Per Trainer Verlas’s orders, Raia spent the night in the stable, which was not at all what she’d been hoping for, after a string of terrified nights spent hidden in sheds, alleys, and abandoned houses. She’d wanted a nice cot in a quiet corner inside a house.
The stable was definitely not that.
She was supposed to work on conquering her fear. Not banishing it. Just dealing with it as a constant that didn’t have any power over her. Easier said than done, Raia thought. But at least she had a roof over her head and didn’t need to worry about being run off by the stable’s owner or a city guard, which was an improvement.
And it wasn’t as if she had to sleep in a stall. There was an office off the stable that boasted a cot and a washbasin. It even had a cabinet stocked with sausage rolls for her dinner and fruit for her breakfast.
The only flaw was all the monsters on the other side of the wall.
How did I get myself into this?
She was supposed to be on track to becoming an augur, her future assured. The fact that it wasn’t a future she wanted was less important than the fact that it would provide her with wealth, security, and comfort—or so her family had repeated ad nauseum. Maybe in a past life, she’d earned her place with the augurs, but she didn’t remember that existence, and she wasn’t that person anymore. Her parents had never understood that.
What would they do if they could see me now?
She knew the answer to that. Haul me back in chains as if I’m a kehok. Toss me in a house that might as well be a locked stable and tell me to breed.
It was better here, even with the horrors that slept only a few feet away. Even if she had no idea how she was ever going to control the one that was supposed to be hers, much less ride him. I’ll learn, she promised herself.
Lying on the cot, Raia slept fitfully—every time a kehok screamed, she woke convinced her family had found her. She fell back asleep grateful it was just a monster, only waking permanently when dawn poked its way through the dusty windows.
She washed as best she could with the shallow basin of water and dressed in the student rider clothes that Trainer Verlas had left for her: a durable tunic and rough leggings that scraped at her skin. The tunic was scarlet red. To hide the bloodstains?
Don’t think like that, she told herself.
She’d chosen this life—the first time she’d chosen her own path—and she wasn’t going to panic just because the outfit was ominously colored. She could do this.
That burst of confidence got her out of the office and into the stable . . . and then it abandoned her.
Raia felt as if she were being smothered in screams—horrible, bone-cutting screams that ricocheted through her veins and filled her skull. Inside their stalls, the kehoks raged, smashing against their walls, tugging at their shackles, and squealing as if they were being skewered. For a long moment, she stood just inside the door, her ears too flooded with sound to move as the kehoks bashed against their stall walls and strained against their chains.
All of them except the black lion.
He stood in the center of his stall, the net of heavy chains draped around him, shackled to the wall. He was motionless, but his eyes followed her as she crossed toward his stall door. She stopped several feet shy of it.
“Why aren’t you screaming? Not that I want you to. You can stay as silent as you want.” She didn’t think he could hear her over the others, even if he could have understood her. Yet he was looking at her as if he followed every word.
“What did you do to be reborn like this?” Raia asked. “You’re lionlike, so you must have hunted the innocent in your past life. Were you a murderer? An assassin? Did you seek people out to be cruel to them? Did you hunt with words or knives? Your body is metal, so you must have been cold. Unfeeling. A hard man. Did people hate you? Did you hate them? Both?”
She knew she was babbling, but the words wouldn’t seem to stop. “Did you know you would come back like this? Did you ever try to change? You know that’s what augurs are for—to help you make the right choices and help you lead an honorable life. They could have prevented this from happening to you, if you’d let them, which you obviously didn’t. Why not? I mean, I know why my parents don’t ask augurs to help them.” A waste of gold, they called it. She’d never seen them enter a temple except to pay her fees and check on her progress, and she wasn’t permitted to read them herself—it was one of the rules of augur training, no unsolicited readings—even if she’d been skilled enough to see their auras clearly. “I think they’re afraid of what the augurs will tell them. I think they know deep inside that they are not any of the things they’re supposed to be, and they’re scared it will be too hard to fix themselves. Is that what you did? Avoid the augurs because you thought it would be too hard? Or did you simply not care whether you were a good person or not?”
