Silver on the Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Oh, that’s not upsetting at all,” Gabriel said, listening to the lingering echoes. “Isobel, take the mule. Head out of town, back past the post.”

  She didn’t argue.

  There wasn’t a taint in this town as far as he could tell. It was just . . . empty.

  Sometimes, he knew, towns went empty like that. Harvest failed one time too many, or illness left ’em too dispirited to go on, or they got into a foolish scuffle with the local tribe and lost. But Clear Rock had a purpose in being there, a reason for people to stay. And if they left . . . what had come through while they were gone?

  Gabriel holstered the pistol and dismounted from Steady’s back, tying the horse’s reins loosely to the fence of the corral so that if anything happened, the gelding could break free on his own. The dog had disappeared, and Gabriel felt faint relief: a dog that’d gone feral or sick was a problem he didn’t need. He felt no worry leaving the horse behind; if it returned, Steady—unencumbered by a rider—would dispatch it with his hooves if it were a threat.

  Every inch of his body alert, he loaded the carbine and carried it easy in his arms. If anything were to attack, he’d have the one shot, but after that, the gun would be as much use as a club, and he’d have to drop it to use his knife, anyhow.

  But nothing jumped out at him. Nothing moved inside the buildings, not on two legs or four. There weren’t even any vermin that he could see, and usually, they’d be the first to move in when a place was abandoned, right after the birds.

  That made the dog’s presence even more unnerving.

  He looked up into the sky, half expecting to see carrion birds wheeling overhead. Or raptors, the way they’d been in his dream . . .

  He stilled, the memory of that dream coming back to him. The stillness as the water rushed past his legs, the fish swimming below and the hawks above, but nothing living save himself on the ground . . .

  Mostly, Old Woman Who Never Dies left him be now that he’d come home. But he’d hitched himself to more powerful things, so it was pointless to complain now when they dragged him along behind. She and the devil could argue over him when this was done, but he wasn’t fool enough to ignore warnings, even if he didn’t know yet what they meant.

  “All right,” he said out loud. “All right.”

  He’d fought against this all his life, run from it, crossed the Mudwater, buried in the laws and rules of another country, and come home because he had no choice. But that didn’t mean he’d given in. He’d listen to warnings, but he’d do this his own way.

  He had to be certain, though. Gun cocked, he opened the door of the nearest building and went inside. No bodies. A chair was overturned and beds were unmade, but there were no other signs of violence. Whatever had happened there had happened quickly. But there was no smell of illness, no bodies too long unbreathing and untended.

  A quick pass through the kitchen made him pause and back up. The cookstove was cold, the fireplace ashes swept up, and the narrow pantry’s shelves were empty. It was spring, yes, and they might have run down their supplies something fierce, but there still should have been some staples, the last dregs of even a hard winter, the last of the potatoes, or . . . something.

  Not empty shelves, not even an onion left in the bin. They had taken everything edible with them.

  Or something had eaten it.

  He went through every house, quickly but carefully, then backtracked to the corral, untying Steady and putting their back to the town, as quickly as he could.

  The town of Clear Rock, some five days’ journey west from the farmstead of the family Caron, in the foothills of . . . Izzy stopped, frustrated. She didn’t know what these low hills were called, where they would appear on the boss’s map. She closed her eyes, trying to visualize the map unrolled across his desk, place herself on it, move herself along the road that would take her there. They had gone north briefly but then turned south, even as they went west. . . . If she could feel the road under her feet, surely she could feel where she was on them?

  The nape of her neck itched, and something pricked the palm of her left hand, sharply enough that her fingers flexed, making her drop her pencil, breaking her concentration. She looked around even as her right hand went to the knife at her side, a new and still-uneasy reflex.

  Nothing was visible on the road save Uvnee and the mule, both of whom were looking at her curiously. The feeling intensified, thrumming through her, and then . . . disappeared.

  “I felt something,” she said, glaring back at the mule as though daring it to say something. “I know I did.” Not the way she’d felt the road under her feet; more like how she’d come to know something was watching them, a sense of unease that had no obvious source.

  Was their unseen companion back? If it had been a dust-dancer . . . how had it come off the plains into the hills? What did it want? She didn’t know, didn’t know enough without Gabriel here to explain things, and she felt her frustration build. Where was he? Had something happened to him? If something had happened to him, what would she do?

  The mule flopped one long ear at her and went back to contemplating the air in front of its nose as though her panic was of no consequence to it. Whatever had made her tense didn’t bother it or the mare at all. She wished that made her feel better.

  Izzy frowned, realizing that she’d once again forgotten to ask Gabriel the mule’s name. Somehow, that failure calmed her: something so ordinary and stupid, a balm against her panic.

  The sound of hooves made her turn back toward the town even as she reached down to pick up the pencil from the dirt, tucking it back into her journal and replacing them both in her saddlebag. Gabriel was leading Steady by the reins and looking like he’d just eaten something that disagreed with him. She waited, calmer now, but still feeling the sweat on her skin and the slight pinch of her boots, the smell of horse and leather and her own skin, and the sensation, still lingering, that something had been watching.

