Race the Sands

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “We must be careful how we announce the news to people,” Yorbel cautioned.

  Dar nodded. His face twisted, as if he wanted to cry or rage but knew he dared not do either, and Yorbel wished he could say or do anything that would help. He was acutely aware he had caused this pain by bringing this news.

  “It would be best to wait until we’re certain of the correct course of action,” Dar said.

  “Indeed.” Yorbel hesitated, trying to formulate his next question. “The royal stables are in a state of disrepair. Perhaps you would like to visit them and meet the racer that I have procured on your behalf?”

  “Yes!” The word came out like an explosion, and then Dar contained himself. Yorbel felt a burst of both pride and aching sympathy for this boy who was being forced to grow up so fast. “Yes, that is an excellent idea. As it happens, I am between duties now.” He shot a look at the stack of unsigned papers that remained. “Please lead the way.”

  Raia coaxed the black lion into a stall and bolted the door after him. It seemed sturdy enough, and Tamra had pronounced it suitable—whichever emperor had commissioned it had poured plenty of gold into its original construction.

  Beneath all the cobwebs and sand, the stable was still beautiful. Lady Evara’s servants were scurrying all over the grounds outside, cleaning the viewing area first, where Lady Evara might wish to sit, as well as the exterior of the stable, exposing the murals.

  Guess I should make myself useful.

  She darted out and helped herself to a bucket of soapy water and a sponge. Across the track, she saw Trainer Verlas with Lady Evara, greeting a contingent of guards. She hoped they’d come to help clean. Regardless, she knew Trainer Verlas would handle it.

  She started with her kehok’s stall door, wiping it down while staying out of reach of his claws and jaws. He paced inside. Now that they’d arrived, he seemed to be growing more and more restless. “You want to be running,” Raia guessed. “Me too.”

  Soon, she was sure, Trainer Verlas would have them out on the track. She wouldn’t want to waste much time—she wasn’t the type who cared about the aesthetics of a place. Lady Evara could keep neatening and prettifying as much as she wanted, but Raia knew her trainer’s patience for that would wear out quickly, which was good.

  “We have to win next time,” Raia said.

  The lion snarled, but he didn’t seem to be paying attention to her. She found a sink near one of the adjacent stalls—the fanciest sink she’d ever seen, with multiple faucets and a wide basin of black stone. She carried a bucket over to it and, after the pipes finally started spewing clean water, filled it and then lugged it back over to where the kehok could reach it.

  Outside the stables, she heard a commotion, and without thinking, she ducked into the adjacent stall. As soon as she was hidden, it occurred to her that she didn’t need to hide. She was supposed to be here. This was her racer.

  Then she heard Augur Yorbel say, “Your Greatness, it would be safest to view the kehok while he is secure in his stall.”

  That can’t be . . . She peeked between the slats and saw the doors open. Sunlight flooded inside, silhouetting about a half-dozen guards who marched together into the stable. In between them was a taller figure, a man. But he was too shielded by guards for Raia to see his face.

  She stayed hidden.

  Filthy from the journey here and from scrubbing the filth from the stalls, Raia did not want the emperor-to-be of the Becar Empire to see her this way. Or at all.

  Inside the adjacent stall, her kehok began to rage. Screaming, he fought his shackles and threw his body against the walls, as hard as his bindings would allow.

  Steady, she thought at him. Calm down!

  Beyond the stall, she heard Trainer Verlas boom, “Silence!”

  The lion whimpered but continued to struggle quietly. Raia shifted so she could see him, drawn back into one corner. He looked as if he were in pain. She wished she dared go to him.

  One of the guards asked, “What is agitating him?”

  Another replied, “It’s a monster. They’re always like this.”

  “Your Greatness,” Trainer Verlas said to the emperor-to-be, “it’s most likely your soldiers. No doubt their swords remind him of when he was captured. It’s a common reaction in kehoks.”

  Lady Evara hurried to say, “I promise that his rider has complete control over him on the track. Let her demonstrate! Where is that girl?”