As she talked to the black lion, the other kehoks’ screams began to blur into the background. They still made her bones itch and her skin feel raw, but she wasn’t as aware of them anymore. She was instead hyperaware of the metallic lion’s golden eyes.
Kehoks had beautiful eyes.
She’d heard that before, but she’d never been close enough to see for herself. It wasn’t just that their eyes were golden, but the gold seemed to shift as if it were molten metal. The longer she stared, the more she thought the gold was really a mix of colors: reds and yellows and oranges, constantly swirling around black pupils. “It must mean something that your eyes are so beautiful. You must have some good in you.”
She hadn’t learned much about kehoks in her training, only that they were the worst fate for the worst of souls. The bulk of augur training focused on ordinary souls. Kehoks were a cautionary tale. “I think if my ‘fiancé’ were to be reborn as a kehok, he wouldn’t have your eyes. There’s nothing good about him.”
It was funny, but the longer she talked to the black lion, the easier it was to stay in the stable. She could almost forget she was surrounded by monsters. At least until the other students began to come inside, and the kehoks burst into rage-filled roars again.
Quickly, Raia ducked into an empty stall.
Peeking out, Raia saw three students: two girls and a boy, all about Raia’s age. One of the girls had a shaved head, the boy had a scar on his left arm that looked like a crescent moon, and the other girl towered over Raia by at least two feet. All three of them wore sleeveless tunics that showed off their arm muscles. Looking at them, Raia was aware of how few muscles she had, anywhere. She was also aware that they had blocked the stable’s only exit, and that she was effectively cornered inside a stall.
One of the girls whispered something to the boy, and he laughed.
Raia shrank deeper into the stall and wondered if they’d noticed her yet.
“Hey, new girl,” the tall girl called between the kehok screams. “Come on out.”
Heart thudding, Raia inched forward. She wondered if they planned to hurt her and if she could stop them. Trainer Verlas will stop them, she thought. But how would Trainer Verlas know she needed her? Any call for help would be drowned out by the cries of the kehoks. And any screams would be lost beneath theirs.
“Whoa, relax!” the girl with the shaved head said. “You look more scared of us than of the kehoks. Promise we don’t bite. At least not as hard as they do.”
“It’s because I’m tall,” the tall girl said knowingly. “You think because I’m tall I have the overwhelming urge to drop heavy objects on smaller people.”
“You don’t?” the boy asked. “I always assumed you did.”
“Of course I do,” the tall girl said, “but I resist those urges because I’m civilized. Unlike you. You are literally standing in monster crap.”
The boy looked down. He’d stepped in a mound of manure. “Shit.”
“Yes,” the tall girl agreed.
Watching them, Raia didn’t think they seemed threatening. Maybe she didn’t need to be afraid of them. Still, experience had taught her caution.
“I’m Silar,” the tall girl said. “This is Algana, and he’s Jalimo.”
Jalimo pointed to his feet. “And these were new boots.”
The shaved-head girl, Algana, clicked her tongue. “You should know better than to wear new boots to a stable. What were you going to do when Trainer Osir asked you to muck out stalls?”
“I was going to bribe you into doing it for me,” Jalimo said, then turned to Raia. “So what’s your name, who’s your trainer, and are you a paying student?”
Before Raia could answer, Algana jumped in. “She has to be a paying student. Look at her.” To Raia, she said, “Not that there’s anything wrong with paying—the trainers need to eat. You just don’t look like someone who . . . Well, you don’t look . . . Silar, help me out here.”
“Oh, no, you stuck your foot in your mouth all by yourself.” Silar was grinning. But it wasn’t an unfriendly grin. Raia allowed herself to relax minutely.
“My name’s Raia, and I’m not a paying student,” Raia said.
“Yes!” Jalimo said, punching the air. “Another one of us! We’re all training to be champions. The paying students . . . they’re just paying to play being brave. Fierce rivalry between us and them.”
Silar rolled her eyes. “No, there isn’t.”
“We at least look down on them,” Jalimo said in a wounded voice.
“And they look down on us,” Algana said.
