The Night Ride Page 9

  I’m out of the saddle in a heartbeat, telling Ricochet to stand. The other kids follow my lead, scrambling to dismount. Once a flag is in my jacket, I put one foot in the stirrup and cue Ricochet to go, landing in the saddle while the others are still trying to calm their horses enough to mount.

  As we head into the trees, I count again. I think we’re in the top three now. We’re going to show.

  Going downhill in the dark is beyond terrifying, but I give Ricochet his head once more. He knows what he’s doing, and I trust him. I lean back in the saddle to help him balance his weight. His hooves clip and clop while unseen branches catch at my hair, but I pull in steady breaths and picture what the trail looks like in the daytime. Well-trodden. No rocks. No chuckholes.

  I have to stay calm. If I’m not calm, Ricochet will know, and he’ll panic. If he panics, we’re both in trouble.

  The greenwood is perfectly still. No birds. No creatures. The air smells damp and it’s warmer than I’d have guessed, and moonlight silvers through the branches almost as bright as safety lamps.

  It’s beautiful in a way I never expected the night would be, not when Father and Mother always made us come in before dark. It’s just me and Ricochet, and any time I spend with him is good time. And passing riders—

  It’s actually kind of fun.

  It’s not. It’s not.

  When we get to the bottom of the incline, the trail is flat for a good long way, and I tell Ricochet to gallop. The drum of it works into my legs and back like a kitten’s purr, and wind curls around my face so fresh and brisk that I grin.

  We emerge at the craggy rock. The final checkpoint. There’s a series of bows tied along several nearby branches. A lot of them. Which means not many kids have passed here to take one.

  There’s a crunch-crackle behind us. Someone coming at a trot, and I don’t stop to count bows. Ricochet stands while I untie a flag and stuff it into my barn jacket with the rest, and now we’re home free. The back pasture is a gentle stretch of trail from here, and now I’m ahead of one more kid.

  I cue Ricochet to gallop, and we’re away.

  He’s not a racehorse. He never will be. But Ricochet loves to run, and I love riding him when he’s doing something he loves. We fly through the night toward the back pasture. The gate is open, which is a major violation of track policy, and there’s a horse-shaped shadow slowing down to negotiate its way through.

  Fleet horses have been taught to move quick and steady past unusual obstacles and disregard flapping stirrups and dangling mailbags and get along with every kind of animal.

  They’ve also been taught to jump.

  We’re in the air almost before I know it, and I can hardly breathe as we sail over the pasture fence and land—two hooves, four hooves—with a jolt that makes me slide hard in the saddle and grapple for a handhold.

  As I recover, I spot Ivar coming through the gate. He’s the shadow, and I’m close enough that I can see his mouth open like a fish for a long moment before he goes steely.

  Ricochet has momentum from the gallop, and I guide him with a firm rein toward the end of the pasture where there’s a dark pillar who must be Benno at the finish line. There are no horses in front of me. No obstacles.

  “Go, friend,” I whisper, and I give Ricochet his head once more because this pasture is safe and I want nothing more than for Ivar to eat dirt clods.

  Behind us, there’s a thundering of hooves as Ivar and Banner try to catch up, but it’s too late. Ricochet gallops past Benno, who holds up one arm as we fly by.

  We made it. We’re safe, both of us.

  Ricochet needs to cool down, so I let him find his own pace along the pasture fence. When he drops into a walk, I slide down so we’re shoulder to shoulder, and I lead him.

  I can’t stop petting his sweaty neck with hands that tremble. That ride was nothing like the exercise course at the royal stables.

  There’s a crowd of men gathered behind the finish line, just beyond the fence. There are at least a hundred, and they’re blocking the gate.

  Constables. They must be. They’ve come to arrest every one of us.

  Something went wrong. Deirdre spoke with people she thought she could trust, but they had no reason to help her and every reason to turn us all in. They’d have gone straight to the track stablemaster, who called the law to save his own skin.

  But the men don’t pour into the field with billy clubs flying and handcuffs jingling. They seem to be lined up in front of a big trestle table and lurking near it. Waiting for something and willing to wait.

