The Crimson Claw

by Deborah Chester

  Ampris slowly looked up and met his eyes. Only now did she realize what he was actually telling her. She drew in a sharp breath, and her whole body came alive again.

  “Elrabin!” she said.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the running water still thundering into the trough and gestured for her to keep her voice down.

  Ampris reached out and gripped the fancy front of his coat. “What have you done?”

  He tipped back his head proudly, letting mirth dance in his eyes. “That’s right,” he said. “I found you a network, just like you been asking for. We’re tapped in. All you do is ask for something, and my contact will track it down.”

  She felt as though she’d already swallowed the boost. Jumping off the massage table, she said, “Can she get into the palace archives?”

  “I’ve got a request in,” he said. “It takes time. She’s good but she’s slow. Too many precautions maybe, but if she gets caught she gets burned big time.”

  “I can wait,” Ampris said, excited. “This is perfect. If she’s Myal, then she’ll have access to all kinds of knowledge—even the—”

  “Now slack yourself, you,” Elrabin said. “I just said she’s slow. I don’t talk to her direct, see? We gotta keep this simple and clear, ’cause the messages get passed along through a lot of checkpoints. We can’t trace straight to her, and she can’t trace straight to us.”

  Ampris didn’t care. Her hope was bouncing high, right along with her spirits. “She must contact Bish, and—”

  “It don’t work that way,” Elrabin said, twitching his ears in exasperation. “It ain’t that quick, and it ain’t direct. I told you, it’s complicated.”

  “But it’s there, and we can find out things now.”

  “If you’re patient,” he said. “If you don’t expect too much. I thought you’d be happy, yeah, but not go over the ceiling.”

  She pounded him on the shoulder. “It’s a start,” she said happily. “I feel like finally we’re getting somewhere. Good work!”

  “Don’t expect too much,” he warned her.

  A thud on the door made them all freeze in place. “Time!” the guard on the other side called. “Fifteen-minute warning.”

  Elrabin was the first to react. Darting over to the trough, he shut off the water, picked up a sponge, and rushed back to Ampris to start cleaning the blood-splattered fur on her arms. The vidcasters preferred they not spiff up until the final interviews, but Ampris liked to enter the arena clean. Besides, she knew it justified their having run so much water. Sometimes the handlers got suspicious and put meters on the spigots to monitor the water usage.

  The door opened without warning, making her start. Elrabin gripped her arm tighter than ever and went on scrubbing the dried indigo blood away.

  “Must have been a fast slaughter out there,” he muttered, finishing her left arm and starting on her right. “Shouldn’t be done this soon.”

  Ampris was looking at the door and didn’t reply. Halehl stood there, cloaked in Galard blue striped with black chevrons. Behind him, hubbub raged in the tunnel as handlers and subtrainers led gladiators back and forth on leashes, struggling to keep fighters apart as they roared and clashed with each other.

  Halehl stepped inside, and the guards shut the door behind him, thrusting back a scrawny Kelth slave who was trying to jump high enough to see into the room past Halehl’s shoulder.

  Readjusting his cloak, which had been pulled slightly awry, Halehl swept his cold Viis eyes over them, taking note of the water cup in Ampris’s hand, the clean cloak folded and ready on the stool, the bundled towels on the massage table, the wet sponge in Elrabin’s hand, the dark streaks of moisture on Ampris’s fur, the water droplets glistening still in the bottom of the trough.

  “How is the shoulder?” Halehl asked, speaking abiru in his precise, almost courteous way.

  Elrabin released Ampris and backed away with his head lowered respectfully. He went to stand beside Okal, who was fluttering his tentacles and rolling his eyes with his bulbous head pointed at the floor in obeisance.

  Ampris answered the trainer’s question. “I’ve pulled it again. Nothing serious. Okal’s patches are helping.”

  Halehl pulled off one of the patches and sniffed it with a quick flicker of his tongue. “This is not a standard drug.” His rill reddened and rose behind his head as he glared at Okal. “You fool! She could be disqualified for this.”

