The Scorpio Races

otherwise insulted them. The other birds dive-bomb and scream and the crow merely stands there, looking dark and still and unimpressed.

So it’s just this: Sean and Mutt, heir to the island’s fortune, and Mutt’s spit glistening on Sean’s boots.

“Nice boots,” Mutt says. He’s looking down at them, but Sean Kendrick isn’t. He watches Mutt’s face with the same looking-but-not-looking expression he had in the butcher’s. I’m kind of horrified and fascinated by what I see on Mutt’s face. It’s not anger, but something like it.

After a long moment, Sean turns as if to go.

“Hey,” Mutt says. He has a smile on his face, but it means the opposite of a smile. “Are you in such a hurry to get back to the stables? It’s only been a few hours since you’ve gotten your fix.” He pumps his hips enthusiastically.

I would have felt bad for Mutt’s goading if I hadn’t seen Sean’s smile then. It’s barely a wisp of a smile, only there for a second – not even really making his mouth move, just flattening his eyes a bit – and it’s canny and condescending and then it’s gone. And I realize that what’s on both their faces, in two entirely different shapes, is hatred.

“Say something, horse-stroker,” Mutt says. “Did you like my present to you?”

But his fists are clenched, and I don’t think it’s speaking he wants out of Sean Kendrick.

And still Sean says nothing. He looks weary, if anything, and as Mutt shifts his feet to circle him, Sean simply begins to walk away.

“Don’t walk away from me,” Mutt snarls. He catches up to Sean in three uneven strides, and when he catches Sean’s upper arm with his big hand, he spins Sean around as easily as a child. “You work for me. You don’t walk away from me.”

Sean puts his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Indeed, Mr. Malvern,” he says, and his tone is so deadly calm that Dr. Halsal, who’d been watching, frowns and ducks back inside the butcher shop. “And what can I do for you this evening?”

This momentarily stumps Mutt Malvern, and I think that he might just hit Sean Kendrick now and rustle up a good reply later. But then, it comes to him, and he says, “I’m having my father let you go. For theft. Don’t say it’s not so. I had that horse, Kendrick, and you let him go. I’ll have your job for that.”

Money’s not something many people have on this island. Talk of axing someone’s job is not a thing to toss around lightly. It’s not even my employment, and I already feel the pinch in my stomach, the same one I get when I open up the pantry door and see the shrinking contents.

“Will you now?” Sean says softly. There’s a long pause, full of the sound of muffled voices in the butcher’s. “I saw you signed up for the races. But there’s no horse there beside your name. Why is that, Mutt?”

Mutt’s face purples.

“I think,” Sean says, and as before, his voice is so quiet that all of us are holding our breath to hear him, “it’s because, like every year, your father is waiting for me to pick a horse for you.”

“That’s a lie,” Mutt says. “You’re no better than I am. My father lets you put me on the wasters. He lets you put me on the nags and the leftovers and you take the best for yourself. I have no say in the matter or I’d be on that red stallion. I’m not going to have you put me on a loser this year.”

The door opens and now Dr. Halsal has returned with Thomas Gratton. They stand in the doorway and Thomas Gratton wipes his hands on his butcher’s apron as he surveys the situation. Sean Kendrick’s low voice has somehow made the argument both quieter and more impressive – a silent night ocean full of restrained power. The space between Sean Kendrick and Mutt Malvern seems charged.

“Boys,” Thomas Gratton says, and though he sounds jovial, I can see that he’s cautious. “I think it’s time you push off.”

As if Thomas Gratton hasn’t spoken, Sean leans into Mutt, and he says, “Five years I’ve kept you alive on that beach. That’s what your father asks of me, and that’s what I’ll keep doing. You’ll ride what I tell him you’ll ride.”

He turns to Gratton and nods sharply, suddenly old, before striding inland. Mutt makes an obscene gesture to his back. When Mutt sees Gratton looking at him, he takes his time lowering his hand and putting it in his pocket.

“Matthew,” Gratton says. “It’s late.”

Dr. Halsal glances in my direction. His eyes narrow, as if he’s convincing himself of what he sees, and I hurry to retrieve Finn’s bike before he can say anything. I should be off anyway. Like Thomas Gratton said, it’s late. And I have to be up early tomorrow.

Sean Kendrick is no one to me that his worries should be mine. He’s just another rider on the beach.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PUCK

That night, I dream about Mum teaching me to ride. I’m nestled in front of her like we are one creature, her arms around me. Her fingers are stubby like mine, and it’s easy to compare them – my hands are fisted on the pony’s mane, and hers are light on the reins. It is neither raining nor sunny, but somewhere in between, as it often is on Thisby. My hands are wet with the sky’s sweat.

“Don’t be nervous,” she tells me. The wind beats her hair against my face and my hair against hers. It’s the same color as the ruddy fall cliff grass that bows down to the ground and back up again. “The Thisby ponies love to run. But it’s easier to get a barnacle off a rock than a Keown woman off a horse.” I believe her, because she feels like a centaur, like she’s part of the pony. It’s impossible for either of us to fall.

I wake from my dream. I have a memory of the door to the house closing and I think this is what woke me. I lie there, looking at nothing because the room is too dark to see, waiting for my eyes to adjust or waiting for sleep to return. I wipe some of the tears off my cheeks. After a few minutes, I start to doubt that I actually heard the door close.

But then there’s the smell of salt water, momentarily terrifying, and Gabe, standing at the door to my bedroom, peering in. I can see the line of his neck as he looks. Inside my head, I say please come in, over and over again. I want so much for him to sit on the end of my bed like he used to, before our parents died, and ask me what my day was like. I want him to tell me he’s changed his mind and I don’t have to ride after all. I want him to say where he’s been out so late.

But most of all, I just want him to come in and sit.

He doesn’t. He silently knocks his fist against the door-jamb as if I’ve said something to disappoint him. Then he turns away, and eventually, I fall back asleep. But I don’t dream of our mother again.

SEAN

The Malvern stables are a haunted place at night.

Though I have already been awake for seventeen hours and need to be up in another five if I’m to have the beach to myself in the morning, I don’t go straight up to my flat. Instead, I take my time in the chilly stable, walking up and down the dimly lit aisles, making sure that the grooms have fed and watered the thoroughbreds and drafts as they were supposed to. They’ve mucked out most of the stalls but now that it’s nearly November, they’re too cowardly to enter the few stalls occupied by the capaill uisce, even when I had the water horses down at the beach. Part of that is the water horses’ reputation, I think, and part of it is the stable’s. Regardless, it leaves me with three stalls I don’t want the capaill uisce to stand in all night. As head trainer, my time’s supposed to be too valuable to be bothering with mucking, but I’d rather do it myself than have Malvern’s two new frightened mice do it badly.

So while the horses make their soft, slow night noises, and the dark, knowing walls of this place hold me close, I clean out the three stalls. I wipe down the surfaces in the feed room. I give the water horses their meat, though I think they’re too wound up to eat it. And all the while, I imagine that this massive stable is mine, that these horses