Toby Bishop - Horse Mistress 03

by Airs of Night

  Slater’s small eyes darted up to Nick Hamley’s face as if to judge his will, then slid away to Amelia, who stood trembling above Jinson’s body.

  Nick said, “Now, sir!” and lifted the sword till the tip was at Slater’s throat, dimpling the skin with its point. Slater, with another curse, dropped the pistol onto the gravel. Still Nick Hamley didn’t withdraw the blade. “And the box,” he said. “I’ll turn them over to your master.”

  At that, Slater gave his phlegmy laugh. “My master!” he said. “My master has other things on his mind.”

  Nick Hamley answered by letting the tip of his sword press harder on Slater’s neck. A drop of blood welled around the point, not dark like the blood that stained the gravel beneath Jinson’s limp body, but scarlet and glistening. Slater sucked in a breath, and his eyes flickered from side to side.

  Amelia watched in shivering revulsion as he tossed the tin box to the ground. Nick lifted the sword from his throat but kept it poised and ready in his fist. “And now, sir,” he said, “as an official member of Oc’s militia, it will be my privilege to escort you to the prison in Osham. ’Twill be someone there who knows what to do with you.”

  “I ain’t going anywhere,” Slater said sullenly, his bravado fading. He wiped at his throat, and his fingers came away wet. Blood still seeped from the cut in irregular droplets.

  Nick brandished the smallsword. Its tip was dark with blood. “Take a blink at this,” he said. “Shall I redden it more than it already is?”

  Amelia drew a deep breath to drive away her nausea. She still trembled, but she spoke with a semblance of control. “You can lock him in the stable,” she said to Nick. “In the tack room. And then go up to Fleckham House for help.”

  “Aye,” Nick said. He flashed his white teeth at Slater. “Smart lass, this.”

  “The Duke will have your head, you fool,” Slater hissed.

  Amelia said, “You said the Duke has other matters on his mind, didn’t you, Master Slater? I hardly think the imprisonment of a murderer is going to call him away.”

  Slater glared at them both for a moment. “You’ll find you’re wrong about that,” he snapped. He turned, the heavy layers of his coat flaring around his stooped figure, and stalked into the tack room. Nick pulled the door to and set the bolt.

  Amelia stood looking down at Jinson’s still form. Tears burned in her throat, and she didn’t dare speak for fear of releasing them. Bramble, her tail between her legs, pressed against the back of Amelia’s knees. Mahogany whickered anxiously from the dry paddock.

  “I’ll bring someone to fetch this poor fellow,” Nick said.

  “Thank you, Master Hamley,” Amelia choked. “I’ll stay with him until you return.”

  “Aye,” Nick said. “You look a little unsteady on your pins, Miss. I’ll bring you that mounting block, right? Do you sit a bit until you feel stronger. Nasty business.”

  After Nick rolled the mounting block across the gravel, she sat down on it, and folded her hands in her lap. She heard Nick’s boots scrambling up the slope toward Fleckham House, but she kept her eyes on Jinson’s still face. The scene of his killing ran over and over in her mind. She wanted to stop it, but those awful moments kept flashing before her, Jinson’s eyes widening, the sickening sound of the cock, the hiss of the ball leaving the barrel of the pistol. And then, with such shocking finality, poor Jinson going down.

  He had tried to protect her. He had stepped in front of her, dared the pistol, for her sake.

  Amelia knew that Jinson was not well liked, that everyone considered him unsuited for the job of Master Breeder—and he was. But he had cared for the winged horses, and he had cared about her, unjustly imprisoned and misused by his master. She whispered tearfully, “I am so sorry, Master Jinson. I don’t know if you have anyone to mourn you, but I will do it. I promise.”

  She got up from the mounting block to pick up the pistol and the little tin of ammunition from where they had dropped onto the gravel, then she sat down again. For long moments she was nearly as still as Jinson. From the dry paddock Mahogany whickered questioningly every few minutes, but still Amelia stayed where she was. She didn’t rise until Nick rumbled down the lane in the Fleckham House oxcart.