  Raia knew that was her cue to expose herself, but she hesitated. She wasn’t certain she could control him when he felt so cornered, and she didn’t want to fail in front of the emperor-to-be of all Becar!

  In that moment of hesitation, the emperor-to-be spoke. “I will view him alone.”

  “Your Excellence . . .” a guard protested.

  “He is secure, as you can see,” Prince Dar said. “And there is no threat here. Guard the door. Outside.”

  Reluctantly, the guards shuffled out of the stable.

  “Alone, I said.”

  Raia saw her trainer, the augur, and Lady Evara bow and exit.

  She’d missed her chance to come out. Now it was too late. She was hiding in the presence of the emperor-to-be. There was no way this could be construed innocently. His guards would immediately think she was a threat. I’ll be arrested. Accused of being a spy or an assassin from Ranir . . . Motionless, she watched through the slats.

  The emperor-to-be approached the kehok’s stall. He knelt, which put him eye level with her, and she had a clear view—which meant that if he turned his head, he’d see her too. She didn’t dare move.

  He was young, not much older than she was, with a thin face, as if he wasn’t eating enough, and deep circles under his eyes, as if he wasn’t sleeping enough. He wore intricate gold necklaces tight around his neck, and his hair was braided and pinned with diamonds and rubies. But his face looked so ordinary, framed by all that wealth. And so very sad.

  “Tell me it isn’t true,” he whispered.

  She almost flinched, but he wasn’t talking to her. He hadn’t even glanced her way. All his attention was focused on the black lion.

  The lion was still whimpering, but he wasn’t fighting anymore. He was merely looking at the emperor-to-be with his golden eyes, which Raia thought also looked sad.

  “Zarin, this can’t be you,” Prince Dar whispered.

  Suddenly, Raia felt as if there wasn’t enough air to breathe. What did he call him? She had to have misheard.

  “Please, Zarin. Do you remember me? Do you know who you were?”

  No, she hadn’t misheard. Zarin. The late emperor.

  Even in all her running and hiding, she’d heard people gossip about how his soul’s new vessel hadn’t been found, about how they thought the new emperor-to-be was delaying the augurs because he didn’t want to be coronated, about how they were losing gold every day because there was no new emperor yet, about how they feared an attack by Ranir when they were at their most vulnerable . . . She’d heard them blaming the emperor-to-be and saying the augurs should work faster and look harder.

  It didn’t make sense.

  And yet it did.

  This was why Augur Yorbel had come to their stable, why he had bargained so badly to buy a kehok, why the palace hadn’t seemed ready for them when they arrived.

  “You were good,” Prince Dar said. “You were good to me. How could this—You didn’t deserve this. Did you? How could you have hidden such darkness from me? How did I not know? I knew you!”

  His voice was barely louder than a breath. He sounded as if he were breaking in two. She knew how it felt to be betrayed by the people who were supposed to love you, to discover they weren’t who you thought they were. She remembered the day she’d been ejected from the temple and how she’d felt when her parents had raged at her failures. This had to hurt even worse. She at least had caught hints of who her parents were before that moment.

  It sounded as if he’d had no idea.

  “It could be a mistake
,” he said. “Yorbel could have read you wrong. You can’t be him.”

  Raia wasn’t skilled enough to read a kehok’s aura. She didn’t know what the augur had seen, but surely he wouldn’t go through all this if he wasn’t certain. It was too important for mistakes.

  Prince Dar seemed to agree with her unspoken thought. “Of course, Yorbel is never wrong. But how could this have happened? How could the augurs who read you when you were alive not have seen—” He cut himself off as his voice broke.

  He curled a fist and bit into the side. She knew the look on his face—he was trying desperately to hold himself together so the men and women outside wouldn’t guess at his emotions. She wished she dared to comfort him. Just one word . . .

  But she said nothing.

  At last, Prince Dar pushed off his knees to stand. He smoothed the silk beneath his golden necklaces. He stilled his face. Only a second later, the stable door opened. “Your Excellence?” a guard asked. “Is all well?”

