Silver on the Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  It was possible: the tribes warred on each other and occasionally overstepped to raid a farmstead that had offered them no insult. Or perhaps the miners had offered insult, had crossed a border or offended? But the woman who had given them shelter, Angpetu, had been native, hadn’t she? Was she of the same tribe? Izzy had been so tired the night before, she couldn’t bring the woman’s features to mind to compare.

  The miners looked at each other while the natives waited behind her, and Gabriel just looked patient.

  “No, ma’am,” one of the miners said finally. “Or . . . well, it’s just that there’s been some strangeness around lately, and—”

  “And you’ve decided they’re to blame?”

  “We don’t know rightly who’s to blame, ma’am. We’d blame you, ’cept the marshal said you was all right,” the younger miner, his face ruddy with embarrassment, said. “But there’s men gone missing, and things gone wrong down in the mine, and . . .”

  She had heard enough and was beginning to understand Gabriel’s unease. Her palm itched faintly, and the thin air burned in her lungs. “My companion has invited these men to speak with us. Are you standing in our way?”

  The older miner exhaled and stepped back a pace, pulling the other man with him. “No, ma’am.”

  She nodded and stepped forward, shoulders straight and every patch of her body alert, as though one of them might suddenly change their mind and try to stop them. She heard the faint huff of a laugh from Gabriel, not quite as hidden as it should have been, and then he and the three natives followed, their footsteps soft in the melting snow.

  “That was well done,” Gabriel said quietly to her as they gathered in the foreroom of the guesthouse, that being the only place that was private and warm, rather than risk another confrontation with the miners. She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, but his praise warmed her more than the stove could. There weren’t enough chairs, so Gabriel and the younger native sat cross-legged on the floor, while Izzy perched herself on the desk, leaving the two seats for the older natives.

  “You already know our names,” she said, and waited. Away from the miners, would they be more forthcoming?

  “I am Rains at Night, also called Aleksander,” the older native said, and allowed himself a brief smile at her surprise. “My mother’s sister married a French trapper,” he said. “I hunted with him for many years. This is my brother, Bear Who Runs.” He did not introduce their younger companion, who had yet to speak or even make eye contact.

  “The morning’s snow was a lucky thing,” Aleksander went on. “Another day, our dream-speaker might not have known when you arrived, and we might have taken a different trail and bypassed each other’s steps.”

  Izzy bit the inside of her lip. Why did they take so long to say anything? They were almost as bad as the boss. “You said there were things we needed to speak of?”

  Her bluntness made Gabriel lift his head, as though he were about to scold her, then he tightened his mouth and waited. The older native’s eyes widened, but she was certain she saw the tip of the other man’s mouth curl up. She still couldn’t read them, not entirely, but if he’d been scolded for staring at her, she was reasonably sure he wasn’t offended by her being rude right back.

  “Something cracks the bones,” Bear Who Runs said. “Something rides the night wind and bears us no goodwill.”

  His English wasn’t as good as his brother’s, choosing his words with hesitation, but those words felt familiar to Izzy, that she’d heard them before somewhere.

  Izzy tried to keep her own face from showing expression while her thoughts scattered everywhere, like a mis-shuffled deck. Where had she heard it? In Flood? No. Had Gabriel . . . No. The natives back on the plains had used it too. Had warned her, warned the boss . . . Something shifted in her memory, some time she’d heard the phrase before even then, but it was gone before she could catch at it.

  “Something . . . what?” Gabriel asked. “Do you know?”

  “You have seen it,” Aleksander said to her, and it wasn’t a question. He knew without her having said anything. “You have seen the wrongness. The eater.”

  “Yes.” The memory of the storm racing through the sky, sliding across the mountain range, shivered through her spine, all the way to the backs of her knees, and left her needing to sit down. “Have you?” She would not wish that memory on anyone else, but the desire to rest part of the burden on another was immense.

