Silver on the Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Because of the boss.” Her voice was subdued, almost bitter, and he resisted the sudden, unexpected urge to hug her.

  “Maybe so, but what I’ve learned of tribal ways, they won’t see the difference: you speak for the Old Man; you are the Old Man, in all the ways that count.”

  Isobel leaned forward and stroked Uvnee’s neck, hiding her face. “Why do they call him that?”

  He let her change the subject without argument. “Well, he is, isn’t he? I mean, he’s been here how long? Since before any whites came across the River, or the Maya from down south, since before the conquistadors tried to push their way in, and your boss stopped them cold. That’s a long time, Isobel, near three hundred years.”

  She’d clearly never thought about it, never thought what it meant.

  “Flood’s only been around for fifty, sixty years,” she said. “But Marie’s been with him near forever. That’s what everyone says. That they’re hard-pressed to remember the saloon without her.” Marie was the woman who ran the saloon; he remembered that. The devil’s other Hand. He would have sworn she was barely a decade older than him—forty-five at most.

  Isobel seemed to be thinking hard on that, and he let her lapse back into silence, preferring not to push too hard, not when she’d been so close to snapping in two just yesterday.

  “Calls Thunder thinks I’m like them. A dream-talker.”

  “That you’ve got powerful medicine, anyway. Because you do.”

  She shook her head. “Not me. Just the boss.”

  “Told you, they don’t see the difference. Not sure I do, either. Pretty sure that magician didn’t, either.” Maybe not the best ­example, but there was clearly some maggot in her head, turning in her thoughts. He had to get it out of her before she let doubt dig in too deep. He might not understand the subtle ways—he needed beating over the head, more often than not—but he knew what doubt could do to a rider. And a rider with strong medicine? Magicians might be the least of what would sniff at her heels out here. “Talk to me, Isobel.”

  “How can it all be connected?” she asked finally. “The illness, the . . . thing at Clear Rock, the creature that came after the magician, the missing men, the things Calls Thunder saw. It’s too much, too much distance, too much . . . It would be madness to think they’re all connected.”

  That startled a laugh out of him, and Steady twitched his ears in annoyance. “Iz, there’s nothing about any of this that isn’t madness. But your instincts are good; trust them. When the devil’s sent a Hand out into the Territory for the first time in how long? And you and Calls Thunder both saw something coming out of the West? In the courts, that might not be enough to be considered evidence but would assuredly raise the question.”

  “No courts here,” she said.

  “No.”

  There were marshals to deal with complaints lodged against men—or women—and to ensure that feuds didn’t get out of hand, and judges to hand down punishments at the bench. But no courts the way he’d been trained. No jury, only a posse to hunt you down. Only the devil if you made a deal, and the cold hand of life in the Territory if you didn’t.

  And the devil’s Hand. He studied her as they picked their way up the trail—a trail, not a road: Graciendo lived where not many went. Her hat was slung on her back this morning, a thread of red running through the black strands of her braid when the sun hit it just right through the trees. And when she looked up at him now, her fine dark eyes had lost their snap and gained a weariness.

  “I saw it come over the mountains. It had to be the Mother’s Knife; there’s no other range to the west it could be.”

  She seemed to be waiting for him to agree, so he nodded. He had no argument with that, based on what she said she’d seen.

  “It was like a storm, a massive storm, at first. But then it split. And if one ribbon fell upon Clear Rock, and one here, then where else? I felt a thing in that storm, Gabriel. Something alive. Hungry. I need to know what it is, how to stop it. As soon as we’re done with your deliver­ing, I need to go back to Clear Rock. I know it fell there; maybe there’s some . . . something to tell me what it is, where it came from.”

  “And then what?” The last thing he wanted to do was let her go back there. The last thing he wanted to do was go back there ever. But nothing she’d said was wrong, even if he didn’t like it.

  His job was to keep her alive and bring her back to Flood when he thought she’d learned enough to be on her own, he reminded himself. What the devil did with her after was none of his concern.