  I recognize several of Perihelion’s grooms. Hesperides’ exercise rider is nearby, along with a handful of undertrainers. They’re wearing hats pulled over their eyes and shabby barn jackets in dark colors.

  “Rider.” Benno gestures me over. He’s got long hair that glints in the silver light and the swagger of a bandit king.

  This can’t be right. The jockeys can’t be behind the Night Ride. They have the most of all to lose, and setting up a pay table would take dinars none of them have.

  There’s a bonus, too, if a horse wins with long odds. When the king wins big, he does not forget his jockeys.

  When I edge near Benno, he says, “Flags?”

  It takes a moment to remember what Astrid said about the flags, how you need four in the right colors or you’re disqualified. I reach into my jacket, pull out the scraps of cloth, and lay them across Benno’s palm. Ricochet behind me mouths his bit and shuffles.

  Benno turns to the crowd behind him and lifts a single finger high in the air. “Sonnia. On… who is that? Ricochet?”

  There’s a groan so loud I cringe, waiting for the onrush of constables or even the track security guards who wander the grounds with cudgels to keep spectators polite.

  There’s also a single whoop of joy, followed by cackles and hoots of laughter and the clinkety-clink of metal on metal. Like coins being poured.

  If jockeys are running the Night Ride, Deirdre would already know about it.

  Unless they’re cutting Deirdre out. The only girl jockey. The one who’s close enough to the track stablemaster that he listens to her.

  Benno turns the flags over, admiring. “You know how long it’s been since we’ve had an upset? You’re barely on the pay table, but anyone who put money down that you’d win is very happy right now.” He smiles. “I happen to be one of them. And may I say it’s about time you got with the program.”

  There are so many things I want to say. So many answers I want to demand. What comes out is “Wait. We won?”

  Benno grins and hands me a drawstring pouch. It’s heavy and it clanks. I loosen the cord and peek inside. There are five big gold coins. Five dinars.

  The winner’s purse.

  The program.

  Five dinars is a month’s rent. It’s food for a whole season. It’s my share of pony ride money this month, and next month, and maybe more months after that.

  It’s Ricochet’s whole leg. Or his wonderful, intelligent head with its unlucky white blaze.

  “Go on now,” Benno says to me, then he turns and gestures to Ivar, a dark blocky shape behind me. “Second-place rider. Flags.”

  The crowd of men has thinned enough that I can spot a table in its midst, and sure enough, there’s someone behind it with a strongbox. A jockey—Felix, I think—is counting coins into a shadowy hand.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was the same box that Deirdre had on payday.

  Ricochet whuffles. He just ran a race. He needs water and a hot bran mash and a cozy stall to sleep in. I clickclick to him and lead him away, past the pay table. Something snares my sleeve and I startle, but it’s only one of Perihelion’s grooms. He’s thin and pockmarked and grinning so big he looks ready to eat the world.

  “Sorry. I just want to say thank you to this beautiful boy.” The groom gently takes Ricochet’s bridle and kisses him right on the nose. “I’m taking fifteen dinars home because of him! Oh, and you, too. For a wager of
five coppers!”

  “I—I thought the racetrack had a minimum bet,” I stammer. “Fifty dinars, right? How could you wager five coppers?”

  The groom lifts his brows. “Do you see anyone near the track betting window?”

  “But why… why would you…?”

  I don’t mean it as a real question, but he replies, “Mostly because of Ricochet. To annoy my boss. Perihelion’s head trainer, I mean. You were barely on the pay table. A girl. Someone who’d never won a Night Ride. Someone who’d never even ridden, and Ricochet hardly knows the trail.”

  “I made the pay table interesting,” I whisper.

  “You shattered it, is what you did.” The groom grins at me in wonderment. “How did you get him to jump? Outrider horses don’t jump. He’s going to be everyone’s first choice for the Night Ride now.”

  I close my eyes. Lean my cheek against Ricochet’s bristly mane. This horse was my first choice long before today, and not because he can jump.

  “Can’t wait for next week’s Ride!” The groom kisses Ricochet’s nose one last time. “What a pay table that’ll be.”

  My stomach sinks down and down.

