminder that I was owned, maybe.
“I don’t have to be serious,” I said, unasked, because the file had noted that he liked to spar.
“Oh no?” he said, with a bit of a sneer.
I smiled at him as if I hadn’t noticed, locking eyes. “Oh, not at all.”
And it was true then, everything the other geisha had been telling me. I practically saw his heart rate increase.
I had him then. That quickly. Even when Marcus diverted his attention back to business, I had him.
They danced around each other, the symps and these dealers, like proper lovers waiting for a chance to consummate their commitment. Marcus acted as the go-between, Shiva’s Captain Townsend as a second ameliorating factor and a ship willing to escort the weapons to the DMZ and beyond, and we geisha circulated with food and drinks, open ears and soft words. Ville played music and halfway through the meeting Yasmin danced with her fan. It was all very pleasant and cooperative. We were trying to establish a long-term deal, and Marcus had it in mind to treat it like any other business transaction. Just because we were pirates didn’t mean we couldn’t be civilized. Even symps.
The symps were Hub-born but for some reason sided with the strits, and I restrained myself to blank looks when any of them cast an eye my way. If I hadn’t done that, I would’ve been too tempted to hit one or two of them with my serving platter. Strit-lovers. Every once in a while Marcus called me back to his side and whispered in my ear to linger a little longer at one person or the next, and so I danced too, in sly subtle ways, powdered and painted and as unobtrusive as the walls, woven among the conversation like a needle stitching all of our allies together.
When the party finally started to break up, over three hours later, Marcus motioned me to his side. I strolled over, and he rested his hand on my shoulder. “I want you to go with Arnell.” He nodded toward the ex-colonel.
“Yes, sir.” Now my gut started to twist again, as if I were back in Estienne’s quarters being touched for the first time.
“When you’re finished, come back to the ship. He won’t care for you to linger.” He patted my back. “You did well, very smooth. The deals are made, and Arnell is a happy man. Don’t mess it up now. Reward him.” He didn’t ask if I was up to it, of course, he just squeezed my arm and walked off to Captain Townsend.
I looked around for Estienne, saw him talking to another of the dealers, a rather tall blond woman. Why couldn’t I have got stuck with her? Instead, Arnell and his contrasting eyebrows stared at me from the corner with a spiced rum drink in his hand. He’d been drinking it and refilling the entire time.
Ville said to take your mind elsewhere. So I made sure my face was in a proper neutral expression, glancing once into the column of mirror on the wall, and headed over to Arnell at an easy pace. The symps were already leaving, bowing or shaking hands with Marcus; but Arnell hadn’t touched the symps the entire time, could barely even hide his disdain for them. But whatever hate he had, it wasn’t as loud as the mewling voice from his bank account.
“The serious young man,” he said, when I got close enough to hear his low voice.
“Not always,” I replied. “As I mentioned.”
“What will make you smile again?” he said.
Jonny’s training didn’t go to waste. Or maybe this man was just too easy to please. “I could tell you,” I said, “but I’d rather show you.”
It was up to him to direct things from here. I was sure this wasn’t his first time with one of the geisha. His mouth quirked, and he rolled his shoulder against the wall, turning toward an exit at the back of the room. This one led to the club’s main rooms, which would lead us eventually to the den.
I followed him, mapping the route, noting the exits, staying just behind his shoulder. But he turned, taking my arm lightly and pulling me up to his side. Less out of courtesy and more out of a sense of paranoia that I might simply shoot him in the back regardless of the deals he’d just made.
“So what’s your name?” he asked, still holding my arm like we were two friends out for a stroll.
“Yuri,” I said. Never give your last name.
“And how old are you?”
Never give them your real age either. “Sixteen.”
“Really? I’d thought you younger. But I suppose deep spacers…it gets pretty tangled, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.” He knew I was fourteen or thereabouts. He just wanted to be lied to so he wouldn’t have to think about the fact I was underage.
Our stroll took us through the main bar area, which was lit and lively with people, music, and much alcohol. Despite the shadows and activity, he seemed to know exactly where he was going. And of course he did. He’d probably done this before.
Eventually he directed me to the den entrance, deep through the hallways there. It was a high-end warren of rooms, no junkies or dross hanging out the doors, no thin walls where embarrassing noises might filter. Arnell stopped at a door marked twenty-nine and lifted out a key from his breast pocket. He smiled at me and pressed it to the lock, the door clicked open, and he motioned me in first.
I thought I should be back on ship in a half hour, an hour at the most. This man didn’t seem too terribly exciting, and with any luck I could just admire the room design, get him off, and leave before he could smudge my makeup.
&nb
sp; I walked in and stood at the foot of the bed. The walls were velvet red, with spacescape hotel art shimmering and morphing all around us. Everywhere smelled of hospital. I doubted this was even the room that he was truly staying in, but at least it was clean.
“Have a seat,” he said, tossing the key on the dresser.
I perched on the bed, and he came over and sat beside me, immediately placing his hand on my leg, above the knee. His fingers clenched.
I could feel it all happening, even though a part of me wanted to separate, stand, and walk across the room to face the corner.
Instead I faced him, and he was smiling.
“Your first time,” he said. “Ever?”
“No. Just here.” Maybe he didn’t know how the geisha trained. Probably not. I didn’t see Marcus making that common knowledge even with his clients. Or especially with men like this.
“Scared?” he continued.
Disgusted. But I said, “No, sir.” Ex-Army, he’d like the false respect.
He released me and shoved me back on the bed. I tried to sit up, reflex, but he pressed a hand to my chest, and I stopped myself. No, this was the way it had to happen. Right? This bastard was all into the power thing. He held himself aloof from the symps, sneered at me like I was stupid, walked around like the Hub owed him something. So confident, so smiling. My heart galloped, and he could feel it with his hand there and maybe he took it to mean I was liking this because he leaned down, kneeling there on the bed, and slid his hand up to my hair, gripping.
“You know what to do, don’t you?”
Someone like him wouldn’t want it any other way, so I nodded once. When he let me go I rolled over.
“You don’t talk much,” he said.
The blanket on the bed smelled like detergent and flowers. I said, “Would you like me to?”
“It might make things more interesting,” he said, grabbing the waist of my pants.
“I can give you a critique as we go along,” I said, because I knew it’d make him laugh.
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