The Night Ride

by J. Anderson Coats

  It’s only when he’s gone that I realize I should have asked them to visit. Bring my wooden toy horses, in case these walls are the last thing I ever see.

  On the third day I’m drawing Ricochet in the dust when an official scrapes open the door and jerks his chin at the corridor beyond.

  This must be it. Time to hear my sentence.

  I follow without a word. My heart is hammering so big and throbby that I sway on my feet. The official leads me through dim passageways that change from stone to rough wood to smooth, shiny planks, until there’s carpet under my feet and paintings of horses on the walls and a huge fireplace and big windows that spill huge panels of light onto—

  The king.

  I’d know him anywhere. Everyone in Mael Dunn knows him. He and his family ride in processions through town during all the holiday parades. His daughters wear cloaks with fur collars and throw candy and toys and coppers from silken bags for children to gather. He rides a huge white stallion named Polydorus, and he gave Torsten a job that has probably already been taken away.

  The official elbows me, and I curtsy even though I haven’t worn a dress in months. I don’t think my old school dress even fits me anymore. But that won’t matter. School is the last of my worries now.

  The last of Greta’s, too. There’ll be no place in a schoolroom in this realm or any other for someone with a branded hand.

  The king gestures to a stool on one side of a sprawling table. It’s stationed across from his oversized plush settee beneath the floor-to-ceiling windows. Somehow I manage to cross the thick red carpet and fall onto the hard wooden seat.

  “Well, then.” The king’s voice is measured as he strokes his dark moustache. “You’re the girl who stole one of my horses.”

  “Ricochet.” I sit up straighter. “His name is Ricochet, and is he all right? Someone took him away after we broke up the Ride. Is he back with Master Harold? In his old stall?”

  The king frowns the smallest bit. “Yes. He’s at the royal stables and perfectly sound.”

  I let out a long, trembling breath and blink away tears. Given everyone who’s going to suffer because of what I did, at least Ricochet won’t be one of them.

  “Most people who get a clemency hearing use it to beg for their lives.” The king leans forward. “Not ask about the well-being of someone else’s horse.”

  If I were Greta, I’d know what clemency means, but it seems like the king is either looking for a reason not to hang me, or a reason he should.

  I’ve repeated the same story to magistrates and sergeants-at-law and royal officials for two whole days. If the king hasn’t already decided what’s to become of me, I doubt there’s anything I can say now to change his mind.

  So I lift my chin and say, “I didn’t steal Ricochet.”

  The king’s brows go up, and my belly plummets down and down. It’s hard not to think of a horse as your own when you take care of him every day and you know his favorite treats and where he likes to be scratched. You can’t steal something that’s already yours.

  But Ricochet isn’t mine. He was never going to be, even when I was saving up my pony ride coppers with more hope than sense.

  “All right, yes, I did take Ricochet from the racetrack without permission.” My belly churns. “I’d have brought all the outriders with me if I could. But everyone knows how much I love him, and I wasn’t going to take the chance that someone would hurt him to teach me a lesson.”

  The king’s face is red, like he’s trying not to lose his temper.

  “I was always going to give Ricochet back,” I whisper. “I just… I knew I would lose him for good once I did.”

  “No need to worry about the horses at the track anymore,” the king growls. “Right now they’re being cared for by men from the royal stables whom I trust personally. Racehorses, workhorses, outriders, all of them. Every last person who had anything to do with my racetrack is now out of a job—and being interrogated.”

  I breathe out, long and relieved, but now that it’s done, it feels like something adults should have taken care of long ago, so there’s be no shadow of the gallows over me.

  “You disagree?” The king peers at me.

  “No. Sire.” I squirm on the hard seat. “Only sad for my friends. The kids in the junior racing cadre. Worried for them, too.”

  “The magistrates have already questioned the boys—and girl—in Deirdre’s so-called junior racing cadre. There’s nothing to be gained in punishing them, and they’ve already been released.”

