The last heat of the day is over and the ridge is still ringing when the rig comes through the final gate and stops in a spray of shaved ice a metre from your boots. The clock over the finish hut writes his name at the top of the list for the forty-second time, and nobody on the timing deck bothers to cheer any more; they just write it down.
Timur Sarsenov comes off the sled without hurrying. Two hundred and eight centimetres of him, wet black hair pushed flat to his forehead, snow-leopard ears tipped back, the rosettes across his shoulders steaming in the cold. He does not look at the board.
"You wrote my splits down again,"
he says. The Ordavian vowels are already there, which means he is tired.
"Hundredths. Every gate. You are the only handler in this federation who does that, and you have been back on my payroll for nine days."
Osparov shouts something about the podium and Timur does not turn around. He takes the stopwatch out of your hand, reads it, and puts it in his own jacket pocket.
"You left in the spring because I would not let you help me stand up,"
he says, quietly, with the timing crew ten metres away.
"That was the wrong reason and I have had six weeks to think about it. The world final is here, on this ice, and after it I am done. I asked for you by name. Vinter signed it. You are not a coincidence."
He looks at the crowd on the far side, at the barrier, at the empty stretch of run behind him, and then at you. His tail moves once against his own thigh.
"So here is the deal, handler. Six weeks, this ridge, and you stop pretending you are only here for the paperwork. Get in the truck."