“It’s a mutual condescension thing,” Jalimo agreed. “But the trainers won’t allow an actual rivalry. They said it will distract us from our training. And besides, the kehoks bruise us up plenty. We don’t need to fight among ourselves.”
“So you aren’t going to beat me?” Raia burst out, before she thought about her words.
All three of the students stared at her with appalled expressions.
“Like some kind of hazing-the-new-student thing, or establishing of the hierarchy?” Raia tried to explain. It didn’t happen inside the training temple, with augurs everywhere to check your aura for any hint of misbehavior, but her parents had always told her it was common elsewhere—they’d stressed that every time they wanted her to appreciate how lucky she was. “I mean, I’ve heard those things happen. . . .” She felt her face heat up in a blush.
“Definitely not,” Algana said. “What kind of messed-up place did you come from that you’d even think that?”
Raia felt her throat go dry. She wasn’t going to answer that. “I’m sorry.” She hadn’t meant to insult them. She wondered if she’d ruined any chance she had of becoming friends with them. It would be nice to have new friends. She’d abandoned every one she had when she climbed down that trellis and disappeared into the night. She thought she’d come to grips with the idea of losing everyone she knew, but then she felt tears prick her eyes. She blinked them back and hoped the three other students didn’t notice how weak she was.
“Never mind where you came from,” Silar said kindly. “You’re here now. And all that matters is that the qualifying races start in just a few weeks, and we have to—”
Jalimo pushed past her, deeper into the stable. “What, by the River, is that?” He pointed to the black lion, who, out of all the kehoks, was the only one not fighting the shackles that chained him to the floor and walls. Instead, he was staring at them with golden eyes, as if he could dissect them with his gaze. “It looks like it’s made of muscle and metal and nothing else. How fast can it run?”
“Never mind how it runs,” Algana said, awe in her voice. “Look at its jaws! It could tear you apart in seconds.”
“Let me see,” Silar said.
“It’s the one that Trainer Osir was talking about,” Jalimo said. “Must be.”
The others crowded next to Jalimo, and as they pressed closer, the black lion exploded, lunging to the limits of his chains, crashing against the door to his stall. All the students shrieked and stumbled backward, except Raia, who stepped in front of his door, as if to protect him from them.
“Trainer Verlas bought him yesterday,” Raia said over the roars. “He’s my racer.”
All three students then switched from staring at the black lion, who continued to rage in his stall, to staring at Raia.
“Your racer,” Algana repeated.
“And you’re with Trainer Verlas?” Silar said.
Jalimo let out a low whistle.
“Why?” Raia asked. “What’s wrong?”
Silar patted her head. “It was nice meeting you, Raia. We’ll all wear mourning gray to your funeral and play the bells to guide your soul on.” The other two nodded solemnly.
Raia opened her mouth to ask more questions, but just then the stable door slammed open. “You lot, out!” Trainer Verlas barked at Silar, Algana, and Jalimo. “Your trainers want you. Raia, stay! It’s time for your lessons.”
Each of the other students clasped her shoulder on their way out, as if saying a final goodbye. Raia gulped and reminded herself she didn’t have to banish fear. I just have to conquer it.
Briefly, Tamra wondered what nonsense the other students had told Raia, but then dismissed it. It doesn’t matter. I don’t have time to worry about gossip. She had only three weeks to prepare an absolute rookie to race on the black lion.
Luckily, she didn’t have to teach her to win. Not for her first race, at least. You were allowed two chances to compete in the qualifiers. Only your top time was used to calculate whether you’d run in the major races or the minor races in the Heart of Becar. So you could consider your first qualifying race part of your training.
By the second, though . . .
Pursing her lips, Tamra studied Raia.
She wasn’t likely to achieve much physical change in the three weeks leading up to her first race. But Raia could learn the proper techniques: how to keep her seat, how to handle turns, how to pace herself and her beast so that they’d have the stamina to accelerate in the final straightaway.
First things first, though. Before Raia could even mount a kehok without getting killed, she had to master the basics of controlling one. Tamra shifted her gaze to the black lion.
Not you, she thought. Not yet.
Yesterday’s attempt to force him into the stable had been too spectacular a failure.
