Chris unclenched his jaw and let his eyes rest at a spot on the wall just over her head. “Thank you, Trainer, for your confidence in me. Although I was too stupid to figure out your intentions, I am glad to have been of service to you.”
“Are you really? If you are in my service, why did you accept Tetsuo Sakai’s kimono and wear it in public? Why did you actually discuss your sale with him?” Her voice scaled up slightly, although she did not actually raise it. It made Chris shiver, it was a rare kind of sound from her, true anger. She put her glass down and stripped her bracelets off, laying them on the table and massaging her wrists. There were red marks on her wrists, Chris noted, and he knew that she really was a bad flyer and had probably spent the last twelve hours in one plane or another, gripping the arms of the seat or her own wrists, while Ron plied her with bourbon and amusing, profane stories. He kept his eyes steady.
“The Trainer is well informed,” he said quietly. “This student accepts full responsibility for these actions and further disgraceful behavior in not informing the Trainer of these decisions and actions, and this student sincerely begs pardon...”
She slammed her palm down on the table top, and the bracelets rattled. “I’m not interested in your begging,” she snapped. “I’m interested in how you broke confidence with me after all these years.”
“Sakai-san knew,” Chris said, his hands clenching tightly behind him.
“He guessed,” she corrected.
“I cannot lie to him any more than I can to you, Trainer,” Chris said, and he lowered his eyes again. “Again, it is my failing.”
“It sure is,” Anderson said. “It sure is. Well, you are not for sale.”
Chris found his jaw tightening again, and all the benefits of his long soak seemed to vanish, leaving his body tense and almost shaking. He knew what he should do—incline his head correctly, take a step back, accept the final word with grace and silence and wait for further discipline or instruction. But his body was too stiff, his back too straight, his legs almost sunk into the carpeted floor.
“With all due respect, Trainer, why not?” he asked, his voice inappropriately sharp.
Anderson, who had been engaged in taking off a silver ring, laid it down on the table in astonishment. “Excuse me?” she asked.
“Why not sell me?” he asked. “You don’t own slaves, Trainer. Everyone knows that. Everyone but me, and now Sakai-san. Let him take me off your hands.”
“You owe me, Mr. Parker,” Anderson said evenly, her slight drawl creeping into her voice. “Let’s not forget that, shall we?”
“I will never forget that, Trainer,” Chris answered hotly. “I owe you much more than the money and time you’ve invested in me, I owe you my life. I have served you without the name to which I am entitled, and yet I will forever be grateful to you. I swore that I would do as you said and give myself over to your plans in five years despite what you know are my own personal desires. And—and I am shamed to admit that I dread that day. I am ashamed to admit that I’ve hoped that you would reconsider. But I have, Trainer. I have done as you requested, but every day I have hoped that in some way, you would find it in you to release me or bind me to someone else and allow me to live the way I have always dreamed.” His face was taut with the effort to say these private and terrible things out loud, and when he was finished, he couldn’t even look at her. With a slight cough that didn’t quite hide a choke, he gently dropped to his knees and lowered his head, this time the carpet soft under him, this time, a genuflection of humility and sorrow and not mere respect.
“And all I’ve invested in you—I should pass onto Tetsuo, just like that? Get rid of the trainee I expect to take over for me because he wants the pride of a collar?” She stressed the word “wants,” and the accusation stung.
“Then please, Trainer, keep me. I would be honored beyond belief to serve you forever. But keep me as what I am, not as who you wish I were,” Chris snapped back, his eyes flashing. “If I have pride in a collar, it is because you have driven it into me as surely as how to stand and speak and serve a—a glass of water. Allow me my pride or strip it from me if it pleases you, but dammit, acknowledge me for what I am to you.”
Anderson stood up, her eyes sharply drawn. “Your voice is raised to me, Chris, and your formal manners are uneven and disgracefully sloppy. It’s hard to believe you actually were my student.” She walked around the edge of the table to stand next to him, looking down. Chris blushed; it was true, he had slipped in and out of formal phrasing, each time guided impulsively by anger.
“The Trainer is correct,” he said bitterly, his voice deliberately even again. “Again, this student begs for pardon...”
“I never asked for this from you!”
“Yet the Trainer accepts it when it suits the Trainer’s needs,” he said tightly.