  “I don’t know.” She sighed. “But you said it yourself: they’ve laid it on me. The boss needs to know as much as I can learn, and maybe I can see more if I can feel it again.” She stared at him, and he could see the determination behind those eyes. “I’m like silver, Gabriel. The boss tosses me in and I see if it’s safe. And if it’s not . . .”

  His job was to keep her safe. Alive. He needed to be the devil’s adversary here, not his advocate. “And if it’s not, then what? We’ve got no defense at it, Iz. We almost got killed the first time you tangled with it!”

  “Almost isn’t is,” a deep, raspy voice said. “Almost doesn’t count.”

  Izzy would have sworn at that point that nothing could surprise her, much less shock her, and yet . . . He stood in front of the horses, hands shoved into his pockets, head cocked to the side, sand-colored hair slicked back from his face, lines deep around dark eyes that squinted at them as though he knew the most marvelous secret ever, and Izzy could feel the strangeness in him now, where before it had been muted, hidden behind a mask, a pretense.

  She said the first thing that came to her mouth. “You’re dead.”

  “Death, my dearests, is boring.” As casual as if he’d commented on the bathhouse being warm or the snow cold. The magician smiled at Izzy, a quick flash of teeth, his eyes too merry for the conversation, too merry for the exhaustion in his face. Whatever had happened to him, wherever he’d been, it hadn’t been as simple as he tried to make it seem.

  “You’re dead,” she said again, as though he hadn’t heard her. “How are you not dead?” And yet there was no surprise in her voice, no shock. Magicians, the boss said, were a law unto themselves, and then he’d laughed like that amused him.

  Something that could die and not die would amuse the boss, she thought, even as the idea sent a shudder down her spine. All things died. Didn’t they?

  “Dead and eaten.” Gabriel’s voice was shocked, but when she glanced at him, his expression seemed more disgusted than surprised, and she could practically hear him thinking that it would figure a magician couldn’t even die right.

  Steady reached out his neck as though thinking to bite this new arrival, make sure it was real. The magician flicked a glare its way, still smiling, and the horse pulled back, his ears twitching.

  “Perhaps indeed I was, and perhaps I wasn’t, and what’s dead to the wind and bones?” He still spoke lightly, but there was a deepness to it, deep the way Izzy thought loneliness or sorrow might feel, an ache that stretched from mouth to ribs, a twisting line of darkness, hard and hollow. “Boring is what it is. And so, I am back!”

  “Back to pester us?” Gabriel’s hand was on the hilt of his knife, and she could see him figuring the odds of it even clearing the sheath, much less hitting the magician, before something dire came after him in return. She felt the urge to place a hand on his arm, remind him that it would clearly be pointless, but it did not seem he would welcome her interruption.

  The magician sighed, spreading his arms, and she was reminded for a moment of the Reaper hawks, wide wings blocking out the sun. “If we must be truthful, I would rather be elsewhere. Any elsewhere. I’ve seen things while I was away, oh, such things your eyes would widen for the telling. I’ve seen things . . .” His fingers curled, talons clenching at missed prey. “But the wind brings me here, and so here I sha
ll be.”

  “Seen what?” Izzy asked, her entire body canting forward with her desire to hear. “Did you see the storm, Farron? Tell me! You’re a magician; you must know what it is.”

  The mockery left his eyes, and he looked past them into something that was not there. “This time, I was closer, through no wish of my own. This time, it was clearer. The winds are in confusion, sweeping low to the ground and listening, fearing. . . . A storm has arrived, a bitter storm.”

  The winds. Magicians took their direction from the wind, and that made them a little mad. If the storms were confused, then would a magician be even more mad? Izzy felt her stomach clench at the thought, a lingering voice whispering at her, Run.

  She couldn’t run. The bones cracked, and the winds were in confusion, and Izzy had no idea what any of it meant, except that everyone thought she would fix it.

