Silver on the Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  She looked to her right, down the street to where the mine workers lived, but then turned and walked the other direction, away and out of town.

  Behind her, the wind picked up and thin white snowflakes began to fall.

  Gabriel didn’t think much of it when Isobel’s bed was empty when he woke. He figured she’d gone to use the bath again, or merely wanted some fresh air. The room they’d slept in was tidily built, but without windows or chimney, the air became stale overnight. He stretched, feeling his back crack in ways it never did when he slept on the ground, and pulled his clothing on over his johns, gathering his shaving kit. He didn’t mind a bit of scruff, preferring that to a cold-water shave, but the steam from the bath would soften the bristles nicely for a close shave. Then he could check on the horses and find Isobel and some breakfast, in that order, if she hadn’t already come back.

  The outside room was empty and surprisingly chilled, even with the stove still warm from the coals glowing within. When he opened the main door to step outside, he discovered why: the ground and rooftops were draped with soft white snow. Unusual this late in spring, but not unheard-of in the mountains. There were footprints showing where people had walked, but there were none leading from the doorstep he stood on. If Isobel had come out this way—and she must have—she had done so before the snow began falling.

  He frowned at the snow, then looked up at the sky. The thick cover of clouds, still sending down a light shower of snowflakes, gave him no hint as to how long the sun had been up. Still. He chewed at his lower lip, thinking. If it had been falling more thickly earlier, her steps could easily have been filled in by the time she made it to the bathhouse. Or she might have changed her mind and gone to check in with the marshal. There was no cause to worry: Isobel was a sharp girl, and she knew to be alert. He wouldn’t worry. Yet.

  The mercantile, as he’d remembered, was much smaller than the one in Patch Junction, with fewer goods and higher prices. But there were the basics they needed and enough more to get them back to more civilized places, and he still had enough coin to cover it all.

  “I’m telling you, there’s something out there.”

  Gabriel let his hand rest on the sack of dried beans he’d been about to pick up and listened without turning around. That had the sound of an interesting conversation, one possibly relevant to their situation.

  “You’re letting nerves play tricks on you.” A younger voice, also male, and dismissive.

  “Mind your manners, Adam,” the first speaker said sharply. “I was working these mines when your mother was changing your napkin, and I know when something’s wrong. There’s bad air down there and above as well, and it’s only getting worse.”

  Gabriel turned slowly, making it seem as though he were looking at another sack of beans identical to the first, and studied the newcomers.

  The three men were clearly miners: broad-shouldered and stooped. Two of them were older, their grey hair showing scalp beneath, while the other seemed to have barely started growing facial hair. Gabriel ran his hand over his own freshly shaved chin and admitted that the man might have shaved that morning as well, but he doubted it. The younger man had brash words and a brave face, but he held himself like a man about to bolt; he was the one feeling nerves.

  “It’s not the air,” the first speaker said. He was facing Gabriel, his face narrow and long, the skin pale as any Gabriel’d ever seen. The other two men had the square faces and darker coloring of griffe, father and son maybe, but they all had the same wan complexion of men who didn’t see the sun often. The mines were no place to spend your life, in Gabriel’s opinion, no matter how well it paid.

  “Don’t start with that again, Will,” the other older man said.

  “I’ll say as I well please, and you’d be wise to listen,” Will replied, his words full of heat. “It’s not the air; it’s the very bones beneath. Some demon’s work or worse. It’s watching us, lurking where we sleep. The devil’s work, I say.”

  “The devil pays us no mind, so long as we provide,” the younger man, Adam, scoffed. “Haul silver down and hold the stone.”

  “Mayhap it’s time the devil does pay us some mind,” Will said, but this time his words were tired, as though he’d said it times before and never been heard. “There’s three gone, up and into nowhere when they should have been working, and left nothing behind. If it were a cat, we’d’ve heard it screaming; if it were a demon, it would have taken more; if it were a bear, it would have mayhap killed the one but no more, not once the berries started to bloom. And you think a bear won’t leave sign? Nothing. But something’s out there, and it’s stalking us. Pretending otherwise never makes it go away.”

