Sixth lap. Diana lets the reins through her fingers another few precious inches and the Anemoi respond like a sixteen-legged machine, flying up alongside the Blues. Eight horses, nose to nose, and then Diana abandons all caution and opens them up. They flick past the Blues in an instant, and before Derricus can stir up his own team the turn is on them. The Blues are hugging the spina and have to slow down or crash, but Diana takes the turn at reckless speed in the middle of the track, sawing ruthlessly on Boreas, and he hunches his broad neck and scrabbles almost horizontally at the sand to give her the speed she wants. She loses ground on the turn but the Reds are still ahead by a nose as they flash past the Imperial box, the blood bays in their blue harness clawing grimly on the inside.

Last lap.

Derricus pulls even, shouting something, but Diana never looks at him. All she can see are the four red noses stretched ahead of her, the smooth red bands of rein spinning back into her blistered hands, which are now breaking open inside her gauntlets. Her waist is a circle of pain from the knotted reins, the horses are cutting her in half and her arms are on fire holding them, but she’s laughing behind her helmet as she at last gives the Anemoi their heads.

The Blues keep up for a moment, and Diana can see Derricus’s startled black hole of a mouth. Does he know who I am now? Maybe he does, but then the first turn comes and Boreas digs savagely into it and drags the others with him, and as they pull onto the straightaway they settle in next to the spina because the Blues are gone and it’s just the Reds in front, the Reds all the way to the finish, and nothing will ever catch them. Diana knows she should pull them up, try to conserve their speed—they keep running like this, they won’t be fit to race again for months. But they have the bits in their teeth; she couldn’t stop them even if she wanted to. And she doesn’t want to. She wants them to run forever, to run the Blues into a ruined oblivion. She steers them into the final turn, neat and tight against the spina as Llyn taught her, and then she leans forward and snaps the reins against their backs. Boreas stumbles, tiring, but fleet Zephyrus jumps out against his harness on the outside, pulling the others along, and they streak down the final stretch all alone, four red winds flying to eternity.