Rebel Ice (18 page)

"The League does not serve us," Orjakis snapped. "They are mongrels and mercenaries, unfit to look upon us." But they were also the most powerful alliance in the galaxy, and possibly ruthless enough to exterminate the Hsktskt. If they did win this war of theirs, it would be within their power to outlaw slavery. "Why are we tormented like this? Is it not enough that we must serve the people every moment of every day, devoting every second of life to maintaining our perfection exclusively for their benefit?"

Gohliya did the unthinkable. He did not answer.

"We are aware of your feelings for us, General," Orjakis said, extinguishing the tiny flicker of pity he had once felt for Gohliya. "Someday we will grant your wish and separate that hideous head from your shoulders. But until that time, you are sworn to serve us. Sworn by the same oath that your father and his father took."

The general inclined his head, almost breaking eye contact. "What does the Kangal order me to do? Shall I pursue finding the crash with our own resources, or shall I contact the League and enlist their aid?"

Orjakis gave him his instructions, and then left the receiving room and walked back to his chambers. His mind kept returning to the image of the devoted Aledver accepting his mission to interrogate and kill the League colonel.

I will find out what he conceals from the Kangal
. Aledver's eyes had been a rare color, almost as unusual as the colonel's eyes. The devotion in them had been absolute.
He will tell me everything the Kangal wishes to know
.

Now poor Aledver was dead, and his body being torn apart—oh, gods, and eaten—by the animals below. The obscenity of those thoughts staggered Orjakis. Aledver had been one of his best internals, as

Aledver, forgive us. You above all did not deserve this fate.

Tears were winding down his cheeks as he closeted himself in his bedchamber. One of the female animals that had been sent to him as tithe tribute knelt in a trembling, submissive pose at the base of his bed. She was so ignorant of how to behave that she kept her gaze fixed on the floor.

"Look at us," Orjakis heard himself tell her as he drew one of the small ceremonial daggers he wore at his waist.

The woman lifted her eyelids. She must have been the most comely of the tribute women, but the ravages of cold and work had burnished any hope of beauty from her face. She looked upon him with hope, and fear, and, yes, longing. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

He thought of Aledver, who would never see him again, and looked into those dark eyes.

Orjakis walked naked into the bathing chamber thirty minutes later, his face and hands soaked with blood. Small bits of flesh and bone fell to the floor as he handed his ruined dagger to the nearest drone. "It is contaminated. Destroy it." To his notch, he said, "Have our chamber cleaned at once."

Orjakis could not enjoy the same treatment. He would have to wait for the drone to remove the remnants of the woman from his body before he could sink into his tub.

He looked down at himself, vaguely surprised by the amount of gore. He had never taken one of the little animals before, but it had been a pleasant surprise. He had not gagged her, and yet through all that he had done to her, she had not made a sound to distract him. Perhaps he need not sell all the women they sent him from the surface. The exercise might prove beneficial.

He had been wrong about her potential, as well. Her dark, slick blood provided a unique foil for his smooth, firm skin.
On me, she looks quite beautiful
.

Chapter Ten

After Hurgot's visit, Resa guessed that someone would be sent to the caves to take her back to the camp. From listening to him talk to Egil, she knew he was going to tell the leader of the people that she was alive.

She knew she was supposed to be dead.

Egil had told her himself that as soon as he left her, that first night, the cats would devour her. He had suggested she make cuts in her arms so that they would not play with her. It had not happened, even though these cats were not the same as those Resa had stayed with before she had found the camp. These strange cats had accepted her just as the others had, treating her as if she were one of their own kind.

She sat by the heatarc she had constructed, and wished she had enough of their words to find out why the woman wanted her dead. She knew she was different, not like the people in many ways. She knew some, like Ygrelda, could accept this. But the one who wanted her dead the most—the one whose name everyone whispered—would find another way.

I did nothing to her, and she wishes me dead
. Try as she might, Resa could make no sense of it.

She did not wish to die. Not alone on the ice, and not at the hands of the people. If she was to die, she would choose the moment. Perhaps she would walk out onto the ice in the night, and let the one of the things that prowled the darkness take her. She knew places where they gathered. The jlorra would not kill her unless they were starved, she thought—the others had dragged her to their cave when they had found her wandering in the snow—but surely she could sneak out just after they fell asleep.

There was no way to avoid death unless she stayed here, with the cats, but the people would not permit it. She also suspected she might die of loneliness, or fear from the dreams she had been having.

The dreams began the same way, each night: She was bleeding on the ice, reaching out to someone standing over her. A woman with long dark hair.

Dahktar
, she told the woman.
I am a dahktar
.

As the woman bent over her, Resa lifted a weapon and shot her in the head. But it was her own head that exploded with pain, her own face that turned wet with blood. Then light surrounded her, and wrapped her in chains. A jlorra licked the blood from her face, and the woman was there, holding her hand, watching her.

Resa looked at her and saw her own face on the woman's. Heard her voice coming from the woman's mouth.

Dahktar. I am a Dahktar. A Dahktar
. The woman produced a chain and bound their wrists together.
So are you
. She lifted a dagger over Resa's chest.
For that, you must die
.

Resa would wake up, covered with sweat and shaking, white-hot pain in her wrist.

Egil did not come the next day, but a storm did, and Resa was glad of the food Hurgot had brought her. She tried to share some with the cats, but they preferred their food bloody-dead, and refused it. As soon as the skies cleared, the entire pack left the caves to hunt, and Resa was once more alone.

I could go and look for other people
, Resa thought as she busied herself stitching together some fur pieces.
Ygrelda said there are many iiskars spread out over the ice. Perhaps another camp would not have a woman who hates me for no reason
.