  The ox, used to transporting all sorts of dead things, stood stolidly as Nick and one of the other militiamen lifted Jinson into the back of the cart. There was a big sheet of rolled canvas in one side of the cart bed, and they unrolled it and stretched it over his body.

  Nick went to the tack room and tried the bolt to be certain it would hold. His fellow guardsman took up a post beside the door while Nick climbed onto the bench seat of the cart and whipped up the ox.

  Amelia stood uncertainly, watching the cart roll away. She had dropped the heavy pistol and the tin of bullets into her pocket, and they dragged at her, heavy as death. The militiaman left behind had apparently forgotten all about them. To his credit, she thought, he was more concerned with Slater, the

  murderer, than he was with her.

  In the distance, with a sound like a roll of thunder, the guns began again in the harbor, a boom and an answering shot, then a silence while the guns were reloaded, and then more dull booms, diminished to mere thuds by the distance. Smashers, they called the balls fired from carronades, because they smashed wood into deadly splinters. Amelia stared in the direction of the bay, thinking of other men, innocent soldiers like Nick Hamley, lying in pools of blood like the one drying now beneath her boots.

  There must be something she could do, something to stop all this madness. If she was the cause, or even the excuse, for this war, she must stop it.

  She took a trembling step toward the side of the stable. The guard said nothing. His eyes were following Nick and the oxcart as they rumbled up the lane. Amelia took another step.

  She glanced back at the soldier, but he seemed not to realize she could simply walk away. He, too, was listening to the sound of the guns from the sea. “They’re shooting again,” he said.

  “I hear it,” she said. She put a hand to her throat. “What do you think it means?”

  “It’s war, Miss. Those damned Klee—” He stopped, looking at her, as if he had suddenly realized who she was. He opened his mouth, then closed it, fishlike, confused and uncertain.

  “I’m just going to fetch some water for my colt, and get away from—” She glanced pointedly at the bloodstained gravel, and gave a deliberate shudder before she turned away.

  The guard stared after her, frowning. He lifted his smallsword as if to give her some order, but then lowered it, looking in confusion at the locked tack room. He looked torn between his duty to restrain a murderer and his orders from the Duke to guard the royal hostage.

  Slater shouted something from the tack room, but she couldn’t hear what it was. She went on around the side of the stable. When she was out of sight of the guard, she picked up her too-long skirts and ran to the dry paddock. Bramble, with one yip, followed.

  Mahogany met her at the gate, whickering in relief, butting at her chest with his nose as if to reprimand her for her absence.

  Amelia threw her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek against his mane for a brief moment, then pulled back. “Mahogany,” she said softly. “We’ve never done this before, and now we have no saddle and no bridle. But you and I have no time for niceties. I’m going to ride, all right? Bareback. Lark says it’s the perfect way. And you must pay close attention to me, though I have only your halter and lead.

  You have to know where we need to go. You have to hurry, but not be careless.”

  Mahogany blew through his nostrils, and stood very still as she arranged his wings and made sure the wingclips were secure. When she leaped upon his back, he turned his head and sniffed at her knee.

  “Good, Mahogany, very good,” Amelia said.

  He turned his head forward again and seemed to gather himself, to prepare for whatever was asked of him. It was true, she thought, what Lark and Hester had said. Kalla had bonded her to
a winged horse who reflected her own personality, almost as if Mahogany had been at her side as she learned diplomacy and leadership and the responsibilities that came with her birth. She touched his shoulder, and said again,

  “Good.” There was no need to be fulsome in her praise. He sensed, she could tell, the urgency of their plight, the weight of their duty.

  Amelia prayed this would not stress his tender bones nor harm the tendons of his pasterns. He had been training with the saddle and sand weights, and they would have begun riding in the paddocks before the Erdlin festival, which was only weeks away. Surely, she thought, her slight weight could hardly hurt him.

  She had left the gate open, and she urged him through it with pressure from her calves and murmured commands. He started to turn toward the lane, but she pulled on the halter lead to stop him. “Not that way, my love,” she whispered. “They’ll see us.”

