Those beautiful eyes focused on my hands in a way that made me think the dominance issue still hadn’t been settled, from her point of view. “Is the Delegate in pain or discomfort?”
“It itches,” I said and rubbed my left palm over my knee as if to illustrate the point.
She strained her legs as if to get up. “The staff will arrange a medico.”
“Wait.”
She froze.
“I would prefer to walk to the treatment bay.”
“Delegate Akhtari says—”
“I can walk.” The latter a bit too abrupt, perhaps.
She looked down, submissive.
Please, no; she’d decided that she was the inferior party. That wasn’t right. That couldn’t happen in a zhayma arrangement.
Damn, I wanted Nicha back.
And I was fighting myself, and utter, complete fatigue.
“Are you . . .” I made sure I used the polite-you form. “. . . are you fine for accommodation?”
Another flick of those perfect eyebrows. “I have a room off the hall, if that’s what the Delegate is asking.”
“That is what I am asking. I wouldn’t want any assistant of mine in inconvenient situations.” Meaning sexual situations, Delegate. That simple word, convenience, imashu, had a nasty double meaning.
The flick of an eye, a sharp look. Not subservient? “My situation is not inconvenient.”
“Good.”
Damn. Trust me to slip up in situations like this. I could debate Danziger into the back of the cupboard, Delegate Akhtari, too, if she chose to chuck the formality and faced me head-on, but as soon as there was a pair of pretty eyes involved, I stammered like an idiot.
I love it when you blush, Eva would say.
Well, I didn’t.
My mind worked to dispel lingering discomfort. “It’s nice here.”
“It is.”
“This apartment seems very big. Whose is it?”
“Yours, Delegate. Shall I leave?”
Total misunderstanding. “No, what I mean is: who did I displace before . . . all this happened?”
I didn’t even know if she was up-to-date with what had happened to me, if she knew where I came from.
“What does the Delegate mean?”
“Please. If we’re to work together, call me Cory.”
She blinked at me. Said nothing. Showed no emotion.
I breathed in deeply. “What I mean is that I am a minor player in gamra. I presumed I’d get an apartment on the ground floor.”
“Is this not good enough. . . ?” I could see she almost said Delegate again.
“To the contrary: it’s too good. I am not important enough to warrant this treatment.”
“Oh.” Comprehension dawned on her face. “I don’t know. It seems to me that no one has lived here for quite some time.”
“How so?”
“The bedding smells stale; the cupboards are too empty.”
“Who owns this apartment?”
“I’m not sure.”
I had a feeling she lied, but I let the subject rest. If that knowledge was important, I had no doubt I would find out soon enough.
“Forgive me for asking, but I’d like to know how much you know of my homeworld, its customs and its groups.”
“Delegate Akhtari has informed me.”
What? About all of Earth? “Do you have a background in gamra law?”
She gave me a look that said what do you take me for?
“As I said, excuse my questions, but I like to know if we are to work together.” I kept my pronouns strictly professional.
She raised her head, chin up. “I studied law and inter-entity relations. I speak Damarcian, Mirani and Kedrasi. I have completed two years at the Trader Academy.”
Nothing wrong with that. She probably had a solid grasp of the variety of laws and customs within gamra entities, something on which Nicha was a bit weak. But she didn’t speak Isla and had probably never been to Earth, and would have no knowledge of the inner workings of Nations of Earth.
“Shall I show you around?”
I started to refuse, but my brain needed space to think. “All right.”
She led me back into the hall, where the mound of crates containing my luggage had grown. I restrained to urge to look for my bag with the infusor. The door was still open, and the two Indrahui guards stood there, unmoving except for their eyes.
“These are Evi and Telaris, and part of Delegate Akhtari’s staff on indefinite loan to you.” Formal-you again.
Both men glanced briefly at me, meeting my eyes with their moss green ones, before returning to watching what went on outside.
I retreated. A person did not keep security from doing their job. Yet I had appreciated their presence, and it irked me that Thayu knew their names and I didn’t. I hadn’t asked; that was not appropriate, but now I knew and I ached to know which one was Evi and which Telaris. I wanted to apologise to them for the past two days. They were the only people in Barresh who spoke some Isla, and their continued presence started to gnaw at me. Somehow, I wondered if they were really as young and inexperienced as I had assumed, and somehow I had a suspicion they weren’t, all of which didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, in my exhausted and filthy state, it made me feel like a profound idiot.
Thayu went back into the hall and past the luggage crates. I glanced into the darkness of the communication room as we passed. Before I went to bed, I had to ask her to show me how the equipment in there worked. I had to check on what was happening in Rotterdam, in Athens and the rest of the world.
But I desperately needed my medicine first.
Thayu kept going, into the corridor. The shimmering ponytail flicked over the back of her tunic with every step she took. Even her walk had this silent, cat-like quality that I would have expected in an athlete, not in a diplomatic worker.
She gestured to the left. “The bathing room.” It had, I noted with a sinking feeling, a decidedly un-private rolling door.