  Released. Surely. Back to the lanes and hiring fairs.

  “I don’t think much of the girl jockey,” the king goes on, like even the words taste bad, “but I admit I like the idea of boys being formally taught the right way to ride a racehorse. How to understand a horse and work with him in partnership. So I’ll be establishing a royal racing academy, with retired jockeys as instructors. No one who might have a conflict of interest.”

  “Does that mean… can my friends be in it?”

  “They will be allowed to try out.” The king says it like he’s giving them a gift. Like they should take it and be grateful.

  It’s more than I expected. Way more than I hoped for. My friends will have the chance that Deirdre promised them—a way to escape the lanes and the hiring fairs. They can build the junior racing cadre they always should have had.

  “Astrid, too?” It’s not like the king can hang me twice. “You said boys, but she’s a good rider, and she cares about horses.”

  “I don’t know.” He sighs harshly. “After Deirdre, it’s going to be hard enough feeling that I can trust anyone at the racetrack. Everyone knew what was going on with the Night Ride. Even the horseboys knew!” The king slams a fist on the armrest. “Yet no one so much as breathed a word to me.”

  I nod and study my feet. No need to tell him why. He already knows.

  “No one but you,” he adds. “If you hadn’t done what you did, the Night Ride would still be happening. I’d have no idea what the girl jockey was getting away with. What that scoundrel of a track stablemaster was overlooking, how much he was profiting.”

  “Wh-what will happen to her?” I ask.

  “Exile. With the brand.”

  I’m glad I’m sitting down. There’s horse harm, then there’s horse thievery.

  “All right. I’m guilty.” I twist my shirttail in my lap. “I took Ricochet. I did it knowing what would happen if I got caught, but he’s not in danger anymore. I know you love all your horses. If he were mine and I didn’t know where he was and I thought someone stole him, I’d punish them too. Only please don’t punish my family. They had nothing to do with this.”

  “I have no intention of punishing your family,” the king replies, “and I definitely have no intention of punishing you.”

  My eyes come up. I blink hard.

  “I don’t like being made a fool. You’re the one who opened my eyes to it.” He shakes his head. “I still can’t believe all of it went on under my nose!”

  The king keeps talking. How Master Harold will be in charge at the racetrack for a while. How racehorses, outriders, and workhorses will all be safe and cared for, and everyone hired will be accountable to the king personally. How he’s already dropped the track’s minimum bets since they kept coming up in a lot of confessions.

  I’m still stuck on no intention and punishing.

  “Ah.” I remember how to breathe. “So I’m not to be hanged?”

  The king laughs. “I should think not! Besides, the horse was returned. Consider all charges dropped.”

  This morning I woke up in a cell in the gatehouse and spent most of the day with one eye on the common just in case the carpenters arrived. Tonight I’ll be at home. I’ll sleep in my own bed. Tomorrow I’ll be—

  Back to pony rides. School. The hiring fairs.

  “For someone who just received a royal pardon,” says the king, “you don’t look happy.”

  “No, thank you, I really am grateful.�
�� I try to smile, but now that I have my life, all I can think of is the future I’m looking toward.

  Which is no future at all.

  The king smiles again, bigger this time, and replies, “My daughters are your age. I can wait forever.”

  “I just… gave up a lot. Now I have nothing.”

  “Don’t you plan to apply to the royal racing academy?”

  I shrug. It’s hard to imagine returning to the track. Even knowing Deirdre won’t be there. The other kids all know what I did. What I took away from them. Besides, the idea of endless post parades and constant competition makes me shudder.

  “Well, what do you want?” the king asks.

  “Ricochet.” It’s foolish and big and unimaginable, but I don’t hesitate. “He’s the reason I went to the track stable in the first place. I started doing the Night Ride to keep him safe, but when I began earning all that money, I figured it would be the only chance I’d have to save up enough to buy him. I’ve only ever wanted him to be my own horse.”