  Missing men and no explanation why? Gabriel was done listening. Indicating to the merchant waiting behind the counter that he would be back for the items already gathered, he left the mercantile, intent on one thing: finding Isobel.

  The snow had stopped, and the chill of that morning was gone, but the sky was still overcast. Isobel hadn’t returned to the guesthouse, nor was she with the horses or in the dining hall, now empty save for two boys scrubbing down the tables. Gabriel made himself stop and think, refusing to allow his worry to turn to panic. Isobel was no flippit to wander off. She was a practical girl who’d proven herself already, and he needed to trust her sense. Perhaps she had gone to speak with the marshal?

  “No sir, haven’t seen the girl.” Itchins was found in a small office behind the mercantile, going over a leather-bound journal. He studied Gabriel with a lazy look that hid nothing of the mind behind. He might play the fool, but no marshal ever was. “You’ve lost one of the devil’s get, have you? That won’t end well for you.”

  “She’s his Hand,” Gabriel said tightly. “I’d suggest you speak of her with more respect.”

  The marshal tried to raise his eyebrows but succeeded only in making himself look like a bemused, overfed owl. “Then you’d best go fetch her, hadn’t you? I’ve more serious things to concern myself with.”

  “You mean the missing men? Yes, I know about that.” No need to tell the marshal he’d learned it by overhearing gossip; let him wonder. “You’d best be on that, then. Terrible if the Hand were to carry back news that a silver town was being preyed upon and the marshal riding that circuit failed to prevent it.”

  The marshal scowled at him. “You think I haven’t tried? You don’t know that’s why I’m here, instead of riding on, this past week? But there’s nothing. Just a bunch of overly nervous miners and three missing men, who could just as easily have run off on their own soon’s the weather cleared.”

  Gabriel wasn’t a marshal, had no obligation to the Law here in the Territory save to obey it, same as everyone else, but he was an old dog with only a few tricks, and one of them was examining a witness. “Nervous how? Because the men are gone, or—?”

  The marshal frowned again, but this time it seemed directed inward. “No. Or, yes, they’re worried about that, o’ course, but they’re skittish. These are folk who go into the bones of the earth on a daily basis, blast and wash the ground under their feet, feed that hot beast of a furnace, and yet something that isn’t there has them shivering in their beds.”

  Gabriel had heard that scorn before but typically not from those born and raised in the Territory. And you didn’t generally come to be a marshal if you hadn’t been raised there. “You think there’s nothing that can’t been seen, felt, touched that’s dangerous?”

  Itchins had the grace to blush, although he kept his bluster. “I’m thinking there’s no proof that anything happened to those men ’cept themselves.”

  “And you haven’t felt anything? No sense of wrongness, of being watched, threatened?”

  The marshal’s hand went to the inside of his jacket, almost as though he didn’t realize he was doing it. That was where he kept his sigil; clearly, the touch of the badge a reassurance. “We’re surrounded b
y silver,” he said, his protest confirmation of what Gabriel suspected. “We should be safe as babes.”

  It wasn’t enough to turn a judge, but this wasn’t a matter for judges. “Should be isn’t always. And you’re assuming whatever it is minds silver in the slightest.” Demon were cautious of it, and magicians steered clear when they could, but Gabriel could attest that the devil himself wore silver, and there wasn’t a native alive who didn’t know the use of it same or better as any other man.

  He hesitated, not sure if telling the man what he knew would help or simply panic him more. “There’s something loose in the Territory,” he said finally. “We’ve encountered it down in the plains. Can’t say that that’s what’s taken your men, but I can’t say it isn’t, either.” Isobel had seen it coming over the mountains, hadn’t she, in her vision? The sense of urgency grew in him: this was her business, he needed to find her.

