The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [99]
“Did you ever wonder …” Holly says, after a pause. “No, perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you know. If anyone knows, you do. I’ve been wondering as I’ve been here, why it is that Thisby has the capaill uisce and no one else does?”
“Because we love them.”
“Sean Kendrick, you’re an old man. Do you smoke? Me neither. We might as well with the air in here. Have you ever seen so many men doing nothing so busily? Is that your final answer, by the way?”
I shrug and reply, “This island’s had horses for as long as it’s had men on it. On the other side of Thisby, there’s a cliff cave with a red stallion drawn on the wall. Ancient. How long do you have to be in a place before it’s your home? This is their home on land.”
I’d found the drawing once while looking to catch a capall. At low tide, the cave led so far into the island that it felt I’d come out the other side if I pressed much farther. Then, all at once, the tide had roared in so fast and sudden that I’d been trapped. I’d spent hours braced on a tiny, dark ledge, each push of the surf soaking me again. Below me, I’d heard the low shrills and clucks of a water horse somewhere in the cave. To keep myself from falling, I’d eventually rolled onto my back on the ledge, and there, high above me where the water couldn’t reach: the drawing. A stallion brighter than Corr, painted in a red that had only faded a little, the pigment out of the reach of the sun. There was a dead man at his feet, too, in the drawing, a dash of black for his hair, a line of red for his chest.
The Scorpio sea has thrown capaill uisce onto our shore since long before my father or my father’s father was born.
“Were they always revered? Never eaten?”
My expression is withering. “Would you eat a shark?”
“In California we do.”
“Well, that’s why California doesn’t have capaill uisce” I pause for him to finish laughing and add, “You have lipstick on your collar.”
“It’s from the horses,” Holly says, but he tries to catch a glimpse. He finds the edge of it and rubs his fingers over the mark. “She’s blind. She was aiming for my ear.”
It explains his rumpled look, in any case. I lean again to look into the lobby. There are more men than before, piling in as the afternoon gets elderly and the shadows get cold outside. Benjamin Malvern isn’t yet among them.
Holly asks, “Do you know what he’ll say? You’re so calm.”
I say, “I’m sick over it.”
“You don’t look it.”
Corr can hold a thousand things in his heart and reveal only one of them on his face, like he did earlier today. He is so very like me.
I let myself, for one brief moment, consider what Malvern may want to meet about. The thought stings inside me, a cold needle.
“Now you do,” says Holly.
Frowning, I look again, and this time I see Benjamin Malvern stepping into the lobby, closing the door behind him. He has his hands in the pockets of his greatcoat, and he strides into the lobby as if he owns it. Perhaps he does. He looks like a prizefighter, the slope of his shoulders in the coat, the forward jut of his neck. I hadn’t seen any of Benjamin Malvern in Mutt before, but I finally see the resemblance.
Holly follows my gaze. “I’d better go. He won’t be happy to see me.”
I can’t imagine Benjamin Malvern being displeased to see one of his buyers. Or at least, I cannot imagine him revealing that he was displeased to see one of them.
“We quarreled,” Holly says. “It’s a smaller island than I imagined. But don’t worry, my dollar bills mean that our friendship will endure.”
We part ways, Holly creeping toward the sound of the piano and me stepping into the lobby. I know the exact moment I am recognized, as everyone looks away so discreetly that it’s obvious they were just looking the second before.
It takes me a moment to spot Malvern in the crowd, but then I see him speaking to Colin Calvert, one of the race officials. Calvert’s kinder than Eaton, the anachronistic bully who Puck had to knock heads with, but he wouldn’t have been at the festival. His wife’s the brand of Christian that forbids a gathering that involves young