So the first few days of settling in on Sozamia had been, quite frankly, a lot ofthat– and then my first designatedPersonal Daycropped up on my calendar, which meant that, after a bit of an awkward morning, Araxis had kicked me out the door of our creche's suite with a firm reminder that it was myday offand that I shouldavail myself of the amenities on a large station.I was sure that, if I'd made a fuss, I could have just lounged in bed all day, but given that my bedroom –ourbedroom; after all, we were playing the part of a perfect little virra-sinnenthi couple – adjoined the meeting room where he and Vivith would be holed up all day in meetings pinging over deep space relays, and I'd be able to hear them murmuring, I knew that it would only be a matter of time before curiosity won and I ended up eavesdropping, and then worming my way in.
And because this was a job, because I had a contract, I couldn't do that.Because this was ajob, I couldn't let myself be sucked in to things that weren't my business – namely, anything happening outside of my working hours (which were 'all of the time, except for random dates Araxis had forcibly peppered into my contract').
I'd thought I might enjoy living in a nice area on a new station – how novel, living somewhere new!– but it was clear from almost the first lungful of the clean, sweet air that Verdant Ward wasn'tforpeople, and I didn't want it to be anyway.Could anyone really feel comfortable anywhere without at least a base layer of grime?I sure as hell couldn't, and so while others might have admired the freestanding white buildings, the orderly streets and avenues and pedestrian thoroughfares, the ample greenery, the broad expanse of artificial sky overhead that mimicked life on a planet, it all made me feel –
I don't know.Itchy, but inside of my brain.There were shops and museums and theatres; outdoor dance classes, parks with fountains, and a very nice 'one with nature' type school – pretty impressive for a school on a space station – that the kids had started attending; there were polite street vendors, slow-moving transit shuttles, public art installations where interested parties wandered about and made curious sounds while staring at some of the ugliest statuary I'd ever seen in my pathetic little life.And everyone who bustled around Verdant Ward wassopolite and well-mannered that they only glanced in my direction when they either recognized me from broadcast or were surprised to see a stray human in such an exclusive locale.Although I had been stopped by ward guards three times to check my ID before word must have gotten out – probably because the last time, I'd been picking the children up from school and mentioned Creche Thiel and the guard, an abaya with a mean shape to their mouth, had actually muttered an apology before leaving me well enough alone.I'd suspected then that I might have to do a lot of name-dropping, and that realization had made me so mad that I hadn't even noticed until we made it half a block away that Adrathi had left her shoes at school.
I hated it in Verdant Ward.Where, I had wondered on my first morning off, were the shady medical clinics, the arcades, the clubs with throbbing music, the cages for pit fighting?Where did anyone launch station shuttles for illegal street races?Would anyone eventryto mug me if I put on a fancy outfit and had the gall to look too rich?Fuck, I hadn't even bothered bringing my swords when I went for a wander because why would I?I was inVerdant Ward, and as far as Sozamia Station was concerned, that was the safest, cleanest,bestpossible place to be.
I didn't even finish the fancy drink I'd bought before tipping it into one of themanypublic waste receptacles, none of which appeared to have ever been used or vomited on.I had downloaded a map of the station, flashing up a quick overview of some of the wards for tourists, just so that I knew what I was getting myself into: I might have been bored and off-kilter and tired of being surrounded by so muchwhite– who had white polymer everywhere on a station anyway?People who had an unlimited budget for cleaning, that's who, and I definitely didn't trust anyone with an unlimited budget foranything– but I wasn't stupid.
Even on Yellow Fin, there were places I wouldn't have dared to go.And on Sozamia, there werelevelsto the seedy underbelly, just like there were on any station of a decent size.
I'd tried Central Ward first in an effort to be respectable or something.It was about as anodyne as it could be – but I'd also been practically mobbed when I was just sitting at an outdoor amphitheatre and alternating between looking at the void of space far above and idly scrolling through message boards in search of a promising language tutor.I'd been trapped for nearly an hour taking photos and signing papers and shirts and the occasional slimy patch of skin, all while fending off wandering hands and trying to smile my way through the whole thing so that I didn't accidentally give any cheap tabloids the excuse to write about me being difficult.The problem was that Central Ward was the must-see destination for tourists – and tourists apparently also enjoyed galactic reality broadcasts and, because they were on vacation and therefore feeling self-indulgent, didn't see anything wrong with bothering a D-list celebrity who was just trying to find leads on potential gyms for some training and abayan language tutors so that he could be less useless.
So that had been Central Ward.I wasn't stupid enough to try Core unless I went fully armed, and even then, the miasma alone might kill me.Glimmer hadn't been too different from Central in terms of my reception – which was to say it was annoying, and not particularly what I thought I'd be doing with aPersonal Day– so it had been with some relief that I'd finally found myself in Radiant which felt, for the first time since I'd left the den, like I was on something like familiar terrain.Radiant Ward was grimy and had the benefit of being where the abaya I'd eventually chosen as my language tutor rented her rooms – there were a lot of abaya in Radiant Ward, which I'd worried might mean that I was bothered there too, but any of the crecheless abaya I'd come across who maybe recognized me ducked their heads and left me alone.It was good luck, too, that it was in Radiant Ward that I'd finally found a gym owner who didn't look at me as a cash cow who needed coddling or hand-holding.
Here, in Radiant Ward, no one gave a fuck at all about who I was or where they'd seen my face before.They weren't trying to be polite: they just couldn't be bothered to give me a moment of their attention.Even the people I was paying would be mean to me, just a little bit – which was more or less exactly what I needed.
