Authors: Renae Jones
Too much niceness was a sign of mental illness.
She continued her tirade. “Because there are no signs I was forced, not ever. I never told you no, I never said stop. I asked you if you wanted my mouth during the ceremony. And the first time? That was my idea too, and if you’re too naïve to see that, that’s not my problem. You think you forced me? I think you are insane!”
Their gardens fell silent, empty of sound like last hour’s bell toll, and she realized she’d been yelling. She’d never heard him yell, had she? He had remarkable self-restraint.
Except when he was fucking her. Then she could shred it like tissue paper.
She burst into tears and ran into her house, leaving her shears forgotten in the dark soil of her garden.
* * *
Fedni fumed. She seethed and cursed into the evening. She tried to distract herself with planning a small dinner gathering she would probably never throw, but she was distracted easily. How dare he think the best sex of her life was some accident of his own angst?
At one point, while she viciously applied a smoothing treatment to her hair, she wondered about the exact nature of his angst. How could a grown man, a sexy, passionate man, feel so guilty about something so natural? There was more foreignness to off-worlders than just bad accents and an odd preference for zippers.
But she didn’t think too long on that, finding her self-righteous anger far more soothing.
The next morning, she woke calm and resolved. Her memory of the fight was already softened by time, but she had the distinct impression she hadn’t made much sense. Only Rasmus made her that mad, that incoherent.
She was going to make him understand, and this time she wouldn’t be reduced to sputtering gibberish by her outrage.
Of course, by the time she’d pulled together a short list of talking points and arrayed herself in casual perfection, the day was already well begun. Rasmus did not answer his door.
With a little research she found an occupation medical center attached to the campus of the Temple of Flesh, with Rasmus listed as a senior physician. The coincidence gave her pause, as did the idea of visiting the campus for the first time, but she would not back down this time.
Fedni sent a terse message through his public mailbox. “We have things to discuss. Will you please give me the pleasure of your company for lunch? I will be there at 13:00.”
From the moment she arrived, she found her surroundings strange. The main Temple of Flesh campus for the city was huge, yet more compact than the Temple of Passion grounds she had grown up on. Instead of lawns, there were plain five-story buildings and the occasional concrete square. Even the seating was more efficient—instead of discrete conversation groupings, there were rows of concrete benches, like bumpy extensions of the ground itself.
The most off-putting part was the air of abandonment. She saw other people, of course, but far fewer than she’d expect on sidewalks so wide. Litter had blown into corners and entire buildings were shuttered.
The occupation medical offices were easy to find; they alone were doing bustling trade. The building itself was squat, more poured gray concrete with green-tinted windows. A crowd of people rode the lift with her, lower-caste members who allowed her an appropriate amount of space.
In a wide reception area, a line formed for check-in kiosks and automated medipods. Fedni bypassed that entirely, heading straight for a waifish off-worlder with riotous curly hair at a reception desk.
She narrowed her eyes as Fedni approached.
“I’m here for Rasmus Misseen.”
“You need to check in, and a doctor will be assigned.”
“I am not a patient. This is a social visit.”
“Is he expecting you?”
“Yes, he is.”
Well, he was, if he’d checked his mail.
The woman looked unconvinced. They stared at each other a moment, judging the situation. Fedni began to get angry, a bit fed up with off-worlders who thought they knew better than you on everything—but then the woman waved a hand in surrender. “Please take a seat. I’ll let him know you are here.”
Fedni sat in a molded plastic chair, her back straight and her legs crossed just so.
She was oddly uncomfortable in a room of people so far below her station—perhaps because that station was now in question. Five years ago, she wouldn’t have been acutely aware of stolen glances and people who avoided walking down her row. She wouldn’t have wondered if hushed murmurs were to respect the noise levels in the room, or to talk about her, so obviously luxury caste in a waiting room meant for the service caste.
When Fedni looked back at the desk, the woman had been replaced by two men leaning over a former Flesh acolyte’s data pad.
The receptionist was gone, and Rasmus was nowhere in sight. Fedni stood, but she didn’t bother with the desk a second time. She walked through a set of wide double doors, walking too confidently for anyone to dare stop her.
