Race the Sands Page 28

  Tamra wasn’t concerned about Lady Evara’s nerves, though—she was worried about what today’s race was going to do for Raia’s confidence. The longer she went thinking she’d lost, the more damage would be done. “I’ll work with her.”

  “We need strategies, dear Tamra,” Lady Evara said. Her tone was light as always, but her expression was dead serious. “There are trainers, as we’ve seen today, who would do anything to win.”

  Narrowing her eyes, she studied Lady Evara, hoping she wasn’t saying what Tamra thought she was saying, and especially hoping she wasn’t saying it here in the midst of the stands, where anyone could overhear. “Those who attempt to cheat at the races are disqualified.”

  “Only if they’re caught.” Then, a second later, Lady Evara tilted back her head and let loose as cascading laugh, as if to say of course she was only joking.

  Tamra knew she should laugh along, but the best she could manage was a glare. “Don’t,” she warned. “We will win this, fair and square.”

  “Very well,” Lady Evara agreed. “But remember: all of Becar needs you to succeed.”

  “Believe me, I know.” Tamra pushed her way through the crowd, ignoring all the other trainers and people congratulating her, and tried to get Lady Evara’s words out of her head. That kind of pressure could break a rider—or a trainer.

  Raia didn’t crumble until she was safely alone, back in the royal stable, away from all the eyes and words. If one more person said congratulations and talked about how lucky she was that the cheater had been caught . . .

  I wasn’t lucky. I lost.

  Her concentration had been poor at the start of the race and had slipped at the end. She’d deserved to lose. It was only because her racer was as fast as he was that they’d come in second.

  Sliding down onto the floor, her back against the wall, Raia sat outside the lion’s stall. She listened to him chew his food and wondered what he thought about the race. She didn’t know how much he understood about why they had to win. He knew that winning meant freedom, she was certain of that.

  She heard the stable door creak open and was certain it was Trainer Verlas, returning for another pep talk—she’d been the one to break the good news to Raia, followed by a dissection of Raia’s performance and a reminder that she needed to focus on the race, not be distracted by all the pressure, et cetera. Raia knew Trainer Verlas was right, and she knew she should stand and look ready to face the next challenge, but it was hard to summon up the energy. “Just resting a minute,” Raia said. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Indeed it has.”

  Raia knew that voice. She scrambled to her feet. Nearly falling over, she bowed. “Your Excellence! I’m sorry. I didn’t expect you to come here!”

  The emperor-to-be winced. He was dressed in a royal guard’s uniform, instead of silks with gold necklaces. “You aren’t supposed to recognize me. I’m here incognito.”

  “Oh!” She bowed again. “I’m so sorry! Forgive me, Your . . .” She trailed off. She’d had plenty of etiquette training, between her parents’ insistence on proper manners and the augur’s emphasis on control at all times. None of it covered this, though!

  He was frowning at his uniform. “This should have worked. It fooled everyone I passed, and some of those people have known me since I was teething. Most people don’t even know what I look like—they see the silks and stop there.”

  “It was your voice,” Raia said.

  “Have we met?” he asked.

  “Um . . .” She wasn’t sure if it was better to explain that she recognized his voice because she’d eavesdropped on him. “You sound royal?”

  He sighed. “It’s all the lessons. My tutors were firm about proper diction.”

  “They’d be proud,” Raia said. “You pronounce things perfectly.” She felt her cheeks heat. Why did I say that? It was an inane thing to say. Complimenting his pronunciation? “I, um, assume you’re here to see . . . him.” She almost said “your brother” but stopped herself in time. She began to scoot sideways, like a scuttling crab, toward the door.

  “You are Raia, his rider, aren’t you? I came to talk with you.”

  That’s terrifying, she thought. She wished she could say no and flee, leaving him to Trainer Verlas. She had no idea what to say to royalty! Lowering her head, she said, “I’m honored, Your Excellence.” It came out okay, which was a relief.

  “Augur Yorbel has told me you are aware of the situation.”