She used a sliver of bone to pierce the edges of the fur scraps and form small holes, through which she passed lengths of sinew she had softened in warmed water. When the sinew dried, it tightened a little, sealing the seam. Today she was fashioning an undergarment to wear, for the old outfurs she had been given were worn in many places and would not keep out all of the cold.

Resa held up the garment against her body to assure she had made it large enough. She used a long, narrow wedge-shaped piece of metal that she had found in the discarded salvage heap and sharpened to trim some uneven tufts. It would not win admiring looks from anyone, but it would do. She started to finish the last seams, and felt a little disappointed that the strange pleasure in putting together the thing would soon be over.

The day drew on, silent and empty. Resa tidied the caves, sorted through her stores, and prepared a stew for her evening meal, but after that, there was nothing else to do. She dressed to go out and look at the colors of the sky, and watch the sun start to drop. The shift in light made the shadows on the ice move and change shape, and for a time she tried to see things in them. But soon that, too, grew tedious.

If the cats did not return by sunset, Resa knew that they would take shelter somewhere else and wait for the sun. Without the warmth of their bodies around her, she would have to sleep closer to the heatarc.

Resa walked around the caves, warming her limbs with the exercise. She tried to make the sweet strings of sounds that some of the women in camp did, what Ygrelda called singing, but discovered the sounds that came from her throat were flat and rather unpleasant by comparison. She could not sing, so she practiced her words out loud, repeating all she had heard, and trying to make sense of the order and meaning.

"How does she live?" she muttered under her breath. "She carries no furs, no food, no weapons. The demons protect her. No. Who are you?"

She understood most of that now. Except for
the demons
, which she thought might be another word for the jlorra. She did not know the answer to the last words—
Who are you
?—but she did not think she would ever know.

Resa took out the piece of metal she had used to cut things. One side of it was shiny and showed a slightly distorted image of her face. She remembered the first time she had looked into it, when she had not known her own face. Even now it looked strange to her.

If she had been important, special, beloved, someone would have looked for her. She did not know exactly how long she had been in this place, but she had not just come here. She had the distinct feeling that she had been here for some time before her earliest memory of the cats.

Is there no one who knows who I was?

She did not think of her past as belonging to her anymore. Who she had been was lost to the darkness and the pain. In fact, Resa was almost afraid to remember it, because knowing would mean missing everything she had loved in her former life. Whether or not she had been loved, she had felt love for others, she felt sure of it. She had begun to love Ygrelda, and it had not seemed like a completely new feeling. Nor had the odd affection she felt for Hurgot, although that puzzled her even more. She did not feel desire for him, and knew he did not like her.

Why did she still feel this kinship with the camp's healer? He was old, and a man, and of a different kind. She felt certain that he didn't even
like
her.

A soft growl made her look over her shoulder. The cats had returned, their claws and muzzles stained with bits and patches of red ice. Despite their gory appearance, she was happy to see them and went to greet them with affectionate hands.

"You do well?" She looked at the pack and saw the remains of a carcass they had dragged through the snow. Since the jlorra devoured their kills as soon as they caught them, she knew the meat was meant for her.

They feed me like a cub too young to make her own kills
. "I thank you," she told the big male, and started to walk back to the caves with them.

The cry made Resa stop and look in the direction from which it had come. There was a skimmer down on the ice, perhaps three hundred yards from the caves, and a hunter half on, half off it. Something was atop him, something twice his size.

Beside her, the largest male in the pack sniffed the air, catching the scent of fresh blood. He was well fed, however, so his interest was only casual.

"Egil, help me!"

Resa understood that the hunter had mistaken her for the beast master, but that was not the problem. She had been given no serrats on her boots, possibly to keep her from attempting to go back to the camp. The worn soles of her boots made it impossible for her to run to him. They were also too far from the camp for the hunter's cries to be heard. She was as useless as a child, or a cub—

The cats think of me as a cub.

"You carry me?" she asked the male, stroking him with reassuring hands as she went around to his side. She had never tried to ride one of the cats, but she had seen both male and female carrying their cubs on their backs when the young grew tired—and when they were going on a hunt. If the male objected, she would get off immediately.

As soon as she was seated, the big cat started toward the skimmer. Her weight on his back made no difference in his stride, and he displayed no displeasure when she grabbed on to the thick fur clump between his shoulders to keep from sliding off.

Resa looked ahead. The hunter was now huddled over, his arms over his head, crying out each time the avian's sharp beak struck him from behind.

The jlorra stopped a safe distance from the skimmer and moved his shoulders, as if to tell Resa to climb down. His narrowed eyes, she saw, were focused on the huge avian ripping and tearing at the hunter's out-furs, trying to get at the flesh beneath. The creature had wings twice the length of the skimmer, and claws that were as curved and sharp as its beak. A length of thin, sheared rope hung from its neck.

Snare cord
, Resa thought. She had seen some of the netlike traps that the hunters used.
Why didn't he kill it before he put it on the skimmer? Stupid man
.

As soon as Resa was on her feet, the jlorra snarled and bounded forward, jumping from the ice to knock the avian from the hunter's back. The two tumbled over and over until the avian landed on the ice and the jlorra lunged, mouth open, teeth bared to sink into the avian's thick, corded neck.

The avian struck the big cat directly in the face, nearly taking out one eye. The big cat instinctively rolled off, head down, and the avian used the opportunity to launch itself from the ice into the air.

Resa saw it fly up and then make an abrupt turn, diving back toward the ice. It was not coming for the jlorra; it must have realized that it was no match for the big cat's bulk and power. Instead, it hurtled down directly at the skimmer.

The hunter, who had risen from his huddled position, did not see the avian until he pulled the hood back from his face.

"Down!" Resa shouted, but the hunter now saw death coming for him and became like a pillar of ice, unable to move.