Alien Chronicles 1 - The Golden One (41 page)

Getting to her feet, she stared down at Kevarsh. He did not move. She could not tell if he even breathed. But although she walked and breathed, she was already dead herself.

Condemned by her own actions.

Ampris turned and fled, racing through the corridor to the stairs. Ralvik and the cook stood gawking at the foot of the steps. Ampris came thundering down and pushed past them without pausing.

“Ampris!” the Myal cook called after her. “What have you done?”

From the courtyard outside came the sound of shouts and commotion. Glancing back, Ampris saw the master striding inside, his coattails swinging behind him, followed by Faln and Gur. Those two were her friends, but even Gur would seize and hold her if the master ordered it.

The alarm went on shrieking, piercing her skull, drowning out the master’s questions as he hurried closer. From the street outside the opposite end of the house, Ampris heard the approaching wail of a patroller siren.

She looked right and left, then bolted straight ahead into the kitchen. As she ran she grabbed up a large pot and swung it by its handle with all her might. She smashed open the window above the water vat, sending shards of glass raining down over her head and shoulders, and climbed out. Dropping into the dusty tufts of grass outside, she crouched a moment, then ran, veering around the end of the building, through the courtyard, and out into the service alley beyond.

Behind her, the shouts and sirens seemed to grow louder, then faded as Ampris rounded a corner and ran even faster. She darted out into a larger street, one thronged with foot traffic and peddlers pushing wares on antigrav carts, and was swallowed up in the noise and confusion, leaving pursuit behind her.

She ran until she was panting and dizzy in the heat. She ran until suspicious stares from pedestrians brought her back to her senses. Only then did she slow down, tucking her hands beneath her tabard the way other servants did as they went on errands. With her ownership ring in her ear and her tabard on, she looked respectable and harmless. But inside she was a throbbing tangle of fear and worry. What was she going to do now? How could she live? Where could she go? Returning to Israi was impossible, even if she could somehow steal aboard a shuttle and return to Vir, which she could not. It was only a matter of time before her likeness was flashed on every vidcast in Malraaket. She was distinctive for an Aaroun, easily recognizable. The patrollers would find her unless she found a place to hide, and soon. But where?

Knowing nothing about the city, Ampris wandered without direction, taking care only to avoid any patrollers she saw. Gradually the streets grew smaller and the buildings more dilapidated. She saw no abiru wearing tabards and discarded her own by rolling it into a ball and wadding it through a gap in a sewer grate. Far below, she heard a Skek gibbering in glee as it scuttled off into the smelly darkness with its prize.

Ampris dusted off her hands with satisfaction. She felt as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Without hesitation she took off the ownership ring and flung it into the sewer as well. For a moment she felt light and free. She stretched her arms high above her head toward the sky, where the sun was beginning to set, and ignored the warning rumble of hunger in her stomach. There had to be a way to live without belonging to someone’s household. Other abiru folk did it; at least she had heard they did.

The first thing she had to do was disguise herself somehow, then seek employment. She was not going to despair. She was not going to listen to her fears, or pay attention to the memory of Kevarsh’s crumpled figure lying on the floor.

Condemned to death. Condemned to death
. The refrain ran constantly through her thoughts, and she pushed it away. She could not worry about that now. She had to—

The only warning she had was a faint whistling sound through the air overhead; then a net settled its heavy folds over her. Startled, she had no idea at first what was happening, until panic gripped her and she whirled around to fight her way out. But the net was impossible to escape. The more she struggled against it, the more its folds wrapped around her. Something snaked around her legs, binding her before she could elude it, and she was yanked hard off her feet.

She fell onto her side with a jolt that knocked the wind from her lungs. While she was struggling to breathe and hang on to consciousness, she was rolled up in the net and trussed securely.

It happened so fast, so expertly that Ampris could not believe she had been caught. Yet there she lay, helpless and doomed. Her escape had been all too short and futile. Her hopes might as well have been flung into the sewer along with the rest of her identity. A howl of fear filled her throat, and Ampris closed it off with the last remnants of her pride. She squeezed shut her eyes to fight back tears, refusing to let the patrollers see her terror.

