Alien Chronicles 2 - The Crimson Claw by Deborah Chester Read Free Book Online Page B

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