for you,” Lady Evara promised. “Reveal the truth about the kehok-emperor. Expose the fact that Lady Nori tried to have him killed, at the bequest of the high augurs or in coordination with the high augurs. Let people draw the obvious conclusions they wish, and you become blameless.”
He was nodding. “Lady Nori was supposedly present when the high augurs arrested Prince Dar. She could have orchestrated all of it.”
“If you expose her crimes, you’ll be a hero.”
He liked that. She could tell.
She smiled encouragingly as he began to pace and plan. A person who could provide information like that would be valued. He’d curry favor with whomever stepped forward to fill the power void. He suddenly frowned. “But . . . proof? What proof do I have?”
“This isn’t a trial,” Lady Evara pointed out. “This is a riot. You don’t need proof. You only need gossip. I’m sure you know the right ears to whisper into.”
“I do!”
“Right now, people are hungry for facts, whether they’re true or not. Feed that hunger, and they will be grateful to you.” She laid a hand on his arm. “As am I.”
“And I am grateful to you, Lady Evara. You did indeed have news that will profit me. I will forget our prior conversations ever happened.”
Calling to his servants, he scurried out of his chambers. She surveyed the room and spotted a fat pouch hastily shoved between tunics. She lifted it out and checked its contents: gold coins. Glancing at the open doorway, Lady Evara pocketed it.
If everything went wrong, she was not going to be penniless.
She then sailed out of the room with an aristocratic nod to the guards. Before giving up and fleeing with a stolen pouch of coins, though, she was going to do what she could to make sure that nothing more went wrong—At least not for me.
She wasn’t going to make any bets on the fate of Becar itself.
In his cell within the augur temple, Dar despaired.
He sat on a bare cot. Through the one tiny slit of a window, he could see the sky, a mottled orange and rose—it was near sundown, the time when Zarin’s vessel should have been killed so he could be reborn. It had been such a good plan, he thought.
But he realized now he’d never had a chance. The high augurs had always had all the power, and today they’d proved that. He could almost admire how thoroughly they had outmaneuvered first his brother and then himself, and no one had ever suspected them. Until Raia.
He wondered if the high augurs had caught her yet. He didn’t doubt she was on their list, as one who knew the truth. It was too dangerous to leave her be. She may be publicly executed as well, accused of high treason, or it could be done quietly. The augurs might not even have to sully their own hands. Certainly they had enough gold to ensure it happened.
How could he have misjudged them so badly? All of Becar had. Everyone trusted the augurs, completely and absolutely, to guide them toward the right and good. But all the while . . . And now the people would never know the truth. Lady Nori would be crowned empress, and Zarin and Dar would be forgotten, intentionally, as an embarrassing disaster that they’d escaped.
What he didn’t understand was why. But he doubted anyone would explain that to him.
He wished he’d had a chance to talk more with Zarin. He would have liked to say goodbye. And Raia . . . He’d never met anyone as brave as her. He knew what had happened with her parents, and how she’d gone on to race and win.
There were a thousand things he wished he’d said or done. Alone in a room with stone walls, he thought through them all. If I had a second chance, I wouldn’t let so many moments pass me by. I’d say what I felt. And do what I thought was right.
But he’d used up all his chances.
His fate was sealed. No one was more powerful than the high augurs.
He wondered what he’d come back as.
Chapter 33
Tamra strode through the stable, unlatching lock after lock on the stall doors and loosening the chains that held the monsters at bay. She could feel the agitation of the kehoks on her skin and taste it in the air. Every nerve in her body hummed in response. She held the monsters still with her mind, as if she were a dam