The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [17]
Fifths is another thing I learned about from the daydreaming boys. It’s gambling, more or less. Sometimes a monger will let you have a horse for nothing on the condition that whatever you win in the race, they get four-fifths of it. That’s not really anything, unless you come in first. Then you could buy the whole island, if you wanted. Well, at least most of Skarmouth, except for what Benjamin Malvern owns.
The gnome looks at me.
“No,” he says. But I can tell what he really means is Not for you.
I feel a little shaky inside, because it hadn’t occurred to me that they would say no — were there that many people who would ride capaill uisce that the mongers could be choosy? I hear myself say, “Okay. Could you point me toward someone else who might?” I add, hurriedly, “Sir,” because Dad once said that saying “sir” makes gentlemen out of ruffians.
The gnome says, “Bowler hats. Ask ’em.”
Some ruffians stay ruffians. When I was younger, I would have spit on his shoes, but Mum had broken me of the habit with the help of a small blue stool and a lot of soap.
So I just leave without saying thanks — he was even less help than pretty Tommy Falk — and I wind my way through the crowd looking for the next bowler hat, only to get the same results. All of them say no to the ginger-haired girl. They don’t even consider it. One frowns and one laughs and one doesn’t even let me finish my sentence.
By now it’s lunchtime and my stomach is snarling at me. There are people hawking food to the riders, but it’s expensive and everything smells like blood and bad fish. There’s no sign of Finn. The tide is starting to creep in and some of the less brave souls have already left the beach. I retreat a bit and press my back against the chalk cliff, my hands spread out on the cold surface. Several feet above my head, the chalk is lighter, marking where the water will rise in a few hours. I imagine standing here until it does, salt water slowly swallowing me.
Tears of frustration burn behind my eyes. The worst of it is that I’m sort of glad they all said no. These terrifying monsters are not at all like Dove, and I can’t even start to imagine myself trying one out, much less taking it home and training it to eat expensive, bloody meat instead of me. In the summer, children sometimes catch dragonflies and tie strings round them, just behind their eyes, and lead them like they are pets. Those dragonflies are what these grown men look like with the capaill uisce. The horses drag them around like they have no weight whatsoever. What would they do to me?
I look out across the sea. Close to the shore, the water is turquoise in places where white rocks have fallen from the cliffs into the water, and black where dark brown kelp covers the boulders. Somewhere across all these buckets of water are the cities we’ll lose Gabe to. I know we’ll never see him again. It won’t matter that he’s still alive somewhere; it will be just as bad as Mum and Dad.
Mum liked to say that some things happen for a reason, that sometimes obstacles were there to stop you from doing something stupid. She said this to me a lot. But when she said it to Gabe, Dad told him that sometimes it just means you need to try harder.
I take a deep breath and head back toward the only bowler hat who doesn’t avoid my eye. The gnome. He has only one horse in his hands now: the piebald mare that screamed earlier.
“Heh, you!” He says this as if I’m about to pass him by.
“I think we need to talk,” I tell him. I feel unfriendly and messy. Any charm I had when I started this is back at home with the makings of a sandwich.
“I was thinkin’ the same thing. I’m about to be off. I’d rather not be back tomorrow and you’d rather have a capall. What will you give me for her?”
My first reaction is to think, Well, how much do I have? and then I come to my senses and remember his unhelpfulness from earlier. “Nothing up front,” I say. I have to be firm on this. If Gabe really does leave us to fend for ourselves, we’ll have nothing at the end, either. “I’m just looking for a fifth.”
“This mare is amazing,