  “We’ve got trouble,” he said.

  She bit her lower lip, feeling how dry the skin there was. Did she tell him about the feeling? No, wait, let him say what he had to say first. “They’re all gone?”

  “Gone, fast and hard. And their supplies are gone, too. Everything edible, down to the last dried apple.” His mouth was a thin line, his eyes unhappy, and her worry deepened. People didn’t just up and abandon their homes, pack up all their supplies, not unless something drove them out.

  “But not illness.” Again, she meant.

  “No bodies, no stink, no new graves less’n a few months old. I’d say no.”

  Some of her fear eased then. Two instances of a fast-moving and deadly illness, this far apart, would have been terribly bad news. Not that this puzzle wasn’t worrisome too.

  Gabriel took off his hat, running his hands through his hair until it stuck up in tufts. He’d shaved before they left the farmstead, but his chin was covered in thick dark stubble again, and there were shadows under his eyes that hadn’t been there when she met him. She didn’t know if that was normal for being on the road, or if all this was more trouble than he’d been expecting. If she were placing a bet, she’d say the latter.

  She also suspected she didn’t look much better. Not having a mirror might have been a blessing after all.

  “I’d been counting on resupplying here,” he said. “Their well was clean, so I refilled my canteens, but I’m not going back in there with the rest, and we’re too low on supplies to continue on into the mountains. We need to get back into the plains, let me do some hunting, maybe find the nearest tribal encampment and see if they’re open to trading. I don’t suppose you have any extra shiny we could use?”

  “You told me not to bring fripperies,” she said tartly.

  “That’ll teach you to listen to me.” He smiled, but it clearly took an effort, the surface charm of the man she’d first met scraped dry to the bone.


  Her hand ached again, as though someone’d jabbed her deep in the palm, and she rubbed it, frowning at the skin as though it were to blame for everything. Her thoughts chased each other until she forced them into order, looking back up at him. “We can’t go yet. We need to know what happened.” It was just common sense: This town was too close to the southern border, a waypost, Gabriel had said. If something were causing trouble here, the Spanish viceroy, de Marquina, would hear of it, use it to his advantage.

  She might be called the Devil’s Hand, but she was his eye and ear, too. Same as any who worked for him. And she was the only one there.

  “What happened is that nearly a half hundred souls are gone,” Gabriel said, his voice harsh, “and we don’t know why or how, or if whatever spooked ’em is going to come back around again while we’re waiting here.”

  “If I’m to be the Hand . . .”

  “You need to know what’s happening. Yah, I get that.” Gabriel threw his hat to the ground, then stared at it, bent, and retrieved it, slapping the dust off against his leg. He wanted to saddle up and ride away; she could see that in him. Every bone in his body yearned to be away from there as fast as Steady could carry him. But he wouldn’t. Not if she said no. The sense of power she’d expected to feel didn’t come; she just felt tired. Sad. Scared.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “That maybe this is related to what Devorah said? About things getting worse near the border?’

  “I don’t know.” Izzy realized she was still rubbing at the palm of her hand, and forced herself to stop, willing the ache away. “But the boss would say that’s a suspicious hand.”

  He sighed and stared at the ground, like it would tell him something useful. “Yah,” he said finally. “Yah. You’re right. All right. So, what now?”

  He was asking her? Izzy shook her head. She’d called rank as the Devil’s Hand; what else would he do?

  “I need to know what happened,” she said, not so much to Gabriel, or even herself, but that sense inside her. The one that had told her what to do outside Widder Creek. “I need to know . . .”

  She had to be careful. If that knowing was from the boss, odds were it worked the same as anything the boss gave away: you had to know what you wanted and what you were willing to give, and you mostly only ever got one shot to make it right. And if it wasn’t, if it was some other medicine . . . well, all the more reason to be careful with what she asked for.

  The salt-stick was where she’d replaced it in the pack, and she took it out, holding it uncertainly and yet certain that this was what she’d need. The silver band on her finger seemed to weigh more all of a sudden, curling her little finger in toward her palm. Silver and salt—they were protection, not weapons.

  “But knowing is protection, isn’t it? And I need to know why they left the way they did.” She crumbled a little of the salt off the stick, letting the grains rest in her left hand, and curled the finger with the ring inward. “Maleh mishpat,” she told it, the words forming in her mouth without conscious thought. She didn’t know what they meant, but the sense told her they were important. “I am the strength of the Territory, the cold eye and the final word. And I must know what happened.”

  Gabriel was speaking behind her, but she was aware of the sounds rather than hearing them. The mule was directly in front of her, dark brown hide shuddering as it flicked a fly off its hindquarters, but it seemed far away, not within arm’s reach. The world spun around her, and she was spun within it, her arms too heavy to hold up, her head too large to stay on her shoulders, her knees too wobbly to support her.

  “Isobel? Izzy!”

  The words were distant, impossible, incomprehensible, nothing to do with her. She was stone and bone, dust and wind, the steady roar of water deep underground, the cold bitter bite and stifling heat. . . .

