The Crimson Claw

by Deborah Chester

  “Yes. She lives here still, in the same tenement as my mate and I. She has the healing arts, which she taught me. Now she teaches them to my erizana, my last-born daughter.”

  “I wish I could meet her,” Ampris said wistfully, feeling a longing for all that she had lost when she was taken from her mother at birth. “I wish I could meet all your family.”

  “So do I, Ampris,” Fula said with kindness. “But that is impossible. You belong to the Blues. You are not permitted the freedom we common workers know. Even your Elrabin comes and goes wearing a surveillance strap on his arm. It is a shame for you to live this way.”

  Ampris backed her ears. She did not want to be pitied. “Someday, all the abiru folk will be able to come and go as we please,” she said.

  “Is that your dream?” Fula asked. “It is a good dream, Ampris. Freedom is something to be cherished. But it will not come for you and me.”

  Ampris didn’t want to hear such pessimism in Fula’s voice. “It might,” she said stubbornly.

  “Perhaps. My dream is for my daughter to become a medic. Such aspirations are not allowed now. But perhaps by the time she is grown, the regulations will be loosened. That is my dream,” Fula said. “Small steps taken over long years.”

  She bent down and briefly allowed her fingers to skim across the surface of Ampris’s Eye of Clarity. “I have told my mother of this necklace you wear. She says you are blessed to have it.”

  “Yes,” Ampris said quietly. “I think I am.”

  “Now you will rest. I can hear the medic coming.”

  Because of the restraint cables, Ampris could not reach out to grip Fula’s hand. She lifted her head instead. “Will you come again tomorrow? Will you talk to me some more about the ways of our people?”

  “Better than that,” Fula said. Again she glanced about warily, then stepped closer. “If you promise to be very, very careful with it, I will record a data crystal for you. With the old tellings and perhaps with some of the prayer songs of my clan.”

  Gratitude swelled inside Ampris. Her eyes widened, and she thought she might burst with joy. “Oh, Fula—”

  “Hush now. Hush. Say no more of it, for it is forbidden.”

  “I understand,” Ampris said quickly, knowing the risks involved.

  “You will not betray us, for you are one of the good in this life,” Fula said. “But take care.”

  “I will. I promise no one will ever trace it back to you.”

  “Then it will be arranged,” Fula said. “If your servant is trustworthy, I will give it to him. Here in the ward, you have no place of concealment.”

  “Perfect,” Ampris said. She could not believe her luck.

  Fula gave her a brisk nod and turned away.

  “Thank you,” Ampris called after her.

  But the medic was coming in, a tall Viis male in a smock embroidered with his family crest. Following him came an abiru attendant who would do the actual procedures on any abiru patients who needed them.

  Fula flicked her ears, showing that she heard, but she hurried away from Ampris without looking back.

  In the following days, Ampris rarely saw Fula. Or if she did, there never seemed to be an opportunity to speak privately. When Ampris was released from the clinic, one of the subtrainers came to collect her, along with several burly Toth bodyguards and Elrabin. Bustled swiftly into the closed cargo hold of a transport to avoid the hovering news-cams, Ampris had no chance to tell the Aaroun nurse goodbye.

  They went straight to the spaceport, shuttled up to a ship, and departed for Fariance.

  Ampris was shut away in a cargo cabin under tight security, with the smelly, brutish Toths on constant guard for her protection. She noticed that the ship’s crew came by frequently on various pretexts. Sometimes other passengers wandered past her cabin. All were sent away, but Ampris could hear their voices outside her door.

  “A big celebrity you be now,” Elrabin told her proudly. Grinning, he used his hands to slick back his ears, then blew on his fingers in admiration.

  “Stop it,” Ampris said, uncomfortable with her new status. “I ruined our team—”

  “No, you stop it,” he broke in sharply. “None of that, Goldie. Ylea went rogue, and you did what you had to do. Master Halehl ain’t blaming you. No one’s blaming you. So don’t waste time blaming yourself.”

  She told herself he was right, but she still felt guilty. “Ylea was driven to it,” she said. “Will I go mad, like her, eventually?”

