Chapter 28 – Untested Treasure
What followed was one of the strangest series of days in my life, and that's saying something. Not many people get to experience the extremes of absolute tedium and utter emotional devastation, layered on top of each other like a particularly awful cake. I guess I'm lucky like that.
I woke sprawled across the bed with a blanket draped over me, to the distant sounds of bustling in the kitchen.
Nilli had seemingly moved in and when I asked her about that and if she had other things she had to attend to, she only beamed at me and insisted that it was a great honour to care for me.
Besides, she said, she was an old entinn and didn't often get to dote on sweet not-quite-hatchlings any more.
She said it in a way that made me feel like I was indulging her as she waited on me hand and foot. I felt better after eating, and she gave me strict instructions to sit in bed and do nothing at all.
So I did just that. I sat in bed, and I clicked the media centre on and I watched the coverage of the Tournament.
It was all replays, of course, and when I turned it on, they were in the middle of airing a compilation about Andiri of Creche Ena's time.
I do not care that I am dead, she said to the camera from the booth where we'd all lined up to film our final words in case of this exact circumstance.
This was spliced with footage of her growling at me by the pool, glaring at Araxis across the practice ring, snarling something at Araxis in abaya that went too quickly for me to process the subtitles, arguing with a voltaari in the kitchen, all intermingled with footage from the arena.
If I am victorious, my creche will welcome me back.
If I die, at least I will not be crecheless.
I curled my battered palms around the cup of tea Nilli had prepared for me, and watched as the broadcast transitioned into a long sequence about Araxis and me.
Our first conversation at the mixer, his dark eyes as he stared at me dancing on the pole (honestly, I looked better than I'd expected, given that I was up there reluctantly), our training sessions with his body pressed up against mine.
The first time I'd kissed him in my quarters; the way he watched me, utterly transfixed, while I chattered over tea in the kitchen.
The rooftop kiss and Grigor's attack. It was just cutting to our travel down toward the shuttle with I turned the whole thing off.
I didn't think I wanted to see. I was done with the pretending. At least, I hoped I was.
So I slept. I poked around in the media libraries; they didn’t have Across the Timescape but I spent some time watching documentaries about a few of the animals in Xitera and other abayan territories.
I wasn’t pleased to discover that giant bugs seemed to be the most common wildlife, but if I could get used to working and living alongside aliens that were mostly insects, then I could get used to seeing massive too-many-legged critters in Xitera and Thelessia.
I rested, all while Nilli slept in an adjoining room and catered to my every whim, seemingly delighted.
I spent three full days in that suite. And while it mostly felt like time wasn't passing at all, like I was in this strange liminal space, an eternal waiting room, there was one hour each day when I became sharply aware of every passing second.
Each morning, we watched live coverage from the Tournament as the contestants rose out of the ground beneath the arena and spilled out across the sands, and I was sick the entire time.
Nilli would sit on the bed with me, touching my hand or my shoulder and forcing an endless stream of tea and food on me.
Each day, Araxis was spectacular: he was a perfect knight of Creche Thiel, a scion of the abayan empire, a steadfast and deadly warrior who knew how to hunt his prey.
After the first day, only Andiri had been killed, though Tulsu and the marn were injured.
Any competitor who survived to the end of the hour got patched up and thrust into the arena once they were on their feet again – the conglomerate wanted as much content as possible, after all – so they both reappeared on the sands the next day.
By the end of that second hour, Araxis had killed the auvril and accepted Atosha's yield.
The third day of competition saw the brin warrior Zey'flen hunt down Neern Mournet who, in the end, was the one who got sliced and diced; that editing overlay – Neern's reedy voice sneering his intro line – seemed particularly cruel as Zey'flen methodically cut off each of his four arms. Dismemberment was definitely not playing nice.
Tulsu, the remaining voltaari, spent most of that day hunting the ketaari Tree Lily, only to find at the end that she'd lured him into a dangerously pinched part of the grounds.
Without enough room to effectively manoeuvre, Atosha had been helpless against Tree Lily's flying daggers.
