Trial by Desire by Courtney Milan Read Free Book Online Page B

carrot. He offered it, palm up; the horse snuffled it up.
    “If you’re looking for that new devil of a horse, he’s not in here.”
    Ned turned at the sound of this ancient voice. “You’re talking about Champion, then?”
    Richard Plum scrubbed a callused hand against an old and wrinkled cheek. It was the only commentary Ned expected the old stable-master would make on the name he’d chosen. Ned could almost hear the man’s voice echofrom his childhood. Animals don’t need fancy names. They don’t know what they mean. Names are nothing but lies for us two-legged types.
    “I’ve seen a great many horses,” the man offered.
    Ned waited. Plum spent so much time around animals—from the horses in the stables to Berkswift’s small kennel of dogs—that he sometimes forgot that ordinary human conversation had an ebb and flow to it, a certain natural order of statement and response. Plum seemed to think all conversations had only one side, which he provided. But if left unprompted, he usually recollected himself and continued.
    “This one, he’s not the worst I’ve seen. Not the best, neither. Conformation leaves a lot to be desired, and even after we’ve put some flesh on his bones, he’ll likely always be weak-chested. But his temperament… He’s as wary as if the devil himself were pissing in his grain. I don’t trust him near my mares.”
    Technically, they were Ned’s mares, but Ned wasn’t about to correct the man. He’d hoped this morning’s equine tantrum had been nothing more than an aftereffect of Champion’s earlier mistreatment.
    “That sounds bad.”
    “Hmm.” Mr. Plum seemed to think that bare mono-syllable constituted sufficient answer, because he put his hands in his pockets and looked at Ned. “An animal needs to know some kindness in its first years of life, Mr. Carhart. If your, ah, your horse —” Ned noticed that Plum carefully eschewed the name of Champion “—has never known good from people, that’s the end of it. It can’t befixed, not with a day of work. Or a week. Or a year. And if that’s the case, there’s nothing to be done for it.”
    “When you say ‘nothing,’” Ned ventured gently, “you don’t literally mean nothing can be done. Do you?”
    “Of course not.” Plum shook his head. “Always something to be done, eh? In this case, you load the pistol and pull the trigger. It’s a mercy, doing away with a one such as that. What an animal doesn’t learn when young, it can’t find in maturity.”
    Ned turned away, his hands clenching. His stomach felt queasy. He hadn’t saved Champion only to have him put down out of some sense of wrong-headed mercy. An image flashed through his head: a pistol, tooled in silver, the sun glinting off it from every direction.
    No.
    He’d not wish that end on anyone, not even a scraggly, weak-chested horse.
    “How far gone is he?”
    Mr. Plum shrugged. “No way to know, unless someone gives it a try. Have to make the decision out of rational thought, sir. Me? I doubt the animal’s worth the effort.”
    He paused again, another one of those too-long halts. Ned began to drum his fingers against the leg of his trousers, an impatient ditty born out of an excess of energy. Another bad sign.
    “Very little use in him, sir.”
    “Use.” Ned pressed his palms together. “No need for an animal to be useful, is there?”
    Plum met his gaze. “Use is what animals are for, Mr. Carhart. Useless animals have no place.”
    Ned knew what it was like to feel useless. He had beenthe expendable grandchild, the non-heir. He’d been the fool, the idiot, the one who could be counted on to muck up anything worth doing. His grandfather had expected nothing of Ned, and Ned, young idiot that he had been, had delivered spectacularly. But he had learned. He had changed himself, and it had not been too late.
    “Where have you put him?”
    “Old sheep corral. It’s empty, this time of autumn, what with the sheep all brought to the lower