Race the Sands

by Sarah Beth Durst

  He shrugged, as if it were of no consequence. “I wanted what was best for her, but she didn’t listen.”

  True. “And what happened?”

  “She tried to run from me, despite all I had given to her, despite all I wanted for her. She was not in her right mind.”

  “You killed her.”

  He didn’t answer.

  But that was answer enough. He wasn’t even trying to hide how warped he was, how badly he wanted to own her, how he wanted to control her. With the papers he had, he must have felt it was his right.

  “Raia, I swear I will never hurt you. Just let me take care of you. I will see to your happiness in every way imaginable. You will want for nothing.”

  Except her freedom. He and her parents had conspired against her, declaring her incompetent, binding her to him without her consent. Condemning her. All the while, thinking they were doing what was right. Like she was certain Celin had believed when he killed his last wife. He’ll hurt me, if I let him.

  Then she heard in her head, as clearly as her own thoughts, a gravelly male voice she’d never heard before: I will not let him.

  The black lion lunged forward. In the loosened chains, he could reach the stall door. He swiped with his massive paw, and his claws tore Celin’s throat.

  Celin’s eyes widened, as if he were surprised that anyone would dare hurt him. He was a man who hurt others; no one had ever dared touch him.

  He was dead before his body hit the ground.

  Chapter 14

  When Raia screamed, Tamra slammed open the stable door and rushed inside. She scanned the stable: body, kehoks, Raia. . . . Raia was huddled against the wall, far from any kehok and far from the body. A quiet part of her mind whispered: Body?

  But a louder part shouted: Raia is safe!

  Tamra pivoted to face her kehok. He was still chained, shackled inside his stall, but his muzzle was spattered with blood. It looked like wet blackness on his metal face. Lunging forward, she swung the stall door shut and locked it.

  The lion did not move. He only stared at her with his beautiful eyes.

  And then, only then, did she look down at the body.

  Tamra had seen blood before. And death. But that didn’t make it any easier. She didn’t recognize him, which helped. She hadn’t bothered to learn the names of all the students who worked with Osir and Zora, but she knew by sight who belonged in the kehok stables and who didn’t. He wasn’t anyone who should have been in here with Raia.

  He could have been handsome, if he wasn’t dead. But his empty open eyes and gaping mouth—as if he continued to be surprised he’d died—robbed him of any beauty he’d once had. His clothes were expensive layered silks, hemmed with gold embroidery.

  A dead rich man in the stable.

  And her kehok had killed him.

  His throat had been torn. It was a clump of red, and the stain was spreading down his silk tunic and pooling on the sand-strewn stable floor. Beside Tamra, Raia’s parents were wailing.

  It didn’t take much to figure out who he was. The fiancé, the one Raia had run from because of his dead wife. He must have come with the parents and snuck into the stables to corner Raia while Tamra was distracted. While the parents keened over the dead fiancé, Tamra knelt next to Raia. “Are you all right?”

  Raia shook her head hard.

  Tamra clarified. “Are you hurt?”

  Another shake of the head.

  Good. In fact, that was the only good thing about any of this.

  Across the stable, Raia’s mother had dropped to her knees, carefully beyond the edge of the pool of blood, and was wailing loudly enough to match the kehoks. Raia’s father was shouting, “How could this have happened? Who is responsible? Someone must pay for this . . . this . . . abomination!” And the augur was witnessing it all, silently.

  “Shit,” Tamra muttered.

  She felt old as she pushed on her knees to stand. All her muscles still ached from the ride, and even her bones felt tired. The shrieks of the other kehoks mingled with the screaming of Raia’s parents until they all bounced around inside of Tamra’s skull.

  “Quiet,” she ordered, and projected her will like a blanket, smothering the kehoks.