  “Calls Thunder has dreamed of it, three times running.” She didn’t know who Calls Thunder was, but the way Bear Who Runs didn’t look at their other companion, she thought it might be them. Why didn’t they let him speak? “Calls Thunder says the rocks shiver in the ground when it passes, the trees turn away their budding leaves, and the waters of the streams are filled with birds.” Aleksander shook his head. “None of that is good.”

  “No.” She didn’t know what any of it meant, but she could agree that it didn’t sound good. “It cracks the bones. . . .”

  The sensation of wrongness she’d felt at Clear Rock. The tremble and shudder from simply knowing it was nearby. That might not have been what they meant, but she thought she understood now, and berated herself for not seeing it before, for not understanding, when she’d been told, been warned.

  “You have seen it.” Bear Who Runs wasn’t repeating what Aleksander had said but asking a different question.

  “Maybe? I have seen a thing elsewhere that may be the thing we discuss.” She didn’t know why she was so hesitant to name it, but they nodded as though they understood. “Something is wrong, not only here.” She looked at Gabriel again, but he showed no sign of wanting to pick up the story. This was on her.

  “A few days past . . . No. It began before then.” She wasn’t certain, not the way she’d known other things, but it felt right to start there. “We rode into a farmstead and found all there dead. An illness that struck so swiftly, they had no time to seek help, no time to gather themselves for death.” She paused, waiting to see if the others had anything to add. There was silence, the kind that said they were waiting for her to continue. So, she did.

  “A few days ride north and east of here, in the red hills, we rode into a town called Clear Rock.” It was harder to tell this story, the experience still cold in her bones. “There was no illness there that we could see. There was . . . nothing. No people. No livestock. Nothing left alive.”

  “They left their town to avoid illness and will return when it has burnt itself out?” Bear Who Runs suggested.

  “We thought maybe. Or they had been overrun by bandits, or . . . any number of things we could not determine. So, I . . .” She took a breath and admitted it out loud. “I used my boss’s medicine to look.”

  The memory of the thing she had seen roared back, and suddenly the room was too warm, making it hard to breathe.

  “Iz?” Gabriel was there, one hand on her shoulder, the other cupping her chin, but she could barely feel it, the memory too much, too strong, pulling at her flesh, the black ribbons trying to sink into her thoughts. Then another hand lay on her arm, and she looked up into Calls Thunder’s eyes. The skin was so smooth, so tightly drawn over bones, that she couldn’t help but reach up and touch it, her fingers cool as stone against that warm flesh. They lifted their own hand and covered hers with gentle fingers.

  They understood what she felt. What she worried about. They worried about it too.

  “Something came on the winds. From the west, over the mountains, over the Mother’s Knife. It is a living thing, full of ill intent. I saw this. I saw this through the wind and through the stone. It came hungry, and it came angry.” She blinked and shuddered, sliding away from Calls Thunder’s touch. The eater, they’d called it. “It ate them. It ate the entire town. It would have eaten us, too, when it found us, but we ran.”

  She flicked her gaze up then to see how the others took that admission. She
could not read their faces, still, but the softening around Bear Who Runs’s eyes and mouth told her that he, at least, did not judge her less for the admission of fear.

  “And then . . .” Somehow, this part was harder to tell, her mouth drying up around the words. “It may not be connected, but we encountered a magician in the road.”

  No reaction; she might as well have told them she found a dog or a snake.

  Oh. She hadn’t mentioned the snake. She thought about it, then decided the message had been private, and meant for Gabriel, anyway, not her.

  “He was . . . well, what one might expect of a magician, I suppose.” He had been arrogant and dangerous, and yet, there had been a humor to him that she might have enjoyed in a travel companion, had it not come bundled with all the rest. “He thought to see more clearly what we had encountered.”

  “And it ate him as well?” Bear Who Runs asked.

