“Elrabin,” she said, “we don’t need weapons. We have knowledge, and that is more dangerous than any side-arm.”
“Goldie, don’t get into this,” he said, making it a plea.
“We are already in it,” she said. “I was spared so I could finish what I have to do. When will the others come back?”
“Tonight. I don’t know where the cubs are. Tantha’s in charge of them today. They been pretty good lately.”
“Can you get a message to Luthien or Harval?”
His eyes widened. “Harval the dust runner?”
“Yes.”
“Goldie, you don’t want that kind of riffraff around.”
“Someone in their groups betrayed the archivists. That’s how I was arrested, but they’re still important contacts,” Ampris said. “I was named the leader of the resistance. I need to meet with everyone. As soon as it can be arranged.”
“Why? So they can betray you again?” he asked fiercely. “I’ll take out Harval’s throat if he sold you to the Bureau!”
“Is he who you worked for when you were a lit?” she asked.
“No. Rival gang, but they all be bad, Goldie. You can’t trust any of them.”
“And who do I trust?” she asked. “The Viis? No, Elrabin. Spread the word. We will meet tonight.”
She fell asleep for the rest of the day, but by evening she felt stronger and more alert.
Foloth and Nashmarl joined her, coming to stand awkwardly beside her bed. She smiled up at them. As always, it delighted her to see their faces, to inhale their scent, to stretch out her hands and clasp theirs.
“My sons,” she said happily, pleased to see them looking well. “I have missed you so much.”
Nashmarl stared at her with a mixture of longing and confusion in his eyes.
Foloth squeezed her hand. “Elrabin says you will get well, Mother. I’m glad. I’ve been worried.”
Ampris smiled at him. “Do not worry about me.”
“Why did you stay away so long?” Nashmarl burst out as though he couldn’t hold back his questions. “Weren’t you ever coming back for us?”
“Hush, you fool!” Foloth snapped at him, and Nashmarl drew back with a scowl.
“Do not quarrel,” Ampris pleaded. “Please. Not now.”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Foloth said and glared at his brother. “Keep quiet, Nashmarl. We’re not supposed to upset her.”
Nashmarl glowered at the floor, saying nothing. Ampris tugged gently at his hand until finally he glanced at her.
Tears of apology were blurring her vision. “I could never abandon you, Nashmarl. Never. I was coming back for you when injury and arrest prevented me—”
“You’re tiring her and making her cry,” Foloth interrupted, still glaring at Nashmarl. His gaze shifted to Ampris. “Don’t apologize, Mother. We understand what kept you here.”
Hearing a trace of judgment in his tone, Ampris sighed. “Do you really?” she asked him. “I hope so. My thoughts have been with you every day we were apart. You’ve grown taller, both of you. Did you realize that?”
“We’re nearly adults now,” Foloth said, squaring his shoulders. “Not cubs. We should have a vote in the meetings.”
“Elrabin already said no,” Nashmarl told him spitefully. “He said not to pester her about it.”
Closing her eyes a moment, Ampris let her grip slacken on their hands. Abruptly their bickering ceased.
Nashmarl touched her face. “Mother?” he asked, his voice shrill. “You aren’t going to die, are you?”
She forced open her eyes, blinking away her tears and summoning a smile. “No, I promise you that I am much better. It just makes me sad when you two quarrel. You are brothers. You must learn to help each other in this cruel world.”
Nashmarl’s mouth quivered. “I’m sorry.”
She looked at her elder son. “Foloth?”
“I’m sorry also, Mother.”
Satisfied, she took their hands again, lifting one then the other to her muzzle in a brief caress. Silence fell over them as they shared this moment of togetherness. Ampris’s heart filled with gratitude for peace among her family, however brief it might prove to be. Later, she told herself, she would try to talk longer with them about their recent experiences. She understood that more must have happened to them than she’d been told about thus far.
“Hey, uh, Goldie?” Elrabin said, coming up to them. “Hate to interrupt, but it’s time to go.”
