The Crimson Claw

by Deborah Chester

  Halehl flicked out his tongue, and overlooked her transgression. “You are a professional now,” he said, sounding amused. “Ah, Ruar,” he said to someone approaching from behind her. “Come and get Ampris settled. We’ll start her training tomorrow, but let her adjust to the climate and gravity for the rest of today. Take her around the training grounds. Let her sniff and look all she wants.”

  Ruar proved to be an elderly Myal with silvered fur and extremely short bowed legs. His mane was so sparse only a few strands floated around his face. His eyes were dark and rheumy, and he bowed to Halehl with a type of habitual anxiety not often seen in his kind.

  “As the master says,” he replied, bowing again. “And the evening meal?”

  “No,” Halehl said, puffing out his air sacs thoughtfully. “I think not just yet. Keep her isolated from the others. They’ll meet her soon enough. I want to watch her train alone for a few days. Then we’ll integrate her with the team.”

  Ruar glanced at Ampris as though she had just made his life harder. “They will want to see her,” he objected, wringing his thin, bony hands. His prehensile tail was coiled tightly around one of his legs. “Master knows how Ylea is.”

  “Ylea will have to wait, just like the others,” Halehl said firmly. “I don’t want any turf fights. Is that understood? They will keep their distance until I allow the integration.”

  “As the master says,” Ruar said with another bow.

  Halehl flicked his fingers in dismissal, and Ruar gestured at Ampris.

  “Come, come,” he said.

  She followed him beneath an arched overhang leading to a flight of stairs, but before they could climb them, a door slammed from above and footsteps came thudding down the stairs toward them.

  An enormous female Aaroun, spotted in shades of brown and fawn, blocked their path. Garbed in loose, quilted trousers and a sleeveless vest, she was the biggest female Ampris had ever seen, with exaggerated muscle development that rippled beneath her glossy fur. Her neck and shoulders were massive, adding to the impression of sheer physical power. Despite that, her face was feminine, almost dainty, with long-lashed eyes tilted ever so slightly. Her ears were rounded and fringed with cream-colored fur on the tips. She flicked them back now, setting the ownership cartouche in her ear jingling.

  Ampris noticed she wore much additional jewelry as well. Multiple necklaces hung around her neck. Rings glittered on every finger. Her claws were painted carmine, and she wore matching wrist cuffs of heavy gold.

  Ampris could not help but stare at this creature. She had never seen a slave wear so much adornment before.

  “Ruar,” the Aaroun said in a silky, dangerous voice, “what kind of ruvt you bringing to our quarters?”

  The word she spoke was an insult, very dirty. The fur bristled around Ampris’s neck, and her lips curled back from her teeth.

  Ruar glanced between them nervously, coiling and uncoiling his long tail as he did so. “Now, Ylea,” he said in a placating voice, “don’t cause trouble. The master says to stay away from this one for a while. You know the rules.”

  Ylea gripped Ruar’s scrawny shoulder with her red-tipped fingers and moved him aside. Then she stepped right up in Ampris’s face and sniffed the air.

  This additional insult was worse than the word she’d called Ampris. Angered, Ampris fought to keep still, to keep from snarling openly. But now the hair was standing erect along her spine. She narrowed her eyes to slits and growled a low warning in her throat.

  “Stop it. Stop it,” Ruar said in alarm. He fumbled for the transmitter at his belt and pushed it, sending a jolt into Ampris’s throat.

  She coughed and took an involuntary step back, furious with him for overreacting. This giantess wore a restraint collar too. Why wasn’t he punishing her?

  Ylea advanced on Ampris, crowding her again, giving her little pushes back into the courtyard. “You think you can just come here like princess, one of us from day first? You think you so golden, so pretty, we like you? You think you any kind of match for our team? Hah! You half our size, puny ruvt. You like weed, get snapped in half, in first combat.”

  Ampris felt dwarfed by Ylea’s muscular bulk, but also sized her up in seconds and realized she was slow, almost ponderous, in the way she moved. Ampris could run rings around this behemoth, but she wasn’t ready to betray that yet.

