Page 28 of Xel: Broken Bond
I considered that for a moment. “I think that does make me a little more comfortable with all this,” I admitted. I was very aware of Leesha watching on, paying close attention to every word. And that was likely a good thing. Having a witness to this most unusual conversation made me feel less like these were secret confessions, and more like this was just a frank negotiation about an unusual business arrangement.
Or maybe I was just deluding myself.
“If I may make one final observation?” Xel asked, and I braced myself for some additional revelation, even as I nodded. “Would I be correct in assuming that you did not get along with your uncle?”
It was a fact that I’d tried very hard to keep under wraps. But apparently not hard enough. “No, I didn’t,” I replied, after a pause. “How did you know?”
“You’re not mourning for him,” Xel said. “You haven’t cried at all. You haven’t mentioned him since Aiden brought me here. That’s not the behaviour of a man who loved his uncle.”
I briefly considered what to say. “He was your master,” I said eventually. “And so I don’t want to spend a long time telling you all about why I didn’t like him. But he was the sort ofman who only ever did what best suited himself. So no, I’m not particularly mourning his loss.”
Xel nodded, and said, “I understand.”
I didn’t point it out, as I returned to finishing my dinner, but Xel himself was not displaying any signs of mourning my uncle. He hadn’t cried. He hadn’t said anything in particular about him, aside from acknowledging a few of his habits or rules. And while Xel seemed to understand my lack of attachment to the man, I remained entirely baffled by his lack of regard for the man who had been the centre of his world.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
XEL
“We should choose some new clothes for you,” Leesha declared, as I ferried the empty plates back to the kitchen counter. “Come into the living room and we can look through the catalogues on the grid.”
“I need to help my master clean the kitchen,” I said, feeling a little awkward about the statement, after our very frank conversation about the fact that he was not, if fact, my master. I’d taken quite a risk in saying it, but his growing discomfort with his assigned role had been obvious, and somehow, what would have been a huge insult to most masters had been a reassurance to him.
“I’ll clean up,” my master said, already running water into the sink. “You go pick out some clothes. I meant to do that with you this morning, but we got caught up in dealing with Huckleberry.”
I stood frozen in confusion for a moment. My master wanted me to let him clean up? But a dimari’s role was to… Oh, goodness, this was all very confusing. “Yes, sir,” I said finally, allowing Leesha to take my hand and lead me into the living room.
Bribie was still curled up on the rug, and his tail wagged briefly as we came back into the room. “Has he had dinner yet?” I asked Leesha, and she shook her head.
“You want to feed him? There’s a can of dog food in the pantry.” She smirked as she saw the eager smile on my face.
“I would be happy to help,” I said, trying not to sound too eager about it. But Leesha wasn’t fooled for a moment. “Come on, Bribie,” I called to the munsend. “You want some dinner?”
Given that I was speaking Eumadian, Bribie wouldn’t have understood the word ‘dinner’. But the encouraging tone of my voice seemed to get the message across, and he sat up quickly, his tail thumping eagerly on the floor. I headed back into the kitchen and fetched the can, making sure to keep out of my master’s way, then emptied it into the bowl that I saw tucked into the corner near the dining table.
I looked sideways at my master as I did so. He didn’t want Bribie in the house, but he kept a dog bowl in the kitchen specifically for him to be fed? Unless Leesha stayed the night far more often than he’d suggested, I suspected there was something else going on here that he wasn’t telling me about.
“Good boy, Bribie,” I said, as the munsend enthusiastically started eating. I returned to the living room, eager to find out what sort of clothes I would be allowed to wear.
“Have you spent much time on the grid?” Leesha asked, patting the sofa beside her and activating her comm.
“No,” I said honestly. “I was never allowed to have a comm of my own. I know how to do basic tasks like ordering food, but not much beyond that.”
“Okay, then let’s start by showing you the ordering system that Hon uses.” She spent the next ten minutes explaining the various online stores, the transport service that delivered packages several times a day, and how to search for various items or services, showing me the various pages on her comm,while I mimicked her actions to bring up the same page on my own comm, so that I could read them in the Eumadian script.
“Okay, now we need to find out what size you are,” she said next. “Most comms have a scanning function to help people order clothes.” She fiddled with the options on her comm, then gave me a quick once-over. “The best way to do this is without your shirt on. It gets better readings that way. Stand up just over there and take your shirt off.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. I had no qualms about nudity in general, but I’d got the firm impression that people in this culture were expected to wear clothes in all but a few specific circumstances.
Leesha smirked, seeming to read my mind. “I’m not trying to come onto you. I just need your measurements for the grid sites.”
It was ironic for her to be trying to reassure me by insisting shedidn’twant to sleep with me, but I refrained from pointing that out. Sex in general, and the sexual services of dimari in particular, seemed to be a taboo subject in this culture, and I didn’t want to inadvertently upset anyone. There was likely an appropriate time for jokes about the subject, but I wasn’t familiar enough with the nuances of the culture to draw a line between what was funny and what was offensive.
Nonetheless, I took my shirt off, tossing it onto the end of the sofa… just in time for my master to walk into the room, having finished tidying up the kitchen.
He stopped in his tracks, mouth falling open, and he looked frantically from me to Leesha and back.
“Oh, put your tongue away,” Leesha scolded him, though she sounded quite amused at the same time. “I’m just taking his measurements for some new clothes. Stand up straight, arms slightly out to the sides,” she directed me. Then she held up her comm and it projected a beam of red light over my body,running in a slow sweep from my neck to my waist. “Now turn to the side, same again.” I turned, and once more, the beam scanned my body.