“Can you end the drought?” she broke in.
“Of course, majesty, given time and, of course, official funding. We are a small division of the—”
“Fool,” she muttered beneath her breath and gestured for the channel to be cut once again.
Furiously, she circled her apartments. It seemed no one would, or could, supply her with an answer. She knew she could make an official request for information, but several weeks would pass before a report was issued. Israi wanted action now.
For years she had been vaguely aware of problems with failing technology in the empire, but now the problems had begun to impact on her. Her hunting lands were dying. Her guards could not find her because their scanners malfunctioned. Within the imperial palace, some of the mirrors no longer activated. The automatic doors had not worked since before she was born, necessitating that servants be stationed everywhere to open them on command. She had grown up thinking her father was old-fashioned and preferred antiquated traditions, when in reality he had just been concealing the many breakdowns in the general operating systems of the palace.
There was only one other place she could think of that could provide her with an immediate answer.
Israi summoned her servants. “Bring our costume of incognito,” she commanded them. “At once!”
Down in the Archives, Ampris hefted her pack and found it far too heavy. Smiling to herself, she opened it and lifted out three carefully wrapped bundles that she had not placed there.
“Mystery gifts?” she asked, holding them up.
The Myals ringed around her looked disconcerted.
“Ampris,” Quiesl said chidingly. “Those were to be a surprise.”
“Thank you,” she said, her smile widening. “But you have given me far too much already. I can never repay your kindness and hospitality.”
“You are our hope,” Prynan said. “Our only hope.”
“No,” Ampris said firmly, wanting to squelch that idea once and for all. “I am not. You—the brotherhood of archivists—have done the most to keep the idea of freedom alive.”
Quiesl stepped forward and gestured at the bundles she held. “Please, take our small tokens. They are to help you with your journey.”
“Thank you, but I cannot carry so much,” she said. “If I am to travel swiftly, I must travel light.”
Ignoring their murmurs of protest, she went through her pack again, removing about half of its load. They had provided her with a tent that folded to a square hardly bigger than her two hands, blankets, extra clothing, credit vouchers, a folding shovel, fuel for cooking fires, ration packets with military seals on them, charge packs, sacks of fruit, a medicine kit, a small torch, and an illegal hand-link. Ampris kept one blanket, the food, the medicine, and the hand-link.
“Ampris, that is not enough to sustain you,” Quiesl protested while the others looked shocked.
She added a water carrier, closed the pack, and strapped it over her shoulder. “More than enough,” she said. “I can live on very little, and I must travel fast.”
“But, Ampris.”
“Please,” she said. “Thank you for the rest of it. Please keep it for me until I return.”
They looked both hurt and disappointed. She was sorry she had injured their feelings, but none of them could really imagine what lay ahead of her. She didn’t want to think of the grueling journey either, but it had to be done. The quicker she left, the quicker it would be over.
“Good-bye, my dear friends,” she said. She placed her hand on each archivist’s shoulder in turn. “Thank you.”
When she reached Quiesl, it was he who clasped her shoulders. “Come back to us quickly and safely,” he said.
She smiled brightly to deflect the worry in his eyes. “I will.”
Turning away, she went down the corridor and up two levels to the exhibition floor. At this late hour, they had decided she could safely risk exiting the Archives by an easier route than she’d come in.
Quiesl had prepared a crate of instructional materials to be shipped to Malraaket’s small auxiliary library. Ampris was to exit the city inside it, then break out and be on her way.
“Wait!” Quiesl called, hurrying to catch up with her. “Not so fast. I am old, Ampris. I cannot walk so quickly.”
She slowed down as she came to the exhibition rooms, giving him a chance to catch up. Then her nostrils caught a whiff of perfume, costly and rare. Beneath it ran the fragrance of scented skin oil and Viis.
The fur bristled around her neck. She stopped dead in her tracks and Quiesl bumped into her.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
She lifted a hand to silence him, and gazed around with all senses on alert. The exhibition rooms were unlit except for the dimmed lights in the display cases. Ampris studied the shadows, knowing that an intruder was with them.