  All the kehoks quieted at once, leaving only Raia’s parents making noise—which seemed telling.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the augur’s attention shift to her. She supposed that was because she’d silenced all of them—that little parlor trick always drew notice. I guess hiding the body isn’t an option. She knew a very nice desert just beyond the tracks with hot winds and sands and wraiths that would happily flay the flesh from a corpse until it was unrecognizable. But there were far too many witnesses.

  Also, that wouldn’t be good for my soul.

  But that was a secondary issue. When it came right down to it, no matter what the augurs preached, she didn’t much care what happened to her in her next life, so long as everyone she cared about in this life was safe. And now they decidedly weren’t.

  Without the screaming of the kehoks to drown them out, Raia’s parents were shouting even louder. Raia’s mother was howling, “This is murder! Murder! It’s the murder of my baby’s future! The murder of all her dreams!” while her father was shouting that the city guards must be called, someone was responsible, and justice must be served.

  “Oh, shut up,” Tamra told them. “Your wailing isn’t helping anyone.”

  Belatedly, she realized this might be insensitive. For all she knew, they’d truly cared about this overdressed corpse and their pain was real. On the other hand, they’d come here to threaten and coerce her rider—not to mention the fact that this man should never have been inside the stable in the first place—and that lost them any sympathy she might have had.

  Plus, they haven’t even checked to make sure their daughter is okay!

  Now that she’d caught their attention, they aimed their anger at Tamra. She heard the words “irresponsible” and “unforgiveable” before it degenerated into curse words spat at her. She filled her lungs, intending to yell them into silence, when the augur stepped forward with his hands raised.

  “Please,” the augur said.

  His simple word quieted Raia’s parents. Tamra was impressed despite herself—even without being able to read auras, she could feel his holiness. It permeated his voice, his demeanor, his very being. That inherent purity was why augurs were so essential to Becar. It was said one augur could stop an army or soothe a mob, and feeling his serenity fill the stable, she could believe it. He’s much better at this than Augur Clari, Tamra thought.

  “Most Holy One.” Raia’s father bowed. “You must help us seek justice for this good man, viciously slain! The kehok must be destroyed, and his trainer punished!”

  Tamra felt her heart sink. That could happen. This wasn’t a death on the tracks, where accidents were expected. This was a civilian inside a stable. If the augur believed the cause was negligence . . . A second charge of negligence would destroy her. And take Raia and Shalla down with me.

  “Is there no hope for the boy?” the augur asked.

  Tamra glanced at the widening pool of red. “Um, no.” Definitely no. She added, “I am deeply sorry for the accident that occurred here today.” She emphasized the word “accident.”

  The augur hurried past them, crossing to Raia, and Tamra and Raia’s parents backed out of his way. He bent down beside Raia. “Are you hurt, child?”

  Now that was what an augur should do: be kind to those in distress. Of course, Tamra hadn’t seen many augurs who acted that way. She thought of Augur Clari once more, so certain of her superiority. But this augur didn’t seem to care that the hem of his robes was dipped in blood, or that Raia’s parents were muttering behind him about how they’d been wronged and what reparations should be made for this calamity.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” the augur asked in a gentle voice.

  Raia lifted her tear-streaked face, and Tamra wanted to gather her
in her arms and soothe her, like she did Shalla after a nightmare. Except this nightmare was real.

  “He s-scared me,” Raia whispered. “I—I backed away. Into the stall. And he came toward me. And my racer—the lion kehok—he tried to protect me. It happened so fast. I didn’t—”

  Raia’s mother gasped. “Oh, Raia, is this . . . is it your fault? You made that monster attack him? River protect you from your fate, for we cannot!”

  “I didn’t!” Raia cried.

  Tamra stepped in front of her parents. “You said yourself she couldn’t be a rider, and now you think she has enough control over a kehok to command him to kill? You can’t have it both ways.”

  “She admitted it!” Raia’s father blustered. “He tried to protect her.”

  Tamra snorted. “She’s mistaken. Kehoks don’t protect people. They slaughter them.” She gestured at the body on the ground. “If anyone is stupid enough to get close to a kehok they can’t control, then the results are their fault. Any child knows that.”

