The Scorpio Races

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Sean Kendrick told me to meet him at the point of the cliffs over Fell Cove, but there’s no sign of him when I get there.

The cliffs here aren’t as high as the ones that border the racing beach, and they’re not as pure white. The shore by the cove is a weird, awkward place to get to, and once Dove and I manage to creep down the narrow, uneven path to the beach, I find that it’s no good for riding on. The beach here is rocky and uneven, and the sea hugs it closely. It’s low tide, but still, there’s only fifteen feet of rocks before the unruly sea smashes itself against them. It’s the sort of place we were always warned against, because a horse could be up out of that ocean and back down with us before one wave had gone out and another taken its place.

I wonder, suddenly, if Sean Kendrick sent me here as a prank.

Before I have time to consider if he seemed like that sort of person and think something truly foul about him, I hear hoofbeats. I can’t tell at once where they’re coming from, and then I realize that they’re coming from above me. I crane my head up to look.

I see a lone horse, stretched out to its fullest, galloping along the edge of the cliff, bits of turf plowed up beneath its hooves. I recognize the horse a moment before I recognize the rider – Sean Kendrick, folded up tightly along the stallion’s back, moving as one with the horse. As the bloody red capall uisce pounds past me overhead, I see that Sean rides bareback, the most dangerous way of all. Skin to skin, pulse to pulse, nothing to protect you should the horse’s magic seize you.

I don’t want to admire them, to admit that the two of them together are something altogether different than I’ve ever seen, but I can’t help it. The red stallion is so fast that it steals my breath and speeds my heart with the thrill of it. I thought the horses I saw on the first day of training were fast, but I’ve never seen a horse move like this before. And Sean Kendrick on him, bareback. He is a pisser, for sure, but the old man I met in the butcher’s is right: There is something about him. He knows his horses, but there is something else about him, too.

I think about the way his face felt in my hand when I pulled it above the water.

I think, too, about what it would be like to ride a horse like that. A bit of guilt stabs just inside my ribs as I remember Finn and his principles, or rather, my principles, the ones that started to slip when the house was at stake. I wish the idea of this sat more easily with me.

Back we go to the top of the cliff, Dove prancing a bit. Even going uphill, even after being ridden well for days now, she’s still excited about running. I hear Finn’s voice whispering in my ear as she flicks her tail.

By the time I get to the top of the cliff road, I know what I’m going to ask Sean.

There’s no sign of Kate Connolly when I arrive at the point of the cliff, though I wait for several long moments – moments I can’t spare. I tie the bay mare down, draw a circle around her and spit in it, and take Corr out for a run. If Kate doesn’t show up, I’ll at least have stretched him out. He’s eager and forward today, glad as me for the gallop.

Galloping up at the top of this cliff requires a gull’s heart and a shark’s nerve. It’s not as high as the cliffs over the racing beach, sure, but a fall over these would kill you just the same. And to a capall uisce, the call of the sea is nearly as powerful one hundred feet above it as it is one hundred feet across a beach from it. More than one man has ridden that sinking ship over the edge and onto the rocks, just shy of the ocean.

But these low cliffs are the first place that my father ever set me on one of the capaill uisce. Not the beach where he had been taught. Because always, always, my father feared the sea more than he feared the heights.

I think they’re both deadly, which isn’t the same as being afraid.

When I double back, Corr stepping high over the long cliff grass, I see Kate Connolly standing beside her little dun pony. Kate’s hair is the color of the cliff grass turned red by autumn, and she has a spatter of freckles across her face that at first glance makes her look far younger. It’s a strange magic: At once she’s a cross child and also something older and wild, something grown from this coarse island soil. She’s looking at my things – my saddle tipped up on its pommel, my rucksack, my thermos, my bells – where I’ve left them, and for some reason, that makes me feel odd, like skin rubbed raw by sand in the wind.

When Kate notices me, she frowns, or at least narrows her eyes. I don’t know her to be able to tell the difference. I feel that same disquieted feeling I had in the cove. Again Fundamental goes under the water, and me with him. But I’m not drowning now; I let out my breath.

Corr’s inspired by the appearance of the mare; instead of slowing to a walk, he trots nearly in place, shivering with his excitement. I don’t dare get as close to her as politeness demands, so from fifteen feet away, Corr dancing beneath me, I say, my voice louder to be heard over the wind, “What do I call you?”