“Get up,” she snapped, and he rose and turned to face her. With cool deliberation, she raised her hand and slapped him, sharply, against his left cheek. Her aim was deliberate and perfect, and the backs of her fingers hit underneath his cheekbone. He gasped, but allowed his head to turn with the blow, feeling the tingle of the flesh with a renewed sense of shock. Quickly, he reached up and took his glasses off, and returned his hands behind his back.
“Bastard,” Anderson whispered. “Is that what you want?”
She slapped him again, this time on the other cheek, this time harder. Again, left cheek, and then back, on the right. Each time, her blows got stronger, a measured build-up that echoed both in the room and in his ears, and he tasted blood in his mouth, but he did nothing but allow her to repeatedly force his head from one side to another. The walls blurred as his head snapped from side to side and he closed his eyes to keep himself as steady as possible. Eventually, two blows rocked him back on his heels, but each time he righted himself quickly and he never brought his hands forward.
Finally, she stopped, her breath shallow and quiet, and stared at him. His cheeks were red. There was a cut in his lip, from one of her nails. Light red welts streaked across the bottom of his jawline already. His own breath was quickened, and when he opened his eyes gently, without a scared jerk of panic, his pupils were wide, and there was no anger in his brown eyes.
“Is that what you want?” she repeated.
“Yes, Trainer,” he said softly, a droplet of blood at the corner of his mouth. “Oh, God, yes.” As he spoke, it grew into a thin stream, down his chin, skirting and then mingling with his close trimmed goatee. But he made no attempt to stop it.
Anderson took a step back and sighed. Suddenly, there was no anger in her, either. “Put your glasses back on,” she said, unbuttoning the top button of her blouse. “Freshen my drink, send for tea for two, and something sweet. Wash your face, you’re bleeding. And then wait right here, in a suitable position for someone in your station, until you’re needed.”
“Yes, Trainer, thank you for correcting me.”
“That wasn’t to correct you, Chris,” she said, as she headed for the bathroom. “You should know better than that by now. That was for my pleasure.”
Chris flushed again, in amazement and an overwhelming need to beg for forgiveness again, or to thank her for that casual off-hand comment that made him so warm in this air-conditioned room. But instead he did as he was told, a little numb inside, his cheeks warm and sore and blood in his mouth, flooding around his teeth and tongue. There would be bruises, he could see where they would form as he patted his face with a folded wet towel. The skin was abraded in several places, but she was precise and careful in her sadism and he wouldn’t even have a black eye. He tried to focus his thoughts, wondered how Michael would react when he saw the marks. It would be a good test, especially if Michael felt compelled to display some sort of anger toward the Trainer. An excellent object lesson, as a matter of fact. He called the kitchen and ordered the things she requested. He unpacked for her as well, and when the tea and cakes arrived, he laid them out.
When she came out of the bathroom, she was wearing the light summer dress he had hung in there for her. She ignored him, kneeling by the table, and shook her head at his offer to pour tea. Instead, she put her bracelets and rings back on and leafed through the Academy schedule. When a knock came at the door, she put it down and sighed. Chris got up and went to the door, and opened it for Tetsuo Sakai.
Tetsuo smiled and bowed to Anderson, who rose for him with an equal smile. He thrust something at Chris, and walked into the room, saying, “Imala, thank you so much for coming. You do me way too much honor, especially when I have been so rude to you.”
“The day you’re rude to me someone will have to let me know,” Anderson said, shaking his hand and then hugging him. “Come on, sit down, have some tea. I heard you went to Bali for a few weeks, tell me all about it.”
Chris closed the door and walked quickly back to the table, as Tetsuo seated himself comfortably in one of the arm chairs. Chris knelt next to the table and laid the folder that Tetsuo had handed him down, carefully poured tea, then inched back out of the way. It was impossible not to notice what Tetsuo had been holding. It was a green folder, not too thick, with a white and gold label on it. It was an official Marketplace slave record, and it had never before been outside of a comfortable, tree-shaded brownstone in Brooklyn.
It took all of his concentration to focus on service. It was his folder. She had sent his records to Tetsuo.
