Race the Sands

by Sarah Beth Durst

  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.