fear back. She wasn’t going to waste a moment bemoaning the fact that Shalla was destined for a higher purpose. Tamra spent enough time in the day drowning in bitterness and regret. Nights were for joy.
Shalla poked at the crust of the bread. She’d been cooking on her own for nearly a year now, and Tamra thought she had a talent for it. “You’re right. Not burnt!” Shalla cheered. “Mama . . .” Her shining face began to frown. “Augur Clari said to tell you that the fee for level nine lessons is thirty pieces higher than for level eights. But you have enough students, don’t you? It won’t be a problem, will it?” She gazed at Tamra with hopeful eyes.
For a moment, Tamra felt as if a desert wraith had stolen her breath. They wanted more gold? She’d been warned training was expensive, but Tamra had said she could handle it. She hadn’t had much choice.
To be chosen to become an augur was considered one of the highest honors in Becar. It was also an honor you couldn’t refuse—if the augurs deemed you worthy, you had to train. Becoming an augur required a pure soul, and those were rare. Becar couldn’t afford to waste a single one.
Augurs possessed the rare ability to read souls. A trained augur could tell what kind of creature you had been in your past life and what kind of creature you would become when you were reborn. By the end of her studies, Shalla would be able to look at a night heron and tell you if it had once been the baker down the street, or the emperor’s pet cat. Her skills would be in high demand and her future determined. She’d be granted a palace on the southern bank and the vast coffers of the temple would be open to her, in exchange for performing an augur’s duties, and she’d be both respected and feared. The augurs were the moral compass of the empire, ensuring its greatness continued as it had for centuries, keeping Becarans on the path to embrace their destinies. In practical terms, they helped solve disputes, soothed grieving families, and guided people’s behavior on a day-to-day basis.
Augurs were the heart and soul of Becar, which was lovely. Just not cheap.
By law, every trainee’s family was offered the “honor” of paying for the cost of training. In return for regular payments, Shalla was allowed to continue to live with her mother.
If her family failed to pay, though, Shalla would be taken away. She would become a ward of the augur temple, required to live there and work for them every minute she wasn’t in lessons. Tamra would not even be allowed to see her. Not until her training was complete, and her childhood was over. Shalla would emerge a stranger, formally “severed” from her.
I won’t let that happen.
“It won’t be a problem,” Tamra lied.
Somehow she’d make it true.
At dawn, Tamra sat alone at the table and ate a slice of onion bread. Last night it had been warm with melted onion. Today it crunched, cold in her mouth. She swallowed it down with her tea. Shalla was gone, back across the river for her daily augur lessons, and the house felt empty and bereft. And the specter of thirty additional pieces of gold hung over Tamra’s head.
She’d have to grovel before the parents of her former students. Beg them to come back. Also, try to drum up more business, which would be hard with Fetran’s and Amira’s parents positioned against her, poisoning her reputation. At least the parts of it that weren’t already poisoned.
And even if a miracle occurred and she won a full class of students, she still wasn’t going to be able to pay Shalla’s increased tuition. She was barely making the payments before. It’s not possible, she thought. The math didn’t work.
She took another swig of her tea. She hadn’t added enough honey, and the bitter taste made her nose wrinkle. So did the thought she’d been trying to ignore all night. Because there was, of course, one obvious way.
Train a rider who could win.
Pair him or her with the fastest racer she could find.
Win a few races, even minor ones, and that’s tuition for months.
There were plenty of races each season, all with prize money: first the qualifiers, which were regional races held on tracks up and down the Aur River, and then the main races in the Heart of Becar, the capital of the empire.