"Was I always just a client to you?"
Kenya knew better than to fall in love with a client.
Of course, that didn't stop them from falling in love with her. Declarations of undying love were a near-weekly occurrence at the NeedWant. Kenya received gifts all the time. Expensive gifts, the kind of thing that could make a person go bankrupt. Old-world scotch and luxurious furs from new Votan creatures. The scotch she gave to her sister. She kept the furs.
Kenya had a gift for knowing what people needed. Kenya was a natural chameleon, as much a shape-changer as any Indogene. It was easy for her to assess a person with a look, a few words, and then slip into a new skin, a new persona, and become exactly what they wanted. What they needed.
Most people didn't think about what Kenya needed. Most people didn't wonder why she chose to be a prostitute. After all, her sister was the mayor. Kenya wasn't forced into becoming a hooker as a matter of mere survival, as some women or even men were, to earn enough scrip to keep a roof over her head and food in her belly. No, Kenya liked what she did.
Kenya knew that some of the townspeople looked down on her (despite everyone coming to the NeedWant eventually). Most of the time that didn't bother her. Kenya liked to take care of people, and this new world had so many broken people that needed to be cared for. Love was her trade, more than sex. She gave comfort where it was needed, cared when no one else did. The Pale Wars had left so many scars, physical, emotional, even spiritual, if the spirit was an actual thing as most Votans believed (strange that these creatures from another world were more spiritual, more religiously devoted, than humans had been in centuries). Some of the broken people that came to her had not experienced a moment of tenderness since before Arkfall. She was good at caring. And that allowed her clients to project whatever it was they needed onto her. Most went away happy. Some wanted the fantasy to last longer, or were too dumb to realize it had been a fantasy in the first place. Those needed careful handling, so that they were let down gently, but aware of where they stood. Rupert the miner had somehow gotten it into his head that he was going to leave his wife for her and take Kenya "away from all this". She had had to be firmer and blunter with him than usual to get it through his thick skull. Kenya still felt a tiny bit bad about the crestfallen look on his face.
Kenya knew better than to fall in love with a client.
Nolan had been a close call. She had actually stopped charging him, although she had steadfastedly refused to label what was going on between them. When Nolan's old bounty hunter friend Cooper had come to town, on the tail of the mad bomber Pol Madis, he had tried to hire her for the night. Kenya had actually turned him down, and she didn't know why. Her connection (not feelings, never feelings) with Nolan was getting in the way of her work. Kenya had not allowed herself to get that close to anyone since Hunter. That had ended terribly. She couldn't allow that to happen again. She was forced to end it before either of them got to attached.
Kenya knew better than to fall in love with a client.
Stahma Tarr was different. Kenya didn't know why. She told herself that she was just concerned for Stahma. That she was trapped in a bad marriage, like Kenya herself had been once upon a time. But she knew that wasn't true. Somehow Stahma had crept into her heart, silent and still, and from there she had destroyed Kenya.
She had practically glided into the NeedWant, ethereal and untouchable, as all Shanje liro were. All Castithans carried themselves with an almost unspeakable grace, even the lowest of the low in their society. But Stahma Tarr was born Shanje, the highest of the liros, the Castithan caste system. She was born on top, born to rule and be worshiped, and she knew it. Yet by virtue of her sex she was subservient to her husband, and would never be anything more than the faithful wife and mother, airy and insubstantial.
To someone who didn't understand Castithans, they might seem absurdly prideful, arrogant, in the way they rigidly clung to the traditions from a dead planet, devoured by an exploding sun centuries ago. Kenya was no stranger to Castithans, of course. Defiance had more Castithans than any other Votan race, and Stahma's husband Datak was one of her most regular customers. But Stahma had shook her.
"This whole time you've talked about Datak and Alak, but never about yourself. When was the last time you did something for yourself?"
It was the razor rain that had first trapped Stahma at the NeedWant, that had forced them together. Stahma had wanted to procure her services for her son, to teach him how to pleasure a human woman before he married his fiance. Kenya had unintentionally laughed at the thought of poor Christie regaling her father with the events of the wedding night.
