Silver on the Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “We’ll be there soon enough,” he said. “Try not to worry about it until then, and come help me set traps for dinner, or we’ll be eating bean-bread again—and we’re near out of molasses.”

  The thought of fresh meat made Izzy’s mouth water. Fortunately, they were lucky enough to catch a plump rabbit while making camp, mainly by dint of Gabriel stumbling over it, startling it into Izzy’s hands.

  “Catches with Open Fists,” he teased her. “That’s what the Hochunk would call you.”

  He kept mentioning that name. “Who are the Hochunk? How do you know them?”

  He gutted the rabbit and dumped the remains into a hole she’d dug by the creeklet, and she put soil back on top to keep predators from it while they camped there. “I stayed with some of them when I came back,” he said. “They’re good people. They hunt up near the Great Lakes, near the border, do a lot of trade back and forth across the river. Smaller tribe, not like the Niukonska or Lakota.”

  “You stayed with them a long time?”

  “A year, more or less.” He tossed her the gutted, skinned rabbit and got up to wash his hands, ending the conversation.

  The coalstone had spluttered and died several nights before, but they’d collected dried dung—bois de vache, Gabriel called it—and shoved it into one of the now-empty bags strapped to the mule’s back. He used a handful now to build a small, intense fire, and she set the meat to cook.

  “Most folk don’t interact much with natives,” she said, picking up the conversation again as they ate.

  “Most folk aren’t riders, Iz. You had the one poor experience, but you can’t judge from that. Mostly, we ignore each other unless we’ve cause; there’s room enough to do that.”

  “Your old friend we’re going to see. He’s native?”

  “He’s . . . something.” He cracked a bone and tossed it into the remains of the fire. “Not sure what tribe, though. Never asked. A man living alone like that—”

  “You don’t ask where he came from or why,” she finished. “I know.”

  “Just checking, greenie.”

  She took the teasing as a warning to stop poking and pulled her blanket more closely over her shoulders, resting her head against the pack. “Good night, Gabriel.”

  The sky was clouded that night, the stars hidden, and the faint flicker of their fire made the night seem even darker and more vast. For the first time in five days, with the mountains lurking in front of them, Izzy fell asleep wondering about the tribe Gabriel had spent a year with, rather than the magician, and Clear Rock’s fate.

  Her dreams, if she had any, were washed away when the sky opened just before dawn, waking them with a sudden downpour, and they were quickly soaked and covered in mud, the grass beneath them now slick and slippery. There was a mad scramble in the dark to get their belongings under cover of the oiled tarp that protected the tack from dew, the animals setting themselves side by side and bearing with the deluge as best they could.

  Once that was done, Izzy looked down at herself and started to laugh, swinging around wildly as the rain fell down, feeling her bare feet squelch in the mud, her hair sticking to her back, her chemise clinging to her limbs. Izzy had almost forgotten what rain felt like. She turned once again and had her hand caught up in Gabriel’s, his other hand settling at her waist, and they performed a slippery, messy reel of sorts, ending when one of them slipped and fell, dragging the other down to the ground with them. They lay there, the horses watching them, until the rain ended, and pale light began to creep into the eastern sky.

  “We’re a right mess,” Gabriel said, slicking his hair back from his face, and looking at himself in dismay. “Into the creek with both of us, and hope there’s a towel still dry afterward.”

  Izzy paused a moment, digging into her pack for a sliver of soap, then grabbed a reasonably dry cloth and joined her mentor by the water’s edge. She stopped and watched as he tried to dunk himself in the water, which even after the rain was barely deep enough for fish, much less a full-grown man, and laughed again before sitting down at the edge and leaning back slowly, so that the water rushed over her, rinsing the mud from her hair and skin without effort.

  “Smart girl,” she heard him say, and then he sat down in the water alongside her and did the same.