  Darkness came, sweeping low over the western horizon. Storm clouds spread too far, piled too deep, hiding something within. Does not belong, something told her. Does not belong. And the darkness slid through the jagged mountain peaks, sliced into thick ribbons, still rushing forward, dispersing into the sky, soaring up and dipping down, down, and one of the ribbons fell onto Clear Rock and ate it whole. . . .

  “Izzy!”

  She was being shaken roughly, hands gripping her arms hard enough to bring her back to her flesh, eyes focusing, letting go, and remembering who she was . . .

  “Izzy?”

  “Yes,” she said, answering the unasked question. “Yes.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Something came . . . out of the sky. Something fearsome and dark, and . . . ”

  And consumed every living thing in the town.

  “What now?”

  Izzy blinked at him, her jaw dropping slightly. “You’re asking me?”

  He made a sound of exasperation and ran his hands through his hair again before flinging them wide. “I’m out of my depths here, Isobel. Natives? Rockfalls? Sickness? I can handle all those and more. Mysterious storms that leave behind empty towns? I’ve got nothing. So, I’m asking you, Devil’s Hand: what do we do?”

  The panic that had quieted when Gabriel returned roused again at his words, pressing against her ribs and her throat. Her heart beat too quickly, her blood raced as though she’d been running too hard, and she realized suddenly she’d clenched both hands so tightly, there were red marks from her nails on the flesh of her palms. She wasn’t the Hand, not properly, never mind that she’d been able to see what happened, all the confidence she’d had when they rode out sucked away by weeks in the saddle, weeks of people not being impressed by her at all, by not being able to do something as simple as collect eggs from chickens or save people from being ill.

  She looked up at Gabriel, intending to throw the question back to him—he was her mentor; he was supposed to know things. But what she saw there stopped her cold.

  His face was calm now, only the slightest pinch between his brows. His jaw was unclenched, his head tilted just slightly to the right, and his eyes . . . his eyes were half-lidded but alert, curious. Waiting.

  He trusted her to know what to do. He had confidence that she would be able to think of what to do.

  She shook her head, panic replaced by lingering confusion and helplessness. “I don’t know.”

  That seemed to turn a key in him. “All right. What do you think we should do?”

  She swallowed, still feeling the panic pressure, still queasy from being spun around by the vision. But his certainty didn’t allow her to question herself, didn’t give her room to back out.

  Another test, she thought to herself. Just pretend it’s another test.

  “I want to turn tail and ride home,” she admitted. Go home to Flood and lay this all out at the boss’s feet. Have him ride out, handle it. “But . . .” The words she’d spoken earlier, the words the boss had said, came back to her. “I am the strength of the Territory. I need to know what’s happening.” She was the cold eye and the quick knife, and the final word. Her, not the boss. No matter how woefully unready she felt.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening.” Here, or to her. “But I think I know what to do.”

  His confidence in her had limits.

  “I don’t want you going back in there.” Gabriel had his arms crossed in front of his chest, staring down at her, and Izzy spared the thought that he wasn’t as good at that look as Marie or William. “Listen to me, Isobel. When a situation’s gone that bad, you don’t plant yourself in the middle of it while you poke.”

  She crossed her own arms and glared back. “Then how’m I supposed to poke it?”

  Izzy was certain that whatever had happened to the people of Clear Rock, the only way she’d be able to find out—assuming she could find anything at all—was to be there when she looked. Gabriel, though, he was dead certain that she could do it just fine from out there, same
way she’d seen whatever it was that came down in the first place. And he had all the logic on his side, like the boss would say, but it didn’t feel right.

  And all she had to go on just then, much as she hated it, was how things felt.

  It was the first time she’d ever truly challenged him, terse-voiced and tight-gestured, and he was answering back the same. “Isobel. Listen to me. My job is to keep you safe. And I know you need to do this; I’m not arguing with you, am I? But whatever you saw come down—”

  “It’s gone now!”

  He let out an almost-not-quite-growl and lifted his hands in exasperation, like he wanted to punch something but couldn’t. “Is it? Are you certain? Could you raise your hand in oath and swear whatever did this is gone?”

  The words caught in her gullet. No. No, she couldn’t. In fact, she knew—the way she knew all the things she could not possibly know—that it lingered.

  She set her jaw, not willing to admit that he had a point. “I have to know what it was.”

  “You can poke at it from here. Outside.”

  Beyond the post-marker. Beyond the town’s boundaries. “Whatever words they had, it didn’t save them from this. It won’t keep it contained, either.” The road-post would not slow down the storm she had seen.

  “Isobel.” His mouth was a flat line again, eyes narrowed, the charm replaced by a low-burning anger. “This isn’t up for debate.”

  She tried to hold on to that feeling, that certainty that she needed to get closer, but it slipped away under his insistence and her own fear. “All right.”

  Battle won, Gabriel stepped back, his arms hanging by his side as though unsure what to do. Izzy almost laughed despite the fear, because it wasn’t as though she had any idea either.

  “If this is you, boss,” she whispered under her breath, into the air, “you might’ve warned me.” Some folk might be fine being thrown into the creek; she preferred to know how swift the current was first. And now, this was a river, not a creek, and the water was well over her head.