The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(65)

Six heartbeats fluttered in her palm, the pulsepulsepulse a softer sound than her own breathing, so delicate, so easy to close her fingers, tighten and squeeze . . .

The Hand opened her palm and kneed Uvnee forward, the mule close at her heels. One heartbeat stuttered and fell, and behind her she knew Gabriel was swinging into Steady’s saddle, leaning forward, his body still not quite his own, tied to her own will, her irritation.

Five pairs of eyes followed her as she rode past, a darkness seething in them. Isobel could feel the hatred surging like a living thing, pressing to break free, to lunge, pull her from Uvnee’s back and rend and tear her into shreds. She had never been hated before, not with this hot, focused intensity, and the urge to strike back against it, to clench her fingers and still their heartbeats utterly, washed through her, a flame to kindling.

Instead, as they left the five behind, she forced her fingers to ease, uncurling, letting the heartbeats flutter away one by one.

She waited, listening for the sound of pursuit, for cries of rage or anger. Instead, there was silence, stunned and, she thought with no small satisfaction, respectful.

“Izzy.”

She wasn’t Izzy anymore. She hadn’t been Izzy in a long time.

“Isobel, what did you do?” His voice was hoarse, framing a hundred questions in the one.

“I don’t know.” She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t shape the knowledge into words. There was the feel of something moving within her, molten and slow, and it was both strange and familiar, and deeply uncomfortable. “If they had attacked, you would have been hurt, maybe killed, and it would have done nothing. If they had tried to attack me, I . . .”

Her voice faltered. What would she have done? She kept her eyes steadily on the grassy slope in front of Uvnee, did not allow her thumb to press into the center of the sigil, the way she had learned to seek reassurance. She had acted as the Hand, but the sigil had remained cool, the slow burn inside her coming from . . . from where?

She thought of the molten whisper sliding within her, holding the ancient spirit caged, holding the poison within itself, and her throat closed up and her eyes cast down, and she had nothing more to say in answer to Gabriel’s question.

Thankfully, he did not ask again.



Gabriel hadn’t realized he was trembling until the warriors—and their dogs—were distant behind them. He recognized the reaction; it was the same sensation he’d get after making an argument to the court, when expected opposition hadn’t been raised, when it was all over and in the judge’s hand to decide.

He’d never thought to feel that again in the Territory.

He looked over at Isobel, who had pushed her hat back and lifted her face to the sky, where the blue had disappeared again behind clouds, pale white broken by darker, more ominous ones. It didn’t feel like a storm was brewing; they’d likely not have to worry about more than a passing shower, and there was far less risk of a sudden windstorm here, surrounded by sloping hills, than the plains. But he scanned the horizon anyway, looking for potential structures or outcrops where they could take shelter if needed.

There was nothing as far as the eye could see save the dip and rise of sagebrush-dotted hills, and occasional clumps of rock, broken by a tree here and there, solitary against the sky.

“They knew we’d be there. They knew where we’d been.”

“Yah.” There was what looked like an abandoned farmstead to the northeast. He hadn’t thought to head that way, but then he hadn’t thought to head this way at all, so it was never-no-mind what he chose, he supposed.

He angled Steady in that direction, Uvnee keeping pace next to him. The mule wandered off, chomped a few clumps of grass, then wandered back. Gabriel saw something spook under its hooves, furred and fast, and felt one knot of worry ease.

It also reminded him how very hungry he was. When had they last eaten something more than coffee and cornmeal or dried meats? Too long. He reached into the nearest saddlebag and pulled out a chunk of dried apple, eying it with resignation. It wasn’t a warm meal and a comfortable chair, but he’d had worse.

“Eat something,” he told Isobel.

“Not hungry.”

“Didn’t ask if you were. Eat something.”

She said something uncomplimentary about high-handed riders, but when he turned to look, she was rummaging through her own saddlebag, pulling out a mushcake and biting into it without any enthusiasm whatsoever.

“It could be worse,” he said. “You could be stuck eating grass.”

She contemplated the remaining cake in her hand and gave a shrug. “Without honeycomb on it, I’m not sure there’s much difference.”

Her argument was solid.

She took another bite of the cake, then fed the rest to the mule. “How did they know?”

“Remember what I said about not knowing why a native does something, Isobel? Goes for how they know, too. Some mutter about tricks and medicine; I think they just gossip better than we do.”

She didn’t smile at that, the way he’d hoped.

“Those magicians, the ones who didn’t die . . .” She took a deep breath. “They’re bound to cause trouble. They won’t be able to help themselves. They’ve been broken, their madness no longer controlled. Lacking the power they’d hoped to gain, they’ll scrabble for any they can find, and damn the cost. Not only crossroads, Gabriel. Anything with power. Anyone.”