Silver on the Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  She was still weak after whatever it was she’d done back at Clear Rock, and he’d told her to sit and rest while he set up the fire. The magician, of course, was useless, wandering off to stare into the distance, hands clasped behind his back, the moment they made camp, rather than offering to help. He had no gear—he could conjure up a cabin for himself or sleep suspended in air, for all Gabriel knew. Or it was entirely possible that magicians didn’t sleep. Rumor said they’d started human but weren’t any more, giving themselves over to the spirits in exchange for their powers. Rumor said they weren’t to be trusted.

  Gabriel was pretty sure rumor was right on all those matters.

  “If you were anyone else, I’d say yes,” he told her honestly. “With you?” He shrugged, letting his gaze drop down to where the tiny flames were now curving around the coalstone. “I don’t know. What was that you said about suspicious hands earlier?”

  “The boss calls it that,” she said. “When things go one way too consistently. The world is random, he says, like the deal of cards. A good player can manipulate what they get, but they can’t control the deal, not without cheating. So, if you call the high card every time, it might be luck and it might not.”

  “You’re calling all this a high card?” He couldn’t help but be amused.

  She let out an exasperated sigh, as though she couldn’t believe she had to explain this to him. “It’s too much. Too consistent. Bad luck, yes. But all this, the illness in Widder Creek, the . . . thing in Clear Rock, and a magician who happens to meet us in the road and offers us his aid? And something following us, maybe for days?” Isobel had been checking each item off on a finger, then folded them all against her palm. “The boss taught me how to conjure the odds. Can you say that this doesn’t feel”—she expanded her fingers, like a bird taking flight—“suspicious?”

  “Sometimes a run of bad luck’s just a run of bad luck, Isobel.” But once she’d presented the evidence, he couldn’t not see it. Not all of it, but some; if he were gathering evidence, it might be enough to sway a judge and jury.

  “Pfffft. Bad luck or manipulation, what does it matter?” The magician stepped out of the dusk, not even pretending not to have been eavesdropping. He had shed his long coat and rolled his sleeves up, looking like any other rider at the end of a long day, if you didn’t look too closely at his face.

  Gabriel looked at his face. The eyes were golden brown in the faint flickers of firelight, the sharp planes of his face giving him a feral, worrisome look.

  “You think there’s no connection?” Isobel had too little caution of the magician, but Gabriel carried enough for them both. He hoped.

  “I say you worry too much of what is and what isn’t, little rider. The winds blow, and the world turns, and things change. You have no control over any of this.”

  The magician—Farron—cocked an eye at the coalstone, then shook his head in mock sorrow and bent down, holding out his hands. It looked as though he were trying to warm his fingers, but a faint breeze rippled around then, and the flames grew twice their size, crackling as they fed on invisible fuel.

  Gabriel shifted uneasily but didn’t say anything. Knowing that power swirled throughout the Territory, that was one thing. Seeing it used so casually . . . He glanced at Isobel, who seemed unflustered by it all. Then, she would be, wouldn’t she? Growing up in the ­devil’s own house. He might seem just a man, but the few natives Gabriel had spoken to on the subject said the devil’s medicine was bone-deep, powerful enough to level mountains, much less one magician.

  But the devil wasn’t here, and no matter what Iz was proving herself capable of, she was still just a girl and his responsibility.

  “It is my obligation to do something,” she was saying now. “I may not be able to control the wind, but if a storm is coming, I can at least get people out of its way.”

  The magician tipped his head to her, the sardonic edge of his smile softening slightly when he looked at her. “You may try, little rider. You may try.”

  The creature’s informality raised hackles and an immediate need to remove his attention from Isobel. “So, how did you know of this . . . darkness, you called it?”

  The magician didn’t even bother to look at Gabriel. “I know everything the wind knows.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  This time, his smile was a closed-mouth smirk. “It is the only one I have.”

