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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 back, 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