The Night Ride

by J. Anderson Coats

  None are gray, and none are geldings. There’s no sign of Hollyhock.

  This doesn’t make sense. If he’s not in his stall in the outrider stable, there’s nowhere else they might have taken him.

  A doctor with a clipboard appears in the aisle. I’ve never seen anyone with cleaner hands or a tidier beard. He peers over a stall door, then his pencil goes flying over a sheet of thick paper. I can’t stop staring. He must have been years at school to write that fast, when it takes me an age to print my name.

  “What are you doing here, kid?”

  All at once he’s next to me, above me, towering like a cranky, twenty-hand stallion with the same angry, flaring nostrils.

  “Sorry. Sir. I just came to see a horse who got hurt.” I curtsy with the ends of my tunic.

  The flaring stops and the doctor’s face relaxes, but he still looks wary. “It’s not about some outrider horse, is it? Honestly, the last kid who was here didn’t seem to understand that this is the royal animal hospital and we treat racehorses here. Racehorses only.”

  “The last kid?” I’m suddenly hopeful. “A boy with brown skin? Blue shirt? Did you see where he went?”

  The doctor coughs a laugh. “Took off from here like he was on fire when he found out that limping gray gelding he was yelling about was long gone to the butchery pens.”

  “Wait.” Something cold is crawling down my spine. “If only racehorses get treatment here, where do outrider horses go when they get hurt?”

  “I just told you.”

  “No,” I whisper, because if Hollyhock could walk away last night, he likely just needs rest and splints and lots of hot bran mash.

  “If you find that kid, tell him to save his breath,” the doctor goes on. “The track stablemaster isn’t going to punish Deirdre for what happened to that outrider horse. Deirdre could be burying bodies in the pasture and the track stablemaster would ask if she needs a better shovel.”

  I stumble out of the hospital. Past racehorses resting comfortably with grain in their feedboxes and smelling of muscle rub.

  Past three open stalls.

  I tell the other stablehands that I have a stomachache. It’s not entirely a lie, and I do go to the bunkhouse, but it’s not to rest. Instead I put on my fancy riding clothes, collect a handful of toll road tokens, and head for the city gates.

  Cobbles disappear beneath my feet. Sheer marble buildings catch the sun and wink. My stomach turns just at the thought of the butchery pens, much less a horse I know and love trapped there, but if I don’t find Paolo, he’s going to say something he shouldn’t to someone he shouldn’t, and all of us are done for.

  Soon I reach the northern gate of the city, and outside, the market spreads in tents and stalls and carts across big fields all the way to the greenwood. The animal pens are at the edge, inside a fence made of ropes strung taut, and I hurry past the sheep and goats and chickens, straight to the horses.

  The draft horses are first, giants with glorious feathery hair over their hooves who pull plows and harrows through fields of wheat or barley. Then saddle horses, proud and lively, and then cart horses packed from shoulder to haunch with muscle. Last are the pony pens, where a very small me chose Buttermilk because I’d never seen any animal the color of a perfect sunrise.

  The butchery pens are tucked away so you have to mean to go there. There’s no shade and only one water trough, and the horses are bony and pitiful. Hollyhock stands near the front, holding his hoof off the ground. His coat is sweaty and filthy from the Ride. I lean over the fence to pet him, and he gives a weary nicker.

  “Two dinars. Firm price.” A dealer oozes over. He’s got a thin greasy moustache and a smile that only a fool would trust.

  I pull my hand away from Hollyhock’s neck, but it’s too late. The dealer knows I’m not here for meat.

  I have money, but not with me. Even if I could get it, there’s nowhere to keep this poor horse if he’s not welcome at the outrider stable.

  “Fifty coppers,” says a voice from behind me. “Both of us know he’s not the first and he won’t be the last.”

  I whirl, and there’s Paolo. He’s wearing a leather tunic like rangers have, or fleet riders, or bandits, and his boots are caked in mud.

  I’m about to say how glad I am to see him, to pour out everything that needs saying, but something in his face warns me away from it.

