Race the Sands

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “You’re welcome. I—”

  From the tent, Lady Evara called, “Augur Yorbel? We have matters to discuss!”

  He sighed; then his face smoothed back into a pleasant, professional demeanor. Bowing slightly to Tamra, he crossed the deck. She watched him.

  As soon as he’d left, Raia returned. “That was so sweet.”

  Tamra frowned at her. “What?”

  “He admires you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Tamra said. “He was asking for advice.”

  Raia was grinning. “I think it’s romantic.”

  Tamra wavered between annoyance and amusement. She certainly hoped that Augur Yorbel wasn’t having romantic thoughts about her. She had no time in her life for such foolishness, especially in race season. “I don’t need romance in my life right now. I have something more important: a purpose. And so do you.” She pointed at the statue of a crocodile on the side of the river. It was carved of pink stone, polished so it shone. “Concentrate on that statue. Learn its curves, its shadows. Your mind must be strong and focused if you’re to win the next race. For the rest of the journey, I want you to pick objects we pass and let them fill your thoughts. See if you can ignore the wonders of the Heart.”

  “Fine, but you shouldn’t ignore your own heart.”

  “Focus!”

  “Okay, okay.” Quietly, Raia said, “But love is important too.” Then, with more determination, “And I won’t lose again.”

  Tamra shook her head. “Just when I think you almost understand, you say something ridiculous. It can’t be about winning or losing. It’s always just about the moment. What you want in that moment can silence the failures of the past and the pressures of the future.” She paused before adding, “And yes, love is of course important, but love isn’t only giddy new romance. My life is full of love. Now, focus on that crocodile.”

  “You’ll see, Trainer Verlas—this is a fresh start. The augur choosing us . . . We have a second chance!” Raia sounded so certain.

  Tamra pointed firmly at the statue, and Raia finally studied the crocodile.

  As she did, Tamra kept thinking about this unlikely hope. I’ve had so many chances. A lifetime of them. She’d been given a way out of her childhood with kehok races. After she’d been injured too badly to continue racing, she’d been given a way out of despair and a new future with the birth of her daughter. And now this new chance to secure a future for herself and her daughter . . . and possibly a second daughter.

  I don’t know that I deserve yet another chance.

  She’d failed her rider last year. She’d failed her students last month. And in doing so, she’d failed both herself and Shalla. But Raia does deserve this. Tamra watched as her rider began to breathe slower and more evenly as she narrowed her focus on a single, stationary object. As they sailed past the crocodile statue, Tamra directed her toward the next target: a colossal tiger, sheathed in gold.

  She continued to lead Raia through the exercise until they reached the royal docks, which were a sight in and of themselves: every post carved into the shape of a man or woman, dancers and soldiers and farmers and fishermen. “Good job,” she said.

  Raia beamed.

  Stepping off the boat first, Augur Yorbel took the lead, presenting documentation and talking in a low voice to the dockmaster, who bowed and then welcomed them to the Heart of Becar.

  Lady Evara and her entourage disembarked next, as soon as a plank was laid between the boat and the dock. They boarded waiting chariots. Following, Tamra, with Raia, helped load the kehok in his cage onto a cart. An expensive-looking red sheet was draped over the cage. So the citizens won’t have to see such a hideous creature in their beautiful city, Tamra thought. Or so they won’t see a reminder of what could happen to them if they aren’t careful with their souls. Either way, she didn’t object.

  She climbed into the seat of the cart, next to Raia, who’d already hopped up beside the driver—a silent woman in a royal city guard uniform. Raia was bouncing in her seat like an overexcited puppy. As they drove toward the palace, Tamra tried to absorb some of Raia’s enthusiasm. Maybe I don’t deserve this second chance, but I am going to make the most of it.

  Raia twisted around, trying to see everything, so many times that Tamra thought she was going to topple out of the cart. Certainly, there were glorious sights in every direction: a tower sheathed in gold, a statue of a heron sculpted out of glass, a mosaic detailing an ancient emperor’s victory repelling an invasion . . . but Tamra noticed the people. Namely, that there were too many of them, mostly workers who should have been off at construction sites or quarries. She expected the farmers—historically, the Becaran Races began as a way to distract farmers who couldn’t work while their fields were saturated during flood season—but this many workers loitering in the streets was unusual.