  “I’ve already drawn my first blood,” Ampris said proudly, refusing to back up again. She stood with Ylea towering over her, and held her ground. “I haven’t been snapped in half yet.”

  Ylea’s tilted eyes closed to slits. “First blood?” she repeated, then roared out a laugh. “First? One combat and you dare speak to me? Be silent—”

  As she spoke, she raked her claws at Ampris’s face, but Ampris moved in swift reflex to grip Ylea’s wrist and hold it.

  Surprise darted through Ylea’s eyes before her face contorted with fury. She bared her teeth, roaring a challenge, and yanked her wrist free.

  Ruar darted up and stepped between them. “Ylea, stop it!”

  Ylea slapped him aside, sending him tumbling to the pavement, and leaped at Ampris in a body tackle that took her down.

  It was like being landed on by a boulder. Ylea’s weight drove most of the air from Ampris’s lungs. She grappled desperately, trying to keep Ylea’s snapping jaws from her throat.

  A fang grazed her shoulder, and Ylea’s claws dug in like spikes. But when a whipcrack sounded overhead, Ylea jerked back with a snarl.

  “Get up!” It was Halehl’s voice, deep with anger. He cracked the whip across Ylea’s broad shoulders a second time, cutting a gash in her vest. “Get up and form ranks. Now!”

  Ylea scrambled to obey him, and quickly stood with her shoulders hunched and her eyes sullen.

  With his rill crimson and at full extension behind his head, Halehl paced in a circle around Ylea. His eyes were blazing, and even his heavy tail was switching back and forth beneath the long skirt of his coat. Without warning, he lashed her with his whip a third time.

  Ylea flinched but made no sound. One of her necklaces, broken by the lash, fell in a glittering heap at her feet.

  “Stand there,” he told her. “Do not move.”

  Ylea slitted her eyes and opened her mouth.

  “Silence!” Halehl shouted.

  Flattening her ears to her skull, she bowed her head in obedience.

  Halehl turned to Ampris, who was still sprawled on the ground. “Get up.”

  She scrambled to her feet quickly, brushing dust off her coveralls, and felt both rumpled and humiliated. So much for being the bright new gladiator of the team, she thought.

  “Did she bite you?” Halehl demanded.

  Ampris shook her head.

  He glared at her as though he blamed her for this, then snapped his head around at the old Myal limping over to them. “Ruar, you fool! I gave you strict orders not to let this happen.”

  “He tried to carry out your orders,” Ampris said instantly in Ruar’s defense.

  If possible, Halehl’s rill turned an even darker hue of crimson. “Hold your tongue, you impudent cub! Already you forget your orders. Already! Within a quarter hour of your arrival, you have disrupted and disobeyed. One more infraction, and it will be the whipping post for you.”

  Ampris dropped her gaze and said nothing more. Her eyes were burning, and she kept her jaw clamped tightly together.

  “Ruar,” Halehl said, turning on the Myal once again while the short male cringed visibly and coiled his tail around one leg, “get Ampris to her quarters now. See that she stays there.”

  “As the master says.” The Myal snapped his bony fingers at Ampris and gestured urgently.

  She stepped around Halehl and the glowering Ylea in immediate obedience. Ylea turned her head to follow Ampris’s movements. Her lips skimmed back from her large, yellow teeth, and she growled.

  Ampris hurried past her and followed Ruar up the stairs.

  Behind her, although she dared not glance ba
ck, she heard Halehl’s furious voice continue, although now his words were spoken too low for her to understand. She also heard the lash land again and again on Ylea.

  Ampris sighed to herself. If she knew Ylea’s type, Ylea would blame her for the punishment and hate her more than ever.

  Ruar was limping along fast on his short, bowed legs. He shook his head. “Not good. Not good,” he said. “Already you cause trouble.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Ampris said in annoyance. “Ylea started it.”

  “Your being here started it,” Ruar insisted. “You.”

  Reaching a door at the end of the corridor, he unlocked it and flung it open. “Your quarters,” he said. “You stay inside until I come back tomorrow.”

  “But—”

  “Inside! Inside!” he said, almost frantically, glancing over his shoulder as though he expected Halehl to come after him next with the whip. “Now. There can be no more trouble today. Enough has been done already.”