  She reached out her hand and shared the soap, then rinsed her hair out and, leaving him there, picked her way carefully back to the tarp covering their packs. She found dry clothing to wear and stripped off the utterly soaked chemise, abandoning it on the grass. Her skin prickled from the damp cold, but any shyness she might have had once at being nearly bare like this had faded a long time since. She dressed, then shoved her stockinged feet into damp leather. Thankfully, the shelter had kept the tack safe, and the horses had dried out quickly once she’d brushed the worst of the mud off them, too.

  “Too wet to even consider a fire this morning,” Gabriel said. “Think you can manage without coffee?”

  “Can you?”

  “Two more days’ hard push, and we’ll be there. Coffee and someone else’s cooking.”

  That promise got her back into the saddle, although the slightly crazed relief of the rain slowly faded into a twitch of unease in the back of her head that only got worse as the day went on, and what had been a faint blue-grey smudge in the distance slowly rose up as they rode, until it seemed to block the sky.

  She tried not to let her apprehension show, but eventually, Gabriel noticed. “You all right, Iz?”

  “It won’t fall on us, will it?”

  The bastard laughed at her, and she bridled, perfectly willing to burn off the feeling with anger.

  “You’re plains-born,” he said. “I forgot that.” He reached over and touched her arm lightly. “They’re not going to fall on you, Isobel. The bones dig deep, and these mountains don’t move. And we’re only going into the foothills, really. No need for worry.”

  She took a deep breath and then let it and the anger flow away. Gabriel didn’t lie to her. If he said it was safe, it was safe enough. Then his words came clear, and she twisted in the saddle. “Wait, there are mountains that do move?”

  His laughter was her only answer.

  Gabriel lost the road for a while soon after they broke camp the next morning, and while he’d waved off her concern, telling her that “aim toward the Knife” was a perfectly valid direction, the sense of relief she felt when the horses’ hooves touched the road again was mirrored in his own expression.

  And it was a proper road, the first she’d seen since . . . since they’d ridden away from their camp at night, fleeing the creature they still weren’t speaking about. Too narrow even for a cart, the edges were still clear and the reddish-brown dirt puffed around their hooves as they rode, distinct from the grasses around it. Izzy looked down at the swirls of dust and the hard-pounded dirt below, and wondered at its existence so far from anything at all.

  “Riders ride,” Gabriel said, as though he knew what she was thinking. “And this is the only way into the Hills.”

  “You ride this way often?”

  “Once a year,” he said. “Sometimes more, depending.”

  “To see your friend.”

  “To see my friend,” he agreed. “And to carry messages to De Plata occasionally. The mail doesn’t come all the way out here, and the ore trains aren’t always agreeable to carrying anything other than their own profit.”

  “There’re silver mines here?” She tried to remember the boss’s map spread out across the table: there had been red triangles along the western border, but they had seemed impossibly far away then.

  She was impossibly far away now.

  “Three, last I heard, although one was about played out. Your boss takes his cut, and the rest goes to Red Springs, down south, to be smelted.”

  Silver for coins, silver for safety. She touched the ring around her finger a
nd wondered if it had begun its life here, in the hills ahead of them. Coins, or the inlay of a knife, or the buckle on Gabriel’s boot, the links on the boss’s cuffs. She knew mines were safe, they had to be, but . . .

  “Ease down, Isobel,” he said, matching Steady’s pace to Uvnee’s so they could ride side by side. “Living silver’s rarer than a white buffalo.”

  And far more unlucky. Silver ore was malleable, usable. Living silver resisted, often with terrible results.

  “When was the last time?”

  “Eleven years ago, when Kinchester Mine blew.”

  “Oh. I remember that.” She shuddered. “The boss had been mid-deal at the table, when all of a sudden everything stopped. Everything. Not even the lamp lights flickered. It felt like I couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe. Nobody could. And then the boss stood from the table and walked out into the night, and everything had started again, but he didn’t come back home for three days.” She leaned forward and patted Uvnee’s neck, as though the mare needed reassurance. “We only learned later what had happened.”