  His feet shifted uncertainly. She laid the lead against the left side of his neck, and said, softly so the militiaman would not hear her, “This way, Mahogany. First we’ll get into the woods, then we’ll find our direction. Go now, my lad. Go!”

  And Mahogany, catching her determination and the need for silence and hurry, set out at a smooth running walk down the slope of the little vale, then up toward the woods through which they had come three days before. Bramble trotted beside the colt, her ears and tail high.

  Amelia’s body tightened as they moved out into the open, but she forced herself to relax. Any tension she felt would translate through her hands, frighten Mahogany. At every moment she expected a shout of discovery behind her. Mahogany scrambled up the far slope, far faster than she could have done on foot.

  When they reached the cover of the woods, Amelia slipped down, feeling weak with relief. She hugged Mahogany’s neck and praised him, then led him off through the trees.

  They had to crowd their way through the dry hawthorn bushes. Bramble scrambled beneath branches and over roots, while Amelia struggled to find the clearest path so Mahogany’s delicate wings would not be scratched or torn. “We’ll soon be out of this,” she told him, hoping it was true. “And I’ll ride again.

  We did well, Mahogany, my love. We did well.”

  She wished she dared turn for the Academy. She longed for the safety of the Dormitory and the stables there. At the very least, she could send Bramble home.

  When they reached a little clearing, where they could rest for a moment, she knelt beside the dog and took her long-nosed face between her hands. “Bramble,” she said. “Listen to me.”

  The oc-hound’s ears came up, and her eyes fixed on Amelia’s.

  “Bramble. Go home. Go to the Academy.”

  The dog waved her tail, and whined.

  “Home, Bramble!” Amelia stood, and pointed in what she thought was the right direction. “Go home!”

  The oc-hound hesitated only a moment, then gave a short, sharp bark. She whirled, and sprang off into the darkness.

  Amelia watched until she disappeared, wishing with all her heart she could go with her.

  But her duty called her in another direction. Surely, she thought, it was what her father would want her to do.

  TWENTY

  WILLIAMforbade anyone, and especially Felicity Baron, to follow him to the stables of the Ducal Palace. When the guns started up in the harbor, his secretaries, Harold and Clarence, frowned like cranky old women, and sputtered things about the demands of the Council, about mustering the militia to the docks, about needing William’s presence in this time of crisis. He waved them away. Horsemistress Baron followed him across the courtyard, tagging after him like a hound bitch, until he ordered her away, too. Even Constance giggled something about coming to watch, and he barely restrained himself from striking her with his quirt.

  This was his day. The sun shone with cold brilliance on the red and gold shrubberies in the park. Snow crowned the mountain peaks, and the wind that blew from their slopes chilled his hot cheeks. In some strange way, the sounds of battle from beyond the spires of Osham were part of the experience, the feeling of risking everything, of putting every resource on the line for his dream. He could think of little but Diamond, and what it would feel like to ride her, and of how people would look at him when he flew at last. They would bow down to his leadership and his vision! There would be no more of this constant questioning and criticism.

  It was his destiny to change the course of history.

  With that in mind, he had doubled, then tripled the dose of his potion last night. It made him feel odd. He slept poorly, tossing in his bed, wakened frequently by bouts of feverish sweating. His chest ached and was more swollen than ever. He tried to ignore that and dressed without looking in a mirror. Constance, at the breakfast table, eyed him strangely, a hand held before her lips as if to stop herself from some comment.

  It didn’t matter. It would be worth it if Diamond would let him approach without that nervous stamping, that shying away.

  He strode across the courtyard and into the stables. When his stable-man approached, he shook his head, refusing help. He took the flying saddle from its post in the tack room, and the softest saddle

  blanket he could find, and carried them down the aisle to Diamond’s stall.

