The Shadowy Horses

David took firm hold of Robbie with his other hand and the three of us shifted with the crowd, to watch the Herring Queen set down upon the small red bridge at the end of the middle pier. She was a lovely girl, fresh-faced and fair, and her gown, though purple, was a decided improvement on Jeannie's.

Robbie fidgeted through the crowning ceremony, bored by the speeches, and finally tugged at David's sleeve. "Davy, Dad's looking for me."

The blue eyes slanted downwards. "Oh, aye? And where's your dad the now?"

"Over there." Robbie pointed across the harbor, toward the fish market.

"Right, we'll go and find him." David looked at me, apologetic. "You can wait here, if you'd rather, I'll not be more than a few minutes."

"No, it's all right," I said. "I'll come, too."

Brian McMorran, waiting in the shade of the fish market, didn't appear to be actively looking for his son; but then again, I reasoned, perhaps when both father and son had second sight, finding one another was a simple thing to do.

"Heyah, Dad!" Robbie went bouncing over. "Did you see the Herring Queen?"

"I did."

"Was Mum that bonny, when she was Herring Queen?"

"Your mother was the bonniest Herring Queen ever," said Brian, firmly. He propped his shoulder against a post and looked from David to myself. "Been taking good care of my boy, then, have you?"

"It's no use asking Verity," David said. "She's ages with Robbie today, and just as much trouble. I've had to keep the both of them from wandering off."

Relaxing slightly, Brian smiled and lit a cigarette. "I'll take one of 'em off your hands. I've a few hours yet before my work starts." David glanced across the harbor at the Fleetwing's gleaming red-and-white hull. "Are you taking her out tonight?"

"Planning on it," Brian answered, pitching his spent match into the black water. "I'm a man short at the moment, but I'm working on it."

David frowned. "Who's gone, then?"

"Mick." The boy from Liverpool that no one liked, as I recalled. Brian's shrug held no regret. "He took a swing at our cook, this morning. It was either me give Mick the shove, or Billy would have killed him." He pulled at his cigarette, blowing out smoke. "But I've got a lad lined up to take his place, so we might get a few days' good fishing in, before the weather turns. That front brewing down to the south hasn't shifted—it's still only sitting there, doing no harm."

I looked at him. "There's a storm coming?"

"Maybe," said Brian. "Might come north, or go elsewhere. You never can tell. Why, are you worried the Fleetwing'll roll belly-up?" His eyes surveyed me mockingly as he exhaled a drifting smoke ring. "We've come a long way since the days of the Disaster—we've got sonar, radar, everything, these days. If a storm cloud so much as burps I've got the weather service on the phone to warn me."

"And if you did get stuck," said Robbie, "I could come out with the lifeboat men, to rescue you. I've been watching them real careful, like.''

"Have you, now?" Brian's hard eyes softened on his son's upturned face.

"So," David asked Brian, "which of them do you want?"

"Eh?"

"You said you'd take one of these two off my hands," David said, standing between Robbie and me, "but you never did tell me which one."

"Oh. This one," Brian said, claiming his son with a hand on the boy's narrow shoulder. "He's not so much trouble."

"Right then, we're away. We want to catch the last part of the crowning, ken." David took my hand again like a teenage lover and, whistling tunelessly, led me back onto the middle pier. "See your swan," he said, pointing. "I wonder what he thinks of all this activity." I ignored the swan. "Do you know," I told him, putting my head to one side in a pretense of thought, "I'm not sure which was the more insulting—having you offer me to Brian, or having him refuse me."

"Aye, well, if I'd thought he'd choose you I'd never have asked him."

"I mean, it's not as though I'm difficult..."

The tuneless whistling became a chuckle. “Maybe I like a difficult woman."

"Well, keep it up," I dared him, "and you'll find out just how—"

"Careful," he cut me off, putting a hand out to hold me back as a young man came vaulting over the Fleetwing's railing onto the pier, landing directly in our path.

He looked an ordinary young man, with cropped ginger hair and a long face that was neither handsome nor ugly, but his eyes made me uneasy, and I didn't need to hear the Liverpool accent to recognize him as the lad that Brian's mate Billy had wanted to kill. "Did I give you a scare?" he asked, adjusting the bulging daysack slung over one shoulder. "Sorry."

"No harm done," David told him. "Only look where you're going, lad, next time."

"I'll do that." There was something almost evil in the way he smiled at David, and I felt cold until the young man had moved past us, heading down the pier. I watched him out of sight.

"And that, I take it," I said, "would be Mick."

"Aye." David arched an eyebrow. "Clearing off with his things, from the look of it. Either that, or he's been robbing Brian blind."