The Scorpio Races (37 page)

I think I hear a rustle somewhere in the depths of the stable.

I flick off the flashlight.

In the dark, in his stall, Edana’s bay coat looks very much like Corr’s blood-red one. It would be very easy to mistake them if you were expecting Corr and were concentrating on getting into the stall without getting hurt.

There’s movement again, farther away in the stable.

I scramble out of the stall and into the aisle. I stand and wait, listening. My heart has already raced ahead of me. All I want is for the sound to be from anywhere but the back seven stalls. All I want is for Mutt Malvern to have guessed wrong when he went looking for Corr. There are five other stalls equipped for the
capaill uisce.
He could have gone looking in any of them after he discovered Edana was the wrong horse.

I hear the commotion again.

It’s from the back seven stalls.

Now I run.

I strike the lights on as I round the corner by the door. If he knows I am here, surely he will abandon this.

“Mutt!” I shout. Now, under the light, I see blood on the floor, the edge of a shoe printing scarlet every step. I jog along, following, watchful. “You’ve gone too far!
Mutt!
”

My voice echoes in the high arches of the stable; there’s no reply. Perhaps he’s left.

Corr screams.

Now I run like I’ve never run. I can see Edana in my mind, her head stretched unnaturally toward the ceiling as she lies against the wall, ruined in her own skin and not yet knowing it.

If he has touched Corr, I will kill him.

I burst around the corner. The door to Corr’s stall is open. Mutt Malvern stands with a wicked blade in one hand and, in the other, a three-pronged leister spear of the sort used to poach fish or birds. The iron heads of the spear press into Corr’s shoulder, forcing him back against the wall. His skin shivers and ripples under the metal. Mutt Malvern has given some thought to this plan of his.

“Get away from him,” I say. “Every drop of his blood will be ten of yours.”

“Sean Kendrick,” Mutt replies. “Pretty foul of you to swap stalls like that.”

Corr makes a low roar in his throat, a sound that we feel in our feet instead of hear. But he’s pinned by the leister spear, not only points of iron but three of them as well.

“If you knew a thing about the horses under this roof, you would’ve known the difference between them, even in the dark.”

Mutt glances at me long enough to see that I’ve closed the distance between us. He jerks his chin toward the spear. “Stay out of this stall, knacker.”

I slowly wipe my bloody hand across my jacket and draw my switchblade from my pocket. I show it to him.

Mutt regards it with contempt. “How is it you’re thinking you’ll stop me with that wee thing?”

The blade snaps out audibly. Mutt would not be the largest thing to die on the slender point of it.

“I don’t think I’ll stop you,” I say. “I think that you will cut my horse and then when you come out of that stall, I will use this to cut your heart out and hand it to you.”

I am sick to the ends of my fingers. I cannot look at Corr’s eye or I won’t be steady.

Mutt says, “Do you really think I believe that you can do anything to me while I have these in my hands?” But he does believe. I can see it in his eyes.

I say, “What’s it you hope to prove in there? That you are the better horseman? That the horses love you better? Do you mean to carve your father’s approval in the side of every
capall uisce
on this island?”

“No,” says Mutt. “Just this one.”

“Will that be enough?” I ask. “What will be next?”

“There is no next,” Mutt says. “This beast’s the only thing you care about.”

He looks at my face, though, and he’s not quite sure. Maybe because it wasn’t meant to happen with me watching. I was meant to come down in the morning and find Corr as I just found Edana. Maybe because he is looking at me and dreaming of a better way to hurt me.

Surely I must know something that would satisfy Mutt more than crippling Corr. There must be something. I think of his contorted face at the auction and I say, “You really want to prove something to your father, you’ve got to win against us. Beat us on the sand.”

His face shifts. That fiendish piebald has him well fascinated. Mutt glances at me again, then back at the points of the spear on Corr’s shoulder.

I know what is going through his head, because it’s going through mine as well. Benjamin Malvern telling George Holly that I am the rightful heir to the yard. The name
Skata
printed on the board at the butcher’s. The breathless speed of the piebald.

It’s a siren song, and it wins him over.