  Itchins finally focused on him, the intelligence behind those eyes no longer hidden. “Something what? Animal? Magical? Some bastard breeding of both?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly, turning for the door. “I’m sorry. Just be careful.” He needed to find Isobel.

  Izzy hadn’t meant to walk as far as she had. The restlessness that kept her from sleeping had driven her steps. She’d thought of wearing herself out, then crawling back into the bed and staying there, letting Gabriel go visit his friend without her. They’d been on the go for so long, so much to learn and understand, and everything she’d seen and heard circled inward: April’s words and Gabriel’s reaction tangled in the snake’s warning, the illness in Widder Creek and the thing she’d seen in Clear Rock, and how she’d known what to do both times, and then the magician’s fate, wrapping around the unpleasantly tickling sensation that something was following her. . . . It all settled like a bad pudding in her gut, a scrape of fear down her back that made her move more quickly, as though she could leave it behind if she only walked far enough.

  Too late, she realized that she had left the town behind entirely, the snow filling in her footsteps behind her, the tree-covered slope unfamiliar. She was lost. And the sense of being watched was back.

  And it was cold, colder than it should have been for even early spring. She cupped her right hand over her left knuckles and breathed over them, trying to bring some feeling back to her fingers, and warmth flared from her palm out, spreading along her arms, down her back and legs, until the air’s chill no longer bothered her.

  The sigil. She opened her hands and stared at the marking, but it seemed no different, the lines dark and smooth, the flesh taut and warm.

  The sensation of being watched increased, along with a quiet kind of curiosity, clear as a touch. But unlike before, the sensation had no discomfort, no disquiet. She turned slowly. There was nothing behind her, only slender, white-barked trees and jumbled rocks. In the distance, she thought she saw something move—an animal, she thought, spooked by her presence. But the feeling of being watched remained. “Hello?”

  “You are far from where you should be, nééhebéhe’.”

  Izzy turned and felt her breath catch, staring at the man standing in what had been empty space before. How do they do that? she thought, irrationally annoyed at how natives kept sneaking up on her.

  There was a crunch of branches, loud enough she knew it was deliberate, and another figure joined the first. They were both male, older men with narrow faces, dressed in plainshirts under bone-and-cord breastplates, their hair tucked behind their ears and braided in two plaits that came down over their shoulders, feathers woven into the braids. Behind them, another figure—younger, without any adornment and long hair loose—came into view from behind the trees.

  “I . . . was just walking. Stretching my legs,” she said, trying to remember Gabriel’s words to the natives they’d met earlier. “Did I cross a border unaware?” She couldn’t read them at all, the cues and hints she’d learned in the saloon useless here, their bodies held differently, their expressions full of meaning but unreadable. Her position, her origin would mean nothing to them; the first natives they had met had made that clear, and Gabriel was not with her this time to intercede.

  The fear scrambled at her spine, and she lifted her chin in response. She would not presume, but she wouldn’t be cowed, either. “I have intended no offense. My name is Isobel née Lacoyo Távora, and I travel as the devil’s Hand.”

  The first man said something, words she didn’t understand, and studied her so frankly, his dark eyes intent, that she felt no hesitation in staring back at him. Neither of them blinked or backed down, even when her eyes began to water from the strain.

  The man standing next to him, who had been more politely looking off to the side, coughed and slapped the other man on the back of the head, saying something to him in that same language, only harsher, like he was scolding him. “Your companion will be looking for you,” he said to Izzy in English. “Come.”

  Not knowing what else to do, Izzy followed them.

  The walk back to town seemed shorter: Izzy felt a dizzying sensation at one point, like crossing the protective border into Flood, and whispered a thank-you to whatever had allowed her to pass. The older men did not speak again, and Izzy’s one attempt to communicate with the younger one had gotten her a blank face in return.

