The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(97)

“Are you awake?” she called out, standing next to the door. “Are you aware?”

There was sound of something—someone?—shifting. She touched her left palm to the door, asking the wards under the sigil to let her see.

They resisted: she was not the one who had laid them; she had no sway over them. Isobel felt a flash of irritation: she would accept the earth’s refusal of her, but not this. The devil’s sigil was not greater than the Tree, but it was no less, either.

Kneeling, her skirt tucked under her legs, Isobel placed her palm instead on the ground. It was night-chill and dry, and she remembered the feeling of the valley, where she had been cut off from the bones, cut off from the Road.

Choose, the spirit-animals had told her. Was this what they meant? She hesitated, unsure, then she pushed down, feeling the now-familiar dizziness and disorientation as the bones reached up, drawing her in and spreading her thin.

The Road sang to itself, miles distant. Closer, rock grumbled and shifted, cool water trickled and pooled, steam gathered, constant pushing and pressing, building and breaking. All the Territory, as close as her fingertips. Isobel was tempted to linger within, tempted to go deeper, to look backward, to see if she could reach the damaged circle and the power constrained within.

She resisted; she dared not disturb further the spirit or the madness trapped with it. All she needed to know was what waited on the other side of the door in front of her, quench the sigils that flared like a forge as she approached, warning caution to all flesh.

Her breathing rasped in her throat, heart too large to rest within her ribs, thumping to escape. She felt as though she had a fever, skin too tight over bones too warm, the world colorless but too sharp, as though the shapes might cut her eyes if she gazed on them for too long. She could break the wards if she chose to. Sliding from the roof and walls, shattering at her touch, ripping the Tree out by the roots.

She shook her head violently, to rid herself of that thought, and her braid knocked against her shoulder, the feathers braided there tickling her chin, as though familiar fingers stroked her skin, gentle, gentling.

Calls Thunder, the dream-speaker who had gifted her with those feathers. They’d had no great meaning, no significance, Broken Tongue had said. Just . . . feathers.

A gift, Gabriel had said.

She exhaled, reaching up with her free hand to touch the feathers, flicking the braid back over her shoulder, feeling it settle against her back, feeling her spine elongate, a snake stretching itself full length in the dirt, a ghost cat leaping, a Reaper hawk spreading its wings, rising into the sky, the proud line of the wapiti’s neck, prongs limned by sun and moonlight. A thing of the Territory. A thing that belonged to the Territory.

Something settled within her, smooth and heavy as stones, and her heart slowed, thump-thump-thump, then thump-thump, thump-thump, until she could breathe again. The rage disappeared; the power remained.

Her left hand dug into the ground, the sigil burning like a coalstone. Power. Responsibility. The lesson she’d never quite learned: be careful what you ask for, for the devil will give you exactly that. What a magician did was none of the devil’s concern. Until she decided it was.

Show me, she told it. And it did.

One magician had woken, and consumed the other, taking all he was and leaving a husk of flesh and bone behind. Restless, roiling; power still contained behind the wardings, but slowly, carefully, craftily they were being scraped away from inside, layer by layer unraveling.

Bones are strong, but the wind will not be contained.

Isobel sat back on her heels, her skirts covered in dust, and breathed.

Magicians were creatures of the Territory. Like the Reaper hawk or the buffalo, or the waters rushing down from the hills to feed the prairie grasses, or the stone spires rising toward the sky. The eight winds owned them; they answered to nothing less.

But an owl had led her to them. Spirit of the winds, omen of death.

The boss waited in Flood, shuffling decks and turning over cards, watching and manipulating, piece by piece, the Right Hand to succor, the Left to . . . to what?

The great elk had told her to deal with the intruders, to be the knife the devil had sent her to be. The Reaper hawk had told her to walk away, to leave the valley, to survive. Both were creatures of the Territory, but they counseled her at odds.

But the snake, what had the snake said? We tell you only what you already know but will not let yourself hear.

She had been sent out, not kept. She had set foot on the dust roads, had heard the beat of the buffalo herds in her own blood, felt the scream of a Reaper hawk in her bones, breathed the resin-filled air of the mountains and drunk the dark, cool waters, dug her fingers into the grit and loam . . . felt the whispers of the earth itself in her own bones.

All her confusion, all her uncertainty came from that. She should never have listened to that whisper, should never have allowed it within. And yet, had there ever been another choice? Had the boss intended for her to have no other choice?

The Left Hand was the knife in the darkness, the cold eye. The ease she could offer was not to heal but to ensure no further harm. Isobel pressed her left palm back to the dirt.

The magician inside was restless, tightly twisted; it knew she was there but considered her no threat, not now. She had crept in through the bones, drab-colored and dry, and what threat could earth be to something born of the wind?

The calm amusement she’d always felt in Farron’s power was absent here. No humor, no affection, nothing to soften the madness that seethed, needing more without any hope of satiation, no Law, no limits. Only hunger. Only greed.