“Well, well,” said a Viis voice, a smug, self-satisfied voice. “Let’s see what we’ve caught this time, Holonth.”

A booted foot toed her and rolled her over. Ampris opened her eyes, but it was no black-armored patroller who stood over her. Instead, she found herself staring up at a Viis male garbed in loose trousers and a coat the color of dust. A hood lay in folds about his throat, partially obscuring his rill. He carried a stun-stick in his belt, surely, she figured, a weapon illegal for civilians to own. Ampris gazed at him in astonishment, but she felt no relief. Instinctively she knew this male was no rescuer. He smelled of greed and self-interest beneath the sour fragrance of Viis skin. His gaze examined her without mercy.

His companion joined him and crouched down on one knee to stare at Ampris more closely. Holonth’s large head was covered with a smelly mat of brown hair that hung beneath his jaw in a heavy beard. Flies buzzed around him, and even as he grinned at her his broad, ugly tongue snaked from his mouth up into one of his nostrils.

Ampris nearly choked on the stench of him. “A Toth,” she whispered in repugnance.

“Young one,” Holonth said, his voice thick and stupid. “Strong and healthy.”

“Exactly,” the Viis said in satisfaction. He flicked out his tongue, then glanced around at the deserted street. “Bad time to linger. Let’s get her loaded.”

Ampris growled and snapped, but Holonth hoisted her up and flung her across his powerful shoulder. Helpless and afraid, Ampris squirmed all she could and lifted her head to glare at the Viis.

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded in patois. “You have no right to—”

“An educated Aaroun,” the Viis said with amusement. He laughed softly to himself even as his gaze swept alertly from side to side as though he expected trouble. “One who has run away from her rich household. A pity you threw away your ownership ring before we caught up with you. We could have ransomed you back to your owner.”

Ampris again lifted her head to glare at him. The bobbing motion of the street beneath her was making her dizzy. “Is that how you make your living, catching runaway slaves?”

“Such a mouth,” he said to Holonth, who grunted. “Such a rebellious nature. I’m surprised your tongue hasn’t been cut out by now. Still, I suppose you could tell me the name of your master.”

“No,” Ampris snapped.

“Have you been a wicked slave?” he asked her, still using that mocking tone. “Have you run away to avoid being punished?”

“You’re Viis,” she retorted with scorn of her own. “You know all things. Why should I answer?”

He hit her for that, making her head ring. By the time she recovered her wits, she was being stuffed bodily into a cage in the cargo end of a skimmer. The cage smelled of blood. Her fear came rushing back.

Ampris howled. “Let me out! I do not belong to you! Let me out!”

“Shut up!” the Viis told her angrily as he climbed into the driver’s seat and revved the skimmer’s engines. “If you cause trouble, I’ll let Holonth beat you.”

Believing the threat, Ampris fell silent. Still bound inside the net, she sagged wearily against the side of the cage. What had she done to herself, she wondered in rising despair. All she had wanted to do was talk to Israi one last time. Was that so wrong? And now, she found herself descending from one disaster to another. She had thought her life was at the bottom when she’d scrubbed floors for the Hahveens. Now she knew how wrong she’d been. Things could have been much worse. They already were.

Holonth climbed into the skimmer, his weight making it tip dangerously. The Viis gunned it forward, flying fast through the twilight-shadowed streets while he speculated aloud.

“We can sell her to the slave market, but she won’t bring a good price,” he said. “The market is too soft this time of year.”

“Pelt is good,” Holonth told him.

“You think we should take her to the meat merchants and have her skinned?” The Viis laughed, puffing out his air sacs. “Oh, yes, she would make a pretty rug for the floor.”

Listening to them, Ampris curled herself as small as she could and tried not to whimper. They wanted her to be afraid; she could tell by the mocking tone lingering in the Viis’s voice. He was playing with her, the way a predator toys with its victim before the kill.

Memories, old and long-buried, came to life along the edges of her mind. She thought suddenly of the Scary Time, and another Viis who had smelled of cruelty and greed, who came in terror, with Toths at his side. It was her earliest memory of life, a terrible one she wished she could forget.