The office became a maze after that. Dozens of staff had offices, or desks in halls. Automated pods were taking and disgorging people at a high rate, each manned by a medical professional in a pale lavender vest with a low Nehru collar. There were data crystals heaped in piles and a janitor was mopping right in the middle of the hubbub.
It was nothing like the medical office she attended, a discreet place with decent tea and personal attention. This was more like a factory, a manufacturing line to take in people, do their yearly exam and spit them out on the other side. How could Rasmus stand this?
Fedni followed the purple back of a doctor into a long room of curtained sitting areas. The nearest area, curtain open, had a desk, a data console and an exam table smashed into a space too small for comfortable movement.
Her unknowing guide closed a curtain behind her, and another one opened to disgorge a patient. Fedni was turning to go when she heard Rasmus’s voice.
Fedni walked closer, identifying the right curtain by the hum of Rasmus’s soft voice—but she paused outside, not certain what she might be interrupting. For the first time it occurred to her Rasmus might not be able to arrange his schedule to eat with her on such little notice.
“What do I do for now?”
A lick of clingy desperation burned Fedni’s taste centers, not passion at all but too strong for her to miss.
“I know it’s hard to imagine, now, but you will be fine. Go to your counselor, use the new health systems. Come here for your appointments on time. Take the pills, eat well, use lotion to ease the regenerating scars. Six months sounds like forever now, but you’ve had the scars for four years already. Life will pass quickly enough.”
Fedni froze, horrible images pelting her imagination.
Scar regeneration was an expensive procedure, and lengthy, but not that lengthy. This woman’s scars must be very bad to plan for six months of regrowth before surgery.
And four years? That was after the conquering, but before the Temple of Flesh had been disbanded. Why hadn’t the procedure begun immediately? But Fedni already knew the answer to that. The value of beauty in the Temple of Passion was such that even minor scars from childhood spills and acne were tended, but in the Temple of Flesh, acolytes had a far lower value. Disfigured workers were retired, or moved to more exotic venues.
She couldn’t interrupt this. This wasn’t someone here for a yearly weighing. Guiltily, the courtesan moved, letting the curtains of an empty exam room shield her from view.
“And you promise?”
Rasmus seemed to know exactly what she meant. “I can’t promise you will look exactly as you did, but I promise the scars will be gone. No one will know unless you tell them, after the surgeons are done.”
“But will I be beautiful? Will I look weird?”
And now Fedni could taste Rasmus’s sorrow and pity. It tasted familiar, like turnips or bitter kale, and like Rasmus.
“The surgeons, with your input, will pay attention to aesthetics and do their best to make you pretty. They can do amazing things.”
“You don’t know?”
“It will depend on the depth of the scarring and the growth of the stimulated tissue. That affects what they have to work with.”
A moment of silence left Fedni confused, then a soft sob reached her ears. There as a rustle, and she imagined Rasmus pulling the woman close to hold her—a physical comfort Xanian doctors would never lower themselves to, not even with another of the professional caste.
“What do I do?” the woman repeated, her voice cracking. “Who will I be if no one can stand to look at me ever again?”
The words rang harshly in Fedni’s ears. It was a question she had asked herself—“Who will I be?”—as news of her temple’s disbandment had filtered down. What did you do when everything about yourself was taken, when you lost your place in society and became helpless and invisible? The idea that this woman had faced that at Xanian hands, before the Federation took a care in prostitution, rocked her on her heels.
And then Fedni considered the packed waiting room. How many of them were worth more investment in medical care now, for a Federation based light-years away, than they had been to their own temple? What horrors had Rasmus pulled out from under the rug since coming to Xana?
More silence, then Rasmus spoke. “Perhaps I’m not the one to ask. When I look at you right now, you’re beautiful. Injured, but beautiful.”
It was cheesy and cliché and oddly comforting, exactly the sort of thing she’d expect Rasmus to say.
The woman laughed brokenly. “Sky Lords, you really do. I can hear it in your voice.”
“Your dominant sense? Hearing?”
“Yes. I hear lies, deception...and truth.”
“That’s useful.”
The woman paused, distracted from her terror.
