Much like the moon that hung fat and heavy above the Islands, Balthazar was a mystery to Impazienza. On the surface he seemed like an average horse whose personal history clearly involved violence against him (or, fat and white and luminous, usually found at night and always in the sky). There must be more to him than that however. She’d seen him talking to Black Heart Machine, and anyone who could hold the mercurial attention of her sister was worth a closer look. He had not been sleeping near the other mares of the herd when she roused herself from sleep, and as he was as solitary in some ways as Jezibelle was Impa figured she would find him somewhere at the bottom of the Peak while the stars were out.
The Prime Minister descended the mountain face as she considered her guest. Jezibelle seemed to hold the mutilated stallion in high regard for some reason that the black mare was not privy to, and she was determined to find out what it was about this male that had captured her little sister’s attention. Impa could not fathom why Jezibelle was so taken with the silver black stallion. He was male, for one, and Impa had assumed that after the rape Jezibelle would avoid anyone of the opposite gender. Isn’t that why she had come to the Peak after giving birth to Imp? Perhaps his short stature (at least compared to the draft mares) made him nonthreatening to Jezi. Balthazar was also probably the ugliest creature she had ever laid eyes on. Half blind and missing an ear— eugh. But their temperaments seemed fairly similar, given what little she had seen of the stallion. Both of them were moody, morose even. She was glad only one of them was currently on the Peak, although she worried for her sister often. Impa could not begin to guess where Jezibelle had gone, and right now she did not have the luxury of leaving the Peak to go look for her.
Lengthening her stride as the slope steepened, Impa considered her other worry: Ikari. Her grandsire had promised to visit the Peak again before he left, and while it had not been the most lighthearted of afternoons (cold and rainy, in fact, with discussion of the dysfunction within their family and the revelation that Rurisk had killed Kisei) Impa had enjoyed spending time with the reflective shire. She regretted how little time she had had with him on the Islands— they hadn’t met until she was in permanent residence on the Peak, almost four or five years ago if she recalled correctly. Ikari’s wisdom would have been welcome in the Forest when she was a filly, and Impa wondered how her life would be different if her grandfather had been a part of it since the time she was born.
Maybe Kisei would still be alive.
She tossed her head and snorted. They had spoken two seasons ago and she had expected Ikari’s return by now. It bothered her that he had not told her where he intended to go when not on her mountain. Not that it mattered: she could not afford to go looking for him right now, either. It seemed her family was destined to scatter while she drove her roots even deeper into the Peak. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing— Impa glanced around herself as she neared the base of the mountain and smiled. It was hard not to love the mountain. Copses of evergreens grew on its face and wildflowers punctuated the yellow-green grass with bright colors. Higher up was a glassy lake, so pure a blue that Impa felt like she was staring down into the sky when she looked at it sometimes. The air was crisp and clean and each day the black mare woke feeling revived.
She might have been happy, too, had she not been considering the betrayal of her brother against their family. His rage against Kisei had been justified— Impa would not suggest otherwise when she had a chance to confront him. But to murder another horse? The stallion who had a part in giving them life? And, according to Jezibelle, he had been defenseless. Rurisk's actions were unforgiveable, and Impa had every intent of making him apologize next time she saw him. If not for his selfish idea that murdering Kisei was acceptable, their father might still be alive.
And Impa might have finally gotten closure to the wound her father had inflicted on her heart when she was three.
On top of the drama produced by her family were thoughts of a delicately boned buckskin tobiano, thoughts that flushed Impa's body with heat if she considered the mare for too long. Zhenya. A horse she longed to seek out more than even her sister, brother, or grandsire, but one that she had even less freedom to pursue.
Consumed by her thoughts, Impa felt the earth beneath her trotting hooves begin to level at the same time a high-pitched squeal shattered the stillness of the night. Her response was immediate and unconscious: her legs stretched to pull her into a gallop and she charged the rest of the way down the Peak and came upon two stallions locked chest to chest on her mountain. Propelled by gravity and her own considerable bulk, the half-blind mare barely had time to register that one of the horses grappling in the dark was Balthazar and angle herself toward the other stallion.
She dug her hind hooves into the earth and lifted her front feet off the ground as she collided with a grunt against the stranger, getting mud on her left knee as it hit his slick shoulder and dirtying her chest against his muddy neck as she fell into his body to stop her charge. Impa hit the ground hard with her front feet as she tried to avoid stumbling and felt the shock in her knees. She was not young anymore, able to abuse her body with little to no consequences, but neither was she so old that the action would disable her. It would hurt when she stopped moving and maybe ache more than usual in the morning, but for now it sent a sharp spike of adrenaline through her heart as she pressed forward to use her weight against the stallion. If, as she hoped, running into him had knocked him off balance, she could bear down on him and possibly make him fall.
Her goal had been to drive him away from the disfigured stallion, and, feeling she had achieved that, Impazienza backed up a step and turned to put Balthazar fully on her blind side. She stood in front of the silver black stallion as a wall of living defiance to any retaliation or aggression the stranger might have for her or Balthazar. Her left ear flicked toward the male she protected while the rest of her attention zeroed in on the intruder. She addressed the stranger in a voice as cold and unyielding as the stone mountain at her back:
“Your name, stallion, and your purpose: state them now or I will drive you off this Peak with deaf ears and eager teeth.”
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IMPAZIENZA