The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(81)

“Against you two?” the judge asked, turning back to Isobel and Gabriel.

“Against them,” the marshal said, gesturing to the two bodies slung across the saddles.

“Ah.” His narrow-eyed gaze went to them, noting the faded clothing and worn boots visible from that side. “And they are . . .”

There was a silence: Isobel felt no need to be the one to inform the judge that they’d brought two magicians, however unconscious, into his town, and apparently neither did Gabriel. LaFlesche coughed once, then took up her burden.

“Magicians. Bound and warded,” she added quickly. “But we couldn’t simply leave ’em there.”

“Yes, you could have,” the judge said, and for the first time, Isobel felt like she might have an ally here. “What the blasted night am I supposed to do with magicians?”

Run, don’t walk. Isobel hadn’t realized quite how much traveling with Farron Easterly had changed her—and Gabriel—until she saw the panic in the judge’s eyes.

“Drape the bench and pronounce judgment, of course,” LaFlesche said, almost cheerful, and Isobel wondered if maybe the magicians weren’t the only mad ones in their party. From the way Gabriel wiped a hand down the front of his face, leaving two fingers across his lips as though to keep himself from saying anything, she wasn’t the only one having those sudden misgivings.

“I’m too old for this nonsense,” the judge told her, then waved irritably at the people still lingering behind him. Most of them, Isobel noted, were not much younger than he was, mostly male but with a few women among them, silver-haired and deep-creased skin. “Stop hovering like a flock of hens and be useful,” he barked at them now. “Put the walking ones in the holding pen.” And he turned back to LaFlesche to ask, “I’m presuming you have their parole they’re not going to run?”

“They’re not bound to the Territory,” Gabriel answered for her. “If they break parole, nothing will chase after them.”

“There was no need to tell them that,” LaFlesche said, tight and quiet.

“I waited until we were inside walls, didn’t I?”

The judge turned to stare at Gabriel as though seeing him properly for the first time. “Hrmph. Well, Andreas’s walls are good at keeping things out; we’ll see how well it keeps ’em in. And those two . . .” Isobel hadn’t thought it possible for his eyes to squint further, but they did. “You, girl, you the one keeping ’em down?”

Isobel nodded.

“Then you stay with ’em. Lucky you. Lou, take ’em to Possum’s; let him earn his keep for a change.”

Lou was one of the few women in the group, her hair silver-brown and her ash-dark skin lined with age, but she walked with a firm step and flesh on her bones. “We supposed to haul the horses in as well?” she asked tartly, eying the animals up and down.

“Would serve Possum right if you did,” the judge said. “But no. We still got that sledge around here somewhere?”

It seemed that they did.



After sending two men off to fetch the sledge, Marshal LaFlesche and the judge escorted her prisoners down the street as though they were honored guests. Most of the gaggle followed them at a safe distance, leaving Gabriel, Isobel, and the woman named Lou. And two unconscious magicians, three horses, and a mule, the latter having wandered off to pull at the weeds growing along the edge of the gate.

“The boys’ll be here with the sledge in a minute. You want to untie ’em and get ’em on the ground, or will that be a problem?” Lou’s words were blurred soft around the edges, and Isobel had to work to understand her, but when the question came clear, she shook her head. “We lay them flat at night, and it didn’t seem to affect the binding.”

“Well, then, get ’em down.”

Gabriel pushed his hat back and gave Lou a mocking salute, then turned to untie the heavier of the two magicians from Uvnee’s back, while Isobel unknotted the ropes on the marshal’s pony, who turned its head and gave her what seemed, to Isobel’s thinking, a grateful look.

“Didn’t like carrying dead weight, did you, huh? Can’t say as I blame you.” The magician wasn’t much taller than she and seemed barely skin and bones under her hands, but pulling him down from the saddle still staggered her backward, forcing Lou to catch her with a hand flat between her shoulder blades.

“Help me,” Isobel started to say, but the woman had already stepped back, pulling her hand away as though Isobel’s body had burned her.

“They’re . . .” Lou blinked at them, then slid her glance sideways to where the mule seemed to be looking back at her with a “don’t ask me” expression. “They’re safe?” she asked, with her hands trying to emphasize what she meant by safe, but Isobel thought she understood.

“For now, yes.” Three days, she’d had them down; she could feel them both struggling below the surface now, lashings of power and anger mixed with frustration, and worse, a dawning awareness of her as the source of their binding. She was not confident that, in their madness, they’d be able to remember that it had been the ancient spirit that burned them, not her, nor would they care even if they did remember. But for now . . . “Their bindings hold.”

“I only ask, not to offend, but the wards on our walls are for keeping things out, not once they’re already in,” the woman said hastily, as though hearing an edge in Isobel’s voice. “And if they wake as mad as they’re made out to be . . .”