  The dealer glances between us slow and suspicious. He’s worried he’s being tricked. Paolo and I don’t look related, though, and my friend is acting like I don’t exist.

  Which I belatedly realize is the point.

  At length the dealer says, “One dinar. Both of us know this horse ended up here for a reason.”

  “Done.” Paolo drops a big gold coin into the dealer’s leathery palm, and the old man steps into the pen to fetch Hollyhock.

  He’s not the first. When I started at the outrider stable, there was a little roan mare with a cracked hoof. Jubilee. Lucan said he’d take care of it, and then she was gone, and she surely didn’t go to the animal hospital.

  He won’t be the last. I stare hard at my feet. It could have been Ricochet.

  It could still be Ricochet.

  Paolo takes the lead rope from the dealer and clickclicks to Hollyhock. Together they begin shambling step by limping step toward the exit.

  I trot to catch up. “Where are you taking him?”

  “Somewhere he’ll be safe. Somewhere he’ll recover.”

  “We need to talk. About the Night Ride.” I take a deep breath. “About Deirdre.”

  “It’s not supposed to be this way, you know,” Paolo growls. “When you ride trails at night, you’re supposed to do it as a group. As a cadre. For her to use that word, too!”

  “When you—what? No one should have to do anything like the Night Ride. It’s pure foolishness. Pure greed.”

  “It’s not foolish if you do it safely,” he replies, low and cold, “and there’s no greed without purses or a pay table.”

  He says it so firmly, like it’s something everyone knows, or ought to know. But it’s nothing from the lanes. Nothing from Mael Dunn’s struggling quarters.

  “I—I don’t understand,” I finally say. “Who else but us does the Night Ride?”

  “Riding trails by moonlight is how bandits train,” Paolo says, “but they don’t race and there’s no reward. You start slow, walking, and each night you ride faster. You get to know your horse like a best friend, so you know what they’re going to do before they do it, and vice versa.”

  I trail to a stop. The market carries on around me, past me, animals bleating and people calling and footfalls pattering. There’s only one way for Paolo to know all this, and I go still like a spider under a hovering boot.

  “Now’s the time to yell for a constable if you’re going to,” he mutters. “Everyone knows how terrible bandits are.”

  The word still sends a chill down my back, but this is the boy who let a stranger ride Ricochet with him to the racetrack without a second thought, and stood up for Ricochet when Perihelion’s trainer threatened the butchery pens. The boy who made a place for me at his table when the stablehands turned their backs.

  “Is that where you’re taking Hollyhock?” I whisper. “A bandit camp? And he’ll be safe there? Someone will take care of him till he recovers?”

  Paolo hitches a shoulder and looks away. Just like I might if a constable stopped me and demanded what I knew about my neighbor’s illegal water barrel, or exactly how many children lived in the house down the block.

  So I say, “When you grow up in the lanes of Mael Dunn, you know the surest way to make a bad situation worse is calling the constables.”

  For several moments Hollyhock’s hooves seem very loud on the packed dirt between us.

  Then Paolo meets my eye steady on and half-smiles. “Spoken like a true bandit. Did you know I thought you were one of us? When we met outside the royal stables? But you didn’t motion back.” He makes that gesture of his, brin
ging his hands to his belly button like he’s holding reins.

  So that’s how Paolo knew how to do the Night Ride so well. He’s done something like it before. Many times.

  “I mean, you seemed to know Deirdre,” he adds, “and I thought maybe I wasn’t the only one sent to find her after she disappeared from camp.”

  I can’t help but flinch, being mistaken for a bandit, but I tell him, “There’s no truth to that rumor. There can’t be. Deirdre wasn’t raised by bandits. She grew up two streets over from me.”

  “Depends on what you mean by raised.” Paolo leads Hollyhock around a chuckhole. “Deirdre lived in my family’s camp for three years. My sisters taught her to ride.” He must notice my flapping fish-mouth, because he adds, “Bandit life’s not what people think.”

  “Your sisters?” I echo. “Girls get to be bandits?”