  “This kehok will make a fine racer,” the emperor-to-be said, in an entirely different voice. He sounded pleased, even jovial, and Raia felt as if she were hearing herself, the voice she’d used when she told the other trainees at the temple that of course she was fine, everything was fine, when everything was falling apart.

  She stayed hidden as he left the stable and the door closed behind him.

  She didn’t move for a long time.

  Chapter 19

  Raia kept cleaning, because it was better than feeling as if she were choking on the terrible knowledge she now had. Her arms were shaking as she scrubbed, and she felt as if she were chattering from the cold, except the air was syrupy and hot inside the stable. Sweat pooled under her arms, at the nape of her neck, beneath her hair, but her mind was consumed by only one thought:

  Do I stay silent, or do I tell?

  She knew it was a dangerous secret. If people knew the late emperor had been reborn as a kehok . . .

  No, not just a kehok. My kehok.

  Again, Raia felt the old urge to run, as far away and as fast as she could. But where could she go? This was a lot bigger than just running from her parents.

  Once people knew the truth, they would immediately look for who to blame. The augurs, of course. And anyone who had been close to the kehok.

  This was the kind of secret that cost lives.

  But it was also the kind of secret that felt too heavy to carry alone. She couldn’t do it. It shouldn’t even be her burden!

  She heard the stable door open and jumped, ready to duck out of sight once more, but it was just Trainer Verlas, followed by Lady Evara and Augur Yorbel. Lady Evara was gushing. “He seemed so pleased! Didn’t he seem pleased? Rider girl, there you are! Where have you been? The emperor-to-be ordered the immediate rejuvenation of the stables and training track. He’ll be adding other racers, riders, and trainers to his stable if this all works out, so you’d best stop cleaning and focus on your training. We have to make sure that we are the jewel of his fleet, so to speak.”

  Raia felt as if her throat were glued shut.

  “Smile, girl! This is what success smells like!” Lady Evara spun through the stable, her hands out as if she were spraying invisible sparkles in all directions. “Well, maybe not quite as dusty . . . but we’re on the big stage now, and we are going to make the most of it! Tamra, my dear—”

  Trainer Verlas cut her off. “Immediate training. Got it.”

  Raia put down the sponge and washed her shaking hands in the sink.

  She almost managed a smile for Trainer Verlas. “I’m ready.”

  Trainer Verlas narrowed her eyes. “You don’t look ready. Do you feel well?”

  “Yes, I—”

  Augur Yorbel staggered backward. “By the River, you were here! You were here, the entire time. What did you hear? What do you know?”

  Just like that, the decision was ripped from her.

  Raia wished she could hide again. Or vanish into a hole. She should have run. But where? How? She was miles and miles from anyplace she knew, with only the clothes on her back. And there was no way they were going to let her out of here now.

  Always the lioness ready to defend her cubs, Trainer Verlas inserted herself between Augur Yorbel and Raia. Her hands were jammed on her hips. “What is my rider supposed to know?”

  Lady Evara checked outside the door and then shut it firmly. “I told you all wasn’t what it seemed. Never doubt my instincts.” She’d instantly snapped from effervescent to all business, which made Raia wonder how much of her flighty aristocrat manner was just an act. Her eyes were narrowed, and her gaze flitted back and forth, as if she were checking every corner of the stable. But this wasn’t the time to wonder about her.

  Augur Yorbel looked as if he wanted to faint, and it occurred to Raia that he was just as surprised and upset about all of this as she was. If the augurs had known the late emperor was reborn as a kehok, he would have been found a lot sooner, Raia realized. Instead, it was only one augur who had come searching for her lion. It was Augur Yorbel’s secret too.

  “It’s all a lie, isn’t it?” Raia said. “About wanting us to race?”

  “A necessary lie,” Augur Yorbel said. “My soul will pay the cost of it.”

  “Yeah, that’s nice for your soul,” Trainer Verlas said. “Explanation, please. We came here to race, and we need to race. You can’t change the terms—”

  Lady Evara laid a hand on Trainer Verlas’s arm. “Hush. Let the man speak.” To Augur Yorbel, she said, “You brought us here under false pretenses. Pray tell me why so I can react with the appropriate level of outrage. Or panic.”