Better to start small. For today, Tamra selected the lion-lizard that her former student Amira had raced. She’d never had any difficulty cowing him. “Behave,” she told him as she opened his stall. Attaching a chain rope to his net, she led him out. “Follow.”
Keeping her control tight, she led him and Raia onto the training ground. By the time they reached the sands, the kehok was trembling with the effort of trying to resist her, but she didn’t even allow him to scream.
Around the circle, the other trainers were working with their students. In the far corner, Trainer Osir cracked a whip at his student’s monster. One of Trainer Zora’s students was shouting at her kehok and pressing a spear tip against his side. Black blood trickled from a fresh wound, and the kehok screamed his defiance. Tamra ignored them.
“You have one goal,” Tamra told Raia. “Get this kehok to cross the training sands in a straight line, without attacking any of the other kehoks or students, and then make him return and lie down in front of you.”
“Okay.” Raia squared her shoulders and clenched her fists, as if she were about to start a brawl but had no idea how to throw a punch. “How do I do that? Do I use a whip or a spear—”
“Do you see a whip or a spear? No—you will use your will and your voice. On the track, you are the only tool you can and should rely on.” Tamra pinned her gaze on the kehok as she unhooked the chain. He tensed, aware he was free, ready to run, but she kept her gaze pinned to his. “Walk.” Her voice held no hint of compromise, no indication that he had any other option. It was a tone full of expectation: He would obey. He must obey.
He did obey.
Haltingly, he walked across the sands, and then with a surer gait, he trotted back.
“Lie down,” she ordered.
He dropped onto the sands.
“You try,” Tamra told her student.
She saw panic flash in Raia’s eyes, but Raia stepped in front of the lion-lizard. He watched her with baleful eyes. “Walk.” She pointed across the sands.
Tamra kept the pressure of her mind on the kehok but changed her command: You will not harm her. She didn’t dictate more than that. Getting him to move would be up to Raia. But Tamra would keep him from mauling her on her first day.
“Walk!” Raia repeated.
The kehok didn’t move. Just stared at her. His tongue flicked out and in.
“What am I doing wrong?” she asked Tamra, a hint of panic in her voice.
Tamra crossed her arms and didn’t answer. This was something that every rider had to figure out for themselves—their core of confidence. Doubts were rooted in the past, fears were for the future, but kehoks existed only in the present. Raia had to believe the kehok would obey her right here and right now, and to do that, she had to believe she deserved to be obeyed.
Kehok racing, as her own teacher used to tell her, taught you to value yourself.
If it didn’t kill you first, Tamra amended.
Raia clenched her fists and glared at the kehok. “You will walk.”
The lion-lizard began to tremble. He lifted one leg and pressed his paw down, as if he were about to heft himself onto his feet . . . and then he put his leg back down and lowered his head to the ground.
Raia puffed out air, as if she’d been holding her breath. “I can’t.”
“You escaped your family,” Tamra said softly. “You got yourself here. Unharmed. Alone. Your desire to continue is greater than his need to thwart you. He is and will always be a kehok, the lowest of the low. His soul is doomed to be reborn as a monster for all eternity. He is the epitome of hopeless. You are a warrior of hope. You will triumph. Make. Him. Walk.”
Straightening her shoulders, Raia nodded. Her hands formed fists again, and she widened her stance as if she were preparing to fight. “Obey me! Walk!”
Growling, the lion-lizard began to shake. But he pushed himself up onto his feet. Slowly, jerkily, as if he were trying to resist every step, he weaved his way across the sands. His thick, scale-coated tail dragged behind him, drawing curves his wake.
Tamra wanted to cheer. Instead, she kept her voice calm and even, so as not to break Raia’s concentration. “Good. Bring him back.”
On the opposite side of the circle of sand, the kehok pivoted. He began to walk back, faster this time, and in more of a straight line. Excellent! She has potential, Tamra thought, which is a vast improvement over—
CRASH!
From the stables.
The sound of wood and metal shredding.
She heard a kehok scream, but this wasn’t one of rage. It was pain. Beside her on the sands, she saw Raia startle and then twist her head to glance toward the stables—
And that moment of lost concentration was all it took.