The fourth day of the Tournament saw Araxis searching the grounds for the remaining two – Tree Lily and Zey'flen – but he couldn't find them; they also avoided each other, so the whole day was a wash.
To keep the viewers hooked, they kept splicing footage of Araxis wandering the sands alongside clips from our interviews with Sky Pebble or long sequences of the two of us looking at each other.
It was particularly humiliating to realize how utterly besotted I looked every time I glanced in Araxis's direction.
I'd thought I had a firm handle on what my face was doing at any given moment; apparently I was about as opaque as a pane of glass, at least when it came to Araxis.
Every day, I asked to leave the suite and go for a walk, but Nilli just shook her head sadly. "You are not well enough," she insisted.
By the fourth day on Creche Athal’s ship, I knew she was keeping me in the rooms on purpose.
"Nilli," I said as I paced across the living room for the hundredth time that afternoon. "Look at me: I'm up, I'm walking, I'm coherent. Maybe we could go to the atrium? I'd love to look at the trees. I've never seen one in person. A living tree, I mean – the ones in the arena don't count."
She was seated on one of the sofas, doing some sort of complicated weaving with what looked like abayan quills both as knitting needles and woven through the other textile strands. "Oh, dear one, I understand," she said. "You must stay just a little longer."
"I really don't want to," I said, irritation buzzing beneath my skin. It wasn't her fault; I knew it wasn't, but it still felt like she was a jailer holding the key to my cell. "What I'd really like to do is go for a walk, just a short one. That's all I'm asking."
She was silent, the needles in her hands clicking as she continued weaving.
"I know you're keeping me here." I stopped in front of her, looking down. "Am I your prisoner? Am I confined to quarters until Araxis wins? Does he have to pay to free me or something?"
Nilli's black eyes snapped upwards, and her cheeks went dull with upset.
"Oh!" she cried, a keen subvocal whining behind the syllable.
"No, you are not our prisoner; you would certainly not be ransomed, Sashen of Creche Thiel.
It is rather that Creche Athal made a promise to Creche Thiel that we would guard their virra very closely, and so we will. So we must. We are honour-bound."
I reached up and scrubbed a hand across my face.
"Alright, well, I may be virra, but I'm also human, and I'm going to find it really hard to just stay here, waiting for Araxis.
" Nilli's face got a strange, pinched look that struck me as something like hurt, so I added hastily, "You're wonderful company and you're taking incredible care of me. I'm just an… active person."
"Yes, you are virra," she admitted, setting her weaving aside on a little side table made of dark wood that gleamed with a lustrous finish.
"Let me go speak with a few people, hm? I will see what we can arrange.
" She stood and reached up to touch my cheek, and then headed out of the dignitary's suite.
I tried the door when she left. Of course I did: I wanted out. But, as I'd suspected, it was locked tight.
"Motherfucker," I hissed, head thudding against the door.
I'd already gone poking around the media server to see if I could access anything interesting – god knew I needed to learn more about what it meant to be in a creche, and more about what I'd committed to when I had declared for Araxis – but it was totally disconnected from the datasphere except for the local connection to the conglomerate's broadcast. Here I was, on an abayan ship, wearing none of my own clothes, with none of my own things except my swords, basically hanging out with a grandma while waiting for my sort-of husband to come home from the war.
I could scream, I really could. Instead, I heaved in a couple deep breaths. I could allow myself that much.
What I needed was some motion. I was still stiff and sore from the Tournament.
I'd explained to one of the medical staff who'd come by on the first day to check on me that I'd responded well to the more advanced technology in the village on Thenat-6, but the doctor had just looked irritated and said that it was best for me to heal naturally to avoid unintended consequences.
They had seemed none too pleased that I'd been stuck in stasis after Grigor had beat the shit out of me; apparently that wasn't good for the constitution.
So I definitely still felt my bruises and scabby cuts, and I'd had to be treated with a round of antibiotics for the deeper puncture wounds.
The bruises around my neck had started to fade, looking more like a lace collar, although it still hurt if I talked for too long.
But I knew that movement would do me good.