Race the Sands Page 5

  The kehok pressed his face closer to the bars, and she felt the sour heat of his breath.

  He hasn’t killed me yet. That’s good, isn’t it?

  Louder, she said, “You want your freedom as much as I want mine. And the only way they’ll ever let you out of this cage alive is if there’s a chance you’ll win races. And the only way you’ll ever win races is if I’m your rider.” She believed that, because she didn’t think there was anyone else in this whole market, maybe in all of Becar, who needed to win badly enough to risk their life like this.

  “You, girl? You want to be his rider?” That was Trainer Verlas, behind her.

  If Raia hadn’t been standing just a few inches from a killer, she’d have jumped on the chance to convince the trainer that yes, she was serious, and yes, she would work hard, and yes, she was ready, and yes yes yes—she’d said that speech a dozen times today already.

  But this time . . . it wasn’t the trainer she had to convince.

  It was the monster.

  Win him, and she’d win the trainer.

  She understood that instinctively. And she’d learned to trust her instincts, like she did a few weeks ago when she got the very strong sense to climb out her window and down the trellis and hide in the shadows of the topiary garden. . . . Those instincts hadn’t steered her wrong. Her parents had come through her door only minutes later. She’d watched them, lit by the candles they carried, and seen that they’d brought ropes—ropes!—to tie her up, as if she were a disobedient dog.

  But she couldn’t think about them now. Only the kehok.

  “We’re alike, you and I,” Raia told him, softly this time. She was aware an audience had gathered behind her. She saw them out of the corners of her eyes. “We both hate cages.”

  He snorted, almost as if he understood her.

  “I have a proposition for you. You don’t kill me, and I won’t let them kill you. They will, you know. Even she won’t stop them, if you don’t accept a rider. Let me be that rider, and I will make sure you live.” Raia took a deep breath and stepped even closer, raising up her hand palm out. Slowly, with every bit of her body screaming at her to flee—and a number of spectators yelling the same thing—she reached in between the bars and laid her hand on the kehok’s cheek. It felt as smooth and cool as beaten metal.

  Maybe this would work!

  The kehok held still.

  For about a second and a half.

  Then he lunged forward with a horrific roar, and she felt a strong arm around her waist hauling her back, so fast that she fell to the ground, flat on her back, as the kehok raged against the bars.

  “Idiot,” Trainer Verlas snarled at her. “You could have lost your arm. Or your life. What were you thinking? Are you that eager to start your next life?”

  On her back, looking up at the furious trainer framed by the blazing noon sun, Raia felt her heart beating faster than a hummingbird’s wings. She felt like screaming, crying, and laughing all at the same time, as four words chased around and around in her head: I could have died!

  “But I didn’t.”

  “What?”

  Meeting Trainer Verlas’s eyes, Raia said with as much fake confidence as she could muster, “I was thinking you’re going to train me. And I’m going to race the sands.”

  Chapter 5

  Best part about traveling with a deadly monster, Tamra thought, is you don’t have to chat with idiots. She paid the dockworkers who maneuvered the kehok cage onto the ferry, then plopped herself down next to her prize and propped her feet up. With a sigh of contentment, she tilted her head back so she felt the warmth of the midday sun caress her face.

  Across the ferry, the other twenty or so passengers, mostly north-bank laborers but a few river merchants as well, squeezed together as tightly as they could, leaving a wide patch of empty deck between them and the kehok.

  She ignored them.

  She also ignored the kehok bashing against the cage bars.

  “What should I do?” a nervous voice asked.

  Tamra squinted at her. Oh, right. My new student. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Raia.” She was eyeing the kehok as if she expected it to lunge through the bars and swipe at her jugular, which, Tamra thought, was at least a sign that the girl had some common sense, as the lion would absolutely do that given half a chance. He screamed at them.

  “You should ride the ferry, Raia. Like the rest of us.” Did she expect to start training instantly? It wasn’t a terrible idea. But Tamra’s leg was throbbing, her old injury acting up the way it did sometimes, and she still wasn’t sure what to make of her new ward.

