The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(105)

“The new president, Jefferson. He’s a smart man, ambitious. And he’s been given authority, given funding to send a mapping expedition into the Territory. Maps are a kind of power too, Iz. They change the unknown into known, and once a thing is known, it can be taken.”

She was listening to him, chewing his words. “And something like that, an expedition, it would be allowed. They’d pass the Mudwater unmolested. The boss wouldn’t even notice it, because it’s not military, not force. Like the monks.”

The Spanish monks, who had been chasing down an unholy magic unleashed by their masters. The magic itself had carried no intent; the monks had not cared about the Territory, only themselves. There were holes in the devil’s protections, holes that her boss did not seem to care about.

Or wasn’t aware of. Gabriel wasn’t sure which thought unnerved him more.

“Only way to stop them would be to shut the border entirely.” He swallowed, and Steady shifted underneath him, dancing sideways, picking up on his discomfort. He stroked Steady’s neck to calm the horse, trying to imagine that, the inevitable and likely immediate results of such an act on the devil’s part. “He’d have to shut all the borders.” Allowing settlers from all three borders meant no one nation could claim insult—not the Spanish crown nor the British, not the Americans. Nor the French, although they seemed to care little for what happened here, the trappers and woodsmen who remained so well-mingled with the tribes, he suspected they thought themselves other than French. If he didn’t shut all the borders, the ones who were affected would take that as excuse?. The Territory standing alone was a potential prize yet to be won. The Territory possibly allying with another nation became a threat.

“He can’t,” Isobel said, and she had that tone again, telling him that although her mouth shaped the words, the knowing came from another source entirely.

He didn’t know if it meant the devil couldn’t because it would cause more problems than it solved, or if he couldn’t, quite literally.

The why didn’t matter, only the end result: the Territory remained open for Jefferson’s handpicked spies to continue poking into it, causing trouble they were entirely unprepared to understand, much less survive.

Gabriel didn’t need a spirit-dream to tell him who would be tasked to deal with the results.

“You could leave.” Her voice was small but solid, and he had the uncomfortable thought that he might as well have spoken his thoughts out loud. “I’m not sure what’s considered usual for a mentorship ride, but I’m reasonably certain this isn’t it.”

That surprised a laugh out of him, and he took a swig off his canteen to buy himself time to answer.

Guilt alone didn’t explain it. Nor duty—he had little enough of either, and she knew that.

He remembered the dream of a cracked creek bed, the cold sun, and further back, the fish swimming at his feet, passing over him as though he were not there. He remembered the snake’s hissed amusement, and Old Woman’s frown, following him every step deeper into the very thing he’d sought to escape.

Isobel had been confused by the wapiti and Reaper hawk giving her conflicting advice. He’d been dealing with that since he’d returned from the States, Graciendo telling him how to remain apart, while Old Woman’s teachings followed down into his dreams.

He could do both. He could remain himself and still be Isobel’s mentor properly. He simply had to make her understand.

“All my life, I wanted nothing but to leave. I wasn’t a farmer; that was clear from the beginning. My siblings were born with their hands in the dirt, but I . . . It wasn’t for me. When my parents agreed to send me East, for schooling, I thought it was the beginning of my true life, my real life. I was sixteen, a man, and the world lay at my feet.”

“But you didn’t like it there.”

“The city . . . There were so many people, even in my classes, it took me months to walk through them and not flinch. But the things I learned, the things I heard, saw . . . I made friends there, friends who had plans, wanted to shape the world. I thought I could be part of that too, in my own way. But the Territory is possessive, Isobel. It will let us go only so long.

“I fell ill. Soul-sick. I barely made it to the Mudwater before collapsing. If it weren’t for the Old Woman . . .”

He had told her some of this, but only some: she had no need to know of the weeks he’d spent recovering, too weak to move, too weak to not listen as the Old Woman poured stories into his ears, waited by his side while the dreams came. “Most folk who live on that side of the river, they plug their ears and blinder their eyes. They don’t want to see there’s a difference between the banks, don’t feel the way things change. But the folk who cross back and forth, the ones who work the waterways . . . They know. They knew they had to get me back across, soon’s I was strong enough.”

“And you were angry about that.”

“Furious. I raged as best I could, being weak as a newborn babe. I cursed and I swore, and then I learned new words to better curse. But that changed nothing. The Territory had decided where I would belong.

“But it couldn’t claim me, either. Not if I didn’t let it.”

He waited, but Isobel didn’t ask.

“And you kept in touch with your friends there all this time?”