  Izzy lifted one shoulder in a helpless shrug. “When challenged to show his power, he summoned . . . something. I . . . cannot say it was the same thing.” It wasn’t, but she had no proof of that certainty. “But a thing powerful enough to take a magician by surprise so easily? Foolish to ignore it.”

  Aleksander nodded, grave. “Here, also, a thing has come. Calls Thunder dreamed it, and the white men have gone missing.”

  “Have any of your people disappeared?” Gabriel asked, speaking for the first time since Izzy had started.

  “No.”

  “Of course not,” Gabriel said, barely under his breath. Then, more clearly: “Could this be the workings of another tribe, striking out at those who did not abide by the devil’s terms?”

  The terms of settlement, he meant. How the devil brokered peace between natives and settlers. Take only what you need, use only what you must, do not tread on another’s shadow, do not give offense. Unlike her parents, who had been fools and paid her as the price.

  Aleksander and Bear Who Runs looked at each other, then they both looked at Calls Thunder, who said something, finally, but to Izzy’s ear it was gibberish. She looked at Gabriel, who shook his head. He didn’t recognize the language either.

  “There are many who speak with the spirits and may ask them for favors. But none would work such a thing, not so far from their lands, or without cause on those unknown to them.” Bear Who Runs’s words had a quiet confidence to them, so Izzy merely nodded. The boss might not have accepted their assurance, might have questioned them further, but the boss wasn’t here. She was.

  “We have spoken what we know. We will protect our lands, but if the eater stalks the larger land, then this is your burden, not ours.”

  “Wait, what?” Izzy’s jaw dropped, and she scrambled to her feet, even as Calls Thunder stepped away from her, turning away toward the door. “But you can’t—”

  She wanted to demand that they stay to help her figure out what was going on. But they had come out of courtesy; she had no claim on them, no power to demand they stop, help. “It won’t stop with us,” she said softly. “Calls Thunder dreamed of it. You must know that.”

  Aleksander paused, turning to look at her. His face had returned to being unreadable, carved from the stone of the mountains around them. “The peoples ceded the Old Man the things he asked for,” he said. “Stone and bone are his to protect.”

  “But . . .” Izzy felt lightheaded, dizzy, and her hand twitched, the palm burning as though she’d grabbed a handful of thistle, warning her to stop. She had given warning and been given warning in return. The agreement was upheld.

  Calls Thunder rose with the others but hesitated when they walked out the door, looking back, their gaze looking past Izzy, over her shoulder. A hand reached out, and Izzy extended her own hand instinctively, taking what she was given.

  Two feathers, barely the length of her thumb: one banded black and white, the other a pale greyish blue. Her eyes widened, and she drew a quick breath, feeling like she’d failed another test. The exchange of gifts was important, and she didn’t—

  She smiled then and tucked the feather into her palm, then reached up to her hair with her other hand, pulling the pin from the braid. It had been a fourteenth birthday present, carved from sun-whitened buffalo bone and polished until smooth as milk.

  Calls Thunder took it gravely, then followed the others out the door.

  Gabriel and she stood in the street and watched the three figures depart. A few miners were also on the street, watching them go but not interfering, clearly glad to see the backs of them.

  Izzy sighed, the air rising from somewhere around her hips, forcing its way through her lungs and out in a long exhale. She’d never had a problem so neatly tipped into her lap before.

  “Well,” Gabriel said. Then, unexpectedly: “Supper?”

  Izzy’s stomach growled, and the sigh turned into a surprised laugh, reminded that the entire day had somehow passed while she was in the snowy woods. She tucked the feathers carefully into her pocket and made note to pull a leather thong from her tack to tie her braid again. “Yes. Yes, all right.”

  Whatever they were going to have to do, there was no point doing it on an empty stomach.

  PART FOUR

  CROSSROADS

  THEY RODE OUT OF DE PLATA just after dawn the next day, the supplies Gabriel had bought packed and lashed to the mule’s back, plus a new shirt for him and underthings for her. Gabriel was sure that a clean shirt didn’t make any of their problems go away, but Isobel had insisted, and it seemed to give her comfort, so he relented.