  The snow had stopped, and the air seemed to be warming as they walked, as though the storm had existed earlier solely to confuse her steps. Izzy darted a glance at the young man walking beside her and bit her lip. The devil said that no man could work the weather, that it was a creature of its own whim and will, yet magicians could call the winds . . . but natives had their own medicine men, and Gabriel said they spoke with spirits often. But if so, to what effort had they summoned the storm? Surely not malice toward her?

  No. More likely this was merely a freakishly late storm and they had been caught in it the same as she. And without them, she might have wandered higher into the mountains and been truly lost, perhaps attacked by a ghost cat, or . . . She had been foolish to wander off, she berated herself. Her distraction had been no excuse.

  They came up on the back side of town, past the entrance to the mines cut into the face of a cliff. The lattice of heavy timber that surrounded it piqued her curiosity, but her companions kept walking, and while she was no longer afraid of being lost, she found herself unwilling to linger alone too near that dark opening.

  Just past the miners’ shacks, she saw Gabriel standing with two other men in dark coats and heavy boots, intent on their conversation. As Izzy and her companions came closer, one of the men saw them, reaching out to slap his companion in the chest, then indicating their approach.

  “Isobel!” She was surprised at the note of relief in Gabriel’s voice: surely she hadn’t been gone that long? The way he wrapped his arms around her, hugging her fiercely enough to force an exhale from her lungs, made her rethink that. Maybe she had?

  “You’ve been gone all day, Iz, you idiot girl; don’t you know better than to wander off?”

  All day? She blinked at him, feeling foolish all over again. “I . . .”

  He shook her once, gently, then released her, turning to face her rescuers. “I am Gabriel Kasun, also known as Two Voices. Thank you for bringing my . . . my notó’u back to me.” He stumbled slightly over the odd word, but the one who had spoken to her nodded, as though he knew Gabriel’s name already.

  “You are the rider Graciendo waits for.”

  “I am.” He waited for them to introduce themselves, but they stared at him, and Isobel saw the way his gaze flickered to the men he’d been speaking with, then back again. Something had upset him, more than merely her going missing. “My thanks for aiding her back to town,” he said again. “She is plains-born and not accustomed to the mountains.”

  The first warrior flicked a hand, as though dismissing Gabriel’s explanation. “We would speak with you of things.” H
is gaze flicked to her. “Both of you.”

  So, they had been waiting for her! Izzy wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse. Why couldn’t they just come into town, instead of waiting for her to get lost like an orphaned calf?

  Gabriel’s expression showed a flicker of curiosity, but if she’d been sitting across the felt from him, she wouldn’t have known if he held a good hand or bad. “There’s coffee in the mess, if you’d care to come inside and sit down,” he said, gesturing toward the nearest building, a low-slung, windowless wooden structure.

  “You’re gonna let—” one of the miners started to say, then stopped abruptly, like he’d bitten his own tongue.

  “They ain’t allowed in town,” the other miner said. “Sorry, but that’s how it is.”

  Izzy glanced at the miners, then back at Gabriel. That wasn’t right. The boss didn’t allow for that. . . .

  And the boss was nearly a month’s travel from here. These miners made it clear they weren’t pleased about Gabriel’s invitation, and the marshal couldn’t be counted on to support anything they did; he’d made quite clear of that. She had no backing, no support save Gabriel. What could she do—and why should she?

  Because you are the Hand, her own voice told her. Because this is the devil’s Territory, no matter how far away he may seem, and you are here to remind them of that fact.

  “That may be how it was, but that is not how it is,” she said, and her voice wasn’t crisp, the way Marie’s would have been, but quiet, soft. These men would not appreciate being scolded or hounded. She borrowed instead some of the boss’s quiet certainty, thought of the beat of the buffalo thundering underfoot, the deep silence of the open sky and starry night, and looked at both miners square. “This town may bear a Spanish name, but you are within the Territory. If these men have offered you no insult or injury, you may not bar them from going where they will. Have they done you or yours injury?”