by S. L. Viehl
“I would happily bring Kieran here and put you both in the quad to settle this with blades.” Bek uttered a
terse laugh. “I might even tell him that you’re his daughter, after he finished chopping you to pieces.”
That pissed me off. “You never know, Trainer. I might win, considering.”
“Kieran is the most natural fighter I ever trained. No one could touch him, not even your Kol.” He gave
me the once-over. “You have his blood in your veins, but it is tainted with the foolish emotions of an
overwrought female.”
I could have stabbed him for that. “This overwrought female just whipped your big bad silver back in the
session room.”
“I pitted you against Dag because he is slow to react, overconfident, and otherwise stupid. Had you
sparred with anyone else, they might have given Fayne a gift of your eyes.” The Chakaran shook a claw
at me. “Leave your petty concerns outside my training room from now on, or I will instruct them to keep
second level open so you may dance with the drones.”
“Fine. Will you help find Kieran when I take the black band?”
His pupils dilated. “I cannot leave the Tåna, but I will do what I can.”
“Wait a minute—you can’t leave? Why not?”
“That is order business, trainee.” Bek jerked his head toward the training room. “Get back to work.”
Along with pleasing my disgruntled trainer, I had to face new challengers in the quad each day. After the
disaster of the first three-way melee match in which we’d shoved the silvers and browns out of the quad,
we were never again matched as large groups, but neither did we fight alone. Most of the time we were
either paired off or sent in a threesome to fight.
And we weren’t alone.
Other trainees began turning their bands from brown and silver to white neutral, and fighting beside us.
More browns turned than silvers, but that was to be expected. Most of the coldblooded were either
friends of Fayne’s or terrified of her. Despite that, after a week the white neutral group had tripled in size.
“In the war, my people also remain neutral,” a Tingalean named Mojag told me after we’d won another
match fighting together. “It is not a position of great ease.”
“Tell me about it.” I rolled an aching shoulder. “Your moves are good; I’d never have guessed you have
ten other limbs.”
“We are taught from hatching to use each pair independently.” Mojag nodded toward Osrea. “Your
blue-plated comrade there was not.”
That gave me an idea. “How are your kind taught to do that, exactly?”
What he told me made a lot of sense. I asked him to meet me and Os after training, then stole some fruit
out of the dining hall, hiding it under my clothes. Later, I cornered Osrea in our quarters, told him what I
wanted to try, and dragged him out to a practice room.
“This will never work.”
“Give it a try.” Once Mojag entered, I secured the door panel and took out six small near-apples.
“Mojag, this is Osrea. Os, take off your shirt.”
“He has twelve limbs and a tail; I have six.” Still grumbling, he stripped, releasing his other arms. “And I
do not walk on my abdomen.”
“Neither do I,” the Tingalean said. “I slither.” He shrugged out of his shirt and extended the short limbs on
either side of his snakelike body. “I am ready, Saj.”
“Okay, Os, watch.” I started pitching the fruit at Mojag, who caught the first two with his upper pair of
limbs. I deliberately threw the second two at his lower limbs. Instead of catching them with another limb
pair, he tossed the first two near-apples into the air, bent, and caught the second two. By the time I’d
thrown the last two fruits, Mojag was keeping four in the air, and had used only his two uppermost limbs.
The other ten didn’t move because the Tingalean had clasped them together.
Osrea watched, then hesitantly joined his lower arms together the same way. “Like this?”
“That is only part of the exercise, warms,” Mojag caught four of the near-apples with his upper limbs and
the last two in his hinged mouth. He jerked his jaw up, tossing them back to me. “When you have learned
control, you will no longer need to hold yourself thus.”
“What does warms mean?”
“End hatched.” The Tingalean slithered over and held out an upper limb. “My kind, we look out for the
last from the nest.”
I imagined a little Os eating his way out of a shell and bit the inside of my cheek.
Snake Boy still looked suspicious. “You would teach me to do this, as you do, with your limbs?”
“Of course.” Mojag arched his neck, making two curved folds of skin stand erect. I immediately thought
of a Terran cobra getting pissed off, but the Tingalean was giving off different vibes. He was being
generous, or friendly maybe. What he said next confirmed it. “We share nest-blood, little brother, your
kind and mine. It is my duty and my wish.”
They soon forgot about me as Mojag showed Os how to move and flex his limbs to gain more control.
My clumsy ClanBrother began to move differently, not as a Jorenian but as a Tingalean would. It made
all the difference, and I could see that in no time Os would attain the same lethal grace of movement that
Mojag possessed.