  “Yes.” She wasn’t sure if she should say more. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.” He sighed heavily.

  Peeking up, she saw he’d drifted to the side of the stall and was looking at the black lion. The lion didn’t stop eating. “I will work harder and win the next race,” Raia said.

  “I came to tell you I thought you ran brilliantly,” Prince Dar said. “After seeing you race, I believe you can do this.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Did Trainer Verlas tell you to cheer me up?”

  He looked startled. “It was my own idea to come.”

  “Sorry.” Of course her trainer couldn’t order an emperor, or even an emperor-to-be, to do anything. She felt like slinking inside one of the stalls and hiding until he left, except there was no way to do that when he was staring right at her. And he was staring, as if he were studying every aspect of her soul. She wanted to squirm but held herself still.

  “You remind me of me,” he said suddenly.

  She thought that was unlikely.

  “Both of us are in over our heads.”

  That could be true, she thought. She’d never thought she’d have anything in common with an emperor. In fact, she hadn’t thought much about royalty before at all.

  “I was never supposed to be emperor,” he said. “I was the spare. Zarin was supposed to rule for decades. He would have married in a few years, had heirs, and one of them would be stuck with being emperor or empress.”

  She thought about saying sorry again, but he didn’t seem to need a response. He was staring at the kehok.

  “I don’t understand how this could have happened. He shouldn’t have died. And he shouldn’t have been reborn as . . . this. He was a good man. A great brother. All I want to do is set things right, and if you can win the races . . . It won’t fix everything. But it will help.” He was talking openly about the secret, but then he must have felt secure that they were alone in the stable.

  Raia dared move a little closer, to see into the stall beside him. “What was he like?” She tried to imagine her lion as a human. She thought he’d be determined. And strong. And angry.

  “He protected me,” he said simply. “The court is a piranha tank, and he let me stay out of it. Whenever people tried to draw me into their political machinations—dropping hints that they hoped I’d pass to him, feigning friendship in hopes of creating an alliance—he’d find a reason to send me elsewhere, a task that needed doing, a site that he needed me to visit. Every time he could, he made time for me. He used to love stargazing—you wouldn’t think that of an emperor, but he’d memorized all the constellations by the time he was ten, and he liked to climb up onto the dome above his bedroom and look at the stars. I never had any interest in them, but I’d climb up there with him, and he’d spend hours trying to teach me which star was which. I used to pretend I was incapable of remembering any of them, just to mess with him. Just so he’d spend more time with me, pointing out the stars. Does that sound like the kind of man who deserved to be punished like this?”

  She knew from her augur lessons that the universe was never wrong. But she wasn’t going to say that to him. “We’ll win, and he’ll have a second chance. The charm will set things right.”

  A thought occurred to her.

  “I . . . only had a few years of augur training, so there’s probably a very good reason why this couldn’t be possible, but . . .” Raia licked her lips, unsure if she should say her thought out loud. She’d already started though, and the emperor-to-be was staring at
her. “If there’s a charm that can make a kehok be reborn as a human . . . is there any chance there could also be a charm that could make a human be reborn as a kehok? I mean, a human who didn’t deserve it?”

  Prince Dar stared at her. “I don’t know. I never considered . . . But it does stand to reason. Yes, I suppose it could be possible. . . .” A smile lit his face. “I think I want to kiss you.”

  Startled, she took a step back.

  “Oh! No, I didn’t mean . . . Don’t be alarmed. My heart belongs to another.”

  Raia felt herself blush. She hadn’t really thought . . . Well, she had thought for a moment, but of course it was absurd. He was a prince, and she was only a rider.

  Only a rider. The thought nearly made her smile. For the first time, she hadn’t thought of herself as a failed augur, a disappointment to her parents, or a runaway.

