The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(55)

The object inside the wrappings was not more salt, or silver, or anything she recognized, merely a stone a little longer than her hand and wide as three fingers, worn flat on either side, the ends blunted. It felt smooth to her fingertips, but there were figures etched into one side, the lines stained a deep red. If she looked too long at them, she felt dizzy—the same sort of dizziness she felt when she reached too far into the bones, went too far from herself.

Isobel was certain it hadn’t been among the things she’d packed, and equally certain, although she hadn’t asked, that Gabriel hadn’t brought it with him or picked it up along the way.

She rubbed the pad of her thumb across the wrapping, feeling it slick and cool, and thought, not without some unease, that it might have been a parting gift from Farron.

She closed the cloth back around it, wrapped it again in an old stocking that needed darning, and shoved it deep into the pack. They were not in such need yet that she would test a magician’s gift, however it was meant. But neither would she toss it away.

“Here,” Gabriel said, closing the bundle of salt grains to make sure none spilled before he was ready. “Not that I’m certain salt is enough to keep magicians from more mischief. I’d be more pleased if we’d enough silver coin to ring them in as well.”

They’d been over this already, the coins they had, polished and replaced in Gabriel’s pocket, already beginning to tarnish.

Silver warned and silver cleansed, but it could not compel.

“They summoned a force of wind and fire,” she said. “Summoned it, trapped it, tried to force it against its will to submit to theirs.” Insult thrice over. “And it in turn tore them to shreds. Releasing them from that would be a kindness. I only need make them understand that.”

She moved past him, picking up a charred stick where it lay in the smoldering remains of their fire, letting it drag against the ground as she moved with a measured pace, steering well clear of the dead grass and the swirling steam rising through the dirt.

“I’m not certain they’ll see it that way.” Gabriel dropped the remains of the salt stick onto her pack and studied the bundle in his hand, then looked up at the sky dotted with pale strands of clouds drifting southeast. “They’re mad to begin with, magicians, and I doubt being dead has soothed them in any way. Do you truly think, even within a warding, you will be able to control what comes to your call?”

“No.” She saw no point in lying. “I might have been able to stop Farron one on one. But he was as curious as he was mad, and seemed fond of me?—that would have worked in my favor. More than one . . . only if they were distracted. If they turn on each other, I might . . . but if I waited to challenge the survivor, they would be so glutted with stolen medicine, I would fail and die.”

Gabriel put his head down into his hands as she spoke. Isobel ignored him.

The only way to stop another magician was to steal their power. Only another magician was mad enough to try that; the eight winds did not respect flesh or blood and wore down even earth’s bone. Having brushed against the winds, Isobel wanted no part of it. But power could be emptied from a thing. That was how crossroads were kept safe; part of a road marshal’s obligation was to test and drain them as they rode through. A magician was a container for power; all she had to do was empty them.

Marshals were trained, Gabriel said. If a marshal had ridden here, would they have sensed something was wrong, known what was wrong?

Isobel glanced at the sigil in her palm, then down to the sigil she was tracing in the grass. The circle-and-tree badge of a road marshal tied them to the Road; they were bound to the Territory by their oath. Her sigil obligated her to the devil directly. But Gabriel’s comment, that even if she left the Territory, she would not be able to stay away, had felt too true to ignore. Something within her echoed with it, the rolling plains and jagged mountains, the woods and the creeks, the pulse that she’d felt the first time she touched the bones, felt the Road, saw a buffalo herd, heard the cry of an owl in the dawn.

“You bear the mark, and the weight of that obligation,” the wapiti had said, in this same place, not a day before. “The Territory must be protected.”

Because she was the Hand? Because she was the nearest it could find? Because she was fool enough to listen?

Even as she drew the wards in the grass, prepared herself for what was to be done, the Reaper hawk’s warning lingered. The doings of magicians were none of the devil’s concern, and the welfare of natives was none of the devil’s agreement; they had their own medicine folk for such things. What had the Broken Tongue’s people done when the ground shook? They had run.

Isobel very badly wanted to run.

Instead, she completed her circuit, the boneyard markings unfinished to allow the dead to enter, then waited while Gabriel echoed the external circle with salt twice.

“If anything breaks through one line, do you think a second will stop it?”

The look he gave her could have stopped a hungry bear in its tracks.

“If I had the salt for a dozen lines, I would draw them,” he said, his words tightly bitten off. “And shift a stream alongside to boot. This is a fool’s idea, you’re a fool for doing it, and I’m a fool for allowing it.”

He wasn’t angry, though he sounded it; he was worried. Fools die. It was a joke, a curse, a warning. A reminder.