Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (41 page)

Gabriel turned to look at her. “Put the knife away, Isobel. I doubt it would have much use on him, anyway.”

“Unless she meant to use it on you?” The magician grinned again at Gabriel’s look, wrinkles forming around his sleepy-looking eyes, his teeth too white, too sharp-looking for comfort. Izzy slid the knife back into its sheath, feeling oddly reluctant to return it to her pack.

Gabriel might or might not trust Farron, but she was suddenly unsure if she trusted either one of them just then, that they were so easily brought down by the faintest touch of the wind. With the feel of the earth still beating against her bare soles and the memory of what she had seen and felt at Clear Rock lingering, she wondered how one might tell the difference between a good wind and an ill one, how she could trust anything.

She looked down at her palm, traced the sigil with one finger. Gabriel had made a deal with the devil, made an agreement to protect her, in exchange for . . . something. She could trust him same as she’d trust the boss. Couldn’t she?

The feeling of uncertainty was unpleasant. She didn’t like it at all.

Izzy went back to her bedroll, placing the knife down on top of her blanket. She tried not to think about the sweat that had dried on her skin: the creek Gabriel had found was barely large enough to refill canteens; she had no desire to try and wash her body in it. Shaking her hair out of its braid, she ran her fingers through the length before braiding it back up again, the feathers Calls Thunder had given her woven again into the plait, hanging just under her ear, over her shoulder. She let her fingers linger over the spines of the feathers and
remembered Gabriel’s words: Calls Thunder had given them to her as a sign of respect. They were meant to give honor.

The Hinonoeino dream-talker had thought her worth respect and honor.

She slipped a dress on over her chemise, lacing it closed, then drew on her stockings and—after checking to make sure nothing had crawled into them overnight—her boots. Then she rolled her kit back up, and brought it over to where the horses were waiting. By then, Gabriel had the fire started, and the first bittersweet smell of coffee had replaced that hint of fresh water in the air.

“So, where are we heading now?” she asked, sitting down to wait for the coffee to be ready. He handed her an apple, slightly mushy but still edible, and she ate it, waiting for his answer.

“I’d thought to head north after seeing Graciendo,” he said slowly. “Originally, take you up to the Lakota and their kin. I’ve friends there, and they’ve enough sway among other tribes—willing and otherwise—that they would be useful for you to know.”

“Not now?”

He glanced sideways at the magician, who was moving through some sort of slow movements, like knife practice without a knife, away from the fire. “Things have changed. Devorah said there was trouble south of us. And the storm you saw coming in, it came over the Mother’s Knife, right?”

She nodded, chewing and swallowing before answering. “Yes.”

“That’s here”—he drew a wavering line in the dirt with his finger. “The Territory extends here”—he drew another line—“and here”—the line bent away from the first line at an angle. “Devorah was here. There hasn’t been any noise of unrest we’ve heard, north of here”—his finger rested on a spot in the dirt.

“We haven’t been that far north,” Izzy said, squinting at the makeshift map and trying to place the spots in her own mind with actual locations. “I think.”

“You tell me, then. Is the storm north of us?”

She looked at him, but he was completely serious. He expected her to be able to tell where the wrongness was, simply by . . . looking?

She touched the feathers in her braid again, just the pad of two fingers against their raspy softness. She was the one who’d told him she had to know. She was the one who’d demanded they deal with this. Either she could do it or she couldn’t, but dithering accomplished nothing.

She rested her palm on the dirt, pressing the sigil to the ground, and reached for that humming sensation again. Doubt filled her: the boss had ignored her earlier calls, so why should now be any different? She might be able to sense the road, but that was nothing; Gabriel said anyone could do it. He was the one who knew the Territory, could sense water, was—

“Iz.” His fingers rested lightly on her shoulder, his voice barely audible. “Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. You know how to read this.”

Where she couldn’t quite trust herself, she could trust his belief, maybe?

The connection didn’t so much reach out to meet her as it drew her down into it, settling her, spreading her out. Her skin felt rough, her bones soft; her vision darkened but she did not feel blind. She remembered the feel of the storm, the
wrongness
, the hunger of the thing at Clear Rock, the worry in the eyes of Calls Thunder, and searched the humming for something that echoed that, something that called, like to like.

The connection faltered, shied away, and Izzy forced herself to reach for it, holding and stretching to find the faintest glimmers. Part of her resisted that stretch, knotted tight, overwhelmed. She petted the knot, calmed it. A grim determination filled her, refusing the uncertainty, the doubt. If she was to be a tool, if she was to be a pawn, let her be one, but let her do it properly. Let her claim what power was hers to use, and use it.

There. Her skin shuddered, the unease that was never far gone roaring back to life before she sidestepped, ducked, danced out of its
way with her heart beating too fast, her skin sheened with sweat from the effort.

“West,” she said softly, forcing Gabriel to lean forward to hear her. “Southwest, deep and high.” Her eyes opened, and she stared at him, inches away, without seeing him. “That’s where it is. It’s spreading, cracking. . . . Feeding.”

She was missing something, forgetting something, but to remember would be to go closer, lose herself in the strangeness, and she didn’t dare, couldn’t dare, not with that hunger crackling around her.

“Will you know it when you see it?” Farron had joined them at some point, standing away and to the side but close enough to hear.

“Yes,” she said, certain.

Gabriel stood up. “Then let’s go.”

Gab
riel spoke briefly to Farron, their voices a low, unintelligible, background rumble. Izzy rested her chin on her hands, her elbows on her knees, until she felt Gabriel’s hands on her shoulder again, helping her rise. Unlike previous times, the nearly overwhelming, dizzying sense of connection lingered, only beginning to fade when she was back in Uvnee’s saddle, leather reins in her fingers and solid horse under her legs. She felt it go with relief. If that was what Farron felt, even a hint of it, and he carried it with him all the time? No wonder magicians went mad. She thought of Calls Thunder again, of his eyes, the boss’s eyes, and wondered suddenly what her own looked like now.

