Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (28 page)

Malora can’t say how she accomplishes this, any more than she can say how she kills squirrels without guilt or remorse.

Zephele lapses into a rare silence as they make their way down the steep roads feeding into the market square. The centaurs they pass, scent cloths pressed to their noses, flick their eyes toward Malora and then flick them away coldly. After a while, the smile on Malora’s face freezes, then fades. What is the use, she thinks, of trying to make friends with centaurs who go out of their way to avoid her?

Zephele leads Malora past an alley so narrow, no centaur could possibly navigate it. Pausing to peer in, Malora sees small Twani vaulting over each other and wrestling in a furry
heap while a mature female Twan, her tail switching placidly, looks on.

“A Twanian nursery,” Zephele explains briefly. “Aren’t the little kits dear?”

They arrive in the market square to find it thronged with Twani purchasing supplies for their households. Malora and Zephele stand out above the field of milling, frizzled heads. Zephele tells Malora to keep an eye out for Ash. “We must think of a falsehood to feed him if he sees us,” she says, her pretty features marred by anxiety, “for he reports everything back to Herself.”

“We will say that I asked for a tour of the marketplace,” Malora says, “because it was built by the People, and anything that is built by the People is fascinating to me.”

Zephele says, “Malora Ironbound, you are
uncannily
gifted at this!”

They are standing before the cheese-maker’s wagon, nibbling on small, delicious wedges of goat cheese topped with pieces of dried apricot, when Neal sidles up. Zephele, taken by surprise, nearly spits out her mouthful of food, then quickly composes herself, leveling a steely look at him.

“You seem very pleased with yourself today, Flatlander,” she says crisply.

“No more than I usually am, Mistress Highlander,” Neal answers, leaning lazily against the wagon.

“Which is far, far too pleased, if you ask me … which I doubt you will,” Zephele says.

“The Apex’s daughter is more than entitled to her opinion,” he says. “But how would he feel about her aiding and abetting an Otherian in the violation of at least three Edicts?”

Zephele blushes. “Malora has asked for my assistance, and I am helpless to deny her anything,” she says. “If innocent animals of the bush suffer because of my actions, then it is on my conscience, because it obviously isn’t going to be on yours. Oh! That’s right. I forgot. You have no conscience.”

Featherhoof greets this with a chuckle.

Malora observes this exchange with a growing sense of wonder. It is not so different from the way she and Neal spoke yesterday, but Neal was a stranger of whom she was wary. Not only is Neal not a stranger to Zephele, but she has said that she likes him. Is this the way Zephele enjoys her time with the Flatlander? Malora sees that Neal shows neither surprise nor displeasure at the reception he receives from Zephele. In fact, he beams at her. “And how are you today, Mistress Zephele? You are looking unusually well. A becoming cap you’re sporting.”

Zephele’s already-high color deepens as her eyes narrow and her hand goes to her hip. “Don’t pretend to appreciate Highlander fashion, Featherhoof,” she says tartly. “I know you scorn our prudish ways. Now see here—and I assure you I am not being even remotely frivolous when I say this—you must return Malora to this exact spot no later than market closing time. Honus sets down the evening meal at sunset, and if Malora fails to appear, I assure you Honus will be most upset. If Orion finds out, he will be Beyond Cross.
And
if misfortune should chance to befall her …”

Neal laughs. “Enough, Zephie! Nothing’s going to happen to her. She’s more at home in the bush than I am.”

“I know,” Zephele says on a note of sudden sorrow.
“Apparently, the pleasures of Highland life have not been quite sufficient to sustain her.”

Malora is surprised to see that Zephele is near tears. Malora wraps her arms around her friend’s neck and whispers in her ear, “Thank you for this, Zephie. I’ll be fine.”

“I hope so,” she says, sniffing into an embroidered cloth. “I have a good mind to come with you and make sure of it.”

“And warn off our kill?” Neal says. “I think not.”

“I would never!” Zephele says, her cheeks aflame.

“Oh, would you ever!” Neal says, laughing, taking Malora’s arm and steering her away from the market square.

“Where are your hunting dogs?” Malora asks Neal.

“I left the girls at home today,” he says. “For all the training I have invested in them, they have a tendency to misbehave around ostriches.”