  “I need to talk to Augur Yorbel. Yes, he’d know if that was possible.” He didn’t try to kiss her, but he did wrap her in a hug. He smelled of sandalwood and lavender. She hadn’t been hugged often and never by an emperor-to-be. It was . . . nice. Releasing her, he beamed at her, and the joy in his face was like dawn after a cold, dark night. “You’ve saved me today, and you will save my brother in the races.”

  He then sprinted out of the stable.

  Raia stood without moving. The hint of sandalwood and lavender still hung in the air. She breathed it in, and felt better than she had in days.

  Dar climbed onto the gold dome above his bedroom—a thing he hadn’t done since Zarin had died. He remembered which tiles were loose and where to lie with the best view of Zarin’s favorite constellations: the Jackal, the Wheel, and the Lady with the Sword.

  “Lady, tell me: Am I clinging to false hope?”

  In the hour since he had sneaked down to the stable, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the words of the kehok rider. A charm to turn a human to a kehok. He’d never heard of such a thing, and he’d studied plenty of old legends. But if it was possible . . .

  He heard a clattering from below him and didn’t move.

  Puffing, Yorbel hauled himself onto the roof. He hiked up his robes with one hand, and he climbed painstakingly slowly with the other.

  “It’s not that steep,” Dar said.

  “Apparently I’m that old,” Yorbel said.

  Dar snorted.

  “May I ask why you requested my presence here, Your Excellence?” Yorbel sounded a touch exasperated, which was amusing since the augur was normally unflappably calm. He lowered himself to sit beside Dar.

  “Spies can’t hear us. Plus, great view.” Leaning back, Dar pointed at a trio of stars. “Look, the ears and nose of the Jackal. Always rises in flood season.”

  “Very nice.”

  “You’re in a foul mood tonight, Yorbel.”

  “And you’re in a surprisingly good mood. Your racer nearly lost.”

  True. “But she didn’t.” He’d seen the way she’d pulled herself out of a slow start. He’d also seen the hiccup near the end, but the fact that she could overcome a bad beginning spoke well. A lot of riders would have folded after that. And the way she attacked those turns!

  “Spared by a technicality.”

  “You watched the race?” He’d thought that Yorbel had washed his hands of the whole business after he reported on the poor performance of the supposedly top-notch trainer and rider that Dar had called in. He’d delivered that news with the air of a man who had had enough, and Dar had been content to let him return to his cocoon of a temple.

  “From a distance.”

  “You should have joined us. Lady Nori would have been happy to see you.” He’d been lucky enough to have her with him in the stands, even if he hadn’t been able to explain to her why he’d cared about winning so badly.

  Yorbel was silent for a moment. “I hadn’t planned to watch it at all. But I couldn’t stop thinking about her. It. The race, I mean. Sneaked out of the temple like I was a recalcitrant schoolboy.”

  Dar laughed at that image. It felt good to laugh. He hadn’t done enough of that lately. He wondered who the “her” was. The rider? That was the “her” he couldn’t get out of his head. She’d given him hope, in a way no one else had. He thought hope had died with his brother. “Yorbel . . . the victory charm used on the winning kehok. How was it created?”

  “Only the high augurs are privy to that secret,” Yorbel said, “if it hasn’t been lost to history. The victory charm was made many centuries ago.”

  “And there is only the one? Because it was such a difficult process?”

  “Very arduous. The sacrifices to the souls of the augurs who created it . . . As students, we used to speculate on it, and we were always told that the truth of it defied imagining.”

  “Do you know of any other charms that we ever made? To influence how a soul is reborn?” Even though he knew the dome was safe, Dar kept his voice low.

  “You are talking sacrilege, Dar,” Yorbel said, equally quietly. “The fate of a soul is sacred. To interfere . . . Hush, and never speak of this again.”

  “I don’t wish to do it,” Dar said. “I want to know if it could have been done. If it has been done. To Zarin.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Why? The victory charm exists.”

