He composed himself, forcing back thoughts of his mother and his brother, as the rider Raia, her trainer, Augur Yorbel, and Lady Evara were led into the courtyard. All of them bowed. He gestured to the chairs. “Please, sit. Make yourselves comfortable. I believe I have found a location where we can, at least for the time being, speak freely.”
“It’s beautiful,” Raia said, looking around. “You could almost believe it wasn’t a cage.”
“Raia,” the trainer muttered.
Raia blushed. “Oh! I didn’t mean . . . Forgive me, Your Excellence! It’s only . . . My family had an aviary, but you could see the walls and the wire mesh above. With the glass, the birds have the sky. I think that’s wonderful.”
“My brother loved this place,” Dar said, and then his throat clogged. He cleared it, as if he’d merely swallowed wrong. “But I asked you here for a purpose, not pleasantries. Rider Raia, congratulations on all your wins. Trainer Verlas, how are our prospects for tomorrow’s championship race?”
“She can win, if people will stop trying to murder our racer,” Trainer Verlas said.
The word “murder” felt like cold water being thrown in his face.
Lady Evara rolled her eyes. “Forgive her, Your Excellence. I’ve often considered Trainer Verlas’s bluntness to be a virtue, but I recognize that not everyone agrees with me.”
Dar tried not to look as alarmed as he felt. “Tell me all.”
Trainer Verlas described an attempted attack on the lion in the stables. Most of it he’d heard when Lady Evara requested the use of palace guards for the kehok, but he’d assumed it was an accident. The trainer, though, was clear that she did not consider it an accident. She suspected that the latches had been weakened on purpose. She believed it was too great a coincidence that the three kehoks with weakened latches also had loose shackles and also aimed their attack at the same target—she believed the attack was orchestrated and guided. After listening to her, Dar was inclined to agree.
“We should arrest the suspect trainer,” he said.
“With all due respect,” Lady Evara said, “our sneaky little trainer is no longer a threat, and we should be focusing our attention in other directions.”
“But we can’t let this criminal walk free—not when there’s only one race that stands between us and an end to this! We can’t allow anything to interfere with tomorrow.”
“Precisely my point,” Lady Evara said. “The racing commission has been alerted. They view any attempt to tamper with race results as the ultimate crime. She is being interrogated and will be dealt with. At the very least she won’t dare make another attempt. But she is not the only threat.” Lady Evara related how a courtier had approached her with a threat of blackmail and an offer of riches. She named the man as Lady Nori’s cousin, Lord Petalo, a man known for his heavy gambling on the races. She wasn’t specific about the details of the blackmail, but Dar considered that a lesser issue.
Lady Evara added: “Just for the record, I did not try to poison the kehok.” She smiled at them as she said that, as if expecting great praise for not committing treason and murder.
Raia picked up the story, describing how a palace guard, or someone impersonating one, had attempted to poison the black lion. The suspect had fled. “We’re watching his food even more carefully now,” she said. “It won’t happen again. And the lion is helping—he knows not to eat until I’ve tested his food.”
“Uncanny,” Trainer Verlas muttered.
Dar heard her. “What do you mean?”
“He’s a highly intelligent kehok.”
My brother was a highly intelligent man, Dar thought.
“No, Dar,” Yorbel said quietly, as if sensing his thoughts. “He may have your brother’s soul, but he does not possess his mind. He is not your brother. He has the mind of a monster now, with all its limitations.”
Raia jumped in. “But he didn’t kill a man when he could have.”
That’s true, Dar thought. Was it so terrible for him to hope that some vestige of his brother survived whatever was done to him? After all, Zarin had come regularly to talk to the river hawk who had been their mother, claiming she carried some of her memories. It was said memories, at least the strongest ones, could return through exposure to past loved ones.
“Details aside, it remains that the poisoner is still out there,” Lady Evara said, “as is the one who hired him or her. . . . According to