The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(84)

That thought made her frown. She had liked Patch Junction. It was busy and bright, and full of bustle, built on an old crossroads, Gabriel’d said; the original settlers had cleared the crossroads and built a trading post into a real town, with farms circling around it. So why now did simply thinking of it fill her with unease?

She shook the feeling off with an effort. Too long on the road, too long not seeing anything other than trees and rocks and the back of Gabriel’s head. That was all.

“Back here,” Lou said, leading her between two of the houses. “Here’s the first post.”

The houses were not built up against the enclosing town wall after all, Isobel discovered. There was a narrow alley that ran behind the houses, the space between them and the much taller wall barely wide enough for two people to walk along abreast. There were no windows on this side of the houses, just rough planking, the chinks between them filled with plaster. She took a closer look, curious. The plaster was rough to the touch, like petting a newborn calf.

“Rock dust and the hairs we scrape off hides; stiffens the plaster,” Lou told her. “Not so much for insulation, though. Inside, you line the back walls with as much hide as you’ve got. But over here, this is what you wanted to see?”

When Lou had mentioned a ward-post, Isobel expected something like she’d seen outside Clear Rock, a medicine-sigil burnt into a marker or maybe a boulder, holding the power in place. Instead, Lou showed her a collection of bones hung against the inner wall, some held there by thick black nails gone red-rusted, others seemingly wedged into the wood as though they’d grown there. Most of the bones were the size of her hand, others longer, some bleached white and the rest crackling-brown with age and weather, and Isobel reached out her own hand to touch one, only to pull her fingers back as though she’d been slapped.

“What is this?”

Lou’s brows drew together in confusion, her head tilting as she looked first at Isobel, then at the bones, then back at Isobel. “The ward-post,” she said, as though a child should have known that.

Isobel rubbed her fingertips together, reassuring herself that she could still feel them. The wardings of Flood’s boundary were sunk deep in the earth, circling the town from river to farms’ edge. You could feel them when you stepped over, and they felt you, knew if you belonged or were a stranger, if it should alert the boss or let you pass. The wards she’d encountered elsewhere, at campsites and farmsteads, had been weaker but similar: woven into the ground the way a stream cut through stone. Even the makeshift hollow crossroads the marshal had created, the warding there had been passive, waiting for something to push against it before reacting.

This . . . was awake. She thought of the sensation she’d felt when they crossed the gateway, and wondered if she’d caused this, or if it had been that way before.

Lou was still staring at her, waiting on her to say something.

“How old is this?”

“Told you. Since before the town was. Folk who were here started it, we just”—Lou shrugged?—“built around ’em.”

Isobel stared at the bones, her eyes itching as though road dust lingered in them. The folk who were here, Lou’d said. The folks who were here.

“And you alter them. Weaken the bindings in good weather, raise them for cold.” Isobel shifted to look more closely at the bones without getting any closer. “The older ones are mixed with the new—they’re moved?”

“I don’t know. I’m not . . . I don’t handle them. Told ya, Possum or young George does that.” For the first time, Lou seemed to realize that there might be something wrong. “They’re all right, aren’t they? The wards? They’re . . . they’re still working?”

Isobel would have sworn nothing could drag her attention from the shimmering, seductive hum of the bones, but those words pricked her into movement, her jaw dropping even as she turned to stare at her companion instead.

“You can’t feel them? At all?”

Lou shook her head once, her brow pinched with worry. “Not . . . not the way Possum can.” She bit her upper lip, then licked at it nervously. “I mean, we know they’re there, we see ’em keep out the storms and the beasts, so they must be there, right? And Possum would say something if they weren’t?”

Lou assumed they were working, but she didn’t know, the way Isobel had always taken for granted, had felt wards shift under her like a horse under saddle, or a dog pushing close to be petted.

The realization was a blow to her gut, only from the inside out, leaving more questions behind. Could the woman not feel them when she went in or out of town? Although she was older, her gait was steady and she seemed strong, but maybe she didn’t leave town often anymore, didn’t have reason for the wards to touch her.

“Ma?tre?” Lou had taken a step back, as though Isobel were more unnerving than the bones.

“They’re fine,” Isobel said. “The wards, they’re . . . they’re fine.”

“Ah.” She nodded, swallowed, her throat clenching around the movement, and looked away from Isobel and then back, as though afraid she might be accused of rudeness. “Well, there’s a relief. We don’t get many riders up here ’cept the occasional marshal, and truth is, not many of us have the touch so’s noticeable ’cept Possum, and he’s, well, he’s Possum.” The older woman spoke too quickly, her hands pressing against each other as though for comfort, but Isobel had none to offer.