Page 55 of Trickster King

“We have to do the RPS training sessions anyway, so that’s a reasonable request. I’ll do the work for that on my end. Good job on the jump, babe. I know it hurt your feelings that you couldn’t ride in the track races, so I’m glad you got to leave your mark on the horse world somehow—and I mean beyond your rescue efforts and better treatment for retired purse horses. Did Randy and Geoff have kittens?”

“Entire litters. Randy even gave me a safety brief on how not to fall off when in a state of shock I hadn’t fallen attempting the jump.” I grinned, waiting for the laughter I knew would come.

Sure enough, my wife snickered. “There’s a reason for that, Pat. Maybe if you’d stop taking dumb falls from being in shock every time you accomplished something new, your agents wouldn’t be reminding you.”

“You don’t mind I tried it without talking to you about it first?”

“Pat, if I were given the chance, I’d be doing it without hesitation knowing someone might think it through and tell me no. I’m glad you didn’t overthink it.”

“I wanted to fly.”

“Oh, Pat. I’ll see about some track races where you can fly to your heart’s content. Maybe we can try a new category for heavier jockeys. I’ll look into it. If you get upset the Grand Prix is off the docket, come crying to me. I’ll make you feel all better.”

I bet she would. “In your old rooms?”

“Of course. Don’t be silly, Pat.”

I laughed. “I’ll try not to be too broken hearted over it, but I’ll be a little broken hearted. I’ll trick everyone into believing I’m not crying inside that I realistically can’t try for the Grand Prix.”

Technically, I lied. While she said I couldn’t realistically try, I would try regardless—and I’d rope everyone I knew into helping my cause. Keeping the circuits quiet over my participation would be an issue.

Then again, she had pegged me as the Trickster King. Theatrics were a huge part of show jumping, eventing, and every other horse discipline in the world. Perhaps I couldn’t openly ride as Patrick Laycal, King of Texas, but I could ride under a guise, wearing a masquerade mask along with my helmet. Little would hide my build, but I could pick riding clothes nobody would expect me in.

Sometimes, the most effective way to hide was in plain sight.

“Why don’t you ask Randy and Geoff to take you out looking for a good horse. You could try one of the local steeplechase or cross country circuits. That’s close enough to flying, isn’t it? While the race circuits won’t take you, maybe you can slide in on one of the unofficial races? You’re still too heavy for the official races.”

“If I tried to weigh a hundred and forty, I’d resemble a skeleton,” I complained. “But they do have demonstration rides fairly often. Think the regular race circuits would let us heavyset men tear up their precious tracks to drum up attention?”

“I can make some calls for you. I’m sure a little Royal attention will get everyone allowing you to do demonstration rides. It’s not quite the same, but something is better than nothing.”

Yes, it was. And unbeknownst to her, I would still try for the ribbon. It would just take a little more trickery than usual to make it happen. “That would be nice. And it would get us away from work a little more often.”

“It’s obvious we’re both overworked, so we’ll see about adjusting the palace staff and becoming more efficient. I suspect there’s a lot of things we are handling that we don’t need to handle. We just need to know it’s being handled.”

“We could start with expanding our ethics committee to keep our politicians in line. That would remove a lot of general stress, and if we have someone outside of the government working on it, then we can spend that time relaxing.”

While it was only half my fault, we had more ethics work on our desks than either of us appreciated most days of the week.

“A contractor outside of the government? That’s interesting. I think we can wrangle that. We hire contractors to evaluate other parts of our government, so why not ethics? I’ll brainstorm on that while you’re gone. We’ll call it my last hip-hip-hoorah before the food-thieving tyrants have their way with me.”

That would work—and it would give me the time needed to situate things at my new equestrian center, get to know Dynamite a little better, and go shopping for some horses to continue tricking my wife into thinking I was going to be a reasonable man about the Grand Prix. “That sounds good. What’s my budget for the competition horses?”

“We don’t have any trained steeplechasers, and I might have one horse suitable for cross country, so get one of each. Try to keep it to fifty thousand or less, but you can go up to a hundred thousand on a spectacular horse. Honestly? If you can find another great five hundred dollar horse, you’ll do a lot more for the sport than a prissy little purebred.”

Ah. My wife had opinions, and unless I put on the brakes, she’d share all of them with me, resulting in an hour-long rant over horse breeders, purse horses, and the evils of the equine world. “I’m sure this asshole kingdom has some horses on the meat market,” I muttered.

“Asshole kingdom?” My wife snickered. “I’ll allow five rescues in addition to the horses you think will be promising for your competitions. You have the land for them, and I see no reason why you can’t slide in a few extra grain guzzlers. Just breed sufficient meat cattle to make up for the loss of the horse meat.”

That I could do. “I’ll see if the new ranches can let me move forward with some of my breeding projects. Now that we’re doing all right on diverse stock, I want to work on having excellent stock. I want my cattle providing excellent steak for the kingdom.” Once again, my youth reared its ugly head, reminding me of the little my family had growing up. “Excellent steak everyone can enjoy.”

“And if all our cattle stock provides excellent steaks, even the cheaper stores will have good quality meat. There won’t be any low-quality beef in our stores because we’ll produce nothing but excellent cattle. It’s a good plan—and it won’t raise costs at the end of the day, especially if the kingdom is actively expanding the diverse cattle numbers. It’ll take time, but it should work. I’ll see what we might be able to do to get some public funding for the project. I’m sure cattle ranchers would invest in the system in exchange for a set number of cows or bulls.”

“And if we cross breed the diverse cattle with the cattle with low diversity, we can eventually correct that.”

“Right, especially since you’re discouraging inbreeding in our cattle. With other ranchers picking up on the project, we might make good progress. I’ll make a note. Oh, and Pat?”

“Yes?”

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