  “Farron.” Isobel sat down, the knife and whetstone now placed by her knee, and leaned forward, staring intently at the magician. “You offered your assistance, said you wanted to know what happened back in that town too. We allowed you to come with us, have offered you hospitality by our fire. You will not repay us by mockery or evasion.”

  It was her voice, but those weren’t her words, not entirely. Gabriel had recited enough speeches, mouthed the words of others for effect time enough to recognize the difference. The cadence was another’s entirely. The only thing he didn’t know was if she were merely imitating her boss, or if his hand lay on his Hand, even at this distance.

  The air crackled, the fire snapping in the night air, sparks arcing to the ground. In the distance, an owl hooted twice, then fell silent.

  “As you will,” the magician said with an overly dramatic sigh. “I know because the wind told me. Every turn and twist it takes, every new thing it carries, I feel and I hear. When something new digs into the ground and strikes stone, I know. And this . . . this darkness is all the wind and the stones will speak of, for days now.”

  “You hear the wind? How?” Isobel leaned forward even more, her braid coming perilously close to the flames. Gabriel, unnoticed, tucked it back over her shoulder.

  The magician leaned back, as though drawing away from her intensity. “How? How, indeed. For every gift, there is a cost. For every cost, there is a gift.” He lifted his arms in a shrug, and it felt, to Gabriel, the first honest thing he’d done since appearing. “You might as easily ask how I wish or dream. The wind warns of something coming. Something with power. Power and ill intent. We can taste it.”

  “We?” The last thing Gabriel wanted, after a magician in their party, was more than one magician anywhere nearby. “No, never mind. You said you could help. How?”

  “I felt you push at the bones,” the magician said to Isobel. “You are . . . half-trained and weak, and could only rouse the beast, not question it. My skills are greater, but I lack the strength to face this storm on my own.” His admission had nothing of humility in it, only simple fact. He tilted his head again, the pale strands of his hair tinged red in the firelight, his eyes glittering. “I admit, our meeting on the road was not entirely coincidental. I felt you on the winds and waited for you to find me.”

  Gabriel watched Isobel, watched how she leaned into the magician’s words. They were appealing, even he could feel it, but there was something sticky in them, too, unpleasant like a spider’s web.

  “Your strength and my skills, we could ride this storm, make it our own.”

  “Magicians do not share.” Gabriel made his voice harsh, attempting to break those honeyed webs, his heart pounding at the risk he took. “Nor do they merely borrow power from another. You lie, magician.”

  The magician’s chin lifted, and he stared at Gabriel, Isobel forgotten for the moment. “Have a care, rider.”

  The power in his voice was a stranglehold, but Gabriel forced the words out of his too-tight throat. “Threatening allies? How quickly you revert to type, magician. I say again: you lie. You do not want a partnership; you want her. You need Isobel’s skills and her power, too, no matter how weak you claim they are, because you’re afraid and can’t do this yourself.”

  This was dangerous, Gabriel knew, like waving a fish in front of a grizzly. But the magician lied, was attempting to manipulate Isobel, and Gabriel’d learned over years that the surest way to find truth was to make someone mad enough t
o spit it out.

  “You’re a coward and a liar.”

  The magician stood in one smooth movement, uncoiling until he towered over them, his hair pale against the dark sky, the fire cracking with renewed vigor until he seemed limned with flame. “I ride the east wind. Do you have any idea what that means, mortal?”

  Gabriel stood as well, showing his teeth in a grin as cocky as he could muster. “Show me.”

  Izzy could barely breathe, feeling the air around the small fire thicken as Gabriel goaded the magician, pushing with his words, saying things he had no place to be saying.

  So, why was he saying them? The boss’s voice asked the question in her head, forcing her to stop reacting, start thinking. Why was he doing this? Gabriel Kasun was a solid man, a thinking man who counted the cards and considered his bets. He had offered to mentor her on a whim, but even then, he’d had his reasons. So, what was his reason here?