“It’s very rude to just ask like that, by the way.”
“I’ve been told I am a very rude person,” Rasmus commented dryly.
Had Fedni said that? She didn’t think she’d said that.
“By a Xanian?”
“Oh yes.”
More rustling, and the soft snick of a stylus on a cheap data pad.
Fedni reached out, closing the curtain around her. Her curiosity about the woman’s injuries was turning restlessly in her mind, by turns looming and fading, sickly and bright. She would not be standing looking when they came out, though. She suspected her eavesdropping was a transgression Rasmus would not forgive.
“We’re all done. I’ll see you next week.”
“Of course. I look forward to it.”
A pause, and Fedni knew what was coming, long before Rasmus did.
“I look forward to our appointments so much... We should get together sometime, enjoy a show.” The woman’s voice dropped seductively at the end.
Fedni wanted to sigh. It was clumsy and ill done. She’d gone from crying to come hither in about two seconds. Rasmus was kind, and an off-worlder, but neither made him stupid.
“I’m afraid I do not court my patients,” Rasmus declined with just the right amount of polite regret in his voice.
“Oh no, that’s fine. I didn’t mean...” The woman hastily changed her tack, abandoning seduction and jumping straight to sex. “I just meant, my body’s fine. And I’m good at satisfying a man. The best. If you ever have needs, I could satisfy you. No commitments. I didn’t mean courtship.”
She didn’t even try to sink a hook in the bait. She would be completely reliant on Rasmus’s goodwill, if he took her up on it.
Fedni closed her eyes, tasting both of them. Rasmus was dry, salty crackers, not attracted and slightly offended. The woman was paper, paper once handled by dirty hands. It was the most passionless exchange possible, the offer made out of calculation and met with resigned disgust.
It was an offer Fedni could understand. In the demise of the temples, finding a benefactor was a popular move, one she had considered at length herself. And Rasmus would make a good benefactor—kind, enough money, some status but not considerate of it himself. How many people had seen this and thrown themselves at him?
Rasmus answered slowly, and for the first time Fedni heard pity in his tone. “Since you’ve already taken the conversation out of the bounds of professionalism, I’m just going to say this. If your body were truly all you had left, shouldn’t you value it higher? Which I don’t agree with, by the way. I know you have a sharp mind, a strong will, a very useful dominant sense, and I barely know you.”
Fedni expected outrage or maybe a good vicious set down—what her own reaction would be—but the woman responded in a shaky, broken voice.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You didn’t offend me.” But she had, and the woman would hear it.
“I’ll go, I’m sorry.” Her voice was shaky again, and the desperation back, making Fedni wonder about her sanity. It seemed a frail thing, too beaten to be damaged by just an injury, no matter how horrific.
Fedni stood frozen as Rasmus solicitously saw the woman out. He was so polite, so careful of her feelings, just like he’d been of Fedni the morning after he saw her temple mark.
Was this how he thought of her now, frail and damaged? Did he think he was her retirement plan? Fedni snuck out before Rasmus returned, her taste for confrontation gone.
As quiet as she moved, it seemed her thoughts beat louder. Did he pity her? The look on his face while pulling at her hair had been anger, not pity. But the next day, that had been pity.
Her memory returned to the woman’s words. “Who will I be?”
Was Rasmus right? Was pity what Fedni deserved?
And why did that question make her more sad than angry?
* * *
That evening, still burdened with doubt by what she’d overheard, she received another apology in a gorgeous rose-shaded envelope, smelling of chamomile and soft like cheesecloth in her hand. It was very Xanian—handmade, handwritten, contrite. It was the apology of a suitor, written in the inexpert script of a barbarian, on a paper embossed with an accent margin of silver squirrels. It made her smile.
In the attached box were her pruning shears, neatly cleaned and oiled.
She was tempted to not read it, worried it, too, would offer her more questions than answers. As she’d left the clinic, she’d realized it all hurt so badly not because she’d wanted him so badly (which she had), but because she’d taken such pride in her decision to pursue him. She’d failed, again, facing rejection over her status and temple, again. It was a new story with an ending grown familiar since the conquering.