  She watched as Raia’s eyes flicked back to the monster, then to the other passengers, then to the receding market, as if she couldn’t decide which was more terrifying. The girl adjusted her hood so it shadowed more of her face. She’s hiding from someone, Tamra thought. Runaway?

  Probably.

  That could be a problem. Especially if whomever she was running from was dangerous. “Why don’t you have a seat, make yourself comfortable, and tell me why you’re on the run?”

  Raia answered promptly, “I didn’t run from anywhere. I just don’t have a home anymore. I’ve been orphaned, and my parents didn’t set aside enough money for me. The creditors took our home, and I’ve been looking for a way to support myself.”

  Poor thing. She must have been practicing that speech for days. She seemed so nervous that Tamra said encouragingly, “You’re a good liar. That was plausible.”

  “I’m not lying!” Raia’s voice squeaked, making Tamra even more confident that yes, she was absolutely lying. On the plus side, she hadn’t bolted yet.

  Granted, it’s difficult to bolt when you’re in the middle of a river.

  The river licked at the sides of the boat. A nice breeze carried the scent of lilies that clustered on the banks. When the breeze faltered, the sails flapped, and the ferryman shoved a pole into the water to push them along. Except for the kehok’s horrifically bone-chilling screams, it was peaceful.

  “Is he in pain?” Raia asked, unsubtly changing the subject.

  “Don’t feel sorry for him,” Tamra said. “Given half a chance, he’ll gore you.”

  “I can feel sorry for him and fear him at the same time.” Raia was gazing into the cage. She’d drifted a few inches closer. “I wonder what terrible thing he did to be reborn like this.”

  “Calculate the distance from his shoulder to his paw, then double it,” Tamra advised.

  Raia looked at her blankly.

  “Any closer than that, and he’ll reach you.”

  As if to prove her point, the kehok slammed against the cage, rocking it forward, and swiped with his paw. His obsidian claws raked the air as Raia squealed and jumped back.

  A few of the other passengers shrieked, huddling closer. A man from within the clump called out, “Hey! We deserve to travel without abominations! We pay our way!”

  “We pay more!” Tamra hollered back.

  There was a significant extra charge for transporting murderous cargo.

  Raia scooted a safe distance away from the cage. Behind her, the other passengers were beginning to grumble about their right to a safe passage. The man in the middle was egging them on, but also, Tamra noticed, keeping about three peoples’ worth of buffer between him and the kehok. Very brave, she thought. Perhaps he was hoping to spend his next life as a meerkat, hiding within his pack. Around him, the grumbles began to escalate.

  Conversationally, Tamra said to Raia, “This happens sometimes. You get one or two scared people, and they’ll run from danger. You get a bunch of scared people, and they’ll make danger.”

  “You think they’ll attack us?” She was quivering, but she didn’t retreat behind Tamra. “Even with the harm that will cause their souls?”

  “I know they will. Unless we reason with them.” Raising her voice louder than the growing mob, Tamra said, “You either have a nice trip with an abomination, or I have a n
ice trip without you.” She eyed the lock on the cage, as if she were thinking about opening it. Then she tilted her head so the other passengers couldn’t see her mouth move, focused her will on the kehok, and whispered, “Fight.”

  He went into a frenzy, bashing from side to side in the cage, raking his claws against the bars, throwing his maned head back and roaring loud enough to shake the sail. The other passengers screamed and cowered.

  One of them, pushed to the edge, fell into the water with a splash.

  “Stop!” Tamra ordered the kehok.

  He didn’t respond right away, lost in his rage, but she bore her thoughts into him until at last he quieted. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Raia was staring at her. She was glad—and a little surprised—to see that the girl hadn’t moved. She continued to stay a safe distance from the black lion’s paws, but she hadn’t retreated any farther than that.

  The kehok backed to the far corner of his cage, crouched, and let out a whimper as if she were hurting him. She switched her attention back to the passengers—they’d fished the one who had fallen overboard out of the water and were clustered around her, comforting her. A few shot Tamra terrified, hate-filled looks, but the fire that had fueled the near-mob had been quenched.