Mutt backs out of the stall. Corr charges up toward the space he leaves behind. His eyes are wild. I see the pricks of blood the spear has left in his shoulder, and when Mutt slides the door shut, I spring onto Mutt and press my little switchblade to his great bulging neck. I can see his skin sucking in with his pulse. My knife lies right next to it.

“I thought you said to beat you on the sand,” Mutt says. Corr slams the wall of his stall with his hooves.

My voice hisses out through a cage of my teeth. “I also said ten drops of your blood for every drop of his.” I want a pool of his blood around him like the one beneath Edana. I want him to lie against this wall and whimper like she does. I want him to know he’ll never stand again. I want him to remember David Prince’s death mask as he wears it for himself.

“Sean Kendrick.”

The voice comes from behind me. I incline my head even as Mutt’s eye catches mine.

“It is late for this sort of entertainment, isn’t it?”

With great reluctance, I snap the blade away and step backward from Mutt. Mutt’s hands remain by his side with the spear and his wicked carving knife still dark with blood. We both face his father, who stands with Daly at the entrance to the aisle. He wears a buttoned undershirt that he must’ve been sleeping in, but he is no less powerful-looking in it. Daly, shamefaced, won’t meet my eyes.

“Matthew, your bed is lonely.” His voice is cordial although his posture is not. Malvern meets Mutt’s gaze and for a moment, nothing happens. Then Malvern’s expression hardens and Mutt strides past him without a word or glance toward me.

Malvern turns his eyes to me. I am shaking still, struck with what Mutt nearly did to Corr and with what I was ready to do to Mutt.

“Mr. Daly,” Malvern says without turning his head. “Thank you for your assistance. You may return to your bed.”

Daly nods and vanishes.

Benjamin Malvern stands an arm’s length from me, his eyes steady on me. He says, “Do you have anything to say?”

“I would not” — I close my eyes for a moment. I need to get my bearings. I need to find the stillness inside me. I cannot find it; I’m destroyed. I stand in the ocean, my hands cupped to the sky. I’m immovable in the current. I open my eyes — “have been sorry.”

Malvern cocks his head. For a long moment he looks at me, at the switchblade in my hand, at my face. Then he folds his arms behind his back. “Mr. Kendrick, go put that mare out of her misery.”

He turns and walks from the stable.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

SEAN

The next day is bitter and ruthless. The wind races around the horses’ feet and makes them wild. Overhead, clouds like ragged breath flee in front of the cold. There’s a gray ocean above and below us.

I meet Puck at the head of the cliff road. She frowns when she sees me; I know my face must be a wasteland of fatigue after last night. Her hair is held down by a lumpy knitted hat, but a few strands snap across her face. The vendors are struggling to keep their tents from flying away. The riders heading down the cliff path endeavor to keep their mounts from doing the same.

Puck tugs down the edge of her hat with one hand. Something nearby creaks and groans in the wind. Dove tosses her head. I see terror in her wide eyes.

“Take Dove home,” I tell her. “This isn’t a day to be on the beach.”

“There isn’t any more time,” she replies. “I thought you said I should get used to the beach. There’s no more time.”

I have to shout to be heard over the wind. I spread my empty palms to the sky. “Do you see Corr in my hands? This isn’t a beach you want to get used to.”
Killing sands,
that was what my father called a day like today. Today the riders would die because they didn’t know or because they were desperate or because they were foolishly brave.

Puck frowns at the cliff road. I see her uncertainty in the wrinkle between her eyebrows.

“If you trust me on anything, don’t risk today. You’re ready as you’ll ever be,” I say. “Everyone else is robbed the extra day, too.”

She bites her lip in dark frustration, looks at the ground for a moment, and then, like that, she’s done. “It is what it is, I reckon. Is Tommy Falk down there?”

I don’t know. My interests don’t lie with Tommy Falk.

“Hold Dove,” she says, when I can’t answer to her satisfaction. “I’m going to get him if he’s down there.”

I don’t want her on the beach on a horse or off it. “I’ll go look for him. Take her home.”

“We’ll both go,” Puck says. “Wait a moment. I’ll get Elizabeth to tie her behind the booth. Don’t move.”

I watch Puck make her way back to Fathom & Sons’ booth and get into a spirited discussion with one of the sisters who tends it.