  He settled the saddle over the half-gate. The filly flicked her ears toward him and trotted willingly enough to the gate to nose his palm, to nibble the bit of barley he had brought for her. The morning sun poured through the high windows of the stables, casting shadows here and there where oat bins and water buckets interrupted it. In the dappled light, Diamond glowed like her namesake stone, and her delicate silver wings flexed beneath their wingclips.

  “No, darling, not today,” William murmured. “Today we ride.”

  At the thought, his heart beat in his throat as if he were a girl in love. The thought crooked his lips in a smile. That didn’t matter, either. He was the first, a pioneer. If this was what it felt like, so be it. Once he knew all of these things, he could instruct the young men who would come after him.

  He supposed the horsemistresses told the girls before they were bonded what it would be like. But they could never feel exactly as he did because they didn’t have his beautiful Diamond, his perfect filly. He opened the gate and slipped into the stall, his calfskin boots nearly silent in the straw.

  Diamond took a step back and lifted her head high on her arching neck. Her eyes were wide, liquid black, the lashes long and dark against the silver-gray of her face. Her white mane fell over her withers in long strands of silk, like a maiden’s long hair spilling over her shoulders. William stood very still, willing her to come to him. He wanted her to make the first step, today of all days.

  A long moment passed. In the park, the yellowhammers called from the hedgerows. One of the wingless horses whinnied from the pasture, and Diamond turned her head briefly toward the sound.

  William hardly breathed. Diamond brought her delicate muzzle back toward him. She sniffed, then, one small shining hoof at a time, she walked to him.

  William stroked her forehead, and tangled his fingers in her mane. He sniffed, too, treasuring the clean, oaty smell of her, the tang of horseflesh that had never meant anything to him until he was bonded. “My perfect Diamond,” he said softly. “This is a great day.”

  She stood very still as he draped the saddle blanket over her back and lifted the flying saddle into place.

  He buckled the cinches carefully beneath her wings. He slipped the breast strap around her chest and fastened it. He’d been watching Felicity Baron and her gelding, and he knew how to fit the stirrups under her wings. She accepted the bridle without demur.

  When all was in order, he stood back and surveyed her. She switched her tail and blew through her nostrils, making them flare pink.

  He laughed. “Impatient, are you, my little darling?” He looped her reins over his arm and opened the stall gate. “Come, then. Let’s see how we do.”

  William was accustomed to leaping into the saddle with
out thought for the horse’s back, and they often grunted at the sudden weight, the roughness of his mount. But with Diamond, William meant to be as gentle and steady as he could. Despite his dismissal of Felicity Baron’s recommendations, and though he would never admit that she had been right about his heavy hands, he had taken her warning to heart. He led Diamond to a mounting block and stepped up on it before lowering himself carefully into the saddle.

  He found the stirrups with his boots and settled against the cantle of the saddle.

  She threw up her head, and that shiver that so distressed him ran through her body from head to tail.

  William sat still, giving no direction, letting the reins swing loose below her chin.

  She breathed deeply, and he felt the expansion and contraction of her ribs beneath his calves. Her folded wings trembled over his ankles. He felt a shiver of his own, one of pure delight, and of the exquisite joy of possession. She was his. No one else could touch her. No one else would ever sit in this saddle.

  He reached down and stroked the point of her right wing with his palm.

  Then he lifted the reins cautiously and tightened his calves around her barrel. She shivered again, but she began to walk.

  William disdained the dry paddock, though that, too, had been one of Mistress Baron’s suggestions. He tugged the right rein, ever so carefully, and laid the left against Diamond’s neck. When she turned to the right, toward the park, he immediately loosened the rein, letting her choose her path. Her gait was smooth and steady as she headed down the grassy slope toward the orchard. Relief and elation made William giddy.

  Diamond’s ears flicked forward, and back, and she broke into a trot.

  William let her go, posting easily in the stirrups, and together they rode toward the far end of the park. As they passed beyond the hedgerow, Diamond broke into a fluid, rocking canter, a smoother, lighter gait than William had ever experienced. He thought his heart might burst from the sheer joy of the moment.

  When womanish tears stung his eyes, he reined her in. It would never do, after all, to lose sight of who and what he was.