He’d refused to allow himself to read the kehoks—their auras would drown out any sense of the here and now. He knew he wouldn’t be able to function if he let them inside his head, and he needed clear thoughts for this situation.
A man had been killed by a kehok.
It was a common occurrence in the wild. It even happened often enough on the racetrack. Riders lost control. Every season a few were lost. Sometimes bystanders. It was the primary reason he never attended the Becaran Races. He had no interest in witnessing death as entertainment.
This, though, was different. A death in a stable. As loath as he was to admit such corrupt souls were in the right, the man and woman were correct that there should have been enough safety precautions in place as to make this kind of accident impossible. It was negligence on the part of the kehok’s trainer, perhaps reflecting on the stable as well.
It also pointed to a kehok who was unsuited to the races. It was irresponsible to keep a kehok that killed so quickly and easily—such a kehok would surely cause more death on a track. The required action was clear. He had to report it to the city guards, have the training facility penalized, the trainer charged and stripped of her license, and the kehok eliminated before it caused any more disasters.
But then the trainer had said, Look at him!
And Yorbel had looked without thinking to shut his inner sight.
Staring at the metallic black lion, he felt as if the air had turned hot enough to choke him. He gripped the wall, suddenly dizzy. Unlike the other kehoks he’d seen on his journey, this one had two layers of auras.
First was the layer he expected: the decayed horror of a kehok’s broken soul. But it was flimsy, as transparent as a silk scarf. It seemed to flutter loosely around the kehok, like a tunic that didn’t fit.
Beneath the scarf-like layer, though, was a more solid shape. It was coiled at first, hard to see, as if it were hiding beneath the shadows. A less skilled augur would have missed it entirely. An augur who didn’t know what to look for would have ignored it. But Yorbel was neither of those things, and so he peered at it, shutting out the distractions, the yammering of the girl’s parents, the pleading of the trainer, and the quiet sobbing of the girl.
As he separated the tangle of shadows—like pushing aside a cobweb—he caught sight of the soul beneath the soul, and one thing became instantly clear.
I know this soul.
The longer he stared, the more certain he was. He saw the shape of the man this monster used to be. The late emperor Zarin. I was right.
He wished with every fiber of his being that he wasn’t.
He drew in a breath.
Behind him, the trainer was insisting, “There’s no need to call the city guard! This was an accident at a kehok training facility.”
“You want to hide what happened here—” the father began, about to launch into another rant, as if volume could hide the shadows he held within. The fear, both his own and theirs, inside the stable was so thick that Yorbel could taste it, sharp as copper on his tongue.
The trainer cut the man off. “I’m hiding nothing! Call the carriers for the body and the mourners to perform the rites. We already have an augur here to lead them, if he’s willing. Are you willing?” That last was directed at him.
Yorbel was finding it difficult to think. He’d never been one to like making decisions under pressure. He preferred to consider all angles, weigh all options, and then make a calm, measured decision. He did not feel in any state of mind to make any kind of calm, measured judgment on anything, even if she’d asked him what he wanted for lunch or whether he liked the color blue. “I do like blue,” he said out loud.
“What?” the trainer said.
Get control of yourself, he told himself firmly. You’re a highly educated, well-trained expert in death, resurrection, and the care of souls.
And even more important: Dar trusts me to bring his brother home.
“I am an augur from the Heart of Becar,” Yorbel said in his most official tone. “I will handle this matter. Come, let us find a place we can speak to one another beyond the touch of death, and I will tell you how we will proceed.”