  Elrabin rubbed his muzzle. “Don’t think so. It was all the conditioning they did on her that got to her. You know, the collar—”

  “I know,” Ampris said, fingering her own.

  “Hey,” Elrabin said, tugging at one of her ears. “You’re wearing Lord Galard’s cartouche now. Pretty, ain’t it?”

  She backed her ears. “I’m team leader.”

  “It’s a sweet spot to be,” he said eagerly. “Wait till you see your new quarters. Word is, they’re being redone just for you. Ylea’s tastes were bizarre, see? Nothing you’d like.”

  Ampris was glad the quarters were being changed. She wanted no reminders of her dead teammate.

  “Hey,” he said again, to get her attention. “I’ll tell you something about old Ylea that you don’t know. She wouldn’t fight when she first became a Blue. They bought her for her size, see? But she didn’t have it in her. Omtat says she’d been brought up free—”

  “Free!” Ampris said in astonishment. “Impossible. All Aarouns are born slaves.”

  “Ain’t so, Goldie,” Elrabin told her. He tilted his head to one side. “You born in the cities, sure. You born outside, out in the wild places, who finds you? Who puts a registration implant in your arm? You think the Viis are going to round up every stray that’s out there?”

  Her eyes went wide. She turned the idea over and over in her mind, astonished by it. Exhilaration began to build inside her. “I never knew this. You never mentioned it before.”

  “Thought you knew. For someone who used to hang in the palace, Goldie, you can sure be ignorant at times.”

  “It’s called being sheltered,” Ampris replied icily. “We didn’t grow up watching public vids.”

  “Shame,” Elrabin said, her sarcasm going right past him. “Anyway, I hear there’s whole villages on the home-world—on Viisymel—where abiru folk live free. They move around a lot like—like, uh . . .”

  “Nomads,” Ampris supplied.

  Elrabin yipped. “Yeah, like nomads. Gotta keep ahead of Viis patrol sweeps. But that ain’t hard. Anyway, Ylea was raised that way. Free, see? Her folks were rebels, the rumor goes, tried to start an uprising and got caught. Folks got killed, and Ylea went into the auction. She got bought by the Blues, but she wouldn’t fight.”

  Compassion touched Ampris. She felt more guilty than ever, and stared at her hands. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. They conditioned her, turned her mean, made her crazy. Ain’t nothing you could have done about it.”

  “I could have talked to her—”

  “No,” he said sharply. “Don’t go down that road, Goldie. She was gone before you ever came along.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” Ampris asked. “When she was still alive. I wouldn’t have treated her the way I did.”

  “No, you’d have tried to be her friend, and she would have killed you.” Elrabin swiveled his tall ears. “Now that’s done. You go forward and don’t think about her, see? You got a good first season on your belt. You going far now. Far.”

  Ampris didn’t want to think about resuming training or preparing for another season in the arena. Changing the subject, she said, “I met someone in the clinic. She told me—”

  “Yeah, I know,” he broke in, warning her with his eyes to be cautious.

  She tapped her collar questioningly, and he shook his head. But Ampris still understood that it was better to name no names whenever possible.

  Elrabin took her hand and pressed something small into it.<
br />
  Ampris looked down at the data crystal and smiled in delight. “She kept her promise,” she said excitedly.

  “Yeah, I guess she did. Made a big deal of it being important. Told me the ghosts of my people would haunt me if I lost it.” Elrabin shrugged. “Like I believe in any of those old tales.”

  Ampris curled her fingers around the crystal. This time, she promised herself, she wasn’t going to run through only part of it and then hide it away. This time she understood what a priceless gift knowledge actually was. She meant to study every bit of what was contained in the small, cylindrical crystal.

  Elrabin hummed to himself and opened a small cabinet to reveal a player.

  Ampris gasped in delight, then turned to him in amazement. “How did you get that?” she asked. “You’re not allowed to—”

  “I told you when you first joined the Blues,” he said, pretending indifference while his eyes gleamed. “You do good, and you get rewards. I put in the requisition, and the master authorized it.”