I could almost hear Eva’s voice, You undress in front of a woman? The journalist who had bought my explanation of the zhayma concept like marriage but without the sex needed to be given a PhD in gullibility, but I didn’t think Eva fell for it. She didn’t like Nicha because she was unsure of my relationship with him, and she didn’t ask because she was afraid to hear my answer. Did I love him in the same way I loved her? No. Did that mean nothing had ever happened between us? Well—no. When you were connected to someone in thought, and spent all your waking and sleeping hours with this person, what did you expect? Poor excuse, of course, but this was the culture. Coldi didn’t marry for love, and as a result, they found satisfaction elsewhere. To them love, affection, friendship and physical attraction were all pretty much the same thing, imayu. They bonded with friends through physical intimacy. They sealed business relationships with physical intimacy. That was all very well with Nicha, because touching a man meant little to me, in that way humans reserved for a special person in their lives. Eva knew that—I had told her many times, but . . .
Whose fucking idea had it been to appoint a woman as Nicha’s replacement?
At the far end of the corridor, a broad staircase spiralled down at least thirty steps. Downstairs, we entered another corridor of another apartment, almost a copy of the apartment upstairs, with equally extravagant mosaic floors, and an equally high ceiling.
A number of people lined up along both sides of the walls, wearing uniforms of khaki fabric with blue belts. I was distinctly aware of my bloodstained jacket and my scruffy hair in sandy curls that had a mind of their own, especially after the dry air of space travel. Half of my former fringe had escaped the clips I used to keep it out of my eyes. Nicha had told me that people whose hair was too short for a ponytail were assumed to have spent time in prison, so I could only imagine what they thought of me.
A woman at the front bowed. Olive-skinned, with curly black hair and dark, lively eyes. Whatever beauty she would have possessed
was negated by a bulbous blob of a nose, with a vertical groove down the tip. I had seen this type of people before: they were native to the city of Barresh, the keihu race.
“We welcome the Delegate.” Spoken in Coldi, but heavily accented.
Thayu said in a stiff voice, “This is Eirani, head of domestic staff. She runs the household. Eirani, Delegate Cory Wilson.”
Neither woman met the other’s eyes.
I bowed my head, as appropriate for an employer towards an employee, acutely aware of her gaze on the stain on the pocket of my jacket. “The Delegate is loath to impose.” Using the most formal, most distant of pronouns.
“It is of no matter,” she said, but her tone and stiffness made it clear that it was.
“Please accept the Delegate’s apologies.”
She nodded stiffly—apology accepted.
Not a good start.
After the introductions, Thayu led me to the office, an airy room where two women and two men sat working at desks. Within seconds of the door opening, they had scrambled to their feet and stood beside their desks, arms by their sides, heads bowed in that submissive Coldi greeting.
In the uncomfortable silence, I walked around the desks, asking about each person’s skills. None of them met my eyes. According to gamra custom, they weren’t allowed to do this of course, but they seemed to like this just as little as I did. They all belonged to the same race as Eirani, the local keihu, and had different local customs, which they probably observed with their regular employer, the owner of this apartment. Customs that no doubt didn’t involve bowing and formal greetings.
I didn’t like it either.
Next Thayu took me to the kitchen with heavy stone benches and two basins from where steam, and the sulphuric smell of thermal spring water added to the breathless air. In the hall, she pointed me to the lower floor entry, for business to the office, she said, but please notify security if it needed to be opened.
The thought did not improve my mood. I had imagined myself and Nicha wandering through the sprawling complex, strolling through the many courtyards, sampling the eating houses, the public baths and visiting the shops. I had definitely not imagined I’d be stuck in some kind of gilded cage, requiring an escort every time I left.
While we climbed the stairs, I said in a low voice, to Thayu’s broad back, “The staff seems little impressed with the situation. I’d be quite happy to—”
She turned, and fixed me with her dark eyes. “The staff are being paid for being the staff, not to have opinions. They would do well to remember that.” She charged up the spiral staircase leaving me to stare at her disappearing back.
Bloody hell.
I looked over my shoulder at a soft noise from behind—Eirani.
She bowed. “The kitchen likes to know: would the Delegate require a meal?”
“At the normal time.” All my senses were out of kilter, and I didn’t even know if the house operated on local twenty-eight hour days or gamra day of twenty-three-and-a-bit hours, but the thought of food made my stomach grumble.
“I will bathe first, if that is possible.” Possible, not convenient; I was more careful this time.
“As you wish, Delegate.”
The formal tone just grated. “Please, if I’m to live here with you, at least use professional forms. My name is Cory.”
Last names were optional. In only a few gamra societies did they have the same meaning as on Earth. Mostly, they were clan names or regional names.
Eirani only nodded. “I will bring towels soon.”
Thayu waited at the top of the stairs, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. I stopped, stared at her, seeing something I hadn’t seen before. The fabric of her tunic was drawn tight over small but distinctive breasts. This meant she was a mother, since Coldi women didn’t grow breasts until their first pregnancy.
Her face remained without emotion as I walked past. I ached to ask her what the problem was, but didn’t think she’d tell me in the presence of Eirani, who had followed me. For her part, Eirani ignored Thayu and charged into the corridor, voluminous hips wobbling, where she pushed open the door to what Thayu had indicated as the bathroom.