Ampris lifted her head, eager to embrace the future. “I am ready.”
The abiru conspirators met in the basement of an abandoned building, to avoid compromising Jobul’s home. The Myal medic was young and very kind. He changed her medication patches and mixed up a potion for her to swallow that left her feeling clear-headed and able to endure being carried to the meeting place. With her cubs flanking her, quiet and subdued for once, both pressed close, Ampris sat in a chair, propped up with cushions, and faced the assembly.
She’d been filled in on events and knew that warnings had been leaked to the abiru folk outside the city walls. Yet more were arriving from the countryside every day. Patrollers had started sweeping the streets of Vir regularly, picking up anyone not on a work detail. It was safer to stay home and hide.
But Ampris knew they were past the point of playing it safe.
Luthien came to her first, in front of everyone, and confessed that one of his nephews had betrayed her. “I be ashamed of him,” the one-eyed Kelth declared. “I had no part in that, Ampris. I swear it on my own blood.”
Angry mutters filled the room, but Ampris raised her hand and they quieted. She met Luthien’s fierce glare and believed him. “There will be other betrayals as long as people are forced to live in fear,” she said. “I do not blame you.”
Again voices were raised in anger, but Ampris ignored them. Luthien glanced around, then ducked his head in awkward thanks. “The nephew done been found in the sewers with his throat cut, Ampris. He won’t betray anyone ever again.”
She backed her ears, hoping Luthien himself had not murdered the nephew but knowing he probably had. “We are here to save the abiru folk, not kill each other,” she said at last.
Luthien went back to his place, and the people next to him shifted away as though his presence was a contaminant.
“We have a place to go,” she said to them all. Her voice was weak but clear. They stayed silent and respectful, listening to every word. The atmosphere of this meeting was very different from that of the last one. Ampris supposed it had something to do with the fact that she’d been tortured by the Bureau and survived. It was a hard way to gain respect.
“Ruu-one-one-three will be our new home. It’s clean, unpolluted, unspoiled.”
“Ain’t no such place,” someone said.
Elrabin glared at the speaker. “Hey, shut up. She ain’t done talking.”
“It does exist,” Ampris said. “The Viis thought it would be their promised land, but it never will. The Zrheli believe this planet is sacred. They have guarded it from Viis spoilage and exploitation by closing the jump gate on Shrazhak Ohr. But this planet can be our new home.”
“How?” Harval asked her, unable to keep quiet any longer. He rose to his feet, looking big and bulky in his striped vest and strange, brimless cap. “Another planet? How do we get to it? You give us visions, Ampris, but we got to deal with the practical.”
“Hear me!” Ampris called out. She leaned back against her cushions for a moment, letting a wave of weakness pass.
Looking worried, Nashmarl put his hand on her wrist. She smiled at him and continued, “My plan is no fable, no wish that cannot be achieved, Harval. There are hundreds of cargo ships orbiting Viisymel right now, empty and unused because the economy of this world is bankrupt. Israi Kaa cannot afford to send the ships out to collect the colony exports. If she could, the people of Viisymel would not now be going hungry. Those empty ships are our way off this dying world.”
Commotion broke out, with several peo
ple talking at once. Ampris leaned back and let the hubbub go as long as it wanted. She was growing tired, and she had to conserve her strength.
“You’re feeling worse,” Nashmarl whispered to her worriedly. He stroked the fur on her head. “We’d better take you back now.”
She smiled up at him, grateful for the concern in his green eyes. Nashmarl looked so quiet, so troubled. She reminded herself to find time to talk to him about all that was bothering him.
She sighed. “I mustn’t leave yet. I have them listening. Now I must make them agree.”
“You’re losing their respect,” Foloth said, his voice sharp with a far different kind of concern. “I thought they would follow you anywhere, but already you’ve lost them.”
She looked at him, struck anew by how tall he’d grown during their separation. He appeared to be healthy and well, despite the gash now healing to a pink scar on his forehead, but he remained far too impatient. He had yet to learn so many things. “Wait and see,” she said to him.