  “There are balances to be kept, little rider.” The magician was looking at her again with those, eyes dark-rimmed and too intent for any kind of comfort. His hand was on Uvnee’s bridle and the mare’s ears were back, but she was not shying away or retreating. “There are balances that’ve been tipped turvy. It has to be made right.”

  Gabriel snorted. “By you?”

  “By her. I’m just along for the entertainment.” The magician smiled again, bone-hard and brightly, and stepped back, his earlier intensity breaking. “It’s always a merriment when the wind changes. And it has changed, my dear ones, oh, lucky ones. The wind whistles me up and down, and it tells me of power and the crackling of bones, spilling marrow into the waters for predators to eat.”

  Izzy sat upright in her saddle, her hands tightening on the reins, and Gabriel’s knife was halfway out of the sheath, as though he had heard a threat in those words.

  “Ah, ah. None of that,” the magician scolded, and the knife slid back into the sheath, Gabriel’s hand flying off it as though it had suddenly burned him. “I am not your threat, rider. Not at this moment, anyway. Show me some respect.”

  “Are you here to help me, Farron Easterly? Or to claim whatever power you sense?” Izzy felt the brush of something against the back of her neck, the rustle of something softly invisible across her arms, but she refused to shiver.

  “If you wish my help, I may lead you to where the wind whistles me, but beyond that, it is not for me to say. As for power . . . it is the only true currency, little rider.” The magician looked up again and away, head tilted as though listening to something. “And we should be on our way; it is not wise for us to remain overlong here. How those little diggers spend so much time within the teocuitlatl and still remain dross, I cannot understand . . .”

  “The what?” Gabriel was still upset; she could see it in him, the rising need to control, direct, understand, despite none of it remaining still long enough to for them to pin it down, think it through.

  “Silver, man, silver!” the magician said. “To touch on the veins and unsheathe it from the bones, purify and form, and still they know not what they handle; they cannot feel it . . . But it would feel you, little rider, as much as it feels me. And we do not want that to happen, oh, no. No waking the silver for us.”

  Waking the silver? Did he mean . . .

  Gabriel looked at Izzy, who gave a faint shrug, as much with her face as her shoulder, then she remembered the feeling she’d had when passing the mineshaft opening, the equal pull of curiosity and push of dread, and this time let the shiver take her, with understanding. It hadn’t been her feeling that; it had been the ore.

  Waking the silver. No. Impossible.

  But it might explain why the boss never went to the mines but had them send the silver to him, smelted and tamed.

  “We need help,” she said quietly. “He may not be ideal, but he’s the only one who’s offered.”

  Gabriel ran his hand through his hair and put his hat back on, marking the end of discussion. “He’s come back more mad than before, and we’re just as mad to accept him. But fine. He may be of help. But I’m not taking him with us on my errand.”

  “Who?” Farron asked, more indignant than curious. “Who is so important—”

  “I carry a package for Graciendo,” Gabriel said, and the magician stepped back as though the other man had finally surprised him.

  “Ah. Ah, and now I see more, I do.” Farron’s eyes were merry again, his smile full of teeth. “No fear, rider, no fear. To Graciendo we shall all of us go, thee and thee and me, and see what we shall see.”

  Gabriel narrowed his eyes, clearly about to protest the magician’s inclusion of himself, but Izzy could see no other choice, despite renewed unease. They had no idea what they faced, and the magician claimed to—although she did not look forward to the headache of unraveling his half-mad speech. If he insisted on coming with them to see Gabriel’s friend, how much harm could it do?

  Izzy twisted the silver ring on her finger, feeling it warm comfortably to the touch, and rubbed the mark on her palm against her skirt. She couldn’t risk alienating someone who might have answers. And, she admitted to herself, as unpredictable as the magician might be, for now he seemed to be on their side. Or, she checked herself, the winds that drove him were.

  For now, as they followed Gabriel up the trail to meet with the mysterious Graciendo, she wondered what had happened to the magician after his not-death, what he had seen, and why, now, she could feel the strangeness in him.