  Benno is the line judge. Felix is handling the payouts. If they’re not behind the Night Ride directly, the jockeys must be well paid for the risk they’re taking. Deirdre said she’d handle everything, but Benno and Felix and the others won’t want anyone interfering.

  They’ll find a way to silence her. Maybe for good.

  The outrider stable is lit by a dim glow of moonlight from the stall gates, and whoever got here before me put the safety lamps on their lowest setting. I’m crosstying Ricochet when three horseboys slip along the aisle and into the tack room. When I peek around the door, they’re already hard at work, wiping down bridles and shaking out saddle pads.

  So that’s how everything is clean in the morning.

  Ricochet’s warm breath is damp in my ear, then he’s dragging his tongue down my cheek and I giggle and duck away.

  Then I step back and just look at him. His soft, velvety ears. His huge dark eyes.

  “We won,” I say aloud, to him and the dim, empty aisle. “We won!”

  This must be how Deirdre feels when she flies over the finish line on a horse like Perihelion or Hesperides. What all the jockeys feel.

  What I could feel too if I rode racehorses for the king.

  When I reach across Ricochet’s haunch with a soft bristle brush, my pocket clanks, and out of habit I hold my other hand against it to quiet the coins.

  It’s strange to have a dinar when you’re used to coppers. Dinars are as big as a plum, and the outline of the king in profile is a firm ridge. Coppers are the size of your thumbnail, and the smudgy lines of the castle are rubbed nearly gone by thousands of fingers.

  It’s strange to have a dinar, but almost unthinkable to have five.

  As Ivar comes in with Banner, he pats Ricochet’s haunch and murmurs something that sounds like next time, and my stomach lurches.

  In one week, there’ll be another Ride. It’ll happen with me or without me, and Deirdre can’t help.

  Next time, I’ll turn up at the outrider stable just as it’s getting dark. I won’t give any of them a chance to beat me here and take Ricochet. The only way to keep him safe is to ride him myself.

  Next time, and every time after that, because it won’t do to keep him safe for just a few weeks, or even months. As long as he’s an outrider horse at the racetrack, Ricochet won’t be completely out of danger. That won’t happen until he’s wearing the red bridle that shows he’s mine.

  The only way to get him that red bridle is to do the Night Ride.

  11

  THE NEXT DAY is a race day, and I forget until I turn up at breakfast and there’s no food that needs a plate. Just big buttery slabs of toast and fat sandwiches stuffed with egg and bacon and thick mushrooms the size of your palm that you’re meant to grab and eat on the way to wherever you’re supposed to be.

  At the outrider stable, the stablehands split into pairs and take one horse each from a list hastily chalked on a board near the feed cupboard. Lucan and I are partners, and as we catch and crosstie Hollyhock, I keep waiting for him to mention the Night Ride, but all he does is stuff pastry in his mouth as he works the pump.

  I don’t know how to bring it up, so I just get the horse soap.

  “The most important thing is to not be nervous,” Lucan says as he dumps a bucket of water over Hollyhock’s back. “There’ll be a lot of people there to watch the races and it can feel strange, but just remember they’re not there for you. You’ll be fine if you pay attention to your horse and try not to notice the crowd.”

  I frown at him, bewildered, until I remember that the top six finishers in the Night Ride get to accompany the king’s racehorses on outriders during every race.

  “Once Hollyhock is clean, I can finish the braiding,” Lucan goes on. “You should probably get changed.”

  I look down at myself. He must know that I have nothing decent to change into.

  “They’ll have delivered your gear by now,” he adds. “I know you wish you could ride Ricochet today, but a certain trainer will have kittens if that horse is anywhere near Perihelion.”

  I hesitate, then ask, “Who are they?”

  “I don’t ask questions. Not when all this means my mother will never have to take another hiring fair contract.”

  Lucan uses words like all this to talk about the Night Ride, but the rest of the kids don’t seem to care who overhears. If the pay table relies on penny wagers, it’s probably better if everyone at the track knows, and no one wants to be the one who ruins it for everyone else.

  No one wants to be discovered participating in something that cuts the king out of his twenty shares.

