her on the sands, she saw Raia startle and then twist her head to glance toward the stables—
And that moment of lost concentration was all it took.
The lion-lizard thundered toward the girl. Raia flung out her arms. “Stop! No!” But the kehok didn’t even slow. Jumping forward, Tamra shoved the girl out of the way and held up her hands, palms out.
“YOU WILL STOP!”
The kehok froze mid-stride. Tamra slapped the chain on him and forced him to a wall, where she clamped the chain to a heavy iron ring. Across the training ground, the two other trainers were doing the same with their kehoks, and then they all ran toward the stable.
Out of the corner of her eye, Tamra saw a flash of gold, sparkling brighter than the sun. Surrounded by an entourage, Lady Evara was mincing her way across the sands from the direction of the ferry dock. Several of her servants held parasols over her head, an action made redundant by the model of a sailboat she wore entwined in her hair, large enough to shield her from any hint of sun.
“Oh, by the River . . .” Tamra muttered.
She couldn’t greet her patron now. But she could curse her timing.
Osir reached the stable first and flung the doors open. Before he could even cry out, the black lion burst through and slammed into him, knocking him flat on his back.
“No! Don’t!” Tamra cried. Zora and all the students were crying out too, willing the kehok not to kill him. Do not hurt him!
The kehok trampled over Osir without stopping to savage him.
As Zora ran to Osir’s side, Tamra aimed the force of her voice and the force of her mind at the kehok as he tore across the training grounds. “You will stop!”
Halfway across the sands, he faltered but kept running.
Tamra redoubled her efforts. He would stop, because she would not fail. This was nonnegotiable. She was as relentless as the sun, and he would melt in the heat of her fire. He stumbled in the sands, but then he pulled himself to his feet and pushed forward.
She’d never felt such a strong will in a kehok. Never felt such need.
She lost all sense of everything but where she was in that one moment—the heat of the sun, the wind on her face, the sand beneath her feet, and the kehok straining against her.
She felt the students join her, along with Zora and Osir.
The three trainers, supported by their students, bent their wills toward the black lion. Weighed down beneath them all, he dropped onto the sand like a bird shot from the sky.
At last he lay still.
Tamra grabbed the nearest ankle shackles and ran to his side, fastening them tightly around his paws and chaining them together so the kehok could not stand even if he could muster the will to resist.
She met his golden eyes, expecting to see hate.
Instead she saw sadness.
Several chaotic minutes later, Tamra slammed the bolt shut on the stall door. They’d secured the black lion with triple the number of chains and shackles, and they’d placed him in the strongest stall.
She felt as if she’d wrestled a rhino. She didn’t want to think about how Osir felt. Or what he was going to say to her once he quit moaning about his injuries and decided to move from self-pity to blame.
I am to blame. Again.
Leaning against the stall door, she surveyed the damage. And the blood.
The venomous jackal-cobra lay in a nearby stall. Its throat had been torn. The black lion had burst through the stall wall into the jackal-cobra’s on his way to escape. The jackal-cobra must have blocked him or attacked him, so he’d eliminated the obstacle.
If it had been any creature but a kehok, she’d say a prayer for its soul’s swift journey to a favorable rebirth, but there was no point with a kehok’s soul. It had only one fate.
Primly lifting her skirts above the blood, Lady Evara picked her way over the threshold into the stable. Her entourage shuffled after her, wordless, their eyes obscured by brilliant blue face paint and lashes dusted with gold flecks.
Seeing the dead jackal-cobra kehok, Lady Evara halted. She pursed her lips. Painted, they formed a purple oval. “You realize the dead kehok was mine.”
Tamra winced. I can’t afford to pay her back. She has to know that. Bowing, she said, “Please accept my apology—”
“Not accepted,” she said crisply. “I invested in you, Verlas. Placed my trust in you, and this