Alien Chronicles 2 - The Crimson Claw (6 page)

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.

As he selected a hassock instead and maneuvered it over to the table, the lamplight fell across his face and shoulders, illuminating him clearly for the first time.

He was leggy and tall for a Kelth, thinner than he should have been. When he straightened and turned around, something about the twitching of his pointed, upright ears, something about the shape of his slim muzzle, something in his quick, sidelong glance made him look like someone she should know.

Ampris stared at him, trying to grasp the memory without success. “What is your name?” she asked him.

He glanced at her again, with that familiar darting, sideways cast of his eyes. “Don’t you remember me, Goldie? Don’t you remember the auction? You’ve come a long ways since then, you have.”

The old nickname clicked everything into place for her. Recognition flooded her, and she gasped. “Elrabin!”

His lips peeled back from his pointed teeth in a grin, and his eyes filled with a look of glinting mischief that she well recalled. “That’s me,” he said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t forget me.”

Delighted, she rushed to him, ignoring his cautious flinch back, and slapped him on both shoulders. “Of course I remember you. How good it is to see you. I did not think we would meet again.”

“No,” he said, glancing down shyly. “I didn’t think so either.”

“But how do you come to be here?” she asked him. “Tell me your story. I thought you were sold to the gladiators. You should have been in the ring—”

“I’d be dead by now, wouldn’t I?” he said. “Gladiator bait’s all I’m good for.”

“Don’t say that. You’re quick and agile. You—”

“Look, Goldie,” he said in a voice that stopped her. “I ain’t got the knack for fighting. Never did. But I got a head for details, and my talents work fine at this. Serving. It’s a relief to me, not to have my hide tacked on some gladiator’s door like a trophy.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she smiled at him again. “I am so amazed that you are here, that we are here together. To see you again, after all this time—it’s astonishing. I feel that Fate must have brought us back together.”

Elrabin’s ears twitched. Swiftly he clenched his fist, tapped it, and blew on it in a quick, superstitious motion that amused her. “Maybe it did.”

She touched the Eye of Clarity hanging around her throat, wondering a little.

Elrabin bent over the table and whipped the covers off the dishes with a little flourish. “So eat your grub before it gets cold. It’s good stuff, but you don’t get seconds.”

Ampris needed no more persuasion. Ravenous, she seated herself at the table and dug in.

Elrabin hovered over her, attentive and silent while she ate. He kept her cup replenished constantly from a carafe of the metallic-tasting, icy cold water.

“No wine?” she asked, licking sauce from her mouth. “No mead? No imported ales?”

Elrabin swiveled his ears back and blinked in visible consternation. “Uh, you’re in training now. No—”

“Stop it,” she said playfully.

“I think I can find a way into the kitchens after hours, but they count all the supplies, everything, twice a day. It could be hard to conceal a missing—”

She realized he was seriously considering breaking into the kitchen stores to supply her request. She gripped his sleeve. “Elrabin, no. I was joking. I don’t drink wine. It makes my head too heavy.”

Relief flooded his gaze and his thin shoulders straightened. “Well, I could do it, all right.”

“Don’t,” she said, having visions of Elrabin being caught and chained for punishment. “It was a joke.”

He nodded, but he didn’t seem sure. “You just let me know what you want, anytime you want it. I’ll find a way—”

“Elrabin, I don’t expect you to get into trouble on my account.”

“My job is to take care of you outside the ring,” he said. “Keep you fed, keep you warm, keep you happy. Whatever it takes—”

“You’re my friend, not my slave,” she said sharply.

He tilted his head to one side and stared at her hard. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No
. You gotta be tough here, or you won’t last. You gotta play the games, learn the rules.”

Ampris smiled slightly. “I
am
tough. I understand the games. I’m not the naive cub you met before.”

“Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

Now her smile did widen. “No maybe about it. Don’t worry about me.”

“The Blues ain’t easy,” Elrabin said. “There’s things you don’t know yet, don’t understand yet.”

She met his light brown eyes and ignored what he was trying to tell her. “You’re still my friend. That, I understand. I want you to understand it too. Now, sit with me. Eat some of this feast, and we’ll talk.”

Elrabin smiled for a moment, then his ears swiveled back and he dropped his gaze from hers. “You’ve got a golden heart, haven’t you? Golden through and through. I’m glad you haven’t lost that.”

It was her turn to be embarrassed and look away.

“Thank you for saying what you did, Goldie,” he continued quietly. “It means a lot. But for my sake, you don’t let on that we’re friends or that we ever knew each other in the past life.”

Her gaze snapped up, and they stared at each other in fresh understanding.

“Does it have to be like that?” she asked. She glanced at her surroundings. “This is so pleasant, so private, like a dream.”

“No dreams around here,” he said sharply. “You’ll see. They treat you like this”—he gestured at the luxurious room—“to make up for what you go through the rest of the time. The one I served before you, the last one to live here, she used to come in and wrap herself up in that bed and cry for hours, afterward. The arena is horrible, Goldie. Don’t you ever think different.”

His warning was well-intentioned, but she didn’t need it.

“I know what it’s like,” she said. The rest of what she could have said tangled inside her throat, and could not be uttered. She sighed. “I know.”

Elrabin cleared his throat and busied himself stacking the emptied dishes. “You know about the training ring,” he said. “You ain’t seen the pros at work yet. It only gets worse. You—”

“Elrabin,” she interrupted. “Stop. This is a good place for me.”

“You don’t know about the surveillance, the—”

“No,” she said sharply. “Don’t spoil it. Not tonight. I need to know that sometimes life can still be good.”

He snorted. “Call yourself tough. You ain’t any tougher now than you were that night you wouldn’t eat in the auction pen.”

She drew in a breath to argue, but then stopped herself.

Maybe tomorrow she’d find out about the bad things he kept hinting at. Maybe tomorrow she’d be moved to the real training barracks to be fed hardtack and cold gruel before being hosed down with chemical sprays to keep off body vermin and sent forth for a long day of exercise and drills.

She knew he wanted to lecture her against still believing in hopes, dreams, and goodness, against still being young and naive, against still wanting the impossible.

There was a knot just at the base of her throat, jammed beneath the circle of her restraint collar. A knot of fear she couldn’t cope with, a knot she had to deny was there at all.

And if Elrabin untied the knot, and let all her fears go spilling forth, she didn’t know what she would do.

He picked up a piece of globular fruit and handed it to her. “Eat dessert while I fill the pool and heat your bath.”

She laid the fruit on the table. “Elrabin,” she began, but he gave her a quick warning shake of his head and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.