  In a soft voice, Raia asked, “That was reasoning with them?”

  “Absolutely. I gave them a reason to behave themselves.”

  A grin—so fleeting that Tamra wasn’t entirely sure she saw it—flickered across Raia’s face; then she went back to staring at the kehok. She has a sense of humor, Tamra thought. One more thing in her favor.

  There may be hope for her.

  But common sense and the ability to take a joke weren’t the only things. Tamra needed Raia to have hidden strength. Certainly the girl didn’t have much in the way of visible strength. She was scrawny. Zero muscles. Soft skin. Whatever put her on the streets was recent. She didn’t look like someone who’d been born to the kind of life Tamra had known. On instinct, Tamra commanded, “Show me your hands.”

  Raia startled like a hare in the grasses.

  “Your hands. Palms up.”

  Raia held out her hands, and Tamra studied them. Soft, no calluses and no scars. No surprises. Ink stains between two of her fingers. Her wrists were just bone—Tamra could have wrapped one finger around them. A rich girl. Or at least well-off. Educated enough to write. Definitely a runaway. Tamra judged her to be about seventeen years old, give or take a year. Old enough to know to run away from a bad situation, she thought, but not old enough to know where to run to. “Your hands won’t be as pretty by the end of this.”

  “I don’t need pretty hands,” Raia said.

  “What do you need?” Tamra asked.

  “Teach me how to do that.” Raia nodded at the cage, where the kehok lurked, glaring at them with his golden eyes, waiting for them to show weakness. “You controlled him. How did you do it?”

  “Tell me the truth about why you’re running, and I’ll give you your first lesson.”

  Raia was silent, and for a moment, Tamra thought she wasn’t going to answer. But then the girl spoke in a voice so soft it was nearly swallowed up by the waves of the river. “I was told I was to be an augur, that I’d been identified by my aura as one who was worthy enough to be blessed with the power of inner sight. I didn’t choose it. They chose me. That’s how it always is, I guess. They said I was going to do wonderful things, that it was my destiny, because of the purity of my soul from my prior life. My parents were so proud.”

  “I’m sure they were.” Tamra kept her voice neutral, but inside she began to calculate how quickly she could pay Raia’s ferry fare to send her as far from Shalla as possible. If Raia had run from the augurs . . . I can’t harbor a fugitive from the augurs while my daughter is in training!

  At best, Tamra could give her a head start. There was a little leftover gold from Lady Evara—not much, but a few tokens could buy Raia a bit of distance.

  She’d never heard of an augur trainee running from their duty before. It wasn’t supposed to be part of their makeup. But Raia was right that trainees had no choice, and it wasn’t an easy life. If Shalla had ever wanted to run, Tamra would have helped her, never mind the cost to her soul. She’d do the same for Raia. Just . . . she can’t stay here.

  “As it turns out, I wasn’t special enough. After four years, I was still failing to master the basic skills. So they cut me loose. Returned me to my parents as unteachable. Said they’d expected me to fulfill the potential they’d read in me, but unfortunately, I’d failed to become the kind of student I was supposed to be.”

  Tamra breathed again.

  The augurs weren’t the ones after her.

  “So why run away?”

  “Because my parents want their money back. All the gold they spent for my tuition since I was chosen. They want me to repay them. Since I have no money of my own—I was a student, so how could I have any?—they want to recoup their loss by marrying me to a man who’ll pay for the privilege.” She spat out the words as if they tasted rank.

  Tamra had heard of such things happening—children treated as commodities, essentially sold into marriage, trading their future for their family’s comfort—but she hadn’t met anyone who’d experienced it. Hearing Raia’s story made her wish that Raia’s parents were here so she could unleash her kehok on them. Not to hurt them, of course, since that was strictly illegal, as well as immoral. But, oh, I could scare them!