  “She started it,” Ampris said. It was important that he acknowledge the truth. She knew that trouble and blame could ripple out from this incident unfairly, keeping her from being accepted by anyone on the team. “I did nothing to her.”

  “You came here,” Ruar said, refusing to meet her eyes. “That is enough for Ylea.”

  “Then she’ll have to get over the problem.”

  Ruar sighed. “No,” he said softly. “You will.”

  He pointed again at the door and Ampris stepped through it. But she paused on the threshold and turned back to him. “Is she the team leader?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then how do I appeal to her good side?” Ampris asked. “I will not apologize, but how can I make friends with her?”

  Ruar stared at her as though his eyes would pop from his skull. “Friends?” he squeaked at last. “Friends? There are no friends in the arena.”

  “But we’re teammates, not competitors,” Ampris said. “We’re supposed to work together.”

  Ruar shook his head vehemently. “No friends. You stay quiet. Cause me no more trouble. Food will come soon, then you be very quiet.”

  “But, Ruar—”

  He gave her a shove, hard enough to push her over the threshold, and swiftly slammed the door.

  Annoyed, Ampris gave the door a kick, and in response the locks engaged.

  She fumed a moment, glaring at the door, then recovered her temper and swung around to see her latest cell.

  It was beautiful. It was spacious. It appeared to be filled with every luxury.

  Astonished, Ampris forgot all about her anger. At first, she could do nothing but stare. She kept thinking this had to be a mistake. She was a slave. She’d come here to be an expendable gladiator, useful until she made a fatal mistake or met her match in combat.

  But to be given such a room . . . it reminded her almost of Israi’s sumptuous apartments in the palace, and for a moment Ampris’s eyes stung with tears of remembrance.

  Dusk closed her window now with shadow, but a trio of lamps burned softly around the room. It was furnished as a sitting room, with hangings of lavender and mauve silk, soft chairs filled with cushions, a slightly worn but handsome rug, and an assortment of small tables, one of which supported a geometric sculpture of Igthia crystal.

  Ampris drew in a breath of wonder and went to examine the sculpture more closely. As soon as she touched it, she discovered it to be fake, merely a reproduction, but still . . . to have artwork of her own . . . she wondered if she had stepped into a dream.

  After the plain, unadorned, utilitarian barracks of Bizsi Mo’ad, this was divine.

  Delight spread through her. Ampris grinned, then rushed to explore further.

  She found a curtained doorway off to one side that contained a tiny bedchamber barely large enough to hold a bed—a real bed and not just a hard bunk—plus a side table with lamp and a vid control, a vid cabinet, and a chest with pegs and drawers for clothing.

  Beyond the bedchamber, Ampris found an equally small bathing room, with a sunken pool fitted with hydroponic jets, a steam cabinet, a massage table that unfolded from the wall, and a washing sink of reproduction crystal surmounted by a mirror that activated to shimmering, reflective life at her approach. In the ceiling, a tiny window showed her the first twinkles of alien stars.

  Overcome, Ampris sank to her knees beside the pool and pressed her palms against the smooth coldness of the floor. All this was hers and hers alone.

  Never, not even when she was a privileged cub inside the Imperial Palace, had she enjoyed private quarters of her very own.

  She could not believe it.

  Oh, much of the magnificence in these quarters was surface only. But Ampris did not mind if the rugs were old or if the materials were synthetic. She had never believed she would live this way, especially after she was cast out of the palace.

  And now, unexpectedly, so much was hers.

  After the harshness at Bizsi Mo’ad, where there was no grace, no comfort, nothing civilized, it was like being given breath again. Hope bloomed inside her for the first time in a long, long while. She could not believe this gift, this kindness, this generosity of her new owner. And to think that she had struggled to remain at Bizsi Mo’ad, completely unaware of the better life awaiting her in Galard Stables.

  “Oh, thank you,” she whispered.

  Then tears filled her eyes. Flinging herself facedown on the floor, she wept long and hard.