The lion-lizard thundered toward the girl. Raia flung out her arms. “Stop! No!” But the kehok didn’t even slow. Jumping forward, Tamra shoved the girl out of the way and held up her hands, palms out.
“YOU WILL STOP!”
The kehok froze mid-stride. Tamra slapped the chain on him and forced him to a wall, where she clamped the chain to a heavy iron ring. Across the training ground, the two other trainers were doing the same with their kehoks, and then they all ran toward the stable.
Out of the corner of her eye, Tamra saw a flash of gold, sparkling brighter than the sun. Surrounded by an entourage, Lady Evara was mincing her way across the sands from the direction of the ferry dock. Several of her servants held parasols over her head, an action made redundant by the model of a sailboat she wore entwined in her hair, large enough to shield her from any hint of sun.
“Oh, by the River . . .” Tamra muttered.
She couldn’t greet her patron now. But she could curse her timing.
Osir reached the stable first and flung the doors open. Before he could even cry out, the black lion burst through and slammed into him, knocking him flat on his back.
“No! Don’t!” Tamra cried. Zora and all the students were crying out too, willing the kehok not to kill him. Do not hurt him!
The kehok trampled over Osir without stopping to savage him.
As Zora ran to Osir’s side, Tamra aimed the force of her voice and the force of her mind at the kehok as he tore across the training grounds. “You will stop!”
Halfway across the sands, he faltered but kept running.
Tamra redoubled her efforts. He would stop, because she would not fail. This was nonnegotiable. She was as relentless as the sun, and he would melt in the heat of her fire. He stumbled in the sands, but then he pulled himself to his feet and pushed forward.
She’d never felt such a strong will in a kehok. Never felt such need.
She lost all sense of everything but where she was in that one moment—the heat of the sun, the wind on her face, the sand beneath her feet, and the kehok straining against her.
She felt the students join her, along with Zora and Osir.
The three trainers, supported by their students, bent their wills toward the black lion. Weighed down beneath them all, he dropped onto the sand like a bird shot from the sky.
At last he lay still.
Tamra grabbed the nearest ankle shackles and ran to his side, fastening them tightly around his paws and chaining them together so the kehok could not stand even if he could muster the will to resist.
She met his golden eyes, expecting to see hate.
Instead she saw sadness.
Several chaotic minutes later, Tamra slammed the bolt shut on the stall door. They’d secured the black lion with triple the number of chains and shackles, and they’d placed him in the strongest stall.
She felt as if she’d wrestled a rhino. She didn’t want to think about how Osir felt. Or what he was going to say to her once he quit moaning about his injuries and decided to move from self-pity to blame.
I am to blame. Again.
Leaning against the stall door, she surveyed the damage. And the blood.
The venomous jackal-cobra lay in a nearby stall. Its throat had been torn. The black lion had burst through the stall wall into the jackal-cobra’s on his way to escape. The jackal-cobra must have blocked him or attacked him, so he’d eliminated the obstacle.
If it had been any creature but a kehok, she’d say a prayer for its soul’s swift journey to a favorable rebirth, but there was no point with a kehok’s soul. It had only one fate.
Primly lifting her skirts above the blood, Lady Evara picked her way over the threshold into the stable. Her entourage shuffled after her, wordless, their eyes obscured by brilliant blue face paint and lashes dusted with gold flecks.
Seeing the dead jackal-cobra kehok, Lady Evara halted. She pursed her lips. Painted, they formed a purple oval. “You realize the dead kehok was mine.”
Tamra winced. I can’t afford to pay her back. She has to know that. Bowing, she said, “Please accept my apology—”
“Not accepted,” she said crisply. “I invested in you, Verlas. Placed my trust in you, and this is how you repay me? You purchase an uncontrollable racer and hire an unsuitable rider. Oh, yes, I saw her little performance out on the sands, and I am not impressed.”
“It was her first attempt,” Tamra said.
“It should be her last,” Lady Evara snapped. “Are you trying to make a mockery of me? Truly, I do not know what to think.” Spreading open a golden-edged fan, she waved it as if trying to shoo away this disaster.