  “I take it this isn’t a man you want to marry.” She tried to keep the rage out of her voice—Raia seemed to be having a hard enough time telling her story as it was. She hadn’t once made eye contact with Tamra. All her attention was on the shimmering river. An egret skimmed low over the ripples, its white feathers bright against the blue.

  “He’s not a man anyone should marry,” Raia said. “Rumors say he beat his last wife to death. Of course my parents say not to believe rumors. He wasn’t read by any augur after her death—her family had no money to pay for one, and there wasn’t enough evidence to force one. So he’s innocent, in their eyes. And wealthy.”

  “For the record, your parents are selfish and evil and have placed themselves on the path to be reborn as kehoks. Or at least dung beetles.”

  So much for not showing her rage.

  Raia flashed her a bit of a smile. It faded quickly. “I told them I’d rather die than marry him. But the truth is that I’d rather live and not marry him. So that’s why I’m with you. If I can earn enough money through the races, then I can repay my parents every cent they paid the augurs. They’ll cancel the engagement. And I’ll be free.”

  “Good,” Tamra said fiercely.

  At last Raia met her eyes. “What part of that is ‘good’?”

  “It means you have enough fire to face the sands,” Tamra said. “It means I can teach you to win. You asked me how I controlled the black lion. It’s as simple as this: I wanted it more than he wanted it.” She watched Raia’s face to see if she understood that. Everyone acted as if they got it, but only a few understood it in a bone-deep way—only the ones who truly wanted to seize control of their lives. “Any idiot can command a kehok, if they can learn to focus their thoughts. The trick is that you need to be fully in the moment. You can’t think about the past, the future, what you ate for breakfast this morning, whether you’ll eat breakfast tomorrow. . . . Most people can’t do that, especially not for any extended length of time. Minds are unruly things, and most can’t control theirs—and if you can’t control yourself, you can’t control a kehok. That’s why you don’t see kehoks used for labor. Or war.”

  Many had tried. It rarely went well.

  You needed a fire inside you, the kind that kept you passionately invested in the here and now, the kind that made you want to shape what was happening rather than letting it shape you. Tamra had seen a glimpse of that fire inside Raia back at Gea Market. The key would be if Raia could call on that determination even when she wasn’t in desperate need. “You’ll
help me unload the kehok,” Tamra decided.

  “But I can’t lift—”

  “There’s a winch to lift the cage from the boat to the dock. Then we’ll walk him from the dock to the stables. Or more accurately, you will.”

  Raia stared at her.

  Looking at her expression, Tamra laughed.

  “Good, you’re joking.” Raia sagged in relief. “I thought you meant you were going to unlock the cage and let him out.”

  “Oh, that is exactly what I meant. It’s just your expression was hilarious.”

  Just before sunset, the ferry docked at the training grounds. Tamra helped the ferryman use the winch to swing the cage with the black lion from the boat to the dock, and then she watched as he booked it back into the middle of the river as fast as he could pole.

  From the dock, she waved cheerfully at the remaining passengers. None of them were getting off until Tamra, Raia, and the kehok were as far away as possible.

  They didn’t wave back.

  “Exactly how do we do this?” Raia asked.

  “Carefully.”

  Tamra was confident she could train this kehok to be a racer and equally confident that she could transform a determined girl like Raia into a competent rider. But she didn’t expect to accomplish either before nightfall. “Also, we’ll use chains.”

  Crossing to a box, she opened it and hauled out one of the special kehok nets, made out of iron chains, that all racers wore. Tamra felt a throbbing in her leg and an ache in her back—the net weighed more than she did—as she hooked it up to a set of pulleys and raised it above the entrance to the cage.

  It was a maneuver she’d done dozens of times. Each time got a little harder. Someday she wouldn’t be able to do it at all. She refused to think about that day.

  As she caught her breath, the kehok watched her with unblinking eyes.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” she told the kehok. “I am going to open the cage door. You are going to run forward, thinking this is your chance to escape, I’ll drop the net on you, thereby ruining all your dreams of freedom, and then we’re all going to proceed to the stable.” She didn’t expect him to understand all of that, but it helped focus her thoughts.