The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(38)

“Isobel!”

Gabriel’s shout made her blink again. He was closer now, kneeling beside her, while the old man had backed off, his arms crossed over his chest, staring away from her, as though he’d suddenly realized he’d acknowledged her presence.

“Why doesn’t he like me?” The words came out unbidden, childlike.

Clearly, Gabriel hadn’t been expecting that. He ran a hand through his hair, then ran it down the side of his face, glanced at the old man, then back at Isobel. “I think he’s trying to show you respect,” he said. “And you confuse him. Are you all right? What happened?”

“What happened?” she asked him in return. Thankfully, he understood.

“You stepped forward and went still, and then you bent down, and then you were flying through the air like Flatfoot had kicked you in the . . . in the gut.”

She nodded and closed her eyes, opening them a second later to Gabriel’s voice.

“Isobel. Come on, Iz, open your eyes, wake up, there’s my girl. Can you sit up?”

She nodded and let him lift her up enough that she could sit on her own. She’d been right: everything hurt.

“What happened?” he asked again.

She was about to say that she didn’t know when she realized that she did.

“Something happened here.” She licked her lips, feeling where she’d bitten herself, a strip of skin tender underneath. They knew that already. What had happened? “They took from here, drained it dry.”

“Like a crossroads?”

She nodded, touching the silver ring on her little finger as though to reassure herself that it was still there. She looked down and noted?—too late?—that it had gone from brightly polished to nearly black with tarnish. The power had been drained from here, but before that . . . Their silver had not reacted to the village, had not discolored during their ride. Only here.

Crossroads gathered power simply by existing, feeding off those who traveled them, until either someone came along to draw the power out or something bad happened. Which rarely occurred, because if a magician didn’t find it first, a road marshal would. Or, now, she would. She was the silver the devil cast into the road, Gabriel said.

But there was no crossroads here, no Road at all, no power gathered. Why had her ring tarnished? What had thrown her out of the circle when she tried to touch it?

“My buckle didn’t tarnish,” Gabriel said, twisting to show her his boot. She reached out to touch it, the metal cool under her fingertips, even as he drew his knife to check the silver inlaid in the hilt.

“So . . . only in there?”

He slid the knife back into its sheath but left the strap open. “Yah.”

Something had been drained within the circle. Was it the same something that had scraped the little village clean, that kept them from feeling the Road, kept her from reaching the bones? She could feel the answer fluttering at her fingertips, but there was a soft buzzing in her ears, and chasing those thoughts was like trying to catch a fish with one hand.

Her knees wobbled as she tried to stand, and Gabriel helped her to her feet, holding her steady until she shook him off gently. Now that she knew what to look for, how to see it, Isobel wondered that she’d ever missed it: steam rose from the ground, a lowlying mist swirling and sinking and rising again.

Had it been that obvious before?

“Can you see it?” she asked Gabriel.

“See what?”

“That’s an answer of a sort, then,” she said, not bothering to explain. Had it been there before she stepped inside, and she couldn’t see it, or had her stepping over the line been the cause? Had she . . .

“See what, Isobel?”

“Shhh.” Their earlier concern, that this was another ribbon splintered off from the Spanish spell-storm, faded as she felt around the edges of what lay in front of her. Whatever this was, whatever this had been, it had not come from outside but within.

Territory medicine.

If a medicine-worker had done this, there would be no need for the Devil’s Hand. That left two possible answers, one more palatable than the other.

“When was the last time a marshal came through?”

Gabriel turned and asked the old man her question, or at least she assumed that was what he was saying. He listened to the response, then shook his head and turned back to her. “They don’t.”

Marshals were supposed to ride the entire Territory; that was part of their oath.

“There’s no Road here, Isobel,” Gabriel said. “They can’t exactly cover a Road that isn’t here.”

She lifted her gaze again to the circle in front of her and shrugged in resignation. “Magicians, then.”

Gabriel’s response wasn’t in a language she knew, but the tone was clear enough.





PART THREE


VOICES


Magicians. Gabriel shaped the word in his thoughts carefully, as though the word alone could do damage. Like spirit-animals, he’d spent his entire life having no contact with them, and now . . .

A fly buzzed at his face, and he wiped the sweat with his sleeve and pulled his hat back over his eyes although the sun was behind him and low enough now not to be a bother. “You could have settled down, been a farmer. Married well, raised a packet of kids, never had a surprise a day in your life that didn’t involve storms or locusts.”