“What?”

I ask, “Is your name Kate or not?”

“Come again?”

“It says ‘Kate’ on the board at Gratton’s, but that’s not what Thomas Gratton called you.”

“Puck,” she says, her voice soaked in lemon juice. “It’s a nickname. Some people call me that.” She doesn’t invite me to be one of them. The wind gasps, long and low, around our feet, flattening the grass and tangling through the horses’ manes. Up here, for some reason, it always smells more strongly of fish. After a moment, she adds, “I thought the rules say that you have to train on the beach.”

I don’t understand her for a moment, then I clarify, “Within one hundred and fifty yards of the shore.”

Something dawns over her face, and for a moment, I needn’t be there – it is merely her and her epiphany. I look at my watch.

“Where’s the other horse?” she asks. Her mare tries to nibble her hair, and Kate slaps at her, absently. The pony tosses her head up with mock displeasure. It’s a game bred of familiarity, one that warms me to both of them.

“Just a bit inland.”

Kate regards us. “Does he always do that?”

Corr hasn’t stopped moving. His neck is arched, too. I’m sure he looks ridiculous as he preens for them. Uisce stallions generally prefer to view land horses as meals, not mates, but sometimes a particular mare will take a stallion’s fancy and he’ll make an idiot of himself. “The bay mare’s worse,” I say.

Kate makes a face that I think might be humor.

“Tell me about her.”

“She’s moody and she’s slippery and she’s in love with the ocean,” I reply. I’d caught her in a rainstorm, salt water making all of my leather straps too slick to hold, clouds turning the sky into sea and vice versa, the cold making my fingers imprecise. She came up in a net behind the boat as I dredged the breakers just off the shore. Local lore had it that a capall uisce caught in the rain wanted to stay wet, but I wouldn’t believe it until I’d tried it for myself.

“That sounds bad,” Kate says.

“It is.”

“Then why am I here?”

I study her. It’s a question that’s been plaguing me since I first saw her on the beach. “Because she’d be a capall uisce in a race made for capaill uisce.”

She looks past me at the cliff’s edge then, her eyebrows drawn close together, her mouth set. There’s something uncompromising about her, a fury that I associate with youth.

“I don’t want to consider this unless I’m sure she’s going to be a better bet than Dove,” she says. It’s not until she’s been quiet for a long moment that I realize that she’s looking at me, waiting for me to agree or disagree.

I’m not certain what she expects me to say. She must know all this, but still I say, “There is nothing faster than a capall uisce. Period. I don’t care what sort of training regimen you’re doing, circles in the surf, or whatever. They have strength on your mare, they have height on her, and your mare runs on grass. The capaill uisce run on blood, Kate Connolly. You don’t stand a chance.”

This seems to solidify her opinions, because she nods, once, sharply. “Okay, then. So, you’ll race me, then, won’t you?”

It’s a curious way that she phrases it. The “won’t you?” means that I’ll have to disagree with her just to keep things as normal.

“Race? Me on the mare, you on Dove?”

Kate nods.

The wind buffets us again, finally stilling Corr as he stops to scent it. I can smell rain on it, far away. “I don’t understand the purpose.”

She just stares at me.

Back at the yard, I have two lots of horses to take out to the gallops yet. I have George Holly and at least two other buyers poking around the barns, looking for the horse that will make their mainland yards famous, or at least famous for the year. I have too much to do in too few hours before the October night comes early. I don’t have time for a fool’s race, a capall uisce against a pony that couldn’t begin to look Corr in the eye.

“It’s no more time than it would take for me to try her,” Kate says. “So if you say no, it’s just because the idea insults you.”

Which is how we end up racing.

I retrieve the bay mare, leaving Corr in her place with a lump of beef heart from my satchel, and find Kate adjusting her stirrups from the back of her pony, one leg crossed over the saddle as she does. It’s something you can’t do on a horse you don’t trust, something I don’t know that I’d ever do on one of the capaill uisce.

Beneath me, the bay mare is twisting and anxious. She’s as hard to hold as the piebald, but less malevolent. She would sooner drown you than eat you.

“Are you ready?” Kate asks me, though I think it’s a question I should’ve been asking instead. I don’t think there’s even a ghost of a chance she wants this horse I’m on. “To the big outcropping over there?”

I nod.