  She wept until all her tears were gone, and she was left empty and somehow comforted. Yet still she lay there with her cheek pressed to the floor. The air grew chilly, but she did not care. Exhaustion pressed her bones into lead. She could not move, did not wish to move. Oh, if only she could stay in here, surrounded by this gift, for a year of days.

  A soft tapping interrupted her thoughts.

  Startled, she jerked up her head, then sat swiftly at the sight of a shadowy figure standing in the doorway. Who was this intruder whom she had not even heard enter?

  “Pardon,” said a soft voice with the unmistakable shrill singsong tones of a Kelth. A very ill-at-ease Kelth. “I brought your grub—uh—your dinner. When you want it served, you tell me.”

  Ampris tried to fluff up the tear-matted fur on her face. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah. I’ll activate the heaters now. Should have been on already. The nights here get cold enough to freeze your—uh, really cold. I just got assigned to your quarters, so things aren’t as ready as they should be. Don’t worry, though. It won’t take me long to get this place whipped into shape.”

  No lamp burned inside the bathing chamber. She could not see the Kelth clearly, yet something about him seemed familiar.

  She rose to her feet, feeling embarrassed by having been caught lying on the floor. “My rooms were locked. How did you get in?”

  The Kelth bowed in the shadows. “I’m your servant, see? The locks ain’t much, more for your protection than—”

  “Protection from whom?” Ampris demanded. “Ylea?”

  The Kelth yipped softly in amusement. “Ylea could come through the wall if she decided to. She’s built like a Mobile Forces Tanker.”

  “I’ve met her,” Ampris said.

  He yipped again. “Yeah, you did. And she sat on you. Got herself whipped for it. Got herself assigned extra laps in the morning. She don’t like you much.”

  Ampris sighed. “I’ll have to make peace—”

  “Don’t go crawling to her!” he said in alarm, handing out advice as though she’d asked for it. “That’s no way to handle her.”

  As a servant, he was impertinent and far too familiar for his position, but at least he talked to her freely. Ampris tilted her head. “For some reason Ylea is threatened by me—”

  He snorted rudely. “Threatened? By what? Her quarters are twice the size of yours. She’s team leader. She gets the top rewards, most of which she strings around her fat neck.”

  Ampris thought about having apartments better even than these.
She was too grateful for what she had to feel envious. “So why is she mad at me? Why does she hate me?”

  “Ylea hates everybody. She’s supposed to. She’s a pro gladiator, see? No sweetness and good manners in her. That’s why she’s team leader. It takes fierceness to make it in this business.”

  Ampris snarled ferociously, and the Kelth jumped backward with a yelp.

  Ampris laughed at him, enjoying her joke. She walked past him while he cringed back, staring at her through the shadows. Ampris could smell the faint aroma of meat coming from the sitting room. It was cooked in savory sauce with many spices, not all of which were recognizable. Her stomach rumbled, and her mouth filled with saliva.

  The Kelth followed her at a safe distance, and Ampris laughed to herself again. No one had told her she would have a servant of her own. She felt unreal, almost free, except for the collar around her throat and the locks on the door.

  It had been a long time since she’d last been served. She remembered when she took such luxuries for granted, believing her golden, magical life in the Imperial Palace would go on forever. She had once been the beloved pet of Israi, the sri-Kaa. Now she was afraid to believe in anything good, because the good things always got taken away.

  The sitting room glowed with lamplight, enchanted and beautiful with its treasures. A small round table had been pulled into the open center of the room. A serving place was laid, with an empty platter and forks carved of ival—a fragrant, dense wood impervious to liquid. Covered dishes stood around the platter, arranged in order of size. In a glance, Ampris took note of the arrangement’s composition and was amazed by it. Everything, from the dish placement to the alignment of the forks to the glowing touch of a single orange-colored flower laid diagonally across the center of the platter, told a poetic story. Indeed, she was being treated like aristocracy.

  The Kelth servant had also pulled up a low reclining couch for her to eat in the Viis manner.

  Seeing it, much of Ampris’s pleasure crashed down. She backed her ears. “Take that away,” she ordered without glancing at the Kelth behind her. “I will eat like an Aaroun, upright.”

  “Sure,” the Kelth said without apology. He scurried past her to shove the couch back in its original place.