Page 19 of Tailwind

She had her arms folded, weight leaning on one leg.

‘Where is he?’

I kept on brushing. ‘His room.’

The adrenaline that had abandoned me after the race came rushing back as Josie headed through the doorway to the rider room. Instead of the vast thoughtlessness that had come over me only a moment before, now there were countless panicked ones bombarding me all at once.

After a while, she returned. Her long sleek hair had been tied back at some point, revealing her ears and their multiple gold piercings. Her gaze seemed to be focusing on something far beyond me and Gottyk.

‘Wha—’

She held up her hand.

I balked and carried on. ‘What are you going to do? Just so you know, it wasn’t my fault.’

Even the armour couldn’t protect me from the cutting look I received.

‘I was thinking.’ She pulled a small notebook out of her jumpsuit pocket and flicked through the pages. They were covered in notes. Tiny handwriting interspersed with numbers, grids and other diagrams so dense it made me feel the same.

‘There’s a facility,’ she said, writing something out as she did. ‘It advertises itself as a luxury spa, but it’s really in-patient rehabilitation for rich people.’ She tore out the page and handed it to me.

It was an address. I looked up at her.

‘I know I look crazy, but I don’t need to check myself in somewhere.’

Her eyes fluttered shut and she took a deep breath.

‘For Thorne. This place can only do business if they keep their mouths shut. It’s an open secret among the wealthy and by extension the staff. If you can get Thorne there, they’ll see the augment marks on his arm and take him in, no questions asked. They run a tight facility. Patients need to be completely free of arcanite effects before leaving. They even test their potency before letting them leave.’

I took the address from Josie.

Josie cleared her throat. ‘Like I was saying, we need more pellets next door. Do you have any spare?’

The words went into my ears, but when they reached my brain they were jumbled and wrong. ‘What?’

‘Do you have any spare pellets?’ Her words were punctuated and slow. She was speaking to me like I was an idiot.

‘But—’

‘I’m going to go into that crate over there.’ She pointed at the storage by Gottyk’s stall where he was now rolling on his bedding, completely calm. ‘And then I am going to take a sack of copper and return to the aviary next door. Do you understand?’

My head moved up and down.

Josie brushed past me, the haptic feedback sensitive enough to pick up on the sleeve of her keeper’s jumpsuit. She did as she said. She took the bedding for Gottyk’s sister and slid back out through the doors.

No one else arrived.

Needing something to do that wasn’t vomiting, I went back to my job. I continued the steps, saying them out loud even though Josie was gone.

Still, no one else showed up.

I stood at the low wall that surrounded Gottyk’s stall and watched him eat the food I’d laid out for him. Finally, I understood what Josie had been telling me. There was somewhere to put Thorne. She’d taken the pellets and left. That was all. She hadn’t told anyone. The weight of it pressed down on me harder than any G-forces I’d ever felt.

I’d had a taste of everything I’d dreamed of, of everything I’d been working towards my whole life. I could wait for Thorne to wake up and hand it back to him … or I could take it all for myself.

All I had to do was move one of the continent’s most famous, rich and notorious riders from the aviary to the city without anyone noticing.

Finally, I had a favour I could call on my big sister for.