Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (48 page)

Isobel knew she was dreaming. She walked slowly through a meadow of water, grassheads swaying lazily in the ripples, making the small creatures swimming at her feet flicker and turn. Voices whispered past her, high and low, dry and soft. The sky was pale grey overhead, the cry of Reaper hawks and eagles distant, unseen. On the banks, something stood, moved, was gone.

She was alone, utterly alone. The winds did not speak to her, the sun did not warm her; her flesh felt loose on her bones, and her bones felt soft, crumbling under every step until she was not sure where she ended and the water began. She was not afraid. She was not curious. She was not . . . anything.

“What am I?”

Her voice stilled the water, silenced the birds, hushed the winds.

“Boss, what have I become?”

No familiar voice answered her. She was alone.

Following impulse, she sank to her knees, letting the water rush over her, small forms bumping softly against her knees and elbows, until the
water reached her shoulders, only her chin and face exposed. Her hair ran loose, strands floating on the current, weighing the back of her head down until her back arched, feeling the stretch from her calves to her neck, and yet somehow she was as comfortable as she’d ever been sleeping in her own bed, down feathers and worn, familiar quilt.

The water chilled her skin, then warmed it again, the grey sky soothing when she opened her eyes. All sense of self disappeared, and she
was
the water, rushing over herself, taking bits away and replacing them with others.

Knowing this was a dream, she knew she should be afraid. Instead, she let the water fill her. Running water, to interrupt any conjure, disrupt any spell, even as it cast its own on her, washing her away until there was nothing left, no Izzy, no Isobel, no née Lacoyo Távora, no Hand, only water rushing over bone.

She woke to the smell of coffee and the low murmur of men’s voices.

Isobel opened her eyes, and the sky was pale blue, sparked by gold where the sun stretched its rays. No clouds this morning; another dry day. She sat up slowly, feeling every muscle in her body protest as though she had ridden hard all night, her bones oddly numb.

She remembered her dream and clenched her fingers against her palm as though to enclose the mark there. She did not know what it meant, did not know what she was to take from it, and she wished fiercely for the boss’s soothing voice and unchanging eyes, or Marie’s warm touch and stern tones to set her right.

But she had only herself.

“Here.” She took the mug that was offered her, only realizing after the fact that it was not Gabriel but Farron who offered it. She took a sip, feeling the hot bitterness pull her back to flesh, and smiled her thanks.

The magician did not smile back. There were shadows under his eyes, his thin mouth flattened. “Our sleepers have awakened,” he said. “You’ll need to deal with them.”

Panic fluttered briefly under her breastbone. “How?”

He smiled then, but it didn’t reach the rest of his face, nor did it mock. “I have no idea, little rider. Your man wouldn’t let me kill them, so”—he shrugged—“they are your problem now.”

He turned away, leaving her with the coffee and the problem of getting dressed with strangers only a few yards away. She raised her chin at the one man who was looking at her, waiting until he ducked his head and turned away, then reached for her clothing, refusing to be hurried or shamed.

She held their fate in her hand. She would not allow them to make her discomforted.

Clothing properly adjusted, her hair finger-combed and rebraided, the feathers smoothed and reknotted into her braid, she knocked a spider from one boot and pulled them on, then joined the men by the fire.

“Good morning,” she said, as civil as though they’d met in proper surroundings like proper folk. She tilted her mug in Gabriel’s direction, and he refilled it from the pot. The Spaniards had their own brew, she noted, not coffee but a tisane that made her nose twitch with its astringent smell. “You will be traveling with us for a while,” she informed the leader, turning to him even as she spoke. His expression was one of surprise and anger, quickly hidden.

“You may not—”

“I may,” she said firmly. “Your companion has convinced me that your intent was . . . not intentionally harmful. But I do not trust you on these roads, and I cannot trust you to return home. So, you will come with us, as we seem to have a shared interest in tracking down the root of this malice and digging it out.”

“We are—”

Gabriel stood up, drawing the man’s attention away from her. His hand rested on his belt, not on his blade, but the threat was clear. “You are intruders here. Strangers. And at risk from things you cannot, will not understand. We would have slit your throats while you slept.
Only her presence has kept you alive. Be gracious if you remember how.”

She had never thought he could look so cold, his eyes narrowed, dark curls slicked back with water, weeks of exhaustion honing his face to stone. In the friar’s place, she too would have backed down.

“My name is Isobel,” she said, once the friars’ leader—Bernardo, she remembered—finished spluttering. “Will you give me your parole, or need we chain you?”

His color still high, Bernardo nodded once in acknowledgment, then said in precisely spoken English, “You have my parole, for myself and my brothers.”

They would not attempt to escape, nor to harm the three of them. More than that, she would not trust. The preachermen she’d encountered in Flood had all sworn obedience to their god before any other oath, and she didn’t think these would be any different.

“You were heading east with purpose—do you have a way to track the spell?”

When Bernardo looked away, shifty-eyed, Isobel’s temper broke, her words hard and precise as his own. “You will answer me when I ask a question, Churchman.”

His gaze flickered down first. “We were given a way,” he said, and reached into his pocket inside his robe, pulling out a brass-and-wood object the length of his hand.

“A Rittenhouse compass?” Gabriel huffed a laugh. “I would not have taken you for a surveyor, Brother.”

“It is bespelled,” Farron said, eyeing it the way a child might a mouse found unexpectedly on the table, torn between brushing it away or luring it closer.

“It brings us to the strongest point of disturbance,” Bernardo said, his grip tightening on the object as though he could feel the magician’s interest.

“Disturbance, hey?” Farron leaned back against the air, now looking decidedly unimpressed. “And what were you to do once you found that disturbance? Pray at it?”

