“This is the safest place to be except the basement,” he said. “And in the morning, everything will be wet, but that will not stop us, either.”
“Your great-grandmother and your great-uncle are really going to ride?”
“Oh, they may ride the herd-leaders!” he said. “They are very good riders.” But, he thought, mani was so frail, now, this last year. “Except they will not be riding fast at all, with new riders in the group. You shall see. We shall get you up safely—that is the hardest; and then you just stay in the saddle. There are rings and straps to hold on to.” He made a ring with his hand. “Like that.
Take-holds.”
“Take-holds,” Artur said. “Good!” Artur seemed a lot happier with that idea.
Irene had not said much. She had agreed, but she was scared. She always was, of new things. But she was going to try.
She was not going to get hurt. He had his mind made up on that.
He just wished he could convince Irene, who probably was not going to get a lot of sleep tonight.
She had said, when they had walked back to the room, “The table was so pretty. Everything was so pretty.”
She had even eaten the pâté, and never complained, though after they had gotten back to the room, she had gone looking for the little medical kit in her baggage, saying her stomach hurt.
She had tried so hard. But Irene always had.
Now she leaned with her chin on the windowsill and watched the lightning and listened to the thunder, only flinching at the loudest thunderclaps. “It’s real,” she said. “Pictures aren’t enough. They just aren’t enough.”
13
Bren dressed in his roughest clothes the next morning—his valets had packed a good outdoor coat for him, and had anticipated a country venue might require it. They had assured him through the usual servant-to-servant whispering that that would be perfectly fine for breakfast—that the guests would be in their ship-style clothing.
His aishid prepared in their own way, but their preparations were less about wardrobe than armament, in case, and in communication with the house security station. The word was, throughout the system, it was a fair morning with a light, nippy breeze, and there was nothing changed in the security stance.
Jase turned up, alone, but cheerful, in his blue station fatigues and an insulated brown coat. “Kaplan and Polano beg off. I gave them the chance. They said if anything did go amiss, they’d need rescue themselves. They said better take two more who know what they’re doing.”
“Not nervous, are you?”
“Not as long as I ride with the kids,” Jase said. “You do as you please, friend.”
“I’m perfectly content with that.”
They all met downstairs, in the dining hall, the breakfast room being for intimate gatherings. Ilisidi and Tatiseigi had turned out in riding clothes, while Cajeiri wore a sturdy black twill coat, and Jase and the youngsters from the station all wore their own comfort-wear, with jackets.
It was a quick light breakfast and out and around to the mecheita pens, where a rumbling low complaint said the grooms were letting their charges know they were indeed going to work this morning. The sky was clear blue, and the air was chill—it was not quite to the stage of breath frosting, but it was close, and the mecheiti were in high spirits.
A party of their size meant saddling just about every mecheita, and while it ordinarily meant more control, with more of the herd under rein, with novice children in the group, they needed a serious rider to handle the herd leader, and whatever constellation of fractious competitors the herd’s current composition afforded them. In days past it would have been Ilisidi riding foremost, with Cenedi and Nawari right beside her, hellbent for anything the terrain offered.
But that wasn’t Ilisidi’s choice today. Tatiseigi, who was of an unguessable age, likewise declined, and while one could have ultimate faith in the dowager’s skilled hand, one worried.
Not to mention worrying about his own lately unpracticed self. And Jase.
A groom brought the herd leader out to the pen, and Tatiseigi gave the order for two grooms to take the lead, which was, in Bren’s opinion, the best arrangement.
Other mecheiti came out, under saddle. Ilisidi and Tatiseigi and their bodyguards went into the pen to mount up—they had no trouble to get their mounts to extend a leg and allow an easy mount, but Ilisidi accepted a little help from Cenedi at the last. Tatiseigi managed on his own, on what Bren rather suspected was a retired herd-leader, a mecheita with a conspicuous raking scar on his rump.
And from that lofty vantage Ilisidi and Tatiseigi called Cajeiri over, and introduced him to a fine-looking ten-year-old, a rusty black, with a red tassel on the bridle ring and a ring of red enamel on each of the bright brass tusk-caps.
This was Jeichido, no question, and Cajeiri looked uncharacteristically nervous and excited—quite, quite happy, and emoting just a shade too much around a high-bred mecheita. Ilisidi gave a quiet, “Tut, tut, tut,” that meant calm down, pay attention, as if she were talking to the mecheita.
The young gentleman calmed himself, took the single rein, made a spring for the mounting loop set high on the animal’s shoulder, and with his left toe in the assisting fold of leather, he was up, rein and quirt in hand, the first leg over, and the second foot settling comfortably into the curve of the mecheita’s nape. Jeichido fidgeted a few steps, then swung neatly about at a light tap of the quirt. Antaro and Jegari were up.
“Good luck to us,” Jase muttered, then.
It was their turn. The junior grooms were kind, and afforded them the mounting block, with two grooms to steady the mecheiti, who were not likely to regard an unskilled demand for the extended leg. His aishid needed no such help, and that was six more of them safely in the saddle.
That left the children, and three quiet, older mecheiti, sleepy-looking animals—there were four younger spares and a new foal milling about the pen at loose ends, making trouble, occasioning a threatening head shake from Tatiseigi’s mount and a warning from the junior grooms. But these were the oldest in the herd. They’d follow the herd leaders at whatever pace they could muster, to the ends of the earth, but they wasted none of their energy. The first stood with eyes half-shut as the grooms first lifted Artur up, and then led up a mecheita for Irene.
The herd-leader, however, had gotten wind of odd-smelling small strangers, and was circling under taps of the groom’s quirt, wanting to get closer, chuffing and blowing, sloping hindquarters aquiver with impatience. He—it happened to be a male—let out a moaning rumble, a threat, a warning. They very much needed to get this lot out of the pen and moving on this cool morning.
Irene looked at the herd-leader, who had been put into another frustrated circle, and with a slip of her foot on the first step of the mounting block, she recovered her balance. Then she froze, with a look of terror on her face.
“Come on, Reny,” Gene called out. “Move! You can do it!”
She came unfrozen. She settled her balance on the block, faltered her way up another step onto the top of the block, dropping the rein as she caught her balance. The groom handily caught it as it fell and gave it back, folded the same hand about the quirt and shoved her upward without any preamble. Irene grabbed the saddle back, not the mounting strap, missed the toehold, and as the mecheita took a step forward, she lost contact with the mounting block and hung there, dropping the quirt. Bren loosed his rein and shifted his quirt, deciding to ride alongside and tell Irene to go back upstairs and ask Cajeiri’s servants for a cup of tea.
But she had hold of the front ring instead of the quirt, and she started hauling herself upward. The groom caught a flailing foot in his hand and lifted. Irene landed belly down, managed to drag her right leg over the saddle back and, as the groom tried to keep the old mecheita still, Irene hauled herself upright, grabbed the ring, dragged her left foot into its proper place in the curve of the neck and, panting, took the quirt a second groom put back into her hand.