  “But what did you tell him I would use it for?” she asked. “Not the truth!”

  “Why not? The master don’t care what you do in your own time, as long as you don’t break training. You gotta stop thinking that any Viis really cares what goes on inside your head. As long as you obey orders and do what’s expected, you can get along on your own business with little interference. Part of the game, Goldie. You see?”

  “I see perfectly,” she said, grinning. She handed him the crystal. “Let’s play it.”

  “Now?”

  Ampris nodded, eager to resume her education. “Now.”

  During the slow flight back to Fariance, Ampris filled her imagination with Fula’s songs and stories. Over and over she played the crystal, teaching herself bits and pieces of her historical language, teaching herself to imitate the ritual gestures performed by Fula’s mother during the prayer-songs. Slowly she learned the lore held inside the crystal.

  In her new quarters at Galard Stables, Ampris found the off-season break a perfect opportunity to study. As she learned to speak Aaroun, finding the language far more complex and sophisticated than the abiru patois, Ampris spent many of her free hours devising a code for the freedom network she wanted to establish.

  Elrabin was able to wheedle the second-season fighting schedule out of one of the subtrainers. Ampris took the schedule and together she and Elrabin mapped out the circuit route on her vid’s galactic schematic. After that, it was a matter of Elrabin’s stealing data crystals from Master Halehl’s library and playing the information on each world or station. Grumbling and grousing, Elrabin would then slip the crystals back where they belonged. He was an excellent thief, never getting caught. Ampris paid no attention to his complaints. She knew he took great pride in showing off his talents.

  By the time she began her second season of fighting, she was ready. She had memorized key information on each arena locale. She had a short list of simple objectives for each place: Make contact with the local abiru staff working at the arena or brought in for day labor. Spread the word about the freedom network. Offer further information if the contact wanted it.

  Most were afraid at first.

  But by the time Ampris entered her third season as a gladiator, her fame was growing both in the arena and out of it. The Viis spectators knew her as a tough and wily fighter, the best of the best, as shrewd as she was strong. She never failed to delight the crowd with her swordplay and acrobatic skills. She grew renowned for always having a superb trick in her repertoire, something new or rarely seen before. The crowd never knew when she would use it or if she would use it at all. But somewhere, sometime, she executed a maneuver that dazzled everyone. The suspense made good box office.

  She was Ampris, the Crimson Claw of the Blues. Holo-cubes featuring her trademark moves were sold as souvenirs at every arena on the circuit. Sometimes she saw vidcasts of Viis chunes wearing toy glaudoons and headdresses with her features on them. Her likeness, daubed with fake blood that dripped from her claws, blazed on arena marquees across the empire.

  Among the arena staff, the abiru slaves who scrubbed, fetched, carried, delivered, and toiled, Ampris had another reputation. It was slow to take hold at first. Few wanted to listen to her ideas. Fewer trusted her. In those first years she was tempted often to give up. But she kept on mentioning the ideas of abiru freedom. She dropped hints, offered information from the slowly growing stockpile of history and legend that she and Elrabin gleaned together from vidcasts, archives, and any data crystals they could obtain. Gradually, the slaves began to trust her.

  She asked for nothing in return but information and consideration of the ideal she held before them. She invented code phrases from the Aaroun language. Then she began teaching herself Kelth in order to better win the trust of Elrabin’s sly, nervous, distrustful race. At every available opportunity she tried to convince the slaves that there was hope, if not for them, then for their offspring. The Viis empire was crumbling. Everyone could see that. Technology continued to fail. Older folk grumbled constantly about how well things used to work, whereas now equipment was cheap and easily broken. “Viis-made” was a label that inspired contempt. Yet the Viis went on ignoring the problems around them. The aristocrats seemed to live in denial, to a degree that amazed Ampris and her network. The middle-class Viis went on trying to pay escalating taxes and starving their slaves to save money.

