Chapter 13 – Up Against A Wall
"It was impulsive, and I should have asked first," Araxis had muttered, flushed, his head craned near mine as he watched my skin healing.
"I shouldn't have let my – excitement get the best of me.
Besides, any abaya who saw it would know that you're being –" He stopped, clicking the knitter off and setting it back in a drawer.
"I'm being what?" I'd asked, the metal table cold beneath my palms. I'd reached up and touched the skin. If I pressed hard, I could still feel the memory of a bruise there, comforting. A reminder that this hadn't been a hallucination.
He'd shot me a slightly embarrassed look. "That there is an abaya who likes you a great deal. It would be too obvious. Although… it is nice to hear that you didn't mind."
I'd smiled at him. "I didn't mind. Maybe you can do it again when we're on camera. Day Ten?"
He'd flushed even more and then made his excuses, heading off to meet with Vivith to discuss some final creche business.
Vivith was off working on setting up a clean data chip for me, so I'd headed off to entertain some children who liked nothing so much as looking at pictures of whales and, oddly, star-nosed moles.
Admittedly, I'd thought those pictures had been doctored when I'd first seem them – star-nosed moles definitely didn't feature in Seraphim's workbooks on animals that made their way onto the Ark, and they weren't species that had been loaded on our Ark – so I got the appeal.
By the time Vivith had finished prepping a chip for me, I was surrounded by three sleeping children sprawled out on my bed.
Adrathi was drooling on my shoulder, while Sadin's bare feet twitched near my knee as he dreamed.
Araxis sat at the opposite end of the bunk, having joined me after finishing with Vivith, and was working on finalizing the official petition Creche Thiel would send to the abayan Concord as soon as he stepped foot on Thenat-6.
"You indulge them," Vivith said, nose wrinkling as they stepped down into my cabin. "They should have already bedded down in their nest."
Talvi stirred next to me, blinking blearily. "Not done yet, Vivith," they slurred, one sleepy hand grasping for my wristband.
"You are done for tonight." Vivith stepped forward and reached, plucking Talvi from where their body was cradled next to mine, easily lifting the child to their feet.
"Our Araxis and Sashen must rest for the evening.
They are about to go do some very important work for your benefit.
Sadin, Adrathi – up. Your curiosity is not more important than what they will do. Quickly now."
The children whined as they slid from bed, Vivith plucking each easily from where they were and setting them upright.
"Here." They offered me a chip no bigger than my thumbnail, along with an older style oblong reader with a green readout screen.
"You should be able to display your files on this.
Don't put the chip into your band or any other system: we can't risk cross-contamination. "
This wasn't my first time being a sneaky little shit with digital systems, but Vivith didn't know that, so I could forgive their snide know-it-all tone.
"I'll leave anything I'm worried about here.
I have a bunch of stuff downloaded on to my wristband.
You can pull things off it for the kids, if you want.
But, uh," I slid a careful glance to the three children, who were still rubbing their eyes sleepily, Adrathi's hand tangled in the long end of Vivith's draped robe, "you'll want to be the one deciding what gets ported over.
There are parts that are appropriate for children.
Send me your code: I'll key access to you.
" I didn't say that huge swaths weren't child-friendly, but Vivith's disdainful frown made it clear that they understood and that, while repulsed, they weren't surprised that I'd have adult content downloaded to my personal storage.
It was mostly educational, for me anyway.
Just sometimes the education was in video format, because if I had to figure out how to get an alien off between the time it took me to dance on stage and lead them to a back room at the den, I didn't generally have the time to do an in-depth review of an article and its diagrams.
Okay, and some of it was also for fun. Maybe some managed to be both. Who ever said learning couldn't be a good time?
"Charming," Vivith said, flat, but they tapped at their wrist and a dot of light flickered above my wristband. I made a few changes, and set it to open full file access for Vivith of Creche Thiel.
"Just don't go reading my diaries," I teased. "I wouldn't want to shock you."
