The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(92)

She lifted her chin and stared up at him. His gaze met hers evenly, with neither a flinch nor an apology.

She could defy him. She could demand he . . . do what? Hold the magicians forever? Kill them? She knew that they came back from that as often as not, having seen Farron torn apart by a summoned spirit and then reappear not days later as though it had never happened.

Isobel tried to rein in her fury. Judge Pike was correct, as little as she liked it. The magicians had done damage?—immense damage?—but the Agreement did not cover them; the Law did not apply to them. Like all other creatures of the territory itself, they were unto themselves.

She thought of the buffalo she had seen, slaughtered by these magicians for their blood and hide, for the strength they carried, and left to rot without dignity or respect. She thought of the promise she had made?—the promise Something had accepted?—and her heart ached to think that she would fail in that.

But there was nothing she could do.

We tell you nothing you do not already know.

She was sworn to the Master of the Territory. His limits were her own. Weren’t they?

Listen, Hand.

If she could remember what the wards had told her, if she could remember . . . Why couldn’t she remember?

“Isobel?” The judge was expecting her to back down, to accept his authority in this matter.

“And what of those who incited them?” She swept her gaze to the two men still waiting along the far wall. The scout was busily staring at his boots. The marshal looked back at them, a resigned patience all she could read.

A swell of sympathy surprised her. She too had been sent out unprepared. But she’d been given Gabriel. This man had been given a snake-faced scout who didn’t have the courage to face his consequences.

The Territory didn’t care.

“Paul Tousey. Jedediah Anderson. By the word given of Isobel née Lacoyo Távora and Gabriel Kasun, confirmed by the word of Marshal LaFlesche, you have been observed falsely claiming insult. The punishment for that is severe. However, since those you insulted are not within the purview of the Law and have not chosen to act on their own behalf, we dismiss those observations.”

The scout looked up at that, a gleam of hope lifting his shoulders.

“Notwithstanding,” the judge went on, “you have also been observed by Isobel née Lacoyo Távora in the act of inciting damage to the land of those who have kept peace with us, who have lived by our Law as we live by theirs, according to the terms of the Devil’s Agreement.”

“And that means what, exactly?” Tousey stood, his pose similar to Gabriel’s earlier, his shoulders straight, hands clasped behind his back. She wondered if that was a thing they taught men, across the Mudwater, in the East.

LaFlesche spoke this time. “It means that you have given insult.”

The scout made a noise, a sharp, cut-off bark of a laugh. “It means they’re gonna kill us. Or give us to the savages to kill, or eat, or whatever it is they do. Fine, then, old man, get on with it. Quit yapping at me.”

“Anderson, shut up,” the marshal said, and then turned to address the judge, his tone dry as wood. “And may we speak in our defense? Or do our voices carry no weight under your law?”

“You have a defense that amounts to more than causing mischief???” The judge’s voice was equally dry, his hands tucked into his pockets, elbows loose, hips and knees straight ahead, not turned out the way Gabriel and LaFlesche stood, or hip-cocked the way the boss leaned, casual as a coiled snake. Or the scout, who remained slumped, his shoulders rounded in resignation.

Isobel was suddenly brutally aware of her own body, how straight her back was, her right hand clasping her left, thumb pressed into her palm. She could feel a bruise on the side of her knee where she’d fallen, and another on her shoulder, the smell of blood and sweat still too strong under her nose. She wanted a bath, and a bed, and a warm meal that had no beans in it, served at a table, with a chair under her backside, not a saddle or dirt.

“Acting under orders of your government will not save you,” Gabriel said from behind her, a caution that seemed to spark something ugly in the other man.

“You’ve no government for me to be in contrivance against.” The marshal’s skin was sallow in the lamplight of the judge’s bench, and the hollows under his eyes deeper than merely exhaustion, the look of a man already dead, who simply hadn’t realized it yet to lie down. “I am, at worst, a goad, a match. If there was nothing to set alight, I could do no harm.”

Something shimmered, hot and angry, in Isobel’s bones. But she thought it was not directed at the marshal himself.

What? she asked it.

Listen, Hand.

“You admit that you were sent here to cause harm.” The judge again, his voice calm as though they were discussing the turn of a card, something of significance but no particular urgency. He shifted, though, his body turning to keep Tousey in full sight, suddenly a potential threat.

“Not to cause harm, no. To observe. To note. To report back. Discovering two . . . magicians mid-battle was pure chance, and we?—”

“You interrupted a duel?” There was surprise in the judge’s voice then, surprise and astonishment that they were still alive after that, much less able to affect anything.

Tousey raised his glance to the daub ceiling, then shook his head, the resignation of a man who saw no more point in arguing, convinced he was the only rational soul left among the mad. “I saw two men circling each other, chanting nonsense. Andersen told me that they were magicians, men who had some power in this land, that they did not kowtow to your . . . devil. I thought they might be useful to cultivate as potential allies.”