The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(19)

“Better to look for bears,” Gabriel said when she mentioned the deer. “They’re mostly going to be down by the river”—and she didn’t ask how he knew there was a river; that was a thing he would know better than she?—“but if we’re careless and get between mama and a cub, it could go badly.”

“I’ve never seen a bear.” She’d seen the claws of the great brown bears strung around a marshal’s neck. She’d also seen the scars the man carried, scoring down his arm, too close to the marks on Gabriel’s ribs for comfort. She thought maybe she could be happy without seeing a bear that close ever. Especially one that was upset with her.

They paused briefly mid-day, letting noon pass them by, then rode on slowly, allowing the horses to pick their way up the slope, the sun warm on their skin and the air thin in their lungs, filled with the scent of pine and sage. Although they saw no birds or animals, tiny butterflies flitted around them, blue and red and orange, and when they came around a curve that looked out over a vast meadow, Gabriel pointed out a dusty wallow where buffalo had been, making Isobel feel a twinge again for the slaughtered animals she’d found and had to abandon, her promise yet unkept.

It seemed such a small thing now, and yet she had made a promise.

Isobel shifted her reins, curling her fingers into her left palm, fingertips pressing against the sigil as though to force an answer into the air.

“Boss?” she asked quietly, although it had never done her service before. She could almost imagine that she felt his hand on her shoulder, the warm, smoky scent of his whiskey and tobacco, but she knew it was only imagination. The boss was weeks away. He had sent her here to be his eyes and his Hand, not for him to hold her hand.

She was on her own.

“Damn it, Flatfoot, get your nose off my knee; I’m not your momma.”

Isobel grinned, glancing slantways to see the mule backing away from Gabriel, looking offended at having his muzzle slapped. No, not on her own. And not unprepared, not anymore.

Isobel closed her eyes and stretched her awareness out again, letting herself slide down her spine, through her legs, dropping in a way she could never quite explain out the soles of her boots and down into the ground.

She was the devil’s Hand. She could not be cut off from the Territory, not so long as the Agreement held.

Show me, she asked it. Show me what is wrong.

The bones were there, deep and still. But where she expected the now-familiar dizzying hum of connection, the feel of power rising up to meet her, there was only a flickering awareness, something hot and heavy slipping away when she tried to touch it, shying away as though it were avoiding her.

But when she tried to grab at it, that sense of unease pushed back, powerful enough to shove her, hard enough that Uvnee hesitated, flicking an ear back to ask her rider what was wrong.

Isobel steadied herself in the saddle, weaving her fingers into the mare’s rough-textured mane for reassurance, and called out to get Gabriel’s attention.

“Iz?” He looked worried, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head, settled the reins better in her hand, refusing to look at the black lines on her palm, for fear. . . . She wasn’t sure for fear of what, but the unease had grown in her, real and heavy. “When I . . . when I go deep, past the bones, to see the things I see . . . what am I touching?”

Power, yes. But she’d felt power before, in the hum of the Road, the workings of wards, the swirling risk of crossroads, even the sensation of being greeted by spirit-animals, of standing in the presence of magicians and demon. Standing before the boss, their blood drying together on a Contract. This had been different.

Gabriel hesitated before answering, but she thought it was the hesitation of someone thinking about their answer, not because he was avoiding it. “Truth, Iz, I don’t know. What you do, the way you can look, what you can see . . . that’s the devil’s own skill, not something I’m given to understand.”

People had small skills, small medicine. To ease pain or find water, like Gabriel, find the Road, cajole beasts, read dreams, or make things grow. A greater medicine was to walk the winds the way magicians did, and it came with a greater price.

The Hand bore the mark of the Master of the Territory, carried his medicine. And he had sent her out not understanding what that meant.

She trusted the boss with her life, but for the first time ever, she wanted to shake him, too.

“It won’t let me in,” she said. “How’m I to be useful if I can’t reach it?”

“It’s not only you, Isobel. I can feel the water here. I know there’s a river down a ways to our left, that there’s a stream running underfoot . . . only, it’s like listening to the rain through a roof, or voices through a wall. Faint, muffled. And I can’t feel the Road at all. Not even behind us, where I know it runs.”

“That makes you nervous.” She rubbed a hand against the back of her neck, squeezing tense muscles to force them to ease.

“That, plus what you’re telling me, makes me tremble in my boots,” he said without any hint of shame, pulling his canteen out and taking a long drink. “There should be something, Isobel. There’s no portion of the Territory that hasn’t been walked by someone. Some hunter’s trail or journey-path, a cut between two villages, or trapper’s route. My reach isn’t as far as yours, but I’ve experience to offset that. There’s always something. And here, it’s . . . gone.”