“I would like to practice with you again,” Os said to the Tingalean as we left the session chamber an hour
later. “If you are willing, tevhat.”
Mojag had told my ClanBrother to call him that, and that it meant “soil breaker,” or the first hatched from
the nest. “That is my wish, too, little brother.”
“I’d like to watch more of your moves myself,” I said. “If you don’t mind an audience.”
“Like to like, and unlike, yes. I think we have much to learn from each other.” The Tingalean nodded his
wedge-shaped head. “So we shall.”
When we entered the corridor leading to our quarters, I spotted Kol standing in an open doorway, and
frowned. He was bending over and speaking quietly to someone inside the room.
“Excuse me.” I left Mojag and Os and went to see what was going on. A few feet from the door I saw a
slim white hand resting on Kol’s hip. No, not resting—moving in a slow circle, the fingers caressing.
My blades were in my hands before I realized it. “Kol?”
He turned his head toward me for a moment, then said something and stepped out of the doorway. “Go
back to our quarters, Sajora.”
Fayne stepped out of the room. An open robe of some transparent pink stuff floated around her dinky
body. Her dinky naked body.
Sexual activity is confined to personal quarters.
“What’s going on?” I asked, my voice turning ugly.
“Ah, the Terr an with the limited vocabulary.” Fayne slid an arm around Kol’s waist like she had a right to
put her hands on him. “Perhaps she would like to join us.”
“No, but I have no problem with separating your head from your neck.” I shifted my gaze to Kol. “Her?
You can’t be serious.”
“You are intruding.” He kept his expression blank, but flashed me the Guard the House gesture. “Leave
us.”
As much as I wanted to gut the naked little midget, I pivoted and headed for our quarters. And waited
there, watching everyone sleep and staying on guard, for the rest of the night.
Kol never returned.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
&nb
sp; “Divert a path without cause and condemn your soul to eternity of wandering.”
—Tarek Varena, ClanJoren
I left our quarters early the next morning, and went into the third level alone. The idea of pounding
something to a pulp appealed to me.
A lot.
The moment I emerged from the corridor, I saw Fayne and Cirilo hanging out at the quad with a group of
silvers. An equal number of browns occupied the other side of the arena, and a few whites were
segregated off to one side.
Everyone looked at me, then Fayne.
The midget and her merry band began to move in my direction. There were no trainers out yet, and the
hoverdrones couldn’t do anything but squawk at us if the silvers attacked.
I could deal with that.
The whites came over to flank me. “Where is the rest of your clan?” one of them asked me.
“Sleeping in.” I drew out my blades.
“That is not good.”
“That’s the way it is.” I met Fayne’s colorless gaze across the quad. “You can take on anyone you like,
but the midget albino rat is mine.”
Another white hissed in a breath as the silvers armed themselves. “You’re welcome to her.”
“You rise early, clod.” Fayne stopped a few meters away and examined my group. Her blades gleamed
in her hands. “Even with your backup, you’re outnumbered—or can’t you count?”
“Hasn’t been a problem so far. Kind of like you.” I smiled. “Sleep well?”
“Hardly an hour.” She trailed white fingers down the front of her shirt, stroking her own breast. “Kol is a
magnificent male, isn’t he? So strong and full of stamina. A female could spend years pleasuring herself
with him, and never begin to tap his potential.” She let her secondary eyelids droop. “I may even take him
as a mate, when we join the order.”
My claws emerged. “You’re not going to make it that far, Blondie.”
She bared her pointed little teeth. “Do you mean to challenge me? After all these weeks of running away
at the sight of me?” Her cronies made various sounds of amusement. “Why, clod, you’ve finally
discovered your spine. We should announce it. Perhaps the Master will declare a holiday.”
One of the whites standing next to me clamped claws around my forearm. “Saj, she will kill you.”
“She can stand on her toes and try.” I shifted my grip on my blades. “You want to dance, Blondie?
Let’s—”
“I am pleased to see so many of you here at this hour.” Bek strolled between the two groups. “Fayne,
you and the silvers may begin sparring in the bladework room.” When she didn’t move, he folded his
arms. “Now.”
“I have a challenge to fight first,” she said. “This Terran practically begs for it.”
The Chakaran eyed me. “Did you challenge the Skogaq, Saj?”
“No.” Kol joined Bek. There were faint purple shadows under his eyes. Guess he didn’t get any sleep,
either. “There was no challenge offered, and none will be taken.”
The pounding voice inside my head screamed in outrage, so loud that I could barely get a word out
edgewise. “Shut up, ClanBoy, and stay out of my face.”
