Silver on the Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “You pushed him into it,” she said, returning to the last thing that had made sense. “You goaded him. Why? He could have been useful! He wanted to be useful.” She felt anger flare, a satisfying burn. If she was angry, she had no room to be afraid.

  “Iz . . .” It was difficult to see his expression; he was a silhouette beside her, from the brim of his hat to the cut of his long coat over Steady’s flanks, and his voice was nearly as blank. “What are magicians?”

  She sighed, but somehow the fallback into question-and-answer settled the last of her nerves, as did moving away from the stink of the campsite.

  “They’re white men who style themselves on medicine men, on dream-talkers. They’ve given themselves to the wind in the crossroads, eaten the power there until it fills them entire.” She knew that, everyone knew that, the same way they knew that magicians weren’t the same after that. Not bad, not evil, just . . . different. Unreliable.

  Just run.

  She’d been fooled by the magician’s appearance. Had seen the surface and discounted what was below, even though she knew better, had grabbed at the idea that someone could help her, carry her responsibilities for her. She’d failed, and Gabriel had been right. And the magician had died for it.

  A small, disloyal voice in her thoughts said, Because Gabriel had goaded him.

  “In civilized places”—listening to his voice in the darkness, she thought that Gabriel sounded tired, like he knew he’d goaded the magician into it, as well—“magicians—conjurors, witches, wind-talkers, whatever name you settle on, those who claim the same skills—they’re driven out, same as the rest of what roams wild in the Territory. White or native makes no difference. There’s no place for that in civilized places. But the Territory isn’t civilized, not yet. Maybe not ever, if your boss has his say.”

  Tired and regretful, like he wished it were different. But Izzy couldn’t tell what he wished were different.

  “You meant to drive him out?” After she’d invited him to come with them—Izzy felt insulted, then betrayed, then felt a sudden rush of relief that her mentor had been able to overrule her if the magician had been that dangerous, if she’d made such a terrible misstep. And then she remembered how the magician had died, and felt guilt at her relief.

  “No. But I knew he was dangerous. Prideful, arrogant.” Gabriel tsked with his tongue, a sharp, wet noise. “Maybe they’ve a right to be, magicians. They can do things most of us can’t, and if they pay a high price for it, well, that’s their business. We all make our bargains for what matters to us. But my obligation is to protect you, Isobel. And if he was looking to us for something, adding to all we’ve already seen in recent days? That made me wary.

  “Challenging him the way I did, I knew he was bound to show off, to prove to us—to himself—that he wasn’t afraid. I was testing him, under as controlled a situation as I could manage. Testing his control.And I won’t apologize for that or for what happened.”

  For a bit, the only sound was the clop of hooves on the road and insects singing in the grass, broken once by a distant howl echoed by several more. Too far away to be a worry, Izzy judged, and moving away from them, not toward.

  “What was it?” she asked, finally. “The thing that took him.” It hadn’t been the thing she saw at Clear Rock; she was near certain of that. It had felt different.

  “I don’t know,” he said again. “The tribes have stories . . . All I know’s there’re things out here that nobody’s ever seen, at least not to talk about it. Maybe your boss knows. I’m just hoping that eating what summoned it was enough and it doesn’t feel the need to come back and find us.”

  Wasn’t much to say to that, so she didn’t.

  Despite all that had happened, the familiar motion of Uvnee’s walk eased Izzy back into a sort of sleepy calm, her hands easy on the reins, her body soft and comfortable in the saddle. Part of her knew she was half-asleep; the other was alert to everything around her, the sounds and smells of the night air. She tipped her head back and studied the glittering sweep of stars, the moon now a bright silver glow casting down a hazy light. Izzy had never ridden at night before. Despite the conditions, she thought she might like it. But they were moving in the wrong direction.

  Izzy frowned, then pulled Uvnee to a halt. Gabriel rode on a few paces more, then stopped, sensing she was no longer following.

  Why had she thought that? She pulled at the feeling, kneading and stretching it under her hands until it firmed. The words came to her, certain and firm. “I need to do something. About what happened in Clear Rock.”

  Even in the moonlight, she could see the stubborn clench of his cheek. “You’re not going back there.”

  “No, I know.” She didn’t want to go back there either. Just the thought of it made her chest hurt. “But what the magician said . . . He was telling the truth. He really was worried that something’s come into the Territory that’s scaring . . . that’s that scary. And it’s not enough just to leave it be and hope it doesn’t get hungry again.”

  She didn’t want to go anywhere near that thing, didn’t want to even think about it, but saying the words eased some of the discomfort she’d felt all day, maybe for days now. “That’s . . . that’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Not to run away, not even to run back home with warnings, but to do something about it.”

  He shifted, the saddle’s creak too loud in the thin night air, interrupting the insect chorus around them. “Do what?” He wasn’t challenging her; he wasn’t dismissive. He was asking.

  And she knew. As simple as kneading bread or folding linens, she knew. The way the cards flipped onto the felt, the pattern of the deal, the shuffle and fold of the pasteboards between the boss’s fingers, one at a time but each one part of the whole, she felt something rise inside her. Not the twisting, tossing sensation of before, but a grounding, her backside firmly in Uvnee’s saddle, her awareness stretching through the mare’s legs and hooves into the ground, even as the breeze touched every inch of her skin and the coyotes’ distant howl was clear and close in her ears.

