The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [122]
I strike the lights on as I round the corner by the door. If he knows I am here, surely he will abandon this.
“Mutt!” I shout. Now, under the light, I see blood on the floor, the edge of a shoe printing scarlet every step. I jog along, following, watchful. “You’ve gone too far! Mutt!”
My voice echoes in the high arches of the stable; there’s no reply. Perhaps he’s left.
Corr screams.
Now I run like I’ve never run. I can see Edana in my mind, her head stretched unnaturally toward the ceiling as she lies against the wall, ruined in her own skin and not yet knowing it.
If he has touched Corr, I will kill him.
I burst around the corner. The door to Corr’s stall is open. Mutt Malvern stands with a wicked blade in one hand and, in the other, a three-pronged leister spear of the sort used to poach fish or birds. The iron heads of the spear press into Corr’s shoulder, forcing him back against the wall. His skin shivers and ripples under the metal. Mutt Malvern has given some thought to this plan of his.
“Get away from him,” I say. “Every drop of his blood will be ten of yours.”
“Sean Kendrick,” Mutt replies. “Pretty foul of you to swap stalls like that.”
Corr makes a low roar in his throat, a sound that we feel in our feet instead of hear. But he’s pinned by the leister spear, not only points of iron but three of them as well.
“If you knew a thing about the horses under this roof, you would’ve known the difference between them, even in the dark.”
Mutt glances at me long enough to see that I’ve closed the distance between us. He jerks his chin toward the spear. “Stay out of this stall, knacker.”
I slowly wipe my bloody hand across my jacket and draw my switchblade from my pocket. I show it to him.
Mutt regards it with contempt. “How is it you’re thinking you’ll stop me with that wee thing?”
The blade snaps out audibly. Mutt would not be the largest thing to die on the slender point of it.
“I don’t think I’ll stop you,” I say. “I think that you will cut my horse and then when you come out of that stall, I will use this to cut your heart out and hand it to you.”
I am sick to the ends of my fingers. I cannot look at Corr’s eye or I won’t be steady.
Mutt says, “Do you really think I believe that you can do anything to me while I have these in my hands?” But he does believe. I can see it in his eyes.
I say, “What’s it you hope to prove in there? That you are the better horseman? That the horses love you better? Do you mean to carve your father’s approval in the side of every capall uisce on this island?”
“No,” says Mutt. “Just this one.”
“Will that be enough?” I ask. “What will be next?”
“There is no next,” Mutt says. “This beast’s the only thing you care about.”
He looks at my face, though, and he’s not quite sure. Maybe because it wasn’t meant to happen with me watching. I was meant to come down in the morning and find Corr as I just found Edana. Maybe because he is looking at me and dreaming of a better way to hurt me.
Surely I must know something that would satisfy Mutt more than crippling Corr. There must be something. I think of his contorted face at the auction and I say, “You really want to prove something to your father, you’ve got to win against us. Beat us on the sand.”
His face shifts. That fiendish piebald has him well fascinated. Mutt glances at me again, then back at the points of the spear on Corr’s shoulder.
I know what is going through his head, because it’s going through mine as well. Benjamin Malvern telling George Holly that I am the rightful heir to the yard. The name Skata printed on the board at the butcher’s. The breathless speed of the piebald.
It’s a siren song, and it wins him over.
Mutt backs out of the stall. Corr charges up toward the space he leaves behind. His eyes are wild. I see the pricks of blood the spear has left in his shoulder, and when Mutt slides the door shut, I spring onto Mutt and press my little switchblade to his great bulging neck. I can see his skin sucking in with his pulse. My knife lies right next to it.
“I thought you said to beat you on the sand,