As the handler took the glaudoon away from her, he gave her a tap on the shoulder.
“Claim your victory,” he said.
Ampris lifted her arms to the crowd in the victory salute she had been taught.
They cheered her more. In the professional ring, the crowd would have showed her with coins, flowers, and torn-up betting tickets.
Today, this was good enough.
She felt numb, unsure of herself, almost detached from her surroundings. Although she watched the medics load Mobar’s body onto a floating stretcher, she still found it hard to believe that he was dead.
Ampris touched the amulet hanging around her neck. It’s over, she told herself, clinging to relief when she could find no other emotion. Finally, it was over. Now she could start a new life, filling Mobar’s position here at the school.
Overhead, the cams floated even closer, hovering almost on top of her. At the far end of the arena, the scoreboard flashed to life. Suddenly her name and identification number were posted on it, along with the highest score of the day.
Pride filled Ampris. She was school champion. She had done the impossible. No one else who fought today after her would match this achievement.
“I did it,” she whispered, grinning as she jogged out of the arena.
As she passed the starting gates, Sheir rattled the panels of hers violently. “It’s not over!” she shouted. “I will meet you in combat yet!”
Ampris didn’t even bother to look Sheir’s way. She and Sheir now belonged to different worlds. She had a feeling that never again would their paths cross.
Leaving the arena, Ampris was hustled swiftly past the chute containing the waiting graduates. Their faces held awe and admiration.
“Ampris! Victory!” they cheered to her.
She smiled at them and waved, buoyed now with what could not be happiness, yet came close.
Ahead of her, the medics pushed Mobar’s stretcher. As they all filed into the dank confines of the locker rooms, Ampris saw Mobar’s body placed inside a room and left there. No one wailed in grief. No one would. It was the way of the Bizsi Mo’ad. One lived or one died. There was no middle ground.
Only now, as Ampris sagged onto a battered wooden bench and allowed herself to surrender to her aches, did she acknowledge inwardly that she had killed a fellow Aaroun, one of her own kind. She tried to crush the guilt that swelled through her. No matter how she wished Mobar had been a Viis—for she longed to kill them as the oppressors of her people—Mobar had only been a slave under the orders of his master, as was she.
Ampris felt regret, but she would not grieve. This was survival.
Mobar’s death meant she would never have to kill again. Right then, sore and aching and weary to her bones, she knew it was worth the price.
The door to the locker room burst open, and Cosvik—head administrator of the school—came in with a medic.
Ampris swallowed and dragged herself respectfully to her feet.
Cosvik was Viis, very tall, very thin. Well into his lun-adult cycle of life, meaning he could no longer fertilize eggs, he showed a gray tinge in the skin beneath his jaws and beneath his eyes. They were a bright, harsh shade of red, and his face had no variegated shadings of color. His rill was small, with blunted spines. Ampris suspected that Cosvik had barely escaped being classified as a Reject—those Viis deemed at birth to be too ugly for inclusion in normal society.
She had seen Cosvik only twice before, and never this close. He rarely inspected the lowly trainees. He never spoke to them, any of them. He stayed in his office as a rule, and was usually only glimpsed crossing the grounds of the school compound on his way to his quarters.
The fact that he had come to her now, here in the locker room, told Ampris that her reward was at hand. This was an incredible honor.
She drew herself erect, feeling new pride ease her soreness, and bowed to him with all the finesse and grace instilled in her during her years at the palace of the Kaa.
Cosvik flicked out his tongue but otherwise did not acknowledge her. He gestured to the medic accompanying him. “Examine her quickly. What injuries does she have?”
Ampris said eagerly, “Only a cut—”
“Silence!” the medic snapped at her, and Ampris fell quiet.
Inside she raged at herself for forgetting the rules yet again. It seemed she would never learn to hold her tongue. But from birth she was indulged as the pet and companion of the sri-Kaa, encouraged to speak Viis against all rules of society, allowed to voice her opinions, expected to participate intelligently in conversations. That old habit continued to be impossible to break, although she did try.