“That’s a poor match, Sean Kendrick,” says a voice at my elbow. It’s the other sister from Fathom & Sons, and she follows my gaze to Puck. “Neither of you are a housewife.”

I don’t look away from Puck. “I think you assume too much, Dory Maud.”

“You leave nothing to assumption,” Dory Maud says. “You swallow her with your eyes. I’m surprised there’s any of her left for the rest of us to see.”

I shift my glance to her. Dory Maud is a hard-looking woman, clever and industrious, and even I know from my perch at the Malvern Yard that she could fight the strongest man on the island for the last penny in his pocket. “And what is she to you, then?”

Dory Maud’s expression is canny. “What you are to Benjamin Malvern, only less salary and more affection.”

We both look back to Puck, who has won the battle with Elizabeth and ties Dove behind the booth. This ill wind throws both the ends of her hair and Dove’s mane to and fro. I remember the feel of Puck’s ponytail in my hand, the heat of her skin when I tucked her hair into her collar.

“She doesn’t know any better,” Dory Maud says. “What a girl like her needs is a man with both his legs on the land. A man who will hold her down so that she doesn’t fly away. She doesn’t know yet that someone like you looks better on the shelf than in your hand.”

I can hear in her voice that she means no cruelty by it. But I say, “Someone to hold her down just as you are held?”

“I hold myself down,” snaps Dory Maud. “You and I both know what you love, and those races are a jealous lover.”

And now I hear in her voice that she knows this firsthand. But she’s pegged me wrong, because it’s not the races I love.

Puck comes up to us just then, still wearing the vicious smile from winning the battle with Elizabeth. “Dory!”

“Watch yourself on that beach,” Dory Maud says, and then she leaves us behind with a bit of a growl. Puck mutters something about bad tempers.

“Have you changed your mind?” I ask her.

“I never do,” she says.

The beach is every bit as bad as I’d guessed. The sky is down near the sand and occasional rain hits our faces like sea spray. From our vantage on the cliff road, I can see the thrashing ocean, the
capaill uisce
blowing across the black wet sand, the quarrels between horses and the smears of red down the beach. A dark, dead
capall
lies out flat by the surf, every wave washing around its legs but not moving it. It’s not only humans this is dangerous for.

Puck says, “Do you see Tommy?”

I do not, but only because there’s much to see in this ceaselessly moving play. Rain hisses in my ears.

She pushes down the path and I have no choice but to follow her. At the base are a few huddled spectators and a race official. One of the Carrolls, I think, an uncle of Brian and Jonathan’s. I stop to talk to him, my head ducked down into my collar.

“What’s been happening down here?” My voice is thin in the wind; my eyes are on the dead water horse.

“Fighting. The horses are fighting. The sea’s driving them mad.”

“Is Tommy Falk down here?” I ask him.

“Falk?”

“Black mare!”

He says, “They’re all black when they’re wet.”

“Tommy Falk?” echoes one of the spectators next to him, a mainlander by his navy suit coat and tie, even down here on the sand. “Good-looking boy?”

I have no idea if he is or not. “Maybe yes at that?”

He points toward the curve of the cliffs. The race official, as an afterthought, adds, “Someone was looking for you, Mr. Kendrick.” I wait for him to say who, but he doesn’t, so I step away. In all this I’ve lost Puck. Everyone looks the same in this vile weather. If all of the
capaill uisce
are black when they’re wet, so is every human. The beach is populated by dark, insensible beasts and the smaller dark creatures on their backs. There’s no point calling for her; in five feet all sound becomes the savage howl of the wind.

With my eyes, I finally find not Puck, not Tommy Falk, but his mare. She is blacker than a mirror and unmistakable with her fine bone. She stands about ten lengths away in the shelter of the cliffs, tied near another
capall uisce,
her head low to the ground. The mare’s still in her tack, but there’s no sign of Tommy Falk about her. I think perhaps that Puck has seen her as well, so I head toward the mare, across the loose stones of the high beach.

But before I get even halfway there, I find Puck. Tucked behind the curve of the cliff road, slightly protected from the weather, there are four bodies stretched out parallel to each other, dark outlines on the pale beach, casualties of the morning. Puck crouches beside one of them, not touching or even looking at it. Just hunched down against the wind, studying the ground between her feet.