Elrabin and Harval shouted for silence until at last the uproar died down. Slowly the crowd resumed their seats, but Harval remained standing.
“No one can say you ain’t got bold ideas, Ampris,” he told her. “But we got no transportation and no weapons. How we going to get to those ships? The Viis ain’t going to let us leave. They need us too much, even if right now they’d rather kill us than give us food.”
“That’s right!” a slim Kelth shouted from the back of the room.
“You’re talking everyone, Ampris,” Harval went on. “I know we outnumber the Viis, at least here in this city, and that’s a lot of folk.”
“There are enough ships,” she said. “The cargo ships won’t be comfortable, but they’re big.”
“But—”
She raised her hand. “My plan is very bold. It is risky. But if we stick together we can do it.”
“Even if we could break into the armories, we couldn’t—”
“Harval,” she said, “stop thinking like a Viis. We cannot go to war with them. That is not our way. Anytime the abiru folk have tried to fight their way to freedom, they have failed. We must use guile and cunning. We are going to let the Viis defeat themselves.”
Harval backed his ears, looking baffled. “That don’t make sense.”
“We are going to keep them off balance, play to their worst fears, and distract them until they do not care what we do.” Ampris lifted her head and let her gaze sweep the room. “We are going to deceive the Viis, as once they deceived us. We are going to strike where they are most vulnerable. When we are finished, they will make us go.”
Another Aaroun, as equally skeptical as Harval, rose to her feet. “And how do we do this?”
“We are going to ask the Rejects to come out of hiding,” Ampris said.
She saw ears going back; the murmurs rose again.
“Hear me!” she called over the noise, and they quieted reluctantly. Foloth stirred beside her, but Ampris ignored him. “No more will the Rejects stay out of sight in order to avoid bringing offense to the Viis citizens,” Ampris said. “No more will the Rejects be content to accept charity. I’m going to ask them to assert their rights and demand equality with their more fortunate brethren.”
“What good will that do?” demanded Luthien, his one eye blinking rapidly. “That ain’t no kind of plan.”
“The Rejects are a reminder of the Dancing Death!” Ampris said, raising her voice again to be heard. She felt breathless and pain began to stir beneath her medication, but she never let her gaze waver. “That disease crippled the Viis Empire. It drove them into becoming the venal, lazy, inefficient creatures they are today. They pretend they do not worry about their dwindling population, but they worry all the time. The Viis live in fear, fear that the plague will come back. Every time they see a Reject, they relive a time in their past when they were defeated by a biological enemy unseen and unstoppable.”
“This will torment them,” Harval said. “But it will not do more than that.”
“They must be prepared psychologically,” Ampris said. “The recent defeat of the mighty Viis flotilla has them unsettled. Now the Rejects will continue to upset them. Because, my friends, we are going to bring back the Dancing Death.”
Cheers went up from half the room. The others remained seated in skepticism. “How?” Harval asked.
“How?” Luthien asked.
“How?” someone else asked.
Ampris smiled, and it was a cold, grim smile. “I am acquainted with a Viis scientist named Ehssk.”
“Ehssk the Butcher!” came a shout.
“Yes,” she said. “Ehssk the Butcher. He has been trying for many years to create an antidote for the virus, but he has failed.”
“So?” Luthien said.
“He keeps vials of the virus sealed in his laboratory,” Ampris said. “You are thieves, many of you. How hard is it to break in and take what we need?”
Luthien rose to his feet, his eye staring in astonishment. Harval’s mouth hung open. One by one the rest stood up.
“The Crimson Claw!” came a shout from the back.
It was echoed around the room until the roar was thunderous. “The Crimson Claw! The Crimson Claw!”
“Freedom!” Foloth shouted back.
They took up the chant immediately. “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”
Elrabin came over to Ampris’s chair and bent over her. “You look tired, Goldie, but you got a mind as devious and twisted as the Kaa’s.”
She smiled back, letting the cheers wash over her. “Thank you.”
“They’re yours now. They’ll do it,” he said in admiration. “It be a bold plan, though.”