“The potential is there.” Tamra was gritting her jaw so hard that her cheeks began to ache. If only I didn’t need a sponsor, then she’d see mockery. “All I ask is that you trust my judgment.”
Lady Evara snorted, an unrefined sound that seemed at odds with her exquisitely bejeweled self. “‘All’ you ask is trust?” Closing her fan, she smacked it against her open palm. “My trust is not lightly bestowed, and this is hardly the first time you have disappointed me. And I am not the only one. Must I remind you that your students have abandoned you, save this urchin you have found?”
Tamra met her eyes and wished she felt as confident staring her down as she did confronting a kehok. As firmly as she could, she said, “I can win with this racer and this rider.”
“Correction: you must win with this racer and this rider. I will be recouping my losses from today’s fiasco out of your winnings from your first qualifying race.”
Tamra had planned for her share of Raia’s winnings to pay for Shalla’s tuition. First, second, and third place walked home with gold pieces. She began to calculate the number of races, both in the qualifying round and in the minor races, they’d need to win to pay for both the dead kehok and the augur’s bills. And then she realized that Lady Evara had said “first qualifying race.”
It was rare for a racer and rider to place that high in the rankings in their first race. That’s why you were allowed to race the sands twice before you were slotted for either the major or minor races in the capital city, the Heart of Becar. Tamra had hoped to ease Raia and the black lion into the circuit, use the first race to grow familiar with the track, have a decent showing in her second qualifier, and then press her to win in the minors. We don’t have that luxury anymore. Not if Lady Evara demanded immediate prize money. “You know the first race is traditionally a practice—”
Lady Evara cut her off. “Replacing a kehok is a significant expense. I require the prize money from a first place win. If your rider fails to win enough gold to compensate me for my loss, our association is finished. Are we clear?”
Finished? Tamra had no viable backup plan. She had no skills but training kehoks. If she lost her patronage entirely . . . She’d taken a massive blow from the racing commission’s fines last year. She couldn’t weather another.
In a falsely sweet voice, the kind you’d use to talk to children if you were the sort who hated children, Lady Evara said, “Now, what are the little words we say when someone does you a favor you do not deserve?”
In just as sweet a voice, Tamra said, “Screw you, Lady Evara.”
For a brief moment, Lady Evara’s expression darkened, but then she plastered over it with a laugh and a smile. “You’re a fighter, Trainer Verlas. That’s what I’ve always admired about you. And that’s what I am counting on. I am giving you your shot at redemption, and I expect you to give me mine.” She leveled a look at Tamra. “Let me be blunt, Trainer Verlas: I expect a grand champion.”
Tamra gawked at her. “With a new rider and racer?” Last year, before the accident, Tamra had been on the path to achieving the grand prize. But this year, with a new racer and a new rider, she’d hoped merely to win enough races to pay the augurs—and now the fee for the dead kehok.
That had been an achievable goal.
This was crazy.
“Win, and keep winning. And the gold will keep flowing. But lose, and this is your final season. I have no more patience to spend on you.” With that, Lady Evara swept out of the stable.
Tamra was left feeling as if she’d weathered a sandstorm, with glasslike bits of sand flaying her skin. She glanced at the black lion. “You’d better not be a mistake.”
He merely stared back at her.
Grabbing a bucket and towels, Tamra began to sop up the blood.
Raia helped Trainer Verlas clean the stable, while the others hauled away the dead kehok. Neither of them spoke. When the blood was mopped up, she helped repair the broken stall. Again in silence.
She spent most of the day chasing the same set of thoughts around her head: Her kehok was deadly. All kehoks were, but hers was worse than most. How was she supposed to ride him in a race? And how was she supposed to win? It had taken three grown trainers and a batch of students to subdue the beast. If I try to ride him, he’ll kill me.
This was a foolish, impossible plan.
By the time the repairs were finished, Raia had convinced herself to quit. But she couldn’t say the words. Not with Trainer Verlas so silent.
