The Scorpio Races

Malvern considers all this. “There’s only real money if you win.”

“I know,” I say.

“And you really expect me to put this off on the idea that you and that island pony will cross that line before everyone else?”

I look at his silly teacup with his silly tea in it. Wasn’t regular tea interesting enough? Who drank their tea with butter and salt? Nobody but bored old men who ran their islands like a chess game. I say, “I think you’re interested to see what will happen. And you’ve already waited twelve months.”

Malvern pushes his chair back and stands up. From his pocket, he takes out a piece of paper, unfolds it, and lays it on the table. It’s an official document. I recognize his signature at the bottom. My father’s, too. He says, “I’m not a generous person, Kate Connolly.”

I don’t answer. We regard each other.

He pushes the document across the table with two fingers. “Show that to your older brother. I’ll be back to collect it when you’re dead.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

SEAN

They’re all afraid.

I sit in a boat, half-turned, watching my charge. The boat has the words Black as the Sea painted in white on its black hull. Behind it swims Fundamental, a bay colt full of promise and promises, a sport-horse colt poised to sell for hundreds on the mainland. One of the colts I’m sure Malvern means to tempt George Holly with. Fundamental’s coat is turned dark by the water. He snorts out water and breath every few strokes, but shows no sign of tiring. Boat and horse make their slow way across the sheltered cove. The cliffs here are slanted, like a child shoved them over, and they block most of the wind and all of the waves. The sound of the boat’s motor slaps back at me.

Normally, I would find this ordinary training a bitter drink during race month. But after the strange morning, I’m relieved to have a few moments to sit and let my mind work over events. I still cannot imagine what that girl was thinking.

I glance up to the mouth of the cove. One of the new men, Daly, stands watch. With the clatter of the boat’s motor and the ripple of Fundamental’s breaths, I’m unable to keep an eye out for hunting capaill uisce. This cove is easy to protect, however; its narrow mouth means that one can keep watch while the other trains. Swimming is such a low-impact way to build strength that it’s worth the risk. Daly has a shotgun, which won’t do much, but he also has a set of lungs, which should give me enough time to get Fundamental out of the water.

Daly is from the mainland, and he’s young and nervous. I prefer nervous to cocky. He needs to be my eyes, and my eyes would be fixed on that narrow passage into the cove.

Fundamental keeps swimming. I was there when he was born, just a collection of knobby joints and massive eyes. He doesn’t look at me as he swims. Behind the boat, swimming is his sole purpose. He has enough capall uisce blood in him to lend him a single-mindedness. I have to watch him as closely as Daly watches the entrance to the cove. Fundamental would swim until he sank.

Tomorrow, Malvern will want me to assign Mutt a horse. Every year on the third day, he asks me to decide, and every year I’m afraid he will ask me to put Mutt on Corr.

I cannot bear the thought of it.

Fundamental shakes his head, as if to unstick his wet mane from his neck. I lean to make certain that he’s not tiring. Exercising in the water is lower impact than on land, but I don’t want him exhausted; I was told buyers are coming to look at him tomorrow.

I feel disquieted. I’m not certain why. If it’s because of the girl, interrupting the routine I’ve followed for years. Or if it’s because of Mutt’s piss in my boots. Or if it’s because, as we make our way back across the cove, the water level against the cliffs appears slightly wrong to me. Too high, perhaps. The sky is bright and populated with fluffy clouds; if there’s to be a storm, it’s days away.

But I cannot settle.

“Kendrick! Kendrick!”

My name, a shout made thin by the boat motor.

I have seconds to see it:

Daly is standing on the small crescent beach by the boat slip, far from the cove’s entrance. I don’t have time to think about why he’s moved. The shout is his.

There’s a silhouette at the point of the cove where Daly had been. Mutt Malvern. Just watching me. No – watching a point in the water just before me.

A slight drop in the water only thirty feet from us.

I know that dip, that unnatural crevice into the sea. It looks like nothing, but it’s what happens to the salt water when there’s a massive body traveling very fast just under the surface.

There’s no time to make it to shore.

Fundamental kicks his hind legs, his head thrown back.

Then he goes under.

Mutt Malvern stands motionless at the point of the cove.

I dive into the water.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SEAN

I’m not swimming through water. I’m swimming through blood. It billows around me in great underwater thunderheads as one of my hands finds Fundamental’s spine. In my other hand I have a fistful of the holly berries. I’ve gone years without using them to kill one of the water horses, and now I have them in my palm twice in one day.

Fundamental’s spine writhes. I feel a strange sucking sensation beneath me as one of his legs cuts through the water under my feet, the current dragging at me. I feel forward along his mane. My lungs feel pressed small in my chest.

I can’t see, and then I can.

Fundamental’s eye is wide open, white all around it, but he can’t see me. A slick, dark capall uisce holds Fundamental’s throatlatch in its jaws. Blood floats from a ragged tear like steam. The uisce horse’s legs slice through the salt water, smooth and purposeful. It spares no attention for me. The capall uisce has the colt in a steel grasp and I, a small, vulnerable stranger in this world, am no threat.

I need a breath. I need more than a breath. I need a long gasp and another one and another one. But in front of me I see the capall’s nostrils, long and thin. The berries are hard and deadly in my hand. I could watch it drown.

But next to their two heads, I see the edge of Fundamental’s wound. The colt’s great, brave heart pumps his life out in time with my hammering pulse.

There’s no saving him from this.

I watched him being born. Fundamental, rare colt, so close to the water horses that he loves the ocean like I do.

Colors without any name flicker at the corner of my vision.