The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(100)

Might. Would try, if she knew. And might fail.

He was not her guardian. He should go wake her, tell her what had happened. Let the Hand decide what to do.

He stood just past the doorway, his back to the shredded bodies, and did none of that.

“All right, enough,” the judge snapped when someone else tried to ask another question. “There’s not a thing for any of you to do here, unless you’re volunteering for cleanup?” He waited, but when no one volunteered, he waved his hand irritably. “Then get, all of you.” He waited until they began to disperse, then called out, “Possum!” The hut-keeper ambled over from where he’d been crouched by the door, his eyes redder than the day before, his hair and clothing just as tousled and grimy.

“Anything to add to the conversation?” The judge’s voice was just as sharp, but there was a level of respect that hadn’t been there before when he spoke to the others, and Gabriel wondered if there was more to Possum than he’d realized.

“If’n I did, I would have told you.” His gaze flicked back and forth between the two men, and Gabriel wished Isobel were with them so he could ask her if the ward-maker was lying.

“All right. Do you think you’ll be able to clean that mess up?”

“Not enough that we’d ever be able to use it again,” Possum said readily. “Not so much the blood and guts as what was done to ’em.” He sucked at a forefinger, then added, “Living silver done that. Likely have to burn it down and build anew, maybe even dig up the floor, depending how deep it went.”

Gabriel went still and cold.

“Take what you need to make it done,” the judge said, as though he had no understanding of what the old man had just said. “If anyone gives you grief, send them to me.”

Possum grinned at that, showing blunt yellow teeth. “Ain’t no one will give me grief, and you know it. Even if they do feel summer-dumb.” He gave Gabriel a mocking salute, then ambled past him, pushing the rider aside to reach the doorway, and disappeared inside.

“He’s as mad as a magician.” Possum couldn’t have said what Gabriel had heard. He couldn’t have.

“Not nearly, but . . . he’s always been a special one, from the day he was born. But without him, we’d have a harder time of it, keeping the wards intact, so allowances are made.”

The judge took Gabriel’s arm, pulling him gently away from the lockhouse, leaving Possum to do his work unobserved. Most of the crowd had faded away as well, and Gabriel could hear the previously missing sounds begin, noises of a living town going about its day.

“Did you hear what he said?”

“What, about having to burn the hut down and build again? Yeah, that’ll be a hardship, but I’m thinking we got off lightly after—”

“No.” Gabriel interrupted him. “About the living silver.”

“Living silver is a myth, a story natives tell, to explain things they don’t understand. I told you, Possum’s a special one; he believes things like a child. But he’s a fine maker, and I suppose the two may happen together, yes?”

“It’s not a myth.”

“Oh, come now . . . ,” the judge scoffed, then sobered when Gabriel did not laugh. “You’re serious?”

“The miners believe it.”

“Oh, well, miners.” The judge waved a hand as though to dismiss the entire breed.

“And so does the devil.”

The judge placed a hand over his mouth, drawing it down into a fist resting at his chin, his eyes gone distant. “Impossible,” he decided. “Even if such a magic exists, which I’m not saying it does, we’ve little enough silver here among all of us, and all of it forged and still. No, that was only Possum being Possum. I won’t worry about it.”

Gabriel bit his tongue rather than speak the words he was thinking. Silver was a tool, forged and smithed into useful bits, be it a buckle or a button or the coins they carried. But the deepest, most powerful veins? They were more dangerous than a dozen magicians and thrice as unusable. Simply putting pickax to a vein could be enough to destroy the mine itself and everyone within it.

But the judge was right: there were no mines here that he’d ever heard tell of, and living silver could not be shaped or formed to carry anywhere. The judge was likely right: Possum was the sort who’d lead you by the nose for amusement if you let him.

“—about then, I find myself envying you the Road, I don’t mind admitting.” The judge had still been speaking; Gabriel tried to make it seem as though he’d been listening. “And speaking of which—” The judge looked up at the sun just now rising over the eastern wall. “Time we wake our remaining prisoner and send him on his way as well. You’ll be there?”

And that, Gabriel surmised, would close the book on this matter for the judge. One prisoner executed, one condemned to his fate, two magicians dead?—but since he saw no threat to any of his people, the matter was of no further concern.

The worst of it was, Gabriel could not bring himself to blame the man. That was how the Territory worked: you honored the dead and you warded their bones, but you did not linger with their memory.

But Gabriel, for all that he knew better, for all the warnings he’d been given, couldn’t let go so easily. Only two things could destroy a magician: the wind they took their power from or another, stronger magician. And if a wind had taken back its medicine, there would not have been a lockhouse left standing to be blood-splattered.