As an instructor here, she would have to remember. She could not afford to offend Cosvik from the very start.
Also Viis, the medic scanned her with his instruments. He constantly glanced at Cosvik, seemingly more concerned about his employer than his patient. But his long-fingered hands were deft and sure as he went about his business. When he applied a bandage to her thigh, the medicine inside it soothed her pain immediately. He sprayed something across her back, and she straightened with relief.
“No serious injuries to report,” the medic said. “Very healthy, very well-conditioned young female Aaroun adult. I can assure you that her pelt will heal with minimal scarring.” As he spoke, he stroked his hand down Ampris’s arm, making her shift with annoyance. “Beautiful-quality fur.”
Cosvik lifted his rill in satisfaction and flicked out his tongue. His red eyes gleamed at her. “Most satisfactory,” he said.
Basking in his approval, Ampris puffed out her chest but did not quite dare smile.
“Clean her up. Seal her cuts. Make her look presentable,” Cosvik said. “I’ll initiate the paperwork for the private sale. This is going to be a splendid coup for us.” He glanced again at Ampris, who was staring at him in open-mouthed dismay. “Well done, graduate. Today, you’ve more than repaid the cost of acquiring and training you. Even the cost of replacing a most adequate instructor. Well done.”
With another flick of his tongue, he turned away.
Horrified, unable to believe what she’d just heard, Ampris took a step after him. “But—”
The medic shoved her down on the bench hard enough to make her teeth jolt together. “Silence!” he snapped, his voice harsh with outrage. “You fool, be quiet or I shall have the handlers beat you.”
Ampris barely heard his threat. She couldn’t believe it. All her hopes were crumbling around her.
“But I am to stay here as an instructor,” she said. “I was told—”
“Forget what you were told,” the medic said without sympathy. “Anyone who fights as well as you has to be sold. You’re going for a fortune, young Aaroun. Galard Stables is buying you. The Blues, the best privately owned gladiators in the empire. You should be proud of yourself.”
But Ampris felt no pride at all. Her hopes, her dreams, her strategy had shattered yet again. She had killed Mobar for nothing. It would have been far better if she had defeated Sheir, and paid that braggart back for countless humiliations. Staring at her hands, Ampris clenched them slowly. When would she learn to stop trying? When would she ever give up and finally accept defeat? She had no will of her own in this life. She would never belong to herself. She would never be the master of her own fate. Again and again, the Viis plucked her from her path and threw her aside. And now she was going into the very thing she had most dreaded, had tried so hard to avoid.
Ampris sat there, while the medic finished his work, and battled to hold back her tears of defeat and bitterness.
CHAPTER•TWO
Forty-seven days of spaceship travel, locked in a passenger cubicle since she was now too valuable to ride in a cargo pod, another seventeen days of quarantine to survive her inoculations and to pass customs, then a final transferal of deed and title on the shipping dock of a strange port city on a strange world called Fariance.
Ampris stood patiently in her restraint cables, ignoring the Bizsi Mo’ad handl
er who was finishing the last items of business with the Galard representative. Nothing they said or did was of interest to her. She stared at the odd sky overhead, noting that it was pale lavender with fluffy white clouds tinged a smoky blue shade underneath. A dim, hazy sun hung low in the afternoon sky.
The air was cool and crisp, like autumn descending into winter. Ampris shivered lightly beneath her fur, missing the hot sunshine of Viisymel already.
A tap on her shoulder pulled her from her thoughts.
“Pay attention,” the Viis from Galard Stables said to her. He spoke the abiru patois rapidly.
Ampris glanced around and saw that the handler from Bizsi Mo’ad was gone. Not caring, she backed her ears. The school was behind her now. She must look ahead and adapt to this newest life.
“You are called Ampris,” the Viis said. He did not inflect it as a question, yet he waited as though expecting an answer.
“Yes,” Ampris replied. She kept her voice low and submissive, because she wore a restraint collar. He carried the transmitter on his belt now, she noticed.