My ClanBrother turned and slashed a blade at my face. I reacted so fast that I knocked over one of the
whites, but the tip caught my right cheekbone. I felt the sting, then the warmth of blood trickling my face,
and watched with wide eyes as Kol resheathed his blade.
Cut me. He cut me.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. All I could do was touch the cut on my face and stare at him.
“Sajora is injured,” Kol told Bek. “She cannot challenge, or accept a challenge, until her injury is treated.”
The Chakaran nodded his scarred head. “Report to medical, Saj.”
In the end, Bek ordered two whites to escort—well, drag—me to medical. The doc threatened to put
me in restraints if I didn’t sit still for the sutures, so I shoved back my temper for a few more minutes. I
passed on the anesthetic and sat under the burn of the laser, letting the pain feed the beast inside me.
“You will be scarred,” the doctor told me.
“Good.” Like the spit-bath when I was deported, I needed to remember this.
I went back to third level alone, my face throbbing, my blades in my hands. Bek ordered me into the
quad and sent three browns in after me. They didn’t stay long.
I didn’t let the beast go, but I gave it a lot of chain to play with.
An hour later I stood covered in sweat in the center of the quad, with two silvers and a brown flat on
their backs before me. The crowd of trainees who had been watching the match had put a foot of space
between themselves and the ryata. Even the two whites Bek had sent in to fight beside me for the third
challenge kept a safe distance between themselves and my blades.
So I was feeling a little aggressive. My face hurt. People were just going to have to deal with it.
“Bek.” The sound of my voice sent one of the silvers scrambling out of the quad in a panic. “Send in the
next batch.”
“You have already defeated nine opponents; I believe that is adequate for this session.” The trainer
nodded to my teammates, then held out a towel as I climbed down. “Your face is bleeding again.
Perhaps you should return to medical.”
I wiped off the sweat and blood, and wondered if he knew I was pretending every opponent he threw at
me was Fayne. Or Kol. Emotionally overwrought female that I was.
“Os appears to have found his balance.” Bek nodded toward Snake Boy, who was engrossed in a
conversation with Mojag.
“He’s given up trying to be a ClanBoy and is getting in touch with his snake side.” Automatically I looked
for Galena, and saw Sparky and Nal standing guard. “Now if I could get the rest of them…” I trailed off
and turned to scan the assembled white neutrals. They were all assorted sizes and species. Familiar sizes
and species.
Like to like.
The tidal wave of rage churning inside me finally subsided a few inches. “Excuse me, Trainer.”
The avatars kept their wings bound during training sessions, unless in the simulator or common areas. The
two I approached fanned their primary remiges, a show of avian readiness for flight or to fight.
“Hey.” I held out my empty hands, palm up. “We’re all wearing white neutral here, relax. Strix and Tej,
right?”
Strix bobbed his feathered head. “We thought you’d gone color-blind today, Saj.”
“Yeah, well, I’m in a bad mood. Never spar with me when I’m in a bad mood. You see my ClanSister
over there?” I nodded toward Birdie. “She’s got a problem with her wings.”
“We have noticed,” Tej said. “She does not use them.”
“That’s not her fault. She was raised on Joren, with ground dwellers. They didn’t teach her to fly, and they
kept her plucked.” I measured the way their wings arched. “I’ve been coaching her, but she needs
tutoring from her own blood. Would that be one of you?”
“No. We are Suruki. Your sibling resembles the Calypte.” Strix turned to Tej. “You fostered with her
kind as a fledge, did you not?”
“Two seasons, until my foster dam shoved me out of the weyre.” The avian studied Galena for a moment.
“She is lustrial, not dyratane. A carrier, not a predator,” he added at my blank look. “We are dyratane.
We fly to hunt, not to collect nectar and pollenate flora.
”
“Blade dancers don’t have a lot to do with flowers, do they?” Strix and Tej exchanged a glance; then Tej
shook his head. “My ClanSister can fly, but she needs to learn how to survive. The things she needs to
learn on the ground, I can cover. On wing, I can’t. You can.”
A few minutes later I went over to tell Birdie about her new private dancing lessons.
“With him?” Her voice squeaked as she stared at Tej. “He’s a Suruki. My ClanMother told me they eat
raw flesh.”
“You’ll be training, not dining together.” I patted her cheek. “And I’ll be there with you the whole time,
just in case.”
Kol appeared, looking tired and grim. “Sajora, I would speak to you.”
“Excuse me, Birdie.” I turned and strode off for my next session.