  Paolo grins. “Girls make the best bandits. I’d rather ride with girls than boys any day.”

  I still don’t want to be a bandit, but I can see how a girl from the lanes might. I can see how Deirdre would.

  “Honestly?” He squints. “I should have suspected the moment I met Astrid. There’s no way the track stablemaster would allow a girl to be a stablehand. But if she also made a pay table interesting? Deirdre would have had no trouble getting Astrid into the junior racing cadre.”

  “Kids don’t just get to be in the cadre,” I tell him. “When I was brought in, I had to pass a test. Deirdre had nothing to do with it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  If you do take this job, you can’t make me look bad.

  We stood in the dusty stable, me clinging at a wispy chance to work with horses, to be near Ricochet. Surely she’d meant the stablehand job.

  “Wait.” I cut a glance at Paolo. “You can’t be saying that Deirdre’s a part of the Night Ride. Can you?”

  “No,” he replies. “I’m saying she’s running it.”

  “But that—that’s not right. The track stablemaster is behind the Night Ride.” I say it firmly, but there’s a rasp in my voice.

  Paolo gives me the same patient look that Greta does when she’s long since figured something out and she’s waiting for me to catch up.

  “You get a wage to work at the track, right?” he asks. “Ever wonder why it doesn’t come from the paymaster?”

  Deirdre used to make us pancakes in the shape of animals. She painted our toenails with homemade dye that stained her fingertips bright red for a solid week.

  “Ever wonder why no one in the junior racing cadre comes from a riding family, or even a caretaker family? Kids who are supposedly learning to ride racehorses for the king? Ever wonder why every last one comes from the hungriest, darkest corners of the lanes?”

  Astrid knew I was saving for Ricochet before I told anyone here. The track stablemaster listens to Deirdre, and they have a common interest in dinars. When Deirdre found out I didn’t want her help with the Night Ride, she asked what I planned to do. Somehow my wages after room and board are not enough to let me simply be a stablehand. The only proper jockey training any kid in the cadre will get comes from the Night Ride.

  Lane kids have to go where the wind blows.

  Paolo and I have reached the place where the tidy road that leads to the market fades into the rough dirt trail that disappears into the greenwood. He turns to me and makes a show of bowing. “I guess this is farewell.”

  “You’re not coming back to the racetrack, are you?” I whisper.

  “My parents sent me to find Deirdre, and I did.” Paolo studies his feet. “They’ll be glad to know she’s alive and well, but now that I know what she’s doing, I can’t stay.”

  “But you could stop her,” I protest. “We could stop her. We could save all the outrider horses!”

  Paolo smiles. He clickclicks to Hollyhock, and together they start down the sun-dappled path. Over his shoulder he says, “I can save this horse.”

  14

  WHEN I GET back to the racetrack, it’s late afternoon and the day is fading. The stablehands will be on their trail ride, which is just as well. I don’t think I can face any of them. I need to see Ricochet.

  But he’s not in the outrider pasture. Not among the herd. Not in the shelter.

  I tear into the stable, knocking over a pitchfork and jostling the rack of currycombs, scattering straw, down the aisle and out the back door—

  Ricochet is crosstied under the overhang close behind the stable. Deirdre is running a soft bristle brush over his rump.

  I skid to a stop. My heart pounding in big, heavy thumps.

  “So.” Deirdre doesn’t turn. “An eventful Ride last night, wouldn’t you say?”

  She’s not pretending she doesn’t know. She’s telling me she knows I know.

  “It was awful,” I whisper, but then I realize she can’t hear me, and I risk another few steps closer. “You said you’d take care of everything. You promised.”

  “Taking care of everything is all I’ve ever done my whole life. At least now I get something out of it.”

  Deirdre still hasn’t turned, so I move to Ricochet’s other side so she has to look at me. She shuffs the brush over his flank like she’s seasoning a roast. There’s no love in the action. Just efficiency.

  I wait, my arms folded tight across my belly, because I want her to deny it. I want her to drop the comb and rush over to hug me like she did when I was small and I would pretend she was our biggest sister who was also a princess and could invite us to have tea with the king.