  “Usually, it’s so deep down, doesn’t get bothered. Deep veins, miners know to avoid.”

  “But nobody knows for certain before they reach it?” Before it killed them.

  Gabriel rubbed fingers across his mouth, then made an “I don’t know” gesture. “Magicians, maybe. Your boss, probably. But they’re not the ones down in the mine.”

  She had never thought about the miners before. The idea that someone went into the earth to pull the ore from the ground . . . She had seen the rough silver come to town every year, of course, ready for shaping on the forge, but she had never thought about where it came from. That was almost enough to distract her as the road slowly went higher, taking them into the rougher, steeper terrain, the rocks rising up around her, casting thick shadows. Almost.

  Gabriel reined his gelding in, and as though they’d discussed it beforehand, they dismounted to stretch their legs, walking side by side. The horses trailed behind them, Flatfoot slightly ahead, his ears alert and interested, as though he was glad to be out of the endless flat expanse of the plains, even if there was less to graze on.

  “Gabe . . .” She reached her hand out without thinking, relieved when a warm, calloused hand took it up, fingers twining with her own. Her breath came more easily after that, despite the impossible-to-ignore feeling that despite his assurances, the mountain would fall on them.

  But the moment that fear eased, Izzy realized that the prickling on the back of her neck had returned, and this time, it came with the ache in her palm, dead center of her left hand.

  Izzy hesitated, testing that prickling sensation, then said, “It’s back, isn’t it? Whatever was watching us before?”

  “We’re definitely being followed. Can’t say it’s same as before, though.” He turned to look at her and tipped his hat back enough that she could see his face clearly. His stubble had grown thick over his chin and lip, and there was a bruise over one cheekbone that he’d likely picked up during their scramble during the rainstorm, but his gaze was clear and surprisingly unworried. “What do you sense?”

  She licked her lips, thought about how to explain it. “My skin’s too tight,” she said, finally. “It makes me nervous.”

  “Could be anything,” he said. “Native hunter wondering what we’re up to, or someone come up over the border, poking their nose in. Or a cat or maybe that coyote gotten too curious, wondering if we’re good to eat. Maybe a spirit-dancer, drawn by all the devil’s medi­cine you’ve been using.”

  “None of that’s making me feel any better,” she told him.

  “Or it could be a demon.”

  She liked that idea even less.

  “Unlikely, though,” he went on. “Demon aren’t travelers; they tend to pick an area and stay in it. And generally, if they’re going to cause trouble, they do it; they don’t lurk.”

  “But they do eat people?” Her voice did not squeak.

  “Sometimes. Not often.”

  That failed to be reassuring.

  “I don’t know,” he said again. “I don’t know what it is or why it’s so interested in us, or if it’s the same as was following us down in the plains. But I aim to fix that.” He adjusted the brim of his hat, letting his hand linger over his mouth. “You keep going on; take Steady with you. I’m going to circle around and see what I can see.” He handed the gelding’s lead to her. “Just keep going.”

  “Gabriel.” He paused but didn’t turn back. “Be careful.”

  She felt foolish after saying it; of course he would be careful. He was the cautious one, the experienced one. But something prickled under her skin, all over her body, and the tug she gave Steady’s reins might have been harder than was strictly necessary. She looked ahead, then unlatched her canteen and took a long drink, trying to look unconcerned for the benefit of anything that might be watching, then started walking again.

  The road they were on was wide enough now for both horses to walk abreast without crowding, Flatfoot wandering ahead, occasionally looking back to make sure the rest of his herd was within sight. She kept moving, feeling the strain in the backs of her legs; although she’d become used to riding all day, she was unaccustomed to this kind of climb for any length of time. But walking had an advantage. She could feel it now if she concentrated: not a sound or a touch, exactly, but an awareness of the road under her feet. If she pressed down on the forward step, hard but gentle, she could feel it deepen, humming not in one place, but many. She thought, although she hadn’t said as much to Gabriel, that if she pressed a little more, she might be able to trace every road, a lattice stretching throughout the Territory. But each time she thought that, the connection broke, and she could feel nothing at all.