  With each passing season, more jump gates failed. The arena circuit lost two distant locations as a result, because it became too difficult to reach them in a reasonable amount of time. Vidcasts relayed news of increasing trouble on the empire borders. More rebellions flared up along the rim worlds, requiring additional military campaigns and extra taxation on colony planets. Prosperity reached fewer hands, and many aristocratic households—now bankrupted—cast out their abiru slaves to fend for themselves, or starve, in the streets. Toth gangs grew bolder, preying on everyone in the ghettos and sometimes even venturing past the security barriers to attack Viis citizens in their homes or skimmers. Patrollers seemed unable to cope with the rising crime. Often imperial soldiers marched through streets.

  Ampris herself was seldom personally inconvenienced by the growing disintegration of the empire. She lived a protected existence in many ways, her only true risks coming in the arenas. But even there, conflict was direct and simple. She fought, and she won. Outside the arena, she lived a pampered life by any standard short of that of the Imperial Palace. Sometimes a shipment was delivered to the stables on Fariance that held only multiple cartons of a single item instead of the luxuries expected by the team. Sometimes Ampris overheard the cooks complaining in the kitchen about shortages and misrouted supplies. Sometimes she saw the subtrainers arguing among themselves. But most of the time, the stables ran smoothly along a familiar routine.

  For Ampris, the troubles of the empire remained a beacon of hope that her dreams of freedom could someday come to pass. The constant travel of the gladiatorial life was exactly suited to her purpose of spreading secret rebellion among the slaves. Although she had little respect for her occupation, she found solace in her greater purpose and thus kept her sanity.

  Going into Ampris’s seventh season, the Blues still held the team championship. When Ampris was called into Master Halehl’s office to be told the strategy for the first competition, he instead informed her that Lord Galard had just received an offer of a million ducats for her alone.

  She stood in his office next to the indoor training arena, puffing lightly from the workout she’d just finished. Astonished by his announcement, Ampris thought she heard a peculiar note in his voice. She grew very still inside.

  “Did his lordship accept?” she asked, her voice small.

  Halehl shifted his gaze away from Ampris. “It is a handsome sum, especially in these times.”

  Ampris backed her ears, wondering who could afford to buy her at such a price, and in actual coin, not credits. So many aristocrats now lived on illusions of pas
t grandeur, their fortunes stripped from them.

  “Very handsome,” Halehl said thoughtfully.

  Why didn’t he just say she’d been sold and get it over with? Annoyed, Ampris glared at the floor. She didn’t want to go to another stable. She had made a home for herself here. She had worked hard for the Blues, had brought them more fame than they’d ever had before. A dozen fears and questions filled her mind. Would she have to give up Elrabin and Okal? Would she be allowed to bid farewell to her teammates? Which of her possessions could she take with her? Would there be time to empty her hidden cache of seditious materials and data crystals? Who had bought her? When would she be delivered?

  She wanted to protest, to plead, but she knew better than to try. Because she was a champion, plus intelligent and well-mannered, Halehl allowed her certain liberties, including these conversations in his office. But Ampris was always aware of the lines she could not cross.

  “Such an offer is of course government-backed. Few individuals can now command such resources.” Halehl raised his rill in disgust. “That Ehssk and his genetic experiments. He always wants the very best of our abiru slaves. He’s never satisfied to work his abominations on ghetto dregs.”

  Ehssk . . . Ampris recognized that name. It belonged to a prominent—some would say notorious—scientist on Viisymel. Ampris’s dismay tightened into fear. She stared at Halehl with her eyes frozen wide. Oh, yes, she knew about the controversial Ehssk, who recombined DNA in an effort to find a cure for the Dancing Death, a plague that periodically wiped out entire generations of the Viis population. It was a disease they had never been able to defeat. Ampris did not know of any Viis who was not terrified of the plague. In her lifetime, the Dancing Death had struck twice on colony worlds. She’d seen vidcasts of the grim death statistics, had listened to the fear shaking through the commentators’ voices. It seemed to come without warning, without apparent cause, and nothing Viis physicians could do stopped its swath of destruction. The disease took the old, the young, the weak, and the strong. Quarantines and other decontamination precautions seldom proved effective. It had even reached Viisymel, before Ampris was born, and she had often overheard the courtiers at the palace still lamenting the untimely deaths of relatives or loved ones.