  Only Ricochet is not a want. He never has been, because if he’s a want, he’s a thing. I want things for him, the way I want them for my brother and my sister and my parents and my friends.

  Ricochet may be the only friend I have left.

  “Here’s the twenty-two coppers I saved before I knew he cost five thousand.” I pull the scruffy bag of coins from my jacket’s inner pocket and empty them onto the table. “I know I can’t afford him, and besides, he’s yours, and also I have no way to keep him now that the Ride is broken up, so I guess it’s best he stays where he is.”

  “Hmm.” The king leans forward in his plush chair. “Then would you agree to be a fleet rider? That way you could ride Ricochet all the time.”

  “Don’t you have to be fifteen and, well, get a royal invitation?”

  “I think I can arrange a royal invitation.”

  I smile in spite of myself, and the king goes on, “From what I’ve learned of the Night Ride, you already have better training than most new fleet riders. And I can be sure you’ll never run your horse too hard or take chances with his safety just to get a message through.”

  Hours in the saddle. Days sometimes. Endless trail rides, just me and Ricochet.

  “It’ll be short runs to start with, until the fleet master approves longer missions. Shares are paid on quarter days, but you’ll get a bonus of five dinars right away so you can outfit yourself properly.”

  Shares. A fleet rider gets three shares of everything the horses earn. That’s coppers to send home. Coppers to save.

  “Well?” The king lifts his brows. “Do you want the position or not?”

  I’m on my feet. I’m halfway around the table before I remember that this is the anointed sovereign of Mael Dunn and not someone I should hug. Instead I stand before him, knotting and unknotting my hands, and I whisper thank you again and again until he calls for someone to escort me home.

  * * *

  It’s been three days since I was released from the gatehouse, and this morning I’m expected at the royal stables for my first day as a fleet rider.

  I barely sleep. I’m wide awake when the sky is still dark, but I don’t need much light to put on my fancy riding clothes. Mother took them to the sweatshop and sneaked them into a vat of mysterious liquids, and they’re perfect again. I bought a second shirt and breeches with my bonus, along with a good helmet, all of it waiting in a rucksack by the front door.

  Father has already left on his deliveries, but Greta is sitting at the table with a steaming mug in front of her. She’s wearing a green dress that’s only a little frayed at the cuffs, and there’s a copybook at her elbow.

  When I got home, we hugged and she said she was glad I was safe. I told her I was sorry for making her do all the pony rides, and she accepted my apology.

  She didn’t ask any Greta questions, though—what went on during a typical day at the racetrack, how odds were figured, how many people came to the races, what the other stablehands were like. She didn’t even ask about the Night Ride, and now she doesn’t look away from her tea when I dish up a bowl of porridge and sit across from her.

  The house is so quiet that I can hear the ponies out back chewing hay. I squirm and say, “You must be excited to be back at school.”

  “Mother told me I had to thank you for using some of your bonus to pay for it. So thank you.”

  Greta says it to her mug, her voice flat as paper.

  “Are you ever going to stop being mad at me?” I whisper.

  “I’m not angry with you, Sonnia. I’m just… Torsten’s in royal service. You’re in royal service. Me?” She coughs a bitter laugh. “Might as well go to the hiring fairs right now and save you some coppers.”

  “But you’re in school again. You love school!”

  “For half days. So what? It’s not like anything’s going to come of it.”

  “Only until I get my first shares,” I protest. “Then you can go all day! Master Harold will let us keep the ponies in the pasture with the retired fleet horses and we can visit them.”

  “Half day, full day—it doesn’t matter.” Greta sighs. “Even before I had to quit, Mistress Crumb was already saying there wasn’t much left she could teach me. I’d have to go to the academy for townhouse girls, and it won’t just be a matter of money there.”

  I stir my porridge. It’s thin and bland, nothing like the stuff from the track cookhouse, packed with raisins and swimming with molasses.

