Raia crouched inside the lion’s stall. She kept one hand on his smooth metal mane, while Trainer Verlas strode through the stable. She was unlocking the stall doors and loosening the shackles of three of the nearest kehoks.
“Are you certain that’s a good idea?” Raia asked.
“Oh, yes,” Trainer Verlas said grimly.
After she’d finished, she retreated to join Raia and the lion in theirs. She shut the stall door, secured the lock, and stood like a soldier at attention, watching while the three nearby kehoks yanked on their chains.
SNAP.
Crash.
One after another, the three kehoks broke through their bindings and battered open their doors. They raced up and down the stable, screaming at one another. Raia cowered against the lion.
“If someone enters who shouldn’t, they will regret it,” Trainer Verlas said.
Raia knew she should feel reassured, but she just felt terrified. Outside, she could hear that the riots hadn’t calmed—there was still shouting and screaming. Every few minutes, she heard a loud crash, as if something large had collapsed. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“I know you didn’t. It wasn’t your fault.”
Yes, it was. If she’d not spoken, if she’d found a way to quietly free the lion . . . She didn’t regret saving him. She just regretted that she hadn’t done it in secret.
“The city was ripe for this,” Trainer Verlas said. “Honestly, I doubt it was your proclamation that truly sparked this anyway. We’ve never gone so long without an emperor, and it was wearing on everyone. You could tell. They were just looking for an excuse to explode. I bet that ninety percent of the people out there have no idea what you said or why the fights started.”
“Do you think Lady Evara made it safely through?” Raia asked.
Trainer Verlas snorted. “I think it would take an army to stop Lady Evara.”
Raia smiled briefly, and then went back to worrying. If Lady Evara weren’t able to reach the emperor-to-be . . . If he didn’t agree . . . If the high augurs refused to cooperate . . . “I wish there were something we could do.”
“Me too.” Trainer Verlas laid her hand on Raia’s shoulder.
They waited, as the kehoks raged through the stable and the people of Becar raged outside. Raia thought this was worse than when she ran away from home. At least then she was doing something. But this . . . She hated this. The not knowing was like a constant pressure on her mind.
She saw a flutter of white by one of the windows. “Trainer Verlas?”
Trainer Verlas did not switch her focus from the kehoks. She was eyeing the three of them, clearly ready to restrain them if they tried to attack the lion’s stall or tried to force their way out of the stable. So far, they hadn’t. “Yes?”
“The window. I think . . . It looks like a messenger wight!”
The delicate white shape was fluttering against the windowsill.
One of the loose kehoks, a muscular brute that looked like a cross between a bull and a crocodile, lunged for it, pawing at the wall. “It could be from Lady Evara!” Raia said.
Trainer Verlas nodded once, then vaulted over the stall door.
Raia saw her wince as she landed on the other side. But then Trainer Verlas straightened as the three loose kehoks all targeted her. They charged across the stable.
Trainer Verlas, however, was having none of it. She raised her hands. “Stop.” She didn’t even raise her voice, and they skidded to a trembling halt. They pawed the ground and snorted, but none of them moved. She walked between them to the windowsill. Gingerly, she lifted the wight off the sill and unfolded it.
She turned back toward Raia as her eyes flickered over the silken paper.
Raia saw Trainer Verlas’s face harden.
And then every kehok in the stable, all three hundred of them, screamed at once.
Tamra read the ransom note.
There could be no other interpretation for the message, despite all the flowery language. She crossed the stable, and the three loose kehoks cowered away from her. She handed the message to Raia, who read it, let out a gasp, and then read it again.
“The high augurs have Shalla,” Tamra said flatly.
She felt her throat close up as she said the words.
Raia’s eyes widened in alarm. “Trainer Verlas! The kehoks!”
Tamra pivoted. She fixed the three kehoks in their place. Slowly, they knelt and then lay down, submissive. Her will was implacable. She felt as if she were holding an ocean within her. “Tell me I read it wrong.”
“You . . . you aren’t wrong. I trusted Augur Yorbel.”
“So did I.” She felt as if her heart were being pierced by a thousand claws and talons. He betrayed me. And Shalla. And Raia, Emperor Zarin, and Prince Dar. Closing her eyes, she felt as if a sandstorm were battering within her.
“How could they blame Dar?” Raia asked. “He didn’t kill his brother! They’re lying!”
