Thratia’d clearly gone a little soft in the head when she’d ordered this place built. It was no sort of arena, no testing ground for her warriors. Anyone standing on the sandy floor was just as likely to get tangled up in events as those being tested. A few good balconies wouldn’t have gone amiss. Maybe a nice little dais from which she could lounge and observe her loyal sycophants fight for her favor.
But no one, not even Thratia, put walls this thick around a practice arena. Nor bothered to band the room’s singular door with hard iron. This room wasn’t built for fighting, it was built for containing. For dying.
For him.
His throat went dry as the sand under his boots. He stopped mid-stride, caught the smug look on Aella’s face as she watched his realization take hold, and decided not to give the little witch the satisfaction.
Decided, most assuredly, not to think about the fact that Thratia had to order this thing built the day he left Aransa – the day she discovered what he was capable of – in order to have it prepared for him now. Busy, busy bee.
“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?!” He threw his arms out in welcome and strode forward, owning every step he took with a mud-eating grin. He certainly ignored the derisive snort from Misol as she shut and bolted the door behind him.
Aella was wearing a civilian-styled tunic over a long skirt this time, both in refreshing shades of rare gemstones. Callia still wore her white coat, grubby at the hem, but he ignored her. Focused on Aella’s even stare. Callia had been neutralized – by Aella’s own hand. Whatever fear that woman once inspired in him, whatever tortures she’d visited upon his scarred flesh, she was no risk to him now, broken as she was. He could only hope that one day his own fears would be as beaten down as her body was now.
“You have come unprepared for our session,” Aella said, cool as ever, one blonde little brow perked in probably-faked annoyance.
“My spirit is always ready for the pleasure of your company.” Feigning clumsiness, he stumbled a step from the table and kicked a plume of fine sand at Callia. The broken woman shrieked and tumbled backward, clawing at her eyes with both hands. Aella swore and dropped to her knees to aid her. Detan took the moment to get a look at the instruments on the table while being unobserved. Well, mostly unobserved. He felt Misol’s stare on his back, but the doppel said nothing to alert Aella to his intentions.
Aella’d brought the usual tools of her trade. Scalpel, flint stone, pliers, bags of selium and empty sacks as well. Rope and leather and other gleaming things that looked threatening but he couldn’t name. In the name of research, that girl carried a kit that’d make a professional torturer wet themselves with glee. Skies above, she probably had some potion in there designed to make a man wet himself against his will.
There was no sight of the syringe that carried his usual injection of diviner blood and selium. He tried to ignore the fact, he really did, but after missing his dose the night, before anxiety was creeping in. A presence he had come to expect, invisible but always there, was slowly slipping away. A certain heaviness to the air, a tactile sensation every time he drew a breath. That injection had made him aware of all the tiny particles of selium suspended in the air, even if he couldn’t reach them, and losing them now was like having swaddling stripped away and being left bare-assed in a cold wind.
He swallowed his anxiety, recalling one of the meditative exercises Pelkaia had practiced with him in the time immediately after he’d set Aransa’s sky on fire: think of a singular goal, and breathe evenly. The goal was easy enough – get that injection. That first part was making the second markedly harder.
“Try to watch yourself, you clumsy oaf,” Aella said after she’d settled Callia’s whimpers and given the woman a metal mixing rod to draw in the dust with. Callia shot him little glares every so often, hard to see through the sunken skin shriveling up her face like an old plum, but each one of those little glares he took small pleasure in.
Should have been ashamed of that but, well. Callia had tortured him. And Detan had never been above small pettiness.
“A thousand apologies.” He held his palms to the glaring sky and bowed over them expansively. Already the heat was beginning to draw prickles of sweat between his shoulder blades. He considered asking Aella if she’d swap clothes with him, then decided better of it. She didn’t appear in the mood to tolerate his antics too long, and he knew from hard experience that pushing her now could lead to greater punishment down the road.
And anyway, his one goal wasn’t about being comfortable. It was about getting that injection. And finding out what had happened to Clink and Forge. So, fine, two goals. But Pelkaia wasn’t here to scold him about lack of focus, so to the pits with it.
“You should apologize to whoever made you that suit, it won’t survive this. Skies above, Honding, You’ve been given the run of the city. The servants answer to your needs. Did you not think you could ask for something a little less formal?”
He winced, subtly embarrassed that he hadn’t thought about the fact that their training sessions were quite intense, and he was likely to ruin all the fine stitch work that been put into what he wore now – not to mention stain that ash-grey fabric with sweat. But, more importantly, Aella’d let slip that the servants would treat him as the Lord Thratia was parading him around as. Handy, that little piece of information. Servants would no doubt have less compunction about being forthright with him than his current companions, and anyway, they always had the best gossip. Considering the pits-cursed nightmares he’d dragged himself through over the last few months, he was in desperate need of a juicy story or two to wind down with. Something with an illicit affair being walked in on.
“I wanted nothing but the best for our little chats, Aella dear. You do know how I look forward to them so.”
The corners of her lips twitched – something like a smile, something like a smirk. When he’d first met her, minding his leash on Callia’s airship of nightmares, he’d thought that expression was a smile. Normal little girls smiled when someone cracked a joke, after all. But Aella was no normal girl. She was cold straight through, worse if what Misol had intimated was true – not cold at all. Just… hollowed out inside. Empty. That lip twitch could mean anything. Annoyance, amusement. Pleasure at having witnessed someone – anyone at all – score a verbal point. She did seem to like to spar with him, though her patience with such things had grown thinner lately.
If she even had patience. If Misol’s theory was to be believed, then Aella was a walking blank slate. But that just couldn’t be right. The girl had passion, drive. They were just pointed in what Detan felt were rather unfortunate directions. He wondered, just for a moment, if he could manage to reorient those passions. Harness her drive for something that didn’t end in him sweating blood for data.
Callia shuffled in the dirt, and those thoughts evaporated like so much mist in the desert.
“Let us begin,” she said, and reached for a bladder of selium.
Detan made a show of stripping off his coat, laying it with care on a blank space on the table, and then rolling up his sleeves. He paced, cutting lines in the sand with his new, too-shiny boots, working up a proper coating of dust. Never could trust a Scorched man with shiny shoes. But the dust just wouldn’t stick. Thratia’d had them polished sleeker than a crow’s back.