  “I’m sorry I said anything,” Greta mutters. “It’s foolish. I can’t go to the academy. Simple as that.”

  “You get to want things,” I reply, gripping my spoon. “You get to want anything.”

  “No, I don’t.” She looks me in the eye. “You do.”

  I stare hard into my breakfast. Behind us is my rucksack by the door, packed and ready for my new life as a fleet rider for the king of Mael Dunn.

  The only way kids like us—girls like us—get anything better is when we make it happen for ourselves.

  Only Deirdre didn’t mean ourselves. She meant herself, and I was to do the same if I could, however I could.

  No matter who got stepped on.

  I take a deep breath. “If you can pass the entrance exam and bluff through the interview and get Mistress Crumb to give you a recommendation, I’ll pay your way through the academy.”

  Greta peers at me warily. “It wouldn’t be cheap. Beyond the fees, I’d also need books. Decent clothes. An astrolabe. What about Ricochet?”

  “Oh, I still plan to buy him one day. It’ll just take a little longer.” I smile to show I mean it even as my stomach flips and flips again. “Fortunately, he’s the patient type.”

  “Going to the academy would be amazing,” Greta whispers, “but I don’t know that I can do all those things.”

  “I’m not saying you have to, or even that you should. But if you want to, I will help you make it happen.” Quietly I add, “I love Ricochet, but you’re my sister.”

  Greta runs a finger around the rim of her mug. She murmurs something that might be thank you.

  The sky is getting light. I’m expected at the royal stables before the first chime from the clock tower. I finish my porridge in heaping bites, and I’m shouldering my rucksack when Greta says, “Be safe out there, all right? If there’s any counting to be done, let Ricochet handle it.”

  I laugh aloud, then stick my tongue out at her. She does the same, and then I smile for real because this is Greta truly accepting my apology.

  The royal stables are just how I remember them: warm, gently lit with safety lamps, and already bustling despite the hour. The gather point for fleet riders is at the far end of the corridor, but it seems like I’m the first one here. I’m about to take a seat on a bale of straw when Master Harold turns up. He’s leading Ricochet by the halter, and he’s carrying a red bridle.

  “Good news. The king has agreed to your price and accepted your offer.” Master Harold drops the loops of leather into my han
ds.

  It takes a moment. The red bridle. Ricochet nudging my elbow for the carrot he knows is in my pocket.

  “M-my price?” I stammer.

  “Apparently during your conversation with the king the other day, you offered twenty-two coppers for the chestnut fleet horse known as Ricochet, and the king feels that amount is acceptable.” Master Harold smiles. “Ricochet is your horse now. The red bridle has his name on it, see? His and yours.”

  My mouth is open. Words are coming out, but none make sense. “But he… I can’t afford… the stable…”

  “If you want to keep him anywhere else, you’ll have to pay boarding.” Master Harold looks very pleased with himself. “Fleet horses who live in the royal stable have their keep paid for by the king.”

  I drop the red bridle on the bale of straw and hug Master Harold. No curtsying. Just a hug for a man who’s got so much goodness in his heart that he will always help where he can, wherever he can.

  “What are you waiting for?” Master Harold pulls away and tries to be the gruff taskmaster I always mistook him for. “The fleet captain will be here any moment and that horse of yours isn’t anywhere near ready.”

  That horse of yours.

  Ricochet noses me again and whuffles. I grin and give him the carrot. Then I head over to the tack shed to get the distance saddle that all the fleet horses wear.

  I have a good long ride ahead of me.

  More from the Author

  The Green Children of Woolpit

  R Is for Rebel

  The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming

  About the Author

  J. Anderson Coats has master’s degrees in history and library science. She is the author of the acclaimed novels The Wicked and the Just, The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming, R Is for Rebel, and The Green Children of Woolpit. She lives with her family in Washington State. Visit her at JAndersonCoats.com.

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