  “As I told you, the cost—”

  “Emperors have enemies,” Dar said. “Becar itself has enemies. Some who might be willing to pay any price to see the empire fall, to see my family fail.” He thought of Ranir to the south, who had been nipping at their borders for centuries, and of Khemia to the west, who had had their own political unrest recently. Any of their neighbors would be happy to consume the Becaran Empire, if it were to weaken. Plus there were closer-to-home enemies, rival houses who would sacrifice much to see their own lineage on the throne. He could conceive of at least a half-dozen suspects without even trying, and there were undoubtedly more enemies he was unaware of. It was, frankly, exhausting.

  “No augur would consent to make such a charm,” Yorbel said. “It wouldn’t matter what someone was willing to pay. We know the value of our souls.”

  “But it could be done,” Dar said. “The knowledge exists.”

  “I don’t know if it does or doesn’t.”

  “But it might,” he pressed.

  Yorbel looked as if he’d tasted a poisonous leaf. “It might. I could make inquiries, discreetly, of course. There is one member of the council who is like a sister to me, High Augur Gissa. I have known her for many years and would trust her with my life.”

  “Would you trust her with mine?” Dar asked.

  He expected Yorbel to say yes, of course. But the augur was silent, which told Dar all he needed to know. Whoever this Gissa was, her loyalty didn’t extend beyond the temple, perhaps not even beyond her friends.

  “If anyone were to know that I, or anyone close to me, was interested in a charm like this, they might suspect the truth about Zarin’s vessel,” Dar said. “And if the truth comes out . . . No. Winning the victory charm is still the best plan. It’s enough for me to know that it’s possible for such a charm to exist, for Zarin to still have been the man I thought he was.” That was a very comforting thought.

  “Then yes—I believe it is possible,” Yorbel said in his always-reassuring voice; then he hesitated. “But if it is and you are correct . . . then it means your brother had a very powerful enemy.”

  Which means that I do too, Dar thought.

  And that was a much less comforting thought.

  After receiving a summons from the palace, Lady Evara chose her hat with care: not the hat with the triple-masted ship, not the hat with the live hibiscus growing from the rim, not the hat with a cradle for her bowl of koi fish, but yes to the hat with the diamond the size of her fist.

  She used to think of such hats as fashion, but now she saw them as her disguise.

  A hat like this said: I have wealth. I am one of you. I belong.

  And it was a lie.

  She�
�d spent the last of her gold ensuring no one suspected she was a fraud.

  She’d hit on the plan of owning a grand champion kehok when she first discovered her inheritance was . . . inaccessible. Her parents, before their deaths, had written a quaint little clause into their will. In order to inherit their wealth, their daughter had to be “worthy.” In other words, an augur had to read her soul and determine her soul was unblemished by human faults.

  Even after death, they wanted to make sure she felt their disapproval.

  She’d spent the first six months trying to make herself good enough, but the standard they’d set was impossibly high. Her soul was, like most, blemished. Her parents’ had been too, of course, but that didn’t matter for the legality of the will. So Lady Evara was stuck, unable to access the fortune that should have been hers and unwilling to tell anyone why she couldn’t access that fortune without suffering censure and ostracization.

  Ever since their deaths, she’d been pretending she was good enough to live in her home, to wear her silk clothes, to call herself “Lady Evara.” Meanwhile, her funds had been dwindling.

  Along came Trainer Tamra Verlas, and Lady Evara had been certain she had a winner, a way to wealth that didn’t rely on her parents’ whims and an augur’s judgment. When that went up in flames, Lady Evara was able to look both eccentric and generous by spending a minimal amount to support her—all the while hoping Tamra would become desperate enough to do something mad and crazy and wonderful, like train a needy rider and a barely controlled kehok, which was exactly what had happened.

  She had to admit she hadn’t predicted the latest development.

  But it was all to the good, at least if she could keep it from falling to pieces. If she could be seen as aiding Tamra and the rider girl, and if this emperor-to-be was in fact legitimized, the reward could be more than she’d dreamed. As a bonus, she’d also be helping a single mother and an unloved runaway, which was a delicious rebuttal to her late parents’ belief that she wasn’t a worthy person.