Page 37 of Trickster King

“These are more perfect than usual.” I nudged the mare forward, and once near Randy, I gave him the stallion’s rope. “Take good care with my boy, Randy.”

“You got it,” he promised, and clicking his tongue, he guided the stallion into the open stable.

“Anything else I should know?”

“Well, considering I have to find a quarantine farm for my new herd, I’ll be delayed coming home.”

“I can live with that. You’re not going to sleep well if you were to leave that to someone else. I’ll tell the children you found Chocolate Cupcake’s parents and that Chocolate Cupcake will have a sibling soon.”

“I gave Eddie first pick of the Akhal-Teke foals. Deidre will get the best of the remaining horses or the one on the way,” I informed my wife. “So, if you want to create mayhem at home, tell Deidre she has to pick a stall for her new horse. The horse will be black.”

“You’re something else, Patrick Laycal.”

I really was. “But you like it.”

“I do, but Deidre’s going to lose her mind.”

“Yes, she will. Especially if she ends up with the one on the way. If the foal doesn’t make it, she’ll get one of the other Akhal-Tekes. We’ll just plan the delivery to be when we expect this mare to drop her foal.”

“Late season foaling,” my wife commented.

“As I said, the owner is old, and I suspect he barely made her fertility window. We’ll have to check the other mares here. The stallion was left unattended in the same pasture. We may have to take certain steps.” At the end of the day, I only cared about having healthy horses, but if the stallion had bred with one of his daughters, we’d have to evaluate if the foal could have a healthy, happy life. At the very minimum, any inbred foals would be barred from breeding. In the case of the males, they’d be gelded to prevent genetic deformities from spreading to other horses.

“He could have been set loose after all the mares were out of season,” my wife reminded me.

“That’s what I’m hoping for, but we’ll need to do our due diligence and check—and you can handle anything necessary.”

She remained silent for a long moment. “You’re actually approving of the procedures?”

“The foal’s health comes first, and if the foal can’t have a reasonable chance at a good life, then we do what we need to do.” The first and last time I’d approved of aborting a foal it had been due to an unexpected pairing of two horses carrying the lethal white gene. The stallion had been a little younger than I preferred to geld, although he’d been gelded upon confirming he carried the gene. After conferring with the vets, the difficult decision had been made to terminate the pregnancy.

Exactly nobody in our home had been willing to watch the colt suffer through a horrific death, not when the tests we’d done confirmed he’d be born white and die within days of birth.

My wife sighed. “And there’s the chance of naked foal syndrome.”

I grimaced, as one of the other conservatory breeders had discovered his lines had the gene. While recessive, when it showed up, the foal suffered until dying several weeks after birth, usually from a skin infection. At most, I’d heard of a diligent owner keeping a horse with the syndrome alive for two years before laminitis-induced pain resulted in the animal being put down out of mercy.

Afterwards, he’d made the difficult decision to geld all his stallions with the gene, further reducing the breeding pool.

Chocolate Cupcake’s genetic tests had come back clean, a relief. “The stallion’s not a carrier, babe. Chocolate Cupcake doesn’t have the gene.”

“Oh. Right. I’d forgotten.” Jessica huffed. “I got focused on the potential consequences and stopped thinking.”

“It’s okay. I think I broke out in a cold sweat thinking about what would happen if one of them carried the gene. I think the animals here are all right, although he has unrelated horses I’ll have to test for the gene.” As I knew my wife would ask, I said, “I don’t see any sign of wobbler’s in the stock here, nor am I seeing any evidence of kissing spine thus far, but I’ve only ridden the one mare.” Kissing spine we could fix with an operation, patience, and money, all of which I’d invest in to give the horse a better chance at a good life. “DSLD is a possibility, but we didn’t see any evidence of it in Chocolate Cupcake. But until we identify the markers for that one, we’ll have to do lameness checks on every horse.” I wouldn’t appreciate the vet bills later, but I’d grit my teeth and bear it with a smile. “They look healthy.”

“You realize we pay the royal vets a salary, right? And that we only pay for supplies for the treatments at cost? This is not as expensive as you are surely thinking it is. We put several vets on salary at the palace because of how much it cost to treat What’s the Story, Morning Glory. The only time we pay the insane bills is when we need specialty equipment or someone with additional expertise—and even then, they usually go to bat for us because you’re a horse-crazed man who might cry if you can’t get the proper care for one of your animals. And for some reason, not a single damned vet in this kingdom can handle you when you’re about to cry because you want to save a horse.”

Busted. “I am a full-grown man, and I can cry when I want to,” I informed her, aware she’d be pleased with my assertiveness.

Randy, on route to the stable, laughed at my commentary as did the collection of RPS agents around.

“I hear you have an audience.”

“It’s just a bunch of pesky RPS agents who have had years shaved off their lives because I drove an SUV today.”

“You can’t trick me, Pat. I have a video of you backing your new truck and trailer in my possession. It was a seriously sexy piece of driving.”

“But did the video get the astonished expressions of everyone around when they realized I can actually drive a truck and trailer?”

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