  “Simples,” Okal replied, his voice barely audible. “Simples as the natural remedies always best. Is my—”

  “I haven’t authorized any of your natural remedies.” Halehl pulled off the other patch and flung it on the floor. Lifting his hand-link, he spoke into it rapidly, “Send me Fuvein, now. Don’t make a fuss about it. Never mind Omtat’s gash. His slave can stop the bleeding. I want Fuvein, and tell him to be discreet.”

  Ampris opened her mouth to protest, to assure Halehl that she didn’t need the team’s official physician. Okal’s methods suited her far better than Viis medications, which sometimes had side effects that clashed with her Aaroun physiology. But Halehl’s glaring eyes and stiff rill warned her to be silent. Her well-being was his business, not her own. She knew she had no say in the matter.

  Halehl turned in a circle and began to pace. He flicked his fingers at Elrabin. “Resume your work. You,” he said, pointing at Okal, “get out.”

  The Phivean gathered his things with several tentacles and left as fast as his awkward, stumpy legs would take him. As he passed Ampris, his beaked mouth opened as though he would speak, but he said nothing.

  Distressed, Ampris watched him go, wondering if he would be punished, wondering if he would be taken from her little retinue. She liked Okal, who was gentle and harmless. He only wanted to help. He did not deserve to be hurt.

  Halehl was still pacing, nervous and increasingly impatient when the physician did not instantly appear. “Abiru potions. Abiru quackery,” he muttered in Viis, fuming. He glared at Ampris. “You know better than to allow this. I ought to have all of you whipped for it.”

  Her eyes widened. Perhaps he didn’t realize that he was still speaking to her in Viis. She understood him perfectly, but she realized that she must not show it. When angered, the Viis could be so touchy about unimportant things. Why did they care so much if a slave knew their language? Why were they always so insulted?

  They obsessed over stupid, meaningless details, and let their machinery and systems fall apart around them. How long did they expect the glorious Viis empire to continue like this?

  The door opened, and Fuvein hurried inside. A chime from the still-active wall link showed new text running across the screen. Ampris glanced at it, and her heart sank in dismay. They should not have left that on.

  Halehl noticed it and swore in Viis at Fuvein. “The odds have changed again. How many people saw you come in here?”

  “Everyone with eyes,” Fuvein replied. He was a green-skinned Viis in his lun-adult cycle, no longer fertile but still active and alert. Ampris knew him to be skilled at his work, but impersonal and detached from his abiru patients. He met Halehl’s gaze now, his own calm and unruffled. “The tunnel is nearly blocked with a crowd. I almost didn’t get through.”

  “Look at that,” Halehl said in Viis, pointing furiously at the patches on the floor.

  Fuvein bent slightly to stare at them, but he didn’t pick them up. Elrabin darted forward and handed them to the physician, who still would not touch them.

  Fuvein’s tongue flickered out. “The Phivean’s handiwork, I see.”

  “Illegal!” Halehl spit out. “If she is disqualified for this, now, in the final round, Galard will lose a fortune.”

  Good, Ampris thought in the depths of her heart. Such a loss will be good for our lord master and owner.

  The two Viis went on talking as though neither Ampris nor Elrabin were in the room.

  “You are going to burst a vein if you do not calm yourself,” Fuvein said calmly. “It is you who needs trea
tment, not the Aaroun.”

  Halehl puffed out his air sacs, his rill stiffer and redder than ever. “Do a test on her, quickly. See if you can mask it.”

  “There isn’t much time.”

  “Then hurry.”

  When Fuvein unsnapped his scanner and approached her, Ampris backed up.

  Fuvein’s eyes dilated in irritation. “Now, Ampris, don’t be difficult,” he said, speaking the basic abiru patois. “Don’t show your teeth to me. This won’t hurt.”

  She stood still, because she had been whipped once for trying to bite him. The whipping had been brutal enough to keep her out of two competitions. She had not forgotten the pain, or the lesson taught her: Halehl might pamper her to keep her in good fighting condition, but no matter how her popularity swelled with the public, she had to obey the rules. And the supreme rule of all was that no abiru slave ever attacked a Viis, for any reason, under any provocation.

  The scanner hummed over her, pausing a long while at her shoulder. “The muscle tear is healing,” Fuvein reported. “The inflammation is down. She makes good progress.”