  And he had to admit, if only to himself, that the feel of stiff new cloth was not unpleasing.

  The snow had stopped, the air was sharply bright and clear, and the animals, well-rested after two days in a pen, seemed eager to leave. There was no one to say farewell to, the marshal having busied himself elsewhere, and nobody else having an interest in them save that they were leaving coin behind.

  “We should have told the marshal what they told us.” Isobel refused to let the argument die, even as they left the town behind. “If he’s looking into it.”

  “He won’t, not anymore.” Gabriel was repeating himself, but she had a determined jut to her chin that told him she wouldn’t listen any other way. “I know his type, and you do, too. He’ll feel having told you what little he knows lifts the obligation from him.” Isobel opened her mouth to argue again, and he held up a hand to stop her. “I’m not saying he’s a bad man. He cares about what happened to those men, and I’ve no reason to think he’s a poor marshal. But his purview is fellow-murders, wild animal attacks, and fools lost off the trail. More than that, he knows there’s not much he can do. So, he’s dumped it on your saddle and called it fair, the same way those Hinonoeino did.”

  “I . . .” She shut her jaw with a snap and stared straight ahead. He could practically feel the protest rising in her throat, and part of him wished he could let her let it out, pause long enough for her to have the tantrum she was surely entitled to with so much weight put on her shoulders. They both knew he couldn’t: green rider or no, something wrong was happening, and her obligation was to track it down and deal with it.

  His job was to try and keep her alive long enough to deal with it.

  Although the snow had melted overnight, the ground was still slick underfoot, and the road that led higher into the mountains toward Graciendo’s place was more rock than dirt. The horses picked their way carefully, the mule clumping along behind them, grumbling periodically under its breath; it alone seemed unhappy to be leaving the mining town, where there were regular meals and no heavy burdens to carry. Gabriel had rolled his coat and tied it to the back of his saddle. The morning air still had a slight chill, but he knew from experience that he would begin to sweat the higher into the mountain they went. Isobel had watched him do it but opted to keep her own jacket on, although it was unbuttoned. When he looked at her from the corner of his eye, he saw the dun
hat and dun-colored jacket, the dark brown skirts carelessly hiked over the saddle, and if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought she had taken to the road a year or more ago, not a matter of weeks.

  Was she ready inside, though? Nobody could answer that save her, and maybe not even her, not yet.

  “Drink water,” he said. “You’re not used to being this high up.”

  She didn’t argue, uncorking her canteen and taking a long sip.

  “And let me know if your head begins to hurt.”

  “My head hasn’t stopped hurting for days.”

  “Fair enough,” he allowed. So long as she didn’t complain of dizzi­ness or lose her appetite, she should be fine.

  They rode in silence for a while, birds, invisible in the trees, keeping them company with their calls.

  “Calls Thunder,” he said, suddenly. “They gave you a gift.”

  “The feathers. Yes.”

  “You should braid them into your hair.” He should have told her that before leaving, but he’d been so focused on getting the supplies loaded, he’d forgot. “They were a seeing man, a dream-talker.” Despite himself, despite all he’d seen, Gabriel had been a little awestruck by that. He didn’t hold much with medicine, but he respected it, same as any sane man. “You don’t often meet them. And by ‘often’ I mean never. For them to exchange gifts . . . it’s a sign of honor or respect. You should display it.”

  She bit her lip and a flush touched her cheeks. “Is it medicine? You said a Reaper’s feather was considered strong medicine, but these weren’t . . .” She touched her jacket pocket protectively, telling him where she’d stored the feathers.

  “It’s an honor,” he repeated. “I don’t know the exact meaning they hold for it, but someone we meet might.” Graciendo might, if he could think how to ask him. “Anyroad, that meant they were taking it—and you—serious. That’s something to think on, Isobel.”