I reason with myself: This doesn’t have to be an entirely wasted exercise. If I can get this bay mare running straight and true for these five minutes, then I’ll reconsider what I told Malvern. I hate releasing a horse after I’ve invested time in it, and she’s had plenty of time sunk into her. Maybe I was wrong and she will shape up for next year. Corr took years to settle.

“Are we waiting for a sign?” Kate says, springing off across the field. The bay mare’s after her like a shot, all predator, and I let her have her head until we’ve caught up. Kate has a big handful of Dove’s mane, which I think is for grip until I realize it’s to keep the strands from slapping the girl’s hands and face with their length. I don’t have to worry about that with the bay mare; she’s rubbed most of hers off on the door frame of her stall, longing for the sea.

The two horses gallop through the cliff grass, both of them nimble over the uneven surface.

The bay mare’s not even really trying. I nudge her to get a bit more speed out of her, to pull away from Dove and end this. But the mare curves her body around my leg instead of away from it. She tugs toward the cliff edge, moving more to the side than forward.

And of course that island pony tracks straight and true ahead of us.

It takes me several long seconds to sort my bay mare out again, but when she decides to run, she catches up easily. Kate’s dun pony gallops along – joyfully. Her ears are pricked with the glee of the run, her tail cracking every so often as she bucks playfully with excitement. If my mare is not focused, neither is she.

Kate glances at me, and I urge the bay mare on. I whisper to her for speed and she surges forward, listening. The dun mare doesn’t stand a chance.

I hear a crack over the sound of the wind in my ears and turn just in time to see that Kate has reached behind her and, with her open palm, slapped her mare on the haunches, hard. It’s gotten her pony’s attention and Dove charges forward, giving it everything.

It’s no good, though. My capall uisce has more speed than any island pony has dreamt of, and we’re pulling away, fast. We’ll have thirty lengths between us by the time we make it to the outcropping.

The bay mare stumbles but doesn’t lose her footing. My arms are sprayed with bits of mud. I steal a glance under my arm to see where Kate is. She and her pony are far, far behind. There’s no thrill to this race. No pleasure in such an easy victory. Above all, no joy in a win that the horse has no interest in.

And that’s when the wind throws the scent of the sea at us. The bay mare flags and then twists, throwing her head up, her nostrils flared. I whisper to her and trace letters on her shoulder, but she won’t settle.

She wants that cliff edge. The ocean is thick in the wind and she cannot think for it. I shuffle my iron out of my pocket, trace it along her veins, but – nothing. She rears, clawing at the air, and when that doesn’t unseat me, she decides to take me with her. Her skin’s hot and charged where my leg touches her. Nothing I do to her will turn her head.

Before us, I see cliff grass, and more cliff grass, and then, beyond it, nothing but sky. I pop one rein up, a dangerous way to stop a normal horse as you could pull it onto yourself, but it makes no difference to the bay mare. She has the bit solidly in her teeth and the sea in her lungs.

Twenty feet to the edge.

I have half a heartbeat to make a decision.

I throw myself off her, slamming my shoulder hard into the ground and rolling to diffuse the blow. I see chestnut-colored grass, then blue sky, then chestnut-colored grass again. Pushing myself up on my elbow, I catch sight of the mare just in time to watch her bunch her muscles and leap.

I scramble as close to the cliff’s edge as I dare. I’m not sure if I can stand to see her dash herself on the rocks below, but I can’t not look, either.

The bay mare looks fearless as she sails through the air, as if it’s no more than a casual leap over a hurdle. Already she looks less horselike, her body streamlined.

I can’t look.

I hear a terrific crash. She has disappeared into the surf, her tail the last thing I see.

I sigh and put my hands in my pockets. I can’t tell if she’s survived the dive or not. My saddle’s gone, either way. I’m glad it wasn’t my father’s, back at the barn, though it was still dear; I’d had it made for me two years ago, a rare indulgence. I don’t swear, but I consider the shape of the word in my mouth.

Hot breath whuffs out on my shoulder. It’s Dove, and Kate standing on the other side of her, her ginger hair all pulled out of its ponytail. Dove is out of breath, but not as much as I’d expect.

Kate looks over the cliff and frowns for a moment, and then she points.

I follow her gaze to a glistening dark back swimming out to sea. My mouth quirks. “It looks like you won, Kate Connolly.”

She pats Dove’s shoulder and says, “Call me Puck.”