In the Night Garden

I looked at Dapple, how beautiful she was in the autumn light, savoring a lump of sugar in her ruddy mouth. Her long hair sparkled like a fall of spring rain, and her belly was furred in the softest white. I did like her, I did like her so. But the crown shone ahead of her, and it sang, how it sang!

“No.” I swallowed dryly. I could hardly speak. “Not too terrible.”

Dapple nosed me playfully when I returned to the garlanded starting position.

“I promise,” she said teasingly, her smooth, race-naked skin shining like armor, “I’ll let you stay on as my consort. I’m sweeter than apples and sugar and acorns after rain, I’ll promise that, too.”

I managed a good impression of the grin that such bravado requires, and slapped her rump as comrades will. My fingers were smeared with foul-smelling gray unguent that the Wizard had given me. It would not show against her skin, he said, and no one would be wiser. She blushed with pleasure—and a blush beneath silver skin is something to see.

The bone-horns blared and we were off, running, faster than any rider and horse, and the driverless plow bouncing along beside us, drawing a long, even furrow in the rich soil, its dusts and oils falling off in orange clumps as it went.

For a few seconds, I thought I might win on my own—I am very fast, fastest of all my chestnut-hided family, and sometimes the slender horse will beat the behemoth. My legs clattered quick on the pebbles, but Dapple was only holding back. She spurred ahead with a laugh that shook the elms and firs alike, and slapped my rump with friendly delight as she passed me by completely.

My own heart surged in my chest, as if sympathetic to hers—would he keep his word? She was so far ahead now I could only keep her gray-white tail in view. And then she stumbled.

I felt it in my own chest, a tiny echo of what must have been a cloud-clapping clamor in hers. One by one I felt them go, each chamber collapsing like a hand suddenly clenched into a fist. One, two, three, four. Five, six. Seven. Eight. Dapple tumbled onto the raceway with a terrible dull sound, and pebbles sprayed up all around her like a wave.

I sped ahead. The plow was a full horse-length behind me. I did not look at her as I passed her body, already surrounded by the concerned, soon to be mourners. I crossed the line. The crown sang so loudly, so loudly, and with both hands I seized it, and its voice was pure as sugar, and apples, and acorns after rain.

When we burned her, as Centaurs do their dead, I gave a long and heart-felt eulogy—I was the King, it was my duty to mourn the fallen. The air was filled with the smell of her meat, and I tried not to gag. The Wizard, Omir, came to me after her ashes were combed and looked over the charred bones.

“You will be the last Centaur-King. I thought I should mention it. Perhaps if you were not the kind of beast to whom a crown sings there would be more after you—it never sang to Dapple, after all. But then, if it had, I would not have chosen you, and your sad place as last in a long line is why it had to be you—you will help me, and you will conquer peoples who will help me. After you, the Kings will be men again, and I know already what they are made of. When you are not past middle age, a young and hungry man will come to you on an unspeakable errand, and he will put a knife into the eight chambers of your heart, and he will be King after

you.”

Slowly, fat drops of rain began to fall from the sky, extinguishing the last of Dapple’s embers.

“Shall we go in?” said the Wizard, a wide smile on his face.

THE CENTAUR-KING WAS LOST IN HIMSELF. “I MEANT to be a good King,” he mused, “I did mean to. But there were revolts to put down and taxes to collect and threats to quell on the borders, and it just becomes too much to carry all that on your back along with virtue. Virtue rides heavy in the saddle, you know.”

He rose from his pile of cushions and for the first time I saw him whole, saw his left flank, which had been swallowed up in shadow and rose-colored silk. It was a map of scars, of scars and missing flesh, the cuts, old and new and every age between, crisscrossing his haunches until there was no hide left, only knotted flesh, and long pieces of him were missing, just gone, scooped from him as cleanly as cream from a bowl. Not one of his ribs had been left unbroken. One hoof was as fragile and as filled with holes as a honeycomb, the ankle a mass of scabbed-over wounds. He favored it, and his gait had a terrible lope. He hobbled to me and bent his face to mine, lanky brown hair smoothed back from a haggard brow.

“Tell me—Ismail, is it?—how does virtue ride with your errand in his bags?”

“Lighter,” I whispered, “than with an unnatural creature who lets a slave cut into him until he cannot walk.”

He looked down as if he had not noticed his ruined side until now. “Oh, yes. This is my use. I don’t suppose you have this sort of use—you notice he takes flesh only from the horse half of me, or if I am lucky, the place where horse and man meet. I am happy you came, now that it’s happened. Heirs are heirs, after all. I’m sure you two will find some use for each other, and frankly, I am tired of being useful.”

I glanced at Omir. He met my stare, stone to steel, unabashed and unashamed. In that moment, we understood each other, and all thought of my mother evaporated from my mind like steam rising from a snow-rimmed lake. She could rot in her tower with her thrice-damned hole. I did not need her; I needed him.

Omir reached into his dark robes and pulled out a long knife. The three of us watched it glint in the light that streamed through fine-cut windows. He handed it to me. I did not know killing could be like this—in the open, in the light, acquiesced to by all. It was almost like being at a church service, and I was as excited as a child at his first altar.

The thrill of it sang to me like a crown.

I took the knife from him and walked to the Centaur-King, patting his shoulders like a rider approaching a nervous mount. He did not shy away, but met my stare, heartwood to iron.

“Monster,” I hissed, and slid the knife into his heart, up to the hilt, drew it back and thrust it in again. One, two, three, four. Five, six. Seven. Eight.

Sorrel smiled, and fell onto the dais with the empty thud of heavy bones against marble.

LEANDER STARED AT HIS FATHER IN HIS HUGE, empty bed, the gray at his temples, the lines in his face that were certainly not born from laughter. His eyes flickered in the low light. “Omir and I did find some use for each other. He did not take off his collar, and I did not have him burnt. He wanted the horse-people and their Witch; I wanted a Wizard to make the rain fall when I pleased, to make the drought come when I pleased, to poison whom I pleased and destroy what I pleased. We did great things; we conquered his horse-people together, who were certainly as unnatural as Centaurs. I have never liked magic, but I tolerated his, and that bought him for me. That is a fair bargain, since neither of us was interested in his cutting into me like a side of beef—as fair as the one I struck with this country, which has bent to my order as well as any country may. I did not set out to be beloved and just, only strong.”

“A King can be better than that,” the Prince insisted.

“And so we all begin, determined to better our fathers’ performances, knowing we can change the very nature of humanity, make it better, cleaner. But then daggers strike in the night, and peasants revolt, and all manner of atrocities become as necessary as breakfast. Only Princes believe in the greater good. Kings know there is only the Reign, and all things may be committed in its holy name. Now, are you going to cut my throat, or would you prefer the more intimate method—strangulation? I may have a garrote in the drawer.”

“No,” Leander answered him. “I won’t kill you like a thief in the night.”