“What is it?” Quiesl asked. “What’s wrong?”
A shadow at the far end of the room moved, turning around and walking toward them. Ampris stiffened, but she knew she’d been seen. There was no point in hiding now.
Beside her, Quiesl uttered a low moan of despair. She gripped his arm in reassurance. One Viis could be dealt with.
As the figure drew closer, Ampris saw that it was female, very tall and swathed in heavy purple robes patterned with a strange design she had never seen before. The female was masked with a hood drawn over her head. Ampris knew from her old days at court that sometimes great ladies would go forth dressed incognito to secret assignations. If this one was escorted by guards, they weren’t in evidence.
Ampris kept sniffing the air, however, to make sure.
Quiesl gulped in air several times and coiled his tail tightly against his leg. Casting Ampris a look of worry, he walked forward to meet the visitor and bowed low.
“Great lady, how may I serve you?”
The female halted and stared at them through the slits in her mask. “We come seeking information on weather.”
“Weather? Ah,” Quiesl said as though this were an everyday request. “Perhaps during normal hours of—”
“Fool!” The Viis female’s voice cut him off viciously. “Do not toy with our patience. We are here now. Serve us at once!”
Ampris’s head snapped up and she stared very hard at the masked figure. She knew that voice, that temper, that imperial arrogance. But most of all, she knew that scent masked beneath the perfume.
She stared, stepping forward without being able to stop herself. “Israi,” she said in astonishment.
The masked lady drew back, flicking out her tongue in affront. “Who dares—”
“I do,” Ampris said. She crossed the distance between them, gently shoving an agitated Quiesl out of the way, and plucked off the lady’s mask.
Israi’s aristocratic, golden-skinned face was revealed, still as chiseled and lovely as ever, but now looking frozen with outrage.
“Lights, brighter,” Ampris said, and the overhead lights came on.
Israi was very tall, her regal posture making her seem even taller. Her skin had darkened over the years to a deep golden hue, with a tint of bronze. Too much wine had puffed Israi’s jawline and carved little lines around her eyes. As a consequence of egg-laying her body had thickened, a look considered extremely beautiful among the Viis. Ampris supposed she herself must look very changed too, with her scars and crippled leg and tough muscles. In all her dreams and imaginings, she had never believed she would ever again stand face-to-face with Israi.
It seemed like a dream. Their worlds had grown too far apart for such a meeting to happen, yet here they stood.
She faced Israi, still holding the mask, and tilted her head to one side. “Don’t you recognize me?”
Israi’s eyes widened. Her mouth opened, and her tongue flicked out. She lifted her hands to push back her hood, and her rill rose to its full extension behind her head. “Ampris,” she whispered.
CHAPTER•TWELVE
The sunset arched over another hot, hungry day. Crouched on a ju
tting finger of rock that gave him a vantage point above the road winding across the Plains of Filea, Elrabin wiped the sweat that matted his fur and stung his eyes.
For the past two hours, he had been sitting here, watching the road for Ampris. There was no sign of her. Nothing moved at all out there on that broad, brown flat. It was as though all living creatures had died, and only the land remained.
He sighed and allowed himself one small sip of water. Now he was growing fanciful. It was time to return to camp.
But still he lingered, until the sun finally went down in an angry blaze of red that made the horizon itself look on fire. Ampris was now three days overdue. Elrabin felt bleak with worry. She would have been here unless something had happened to her. Ampris kept her word. Always.
He never should have let her go alone.
When the shadows lay thick among the trees, Elrabin pushed himself to his feet and trudged back to camp. He felt tired and dispirited. It was his and Tantha’s job today to hunt. The pair of tunals he’d brought down were thin, stringy birds. They were hard to pluck, and at best they made poor eating. He hoped Tantha had had better luck.