Now it seemed life had cycled back to the beginning. She gripped her amulet in her fist and tried not to shiver. The amulet grew warm within the curl of her palm, as though her emotions had brought it to life. For a moment it burned against her skin.

Astonished, Ampris uncurled her fingers and stared at it.

The clear center of the Eye of Clarity was glowing with a fiery white radiance.

But as soon as she looked at it, the radiance faded, and the amulet grew cool and lifeless again. It was just an old artifact that no one understood anymore.

Wondering, Ampris stared at it and momentarily forgot her plight. What force, exactly, did the amulet contain? She wished Bish had told her more than his few vague hints. She wished she knew how to control it, how to use it to gain her release. But it was not under her command. It lay on her palm, mysterious and unfathomable, useless to her.

Sighing, she let it swing free around her neck once more.

The skimmer was slowing, and Ampris lifted her head in alarm. Many of the buildings in this section of the city stood dark and deserted. The place lay under an unnatural quiet, unlike the ceaseless noise so common in the rest of Malraaket. The air held the stench of garbage, decay, and rotting vegetation.

The skimmer backed up to a pair of sagging, rusted doors, and hovered on park. Holonth got off and stood guard with his weapon drawn, chewing his cud and flicking his large ears. The Viis pounded on the doors.

After a long while, a peephole squeaked open cautiously. Soft words were exchanged, then the peephole banged shut. The Viis stepped back, glancing around uneasily. Holonth stopped chewing. The quiet grew thick and tense.

Then the large doors creaked open with the grating protest of rusty hinges. A dank, shadowy expanse loomed beyond them. The Viis trader conferred again with an individual swathed in a heavy cloak and hood. Both of them glanced furtively at Ampris.

“I’ll have to see her first,” a voice in a foreign accent said firmly.

The trader murmured again, and they haggled a long while before the trader gave in.

“All right,” he said, the tension gone from his voice. “Holonth, bring her out.”

The Toth unlocked the cage and dragged Ampris out by her feet. She squirmed and snarled, wishing she could break free of her bonds just enough to bite him. He picked her up and carried her inside as though she weighed nothing.

A few quick slashes of his knife, and the ropes holding her fell away. Holonth gripped the net and unrolled her with an expert yank, spilling her onto the floor. She came up snarling and wild, only to be pinned by a spotlight that shone right in her eyes, blinding her.

The cloaked figure circled her, his boots clicking softly on the hard floor. Ampris circled with him, a growl constant in her throat, her fur standing on end. She smelled death on him, and she was afraid.

“What’s her age?” the cloaked figure asked.

“Fourteen, sixteen?”

“Perhaps,” the cloaked one said doubtfully. “We could get a better estimate from her teeth.”

The Viis who had captured her laughed. “I’m not holding her down for that. She’s showing enough teeth already.”

Ampris lunged, and quick as thought the Viis tapped her with his stun-stick.

The jolt zapped through her, bringing a hot flash of pain and numbness that dropped her to the floor. She lay there, panting and whimpering to herself, too stunned at first to quite realize what had happened.

“Plenty of spirit in her,” the Viis said. “A female Aaroun in the first stages of puberty. It’s the perfect time to train her for the arena.”

“Perhaps, but is she trainable?” the cloaked figure asked.

“That’s your job,” the Viis said impatiently. “She’s smart. She’s educated, by the way she speaks. Her accent marks her from the north. Vir, perhaps. She’s well-bred and solid muscle.”

“Thin for her size.”

“She can be fattened up. What do you say? Ninety imperials?”

Ampris gasped at the price, and both of them looked at her.

“She understands Viis,” the cloaked one said.

“Of course. She’s a house servant.”

“Sixty imperials.”

“Sixty!” the Viis said in outrage.

“She’s stolen property.”

“I’m no thief. I caught her on the streets.”

“You could make more if you took her back to her rightful owner.”

“No earring,” the Viis said smugly.

“Which you removed,” the cloaked one said in soft accusation.

“I—”

“Sixty-five. It’s a decent price for a creature off the streets, with no known bloodlines, no provenance at all.”

“Eighty,” the Viis argued. “She’s well-boned and strong. Lots of spirit and intelligent besides.”