When they pass beneath the gates of Kheiron, Neal picks up two spears that are leaning against the gatehouse. Unlike the gatekeeper’s decorative spear, these are made of plain wood, the shafts discolored with the sweat of hands, the tips forged from deadly-looking metal.

“You made these yourself?” Malora asks.

“I’m no smith. I buy all my weapons in the bazaar at Kahiro,” he says.

“Is there anything you can’t get at the bazaar in Kahiro?” she asks.

“Not that I know of,” Neal says. “You said you would need only your rope, but I make a habit never to venture into the bush unarmed. We have just one stop to make, at the Thunderheart Stable, to pick up the horse you asked
for. It’s on the other side of the township we will be passing through.”

Human and centaur walk in companionable silence down a road that is bordered on both sides by farmland. In not much more time than it took Zephele and Malora to reach the marketplace from the Mane Way, Neal and Malora reach the township. It is a clustering of low huts with crudely painted roofs and the occasional statue fashioned from trash and pieces of sun-bleached bush wood, some representing animals and others centaurs. Centaur children with dirty faces and ragged wraps come pouring out of the huts, as if they have been lying in wait, and chase after them, plucking at Malora’s clothing. They seem no more frightened of her than their Highlander counterparts, and even more curious. Finally, Neal stops and lets them have their fill of her. They swarm over Malora, tugging her braid and touching her with nervous fingers.

“Why doesn’t she have round eyes like us?” they ask.

“She’s different and comes from far away,” Neal says.

“Where is her fur?” they ask.

“She doesn’t have any,” Neal says.

The children stare hard at her booted feet. “Does she have split hooves or full?” they ask.

“She has toes. Like the jungle monkeys,” he tells them.

Hearing Neal’s last response, their eyes nearly pop out of their heads. “Does she have a
tail
like a jungle monkey?” One child then proceeds to do a fair imitation of a monkey, making his young audience fall all over each other laughing.

“Not that she’s shown me,” Neal confides behind his hand.

“My father says it’s a dirty deal that she lives all fancy in the Silvermane house while we got our hooves sunk in the muck down here,” says a small, serious-looking lad whose cheeks are hollow and whose eyes are smudged beneath with the shadow of hunger.

“You wouldn’t like the fancy House of Silvermane very much,” Neal tells him. “And the food is plentiful but not very tasty.”

“My mama says she’s an evil omen!” another centaur child blurts.

Neal says, “She’s not an omen. She’s just a Person, a lonely Person, wandered in from the bush, looking for friends.”

“A
Person
, that’s right!” That same serious child seizes upon this. “But they said there were no more People!”

“It just goes to show you how much
they
know, doesn’t it?” Neal says.

Neal goes on bantering with the young ones, answering their questions with surprising warmth and patience. He says to Malora over their shaggy heads, “I hope you don’t mind. The Highlander children catch glimpses of you every day, but these little ones have only heard the tales. As you can see, you are quite a novelty.”

Malora doesn’t mind being a novelty, although, as with the Highlander children, she wishes they would speak to her directly. Eventually, the children scatter back into the huts, and Neal and Malora pass out the other side of the township into another patchwork swath of farmland.

“Why are they hungry if there are so many food crops?” Malora asks.

“The Highlanders own the farmlands. The Flatlanders only work them,” Neal explains. “Most of the food goes to the Highlanders, leaving the Flatlanders mere scraps.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Malora says.

“You believe that life is fair, do you?” Neal asks.

Malora blushes. “No,” she says quietly. “There is no real fairness, is there?”

“Maybe elsewhere in the world, but not in Mount Kheiron!” Neal says with bitter cheer.

The Thunderheart Stable rises up on the crest of a barley field, an imposing gray stone edifice with no adornment except for the row of Golden Horses lined up on the rafter above the entrance. A series of training rings surrounds the stable, but there is no place where the horses can graze.

“Anders Thunderheart doesn’t graze his horses,” Neal says when Malora asks him about it. “He thinks they perform better when kept inside their stalls and unleashed to race.”

In the training rings, female Twani are spinning horses without using ropes. It interests Malora to see how the Twani use their tails to signal direction, as well as pace, to the horse.