Since Anderson had taken a room by herself and not left any instructions for what should be done about her traveling companion, Michael decided to move Ron into Chris’s room. After all, there was plenty of room, and he was pretty sure that Chris would like to spend time with his brother anyway. Theirs was a strong and loving relationship—they were obviously very close. It was so strange, though, that they arrived at the end of the trip. He asked Ron how long they were going to stay, and Ron had shrugged.
“I hope she doesn’t want to turn right around and go back,” he said with a grin. “God knows, I’d do it for her, but two days in the air and in airports is a bit much. Hell, this is a nice place, maybe we’ll stay a while. Now tell me all about my little brother and all the trouble he’s causing.”
After unpacking—and Ron had indeed brought a tuxedo, along with innumerable black T-shirts and one pair of swim trunks—they had gone back to the balloting area, where the last of the trainers was finishing up. Michael told an abbreviated version of the past few days’ events, and Ron whistled through his teeth when he heard about the formal kimono, but seemed pretty pleased with the political side of the story, especially with the compromise.
“He’s quite a stickler, my brother,” he said offhandedly. “Thinks there’s something wrong with the world for not seeing everything through his eyes, sometimes. It’s good for him to bend a little, it’ll make him more friends.”
“But if what he did was such a good thing, why is Anderson pissed off at him?”
“Don’t know. She sure as hell didn’t tell me, that’s for sure. Just said, hey, Chris is pulling off a big change in the way we do business, I need to be there, you’re coming with me. She’s always trying to get me involved in more Marketplace stuff.” He laughed and didn’t say anything more than that.
William Longet watched the clock until voting time was over, and got ragged cheers when he closed the books and passed the box and key over to the accounting team, who walked off with much dignity. Although his job wasn’t over until he announced the results, he loosened his tie and grinned and swept a passing pleasure slave into a kiss as she giggled.
Paul Sheridan met up with Ron in the Eastern garden pavilion and the two men pounded each other on the back and called each other various profanities. Bronwyn was there as well, with Kim and a few of the other junior trainers. Ninon was comfortable on a lounge chair, her hair free and a gloriously handsome woman at her feet, massaging them and preparing to paint her toes, judging from the tiny bottle on the grass next to her and the pedicure tools arrayed on a towel. The thunderstorm in the distance was getting closer, but golden late afternoon sun was filtering its way through layers of clouds, and the breezes also cut through the humidity in a pleasant way. It was nice to sit outside and not broil. Before long, Ken and Marcy joined the small group, and Stuart trailed along behind, turning a little self conscious when he saw Michael. Michael did not repeat his mimed kiss of the morning, but smiled instead and introduced him to Ron. Stuart seemed both shocked and impressed that his hero actually had an older brother.
“So it’s true then? Anderson arrived this afternoon?” asked Bronwyn.
“Yep, in the flesh,” Ron said, stretching out onto the grass. He had picked up a male pleasure slave in his wanderings and was using the man’s buttocks as a pillow for the back of his head. The slave didn’t seem to mind in the slightest, and Paul seemed to enjoy just gazing at the tableau they made.
“But why wait until the last day?” asked Kim.
“Far be it from me to ask the motives of my betters,” laughed Ron. “The Trainer works in mysterious ways, that’s all.”
Ken waved a hand. “Oh, it is nothing mysterious. She wishes to impress us all with her power, and voila, we are all impressed. Now, we shall fight with each other on who gets to send a client to her this year, because she actually deigned to join us in public.” She laughed lightly. “My, yes, I am already thinking of who I shall nominate to her.”
“It is strange how rarely she comes out,” mused Bronwyn. “Especially since she is such a valuable role model.”
“Role model?”
“Yes! The most sought after female trainer, I’d say. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I suppose so,” Ken admitted. “At least, with Ninon here, I should say, one of the most sought after women, yes?”
Ninon laughed. “Oh, I freely relinquish that singular space to Anderson. I know my worth in the world. And while I may make a better lover, she makes a better slave, and we all know which is more important.”
“Well, it’s very rare that a woman gets the respect she does, or the sheer power,” Bronwyn insisted. “I mean, look at what happened—she arrived at the very last day of the Academy, and everyone started talking about her, what did she think, and what did she want, and how did she vote—as if there was any question about that. I’d wager that if she had been here, Parker wouldn’t have had to compromise on that proposal; no one would dare oppose her publicly.”