As it turned out, bathroom was far too mundane a term. After passing through a short corridor that led past a dark cubicle that looked suspiciously like a sauna, but was probably a broom cupboard, I came out into a huge hall. Steam rose languidly off a pool at least ten paces long, surrounded by pavement smooth as ice, and elegant benches, made of carved wood panels and soft cushions.
Eirani followed me into the room, footsteps echoing loudly against the ceiling. She had collected some towels which she placed on a table against the closest wall.
“Thank you, Eirani. I can manage by myself now.”
“The Delegate will wash himself?” Her eyes widened.
“Yes, I am quite capa—”
“We can’t have that in this household. If the word goes that the Delegate bathes by himself, we’ll never hear the end of it. Put those clothes in the basket here, so they can be washed.”
It seemed there was no escape from these women and I was too tired to argue.
I turned my back to her, slipped out of my jacket and fumbled for the buttons on my shirt, but couldn’t even undo them. Rather than letting Eirani help me, I pulled the shirt over my head, releasing a waft of sweaty air. Then I stepped out of my trousers, and as quickly as I could, slipped into the streaming water. Damn, that woman was gawking at me. Next she was going to say something about my relative abundance of body hair. Hairy ape. Yes, I knew I had more hair than most gamra men, but that was a subject I’d keep to myself thank you very much.
She didn’t say anything; she only watched.
Soon I sat on the ledge of the pool, while Eirani’s firm hands massaged soap into my hair. Every now and then, she scooped up water and poured it over my head. The waft of mint soap mingled with a faint scent of sulphur.
While she washed my hair, I peeled the filthy bandage off my hands. The skin underneath was red and strained at the strips of tape, affixed almost a lifetime ago by a doctor in Rotterdam. Had he said anything about not removing the tape? I didn’t remember, but I left it on, because it seemed to be holding the sides of the wounds together. I let the water soothe the hot skin and didn’t dare touch my palms—they hurt too much. When I got out of the bath, I was happy to let Eirani pat me dry.
Then I asked her for my bag with—thank heavens—the infusor band. While the dust whirled in the glass capsule, Eirani fussed with my hair. It wouldn’t all go in a ponytail so she used liberal amounts of a gel-like substance to flatten my curls against my head. She fingered the golden loops I wore in my ears. “Does the Delegate have a family colour?” Nothing escaped this woman.
“Such things are not custom where I come from. Men don’t wear earrings.”
She snorted; she probably thought as little of men who didn’t wear earrings as Eva thought of men who did.
“But the Delegate must have a colour. Everyone has a colour.”
“I’ll think about that.” I rubbed my fingers over my chin, far-too-long stubble making a scratching noise, but I wasn’t about to let anyone else shave me. “Do you have a bowl? Could you bring me the small bag I brought when I came here?”
She vanished, carrying my dirty clothes under her arm.
I looked at my reflection in the black stone walls, the reflection of a stranger. My hair, normally soft and curly, slicked-down and pulled into a ponytail which barely tickled the collar of my shirt. It made me look older and more serious and maybe that was not such a bad thing. I was young for my position, and it really didn’t help that I looked younger than my thirty-two years. When I attended my first assembly meeting, I would ask Eirani to put my hair up like this again.
Clean and feeling much better, with my hands wrapped in a clean bandage, I came back into the living room. The air still tingled on my cheeks. For some reason, my skin hadn’t liked the soap I’d used for sha
ving.
Tomorrow, I had to go dive into that pile of luggage and find my electric shaver.
The sky outside had gone deep orange and the light from the setting suns silhouetted the plants covering the balcony railing like cardboard cutouts.
Thayu sat on the couch and glanced up when I padded onto the carpet. “You look different.”
“You look different, too.”
She had changed into a calf-length garment that was a cross between a tunic and a dress, and maybe bathed, but it was impossible to tell if Coldi hair was wet or dry, it was that coarse.
“Not as much as you.”
I shrugged, glancing at the khaki clothing Eirani had insisted I wear. “Eirani says I’ll need to go to the shop to fit my uniform.”
“She is a fusspot, isn’t she?” Thayu had used the Coldi word yanu which meant something in between a schoolteacher and a nanny.
“Yeah.” I grinned.
A few moments of silence hung between us.
I thought to ask her what her problem was with Eirani, but decided not to spoil the mood, hers or mine. I had quite enough problems for today. In Rotterdam, Nixie Chan was working on Nicha’s release. Delegate Akhtari was aware of the refugee situation, so hopefully arrangements were being made for those people in the terminal hall. And that poor woman who had been screaming for her son.
It seemed various authorities were looking after these people, and I could take some time to recover my own sanity.
“Dinner’s ready.”
Thayu pushed herself off the couch, and while she did so, the split in the bottom of her tunic parted, giving me a glance at her legs. Muscular, the skin soft yellow . . . and much-repressed memories flooded me of a crazy time four years ago, a time when I had drunk in gamra cultures and languages like honey-flavoured liquor, a time of exhilarating discussion and laughter until I thought I would die, a time I would spend all night making love to this crazy, wonderful, intelligent Coldi woman.
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