Human and centaur enter the stable. Malora stops and inhales deeply. How she has missed the smell of manure and hay, she thinks. Her nostrils flare. There is something else in the air here that she cannot quite place. Her eyes accustom themselves to the darkness. There are at least fifty stalls flanking a long, wide aisle stacked with bales of hay.

“Most of them,” Neal explains, “are Athabanshees, from the deserts of the Sha Haro.”

Malora peers into one of the stalls. The horse inside is the most beautiful, delicate creature she has ever seen: a bright
bay with two white feet and a blaze. Head, eyes, ears, neck, breast, belly, haunches, legs, pasterns, and feet are all proportioned to admirable effect. On nimble hooves, she shifts and dips a nose with unusually wide nostrils into her hay. Malora walks along the stalls, and the horses inside, varying in color from white to chestnut, are every bit as exquisite as the first one. The stalls are clean and airy, but the horses look nervous and jumpy, their high spirits held in check. This, she thinks, is what she smells: their desperation to be free.

“You said you wanted fast,” Neal says, “and these are the fastest. Thunderheart might be nominally a barley farmer, but it is the racing he cares about. He is determined never to let a Highlander win the Golden Horse. For this, he is considered something of a hero among the Flatlanders.”

This Thunderheart is no hero to Malora, cooping up his horses like this. They pass out of the other side of the stable and back into the sunlight, where there are more training rings and a large oval enclosure with a track running around the outside. The horses on the track are harnessed to two-wheeled rigs with single seats, upon which Twani perch, leaning forward, holding the reins.

“Anders Thunderheart has taken his winnings and duplicated the Hippodrome right down to the footing and the color of the fencing. Not even the Apex has one of these.”

Most of the Twani hold whips. The whips are not like those used by the hunters of the Settlement, which were thick and made from braided rhino hide. These are snakeskin, loose and many tailed, with cruel knots tied in the ends.

“Are the whips cue givers or motivators?” she asks Neal.

Neal shrugs. “I have no idea, Pet.”

Malora gets her answer the next moment when a Twan unleashes the whip with a loud crack. The ends of the whip writhe and hiss over the horse’s back, like a nest full of snakes. The horse leaps and surges forward around the track. Another horse prances nervously in place. The driver lets loose the whip and the horse rears, overturning the rig and spilling the Twan out onto the dirt.

“Motivator,” Malora mutters. “Thunderheart authorizes the use of these whips?”

“It would seem so,” Neal says.

Anders Thunderheart is a villain to her now. “Are these whips permitted in the actual races?”

Neal says, “Oh, yes. Often on the competitor’s horse. But only when the Grand Provost is looking the other way, which I hear he is amply bribed to do.”

Malora also notices that the horses have patches partially covering their eyes. She has seen such blinders on the horses pulling carts in Mount Kheiron. On the mountain, the blinders make sense because they distract the horses from the commotion on the streets. Here they make less sense. “Why blind the horse on the track?” she wonders aloud.

“I imagine so that they’ll have no way to look but forward,” Neal says.

This seems odd to Malora. A horse is generally spurred on when it spies, with its side- and-backward-seeing eyes, something coming up on its flank. The horse might overreact, but if its rider knows how to harness that nervousness, the end result will be increased speed. An uneasy thought has been churning in Malora’s mind. She turns to Neal, her face heating up. “Is this how my horses are being treated?”

Neal says, “Rest easy, Pet. I’m sure the Apex coddles his horses the same way he coddles his children. It’s not as if he’s ever won the Golden Horse, or, in all likelihood, ever will. Ah, there’s Thunderheart now.”

A gray-haired, bandy-legged centaur emerges from the stable leading the horse with the blaze and the white socks, who dances at the end of the rope. He calls out gruffly to Neal, “If anything happens to my horse, Featherhoof, you will owe me a thousand nubs worth of hides and pelts.”

“Agreed, Thunderheart,” Neal says.

The two centaurs come together and lock hands. When they release their grip, Anders Thunderheart looks into his palm and counts out the nubs Neal has just passed to him. Satisfied, he hands off the rope to Neal. The horse shimmies and dances.

“She’ll have to ride bareback. I have no riding tack, just a lead harness,” Thunderheart says.

Neal looks to Malora. Malora says, “Bareback is fine.”