Aftershock

I was pinned to the floor, my arm wrenched hard behind my back; the hands holding me down, grinding my face against the cold floor, were massive and merciless.

“Say it,” growled the voice behind me. A sharp knee jabbed into my lower back, hard against the knobs of my spine.

“Fuck you,” I snarled against the floor.

The weight on top of me shifted, the hand palming the back of my skull moving, fingers digging hard into my scalp. My heart hammered hard against my ribs, my rib cage feeling smaller by the moment, lungs struggling for each gasp. Something – a tail – wrapped around one ankle as I tried to snake it back to get some leverage.

"Say it,” the voice repeated. “What are you going to do, Sashen?”

I knew the answer. Nothing. I was going to do nothing. I could do nothing. I wheezed again, ribs compressing even more, eerily pliant under the massive weight of another body. “I still – think the tail – isn’t fair,” I whined.

I heard the scoff I knew I would, and the pressure eased up on my back. The hand on my head relaxed, although not before Tam ruffled my hair, which he knew I fucking hated because I’d told him ten minutes ago when we’d been in this exact position. The tight coil of his tail around my ankle slackened, and then he shoved himself off of me.

I rolled over onto my back, my hands coming up to cradle my head as I blinked up at the massive gaanith who was standing over me, looking deeply unimpressed. “Alright, where did I go wrong?” I asked. “Chastise me.”

“Where to begin?” he said, spiny ear flaps flaring with amusement, the leathery skin snapping like flags near a landing dock, here in the gym where I’d been doing this exact thing – getting the shit beat out of me followed by a scathing critique, before getting back up and doing it again – all afternoon. While Tam gave me the dressing down I’d hoped I would receive, merrily outlining my personal flaws, the ways in which I was a shameful student, and my utter lack of anything resembling a sense of self-preservation, I blinked at him placidly and enjoyed feeling enough air in my lungs.

“So,” he finished with an irritated flick of his tail, “Am I going to be seeing more of you, or are you going back to hiding behind your prince’s coat?” He offered one meaty paw, which I took and hopped to my feet, suppressing the long groan that filled my chest as things cracked and popped unpleasantly inside of me. “Hell of a first session, kid.”

I rolled my shoulders, which cracked some more. “Yeah, I’ll send you a list of my days off and you can draw up a schedule.” My tongue traced the front of my teeth, which tasted coppery and bright. “Don’t call me kid, though.”

He followed me as I headed to the side of the training floor to grab a towel and scrape off the sweat and occasional spatter of blood – my own – while I continued to pretend that I didn’t want to wince with every step. “What, then?” Tam asked good-naturedly. ”Buddy doesn’t suit you. Don’t think I’d even try sweetheart.”

I snorted and shot him a pointed look, dumping the damp towel into one of the laundry bins off to the side. “You can call me sweetheart,” I tried, fluttering my eyelashes a little as I stepped into the jumpsuit I’d been wearing over my shorts and tank top.

It was a test. Mostly. A little for him, a lot for me.

To his credit, Tamcer Temahura – retired pit fighter; new gym owner; veteran of hundreds of bare knuckle brawls – only looked deeply unimpressed. “Alright, pal,” he drawled.

And I – looking up at him with his broad shoulders and gleaming red skin, those hands that had thrown me around all afternoon as his bulging body pinned me down – felt exactly nothing.

I just wasn’t sure if I’d passed my own little test or if that meant I’d failed it.

Tam tilted his head. “You want me to call in someone to help clean you up after our sessions? My assistant coach, Dreyko, will absolutely offer to help, but your face is expensive. Don’t let him try and set anything. I don’t want an angry abaya coming by because I sent back his pretty dancer bloodied up or with a crooked nose.” At my blank look, he gestured at my face, and I turned to look at myself in the glass separating the training room from the water tank where species who could breathe underwater would train.

I’d wiped most of the blood off, but there was still a livid bruise blooming across one eye. “I’m good,” I said absently, prodding at the skin that was already starting to swell. “I’ve rented out a place nearby and picked up a subdermal knitter. Just, you know, if you could avoid breaking my nose or knocking out any teeth – I don’t know if I’ve got the jawline for a crooked nose, and I’d rather not go to a clinic. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of a big deal in Radiant Ward. The tabloids would get all excited.”

Behind me, Tam laughed with a booming guffaw, shaking his head and heading over to some weight-lifting equipment he’d had me work at first before turning his attention to beating the ever-loving shit out of me. “Yeah, I know: fan club is right outside. I can hear them screaming even from in here.”

For a beat, there was nothing but deafening silence – and then the air recycler kicked on overhead, wheezing and coughing in this little grimy gym, and I burst into laughter, unable to help myself.

It was exactly what I liked about Radiant Ward here on Sozamia Station.

Creche Thiel’s calendar – by which I mean Araxis and Vivith’s calendar, and therefore my calendar – had been full before we even set foot on Sozamia. On top of managing the retrofit of the ship and arranging virtual meetings with lawyers and politicians in Xitera, we’d also had to move everyone from the ship – their long-time home – to a suite of rooms in Verdant Ward. Maybe that doesn’t sound like it would be so bad when you consider that Creche Thiel was small, and Egnax was staying back with the ship anyway, not trusting anyone to work on it unsupervised. But I quickly came to understand that wrangling three excitable children, and three older abaya I would generously describe as either ornery or particular, was its own challenge.

Avelthe and Yalrinn, who I hadn’t been allowed to meet before the Tournament, were an entire experience unto themselves: Avelthe was quick to complain about everything – from the sound the shuttle made when we undocked to the way the light glinted off the hulking form of Sozamia Station to the volume of my breathing and the sound my eyelids made when I blinked – while Yalrinn was eager to turn every situation into a chance to expound on a favoured piece of poetry or theatre. I might not have been able to speak abayan yet, but that didn’t stop Yalrinn from clasping her almost unnaturally strong hand around my wrist and holding me in place while she recited a favourite monologue in a language I couldn’t understand, beaming at me when she was done. My only strategy was to escape before that reminded her of another favourite text.

Evreni wasn’t much better, watching me like a hawk as I’d carefully packaged up samples of minerals from her lab on the ship and loaded them into the shuttle. “Do you need all of these in the next two and a half months?” I’d asked plaintively after my fifth trip between the lab and shuttle.

Her mouth had flattened, eyes narrowing. “I have told you already,” she’d sniped, and then decided in a fit of pique that she also needed me to bring three different microscopes, just in case.

So the first few days of settling in on Sozamia had been, quite frankly, a lot of that – and then my first designated personal day cropped up in 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 my day off and that I should avail 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 – our bedroom; 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 a job, 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’).