Seeming is being, the Castithans say. Image is everything to them. Laughing was the wrong thing to do to explain the differences in human and Casti culture. Stahma almost stormed out, angry and hurt, and it had taken all of Kenya's skill to soothe her wounded pride.
"Do something that is just for you."
They slept together for the first time while metal fragments from the destroyed alien ships that orbited above ripped the sky apart. Kenya had no way of knowing that Stahma would rip her apart as surely and as violently as the shrapnel from the Arks that rained down that night.
It might have ended there, with one sweet night of pleasure. But it didn't. Stahma wanted more, and Kenya was happy to provide. They had carved a place for themselves at the NeedWant, a secret haven in Kenya's bed made of kisses and sweet touches, of hot tea and soft pillows, silk and velvet. But Kenya had made a deadly mistake. She let herself fall for the alabaster goddess.
"This will end very badly for you."
"Why Stahma? Why are you like this?"
Kenya only saw the woman who was forced to walk in the shadow of her husband. Everyone knew better than to cross Datak Tarr, the hot-headed lord of Defiance's criminal underworld. Kenya saw only the oppressed and abused wife of a cruel and violent man. Kenya had longed to set Stahma free, to let her be wild and pure and herself. But when it came to Stahma Tarr, nothing was simple. Nothing was pure. Stepping into her house had been blinding in its whiteness, the unbelievable glow of it. Kenya wondered now if the Casti obsession with the color white was more compensation, covering up, hiding the dirtiness under their highhanded concept of honor.
Lies dripped from Stahma's tongue like honey, and flowed into the ears of the mighty, twisting their thoughts and making them think it was their ideas in the first place. Stahma Tarr may not wield the knife or pull the trigger, but she pulled the strings. Most of the people in Defiance danced to her tune, pulled along on her strings like puppets, whether they knew it or not. Kenya's sister Amanda and Lawkeeper Nolan were the rare ones that Stahma (usually) could not manipulate. And then Kenya had handed the election to Datak, because she had believed Stahma's lies. She had been so naive.
When she met Stahma in the woods, Kenya really had hoped that she wanted to run away with her. Kenya wasn't stupid. She brought a gun with her, just in case. But she hoped. Because despite what Stahma had done, despite Stahma using her to smear her sister, Kenya still loved her.
"Was I always just a client to you?"
"Just a client."
The last words Kenya said to Stahma were a lie. Stahma still held her as the poison seeped into her veins, freezing shards of ice creeping towards her heart, cooling and chilling her muscles and bones as it went. Stahma's ivory-colored hair fell over her shoulders, and as all the color drained from Kenya's sight, bleaching the world into Casti greyscale, Stahma cooed and sang a lullaby. A Casti lullaby, soothing and crooning, although Kenya doesn't understand all the words.
As the poison addled her mind, black spots beginning to swim over the chalk-white of Stahma's face, Kenya knew she was dying. But it was Stahma who looked like the ghost, as pale as her entire albino species. Kenya felt it the height of bitter irony that Stahma's name means "Summer" in KastÃthanu, because really, she's winter personified. She's made of ice and snow and frost, plans and schemes and plots all winding together as intricate as any snowflake, her smile as blinding white as a snowstorm and cold enough to freeze in if you're foolish enough to be drawn in by her false humility and haunting lavender eyes. As she died Kenya wondered if Stahma ever really had a heart under all that brilliant Castithan white and those glacial eyes.
Kenya had always liked the dangerous ones. She had thought that she was rescuing Stahma from a dangerous man, that she had been trapped in an abusive marriage. Like Kenya had been with Hunter Bell. But she should have known. The last thing Kenya thought as she looked into the pale lilac of her alien lover's eyes was that, of course, it's love that kills her. She should have known better than to fall in love with a client.
Kenya died never knowing if her love had been returned, or if it had all been a game.