  “What about the patch? How large a dosage went into her system?”

  Fuvein made a little humming sound of his own and shut off his scanner. “Topical application only, maybe a few millimeters. It’s a very rudimentary—”

  “But will it disqualify her?” Halehl insisted.

  Fuvein did not answer. Instead he pulled out a small, tube-shaped device no larger than an Aaroun finger, and pressed it against her shoulder where one of the patches had been. A zinging sensation hit her skin.

  She flinched, and Fuvein moved the device to where the second patch had been. It zapped her a second time. Ampris didn’t flinch this time, but she had to struggle to swallow a growl.

  Fuvein stepped back and turned to Halehl with a smile. “I’ve freeze-burned away the affected skin layers.”

  Halehl approached Ampris to examine her for himself. The spots were beginning to burn like fire.

  “Don’t rub her fur,” Fuvein said in warning as Halehl reached toward her. “It will fall out.”

  Halehl swore and gestured at Elrabin. “Glue it, quickly! She’s got to be harnessed and ready to go.”

  Elrabin scurried to obey him while Ampris glared at both Viis. “The freeze mark will show when I’m scanned,” she said, struggling to keep her exasperation from her voice.

  Fuvein turned away from her, ignoring her remark. He and Halehl conferred a moment longer with their heads together.

  Elrabin returned to spray her shoulder with the glue. The smell made her sneeze, and Elrabin swore at her.

  “Hold still,” he whispered, spraying again, then blowing gently on her fur to dry the glue in a way that looked natural. “Freeze burns wear off in a few minutes. Fuvein knows what he’s doing. He’s been slipping illegal stuff past the qualifier for years.”

  “You,” Halehl said loudly.

  Elrabin spun away from Ampris like he’d been shot. “Yes, master?”

  “Put the harness on her. Get her weapons. Daggers and parvallehs. This will be a finale no one will forget.”

  Elrabin bowed low and turned away, leaving Ampris standing there wide-eyed. The parvalleh was indeed the ancient Aaroun weapon of war, evolving gradually through history into ceremonial usage. In primitive times, it had been used to crack open the skulls of sacrificial victims. In peaceful times, it had been used to crush the grain sheaves at harvest ceremonies. Now it was used to entertain the Viis masses.

  Once Fuvein had left the room and slipped past the guards who held back the jostling crowd outside, Halehl approached Ampris. “You and Ylea are both able to swing the parvallehs with one hand. No one has ever seen the hammers fought with in this way before, not in public competition. It will be exciting for the crowd. It will make a newsworthy spectacle. It will please Lord Galard, who is in the audience today. I’ve already spoken to Ylea. She knows what to do. You work with her, Ampris. Follow her lead.”

  Ampris’s heart sank. She knew what that meant. Ylea would take her out there and tell her nothing. But there was no point in protesting. “Yes, Master Halehl,” she said.

  He met her gaze, his own boring in hard and cold, right to the core of her. “Do well, Ampris. Much depends on you today. Do not fail me.”

  She said nothing at all, only nodded. At last he swung away and left, glancing at Elrabin one last time.

  “Hurry,” he said. “Get her ready.”

  As soon as he was gone, Ampris let out a roar of pent-up anger and kicked the stool across the room. “That—”

  “Hush, Goldie,” Elrabin said in warning. He rushed to pull out the hip harness and chains, tossing them on the floor while he rummaged for the designated weapons. “Don’t waste your temper in here. Save it for the arena.”

  “Why does he do that? Why?” Ampris fumed. “He always tells her the strategy, never me. Why does he think she will share any instructions with me?”

  “She’s team leader,” Elrabin said, fitting the harness around her and buckling it tight into place. “But you’re making good progress on taking that spot. You just keep at it, see?”

  Ampris growled as she picked up her dagger and fitted it into her belt.

  Elrabin checked her wrist guards, muttered about one, and replaced it. Lacing it tight, he said, “You know why Halehl’s acting like his tail’s been twisted, don’t you?”

