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“Alright.”
“And when we breezed him, the one time we got someone on his back, the time was almost record breaking.”
“But?”
“He took the bit like he’d had one in before, and then he stood for the saddle. Once. But after that, any time we tried, he practically killed the people trying.” Viktor frowns. “We’ve tranqed him nearly every single day that he’s been here. We can’t keep doing that, clearly.”
“And that’s where I come in.”
“He seems to love you,” Viktor says. “If you can get him to where he’s manageable, we’ll pay you a handsome fee. My boss and I talked—we know it’s dangerous, and we know you’re probably already itching to get out of here. We told the men that you’re a distant cousin visiting from Romania. That way none of them will try to talk to you. They don’t know Latvian, except for Pyotr, and he wants to keep you safe, so he’s promised to stay quiet.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
“If you can break Quicksilver to race, we’ll pay you two million rubles.”
I manage to keep from whistling, barely. It’s not a massive fortune by any means, but it’s enough to buy a used car. And more importantly, it’s enough to get me back to Latvia. Or even on a flight to America, if that seems wiser. Between Nojus and Leonid, getting far, far away from anyone who wants to kill me feels like it might be a smart call.
I’ll focus on getting this horse broke for now, and then once that’s done, I’ll see what direction feels the best.
“Thank you,” I say.
And I mean it.
5
The next morning, I’m cursing Viktor out in every language I know. From the second I stepped into Quicksilver’s Fort Knox paddock, grooms started lining up along the edge.
I thought, since he seems to be an exceptionally smart horse, I might start with Liberty. It’s a training method the Americans like to claim, but really it’s been around since 400 BC when Xenophon the Athenian wrote On Horsemanship, which focused quite a bit on positive reinforcement with a horse instead of just moving off pressure.
The idea of Liberty is to get the horse to work with what it naturally likes, and to give it space to move away or say no if it wants to ignore you.
Unfortunately, Quicksilver seems to naturally dislike anything to do with a crop, which you usually hold to cue the horse, and from the second I walked in with one, he does nothing but run away.
The grooms find this pretty funny.
But after a few moments, Quicksilver notices they’re laughing and scowls. It sounds insane, but I swear the stallion’s glaring at the people watching. I’ve chucked my whip to the edge of the paddock at this point, and I’m standing near the gate, wondering whether to go for the halter and try a modified version of Liberty instead.
Quicksilver’s still focused on the audience, but when I make a bid for his attention, he trots right up to me and places his face right against my hand. Then he whuffles.
“What—”
He snorts then, covering me with grass-flecked bits of snot.
“Thanks a lot for that.”
I know horses can’t laugh, but I’d almost say he laughed.
“Alright, boy, let’s try this without a whip.” I step a bit back, and I signal with my hands the direction I’d like him to go. “Times like this, I really wish horses could talk.” I tilt my head. “Then you could tell me why you’re here, what you already know, and what’s freaked you out in the past.” I shake my head. “But for now, we’ll have to try and figure it out together, one tiny bit at a time.”
He listens much better without the whip, and I find that the more I talk him through things, the better he does. If I were a starry-eyed girl, I’d have thought he could understand me. As a very jaded adult, I realize that he’s almost certainly reading my tone. Even so, if it’s working, it’s working.
By the end of the day, after taking five breaks in between, I notice that even Viktor’s in the audience gathered outside.
“That looked amazing,” he says. “Will you try and get on him tomorrow?”
I frown. “Would you like to get on him tomorrow?”
Viktor’s eyebrows rise. “You were on him yesterday. Doing ground work feels like a backtrack.”
