Augur Yorbel didn’t speak. His eyes kept flickering between them and the kehok, and he looked so lost and trapped that Raia spoke instead.
“The kehok is, or was, the late emperor Zarin,” Raia said. It was amazing that such a terrible secret took only a sentence to say. She hadn’t known that a few words could turn the world upside down, but these words . . . they changed everything.
There was a heavy, terrible silence, pregnant with everything not yet said. Raia thought it felt like the desert before a thunderstorm. She thought about the conversation she’d overheard, if there was anything else they needed to know, but that one kernel of truth was all that mattered.
“Is this true?” Lady Evara asked.
“Yes,” Augur Yorbel said.
Yes.
With that word, Tamra felt as if the sun had been extinguished. She tasted bile in the back of her throat and wanted to vomit.
The late emperor, a kehok? Our kehok?
It was inconceivable.
Such a thing should never have happened. The emperor . . . he was supposed to be beyond reproach, nearly a deity. More holy than any augur. Akin to the stars. To think he could have a soul as tarnished as the worst depraved soul . . .
“This can’t be,” she whispered.
“Well, this is far worse than anything I could have imagined,” Lady Evara said in a clipped voice. She was clutching her hands together, the only indication that she was surprised by this news, though she had to be.
Augur Yorbel nodded unhappily. “It was a last resort, searching for his soul among the kehoks. There was no indication that he would be reborn as anything lesser, much less . . . this. In fact, every prediction was certain he’d be back as a tamarin, or higher. I had hoped my search would fail.” He turned to study the black lion, who was crouched in a corner of his stall. “I think, in a way, it has.”
All of them looked at the lion.
He doesn’t look like anything special, Tamra thought. Standard kehok: a beast that could never exist in nature. She remembered the seller in the market had said it was his first turn as a kehok. That he’d been recently reborn. Certainly, he was the most intelligent kehok she’d ever trained, but that didn’t mean . . .
“This can’t be possible,” she insisted again.
“Move past that,” Lady Evara said impatiently. “I must know what happens next.”
“If it were any other vessel, there would be a public announcement,” the augur said. “Celebrations. A verification ceremony, and then a coronation. The vessel would live the remainder of its life in luxury in the palace.”
“If you reveal the vessel is a kehok, there will be riots,” Lady Evara said. “Or even civil war, as the high houses of Becar question the suitability of anyone in the family line of the late emperor Zarin.” She said this clinically, as if discussing an interesting bit of trivia.
Augur Yorbel looked horrified, as if those options hadn’t occurred to him. Tamra hadn’t begun to think about how other people would react, but Lady Evara was right. It would be chaos. Even deadly chaos, Tamra thought. Already the mood of the country was on edge. This could be the thing that pushed it over. There would be violence for certain.
“You could have just bought the kehok,” Tamra said. “You put all our lives in danger by bringing us here.” She knew they’d insisted on coming, but they hadn’t known all the information—he had. And he should have refused to accept their terms. She shouldn’t be involved in this mess. And Raia . . . Tamra looked at the girl, who was on the verge of tears. She didn’t deserve to face whatever storm this would unleash.
“A true point,” Lady Evara said. “Glad you’ve caught up to the conversation. Augur Yorbel, you have endangered us all. We are tainted by association with this terrible secret.”
“No one will blame you for not realizing what no one could have suspected,” Augur Yorbel said. “I will do everything in my power to see you are not—”
Lady Evara cut him off. “You won’t have the power to help us once this secret comes out. The blame will fall heaviest on the augurs. Especially the augur who discovered this horror. You will be in no position to defend us because you will be consumed with defending yourself. So here is what we will do: You will find a new rider and trainer, for however long His Greatness-to-Be