Chapter 1 #4
I set the dumplings down on the counter, clicked on some water to boil, and ducked back to the hygiene room, wincing as I looked at myself in the buffed metal mirror.
I did look like shit. I grabbed the subdermal knitter and clicked it on, immediately pressing the cool metal against the swollen skin around my eye.
I had enough time to bring that bruise down and to start working on the scrapes on my knuckles when there was a chime from the front door panel.
So much for having time to review my vocabulary banks. I crossed the meagre space of my apartment and opened the door, smiling at the pair of abaya who were waiting for me.
I'd first come to Radiant Ward to meet with Inmadra after sorting through what felt like dozens of listings for potential teachers.
Unlike the others, who had reasonable boundaries about how often you could contact them, Inmadra had sounded desperate enough to let me bother her basically any time I had a few minutes, and she'd gotten back to me immediately when I'd sent her a message in between being mobbed by tourists in Central.
I knew I'd need someone with flexibility, because I'd be trying to learn as much abayan as possible around what was a pretty full schedule, days off aside.
Inmadra was an older abaya, with a strong jaw and a short gray crest she had tied back in a knot at the base of her skull.
I hadn't been sure when I'd first met with her if she'd be up to the task: she'd been quiet when I sat down at the cluttered table in the boarding house where she was staying, which I'd mistaken for reticence – until she asked me to speak a few phrases.
After listening to my attempts, Inmadra had said that my pronunciation was atrocious and that I'd managed to make a grammatical error she hadn't even thought was possible and if I ever wanted to be a decent abayan speaker, I was going to have to demonstrate a level of discipline she wasn't certain I had. She had stared at me with exacting judgment and, when I said I wanted to try again, listening carefully and repeating back the phrases she said, again and again and again while she corrected me every time, she had looked pleasantly surprised. By the time I’d left, it was clear that she had expected me to give up; I liked that I'd maybe impressed her by being stubborn.
I liked that she'd call me out if I was lazy.
This was our fourth meeting and the second one at my apartment. I'd made the suggestion, and she'd seemed fine with it – but had brought another abaya from the boarding house where she stayed anyway. That was fine with me. The abaya with her today was the same one she'd brought before.
I put on a smile. "Welcome Inmadra and Celravi," I said in abayan, stepping back to allow them into the room. "I buy dumplings. I make tea."
Inmadra looked up at me as she stepped in, fluting out a sound of disappointment. "You have bought dumplings," she corrected firmly. "You will make tea. You should offer tea first, and be mindful of your syntax."
Celravi, who was tall and willowy with a long white crest, hummed under her breath as she drifted to the couch to sit. "I always enjoy dumplings best with tea," she said. "You have the makings of a good host."
I sent Inmadra the worksheets I'd completed while she settled at the little table, and I laid out a tray of dumplings and made tea before scooping up the subdermal knitter again so that I could work on my bruises while we reviewed my exercises (which Inmadra pronounced was less than adequate, which I thought might almost be a compliment).
"Sorry," I said as her black stare caught on the flash of silver, "I've started training with a retired pit fighter.
I might be a bit – uh – beat up when we meet in person? "
"Hm." She gestured to the tea, so I set down the knitter and poured it into the three arrayed cups. I handed one to her, then took one to Celravi, who smiled at me, and then settled down with my own. "And your sinnenthi approves of this?"
It wasn't the first time she'd asked what Araxis thought about what I was doing. It also wasn't the first time I chose to respond with deflection. "Araxis wants me to do what makes me happy. He's a good sinnenthi. So – how would I say that I've been going to a trainer? I am go to – trainer?"
Inmadra flashed the corrected worksheets back to my wristband, three of them flagged for me to do over, and set to helping me manoeuvre through the intricacies of syntax when I wanted to speak about something I had done and was going to continue doing.
By the end of our two hours, my head was starting to throb, but Inmadra had only grimaced at me four times when I tried to muddle my way through a rudimentary exchange of greetings, so that was a win.
Celravi, who had pulled out an actual book – small and pocket-sized – that she was paging through, smiled at me again as they both prepared to leave. "You have a fine ear for our language, Sashen of Creche Thiel," she said happily. "Your sinnenthi must be very proud."
I made all the right noises and finalized the time for our next session – Inmadra did some sort of shift work that was unpredictable, so I worked around her schedule on my days off – and managed to see them off without admitting that my sinnenthi knew nothing about where I was or what I was doing today.
How could he be proud of me when I simply vanished into the station?
After my first day off, Araxis had asked me, very carefully, if I'd had a nice day.
When I'd said it had been interesting, expecting to tell him about the tourists in Central and the throbbing lights of Glimmer and the familiar apathy of Radiant, he'd merely smiled and then drifted away to go finish up an agreement he and Vivith had been drafting with Creche Thonen.
I'd been left feeling a bit unsteady, as if I'd reached out for him and, instead of catching me, he'd moved away. Jarring, like missing a step.
I'd thought, until then, that what we were doing – with the contract, with our break – was feeling out the edges of what we had. I'd thought that our agreement was a tool we could use to figure out if, how, we could… have something.
Apparently, that wasn't the case. He really was my client.
I really was his employee. Our contract had weight and heft.
It was real. And so I carefully folded up any expectations I'd had that he might ask me about my day and want to know, that he might pull me close and invite me in, that he might open up for me so that I could feel safe doing that for him too; I folded those up and I tucked them away and I reminded myself, alone in our bedroom where we were playacting as a couple, that I was being paid. This was a job. This was work.
Araxis was my client, and any of the complicated, thorny feelings I had for him had to be put away. So I was doing that, or I was trying to anyway. I could do that. I was good at putting things I didn't need away.
I moved quietly around my little apartment, cleaning up the dishes and setting them carefully to dry before I clicked down the work surface set into one wall and hauled a wobbly chairs over to it.
The display hummed to life, my wristband syncing with the local server.
I opened up the file I'd been compiling for Valerie Prior, logging in through six layers of encryption she'd set in place on a private media server that was no doubt pinging off of relays so obscure that no one would ever think to look there unless they wanted to do research into the mating habits of subspace bacteria.
As soon as I slipped past the final layer of encryption, a cheery line of green text hummed to life.
I winced, rubbing my fingers against my temple.
Thanks for the worksheets! More of those please – and send us the ones you've had corrected.
Our linguistics team got really excited.
I'm not sure I'd get excited about homework these days, but you know.
To each their own. She'd attached a series of questions from some of the other people in Perseus, mostly about the creches we'd met with so far and who seemed progressive (and might be open to allying with a new human political entity) and who seemed more traditional.
What kinds of things were they negotiating for?
What did most creches seem to want? What things would they be willing to trade for, if Perseus could get their hands on the right goods, supplies, services?
I filed the list away for mental reference. That seemed harmless enough.