“Farron,” Isobel said gently, just his name, but it was enough to haul him back.

He crossed his arms and looked unimpressed at her. “They’re fools, young rider. You know what happens to fools here.”

She ignored him with the ease of growing practice, looking back at Bernardo. “And there is a disturbance ahead?”

“Yes.” He looked at the mechanism. “It has been two days. I will need to take new readings.”

“Of course.” She gestured for him to continue but made no move to give him the privacy he clearly wanted. The man thought her a fool, a child, or worse: a woman, with no right to command him. He would have taken orders more easily from Farron, for all that he was the very sort of creature his Church preached against.

No traveler dared speak of it while at the devil’s tables, but after a few drinks, late at night, she had heard the stories. How the Church called the boss evil, claimed he sullied immortal souls, tempted people into wrongdoing, was the root of all sin in the world. Isobel, even as a child, had known that was foolishness. Desire and greed, and all those other things, they were just what people felt. The boss didn’t make anyone do that; they did it themselves.

But Gabriel had been right: they’d burn Flood to the ground if they had their way, and call it a cleansing.

And yet, these men had given her their parole. She was obligated to protect them. She thought that perhaps that was what stuck in Bernardo’s craw more than any other. That he had been forced to accept the protection of a woman, in this land.

She felt no pity for him.

He stood and made a three-quarter turn, holding the instrument flat. She was curious, but not enough to crowd in to see what he was doing; she had the thought that the less she asked, the more he would eventually let slip.

“I’m going to see what supplies these idiots brought with them,” Gabriel said quietly. “I’ll wager it’s not enough to keep them decently
fed. Don’t suppose Farron’s got a deer or two up his sleeve?”

“I doubt they would touch any food I brought to them,” he said. “Devil-spawn, don’t you know.”

“They’ll eat or they’ll go hungry,” she said. “Churchers are all about the mortification of the flesh, aren’t they?”

Farron shrugged, an elegant motion, and turned away, unlike Isobel choosing to move closer to the friar, shadowing him close enough to be obnoxious. Isobel thought about calling Farron off, thought about the probability that he would simply ignore her, and decided to leave them be for now. The friar seemed intent enough on his work; he might not even have noticed the attention.

“Blast it, you’ve bewitched it!”

Or perhaps he had.

The magician danced back, his long legs practically folding backward to evade the friar, who took a frustrated swing at him with the hand not holding the instrument.

“I haven’t touched the thing,” Farron said. “Perhaps your own incompetence fouls it, or you’ve simply forgotten its use and measure?” He leaned forward as though to look more closely at the device. “I hear tell that such instruments read the souls of their users and, if found lacking, will refuse all service to them. . . .”

The friar growled, a noise that should not come from a grown man, and launched himself at the magician, seeming heedless of the instrument still in his grip. Caught off guard—clearly not expecting a physical attack—Farron landed on his back, the friar over him, fist pulled back to deliver a blow to his face, when Gabriel and another monk appeared at his back, hauling him off with no little force.

“Brother!” The second friar sounded scandalized, even as he was taking the compass from Bernardo’s hand. “What has come over you? These people—”

“That is not a person; that is a dust-clotted hellspawn creature, and the compass will not work in its presence!”

The second friar looked at the instrument as though expecting it to speak to him. “It might have been damaged . . .”

“It is that creature! See how it works now—”

Gabriel stepped forward, and Bernardo’s jaw clamped shut. “And you, away from me!”

Gabriel stopped in his tracks.

“Do not touch me, do not come closer. In daylight, I see your sins writ on your skin. You are demon-touched, hell-spawned, and the blessing will not work in your presence.”

“Isobel,” Gabriel said dryly, stepping away from the man before he began to froth or attack him as well, “we seem to have a problem.”

Isobel walked closer, eyeing the friar carefully, but he seemed disinclined to lash out at her, at least. “Gabriel, take Farron and go find us something to eat for supper,” she said.

“But—”

“It’s all right.” She understood that he didn’t want to leave her alone; she did not particularly wish to be left alone. “They have given their parole; they will not harm me.”

The friar was muttering at his instrument now, turning in a half circle to the left, then again to the right, seemingly oblivious now that Gabriel and Farron were no longer too close.

“I will go with them,” Manuel said, joining the group, “so each party has a hostage.”

“You ever hunt before?” Gabriel asked, half challenge, half honest question.

“I was not always a man of God,” Manuel said, his eyes showing amusement. “I can be trusted not to scare away game or ruin a shot.”

Isobel nodded at them, and the three men moved off, pausing only for Gabriel to claim his carbine and load it. She had no idea what sort of weapons Farron or Manuel might use, but her worries were more for the man still in front of her.

“If you touch my people again,” she said quietly, as though they
were discussing the weather, “I will cut off your hands and leave you with bleeding stumps.”

The look Bernardo gave her was colder than frost, but he merely nodded. So long as they understood one another.

He turned the instrument and adjusted something, then stilled.

“What do you see?”

“It hasn’t moved since the last sounding,” he said, and the look he turned to her now was wide-eyed, less afraid than exhilarated, as though the very nearness of the thing thrilled him. “It waits for us.”

Th
e longer he spent in the friars’ company, the more Gabriel’s skin itched. Although he couldn’t blame them, not entirely. Every step he had taken since Flood seemed to have scraped something from him, some layer of skin flaking without notice, leaving him raw and exposed. But he’d said nothing of this. He was Isobel’s mentor; she needed him to be certain, strong. Dependable.

Hunting—moving quietly, working as much on instinct as planning—was oddly soothing, and neither friar nor the magician did anything to ruin Gabriel’s calm.