“What is your age?”
Impatience jabbed her. Hadn’t he examined her paperwork? All her statistics should be on the invoice in his hands, but she knew better than to say so. This interrogation was a test of some kind. The Viis always loved to play games with their slaves.
Swallowing a sigh, Ampris said, “I am seventeen in Aaroun years, fully adult in weight and height. I am vi-adult in Viis—”
He pressed the transmitter, and her collar jolted a quick burst of energy to her vocal cords, silencing her.
“Don’t do that again,” he said.
Ampris bowed her head at once in submission, although inside she battled feelings of rebellion. Why was it wrong for any member of the abiru folk to display intelligence? Why was it so forbidden to make comparisons between abiru and Viis? It wasn’t as though any of the abiru races had much in common with their Viis masters. The Viis controlled everyone and everything. Why, then, were the Viis always so touchy, so defensive?
Were they afraid?
With sudden insight, she flicked up her gaze to study the Viis male before her.
He was not as tall as most males, but he had the fashionable proportions and gracefulness of movement considered so pleasing in the Viis. His rill folds lay thick and luxuriant over a tall collar of engraved brass. His pebble-textured skin was shaded in attractive hues of gold, bronze, and green. Large, intelligent yellow eyes stared at Ampris now without betraying emotion, still evaluating her, still measuring her.
He did not look afraid. He looked assured and competent. Ampris told herself to forget her fanciful thoughts. This was no time to philosophize. She had to pay attention.
He flicked out his tongue. “At Galard, you will do as you are told. You will be respectful of your superiors at all times. You will train hard. You will fight successfully. Those are your duties. If you complete them well, you will be rewarded well. If you are lazy, insolent, or cause trouble, you will be punished. If you lose repeatedly in competition, you will be sold. Is this understood?”
He spoke clearly, yet without disdain. There seemed to be no arrogance in him; he addressed her as a rational being, not as a slave kept only to do his bidding. Ampris found herself liking him, although she immediately crushed such a feeling. Perhaps he was as decent as he seemed. Perhaps he would be a good master, but she did not know that yet.
“Yes,” she answered. “I understand my duties.”
“Good. You seem to be an intelligent Aaroun. That is in your favor. Are you willing to learn, Ampris?”
She backed her ears. “I know my drills—”
Seeing his eyes narrow, she stopped in mid-sentence. Unsure how she had erred, she dared say nothing more. He stared at her in a silence that grew uncomfortable, and when next he spoke his tone was colder: “I have watched your training vids as well as your graduation combat at Bizsi Mo’ad. It was my suggestion to the school that you fight an instructor, and without the assistance of your conditioning modulator. You passed that test well enough.”
Astonished, Ampris stared at him. Did he have that much influence? So much that he had only to make a request, and the school modified its combat evaluations to suit him?
But then, he did work with the famous Blues, the most successful gladiator team in the games.
“You show considerable promise,” he said to her now. “But your training is only beginning. There is much still for you to learn.”
Ampris met his eyes. “What I learn, I do not forget.”
“Come then.” He turned and lifted his hand in a wave. Ampris heard the engine of a transport start up in the distance.
Moments later, the craft rumbled up to them and halted, hovering above the ground. It was heavy and utilitarian, larger than the city transports she was used to seeing in Vir and Malraaket. Dark brown dust coated its undercarriage, partially obscuring the crest of its owner. She did not recognize the coat of arms and knew then that Lord Galard’s estates and title were entirely colonial. He was not a member of the Twelve Houses. That meant his lineage would not be considered distinguished by Viisymel standards, and he would not be received at the imperial court. But with his obvious wealth, perhaps he did not care.
Ampris told herself she had no business judging her newest owner, whom she would probably never meet or see.
The Viis trainer now looked at Ampris again, as though weighing something. Then he said, “I am Halehl, chief trainer to Galard Stables.”
Awed that she had been collected by someone so important, Ampris told herself she should have been more respectful. She bowed in silence.
