Page 58 of The Medici Return

“Yet you want to win.”

“Of course. But the luck of the draw with the horse sets your course. We try to have ten solid contenders, but that is not always possible. And once you have a horse that is surely not going to win, everything changes.”

“You have a loser?”

“Our groom says we do, and he is the expert.”

Malone was now moving the horse at a full run, his body angled down, head high.

“He knows to balance his weight on the horse,” she said. “He’s remembering what to do.”

He was waiting for the advice, so he asked, “You think I am in trouble, don’t you?”

“I think, like us, you have a horse who cannot win. Which means you have to make sure your enemy does not win. Priests? Cardinals? Bishops? Those I know about. Many are worthy of the Palio.”

He smiled. “Such a diplomatic way to insult them.”

Malone made the last turn. The horse’s hooves pounded the ground as they raced by.

“I meant no insult,” she said. “Just a fact.”

“Sadly, it is true.”

“I have read about the trial going on inside the Vatican. Now you are being implicated in that corruption?”

“I am. But it is a lie.”

“Still a problem, though.”

On that she was right. Truth seemed to matter not anymore. Only perception. The bullet points at the beginning, as opposed to reading the whole article. Nobody read the whole article anymore. He was being systematically framed. Set up to be brought down. As an example? Maybe. To send a message to the other cardinals? Surely. Nothing was more dangerous than a cardinal who wanted to be pope. Especially a cardinal with the power of the Secretariat of State and the Entity behind him. They needed to get inside that monastery and see if anything meaningful was there. Long shot? Perhaps. After all, five hundred years had passed.

But they had to find out.

Malone slowed the horse and brought them both around to the fence.

“Can you do it?” Camilla asked.

Malone nodded. “Good thing, though, I don’t have to win.”

“You rode hard,” Richter said. “It will be different tomorrow with the crowd and the other horses.”

“Just make sure the Porcupine horse does not win,” she said. “That’s all I ask.”

But Jason wondered. Was it?

Cardinal Stamm was right.

Everything about Camilla Baines signaled one thing and one thing only.

Trouble.

COTTON GENTLY STROKED THE HORSE’S NECK.

This was not the mount he would ride in the race. That animal was with thecontrada’sgroom back in Siena, who’d kept a constant vigil, day and night, ever since the horse had been selectedthree days ago. The idea was that the animal remain inviolate, protected, not subject to any mischief or mayhem. Eachcontradahad its own veterinarian too. Everything was kept close and in house. The horse he’d just tried, he’d been told, had run in two previous Palios. So it was an excellent trainer.

Camilla had explained that horses were specifically bred for the Palio. No thoroughbreds. Too feisty. Only mixed breeds, trained on tracks similar to Siena’s campo, chosen for their ability not to be spooked by the crowds and thus incur fewer injuries. The only rule? Breeders must reside in Sienese territory or have a substantial attachment to the Palio.

Whatever that meant.