The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(104)

He waited until her legs softened around the mare’s sides and her mouth eased, and she smiled when a gold-and-blue butterfly chased itself around the mare’s ears before flitting off into the grass.

“You killed the magicians, didn’t you.”

He had chosen not to watch her as he spoke, keeping his gaze between Steady’s ears, watching the soft brown flesh twitch back and forth, pleased to be back on the road as well. Her laughter might have sounded true to someone who did not know her.

“You can’t kill a magician. They just . . . come back. Remember?”

He had almost missed her impudence, in all this, and chose to consider its return a good thing. He took two breaths, waited four soft clops of Steady’s hooves, before he looked over. Her fingers hadn’t tightened on the reins, and her body remained open and calm. Her braid was curled over her shoulder, the feathers braided into it fluttering as she moved with her mare, the two of them practically one beast, the way a proper rider should be. Her profile, shadowed under the brim of her hat, showed no hint of a smile, but neither was she frowning, and when she felt his gaze on her, she turned and met it, square and unafraid.

She had spent her childhood at the devil’s knee; he couldn’t bluff his way past her. So, he took a different approach. “You were not pleased with the judge’s decision to let them go free.”

“Neither were you.”

“No. I wasn’t. But I had no ability to prevent it. To prevent them from doing as they would once they were free.” His throat was dry, and he reached for the canteen slung at his saddle, taking a long swig before going on. “You stopped them.”

“Were you the one who told the Americans to approach magicians?”

Her question was so quiet, he almost didn’t understand the words, or the intent behind it. “What? I—”

“That letter that was in the waystation box for you. It came across the river. Good paper, ink that didn’t fade. The boss uses ink like that, and pays well for it. So, someone with money. Over there, you said, money means power.” He saw her shoulders rise in a slight shrug. “I’m guessing that people with that kind of power aren’t that different from magicians. They want more. And . . .”

“And the Territory, to certain people, reeks of power, both the money kind and . . . other,” he finished for her. “Yes.” He could lie to her, but he would not.

“Why?”

That hadn’t been the question he’d half-expected. The devil understood power, manipulated the desire for it to match his own intentions, whatever they were. But then, the devil stayed in his town, at the center of his web, and wove the strands he needed. His Hand strayed further, saw more.

Gabriel knew from experience that more was often confusing.

“Back in Patch Junction, you said that people who wanted things from the States, who tried to bring what was there here, that they were fools. You said that April was a fool for yearning after those things.”

April had been a fool—not for wanting the things civilization could bring, but for not understanding what else they would bring with them. He had the flash of a dry, cracked riverbed, a cold sun, and rubbed one hand against his leg, feeling sweat that had nothing to do with the heat of the day.

“My letters were to a friend. Someone I trusted. What he did with the things I told him could not have given injury.” He had passed along nothing of the devil, nothing of magicians, only tales of long rides and small towns, of ten ways to cook beans and the pleasure of the open skies, compared to the cramped quarters of Philadelphia and Boston. Even if such things had been shared . . . No.

“Are you certain?”

It would have been kinder if her voice were accusing, angry, rather than curious. Accusations and anger he could counter, deflect, defuse.

They rode without speaking after that, birds calling and insects singing, and the occasional relief of a doe and fauns lifting their head to watch them ride past, until the weight of it all pressed too heavily on him. He had shared nothing untoward across the river—and he had not shared everything that came back to him. He had thought—had decided?—that it was nothing to do with him, no matter of his, what games others played in distant places.

He had been wrong, and the fact burned in his gullet like rotgut. The snakes had warned him, over and again: enemies and friends would tangle and be confused. Be careful, Old Woman had said. Even Graciendo had warned him indirectly; the old bear had known that traveling with Isobel—with who she was—would endanger him, claw at his refusal to give in, drag him into the very involvement he had run from.

Not of any thing she would do or say, but simply by being what she was . . . and him being what he couldn’t help but be.

The Territory had never let him go.

The moment he had looked into those eyes and offered, on a whim, to mentor the potential he saw there, he had been found.

“The letter you carried. It was from that friend. He heard a thing that worried him, and he spoke of it to me, I think to ease his mind, to somehow pass word along into the Territory the only way he knew how.”

Gabriel had spent years in the States, pretending to fit, making himself fit, but he’d never been able to let go, either. Abner had known that before he had. Had not been surprised when Gabriel packed up one night and boarded a coach, not stopping until he hit Saint Louis. The letter hadn’t been guilt speaking; it had been a warning.