He seemed pleased by her gesture of respect. “You have been trained in court manners, I see.”
“Yes, Master Halehl.”
“Very attractive. You were once the pet of the sri-Kaa, were you not?”
Ampris suddenly had to struggle to keep from snarling. “Yes.”
“I thought so. Your provenance is muddled, but I recognized you from old newsvids. Well, pretty manners will not help you in the arena. You will have to be quick, well-trained, and savage. Is this understood?”
“Yes, Master Halehl.”
He opened the cargo doors at the back of the transport. “Climb inside.”
Ampris obeyed, her restraint cables making her clumsy, and Halehl shut the doors behind her. She heard the security bolts engage with swift thuds, and her heart sank. At last she was here, ready to begin her new life as a killer. Halehl’s decency only seemed to make things worse.
As soon as he climbed aboard, he spoke a soft, quick command to the Gorlican driver, and the transport lurched forward.
They were slow to clear the dock traffic and congestion, but once they finally headed down the streets of this city, very little traffic could be seen.
The avenues were broad and free of pollution, lined with stately villas spaced well apart. Shops stood clustered in their own separate districts. Tall trees with spindly trunks and strange puffs of foliage at their tops swayed lightly in the cold breeze. The air smelled metallic and clean—very foreign to her nostrils. She found herself missing the heat of Viisymel’s arid plains, the bright sunshine, the slow turgid rivers that smelled of reeds and fish.
The transport crossed one canal flowing straight, narrow, and green between a row of tall buildings, but Ampris saw no other water. Buildings spread farther apart as they reached the outskirts, then they were heading into rural countryside. For nearly an hour the transport flew past rolling meadows bordered by thickets of undergrowth and tall trees. Ampris found it strange that they met no other traffic on the road. Saw no dwellings, passed no village clusters. This was an empty world, Ampris thought. From her old lessons, she knew that not all the colony worlds were heavily populated. Sometimes, the Viis established only a central port, with a governor, a military station, and little else to hold their claim on a planet. Ampris wondered what the native folk of Fariance were like. She had seen none yet. Perhap
s there were none on this cold world with its muted colors and dim sun. Perhaps the Viis had long ago killed them all or deported them to work elsewhere in the empire.
To Ampris, this world seemed an unimportant place for the most popular gladiator stable to be based.
The sun was sinking to the horizon by the time the transport passed through gates that were paneled with tall iron spears. Carved beasts of snarling fangs and extended claws stood atop the gateposts. Then they were winding along a lane bordered on both sides by heavy woods. The ground rose in a long sloping hill, and halfway up the woods stopped. Ampris saw a villa stretching across the crest of the hill.
In the murky remnants of sunshine, the building stood gray, square, and solid—its architectural lines unfamiliar to her. Towers flanked it, and at the rear she glimpsed a tall, solid wall enclosing a compound of some kind.
At the front, the house was aproned by elaborate gardens of low, clipped hedges planted in intricate patterns of knot and curlicue. Stone-paved walkways curled among the tiny hedges in pleasing patterns. But there were no flowers of any kind, no fragrance beyond that of tilled soil, shrubbery, and trees. Ampris sniffed, and found the garden a peculiar and unappealing vista.
The transport made its way around to the rear of the massive house—much larger up close than it had seemed from a distance—and lurched through a gate into an enclosed courtyard.
Once it parked on hover and Ampris was let out of the cargo hold, she stood quietly while her restraints were unlocked. Then she stretched fully, taking pleasure in unrestricted freedom of movement for the first time in too long.
From an upstairs window overlooking the courtyard, she saw movement and a glimmer of a face watching her. Then the watcher was gone, and Ampris wondered if she’d imagined it.
Halehl pointed at the upstairs windows rowed at regular intervals around the courtyard. “The fighters’ quarters,” he said. “Yours are at the end, over there.” He pointed at a window, and Ampris found herself suddenly astonished.
“No barracks?” she blurted out before she could stop herself.
The Crimson Claw Page 3