Her smile faded. “It is a very dangerous plan, Elrabin. For us, the real risks are just beginning.”
His ears drooped. “No other way?”
“No other way.” She gripped his hand, wanting him to have faith too. “But worth it, Elrabin. Worth it!”
The next day Ampris set to work. Still too weak to get about, she met with Luax, Harthril, and four other Rejects from her bed in Jobul’s house.
One of the Rejects from Vir was the dwarf who’d been at her first resistance meeting in the Archives. Today she learned that his name was Mahradin. It was immediately clear that he was the chosen voice of the Reject population in the city.
“We hear,” he said as soon as the perfunctory greetings were over, “that you want us to offend the citizens.”
“Yes,” Ampris replied. “To show yourselves in public, to cause disturbances—”
“Why should we?” he asked. Although she was lying propped on cushions and he was standing, he still had to look up at her. With his full-sized head, large rill, and shrunken body, he looked top-heavy. “We have rules, Ampris. We stay out of sight. We cause no trouble. We do nothing to remind the citizens that we exist. In exchange, each Viis household donates food and clothing to our distribution centers. Why should we risk what we have? We are not slaves. We have our freedom.”
“Are you free?” she asked. “Free to do as you please? Free to go where you please? Have you ever been to a public concert, Mahradin? Have you ever been to the arena to watch fighting? Can you stroll down the famous floating walkways of the Zehava shopping district? No, you are not free. You live bound by the rules of those who will not accept you. You are chained by your dependency on their charity.”
“At least we don’t starve,” he muttered.
She looked him right in the eye. “Is the charity as generous as it used to be?”
The dwarf’s rill stiffened. He glared at her, but did not answer. They both knew there were shortages. As Viis citizens had come to feel the economic squeeze, their pockets had grown more shallow.
“We struggle,” Mahradin admitted finally. “But you would see us cut off.”
“You’re going to be cut off anyway,” Ampris told him. “I know there are only five distribution centers in Vir now; there used to be twenty. When they can no lo
nger feed the slaves, why should they feed you?”
“Because we are still Viis,” Mahradin said proudly.
Ampris sighed. That opinion was exactly what she had to change. “Yes, you are Viis,” she said in agreement. “Every bit as Viis as the citizens. Yet you are shunned. Even your own families will have nothing to do with you. Why? Because you look different from them. What reason is that?”
His rill was turning red. “Why do you pretend such ignorance? You lived with the Viis once. You were pet of the sri-Kaa.”
“Yes, I know that the Viis abhor anything ugly,” she said, choosing to be blunt. “But beauty should be judged by many standards, not just one. Tell me, Mahradin: What do you consider beautiful?”
He flicked out his tongue, his eyes darting around the room. No one else said anything to help him out, however.
Finally he brought his gaze back to Ampris. “I see beauty in someone whole,” he admitted. “In long, straight legs. A body that fits together proportionately.”
“Yes, that is natural,” she said gently, aware that he had hurt his pride in order to admit so much. “Look at Luax. Her limbs are straight. Do you consider her beautiful?”
Harthril stiffened his rill and started to speak, but Ampris gestured for him to be quiet. She watched Mahradin closely, observing the struggles in his face.
“She has a straight body,” Mahradin said finally. “Yes, she has beauty.”
“Yet Luax is a Reject,” Ampris said.
Luax’s eyes filled with hurt. She bowed her head, and Harthril put his arm around her.
Mahradin raised his clenched fists. “You have no right to preach to us about our own beliefs.”
“No, but I think you bind yourself too hard to something that has no foundation,” she answered. “In all honesty, when you are as intelligent and as capable as a citizen, how do you make yourself accept second-class standing?”
“We are not even second-class,” muttered another Reject, a thin blue-skinned female with two rills layered on top of each other. “We are no class.”
“I know you don’t want to trust me,” Ampris said softly. “I am abiru and you’re Viis.”
“Not Viis!” the blue-skinned female said fiercely. “Reject.”
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