The camp itself was new and not very comfortable. They had wedged it into the bottom of a canyon, to help hide their cooking fires from Viis surveillance, which had increased on the imperial lands ever since Foloth almost led a party of hunters and guards straight home. The cub was recovering now from a gash on his head and the serious fright he’d taken from nearly getting himself killed.
If he hadn’t come home already hurt, Elrabin would have beaten him. Even now, two days later, Elrabin was still fuming. Foloth usually had more sense than to wander off on his own, strictly against orders, and put them all at risk. This had been something that Nashmarl was more likely to do, but Nashmarl had been subdued since Steegin’s death and was keeping himself out of trouble. The other adults seemed satisfied that he’d finally learned his lesson, but Elrabin wasn’t so sure. It was hard to tell what went on in that odd-shaped head of Nashmarl’s, but the cub acted moodier than ever. Elrabin wished he could shake some sense into them both.
Tonight, the camp had only one cooking fire burning, and it was a small, cautious one. Wedged in the bottom of the canyon, their shelters received no cooling breeze. As a result, nights were hot and miserable.
They would have to leave soon. They were too far from water, and Velia had been complaining about the inconvenience of carrying it. Game grew scarcer every day. Poaching on the imperial lands was now too risky, thanks to Foloth, who’d frightened the Kaa herself and stirred up the Viis.
But if they left, how would Ampris catch up with them? How cold a trail could she track?
“See her?” Velia called out to him when he entered the camp. She was leaning over a steaming cooking pot, boiling something—roots, he supposed. “I know you’ve been back to the old campsite, watching.”
“Yes. I was there,” he said wearily and laid the tunals on a stone next to her. She glared at them, swiveling back her ears, and he met her look with a sigh and shake of his head. “All I could find. The world is empty of food.”
“Not in Vir,” she said, picking up one of the birds and starting to pluck it without much enthusiasm. “Harthril wants to call a council meeting tonight.”
Elrabin bowed his head, feeling cornered and stubborn.
“Did you hear me?” Velia asked shrilly. “There is to be a meeting.”
“I heard,” he said. “Where are the cubs?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “I can’t watch them, and do most of the cooking, and keep an eye on old Robuhl. He tried to climb the canyon wall today, and nearly fell off. He is becoming a problem, Elrabin.”
“Yes,” Elrabin said, barely listening to her. He nuzzled her throat a moment, then trudged off to find the cubs.
They were crouched under the ribs of Ampris’s old tent, now stripped of its cloth to make them both cloaks. They had taken apart the viewer, and parts and pieces of it lay scattered on the ground between them.
Elrabin knew it would never be put back together. Anger stirred inside him, but he quelled it. Ampris had valued that viewer greatly, even if its charge was exhausted. But perhaps Ampris was never coming back, and if not, what good was the viewer to anyone else?
“Cubs,” he said, interrupting them, “come and eat.”
“Is she back?” Nashmarl asked.
“No.” He knew of no way to soften the bad news. “Harthril wants to meet tonight. I know we can’t wait here much longer.”
Nashmarl jumped to his feet. “But we have to. She can’t find us if we—”
“Mother isn’t coming back,” Foloth said, picking through the tiny pieces of wire and circuitry. “I knew that when she left.”
Nashmarl whirled on him and kicked at his hands, knocking pieces of viewer in all directions. “Liar! You don’t—”
“Stop it!” Elrabin gripped Nashmarl by the back of his new cloak and pulled him away from Foloth. “Both of you, slack off.” He released Nashmarl, who eyed him sullenly. “Clean up this mess and come eat.”
Leaving them, he returned to the fire.
They fell into another squabble while the pitiful supper was being ladled into each person’s bowl. Tantha’s luck in hunting was even worse than Elrabin’s. So it was another night of berry soup, flavored with stringy bits of tunal, and a few chunks of root. Less than appetizing. Horrible. Elrabin accepted his, trying to keep from showing his revulsion. Velia moved around ladling a ration into each bowl and sniffing to herself.
