The Scorpio Races

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.”