The Scorpio Races

by Maggie Stiefvater

Page 15

 

  “Good, you know who I am. That saves us some trouble.

  Now, I wouldn’t presume to tell you your business, but it’s cold out there and an open door makes a very poor windbreak. ”

  I shut it. I shut my mouth as well. I start to make some tea. I’m equal parts offended and curious.

  “What brings you this way?” I ask. I’m unhappy about how polite I sound.

  His eyes were on my saddle but he shifts them to me when I speak. I’m intimidated by them, a little. The rest of him looks like a moneyed old man, but his eyes are clever.

  “Unpleasant business. ” But he says it pleasantly.

  “I would have thought that you have people to do your unpleasant business for you,” I say, and feel cheeky. “Sugar or milk?”

  “Butter, milk, and salt, please. ”

  I turn to Malvern, sure I’ll see humor on his face. But there isn’t any. I’m not sure, now that I think of it, that it’s a face I could imagine humor on. It’s more like a face I can imagine on a pound note. I hand him his cup of tea, a saltshaker, and our little butter bowl. Sitting down with the milk jug opposite, I watch him slice a small piece of butter into his tea, add a healthy dose of salt, and top it all up with milk before stirring it thoroughly. The liquid has a froth on it. It looks like something I saw come out from under a cow once. I don’t think that he’ll drink it, but he does.

  Malvern braces his fingers on the edge of his teacup. “Is that your pony outside?”

  “Horse,” I say. “She’s fifteen hands. ”

  “You’d get better performance out of her with better food,” Malvern tells me. “Switch her from that poor hay and she’d have more energy. Less of a hay belly. ”

  Of course she’d have more energy on better hay and grain.

  I’d have more energy if I were eating something besides beans and apple cake, too, but we’re both going without better for the same reason.

  We drink our tea. I think about Finn coming home right now and finding Malvern at our kitchen table. I sweep some crumbs into a pyramid behind the butter bowl.

  “So your parents are dead,” Benjamin Malvern says.

  I set my teacup down.

  “Mr. Malvern. ”

  “I know the story already,” he interrupts me. “I don’t want to talk about that. I want to know what comes after the story. What are you three — it is three, isn’t it? — doing with yourselves?”

  I try to imagine how my parents would handle this situation. They were unfailingly polite and private. I am good at one of those things. Uncomfortably, I say, “We’re getting along. Gabe works at the hotel. Finn and I do odd jobs. Paint things for tourists. ”

  “Making enough for tea,” Malvern says, but his eyes are on the pantry door. I know he saw its lack of contents when I took out the butter bowl.

  “We’re getting along,” I repeat.

  Malvern swallows the last of his tea — how he’s managed to drink that concoction so fast and without holding his nose is beyond me — and rests his crossed arms on the table. He leans toward me so I smell his cologne.

  “I am here to evict you. ”

  For a moment, it doesn’t mean anything, and then I scramble to my feet. My head pounds like the surf where the water horse struck it. I keep replaying that sentence.

  He continues, “No one has made payments on this house for a year, and I wanted to see who lived here. I wanted to see your faces when I told you. ”

  I think, just then, that in an island populated by monsters, he’s more monstrous than any. My tongue takes a long time to unstick. “I thought the house was paid for. I didn’t know. ”

  “Gabriel Connolly knew better, and has for quite a while,” Malvern says. His voice is calm. He’s watching my reaction carefully. I cannot believe that I’ve served him tea.

  I look at him and smash my lips together. I want to be sure I don’t say something I will regret. I am struck, more than anything, by the sense of betrayal: that Gabe knew that we were living in a ticking time bomb and didn’t tell us. Finally, I manage, “And what is it that you see in my face right now? Is it what you came to see?”

  It comes out like a challenge, but Malvern seems unflustered. He just nods a little. “Yes. Yes, I think so. Now tell me this: What are you and your brothers willing to do to save this house?”

  There was a problem with dogfighting on the island a few years back. Bored, drunk fishermen raised island dogs to tear each other’s faces off. I feel like one of those dogs now. Malvern has thrown me into the pit and is now peering over the side to see what I will do. He wants to see if I will retreat or if there’s fight in me.

  I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me give up. My future crystallizes suddenly.

  “Give me three weeks,” I say.

  Malvern doesn’t dance around the point. “After the races. ”

  I wonder if he’s thinking that it’s crazy that a girl like me is riding in the races and that there’s no point waiting until the end of the month because there will be no money because I will be dead last or just plain dead.

  Keep your pony off this beach.

  I just nod.

  “You don’t stand a chance,” Malvern says, but without malice. “On that pony. Why her?”

  Horse, I think. “The capaill uisce killed my parents. I’m not going to dishonor them by riding one of the water horses. ”

  Malvern doesn’t smile, but his eyebrows lighten like he’s considering it. “That’s noble. It’s not because no one would give you a chance on one of the capaill?”

  “I had a chance to be a fifth,” I shoot back. “I chose not to. ”

  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 stre
ngth 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.