The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(53)

Or before, she thought. Since she saw the slaughtered buffalo. Since the whisper first tangled in her dreams. It lured her, drove her, protected her. . . . It burned like the sigil but it felt no part of it, harsh and liquid in her bones, burning her like a coalstone, heat without ash.

She lifted her head and looked out into the valley, but the shadows were too dark to tell if there was a massive elk lurking at the edges still, a Reaper perched in the trees, or snake curled in the dirt. She was afraid to think about any of it, her fingers curling into her palms, her skin cold without its touch, afraid to poke at that for fear the whisper might come back, demand that she do something, and a greater fear that it might not.

“Better?” Gabriel was closer now, standing behind her.

She didn’t understand the question, didn’t understand how to answer it. She stroked the jacket over her legs, focused everything on the feel of the canvas under her fingertips, rough and warm and real.

“Isobel.” His voice was a rope, settling around her wrists, pulling her in.

“What would you do?” Her voice was too high, too thin; she didn’t recognize it.

“Doesn’t matter what I’d do or not do.” He sat down next to her, mimicking her pose, legs crossed, boots tucked under him. The firelight turned him into shadows, and she wondered what she looked like to him; did he see her truly, or was she, too, shadows and smoke? “Matters what you think’s best.”

Once upon a time, she’d thought the boss knew everything, was everything. Then she’d thought she knew something, understood how the Territory worked, could bend magicians to her will, defend against intruders, make newcomers part of the whole.

But the Reaper’s words had shaken her, the anguished madness of the ancient spirit had broken her, not because they existed but because she could not fix them, could not make them make sense.

The world was meant to make sense.

Doubt settled in her lap. She hadn’t been able to keep her promise to the slaughtered buffalo, hadn’t been able to track those killers. What had made her think she could do anything here?

“You should take the animals, go away,” she told Gabriel. “The ancient spirit ignored you, ignored them. You could go, be safe.”

“Probably should,” he agreed. “Not going to. The which you already knew, so let’s be done with that foolishness, all right?”

She felt the scold like a slap, her cheeks coloring as though his hand had in fact made impact. He had made a Bargain with the boss; of course he wasn’t going to leave her.

“All right.” The feathers brushed against her neck as she moved, but for once, they gave no reassurance. She bit down on her lower lip, her hands knotting in the worn canvas of Gabriel’s jacket still draped over her knees, and once again, the texture of it cleared her thoughts.

“Three spirit-animals. The?—what did you call it? The wapiti, to remind me of my duty. The Reaper, to tell me to save myself. And the snake, to say . . . nothing useful.” She considered those words, then changed them. “Nothing obviously useful. But it follows us—for amusement, or is there something below its words that I’m not hearing?”

“?‘Our friends are not always friends, our enemies not always a danger.’ That’s what it said before.”

“You thought it meant Farron.”

Gabriel chuckled. “I did. But reading anything too narrowly runs the risk of missing the evidence.”

She didn’t quite understand what he meant, but the way he said it reminded her of something else. “The boss always said advice was only worth the intent of the person giving it. And every person who bothered to give advice had something they intended by it.”

“He’s had a long time to study human nature.” Gabriel’s voice was dry, but she could hear the humor underneath and clung to it. So long as Gabriel could joke, she could believe there was hope.

“I want to leave,” she admitted quietly, not looking at him, not looking at anything in particular. The fire crackled and snapped, and one of the horses groaned quietly. “I want to throw my pack on Uvnee and ride out of here and never look back. Go . . . anywhere. Go north. Leave the Territory.”

Abandon her Bargain. Just the thought chilled her, made the lines on her palm feel like they were carved of ice, like she’d never be warm again.

“Will you?”

She swallowed, her mouth and throat too dry to work properly. “No.”

Saying the word eased something inside her, and only then did Isobel acknowledge that she might have, that she had been that close. But even if she had, the Contract could not be broken.

Next to her, Gabriel sighed, and there was something in that exhale that was more than relief, more than satisfaction or regret.

“Gabriel?” She had to stop and take a sip from the canteen, to moisten her throat enough to speak again. “Would . . . Would I have been able to leave the Territory?”

She had never considered it, never had cause to once she’d chosen to make Bargain, to stay. But now the question pinched at her.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But . . .” There was a hesitation. “Even if you left, I don’t think you’d be able to stay away. Not for long. Not and remain sane.”

There was pain there, and a story. She rubbed at the flesh of her palm with her thumb; the gesture that had been comforting, before, now felt like the tug of reins at her neck, a bit in her mouth.