  “That monster should have been secured!” Raia’s mother cried. “Muzzled! I’ve been to races. I’ve seen how they’re supposed to be chained. It’s negligence—”

  “He’s in a stall, shackled to the wall,” Tamra said. “He can’t be muzzled or he can’t eat or drink. If this man chose to enter that stall, then it was his own fault.”

  “He was following her! She must have baited him, enticed him to follow her.” Raia’s father jabbed a finger toward Raia. “Call the city guard! Have her arrested for murder! She intentionally lured him into the stall, knowing what would occur. She caused this, despite all we have done for her, all we’ve wanted for her! She is an ungrateful, manipulative, vile—” He kept going, hurling insult after insult.

  Tamra hated a whole slew of people—those who had doubted her, mocked her, ignored her, rejected her—but she’d never instantly hated anyone as badly as she did Raia’s parents. What kind of parents spoke with such contempt for their own child? Raia was their daughter! They should be defending her! Worried about her! Any emotion but this . . . loathing.

  The wonder wasn’t that Raia had run. The wonder was that she hadn’t run sooner. The fact that her spirit hadn’t been crushed by them was a miracle.

  “I don’t have to be an augur to know how you’ll be reborn,” Tamra told them. And then she remembered the very real augur who was in the stable behind her, with Raia.

  It didn’t matter what these monstrous people said about her or Raia. But it did matter what the augur said and did. The city guard would take any word he spoke as proven truth.

  “She feared these people,” Tamra said to him. “You can clearly see why. As to the cause of death, this man followed her into a stall with no regard for safety. You can’t thrust your hand into the fire and then blame the flame if you’re burned.”

  “The law states—” the augur began.

  “Look at him!” Tamra said, pointing at the lion. “He’s chained inside his stall! Every reasonable precaution was taken.” As Tamra gestured toward the kehok, she noticed the shackle around his neck was looser than usual. Oh, by the River . . .

  She moved to shield the stall from view, but the augur was already standing, looking at the kehok. She couldn’t read his expression, but he looked as if he’d been frozen.

  “Gracious One . . .” Raia’s mother said.

  “Honorable One . . .” her father echoed.

  But the augur didn’t seem as if he was listening anymore.

  Yorbel knew he was one of Becar’s most skilled augurs. He didn’t need peace or silence to read the auras of those around him, which was one of the reasons he’d believed it made sense for him to be the one to search the kehok auctions. If he wished, he could slip into his second sight as easily as putting on a robe. Sometimes he slipped into it even when he didn’t wish it, which was not a fact he cared to share with the high augurs, though of course they themselves were impossible to read. But an unshielded soul was like an open book.

  He’d read the man and woman already: their souls were pierced with so much anger and hate that it tore holes in the fabric of their essences. The trainer had pegged it right. While it was unlikely they were corrupt enough to be reborn as kehoks, it was very likely they’d be reborn as an insect so low that it would take many iterations of rebirth before their souls would be able to pull themselves out of the muck and return as any respectable creature.

  He’d read the girl who huddled in the corner as well. She looked like a candle’s flame that was battered by wind, flickering, close to being extinguished by the shadowy fear that lurked around her. And the trainer had a core like a rock, with shadows that licked at its exterior but couldn’t touch its center. The dead man had no soul to read. Yorbel knew that before he even asked if he could be saved. He’d refused to allow himself to read the kehoks—their auras would drown out any sense of the here and now. He knew he wouldn’t be able to function if he let them inside his head, and he needed clear thoughts for this situation.

  A man had been killed by a kehok.

  It was a common occurrence in the wild. It even happened often enough on the racetrack. Riders lost control. Every season a few were lost. Sometimes bystanders. It was the primary reason he never attended the Becaran Races. He had no interest in witnessing death as entertainment.

