I demand you stop at once! This kehok must receive his reward!”
She sprang onto the lion’s back. He was snarling and snapping but wasn’t attacking, held in place by the will of the riders and trainers. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she cried, “I can’t! They won’t! Dar, the high augurs killed your brother! They murdered the emperor!”
She’d shocked the riders and trainers—she felt it the second their will faltered, like a spring released. “Run,” she ordered the lion. As the crowd exploded into shouting around them, the lion pivoted and carried Raia off the racetrack.
Chapter 29
Tamra shielded Shalla as chaos erupted all around them. The palace guards, the augurs’ soldiers, and the track officials marched through the crowd, shoving people back toward the stands. Closing ranks, the high augurs filed out of the racetrack, while the emperor-to-be’s personal guards spirited him safely out of sight.
“Follow me,” Lady Evara commanded.
Herding Shalla with her, Tamra said, “Come on.”
All around them people were shouting at each other. She saw one man punch another, and a fight broke out to their right. I have to get Shalla out of here! And find Raia! She felt a hand on her elbow and saw Yorbel was there, helping shield Shalla from the crowd.
The tension that everyone had been bottling up during race season, the passion that had built up during the races themselves—all of it was bursting out. It was as if the people were transforming into monsters right in front of her. Every bit of rage that they’d held in was exploding out of them. Fights were erupting in the stands and on the racetrack. Everyone was screaming louder than a horde of kehoks, as if they’d been just waiting for the right moment to unleash all their anger and frustration at life.
The only saving grace was that the actual monsters, the kehoks, were locked in the stable, as was protocol after every race. The stable! Tamra thought. It was the one place that the rioters wouldn’t enter, no matter how inflamed they were. If Raia had any sense, she’d run there. It was the next best thing to fleeing into the desert, which was the opposite direction from where she’d fled. “To the kehok stable!” she shouted at Lady Evara.
Lady Evara nodded once, to show she’d heard, and led the way, wading through shouting people, elbowing them aside. Her enormous hat was easy to see and follow as they pushed through the panicking crowd.
Beside Tamra, Shalla stumbled as a woman crashed against her. Tamra and Yorbel immediately flanked Shalla, protecting her on either side. “Stay close!” Tamra shouted at the others.
It felt like an eternity of pressing through the crowd, but at last Tamra saw the stable ahead of them. She could hear the shrieks of the kehoks inside, echoing the mood of the rioters behind them.
Reaching the stable, Tamra expected to find a knot of guards, but they’d been drawn away toward the thick of the fighting. Lady Evara yanked open the door and shooed them inside. There was none of the flighty aristocrat about her now. She looked more like a soldier, her eyes darting around, taking stock of their situation. The bulk of the chaos was by the track, but it could easily spread here. “Quickly!”
I never thought I’d feel better having Lady Evara with me, Tamra thought.
They ducked inside, and together Tamra and Lady Evara slammed the door behind them and lowered the lock, a thick iron bar. It was a door designed to keep kehoks in; it would keep a horde of people out. Plus the walls of the stable were thick stone.
Inside, the noise was like being within a tornado. There were hundreds of kehoks, shrieking inside their stalls, bashing at the walls and doors. Wincing from aches she was just starting to feel, Tamra turned and saw Shalla retreating, her eyes locked on the face of a jackal-like kehok that snapped its jaws at her. Behind her, a hulking rhino-like brute bashed its stall door so hard that it shook. “Shalla, watch out!”
Shalla jumped away, her mouth open in a scream that Tamra couldn’t hear because of the kehok shrieks. In the next stall over, another kehok, a monkey-like creature with sword-length claws, swiped at her.
“Back!” Tamra ordered with both her voice and mind. “Down!”
The two kehoks skittered back and then lay, cowed, in their stalls.
“Silence!”
The nearest dozen kehoks also quieted. She felt Yorbel staring at her. “I won’t let anyone hurt my girl,” Tamra