Elrabin realized she was crying and trying not to show it. His heart squeezed painfully in his chest, and suddenly he was angry. It was no good, living like this. They were slowly starving. And no matter where they went next, it was going to be more of the same.
“I can’t eat this slop,” Foloth declared, tossing his bowl on the ground. The soup splashed out, and Velia yelped in outrage.
“We haven’t enough to go round, and you throw yours away?” She hurled the ladle at him, making him duck.
Nashmarl jumped up and pushed her, toppling her over and spilling the whole pot.
Then they were all on their feet, shouting and quarreling. Elrabin forced his way through, snapping at someone’s ear to clear a path for himself.
By the time he reached Velia, she was back on her feet, sobbing now. “I hate them. I hate them!” she wept on his chest as he pulled her into his arms. “You have to do something.”
“Yes,” Harthril said. He was holding Nashmarl by one arm as the cub attempted to twist free. “They are your responsibility, Elrabin. Yours.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Elrabin muttered. He released Velia and went over to pull Nashmarl free of Harthril’s grip.
“He hurt me,” Nashmarl said, ducking behind Elrabin and glaring at Harthril. “He hit me and he has bruised my arm.”
“So what?” Elrabin said without sympathy. “Where’s your brother?”
“He ran,” Nashmarl said contemptuously. “Didn’t want to get in trouble.”
“He was born in trouble, and so were you.”
“Foloth started it,” Nashmarl began.
“I ain’t going to listen to no whining about this. March,” Elrabin ordered and shoved the cub off to the edge of camp.
By this time, Nashmarl was shooting him uneasy looks. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I want to go back and eat. I didn’t—”
“You made sure no one gets to eat tonight,” Elrabin said.
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“What is?” Elrabin demanded, exasperated. “What is ever your fault, cub? You so sure the rest of the world is out to get you that you set up extra trouble for yourself.”
“I don’t have to listen to you,” Nashmarl said sullenly. “You hate me, just like all the others.”
“I don’t hate you,” Elrabin tried to explain to him. “I hate what you do. Why can’t you behave? Just for one day. You think maybe you could try sometime?”
“I was just def
ending Foloth,” Nashmarl said. “She had no business throwing that ladle at him.”
Now Elrabin was really starting to lose his temper. “Oh, so now it’s all Velia’s fault?”
“She threw it at Foloth.”
“You try cooking all day, working on something that ain’t fit to eat in the first place. You try doing half of what Velia does, and see where your temper goes by sundown. Anyway, it don’t matter if she throws something or bites your head—she’s an adult, see? You ain’t.”
“Just because she’s grown doesn’t mean she’s better.”
“No, but you got to respect her.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s grown and you ain’t.”
“That’s no reason.”
Elrabin growled to himself, feeling as though he were chasing circles. “Just you shut up about it, see? You go and find Foloth. Tell him to come back and apologize to Velia.”
Nashmarl’s green eyes widened in outrage. “No!”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s not—”
Elrabin’s growl grew louder, “Not what?”
Nashmarl’s face turned red and he wouldn’t meet Elrabin’s eyes.
Elrabin gripped Nashmarl by the front of his cloak and twisted hard, backing the cub up against a tree. “Now you listen good. She’s my mate, and she ain’t going to be insulted or knocked down by a pair of nolos like you. I been real easy on the two of you so far, but you’re pushing my temper, see?”
Nashmarl looked back at him with open insolence. “You won’t do anything,” he said. “You never do.”
“How come Foloth ran?”
Nashmarl said nothing.
Elrabin wanted to bite him, but instead he pulled the cub along to his shelter and pushed him inside.
Nashmarl tried to come out, but Elrabin blocked the way.
Nashmarl scowled. “I don’t want to be in here! What are you doing?”
“You going to stay in there until you be ready to apologize, yeah, and to see that your brother apologizes too.”
“Go mate with a Toth,” Nashmarl retorted.
Elrabin slammed shut the rickety door constructed of slim branches lashed together, and latched it with a stick slid crossways through the tough vine loops. Nashmarl kicked the door, but it held.
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