  Augur Yorbel didn’t speak. His eyes kept flickering between them and the kehok, and he looked so lost and trapped that Raia spoke instead.

  “The kehok is, or was, the late emperor Zarin,” Raia said. It was amazing that such a terrible secret took only a sentence to say. She hadn’t known that a few words could turn the world upside down, but these words . . . they changed everything.

  There was a heavy, terrible silence, pregnant with everything not yet said. Raia thought it felt like the desert before a thunderstorm. She thought about the conversation she’d overheard, if there was anything else they needed to know, but that one kernel of truth was all that mattered.

  “Is this true?” Lady Evara asked.

  “Yes,” Augur Yorbel said.

  Yes.

  With that word, Tamra felt as if the sun had been extinguished. She tasted bile in the back of her throat and wanted to vomit.

  The late emperor, a kehok? Our kehok?

  It was inconceivable.

  Such a thing should never have happened. The emperor . . . he was supposed to be beyond reproach, nearly a deity. More holy than any augur. Akin to the stars. To think he could have a soul as tarnished as the worst depraved soul . . .

  “This can’t be,” she whispered.

  “Well, this is far worse than anything I could have imagined,” Lady Evara said in a clipped voice. She was clutching her hands together, the only indication that she was surprised by this news, though she had to be.

  Augur Yorbel nodded unhappily. “It was a last resort, searching for his soul among the kehoks. There was no indication that he would be reborn as anything lesser, much less . . . this. In fact, every prediction was certain he’d be back as a tamarin, or higher. I had hoped my search would fail.” He turned to study the black lion, who was crouched in a corner of his stall. “I think, in a way, it has.”

  All of them looked at the lion.

  He doesn’t look like anything special, Tamra thought. Standard kehok: a beast that could never exist in nature. She remembered the seller in the market had said it was his first turn as a kehok. That he’d been recently reborn. Certainly, he was the most intelligent kehok she’d ever trained, but that didn’t mean . . .

  “This can’t be possible,” she insisted again.

  “Move past that,” Lady Evara said impatiently. “I must know what happens nex
t.”

  “If it were any other vessel, there would be a public announcement,” the augur said. “Celebrations. A verification ceremony, and then a coronation. The vessel would live the remainder of its life in luxury in the palace.”

  “If you reveal the vessel is a kehok, there will be riots,” Lady Evara said. “Or even civil war, as the high houses of Becar question the suitability of anyone in the family line of the late emperor Zarin.” She said this clinically, as if discussing an interesting bit of trivia.

  Augur Yorbel looked horrified, as if those options hadn’t occurred to him. Tamra hadn’t begun to think about how other people would react, but Lady Evara was right. It would be chaos. Even deadly chaos, Tamra thought. Already the mood of the country was on edge. This could be the thing that pushed it over. There would be violence for certain.

  “You could have just bought the kehok,” Tamra said. “You put all our lives in danger by bringing us here.” She knew they’d insisted on coming, but they hadn’t known all the information—he had. And he should have refused to accept their terms. She shouldn’t be involved in this mess. And Raia . . . Tamra looked at the girl, who was on the verge of tears. She didn’t deserve to face whatever storm this would unleash.

  “A true point,” Lady Evara said. “Glad you’ve caught up to the conversation. Augur Yorbel, you have endangered us all. We are tainted by association with this terrible secret.”

  “No one will blame you for not realizing what no one could have suspected,” Augur Yorbel said. “I will do everything in my power to see you are not—”

  Lady Evara cut him off. “You won’t have the power to help us once this secret comes out. The blame will fall heaviest on the augurs. Especially the augur who discovered this horror. You will be in no position to defend us because you will be consumed with defending yourself. So here is what we will do: You will find a new rider and trainer, for however long His Greatness-to-Be intends to continue this charade. You will compensate us for the inconvenience of the journey here. And we will return home, disavow all knowledge of your motives, and lie low until the chaos passes.”