Growing up in her house, Raia knew how to read silences. There were peaceful ones, where you were content inside the warmth of your own thoughts. There were waiting silences, where you watched time stretch and lengthen. And there were silences like the sky that expects a storm, where the air quivers with unshed lightning—angry silences that you don’t dare break. This was one of those, and Raia knew better than to break a quivering quiet.
Tamra spoke first. “You’ll stay with me and my daughter tonight.”
“I . . .”
“I’m not leaving you here with him. Not tonight. Or any other night. It won’t be luxurious, but we have enough spare blankets that you can set up a pallet on the kitchen floor. At least you won’t have to worry about your kehok breaking through the wall while you’re asleep.” She glared at the kehok.
Tell her you want to quit, her mind whispered. But Raia couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Especially not if speaking up meant she’d lose the offer of a safe place to sleep tonight. She glanced once at the black lion, pinned beneath his chains. She hadn’t relished the thought of another night near the monsters, not with the image of what he’d done so stark in her mind, but a night in a real house, safe and warm . . . It was too much temptation. She told herself she was being practical, not cowardly, though she was glad there was no augur around to read her aura right now. I’ll tell her in the morning.
Leaving the stable, she trailed Trainer Verlas across the sands and toward the city. The sun had begun to set while they were cleaning up from today’s catastrophe. It painted the sky with streaks of rust, and it made the Aur River look like liquid gold.
It was only a couple miles before they reached the cluster of houses and shops on the northern shore of the river, the poorer area of Peron. Raia noticed that a lot of the shops were boarded up, and all the homes looked worn-out, as if they’d weathered too many people and too many years. Up close, the white walls were stained from age, and the blue roof tiles were chipped. By doorways, statues honoring the ancestors’ vessels were cheap stone carvings, roughly in the shape of herons, turtles, and hippos. Well-loved, she corrected, not worn-out. Still, she hoped it was safe to be out after dark here. She’d heard rumors of riots in some cities. Even a few deaths.
As they walked between the houses and shops, she watched her trainer brighten when she saw a soft amber glow through some curtained windows. Her pace quickened, and Raia hurried after her.
Raia checked her hands. She’d scrubbed the blood and dirt off of them at the stables. She couldn’t do anything about the speckled grime on her tunic. She hoped she was suitable enough to meet her trainer’s daughter. She always got nervous meeting new people. She thought of Silar, Algana, and Jalimo, and how she’d felt when she met them—that hadn’t been her finest moment, convinced they planned to pummel her.
“Shalla!” Trainer Verlas cried.
Following her inside, Raia saw Trainer Verlas hugging a young girl who was hugging her back just as happily. She looked to be about ten or eleven and reminded Raia of the kind of bird that pecked for bugs on the riverbank—all quick movements and alert eyes. When they broke apart, the girl asked, “Mama, is that blood? Are you hurt?”
“Not mine, and nothing for you to worry about,” Trainer Verlas said. “It was a difficult day, but all the trainers and students are fine.” Raia noticed she didn’t mention the kehoks. “Shalla, I’d like you to meet my newest rider. This is Raia.”
Raia heard the words “my newest rider” and froze for an instant—would she still be that in the morning? Then Raia remembered her manners and bowed her head. “Thank you for allowing me into your home. I hope I’m not an intrusion.”
Shalla bowed back before bounding over to drag her farther inside. She shooed Raia into a chair and pushed a plate with a slice of bread into Raia’s hands. “Here’s what you need to know. My mother’s like fresh-baked bread. Crunchy on the outside but soft and sweet on the inside. If she took you on as a rider, then that means you’re family, and you’re welcome here.”
Raia glanced at Trainer Verlas and was surprised to see how much her expression had softened in the presence of her daughter. Her lips were curved in what was almost a smile, and she was looking at Shalla as if the girl had carved the crescent moon.
“I’ve been wanting a sister for a while,” Shalla continued. “Last rider was a boy.”
Trainer Verlas protested, “I had more girls than boys with the last batch of paying students, if you want to count them. And there’s nothing wrong with boys.”
“Generically, no,” Shalla said. “I like them fine. But not in my house. Do you have any idea how badly their feet can smell?”