  Gabriel had said she would learn to sense it, that every rider could, eventually. Unlike before, when the boss’s power had flooded through her, this was her, all her. She clung to the connection for that and kept walking.

  Gabriel stepped off the road and dropped to his knees on the ground. Scooping up a handful of rock dust, he coated his clothing and face as best he could. Not that his clothing was brightly colored—even if it had been once, years on the road had worn most everything he owned to shades of brown and grey. But like called to like, and the more he could blend with rock and dirt, the better.

  He spared a thought for Isobel. She’d been on edge since Clear Rock, more so than he’d expected. He’d assumed that, growing up as she did, she would be aware of the nature of the bargain she had made with her boss, what might be expected of her. He might have been wrong in that assessment. Damn the devil for a cold bastard; no doubt he had his reasons for sending her half-trained and half-blind, but they weren’t ones Gabriel could fathom.

  But there was nothing he could do about that now, if at all.

  There was no visible trail save the one they had come along, and damn little cover to hide in. He backtracked along the road, moving slowly, alert for any flicker or twitch that might be another living thing. But save for a rock-mouse that paused to stare at him before deciding he was no threat, there was nothing else on the trail.

  Except he knew there was.

  He hunkered down to think. This was Hinonoeino territory, but if they had been following, they would have left some sign, if only to taunt him with his failure to catch them at it. He knew this tribe: so long as he offered no offense, he would be allowed passage. And Isobel was the devil’s. Here, so close to the border, that could be both a plus and a danger, depending on the Hinonoeino’s relations across the mountains—he wasn’t fool enough to believe they didn’t have regular contact with the Spanish, if only through the endless parade of hopeful padres looking to save heathen souls in exchange for Mexicana silver.

  But if it was not them, and it was assuredly not another rider, and he truly didn’t think it was anything on four paws, the remaining obvious c
onclusion wasn’t one he wanted to make. He’d rather deal with another chimera than a demon, but he suspected he was not going to get much choice in the matter. He exhaled, rubbed at his face, and muttered, “You knew when you signed your name, this was not going to be a milk run.”

  “Sssssssssso you did. And yet you chossssssssse anyway, sssssssssson of bonessssssss.”

  Gabriel sighed, tipping his hat back and sliding—carefully, looking where he dropped his backside—to the ground. “What now?”

  “Sssssssssso gracssssioussssssss,” the snake scolded him, belly to the dirt, head lifted just enough to that he could see the bright black eyes and the forked tongue darting out into the air. Another rattler, this one yellowish-green, with darker black markings toward its tail. It was smaller than the one that had visited them weeks earlier, but Gabriel didn’t pretend that it was any less dangerous.

  “Forgive me, cousin,” he said now. “May I ask why you honor me so with your presence?” Was it you following us? he meant. A conspiracy of rattlesnakes made him more nervous even than the thought of demon.

  “Sssssssssss.” It was laughing at him. “You insssssert yourssssself into the doingssss of the world. We did not expect that of you.”

  “The world is larger than the Territory.”

  “No, it issssssss not.”

  He’d had these arguments before, with those who went about on legs, and never won them, either.

  “Are you here to warn us about our enemies and our allies again? Or has something new occurred?”

  The snake waited, watching him, the tip of its rattle shaking so slowly, it barely sounded.

  “Ahead, there issssss danger. Be wary. Know your enemiesssssss, and know your friendssssssss.”

  The same warning the other snake had given them. And still useless.

  “Thank you,” he said, polite through gritted teeth. “I—”

  He yelped and leapt back just as the hawk swooped down and grabbed the snake in its talons. Golden-brown wings beat the air, driving dust into his face, and then the bird—and snake—were gone.