It felt like breathing in clean air for the first time after too long on a concourse.
"I'll send you those dates," I promised Tam as I zipped up my jumpsuit and headed toward the door, checking the time on my wristband.I had just enough to make it back to the apartment I'd rented before my language tutor Inmadra arrived for our fourth session, which meant I probably had time to grab some dumplings from the abayan vendor in the market outsideandto frantically review the vocabulary banks Inmadra had assigned to me so she didn't tear a strip off me.
"You can also send me my credits!"Tam's voice echoed down the dark and empty hallway at the back of his gym as I pushed out into the ward beyond, and I laughed and called up my display, sending payment directly into his account.
It was pretty fucking novel, having credits of my own.Lots of them.So many that I'd drawn up an agreement with Silver Sea after the first payment had landed in my account, so she was now receiving most of my credits and investing them for me.I shouldered my way past a tangle of ketaari headed toward a nearby arcade that definitely had backrooms where something illicit happened – arcades were neverthatbusy in a place like this – and headed out into the narrow warren of tunnels beyond.
Radiant Ward knew what it was: a questionable neighbourhood on a space station.It didn't pretend to be anything else, not like Verdant Ward that tried so hard to be more like a planet, or Glimmer Ward, which was all neon lights and pulsating nebulas projected on cavernous spaces overhead, like it was playing at being Devonia Station with its infamous thousand and one casinos.Here in Radiant, when I looked up, I could see the ceiling, heavily laden with the pipes, tubes, wires and ducting needed to keep a station humming along.Instead of free-standing buildings, doors split into the tunnel walls, sometimes branching into massive complexes, other times leading to different tunnels and alleys.The air was a bit thicker, although it was still cool.And instead of the glowing white polymers of Verdant Ward, Radiant Ward reflected Sozamia's origins as a mining station: dark metal, blocky facades, utilitarian doors, and a thin layer of dirt and soot that I thought of ascharacter.
Radiant Ward had that particular lived-in filth I'd come to appreciate.It's why I'd bothered renting a tiny apartment – just a studio – close by.At least down here, I could breathe.Down here, I wasn't Sashen of Creche Thiel.I was just Sashen.I had to try beingjust Sashenbefore I could figure the rest out.
By now, I had a route to and from Tam's figured out.I stepped off to the side of one boulevard to cut past an alleyway that I'd found a little too questionable the last time I'd gone through – I was pretty sure I'd interrupted what was either a mugging or a very strange overture to public sex, but either way the pair had bolted away and I'd been left mentally marking that little corridor off the list of places I'd go alone – and paused to look at a glowing screen across the way, where a news story was being broadcast about some sort of riot that had taken place earlier that day at the loading docks on Ibion, a planet I'd only heard of in the same sentence assafety concerns.I couldn't hear the news anchors speak but the subtitles helpfully explained that the abayan host thought the workers werecausing unreasonable disruptions to the shipping schedule for Sadrum-4.Representatives from Xitera have filed official complaints with CPEF in a bid for greater security presence [approving subvocal].
"Get out of the way," snapped a mar as they bustled past me, holding a tray of what just looked like bits of corroded piping."You're in front of my display!Are you stupid?Do humans not haveeyes?"
Ah, to be back in a place where aliens would be pissy with me.
I shot them one of my dumbest smiles."Whoops, sorry," I said, sliding away from the display built into the tunnel wall.A door behind me led into a tiny cluttered shop that was, from what I could tell, just salvage and possibly an excuse for this mar to live in their collected filth.
The mar set their tray down inside the door with a clatter, pivoting to stare at me as I waited for a biryat pushing a hovercart to pass; the whole alley was blocked, and biryat famously hated cold climates, so they might feel compelled to stab me if I got in their way.The mar tilted their head out again, looking me up and down, broad mouth thinning into a massive frown."You're that human," they said after a moment.
"I'm certainlyahuman," I said.
"No, you're that one from the Tournament," the mar said, sounding irritated and nasally.
I looked at them, their gray skin gleaming in the flickering overhead light outside of their shop entrance."Am I?"I asked, not terribly interested in being perceived, especially not by a grumpy mar.
Their pupils narrowed on their eyestalks."I had a sizable bet placed on your demise.I had hopes that Araxis of Creche Thiel would finish you."
Well, that was certainly a flip side to my fleeting fame that I hadn't encountered yet.I fluttered my eyelashes at the mar a little, and said, "Oh, he definitelyfinishesme.Thanks for asking.I appreciate when people are invested in our relationship."And then I flounced off, threading my way around the edge of the hovercart as it passed and disappearing into the crowds of Radiant Ward's more central tunnels.
Of course, Araxis and I weren't doing anything that came to any sort of pleasant finishes at the moment.We were taking a break.He was my client; I was his virra on contract, and he'd been nothing but professional.
Which was good.That was what I wanted and needed and told him to do.And on today, my fourth whole day off, I resolved not to think of him at all.
Although I still hoped the meeting with Creche Ena was going well.It had to be awkward, given how Andiri had nearly murdered me and, in doing so, had apparently broken something inside of me because, weeks after I'd been on the sands, I was still chased by the tremors of terror I'd felt then.The inevitability of my death.Her hungry stare, her hard fingers, the way I'd begged.
I don't ever want to be scared like I was on the sands, I'd told Tam when I'd first met with him, when I was still feeling out whether he might be the right fit.I'd already passed on two other trainers who either seemed overeager to knock me down a peg or overeager to simper and flatter.I want to be able to defend myself.I want to be able to stop someone if they're hurting me.