  All these men and women out of work, purposeless and some of them penniless, had to be causing more trouble than usual. She thought she spotted some soldiers from the Becaran army patrolling with the guards. It was a good thing they’d have the races to distract them.

  That was, according to legend, the reason the Becaran Races began. After the great warrior Aur split the desert and created his mighty river, the people flocked to its banks. Discovering the land was fertile, they rejoiced. But the great crocodile Ferlar, who inhabits all the rivers of the world—a description Tamra had questioned the first time she’d heard the tale and been told he was “so large he needed all the rivers”—heard their celebration and hated it. In response, he flicked his massive tail, causing the fields to flood. Despondent, the early Becarans began to squabble and then war among themselves. To cheer up his people, the warrior Aur plucked a couple kehoks out of the desert and forced them to run as fast as they could. And thus, every year when Ferlar flicks his tail and floods the farmlands, the Becaran people hold their races to distract themselves from the tragedies they can’t control.

  Except for the part with the enormous crocodile, Tamra thought that was a plausible explanation. For at least a thousand years, the races had been giving people something to cheer for, and Tamra had the feeling that this year Becarans needed to cheer more than ever. Turnout is going to be massive, she thought.

  She hoped Raia wouldn’t be distracted by the size of the audience. She was glad Raia had done the extra focusing exercises on the trip here—that would help. As they drove through the city, Tamra silently crafted her training schedule.

  Soon, they saw the palace, and Raia gasped so loudly that Tamra laughed. Composed of several sprawling buildings, the palace was painted every color imaginable: vast murals of river scenes, beside massive thirty-foot-tall portraits of every emperor and empress who had ever ruled.

  They circled around it, driving behind and beyond. Still on the palace grounds, the royal kehok stables were through three archways and beyond a high-walled garden, tucked out of sight. After a surprised-looking set of guards yanked open a black gate, they rode inside, and Tamra saw that Yorbel had not exaggerated. She climbed off the cart, wincing as her leg ached, and joined Lady Evara in surveying their new home.

  As Yorbel had said, the royal kehok stables had not been maintained.

  That’s the polite way to put it, Tamra thought.

  Lady Evara, however, had no interest in putting it politely. “I have housed rats in better accommodations than these.” She had her hands on her hips, her voluminous hat was askew, and her cheeks were flushed.

  “Technically, kehoks are lower than rats,” Tamra said. She supposed there were some people who could even want to be reborn as rats, especially given a worse alternative.

  Lady Evara fixed Tamra with a glare and then pivoted to face Augur Yorbel, who was inching backward as if he wanted to be elsewhere. “This does not begin to fit the requirements I detailed to you. I question whether the emperor-to-be is serious about this endeavor.”

  “He’s more serious than you know,” Augur Yorbel said. “If you will excuse me, I will see what can b
e done to rectify this situation.” He bowed twice before exiting quickly, out through the black gate, toward the palace.

  Lady Evara glowered at his retreating back, at the weed-choked practice track, and at the dilapidated stables. “I don’t even comprehend how anything so close to the palace was allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair. This is absolutely unacceptable.”

  Raia, who had gone inside the stable to explore, poked her head out. “It’s not so bad.”

  “Your rider is too cheerful,” Lady Evara informed Tamra.

  “She’s young,” Tamra said. “It’ll fade.”

  “True.” Then Lady Evara lowered her voice, so only Tamra could hear. “Tell me the truth: Can you do this? Can you shape that girl and her monster into champions? Because this is an opportunity for all of us. Yes, for me as well. You needn’t look so surprised.”

  Tamra knew why she needed this, but Lady Evara? She hadn’t questioned it when Lady Evara had insisted on coming, but now that they were here, she thought it was an odd choice. Lady Evara could have bargained for more gold from the emperor-to-be’s bottomless coffers, rather than tying herself to the risk of the races. She could have stayed in the comfort of her own palace, with all her luxuries around her. “Why do you want a champion so badly?”