She thought she probably should be scared, but she was too tired, worn to the bone. Worn
into
the bone.

Uvnee following Steady without any direction from her rider, Farron walking with his easy long-stride pace along the mare’s right side. He did not touch her or the mare, and she was thankful. They traveled in silence, even the magician’s usual inane remarks muted.

Izzy rubbed the mark in her palm, staring down at it as though it
would resolve into something new if she watched it long enough. But it remained the same familiar sigil, thick black lines curved and flourished in the flesh.

Flood seemed so far away now, a life that belonged to someone else. The girl she’d been would never have understood the sick fear Izzy felt, the ashen taste in her mouth when she thought of Widder Creek, the way her bowels tightened when she thought about facing the thing that had destroyed Clear Rock again, knowing that she would have to, that it was her responsibility now. Whatever she had thought, whatever the boss had planned, none of that mattered. The Territory needed her to do things.

There were more pieces here, things Izzy knew she was seeing, but she couldn’t recognize yet what they meant, and she was afraid to dig too deeply, afraid to rattle free anything more. One more thought, one more weight, and her bones might crack too.

She wished she’d been able to talk with Calls Thunder; they seemed to understand the boss, recognize him. Maybe they could tell her what she was feeling, what she had become.

She nudged that thought, let it creep closer to her, breathed steadily as it made itself at home, sunk into her shoulders and down her spine, dropping into her knees, her feet, her fingers. She wasn’t Izzy anymore, not entirely. Not the girl who’d sewn ribbons into her best dress or folded linens, but still the girl who’d studied strangers while they studied their cards. Still the girl who’d watched the sunrise and shared morning coffee with the devil. And
she
had been the girl who folded linens, so wasn’t she still that same girl, too?

Izzy was so caught up in her thoughts, it took her too long to realize something else had changed.

She moved her mare closer to Steady, letting them match pace for a few strides before she spoke. “It’s back.”

Her mentor didn’t look up, his body comfortably sunk into the saddle, brim of his hat low down over his eyes, his hands relaxed on the reins. “I know.”

Farron increased his stride to join them. “What’s back?”

“Nothing,” Gabriel said.

“Something’s been following us,” Izzy said. Now was no time to be holding back information, not when the magician might be able to give them answers. Although she wondered at the fact that he couldn’t sense it too. . . .

Apparently, he couldn’t. “Something other than me? I’m most put out.”

The look Gabriel shot the magician would have reduced most folk to silence. Farron made a face and held up his hands in surrender. “Tell me more.”

“It’s not . . . that.” Not the thing that had consumed Clear Rock, had chased her from that place. “It feels different,” Izzy said. “We thought it was a dust-dancer at first or maybe a demon. Before we went up into the mountains. But neither one of those would follow us all the way here, would it?”

“Dancers? Barely aware, distracted far too easily. A day they might lurk, but no more. And you, little rider? You’d send them running like a thunderstorm.”

She thought he was trying to be reassuring. He wasn’t.

“And demon . . .” The magician took that more seriously. “They do not roam willingly and rarely go long without causing some mischief. We would have known by now if they had your scent.”

“How long did you follow us?” Gabriel asked. “You said you’d been waiting for us. . . .” He tilted his head and stared at the magician.

“For her, rider, only for her. And only once you entered Clear Rock,” Farron said. “And after, of course, once I was myself again. But I intended no harm. I misdoubt this new unease you feel is me—that discomfort should be an old friend to you by now.” He shook his head in mock sadness. “You must look to another for this determined affection.”

Izzy remembered the feeling of being watched she’d felt in the mountains, how it had felt different from before, and nodded once.

Gabriel saw the nod but didn’t back down. “You haven’t noticed anything dogging us?” Izzy could hear the challenge in Gabriel’s voice, the assumption that the magician was not as alert nor as powerful as he claimed, or that he had sensed it and not told them. But it was a fair question, and she stilled her immediate instinctive urge to smooth things between them, waiting on the magician’s answer.

“I have only dogged you once.” And Farron showed his teeth in that disturbingly toothy grin of his, then went on. “The winds show me everything, rider. Every pulse in the air, every ripple in the stone, each twitch of flesh. But to separate it out into specifics requires focus, and you have given me nothing to focus
for
.” He sobered, his eyes unexpectedly sane for a moment. “And now you know more of my medicine than any who have not paid the wind’s price, Gabriel Kasun. Do you wish to learn more?”

They both stopped, staring at each other. Gabriel did not blink away from the magician’s gaze, but the way he wetted his lips showed his discomfort, and Steady tossed his head, clearly not wanting to be caught between the two of them.

“Stop it,” she said, breaking into their standoff. “We have no time for this, either of you.”

“Truth, little rider,” Farron said. He blinked once, deliberately, less surrender than truce, then turned to her, resuming his walking pace. “So, what shall we do about this unwanted interloper?”

“You mean the
other
unwanted interloper?”

“I say we do nothing,” Izzy said, ignoring Gabriel’s taunt and hoping Farron would do the same. “Whatever it is, it hasn’t harmed us. It’s just watching. We shouldn’t provoke it. Like riding near a bear,” she said over her shoulder to Gabriel. “Just acknowledge and ride on?”

“Allowing a potential enemy to get within range seems counterwise,” the magician said. “And yet, as you say, lingering at a distance shows no immediate malice. . . . Might it be a local hunter, displeased at our overlarge feet and too-loud voices scaring game away?” His tone clearly indicated that it was they who were too loud, not him.