Chapter 248: Showdaowmare

"I’m alive," she said. "I’m safe."

His gaze searched her.

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the only honest one I have." Morgana replied.

He studied her a moment longer. Then something in his weathered face eased, the way a knot eases when it has been worked at long enough.

"Aye," he said. "That’ll do, then."

He let go of her hand.

"Sit. Drink your tea. I’ll tell you about the horse."

He picked up his tea. "Shadowmere had thrown every handler since the day you left."

"Seven of them," Garrick said, blowing on his tea. They sat across the little desk from one another with the stove ticking between. "First week, the boy Matthew. Broke his collarbone. Second week it was Tam, who’s a decent hand and knows better. Got a hoof in the ribs." He grimaced. "I’ve kept him in the far stall since. Won’t let anyone near the gate. He stands there at the back with his head low, and he doesn’t eat unless it’s put down and the door shut."

"Is he ill?"

"Not a thing wrong with him. I’ve had the farrier, I’ve had the leech from the market. They say he’s sound as a bell." Garrick looked at her over the cup. "He’s waiting."

Morgana’s stomach tightened. "For what?"

"I’d not say, if I’d not seen what I saw the day you came. I told you, girl. I’ve worked with beasts all my life. They know things." He set down the mug. "That horse has stood at the back of his stall and watched the yard door since the morning they took you. I’d swear on my mother’s grave."

She set her tea aside.

"Can I see him?"

He nodded and stood.

The far stalls were in the quiet end of the building, down a long aisle of swept brick lit by high windows. The other horses put their heads over their doors as she passed, bays and greys and a little flaxen mare that nickered and shoved at her sleeve. She touched noses as she walked. Her chest ached with a pleasure she had no word for.

Then the aisle ended, and there was only the last stall, the heavy one with the double bolts, and from within it came no sound at all.

"He heard you in the yard," Garrick said quietly. "He’s been like that since you laughed out there. Standing like stone."

She hadn’t known she’d laughed.

She came to the gate and put her hands on the top rail.

Shadowmere stood at the back of the stall in the half-dark, a huge black shape against the whitewash. His coat was dull. She could count the ridges of his ribs. His head was down, the heavy neck held low, but his ears were pricked and swiveled toward her, and his dark eye caught the light and held it.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

"Hello," Morgana said.

The stallion exhaled. It was a long, shuddering breath, and it stirred the loose straw by his hooves.

"I’m sorry I was gone." Her voice cracked. "I didn’t want to go. I’d have stayed. I would have, if they’d let me."

His head came up.

He took a step. Then another, slow, almost uncertain, as though the straw might not hold him. He crossed the stall, and she felt the heat of him before he reached her, the great warm bulk of a horse in the cold morning. The long velvet nose came over the gate and stopped a hand’s breadth from her face.

He breathed in.

Heat flared in her chest. It was soft this time, not the sudden snap of fear that had broken from her the first day, but something low and slow and golden, like the first glow of coals under ash. It rose up through her ribs, and her skin tingled, and the air around the two of them shimmered faintly.

Shadowmere’s eyes closed.

Slowly, with enormous care, he laid his forehead against her breastbone.

Morgana put both arms around his neck.

She heard Garrick’s breath catch behind her. She did not turn around. She pressed her cheek into the warm black hide that smelled of sun and horse and something older, and a slow, steady rhythm came up through her ribs where his great head rested. It matched her own heartbeat, and then, strangely, it did not. It beat deeper. Slower. Like something vast, turning over in its sleep, answering a name it had not heard in a very long time.

Atheris.

She did not know why she thought it.

"Well," Garrick said, hushed and rough. "That’s more than the first time."

"Yes," she whispered.

"You’ve changed." Garrick said in a voice so low Morgana almost didn’t hear it,

"I think so." She replied.

"Not the way a girl does when she’s been pampered in the palace." His voice was thoughtful. "The other way. Like a thing that was kept under a cloth, and now it’s out."

She laughed softly, her face still against the stallion’s neck. "You’ve always seen too much."

"It’s my one gift." He replied.

He drew the bolts.

Shadowmere stepped out of the stall like a king walking from a throne room. He stood in the aisle and shook himself, mane and neck and flanks, and the dull coat caught the light for a moment and seemed, absurdly, to shine. He turned his head and nudged her shoulder, hard, and she staggered and laughed.

"He wants his breakfast," Garrick said.

"Does he?"

"He hasn’t eaten properly since the day you left. Go on."

There was a feed bin by the aisle wall, and a bucket. She scooped oats and carried them in cupped hands, and the horse put his nose into her palms and ate with the slow hungry concentration of a creature who had decided, at last, that it was safe. She brushed him afterward, long strokes with a soft dandy brush that she found, without surprise, in the same place on the shelf where she had left it. She worked burrs out of his mane and talked to him in a low voice about nothing at all, the weather, the way the bread at the palace was too soft, how Rowan had pinched her on the stairs.

He listened with one ear turned toward her and the other swiveled toward the yard.