  Lady Evara waved an arm at the palace spires that rose above them. “For fame! For glory! For personal reasons that I have no intention of sharing with you.” She laughed airily, as if none of this meant anything to her and it was all a grand joke.

  “Fine. Yes, we can win.”

  “What do you need to make it happen? Tell me, and I will secure it for you.”

  It was so similar to Augur Yorbel’s offer that Tamra thought Lady Evara must have overheard their conversation on the boat. She wondered if the lady had thought of Tamra and Yorbel’s interaction the same way Raia had, and then firmly told herself to stop it with the ridiculous thoughts. “That’s a far cry from offering only two hundred gold pieces to buy a racer.” She would have asked what changed, but she knew the answer. An invitation to the Heart of Becar. Proximity to the emperor-to-be. A chance at greater glory. An opportunity to escape the dreaded “boredom” that Lady Evara so feared. Tamra wondered if Lady Evara had ever cared about anything but her own pleasure and amusement. “I told you and Augur Yorbel what I need already.”

  “Augur Yorbel . . . bears watching.”

  “Excuse me?” That was not the response she expected. “Why?”

  “He’s lying to us.”

  Absurd, Tamra thought. He’s not the kind of person who can lie. He was exactly what he seemed—a sheltered-from-the-world, out-of-his-depth augur. A good man. She trusted her judgment on that. She’d met enough bad people in her life to feel confident in her ability to recognize liars and cheats. And yet, Lady Evara was so assured in her declaration. “About what?”

  “I don’t know, which is what bothers me. Can I count on you to be my ally here? Our goals are aligned, after all. Vigilance is required.”

  This was the strangest conversation she’d ever had with Lady Evara. Her sponsor had never talked to Tamra as if she were someone she trusted. The fact that she was doing so now was even more bizarre than the idea that Augur Yorbel might not be who he seemed. But Lady Evara wasn’t wrong—they did have a common purpose, and as long as that was true, it couldn’t hurt to work together.

  “Sure. We’re allies.”

  “Splendid!” Lady Evara beamed at her. She then began shouting at her three ever-present servants to clean up this place so that it was fit for her to see. Obeying, they dispersed, presumably to find cleaning cloths, water, and soap.

  Or to find a new, less demanding employer.

  Tamra joined Raia inside the stable, ducking under an array of cobwebs.

  It had once been a grand stable, a few decades ago. Much of the woodwork was intact. In the dim light that filtered through the windows, Tamra could see paintings on the walls: depications of famous races with beautifully intricate sketches of kehoks and even more exquisite renderings of past emperors watching from their stands. Each stall was reinforced with metal, now bearing rust stains. She tested one door. “Still sturdy.”

  “It’s like a forgotten secret,” Raia said happily.

  It was odd, Tamra thought, that when the emperor-to-be sent an augur to restart his kehok racing program, he hadn’t also ordered cleaners and carpenters to fix up the stable. “Rich people don’t always think about the details it takes to do things,” she said, mostly thinking out loud. “They just expect them done.” Belatedly, she remembered that Raia came from wealth.

  But Raia was nodding as if Tamra had said something wise. “I’m sure an emperor-to-be is the worst. Just make a pronouncement and don’t think about the consequences. You want a pineapple; you get a pineapple. Never mind that they aren’t in season, and it requires a dozen people to travel to where they are growing, bargain with the farmers, and then journey back.”

  “Exactly. I bet it was a whim he had. He probably forgot all about it as soon as he sent Augur Yorbel off to buy some kehoks.” Or maybe Lady Evara was right, and something was truly off here. What if he didn’t know about Augur Yorbel’s plan at all? Maybe the whole idea was the augur’s. It would explain why the stable wasn’t ready for them, and why no one official had come to greet them beyond simple transport here. But that made no sense. Why would Augur Yorbel want them here? He didn’t seem to care—or even know—anything about racers and the races.