  Her thoughts were too slow, and she shook herself, irritated and impatient, her palms warm with sweat as the two men squared off, words threatening to explode into blows.

  “You want to know what a magician may do? How powerful I am?” The magician was beyond sense now, the snarl of a dog in his throat. “I will show you.”

  But he didn’t do anything. He merely stood before them, staring out at something she couldn’t see. Izzy clenched her fingers, knuckle rubbing against the silver of her ring. The sun was below the horizon now, shadows filling the crevasses around them where the flames could not reach. Too late, too late; power was best worked at dawn and dusk and when the sun was direct overhead. Every fool knew that; surely a magician would not—

  A breeze stirred the flames even higher and lifted the edges of Izzy’s jacket, making her shiver, though the breeze was not cold. The magician raised his hands to shoulder height, fingers splayed, palms facing out, and the ground underneath them rumbled.

  Unnerved, Izzy wanted to look for Gabriel, move closer to him for reassurance, but could not take her gaze off the magician. She could see the wind wrapping around him, feathering his long hair, sliding under his skin and then back out again, and her breath caught at how simple it was, how clean and simple, not complicated at all, as though all she had to do was reach out and touch it, and it would be part of her as well.

  Such power, she thought. Not a quiet rumble at all but a roar, the scream of a ghost cat in the night, the howl of the coyote, the rush of buckshot as it left the muzzle, knocking her back and making her hands tremble.

  “Don’t,” she said, unsure if she spoke to the magician, or Gabriel, or the gathering power itself.

  None of them listened.

  The magician’s hands stretched forward, as though he were attempting to take hold of something, and the air opened around his hands, a reddish-black splotch that grew and deepened, tendrils reaching out of like—like ribbons, she thought, even as they spread, shadows in the darkness, tiny flickerings that she could hear as well as see.

  “Blessed angels and all the gods protect us,” Gabriel swore, even as the ribbons snapped outward, raptor wings on a downward strike, and wrapped around the magician’s torso, fighting the wind for his body, rocking it back and forth.

  She thought, for just an instant, she saw the magician’s expression change, eyes widening, teeth bared in a fierce grimace. This hadn’t been what he’d expected, what he’d thought would happen.

  And then a shape thrust itself through the opening, leering out of the blotch, a head elongated like a horse but with teeth like no horse ever had, long curved eyeteeth jutting over a jaw that opened impossibly wide. They snarled at each other, beast and magician, then the beast struck, its head jolting forward, jaws digging into the magician’s chest with a hot, meaty thunk-crunch.

  There was a long, silent second, Isobel struggling to find air to scream, and the head pulled back, drawing half of the magician’s chest with it, ropes of gore and bone exposed in a steaming, salty mess.

  Her voice was still lost, but a scream rose out of the wind itself, piercing Izzy’s ears with its agony and outrage. The storm-snake pulled back in through the splotch, teeth grimed with blood and gore, shaking like a dog to splatter blood into the fire, until the splotch squeezed smaller, smaller still, and disappeared.

  The magician’s body teetered, rocking back and forth on the balls of its feet even as the wind whistled into his skin and out again, wrapping around the bloodied, torn flesh and carrying it away, fading bit by bit, until there was nothing left but the smell of blood and shit, and the cold, sickly sweat Izzy could feel laying thick on her skin.

  The faint noise of grasshoppers came back first, then the call of a distant owl, three ghostly hoots.

  “What . . .” Her voice was clogged in her throat, choking her. “What happened? Gabriel?”

  And then Gabriel was behind her, holding her shoulders, turning her away from the fire, away from the gore splattered at their feet, letting her face rest against the rough cloth of his jacket, his arms warm around her.

  “New rule,” he said, his voice soft, steady against the shell of her ear. “Don’t stand too close to magicians. Ever.”

  “Poor bastard.” Gabriel’s words hadn’t been meant for her, and she tucked her forehead against his shoulder, pretending she didn’t hear, pretending that none of it had happened, that they’d never encountered the magician in the road, had never seen the empty street of Clear Rock, had never ridden up into the hills, had never ridden out of Patch Junction. Had never seen, never felt, never smelt . . .

