Page 5 of Xel: Broken Bond
“I’m game to hear it,” Kathy said, settling herself more firmly into her seat.
“I would strongly recommend that you don’t stay,” Aiden said. “Even so, I’m not going to force you to leave. I believe you’re here because you care about Xel. Xel, would you agree with that assessment?” he asked, turning to me unexpectedly.
I took a moment to consider the question. And then I nodded. “Yes, I think she does.” Kathy had always been rather abrupt in her mannerisms, but she’d also always made an effort to look after the staff – making sure they weren’t overworked, sheltering them from the worst of Dorral’s bad moods, intervening if a guest was being too harsh with them. I recognised a power structure when I saw one, but Kathy, while caught in the middle of company politics, had always made an effort to minimise the effects of any outburst by upper management.
“But because you care about him,” Aiden went on, “you’re likely to find some of the details of this quite distressing. Likely far more distressing than they will be to Xel himself. It’s probably better for your own peace of mind that you don’t hear this.”
Kathy, to her credit, actually stopped and thought about that. And at the same time, I paused to wonder what details Aiden was referring to. None of my training on Eumad had been particularly traumatic for me. And since I’d come to Rendol 4, I would have described my work as monotonous, but not unpleasant. Did Aiden have unrealistic expectations of what my work had entailed? Or was Alliance culture just that different from what I’d been raised to expect? I could only wait and find out.
“I’ll stay,” Kathy decided eventually, and Aiden nodded.
“Then I would advise you to listen, but not interrupt. None of the answers Xel has for us will change the slightest bit off the back of any of your objections.”
Kathy scoffed. “What makes you so sure I’m going to object?”
“I’ve worked with nearly a hundred dimari owners over the past year and a half. So I’ve gotten very good at predicting how people are going to react.”
“Fine,” Kathy said, sounding rather stiff about it. “I’ll do my best to keep my opinions to myself. Please, carry on.”
Aiden turned to me. “What specialty were you trained in during your time on Eumad?” he asked me, without preamble.
I didn’t see that it was at all a contentious question. “I was trained as an erotic companion,” I told him. He nodded slowly, then made a few notes on a document on his comm.
“Did you give your operations manual to your master when you arrived here?”
Every dimari was sent out with a data stick containing detailed information about their training and their contract of sale. I had dutifully handed mine over to my master. “Yes, I did,” I told Aiden.
He nodded again, his eyes flicking sideways towards Kathy for a moment. Then he returned his attention to me. “During the past three years, has your master had sex with you?”
“Yes,” I said simply. No doubt he was going to ask for more details, but until I knew what he wanted to know, there wasn’t much point in littering the air with irrelevant facts. Beside me, I heard Kathy’s muted gasp.
“How often did he have sex with you?” Aiden asked next.
“More or less once a day,” I replied. Kathy turned her head to stare at me. I ignored her, seeing nothing out of the ordinary about my reply.
“Did anyone else have sex with you?” Aiden asked.
“Yes. Dorral, the general manager-”
“That perverted fucking asshole!” Kathy blurted out, looking horrified. “Xel, why did you-”
“Kathleen!” Aiden interrupted her loudly. “You can listen, butdo notinterrupt.”
“But Dorral’s been abusing-”
“I told you this was going to be distressing. Xel was trained as an erotic companion. That means he was specifically taught how to provide sexual services to his master. If you’re going to continue disrupting this conversation, I will ask you to leave.”
Kathy’s expression was sour, but she folded her arms and fixed her eyes on the table. “Fine. I’ll be quiet.”
Aiden waited a moment longer, then turned back to me. “So the general manager was having sex with you. Anyone else?”
“Vish, the morning shift supervisor,” I told him.
Kathy made a spluttering sound of indignation, before Aiden’s glare swiftly silenced her.
“And how often was it with each of them?”
“Again, more or less once a day. Not absolutely every day, if they weren’t rostered on, or had other pressing duties to attend to. But it was fairly regular.”