  “He might have a new whim every day,” Raia said, warming to the idea. “Start a zoo. Build a university. Collect bells. Or birds. Or musical instruments.”

  Maybe, Tamra thought. But did any of that matter? She had a job to do. Whatever’s going on between the augur and the emperor-to-be, it’s not my business. “Let’s get the kehok loaded into a stall, and let Augur Yorbel worry about emperors and their whims. Our concern is only the next race.”

  Chapter 18

  Yorbel wondered if the emperor-to-be would have him executed for bringing such news. Certainly, others had met such a fate for far less throughout Becaran history. He fidgeted as he waited in the corridor for a guard to escort him in. He told himself that he had nothing to fear. Dar was reasonable and, more important, his friend. Friends don’t execute friends.

  Stay calm, he told himself. Professional. Kind.

  He hadn’t sent a messenger wight to Dar, or to anyone in the palace. The only one he’d sent was to the temple, for assistance in arranging transport for himself, the kehok, and the others to the old royal stables. In that message, he’d explained that he’d been asked to recruit kehoks to reestablish the royal stables, so that the emperor-to-be could sponsor racers in this season’s Becaran Races. It was not precisely a lie.

  To Dar, he’d tell the full truth, of course.

  And he would pay whatever cost he must. His soul was already paying for the falsehoods and deception that it had taken to come this far. Soon, though, that would be over, once the truth was out, and he could begin to make amends.

  “His Excellence will see you now,” a guard informed him, and then opened the door.

  Cautiously, Yorbel stepped inside, as if Dar would strike him down on sight. But Dar was at his desk signing papers. “One moment.”

  Yorbel stood silently. He waited, and then he wondered aloud, “Why spend the time signing? Your signature carries no weight until you are coronated.”

  “But once I am, there will be no delay for those who are in need.” Dar signed three more papers, and then stood up and faced Yorbel. “My brother will be found. The high council has informed me that they have doubled the number of augurs searching. And now that you have returned from your fruitless search, you can join them.”

  There was a stiffness and formality to him that Yorbel had never seen. He’s afraid of what I’m here to say, Yorbel realized. And I’m about to make his fears come true. I’m sorry, Dar. “Can you ask your guards to sing?”

  His face crumpled.
/>   “I’m sorry.”

  He sank back into the chair as if his legs failed to hold him anymore.

  “Ask them to sing,” Yorbel begged. “Please.” His friend deserved the dignity of receiving the news in private, before the rest of the empire learned of it.

  Dar shook his head. “Can’t stand their harmonies.” Then he mouthed: Be careful.

  Either he didn’t trust his guards anymore, or he’d overused the singing-guard trick and knew it would alert the spies that something important was being discussed. Or both.

  Yorbel chose his words carefully. “I believe the people will be thrilled when they learn you are reopening the royal kehok stables and sponsoring a racer in this year’s race. It is a wonderful way to connect with the people and show them you wish to be their emperor.”

  “Neither my brother nor my father involved themselves in the races. You don’t think a break with tradition will upset people?”

  If he were merely asking about the races, the answer would be no—it was Dar’s father who had broken with tradition. But he wasn’t asking about that. Yorbel considered how to respond. If the people found out the late emperor had been reborn as a kehok, there would be outrage, sorrow, denial, fear, all of it. Yorbel hadn’t devoted much time to worrying about the ramifications beyond saving his friend’s life. “Some will be upset, yes.”

  There would be backlash against the augurs, of course, for failing to read the emperor properly—the augurs would be blamed for not alerting people that a monster was ruling the empire. And for not saving his soul before it was too late. Also, a pall would be cast over Dar, and people would question the state of his soul.

  But the truth must come out, Yorbel thought.

  It would shake people’s faith in augurs for a little while, but not forever. Once the truth was known, the people could begin the process of healing. The empire could move forward. Dar could be coronated, and whatever unrest Gissa worried about would end. The important thing was that the vessel had been found! The empire could weather this if it meant saving Dar’s life, couldn’t it?