  “You know how much your mother used to pay me to mind you and your brother and sister?” Deirdre meets my eyes over Ricochet’s back. “Ten coppers a week. To watch three kids under seven every bleeding day from before dawn till after sundown. Make food. Change diapers. Keep you all busy. Clean up your messes. The bandit camp had a lot of ridiculous rules, but it was a million times better than that crappy job.”

  That crappy job.

  Teaching us how to draw a hopscotch grid in the packed dirt near the rain barrel. Holding Greta up so she could pick an apple off a tree just like the big kids.

  “But I took care of that, too,” Deirdre growls. “My stablehands make twice that for way less work. They get food and shelter, better and more reliable than the lanes can offer. They get a little time every day to do whatever they want. They get dinars, too, if they can win them.”

  My stablehands. Deirdre with the cash box on her knees at payday. The same box on the Night Ride’s pay table.

  “How…?” I choke. Paolo was right. The Night Ride is Deirdre’s work. But not the Deirdre I remember.

  She shrugs. “More easily than you might think. I told you that the track stablemaster and I share a common interest. Turns out the other jockeys do as well. Everyone likes feeling coins in their pockets.”

  “No.” My voice sharpens. “I meant how could you do this to us? You know how it feels to be where I am. How can you take advantage instead of helping?”

  “I have nothing that I didn’t suffer to gain,” Deirdre snaps.

  “Then shouldn’t that make you want to help more? Because you know how bad it feels to suffer?”

  Deirdre cackles. “You’re free to leave any time you want. By all means, go back to the lanes and suffer away. Take hiring fair contracts till you crumble over dead. Grow old there with nothing to show for it.”

  “But what about the horses?” I protest. “Hollyhock got hurt pretty bad. Next time it could be worse!”

  “What happened with Hollyhock was ugly, and I’m sorry for it.” Deirdre picks a puff of chestnut hair out of the brush bristles. “But things like that only happen when people choose to behave recklessly.”

  I’m stuck on too much at once. People means more riders than just Julian, things means horses being hurt, and like that means horses are injured so often that they simply become things.

  “You promised to do what you were told and not ask questions,” she goes on. “Clearly that didn’t happen. So now the question is,
what about this boy here?”

  Deirdre pats Ricochet on the haunch in what would be a loving gesture if her smile wasn’t so cold.

  “You almost have enough to buy him, right?”

  I nod. “Two more wins.”

  “What a day that’ll be, yes? You’ll want to keep him here, I’m sure. You’ll want to ride him and be with him. And that can happen. It absolutely can.” Deirdre pauses the brush and leans both forearms against Ricochet’s back. “Here’s the thing, though. The Night Ride is how a lane kid makes that happen. If the Ride goes away, those kinds of things will too. Those will be the first things to go away.”

  I go still. The track stablemaster listens to Deirdre, and no one would miss one outrider horse that somehow disappeared from the pasture.

  No one who mattered, anyway.

  I shuffle and whisper, “I understand.”

  “Good.” Deirdre tosses me the brush and smiles, and it’s her real smile, the one I remember so well. “I’m going to tell you something I probably shouldn’t. You’re a natural at the Night Ride. Easily the best in the cadre. You make split-second decisions amazingly well and you don’t panic when things go wrong. Not only have you not made me look bad, you’ve earned me a lot of credit.”

  Two days ago, I would have drunk that up like honey water. Now I just nod and step to Ricochet’s side and start brushing his other flank. I put my whole attention into it until Deirdre’s hollow bootsteps fade into the horseway.

  Then I put my arms around his neck and breathe out long and shuddery.

  “We’re stuck,” I whisper into his mane. “You’ll have your red bridle, but you won’t be safe. Not unless I keep doing the Night Ride.”

  Ricochet is a good listener, but his best advice is a mouthful of hay from the hanging net.

  I step back so I can see all of him, from his unlucky white forehead to his unlucky white feet. His big brown eyes.