  This, though, was different. A death in a stable. As loath as he was to admit such corrupt souls were in the right, the man and woman were correct that there should have been enough safety precautions in place as to make this kind of accident impossible. It was negligence on the part of the kehok’s trainer, perhaps reflecting on the stable as well.

  It also pointed to a kehok who was unsuited to the races. It was irresponsible to keep a kehok that killed so quickly and easily—such a kehok would surely cause more death on a track. The required action was clear. He had to report it to the city guards, have the training facility penalized, the trainer charged and stripped of her license, and the kehok eliminated before it caused any more disasters.

  But then the trainer had said, Look at him!

  And Yorbel had looked without thinking to shut his inner sight.

  Staring at the metallic black lion, he felt as if the air had turned hot enough to choke him. He gripped the wall, suddenly dizzy. Unlike the other kehoks he’d seen on his journey, this one had two layers of auras.

  First was the layer he expected: the decayed horror of a kehok’s broken soul. But it was flimsy, as transparent as a silk scarf. It seemed to flutter loosely around the kehok, like a tunic that didn’t fit.

  Beneath the scarf-like layer, though, was a more solid shape. It was coiled at first, hard to see, as if it were hiding beneath the shadows. A less skilled augur would have missed it entirely. An augur who didn’t know what to look for would have ignored it. But Yorbel was neither of those things, and so he peered at it, shutting out the distractions, the yammering of the girl’s parents, the pleading of the trainer, and the quiet sobbing of the girl.

  As he separated the tangle of shadows—like pushing aside a cobweb—he caught sight of the soul beneath the soul, and one thing became instantly clear.

  I know this soul.

  The longer he stared, the more certain he was. He saw the shape of the man this monster used to be. The late emperor Zarin. I was right.

  He wished with every fiber of his being that he wasn’t.

  He drew in a breath.

  Behind him, the trainer was insisting, “There’s no need to call the city guard! This was an accident at a kehok training facility.”

  “You want to hide what happened here—” the father began, about to launch into another rant, as if volume could hide the shadows he held within. The fear, both his own and theirs, inside the stable was so thick that Yorbel could taste it, sharp as copper on his tongue.

  The trainer cut the man off. “I’m hiding nothing! Call the carriers for the body and the mourners to perform the rites. We already have an augur here to lead them, if he
’s willing. Are you willing?” That last was directed at him.

  Yorbel was finding it difficult to think. He’d never been one to like making decisions under pressure. He preferred to consider all angles, weigh all options, and then make a calm, measured decision. He did not feel in any state of mind to make any kind of calm, measured judgment on anything, even if she’d asked him what he wanted for lunch or whether he liked the color blue. “I do like blue,” he said out loud.

  “What?” the trainer said.

  Get control of yourself, he told himself firmly. You’re a highly educated, well-trained expert in death, resurrection, and the care of souls.

  And even more important: Dar trusts me to bring his brother home.

  “I am an augur from the Heart of Becar,” Yorbel said in his most official tone. “I will handle this matter. Come, let us find a place we can speak to one another beyond the touch of death, and I will tell you how we will proceed.”

  He hoped he sounded as if he knew what he was doing, because he was acutely aware he had no idea.

  Chapter 15

  Tamra led them across the sands to the visitors’ waiting room, the nicest area in the training facility and also the farthest from the stable. The “nicest” room still had cracks in the walls, stained cushions on the chairs, and a dead plant in a pot. It had died on Tamra’s week to water it three months ago, and no one had cared enough to chuck it out.

  With her arm around Raia’s shoulders, Tamra guided her rider to a chair on the opposite side of the room, where she wouldn’t have to sit close to her parents. Into her ear, she murmured, “Tell me you didn’t loosen the chains deliberately.”

  Raia’s eyes widened. “It’s my fault. I did loosen them.”

  Tamra’s grip on her shoulders tightened. No one knows that. It may still be okay. “Before or after you knew your personal nightmare had joined you in the stables?”

  “Before. I swear. I didn’t mean for this to happen!”