Best part about traveling with a deadly monster, Tamra thought, is you don’t have to chat with idiots. She paid the dockworkers who maneuvered the kehok cage onto the ferry, then plopped herself down next to her prize and propped her feet up. With a sigh of contentment, she tilted her head back so she felt the warmth of the midday sun caress her face.
Across the ferry, the other twenty or so passengers, mostly north-bank laborers but a few river merchants as well, squeezed together as tightly as they could, leaving a wide patch of empty deck between them and the kehok.
She ignored them.
She also ignored the kehok bashing against the cage bars.
“What should I do?” a nervous voice asked.
Tamra squinted at her. Oh, right. My new student. “What did you say your name was?”
“Raia.” She was eyeing the kehok as if she expected it to lunge through the bars and swipe at her jugular, which, Tamra thought, was at least a sign that the girl had some common sense, as the lion would absolutely do that given half a chance. He screamed at them.
“You should ride the ferry, Raia. Like the rest of us.” Did she expect to start training instantly? It wasn’t a terrible idea. But Tamra’s leg was throbbing, her old injury acting up the way it did sometimes, and she still wasn’t sure what to make of her new ward.
She watched as Raia’s eyes flicked back to the monster, then to the other passengers, then to the receding market, as if she couldn’t decide which was more terrifying. The girl adjusted her hood so it shadowed more of her face. She’s hiding from someone, Tamra thought. Runaway?
Probably.
That could be a problem. Especially if whomever she was running from was dangerous. “Why don’t you have a seat, make yourself comfortable, and tell me why you’re on the run?”
Raia answered promptly, “I didn’t run from anywhere. I just don’t have a home anymore. I’ve been orphaned, and my parents didn’t set aside enough money for me. The creditors took our home, and I’ve been looking for a way to support myself.”
Poor thing. She must have been practicing that speech for days. She seemed so nervous that Tamra said encouragingly, “You’re a good liar. That was plausible.”
“I’m not lying!” Raia’s voice squeaked, making Tamra even more confident that yes, she was absolutely lying. On the plus side, she hadn’t bolted yet.
Granted, it’s difficult to bolt when you’re in the middle of a river.
The river licked at the sides of the boat. A nice breeze carried the scent of lilies that clustered on the banks. When the breeze faltered, the sails flapped, and the ferryman shoved a pole into the water to push them along. Except for the kehok’s horrifically bone-chilling screams, it was peaceful.
“Is he in pain?” Raia asked, unsubtly changing the subject.
“Don’t feel sorry for him,” Tamra said. “Given half a chance, he’ll gore you.”
“I can feel sorry for him and fear him at the same time.” Raia was gazing into the cage. She’d drifted a few inches closer. “I wonder what terrible thing he did to be reborn like this.”
“Calculate the distance from his shoulder to his paw, then double it,” Tamra advised.
Raia looked at her blankly.
“Any closer than that, and he’ll reach you.”
As if to prove her point, the kehok slammed against the cage, rocking it forward, and swiped with his paw. His obsidian claws raked the air as Raia squealed and jumped back.
A few of the other passengers shrieked, huddling closer. A man from within the clump called out, “Hey! We deserve to travel without abominations! We pay our way!”
“We pay more!” Tamra hollered back.
There was a significant extra charge for transporting murderous cargo.
Raia scooted a safe distance away from the cage. Behind her, the other passengers were beginning to grumble about their right to a safe passage. The man in the middle was egging them on, but also, Tamra noticed, keeping about three peoples’ worth of buffer between him and the kehok. Very brave, she thought. Perhaps he was hoping to spend his next life as a meerkat, hiding within his pack. Around him, the grumbles began to escalate.
Conversationally, Tamra said to Raia, “This happens sometimes. You get one or two scared people, and they’ll run from danger. You get a bunch of scared people, and they’ll make danger.”
“You think they’ll attack us?” She was quivering, but she didn’t retreat behind Tamra. “Even with the harm that will cause their souls?”
“I know they will. Unless we reason with them.” Raising her voice louder than the growing mob, Tamra said, “You either have a nice trip with an abomination, or I have a nice trip without you.” She eyed the lock on the cage, as if she were thinking about opening it. Then she tilted her head so the other passengers couldn’t see her mouth move, focused her will on the kehok, and whispered, “Fight.”
He went into a frenzy, bashing from side to side in the cage, raking his claws against the bars, throwing his maned head back and roaring loud enough to shake the sail. The other passengers screamed and cowered.
One of them, pushed to the edge, fell into the water with a splash.
“Stop!” Tamra ordered the kehok.
He didn’t respond right away, lost in his rage, but she bore her thoughts into him until at last he quieted. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Raia was staring at her. She was glad—and a little surprised—to see that the girl hadn’t moved. She continued to stay a safe distance from the black lion’s paws, but she hadn’t retreated any farther than that.
The kehok backed to the far corner of his cage, crouched, and let out a whimper as if she were hurting him. She switched her attention back to the passengers—they’d fished the one who had fallen overboard out of the water and were clustered around her, comforting her. A few shot Tamra terrified, hate-filled looks, but the fire that had fueled the near-mob had been quenched.
In a soft voice, Raia asked, “That was reasoning with them?”
“Absolutely. I gave them a reason to behave themselves.”
A grin—so fleeting that Tamra wasn’t entirely sure she saw it—flickered across Raia’s face; then she went back to staring at the kehok. She has a sense of humor, Tamra thought. One more thing in her favor.
There may be hope for her.
But common sense and the ability to take a joke weren’t the only things. Tamra needed Raia to have hidden strength. Certainly the girl didn’t have much in the way of visible strength. She was scrawny. Zero muscles. Soft skin. Whatever put her on the streets was recent. She didn’t look like someone who’d been born to the kind of life Tamra had known. On instinct, Tamra commanded, “Show me your hands.”
Raia startled like a hare in the grasses.
“Your hands. Palms up.”
Raia held out her hands, and Tamra studied them. Soft, no calluses and no scars. No surprises. Ink stains between two of her fingers. Her wrists were just bone—Tamra could have wrapped one finger around them. A rich girl. Or at least well-off. Educated enough to write. Definitely a runaway. Tamra judged her to be about seventeen years old, give or take a year. Old enough to know to run away from a bad situation, she thought, but not old enough to know where to run to. “Your hands won’t be as pretty by the end of this.”