  “I need to clean the town.”

  Gabriel might have said something; she couldn’t hear. Her left palm rested against the fabric of her skirt, but it was touching the ground, too. Connected. Listening. More than listening, some sensation she couldn’t name, couldn’t grasp, fire under her skin, stone grinding against her bones, and it hurt but she couldn’t stop, couldn’t break away.

  The moment when she had seen the storm-thing descend remained with her, remained within the stones and bones of Clear Rock. She reached for it, stretching the connection tight between them, flipping a single card from the boss’s deck into it. Low card: dealer wins.

  Flickerthwack. The card landed, a line of flame circling it, racing inward. When it reached the center, a silent explosion filled her awareness, trying to rock her out of the saddle. Some part of her held firm, touching the stones below, wrapping the wind around her, and her inner vision cleared.

  In the town of Clear Rock, every external wall now bore the boss’s sigil, pulsing with power.

  I did that, she thought with awe, then the need to do more pushed through her. She gathered the sigils together, imagined the medicine in them like a coil of hair braided into something stronger, wrapping around the town, and then she set it on fire.

  The sigils flared like the blacksmith’s forge, so bright she half thought it would be visible from where they stood, racing from the external walls inward, until the conflagration met at the center and went out with a brutal snap, only cold ash left behind.

  The town shuddered and was still. Cold, empty. Safe.

  Izzy was allowed a flicker of satisfaction, then her own body resurfaced, screaming in agony. She swayed and fell forward onto Uvnee’s neck, bumping her nose hard enough to send shock back down her spine. When she steadied herself, her left palm spasmed, all the pain centering there. She loo
ked down, and her eyes widened. In the center of her hand, where the burning sensation had been, where it had prickled before, pale red lines picked out a sigil. The same sigil she had left on the town of Clear Rock.

  The devil’s mark.

  “Oh.” Her voice was faint, weak, stunned, her fingers curling over the mark, skin stretched tight and hot.

  “Isobel? What did you do?”

  She could only shake her head, unable to answer. The power that had flowed through her, the knowing—it wasn’t hers, nothing she’d done. She had no power. It was all his. She had given herself entirely to the boss, had signed a Bargain that could never be broken.

  She was the devil’s tool, nothing more. Would never be anything more. The bitterness of it rose in her throat, gagging her.

  “Iz?” Steady was pushing against Uvnee’s side, his square head at Izzy’s elbow, while Gabriel leaned in, trying to take her face in his hands. She shook him off, tipping her head down to let the brim of her hat hide her face, refusing to show weakness. Not there, not then.

  He took the hint, pulling Steady back a pace but still watching her. “It’s done?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” And he turned Steady back and started down the road again.

  The set of his back, his shoulders, reminded her: regret was pointless. She was what she had chosen to be. Had done what needed doing.

  Izzy lifted her chin and pushed Uvnee forward to follow.

  Something was screaming. Lightning strikes rained down into rock, and flesh burned. A coyote howled and a shadow swept overhead, and deep within the earth, something shifted and groaned . . .

  Izzy woke within the echo of her dream, her heart pounding and her face bathed in sweat. Four mornings now, the same not-a-dream, and annoyance was starting to win over the fear. Gabriel wasn’t sleeping well either, the shadows under his eyes deepening, the tension in his shoulders increasing. They didn’t mention it to each other. They spoke of very little beyond what was necessary, making and breaking camp with practiced efficiency, riding toward some point Izzy assumed Gabriel knew, south and westerly by the sun’s track.

  They were riding to see a friend of his, he’d said. Someone who might be able to cast light on the things they weren’t speaking of.

  Despite all that, despite what lurked unmentioned behind them, Izzy felt strangely comfortable. The saloon, the press of people around her, the everyday noise of life in Flood, seemed impossibly far away and unthinkable now. Where the quiet had been oppressive at first, now it allowed her to hear the yet-quieter noises, the creak and groan, squeak and scream of the smaller life around them.

  She avoided thinking about her Bargain the way you avoided a pit in the ground: skirt around it, don’t fall in, and it might as well not be there. She knew it was foolishness, but she couldn’t do anything else, not just then.

  They were riding through grasslands again, the shadow of the hills a constant companion to their right. Gabriel pointed out signs that buffalo had passed by, trampled and grazed-down grasses and drying chips, but the herd had clearly moved on. She watched a small herd of elk move slowly in the distance, saw fox kits tumbling about their mother at dusk and hawks glinting golden in the morning sun, waited while a sleepy-eyed brown bear lumbered past, nodded in cautious greeting when three native boys ghosted by, their bare skins painted, leading a horse equally daubed with color.

  “What are they doing?” she asked, when they were alone again.

  Gabriel merely shrugged, watching where they’d gone. “Doesn’t concern us.”

  Although there was no defined trail under their hooves, if Izzy concentrated, she could feel the hum of the road underneath, barely enough to reassure. Every so often, Gabriel would rein Steady to a stop and tilt his head, listening, and then start on again.

