Chapter 4
There were four coaches assembled in the clearing, suggesting two races for the evening.
Two of them Lucy did not recognise – probably out-of-district coaches come to test themselves.
Such wayfaring was not uncommon, especially among those from districts where the authorities were less forgiving of such nocturnal activities.
The solid, smartly trimmed coach apart from the others was that of Lord Rathbone.
In the Night Races all were equal, but the nobleman never could shake the air of superiority that clung about his well-dressed form.
His coach was expensive, the best that money could buy, with a team working busily on the wheels and tending the horses.
Rathbone enjoyed the speed of the chase as well as any racer but many also believed that, for all he loved a challenge, he loved himself just a little more.
The fourth coach belonged to Dante Torres.
What it lacked in grace and elegance, it exceeded in efficiency and power.
Every curve and joint, every bolt and connection served a purpose.
It was a coach stripped back to the very essence of what a coach should be.
Yet it could not be called rough or haphazard.
A great deal of time and care had gone into crafting the machine and keeping it in top condition.
Lucy could see not a single chip or flake in the panelling, nor a tear in the canvas.
It was not by chance that Torres had seldom been defeated in the time he had raced.
As Molly walked ahead, eager to observe the newcomers, Lucy took time to examine Torres’s coach for changes.
Though no stranger to mechanical design upon her introduction to the Night Races, the intervening years had been filled not merely with a desire to observe the races but to understand them.
Nuts and bolts, wheels and axles, timber and iron.
Lucy could tell someone a great deal about any coach just by observing it from a distance.
She could tell them even more if she was permitted close inspection.
Given the opportunity, she would tell them about it well past their level of interest in the subject.
‘Dual-balanced suspension springs,’ came the thickly Continental voice from behind her.
Lucy stood from her crouch and turned to face Dante Torres.
He was a man of conflicting impressions, bearing both the physique and dress of a workman, and the self-confidence and integrity of a noble.
His hair was short and dark, his moustache and beard trimmed to a fine point.
Though the British weather had tried its hardest, he still retained a faint shade of the tanned skin that came from his homeland across the Channel.
When he spoke, his voice suggested neither kindness nor contempt, merely a cool practicality.
Though his exile was known, no investigation had offered any further intelligence about his past; however, it was murmured among the other racers that Torres was a man whom the heat of passion and the winters of the world had forged into hard steel.
Lucy rose to what she knew was a challenge. ‘Dual springs will lose you speed on hard turns.’
‘Not if you can counter with acceleration,’ he replied, inscrutable.
‘You’d risk losing control.’
‘Control is one of the many things that I do not lose.’
‘Is this what you were working on over winter?’
‘Among other things,’ he replied, nodding politely and moving away.
How and where Torres and his team spent their winter months was a mystery to racers and observers alike.
While other faces were familiar in the daytime world, Torres and his people were like fairies, appearing once a month under the full moon, then disappearing back to their secret groves.
Lucy suspected it was no incidental thing that the group was seen this way.
It was an image they cultivated, an edge of mystery that made them that bit more infamous among fellow racers.
She watched as Torres crossed to a log where Ulcha was sitting quietly.
It was said the young woman was Irish, likely another reason why Molly was drawn to her.
Perhaps it was through her that Molly imagined herself in a coach seat, speeding down a moonlit lane.
While Lucy had certainly entertained thoughts of such a ride herself, she found Torres’s messenger more unsettling than intriguing.
She kept her black hair unfashionably short and, more troubling, never spoke a single word among the crowds.
Only when racing was she seen to speak to her driver and even then only rarely, choosing most often to simply watch the lanes, her uncanny night vision spotting even the smallest of hazards.
No words were spoken between them, but Ulcha and Torres exchanged a glance as he sat beside her.
‘Did you see the detailing?’ asked a deep, familiar voice.
Lucy turned and looked up to the smiling face of the man known to most as Hercules. Of all Torres’s team he was the most given to conversation and the most pleasant in demeanour. He was also the least like anyone Lucy had encountered outside the world of the races, or in many ways, within it.
‘He is La’a Maomao,’ the tall man said. ‘God of the winds.’
Lucy let the strange syllables and sounds assemble themselves in her mind.
‘La-ah-mo-mo?’ she offered back.
He shrugged and smiled. ‘Close enough.’
If Torres was an exile from his homeland, his teammate was a world away from his.
His long journey led back to London, then years on a whaling ship, then back to his homeland in the heart of the Pacific.
Unlike Torres, the weather had not paled his skin, a shade that even a sun-soaked Spaniard could not hope to match.
Despite the equalising nature of the Night Races, many still viewed him as a savage and steered clear of him, not least because of his size.
But Lucy knew that it was those large hands that were responsible for the finely carved and shaped wood on Torres’s coach.
It was the one piece of artistic flair in the otherwise practical machine, an oddity that Lucy could not ignore.
‘How was winter, Hekeelee?’ she asked, careful with her pronunciation.
‘Cold. Far too cold. No wonder you people have such big houses. And you’re getting better at that. Hekili.’
‘Hekili,’ Lucy repeated diligently. ‘Doesn’t it bother you that people don’t use your real name?’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I reckon it’s better to be called Hercules than to have to listen to you lot tripping all over my name every day, don’t you?’
Lucy began to earnestly consider this conundrum, but was distracted as yet another smiling face moved into view.