  She didn’t answer, busy as she was pulling on her glove with her teeth, but Elrabin kept on talking, “Because Galard’s got two or three hundred thousand credits riding on the finale.”

  Ampris dropped the glove and stared at him in disbelief. “What?”

  Elrabin tried to act nonchalant, but his ears were twitching. “You heard me.”

  “Three hundred thousand? But that’s a fortune. That’s—” She stopped, unable to compare it to anything. She knew that it cost aristocrats that much a year to live at court, but the idea of someone’s putting that much stake on one bet boggled her mind.

  “Once he bet a million ducats, at four-to-one odds, and won,” Elrabin said. “He’s one of the biggest gamblers in the empire. And he has great luck. Now you see why Halehl’s rill is upside down? He’s put you and Ylea together as a pair, talked you up on the vidcasts, and old Galard has plunked down a fortune.”

  “He is a foolish male indeed,” Ampris said, thinking of all that could go wrong. “What if—”

  “Hey. Don’t get your fur in a twist,” Elrabin said, giving her a soothing pat. “It ain’t your problem if he wins or loses.”

  “But if I fail—after all, Ylea and I have never fought with the parvallehs in a paired fight before.” She drew in a nervous breath, her ears flattening to her skull. “Why does he want to try something new and unpracticed at such a time?”

  “It’s called gambling,” Elrabin said, flinging her cloak around her shoulders and twisting the catch. “You don’t risk on the tried and true. You risk on the risk, see?”

  “No, I do not see.”

  “It ain’t your problem.” Elrabin stepped back from her and looked her over with approval. “If you win, our owner and trainer both get fat pockets. If you lose, they don’t. Why should you care? You still get fed, either way.”

  “I could lose my head if I fail,” she muttered, wishing Elrabin hadn’t told her about this. “Halehl told me the first day he would sell me if I don’t win. Now, with so much at stake—”

  “Goldie, Goldie, don’t you ever learn?” Elrabin came over and gave her an affectionate rub between her ears. “He bet half a million credits on you for your very first fight. At three-to-one odds. He tripled his money the first day of the season. You’ve already paid for his expenses on the whole team.”

  “Oh.”

  She digested that, her head spinning at the amounts Elrabin was throwing around. Truly the Viis were mad, all of them.

  The guards threw open the door and looked in. “Time.”

  Her heart started racing and she forgot
about the bet. Elrabin struggled to pick up the case containing her parvalleh.

  Behind them on the wall, the vid chimed an announcement. Ampris glanced at the screen and saw that all betting had been closed on her fight. She took a deep breath, trying to rally her courage and calm her nerves. It was time to concentrate on her business, on the fight to come, on surviving it.

  “Good victory, Goldie,” Elrabin whispered, following the ritual he always did.

  Ampris touched the clear stone of her Eye of Clarity and made her own swift prayers. Then, with head high and gaze straight ahead, she strode out through the crowd that surged to get at her past the guards struggling to hold them back. Like a queen she walked through the jostling, the yelling, and the blazing lights of the vidcams.

  CHAPTER•NINE

  In the starting gate, Ampris and Elrabin found Ylea and Ruar already waiting for them.

  Ylea, towering massively over everyone else, was pacing back and forth, snarling and clanking the stout chain that hung from her harness.

  Halehl appeared, distinctive in his blue and black striped cloak, his rill standing stiff behind his head. With his own hands he chained them together, Ylea on the left and Ampris on the right, testing every link until he appeared satisfied, then shortening the length by half.

  Ylea pulled away, snarling in protest. Her eyes blazed with madness. Foam dripped from the corners of her mouth. “No,” she said gutturally, pulling on the chain. “No!”

  “We can’t maneuver this close,” Ampris said, bracing herself against Ylea’s tugs. Ylea was normally hyped for combat, but right now she looked completely out of her mind. Seeing her like this, Ampris felt a finger of fear slide up her spine.

  “Please, Master Halehl,” Ampris said. “We need enough room to swing properly.”

  “You will attack first,” Halehl said to them. “No matter what it takes, whether you are set to go or not. You must attack first. A secondary bet is riding on that. Do you understand?”

  Ylea growled and snorted, flecks of spittle flying.