The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(36)

Then, it had been unpleasant, the smell of illness. Here, it reminded her somehow of home, of the morning stink of Gregor’s smithy, and the smell of dough rising—except unpleasant, unnerving.

She hadn’t realized she was walking toward something until she felt the others gather behind her, Gabriel at her shoulder, the old man a few paces behind. She paused, the toes of her boots neatly lined up as though a ward lay in front of her, telling her to stop. The grass and flowers past her toes looked the same as every other part of the meadow, nothing jarring or out of place.

“Careful”—and Gabriel’s hand was on her elbow, fingers curling around the fabric of her jacket, digging through the cloth. “There’s something . . .”

“I feel it,” she agreed. She turned, her face lifted to the sky, pushing her hat back, watching a single bird winging across the broad blue expanse. It was massive, the sun glinting off dark feathers, and she knew she should feel fear: that was a Reaper close overhead.

Instead of fear, awe overwhelmed her, awe and trepidation; the sense that every beat of its wings was echoed in the thud of her heart, the catch of her breath. Reapers, like buffalo, were creatures of the Territory; they carried some of its medicine within them. Watching it, her head tilting back, the sun glinting at the corner of her vision, Isobel was able to forget, briefly, that she had been cut off, was able to forget anything existed beyond that beat pressing through her flesh, down deep into the bones of the Territory itself.

Then awareness returned. Reaper hawks were hunters, not scavengers: Gabriel had warned her to be careful, that it would not hesitate to attack a slightly built human if it were hungry enough.

“What is it looking for?” she asked. If it lingered here when there was no hunting to be found, there was a reason. Might it also be ill? She remembered the ghost cat, remembered the feel of the plague-ridden settlement of Widder Creek, the stink of the camp burning in their wake, then sniffed the air again, as though something that far away, that high above, could be scented. The air smelled as it had before: tainted, but not ill.

Her feet carried her to the left, the two men following her, until she came back to where the horses and mule waited, clustered together and watchful, well aware of the threat overhead. Only then did Isobel realize she had paced off a circle, large enough for a decent-sized camp, room for people and a fire and horses to move comfortably—but she would no sooner set up camp within that circle than she would walk into a fire. Nothing within the confines seemed any different from outside: the same grasses and flowers, the same ground underneath, the same . . .

She blinked, half-expecting that her eyes were playing tricks on her. Something had moved within that circle. Something unseen, and yet she could see it, indirectly, out of the corner of her gaze, the turn of her head. Directly, it was not there.

Underneath the surface of that circle. Something . . . seethed.

The old man grunted once, a satisfied noise. “Ici, came,” he said, the first word he’d spoken in English, and then he used a word she didn’t understand. From Gabriel’s expression, neither did he. The old man said it again, then made a complicated gesture with both hands, ending with a move as though tossing his hands away in disgust.

“Strangers,” Gabriel said. “Strangers with . . . Strangers coming with harm. He says that this is where men came, with intent to do harm. I think.”

“Strangers . . . Who?”

Gabriel slapped his hands against his thighs, and turned to the old man again. “Qui, grandpapa? Qui ai venu? Absáalooke? Sutaio? Des blancs?”

He got a grunting assent then, and another hand gesture, this one looping like a bird’s flight.

“Des blancs . . . Avec les couleurs de qui? Ont-ils portent des bannières?”

Another series of hand movements, and then the old man fell still again, his dark eyes intent on Gabriel’s face. He had yet to acknowledge Isobel’s existence at all.

“Many men,” Gabriel said. “I think that’s what he says. White men, but not together, not one band . . . not one tribe. Many white men gathered here. Meaning harm.”

“A fight?” That was all she could think of, to have that many men in one place, not coming together. A fight or a gathering to avoid a fight, the way men came to talk to the boss, some years, late nights with whiskey and Marie bringing trays of food into the boss’s office, low voices talking and then leaving, and the boss looking tired the rest of the day, as though they’d taken something out of him.

She’d thought that’s what she’d be doing when she’d gone to the boss: bringing in trays and helping soothe tempers, not . . . not standing on a mountain with a Reaper hawk circling overhead, without any idea what she was supposed to be doing.

“Does it look like a fight took place here?” Gabriel asked, and she bristled before she realized that he wasn’t making fun of her; he was asking her.

Isobel stilled her temper, forced her heart to slow. It was not Gabriel’s fault she was upset, not Gabriel’s fault the bones had rebuffed her, that the sigil was silent, that her doubts tried to strangle her. He was her mentor; he was here to help.

When she felt calm enough, she turned to look at the circle again.

It was only grass, undisturbed, unbroken. Browning in places from lack of rain, likely, but nothing that should catch the eye. What had she sensed? She could not bring herself to touch it, would not cross the line of the circle she had walked, but moved along the outside, her feet knowing where to step, as they had before.