of kehok was unmistakable, undercutting even the sweetest baked goods. She heard the shrill screams of the trapped beasts, the shouts of the owners trying to keep them from savaging potential customers, and the crash of the kehoks thrashing against their cages and shackles.
The kehok auction was marked with black flags embroidered with the symbol of the Becaran Races, the victory charm given to the winning kehok. Imbued with rare and complex magic, the kind that few (if any) understood, much less mastered, the Becaran victory charm allowed the winner to do what no other monster could: be reborn as human.
Without the charm, kehoks were only ever reborn as kehoks, nature-defying monsters sired by muck and filth, who sprang into the world fully grown and deadly. It was an endless punishment for the worst of souls.
Tamra had the likeness of the victory charm tattooed on her right shoulder. It looked like a blue ring around a golden sun, to represent the life-giving River Aur that circles the world and the death-granting sun that scorches everything. It was faded now, after years of sun exposure, but she liked that—its age proved her decades-long commitment to the races. She wore a shirt that bared her shoulders to show off the tattoo to the sellers at the auction. She hoped it would dissuade those who thought she was a newbie they could cheat.
I can do this, she told herself. She was experienced. She was wise. She was shrewd. She was . . . never going to find what she needed for two hundred gold pieces. Really, this was a hopeless task.
Shalla . . .
Squaring her shoulders, Tamra plunged into the auction.
Cage after cage lined the street, some of them stacked three or four tall, each with a kehok raging inside. A few slept, clearly drugged into complacency, but most were left alert to show off their strength and presumable speed.
The auction was far more chaotic than the word implied—there was no auctioneer or orderly presentation of beasts, like at one of the farm auctions. Instead, everyone was buying and selling all at once, deals made beneath the screams of the monsters. With the start of the races only a few weeks away, it was especially busy. The sellers scooted between the cages, shouting the statistics for each of their creatures: height, weight, age, number of races run, number of races won. You wanted fast and strong, with a will that could be bent without breaking.
The stronger the kehok, the harder to control, but the greater the payoff if the rider was skilled enough. It was a balance—what you thought you could train versus what would kill you.
Tamra skipped over the kehoks who had already proven themselves in races. Those would be automatically out of her price range. She let the other trainers haggle over them. She also skipped the ones whose sellers promised obedience. Those were fine for students, lousy for winners. She needed a kehok with fire in its soul.
A seller grabbed her arm. “I know who you are and what you want.” His breath was rancid, stinking of overripe fish, and his fingers were as greasy as a sausage.
“I want your hand off of me,” Tamra said, yanking back hard enough that the seller stumbled. He recovered quickly and launched into his sales pitch, but Tamra was already walking on.
She ignored the whispers around her and the swirl of gossip. The seller hadn’t been the only one to recognize her, clearly. But it didn’t matter what he or anyone said—she knew she wasn’t going to buy from the likes of him. So eager to sell, he’d tell any lie about his kehoks.
She was on the lookout for a particular kind of seller. One that didn’t want to be at the auction. One that didn’t care about the sale as much as the hunt. One just like . . . him. Tamra set her sights on an overmuscled man with three cages behind him. He wasn’t calling out to any of the shoppers. In fact, his arms were crossed over his beefy chest, and he was glaring at the potential customers as if daring them to come closer.
This was the kind of man who saw the kehoks as prizes to be won. The kind who trapped the most terrifying monsters he could find without any regard to their tractability. He didn’t care if anyone bought his kehoks for a decent price. He just cared that everyone admired the fact that he’d caught