"I would not be shocked, only nauseated," they said thinly, and then patted a hand on Sadin's shoulder. "Let us go. Gather your siblings." Then, with a quick glance at Araxis, they added, "Do rest tonight. Both of you. Have the petition finalized for tomorrow, Araxis."
A flicker of irritation flashed across his features – unfamiliar to me. "It is nearly done, Vivith. Your concern is noted."
It was a dismissal if I'd ever heard one.
Vivith left, and they pulled the door into the dark hallway shut behind them, the sound of the children's quiet footfalls fading away to the particular silence of night.
I tucked the chip and reader into my empty pack, still slumped on an open shelf near the window that looked out into the void and the occasional burst of roiling colours when we passed stars and planets.
"Are you –" I started at the same time Araxis said, "Could we –" We both stopped, and I let out a short, half-hearted laugh. "Right," I said, "Why don't you go first?"
Araxis shook his head and closed the blue screen of his wristband. "Of the two of us, you have had rather a more challenging day, Sashen. Tell me what is on your mind."
I folded my arms across my body and stepped closer to the window, looking out at the abyss beyond. There was so much… nothingness. Streaks of light sometimes, other times waves of colour, but so much of it was black. The empty space between stars. The void all around us.
"It started pretty well," I admitted, tightening my arms, squeezing them against my chest until they began to ache.
Something to make me feel like I was back in my body, instead of adrift in the nothingness.
"I guess… I don't know. Do you think it'll work?
Is this an absolutely insane plan – to make it seem like we're falling in love on galactic television, so that when we enter the arena, we'll be able to take care of each other without anyone crying foul? Will anyone believe it for a second?"
We already knew we'd have to admit to running into each other on Yellow Fin at the den.
Araxis could have been seen there, and it was part of my application; there was no avoiding that.
But Vivith thought it would make for a good story – that we'd been near each other but hadn't really met.
That maybe we'd locked eyes, but had missed our chance to connect.
We'd planned our entire first interaction on camera around that little fabrication.
Our second chance, there in the Tournament.
When I thought too hard about the steps between that first conversation and then hooking up on camera and promising to take care of one another, it seemed so incredibly manufactured, so deliberately plotted, that I couldn't imagine anyone falling for it.
Araxis shifted behind me, sliding off the bed; his reflection was pale in the window, his face a streak of white against all the black.
"I am confident," he said. "Even if we misstep, the story is too compelling: they will want to believe because it will make the arena so much more fraught.
And they will imagine one of us will turn on the other in the end, if we survive that long. Like –"
"Yeah, like Edozo and Luxato Bolsin in the 3.
179 Tournament." I suppressed a shudder.
Vivith had explained with numbers, first, how neither contestant had been expected to make it beyond the first day, but their alliance – their burgeoning romance – had given each of them access to different skills than what they'd come in with, which made them a formidable force together.
Until the final day, when Luxato had stabbed Edozo in her tertiary heart and then chewed through her neck, spraying a gout of black blood across the arena sands while the crowd had screamed its frenzied crescendo.
That part Vivith had shown me on video. Apparently, the residuals from those viewership numbers were a prize on their own: Edozo's family had apparently been able to buy mining rights to a decently sized asteroid, which I guessed was something some people really cared about.
I turned to look at him, my arms still hard against my torso.
Thinking about all of it made me feel unsteady.
I liked what we had here, what we were starting to have here – and I should have been over the moon (over a few of the moons?) to have Araxis determined to pay my debt.
He was offering me a way out: a reprieve from a grisly death; safety from Seraphim; a story that we could sell.
I could sell a story. I'd done it every night on the den stage. I'd done it every day of my life.
I just didn't know what he'd offer me after – another debtor's prison, a place to rest, or freedom from everything? Would I leave the arena, debt-free, and just… make my way from there? That was freedom apparently.
Why did freedom – real freedom – suddenly sound an awful lot like loneliness?
"I think… it's workable," I said finally, studying him. "I don't like that we won't be able to talk to each other."
"We'll talk to each other."