  So I pick up a wooden scraper and run it gently but firmly down Hollyhock’s rump, pressing extra water out of his coat. Lucan does the same on the gelding’s other side, and after a long moment he murmurs, “She worked so hard to raise me by herself. She should get to rest.”

  You won’t be the only one who sends coppers home.

  “Hey, you’re not riding today with the racehorses, right?” I ask. When Lucan flinches, I wish I could have it back so I could say it nicer, but I go on, “Sorry. What I mean is, would you be willing to do me a favor? I want to send my winnings from last night to my family. Would you deliver it? I’ll pay you.”

  “Don’t you want to bring it in person? My mother loves when I can visit for an hour or two.” Lucan must see something in my face because he says, “Or maybe you don’t have that kind of family.”

  “No. I do. I just… don’t think it’s good for me to go home right now.”

  “Even if you bring coppers?”

  I cough a laugh. “Dinars, you mean. All of them. That’s the only thing that might convince my parents to let me stay at the track.”

  Lucan’s eyes get big. “I thought you were saving for your horse.”

  “I’m supposed to send home a hundred and fifty coppers a month. If I send all five dinars, I won’t have to worry about it for…” I squint, trying to figure, then give up. “A while.”

  “Three months,” he replies with a kind smile. “One-fifty, three hundred, four-fifty. With fifty extra coppers left over.”

  He says it so easily, without a hint of meanness or mocking, that I miss Greta down to my toenails. The Greta who shoveled manure with me and helped work out the value of hooves and shins and fetlocks for a horse she had little interest in.

  “My father was pretty mad the last time I was home.” I say it lightly, with a carefree shrug. “It’s going to be better if he has a chance to calm down. If there’s enough money in his pocket, my job will start to make sense to him.”

  Lucan gently rubs a towel down each of Hollyhock’s legs. “I’ll deliver your purse, and don’t worry about paying me. I’m just happy that you changed your mind about riding with us. I try to like everyone, but some of these guys? I wouldn’t want
to share a jockey house with them.”

  I start to remind him about guys, but he laughs and adds, “Astrid’s okay. But she wouldn’t be in the jockey house anyway.”

  “She wouldn’t?”

  “Of course not. She’s a girl. Deirdre’s not allowed anywhere near the jockey house.” Lucan frowns. “Didn’t you know?”

  That little room in the stable that smells like compost. The apple crates and rough-cut window—that’s Deirdre’s bedroom?

  “But Astrid and I live in the bunkhouse,” I say, slow and puzzled.

  “Yeah, well.” Lucan scrubs the back of his neck, not looking at me. “I guess it’s different when you’re older.”

  I wouldn’t mind sleeping in a stable. It would be comforting to drift off every night hearing horses whuffle and whicker and shift in the straw.

  I would mind having to sleep there while boys got curtains and carpets and real beds.

  Once Hollyhock is drying in the sun, I head to the bunkhouse, and sure enough, there’s a new set of riding clothes neatly folded on the end of my bed. The shirt is made of linen so fine it’s like wearing air, and the buttons are jade. I don’t even know what material the breeches are made from. Something soft and stretchy, lined with silk. Something I didn’t know existed, straight from a shop on a toll road.

  At the end of the bed is a pair of new boots. Soft leather, gracefully tooled with a thick swirly pattern that I belatedly realize is a line of teeny galloping horses, each tinier than half a pinky nail. I change into clean stockings before I try them on, and when I do, I find something cold and solid in each toe.

  Toll road tokens. Two rolls of them, wrapped in heavy brown paper.

  The riding clothes fit perfectly. The boots make a satisfying clack on the wooden floor. Nothing itches. Nothing bags where it should lie flat or pinches when I reach or bend.

  I’m halfway to the outrider stable with my winnings before I realize that these things were waiting in my room. Behind my locked door.

  I try not to shiver.

  Hollyhock is clean and beautiful, waiting for me in the horseway already saddled. I thank Lucan again, then remind him where on the common he’ll find Greta and the ponies. I jangle the soap flake bag one last time, wistfully, then hand it over and climb aboard Hollyhock.