Trainer Verlas laughed. “Yours aren’t roses either.”
“But they’re my stinky feet, and I’m used to them.” Turning to Raia, she asked, “Do you want fruit on the bread? We have a jar of pomegranate spread. Just to warn you: it’s a little sweet.”
“Sweet for my sweet,” Trainer Verlas sang.
“I made it,” Shalla admitted, “and I kind of dumped a lot of sugar in. A lot of sugar. You should sleep in my bed tonight. I’ll take the floor. You’re probably sore from training. Mama doesn’t go easy on her riders.”
She jumped between topics so quickly that it made Raia’s head spin. “I’m fine on the floor, but thank you. And pomegranate sounds nice.”
Shalla grabbed a jar and ladled a spoonful onto the slice of bread. She beamed at Raia, and Raia stared back at her.
When Raia was Shalla’s age, she was constantly punished for speaking out of turn. Her family didn’t believe in children expressing opinions until they were old enough to . . . well, never really. She glanced at Trainer Verlas and thought she had to be an incredible mother for Shalla to be so open and so happy.
She thought about what Shalla had said, about how she was now family. She didn’t believe that—your family was your family, whether you wanted them to be or not—but she did feel safer and more welcome here than she had in a very long time, even before she’d felt the need to climb out her bedroom window.
Picking up the bread, Raia took a bite. Sugar exploded in her mouth, so sweet it made her teeth ache—it was much, much too sugary. Shalla was watching her anxiously, as if it were important to her that Raia be as happy as she was.
Raia smiled at her. “It’s perfect,” she said. Not the bread. That was awful. But Trainer Verlas and her daughter, and the way they’d welcomed her in.
Shalla beamed back at her. “Good. It’s important you’re happy here.”
She seemed so very earnest that Raia couldn’t help asking, “Why does it matter to you? You just met me.” Certainly her own family hadn’t cared for her happiness. Why did this perfect stranger?
“Because you’re our only hope.” Shalla said it so matter-of-factly, as if it weren’t a terrifying statement. “Right, Mama? She needs to win races so Mama can pay the augurs so that we can be together.”
The sugar suddenly tasted like sand on Raia’s tongue. “You need me to win?” It was one thing when she was racing just for herself—a chance at her own freedom—but this . . .
Trainer Verlas sighed. “I wouldn’t have put it quite so bluntly, but yes. My daughter is training to be an augur, and I will be using the trainer’s share of the prize money to pay for her tuition.”
“If we can’t pay, we can’t be together,” Shalla said.
She was looking at Raia with so much hope and trust that Raia felt sick. She thought back to what the other students had said, and the fact that she hadn’t seen anyone else training with Trainer Verlas.
I can’t be their only hope!
And the fact that Shalla was training to be an augur—it hit too close to home. Her parents wanted her to repay them for the augurs, and now this girl . . . Abruptly, Raia stood, dropping the bread. “This was all a terrible idea. You know I’m too weak to be a rider. You need to find someone who—”
Trainer Verlas cut her off. “I found you. Sit down, Raia, and finish your bread.”
Raia didn’t sit. This was a mistake. She should have kept going and never visited Gea Market. She could still sneak on board another ferry and make it farther south, far beyond Peron, far beyond all the cities of Becar, until she found a village too remote for her family to ever think of searching there. “I can’t. I shouldn’t have stopped running—”
“Your family will find you eventually. If you stay and race the sands with me, then when they do find you, you can give them the money we’ve won from the races—once we win enough, we can pay my debt to Lady Evara, Shalla’s to the augurs, and yours to your family.” Trainer Verlas smiled encouragingly at her. Her voice was calm, but her hands were clasped so tightly that her knucklebones shone white through her skin. She was trying (and failing, Raia thought) to hide how much this mattered to her. “And then we will be both safe and free.”
Raia blinked. Her eyes felt hot. This was all too much. She hadn’t wanted to be responsible for anyone else’s future. For the first time in a while, she wished one of her teachers were here, so she could ask what the right path was. “How many races do we need to win to be safe and free?”
Trainer Verlas’s smile became even more strained.
“Well . . . all of them.”