than he wanted it.” She watched Raia’s face to see if she understood that. Everyone acted as if they got it, but only a few understood it in a bone-deep way—only the ones who truly wanted to seize control of their lives. “Any idiot can command a kehok, if they can learn to focus their thoughts. The trick is that you need to be fully in the moment. You can’t think about the past, the future, what you ate for breakfast this morning, whether you’ll eat breakfast tomorrow. . . . Most people can’t do that, especially not for any extended length of time. Minds are unruly things, and most can’t control theirs—and if you can’t control yourself, you can’t control a kehok. That’s why you don’t see kehoks used for labor. Or war.”
Many had tried. It rarely went well.
You needed a fire inside you, the kind that kept you passionately invested in the here and now, the kind that made you want to shape what was happening rather than letting it shape you. Tamra had seen a glimpse of that fire inside Raia back at Gea Market. The key would be if Raia could call on that determination even when she wasn’t in desperate need. “You’ll help me unload the kehok,” Tamra decided.
“But I can’t lift—”
“There’s a winch to lift the cage from the boat to the dock. Then we’ll walk him from the dock to the stables. Or more accurately, you will.”
Raia stared at her.
Looking at her expression, Tamra laughed.
“Good, you’re joking.” Raia sagged in relief. “I thought you meant you were going to unlock the cage and let him out.”
“Oh, that is exactly what I meant. It’s just your expression was hilarious.”
Just before sunset, the ferry docked at the training grounds. Tamra helped the ferryman use the winch to swing the cage with the black lion from the boat to the dock, and then she watched as he booked it back into the middle of the river as fast as he could pole.
From the dock, she waved cheerfully at the remaining passengers. None of them were getting off until Tamra, Raia, and the kehok were as far away as possible.
They didn’t wave back.
“Exactly how do we do this?” Raia asked.
“Carefully.”
Tamra was confident she could train this kehok to be a racer and equally confident that she could transform a determined girl like Raia into a competent rider. But she didn’t expect to accomplish either before nightfall. “Also, we’ll use chains.”
Crossing to a box, she opened it and hauled out one of the special kehok nets, made out of iron chains, that all racers wore. Tamra felt a throbbing in her leg and an ache in her back—the net weighed more than she did—as she hooked it up to a set of pulleys and raised it above the entrance to the cage.
It was a maneuver she’d done dozens of times. Each time got a little harder. Someday she wouldn’t be able to do it at all. She refused to think about that day.
As she caught her breath, the kehok watched her with unblinking eyes.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” she told the kehok. “I am going to open the cage door. You are going to run forward, thinking this is your chance to escape, I’ll drop the net on you, thereby ruining all your dreams of freedom, and then we’re all going to proceed to the stable.” She didn’t expect him to understand all of that, but it helped focus her thoughts.
“And what do you need me to do?” Raia asked.
“Conquer your fear.” Tamra approached the cage. The kehok was eyeing her as if he were far more interested in mauling her than allowing her to chain him. “And call him to you.”
“Do what?”
Most kehoks would be happy to be presented with a willing target—he’d forget about the danger of the net in his eagerness to reach Raia.
“Call to him,” Tamra repeated.
“I can’t do that and not be afraid!”
Tamra rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say banish your fear. I said conquer it. You are right to fear the kehoks. They will always be stronger, faster, and far more deadly than you, and given the opportunity, they will kill you. Only idiots stop being afraid of what can kill them. Dead idiots. You shouldn’t stop being afraid. But you shouldn’t let your fear control you. Choose to be brave. Stand there. Don’t run. And call to him.”
Without waiting for a response, Tamra turned to the kehok. “Go to Raia. Go