  Had he changed, she wondered uneasily . . . or had she?

  Graciendo’s cabin was only a day’s ride from De Plata, but with the magician on foot, it took them longer than expected, and Gabriel thought it better not to approach the cabin once night fell. They made a rough camp on the trail itself, the ground on either side too rocky for sleeping.

  No road led to Graciendo; Gabriel was unsure if the old man had chosen his location for that or simply prevented a road from reaching him, but the end result was the same. The woods pressed around him, as they did each time he made this trip, and he found his neck aching from the times he looked up, trying to see the open sky through thick green leaves and failing each time.

  Isobel might feel uneasy in the hills; he could never rest properly if he couldn’t see the stars.

  He was not alone in being uneasy; they kept the animals close and the fire small, as though to attract as little attention as possible, and declined to step off the trail to hunt, relying on the beans he’d set to soak that morning, and a chunk of salted goat meat.

  “Does she know?”

  “Know what?” Gabriel knew he was defensive, but the magician gave him no less unease now than he had on first encounter. He fought the urge to flinch, to move away, to find running water and put it between them.

  The other man settled too comfortably next to him, resting against the log they’d dragged over for a bench. “What you are.”

  Gabriel looked over his shoulder at where Isobel was fiddling with something in her pack, the horses a darker shadow beyond, then back to the work at hand. There was enough wood here to make a decent fire, and it had caught nicely, but it couldn’t ward off the chill he felt.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and neither do you.”

  “You think I can’t smell it?” The magician stretched his long legs out in front of him and grinned up at Gabriel, teeth too white and sharp to be soothing. He might look human, Gabriel reminded himself, might even sound human, but he wasn’t, not where it counted. No magician was. “How many generations?”

  Gabriel pulled the coffeepot out of the pack and set it aside, then dug deeper to find the fresh packet of coffee and chicory. “Generations of what?” He was hedging, he knew he was hedging, and part of him wondered why he even bothered. All the years of pushing it down, the denial and the running, and it followed him anyway. The devil had stripped it from him in one sentence, laid him bare and needy, and now this . . .

  But what he wo
uld give freely to the devil he’d give to no other, not even himself.

  “Gabriel Kasun.”

  His name carried the dry dust of the road and the sour tang of the ocean, the taste of honey from his mother’s bees, and the feel of docu­ments shuffled under his hands. Gabriel looked at the magician, his gaze brimming with anger. “Do not attempt to compel me again,” he warned, feeling his entire body shift against the need to respond. “Or I’ll kill you in your sleep and not have a moment of guilt in it.”

  “That would presume I slept,” the magician said, but relented. The sensations faded, but Gabriel didn’t relax. He wouldn’t relax for as long as this bastard traveled with them, and not even after that now.

  “Fine. I will say it for you. You’re bound,” the magician said. “As bound to the Territory as I am—nay, more so. Leaving didn’t work so well for you, did it? Did nobody warn you?”

  The bastard actually sounded . . . concerned.

  “I’m none of your business,” he said, checking the water level in the bag and frowning. This was the second to spring a leak; they would have enough for coffee tonight or tomorrow, not both, and there was no fresh water until they could use Graciendo’s well.

  “Oh, give me that,” the magician said, and took the leather bag from his hands. He held it a moment and then handed it back.

  The bag, half-empty before, now bulged with water, without a single drip.

  Farron leaned back, watching him with those uncanny eyes. “I’m not your enemy,” he said. “I don’t have to be a friend; in fact, you’re wise to keep in mind that I’m nobody’s friend. But I’m not your enemy. Not here, now, in this time and place.”

  Gabriel grunted, scooping coffee into the pot and adding water, then placing the pot on its tripod over the flames.

  “It doesn’t have to be a terrible thing, you know. . . .”

  “Leave it,” Gabriel said.

  Much to his surprise, the magician did.