  Her nose was pressed against Gabriel’s jacket, and he smelled of dirt and dust, of well-tanned leather and horseflesh, of chicory and coffee, and the faint sharp smell that was somehow Gabriel alone, that she hadn’t even known until she recognized it.

  She touched the ring on her finger and felt the tarnish dulling its surface.

  In the distance, a coyote called to the moon, a long echoing noise, and Izzy shivered, although the sound had never bothered her before.

  “Get your gear,” Gabriel said, pulling away. Izzy shivered again, the night air colder after his warmth, but lifted her chin, determined to do whatever he told her. “I want to be on the road as soon as you’re ready.”

  Away from here. Away from—she didn’t look at the ground, still splattered, but nodded once and turned to gather her kit together. While she was doing that, he put out the fire, and the night closed in around them, the stars too dim and the moon too low to bring relief. When he nudged at her shoulder, she jumped, half turning to see him offering her several strips of the paddle-shaped plant he’d brought back for dinner. “You can eat ’em raw,” he said.

  The thought of eating anything made her stomach roll, but she watched as he took one and began chewing at it while he rolled up his own kit. “You’ll do better with something in your stomach,” he said without looking back at her. “Just small bites.”

  She nibbled cautiously at one of the strips. The taste was slightly bland but wet, like a pear that wasn’t quite ripe yet, and she ate the entire thing before wiping her hands on her skirt and going back to work.

  The smell of blood and feces followed her, the horses shifting and shying away when she approached. Even Flatfoot gave her an evil eye when she tightened a strap, his ears flickering back and forth as though he expected something to jump out of nowhere again, this time with a taste for mule-flesh.

  Izzy couldn’t bring herself to fault him. She still felt wobbly, and she couldn’t blame the darkness for how her vision was disturbingly unclear. But closing her eyes to get rid of the tears was worse: she could see the fanged mouth darting forward, heard the meaty thunk as it connected with the magician’s flesh, and she was aware of the fact that it was aware of them, that they were ignored, not unobserved.

  Her hands slipped on the leather, jabbing herself with the buckle hook, and she swore, forcing herself to concentrate. The horses would
calm themselves only if she were calm.

  She felt Gabriel behind her, likely carrying their packs. Her hands stilled, and she tilted her head to look up, looking not at the brightness of the waning moon rising on the horizon but the deeper black overhead. She wished for the warmth of the oil lamps of the saloon, the sulphur­ous reassurances of the blacksmith’s forge, even the steady flicker of a tallow candle.

  “What was that? What did he do?”

  “I don’t know.” Gabriel’s voice was terse, his words bitten off. “I don’t . . . I told you, this is beyond me, Iz. He wanted to show how strong his medicine was, so he probably called on a dust-dancer, or maybe it was what was made lunch out of Clear Rock. I don’t know. He was a magician; who knows what they do or why. Whatever it was, whatever came when he called, it was more than he could handle.”

  It had torn his chest out and eaten it.

  “That . . . that thing wasn’t what I saw before. In Clear Rock.” Her voice wasn’t as even as she would have liked, but Izzy was proud of the fact that she got the words out at all.

  “Wonderful, so there are two things out there eating people?” Gabriel moved to double-check Steady’s gear. Izzy didn’t take it as an insult; he needed to do something too, same as her. She finished checking Uvnee’s girth, pushing the mare’s stomach a little to force her to exhale before tightening it a notch again, then scratched Uvnee once on the poll just between her ears in reassurance, and went to mount. By the time she was settled, Gabriel was already moving Steady back onto the road, the mule’s lead rope tied to his saddle for the first time since they’d left Patch Junction.

  Izzy had seen death before, she’d watched people die before, but never like that. The sheer swift violence of it, the lack of warning—had the magician thought he could control it? Had he even known what he was calling up?