aKIDcalledCUBAN

aKIDcalledCUBAN walked into Champions Court on a bright cold morning and left the main track within a minute. The track was the obvious way, wide and white-lined and full of Beasts running hard. But off to one side a row of benches ran along under the fence, and that looked more interesting.

It was Recovery Row, where rivals sit after a race with their legs in buckets of cold water, not quite talking to each other. aKIDcalledCUBAN walked the whole length of it, stopwatch bumping on its cord. At the far end a Hare sat alone on the step with two cups of tea.

“One’s for whoever sits down,” the Hare said. “Kip Morrell. Late Lights.”

aKIDcalledCUBAN sat down. The tea was strong.

Kip had lost three hundred and twelve races and shaken hands on every one. In the Court that matters. A race both runners shake on is settled for good: right hand, eyes up, say the margin, and nobody can argue with it ever again. Kip was proud of all three hundred and twelve. Today they only wanted one afternoon with nobody asking about a rematch.

So they didn’t talk about rematches. They guessed the lap times of the runners on the track and checked them against aKIDcalledCUBAN’s stopwatch. Kip lost that too, cheerfully, by a lot.

“Three hundred and thirteen,” Kip said. “Don’t tell Old Twelve.”

Old Twelve was up at the Scoreboard, the only decorated thing in the whole bare, open Court. Every result was painted on it by hand, wins and losses side by side. An Original with a stiff wrist stood on a stepladder in front of it, squinting at the top rows, where the paint had gone pale as old chalk.

“Those are mine,” Kip said, and stopped joking for about a breath.

Old Twelve had painted that board for forty years. Two coats for a win, one for a loss, and losses dry faster. They wanted every one of Kip’s losses readable by first frost, but the top rows had faded faster than one wrist could keep up. The sun was climbing. Once the full light hit the board, wet paint would dry streaky.

“I’ll carry the pot,” Kip said, already up. “It’s my name up there. I can at least get paint on myself.”

“Then I’m coming too,” aKIDcalledCUBAN said. They’d said they would do the next thing together, and this was it.

aKIDcalledCUBAN held the ladder. Kip held the pot. Old Twelve painted, slow and exact, rinsing the brush in a plain water jar with a chipped rim. They were behind, and anyone could see it.

Halfway through, Old Twelve held the brush down to aKIDcalledCUBAN. “Base coat. Row nine. Just lay it in.”

aKIDcalledCUBAN wanted that brush more than anything all morning. A line on that board would still be there long after they were gone. But Kip stood on the grass with the pot, looking up, and a new hand is a slow hand.

aKIDcalledCUBAN took the brush. Then they reached down for Kip’s elbow.

“Come up. Hold the pot by me.”

Kip climbed the other side of the stepladder, and aKIDcalledCUBAN laid one thin coat over a loss from years ago while Kip read out the margin underneath, a hand’s width, and laughed at themselves for remembering it.

It was slower than Old Twelve would have been. Old Twelve watched, said nothing, then said, “Even. Good,” and took the brush back for row ten.

aKIDcalledCUBAN climbed down with navy paint on one glove and kept looking back at row nine. They had made it with their own hands, on somebody else’s loss, with that somebody right beside them. It would be there at first frost. It would probably be there a long time after.

At dusk Bo Castillo stood at Gaia Grove’s boundary post with a crate of lamps, handing them out the way some Beasts hand out breakfast. One lamp each, one post number each. Every night since the stretches started going dark, Late Lights had run the old road like this, a runner at every post, word shouted down the line, so anyone cut off out there could follow the lights home.

Kip took post eleven, a lamp, and a second upturned crate, which they tucked under one arm.

“For you,” Kip said. “Best seat on the Meadows road. There’s a bean.”

There was. Gaia Grove’s pale beans climbed the first fourteen posts, and the one at eleven had already leaned round to look at aKIDcalledCUBAN, which takes some getting used to.

aKIDcalledCUBAN had meant to sit on that crate. They’d said they would do the next thing together, and they’d meant it. But all the way out, aKIDcalledCUBAN kept looking back at the Court, at the far end of the Main Track where the south lamps stood over the finish line. A chain is only as good as where it ends. Somebody coming in off the road at four in the morning ought to arrive somewhere, not just stop walking.

So aKIDcalledCUBAN asked Bo which lamp mattered most.

Bo didn’t pretend to think about it. “The last one. Nobody walks home to the first.” They held out a spare lamp and a scrap of card with a number on it. It wasn’t a post number. “That’s the line. Keep it.”

Kip had heard. Kip set the second crate down beside their own, square and empty, and sat on theirs.

“Go on,” Kip said. “Keep the lamps. I’ll save your seat. Lovely crate. Hardly been sat on.” They were grinning. “Go.”

aKIDcalledCUBAN went.

The Court at night was a different place. The stands were dark, the grass was wet, and the south lamps hummed over the finish line with moths knocking at the glass. Way off at the other end, the Scoreboard was a black shape, except for one pale patch low down where the lamplight just reached: row nine, still new.

aKIDcalledCUBAN checked every lamp, topped up the two that needed it, then knelt and chalked the finish line fresh, white from one edge of the track to the other. They set the stopwatch for twenty minutes. Round the lamps, back to the line, again.

In the Court a finish line usually means a race, a handshake and a margin, and Old Twelve painting the result. Not tonight. A walker coming in wasn’t beating anybody. The line was just there to be crossed.

The first one came a little after midnight, a Panda in a borrowed blanket, with a Late Lights runner jogging beside them. A handful of Late Lights runners had stayed late to train for the cup, and they stood up in the stands and cheered. The Panda stepped over the chalk and stopped, looking down at it, as if they hadn’t expected anyone to have drawn them anything.

Bo came in behind them, notebook already out. “Which post?”

“Nine, I think.”

Bo wrote it down.

The line was scuffed where the feet had crossed. aKIDcalledCUBAN chalked it again.

Two more came before three, one near five. Every time, aKIDcalledCUBAN knelt and drew the line fresh. Their hands cracked from the chalk. The navy glove went white, then whiter. Every round, they looked down the dark road past the fence toward the Meadows road and post eleven, and couldn’t see it. Kip was out there on one crate with a bean for company and the other crate empty. Kip had said go and meant it, most likely. Kip had also sat alone on Recovery Row once, with two cups of tea, waiting for whoever would sit down.

Before first light, Morning Court’s dawn lane markers lay rolled and waiting by the fence. aKIDcalledCUBAN’s line ran straight across the spot where Sunny’s start line would go in an hour. Nobody had complained yet.

The road beyond the fence was still dark. Somebody might still be on it.

aKIDcalledCUBAN knelt, blew the old dust off, and drew the line again.