“Of course they’re lying. But even if they were saying the sky is green, it wouldn’t matter to the people. Trusting augurs is our national pastime. As soon as the riots die down, everyone will remember how much they revere the high augurs. They’re the purest of the pure—or so they told us,” Tamra said, opening her eyes again. Her hands were clenched so hard that her nails bit her palms. Even if she were to show this message to anyone, it was written cryptically enough that it wouldn’t be proof of anything. The high augurs were too clever for that. “You were right. They killed Emperor Zarin, and they’re using Emperor-to-be Dar—” She stopped. He wasn’t emperor-to-be anymore. “They are using Prince Dar to cover their tracks.”
The lion and Raia . . . We’re loose ends they want to tie up.
“I believed in them,” Raia said. “The high augurs. They’re supposed to guide us. They’re the heart of Becar, within the Heart of Becar—that’s what my teachers always said. Do you . . . do you think they’ll kill Shalla if we don’t go?”
“I think they’ll kill us if we do,” Tamra said.
She felt cold, as cold as the metal in the black lion’s mane. She felt as if silver were flowing through her veins instead of blood, hardening her.
Raia swallowed but did not cry. She merely trembled as she reviewed the message once again, as if on a third read, it would give her different answers. “It says we need to come by sundown. Maybe . . . Maybe they’ll make the trade. Me and the lion for Shalla. Maybe we should make that trade. I . . . had my freedom. I raced, and I had everything I ever wanted. Shalla . . . she should have a chance to live. If this is the only choice . . . Trainer Verlas, is this the only choice?”
Tamra sank onto the floor of the stable, her back to the stable wall. The three loose kehoks were staring at her, their golden eyes unreadable. She breathed. That was what she did. She drank in the moment. And the moment was this:
The high augurs had souls worse than kehoks.
The high augurs were the monsters.
“I don’t believe they’ll honor the trade.” Tamra felt the truth of it as she said it. “I think they’ll kill us all. Shalla included.” It’s what a monster would do. It was the practical solution. If they wanted to hide their sins, the logical choice was to destroy every bit of evidence. “They’ll say we died in the riots. Or at the claws of the kehok.”
“You think it’s a trap.” Raia’s voice shook but didn’t break. And she wasn’t asking.
The augurs never failed to act “for the good of Becar.” It was their excuse for choosing Shalla’s future for her. It was their excuse for continually pushing to take Shalla from Tamra. It had been their excuse for how they’d treated Raia, first taking her from her family then tossing her back like unwanted garbage. “I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself,” Tamra said.
“But your daughter . . .”
“We set her free.”
Tamra stared into the golden eyes of the kehoks. Brave words, but how could she free Shalla? And Prince Dar? And keep the lion and Raia safe? How could she fight people who were monsters inside . . . ?
“How?” Raia asked. “They’re the high augurs!”
Her back twinging, Tamra pushed herself to standing again. An idea was forming in her mind. A terrible idea. “We fight monsters with monsters.” Her hands were curled into fists.
So the high augurs wanted her to bring a kehok. Oh, she’d do that. And so much more. Tamra turned to face Raia. “You can stay here, if you want. Stay safe.”
Raia shook her head. “You can’t attack the temple alone.”
Tamra smiled, stretching her scar. “Oh, I won’t be alone.”
Kneeling, Raia whispered to the black lion. She tilted her head as if listening to the lion reply, which Tamra would have thought was impossible, except she would have also thought it was impossible for the high augurs to be this corrupt.
She wondered what other atrocities the high augurs had committed over the years. There’s rot in the heart of the empire. It must be rooted out.
“He wants to save his brother,” Raia said. “He . . . told me.”
Tamra didn’t question it. There would be time to wonder at the miracle of that later. And she had no interest in wasting time arguing—Raia was old enough to make her own decisions. Besides, Raia could help. I can’t do this alone. “I will go for Shalla. You and the lion free Prince Dar. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Raia said.
“Help me unlock the stalls.”
Raia came out of the kehok’s stall, with the lion close behind her. “How many?”
Tamra felt her anger and fear rolling inside her. It was a power unlike anything she’d ever felt before. All the sorrows and humiliations and struggles of the past were colliding inside her with all her fears and dreams for the future—she felt the moment, even more intensely than she used to on the racetrack. Her will stretched through the stable, unstoppable.
“All of them.”