kehok to command him to kill? You can’t have it both ways.”
“She admitted it!” Raia’s father blustered. “He tried to protect her.”
Tamra snorted. “She’s mistaken. Kehoks don’t protect people. They slaughter them.” She gestured at the body on the ground. “If anyone is stupid enough to get close to a kehok they can’t control, then the results are their fault. Any child knows that.”
“That monster should have been secured!” Raia’s mother cried. “Muzzled! I’ve been to races. I’ve seen how they’re supposed to be chained. It’s negligence—”
“He’s in a stall, shackled to the wall,” Tamra said. “He can’t be muzzled or he can’t eat or drink. If this man chose to enter that stall, then it was his own fault.”
“He was following her! She must have baited him, enticed him to follow her.” Raia’s father jabbed a finger toward Raia. “Call the city guard! Have her arrested for murder! She intentionally lured him into the stall, knowing what would occur. She caused this, despite all we have done for her, all we’ve wanted for her! She is an ungrateful, manipulative, vile—” He kept going, hurling insult after insult.
Tamra hated a whole slew of people—those who had doubted her, mocked her, ignored her, rejected her—but she’d never instantly hated anyone as badly as she did Raia’s parents. What kind of parents spoke with such contempt for their own child? Raia was their daughter! They should be defending her! Worried about her! Any emotion but this . . . loathing.
The wonder wasn’t that Raia had run. The wonder was that she hadn’t run sooner. The fact that her spirit hadn’t been crushed by them was a miracle.
“I don’t have to be an augur to know how you’ll be reborn,” Tamra told them. And then she remembered the very real augur who was in the stable behind her, with Raia.
It didn’t matter what these monstrous people said about her or Raia. But it did matter what the augur said and did. The city guard would take any word he spoke as proven truth.
“She feared these people,” Tamra said to him. “You can clearly see why. As to the cause of death, this man followed her into a stall with no regard for safety. You can’t thrust your hand into the fire and then blame the flame if you’re burned.”
“The law states—” the augur began.
“Look at him!” Tamra said, pointing at the lion. “He’s chained inside his stall! Every reasonable precaution was taken.” As Tamra gestured toward the kehok, she noticed the shackle around his neck was looser than usual. Oh, by the River . . .
She moved to shield the stall from view, but the augur was already standing, looking at the kehok. She couldn’t read his expression, but he looked as if he’d been frozen.
“Gracious One . . .” Raia’s mother said.
“Honorable One . . .” her father echoed.
But the augur didn’t seem as if he was listening anymore.
Yorbel knew he was one of Becar’s most skilled augurs. He didn’t need peace or silence to read the auras of those around him, which was one of the reasons he’d believed it made sense for him to be the one to search the kehok auctions. If he wished, he could slip into his second sight as easily as putting on a robe. Sometimes he slipped into it even when he didn’t wish it, which was not a fact he cared to share with the high augurs, though of course they themselves were impossible to read. But an unshielded soul was like an open book.
He’d read the man and woman already: their souls were pierced with so much anger and hate that it tore holes in the fabric of their essences. The trainer had pegged it right. While it was unlikely they were corrupt enough to be reborn as kehoks, it was very likely they’d be reborn as an insect so low that it would take many iterations of rebirth before their souls would be able to pull themselves out of the muck and return as any respectable creature.
He’d read the girl who huddled in the corner as well. She looked like a candle’s flame that was battered by wind, flickering, close to being extinguished by the shadowy fear that lurked around her. And the trainer had a core like a rock, with shadows that licked at its exterior but couldn’t touch its center. The dead man had no soul to read. Yorbel knew that before he even asked if he could be saved.