  The fourth or fifth time, Izzy asked, “Can you hear it all the time?”

  “It’s like listening to a creek or the rain,” he said. “You hear it, and then you don’t hear it, but when it stops, you hear the not-hearing it.”

  She thought about that as they rode on, turning more westerly, back toward the shadow of the hills. Overhead, a flock of smaller birds swooped and dipped in a black shadow, scattering when a larger predator dove into the ranks. They’d seen no hint of Reaper hawks since that first, nor any other predator, although they heard coyote song in the early evening, and the coughing call of a ghost cat had kept them company the last night. She had woken several times to see Gabriel sitting upright, the silhouette of his carbine clearly visible in the moonlight.

  There had been no hint of whatever had killed the magician, and her ring, freshly polished, stayed bright, as did the buckles on Gabriel’s boot and the inlay in the stock of his rifle.

  They both stayed alert.

  They broke camp before dawn each day, and when the sun reached its apex, they paused to let the horses rest while they stretched their legs and had a quick meal, then saddled up again. They were both sore sick of bean-bread and molasses, but she had to admit that it filled her stomach and cleared her head. Gabriel took to setting four quarters of a coin and a sprinkling of salt at the edges of their lunchtime camp: noon was a powerful time, and no matter that nothing ominous seemed to haunt them, the slight bit of protection made the meal go down more easily.

  There was still a while to go yet before they would break that day. Izzy rubbed the palm of her right hand against her skirt, feeling the texture of the cloth scratch her skin, and frowned. She’d been able to rinse out her chemises and stockings two days ago, when they camped near a stream, but after nearly a month on the road, she felt the intense desire to dump her skirts and shirtwaists into a tub of warm, soapy water and give them a proper scrubbing.

  She thought about Devorah and her words of advice, and wondered if the woman had made it safely north, and what she would say about all this. Likely “ride away as fast as you can.” Instead, they were riding into toward the mountains. Into the storm. Something twisted in her stomach as she raised her eyes to stare at the still-distant blur on the horizon.

  Darkness came, sweeping low over the western horizon. Storm clouds spread too far, piled too deep, hiding something within. 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 . . .

  She dug her thumb into the palm of her left hand, pressing into the flesh without looking at the mark there, until the memory went away. Gabriel said he had a friend in the mountains, but he hadn’t told her more, and she hadn’t asked.

  They were both waiting, silenced, still holding their breath against another blow.

  Movement to the north caught her attention, and Izzy let her eyes rest quietly on the distance, thinking that maybe she’d seen a rabbit or a small deer, something they could catch for dinner, although the thought of butchering a carcass without water nearby was enough to make her lose any appetite. But she quickly realized that the source of the motion had been much farther away than she’d thought. “Is that a rider?”

  It was, riding a splotched pony, white hindquarters clearly visible, heading east, away from them. Although the rider wore plain buckskin, the colors of the States were clearly visible fluttering from his saddle, red and white stripes and a field of blue.

  “American?”

  “Government rider,” Gabriel said. He was sitting straight and easy, his hand at the brim of his hat, shading his eyes to see better. There was something weirdly yearning about him, as though he wanted nothing more than to hail the rider, speak to him. But he did nothing.

  Anyone could ride into the Territory, if they’d a mind to. Bearing colors gave a rider protection of a sort: nobody thought the Americans would start trouble, but nobody could say for sure they wouldn’t, not even the boss.

  Easier to let them come and go, he’d said more than once. They’ll see
what they see and say what they’ll say, and telling them they can’t is worse than saying they may.

  And those that see, stay, Maria had said once, and laughed. But the boss hadn’t.

  Izzy watched the rider lope away from them and thought of April back in Patch Junction, how she’d sounded, speaking of the American States as though they had some secret she needed to know, and Gabriel’s worries about what she’d said. And then she thought of the boss sitting at his table, flipping pasteboard cards in front of him, listening to the flow of conversation and gossip, and for the first time, she had the sense of him playing not cards but people, places, flipping them over and reading them, sorting them, sending them where they needed to be . . .

  She clenched her fingers around the ache in her left hand, and wondered what card represented her.

  They camped that night next to the bank of a tiny river snaking its way through the grasses. The horses and mule drank their fill, then wandered off, grazing contentedly. Izzy had meant to groom Uvnee, aware that the mare’s coat and forelocks were caked with dirt, but she stopped, midturn, and felt her jaw drop open.

  “That’s . . .” She gained control of her voice again and said, louder, not looking away, “That’s the Knife?”

  Gabriel looked over where she was staring, shading his eyes against the setting sun. “Yep.” He gave her a curious look. “Ah. Never seen ’em before this close, have you?”

  “No. I . . . No.” Her chest felt tight, and she swallowed. “How . . . how far away are they?”

  “’Nother two days’ ride, probably,” Gabriel said.

  “Oh.” Her voice had gone faint again. The jagged smudge rising above the hills, lit from behind with the scarlet of the setting sun, was that far away? She tried to gauge how tall they must rise and failed utterly.