Both the minor and major main races offered pots of gold of various sizes for any top-three placement.
Thing was, none of the kehoks that her patron owned this season were fast enough, and the River knew none of her former students were strong enough—yesterday’s fiasco had made that clear.
I have to go to the auction. Today. Before any more time is lost.
She had to find a new rider and a new racer. But first . . . she needed her patron to back her, for both money to purchase the kehok and for the race entrance fees. And this was easier said than done. After last season, she’d been lucky just to be able to teach using Lady Evara’s kehoks. Maybe her attitude will have mellowed. And maybe she won’t have heard about yesterday’s fiasco. Besides, it had been several months since Tamra had last approached her.
And there’s no better option. I have to try.
As much as she despised begging for gold, she’d do it. For Shalla.
It took nearly an hour to cross the city by foot, another half hour of waiting to pay a bronze coin to cross the Aur River by ferry, fifteen minutes on the crowded ferry pressed up against workers who smelled like lye and soot and spent the entire trip complaining about how the emperor-to-be still wasn’t crowned yet, and gossiping about fears of foreign invaders while Becar was emperor-less—no treaties could be signed, no troops could be moved, no laws could be passed until Prince Dar was coronated, and that couldn’t happen until he found the vessel for his predecessor’s soul. By the time the ferry docked on the southern bank, Tamra felt as if her shoulders were up at her ears and every back muscle was a knot of tension. She didn’t even want to think about what would happen if the emperor-to-be couldn’t be crowned. She had enough of her own problems, thank you very much, without worrying about the world falling apart around her.
After the ferry, it took another half hour to wind through the back streets of the palaces. Men and women from the north bank, “lesser Becarans,” weren’t allowed to use the wide palm-tree-lined streets that connected the palaces. If they needed to get someplace on the southern bank, they had to use the narrow, covered alleys that hid them and their inferior clothes from the eyes of the wealthy.
More than once, Tamra had imagined riding a kehok down one of the thoroughfares, in full sight of the rich. They watch and cheer loudly enough during the races, the same as the poor. Yet we’re somehow unviewable where they live.
Centuries ago, when the first augurs built the first temple, wealth was bestowed on the worthy and pure of soul. Their descendants were fond of believing that was still true—that the wealthy were naturally superior, even though there was no proof of that anymore. By law, all augur readings were private, shielding the nobility from charges of hypocrisy. She could guess who’d made that law: some rich parent who wanted their spoiled, rat-souled kid to inherit their land, gold, and title.
But she shoved her resentment down where it wouldn’t show on her face as she approached her patron’s palace. Over the past few months, ever since the death of the last emperor, the number of city guards patrolling these streets had doubled—it wouldn’t do to look like a troublemaker.
Lady Evara possessed what she would have called a “modest” home, a sprawling complex of “only” six buildings and three gardens. The unrest throughout Becar, the threats brewing beyond the empire’s borders . . . none of it appeared to have touched this oasis in the slightest. But that had to be an illusion. Even the aristocracy needed the empire to function in order to maintain their wealth and power. The rich were merely better at hiding any hint of strain, due to the fact that they, by definition, had absurd amounts of money.
Each building looked like a temple of polished white marble with a blue-tiled dome that gleamed against the cloudless sky. Strikingly beautiful, yes, but it was the gardens that were extraordinary. Entering through one of the servant archways, Tamra marveled at the gorgeous sprays of purple, blue, and yellow flowers that were suspended on impossible-to-see trellises so that they appeared to be floating. She inhaled the perfume of the blossoms, so thick that it made her head feel as if it were spinning. Reaching up, she trailed her fingers