Silver on the Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “You have no authority. You may not keep us from going where we will.” His English was oddly accented but fluent, his hair silvering but still full over a round face. His hands, where they gripped the staff, were weathered, his wrists thickly muscled.

  “No, but we can keep you from getting your necks torn out,” Gabriel said. “Do you know how demon feed? They reach into your innards with talons made of stone and carve your stomach, then your heart, and leave your face for an after-meal sweet.”

  Izzy blinked in shock at that barefaced lie. Demon did no such thing. Oh, they would kill—they did so regularly enough to be wary—but out of temper or mischief and not in such a way. But Gabriel doubtless had a reason for scaring them; she would not interfere. Not yet, at least.

  Why had the demon gone after them? She was quite sure demon didn’t care about politics or borders any more than they did anything manmade.

  Izzy’s palm itched, and she curled her fingers around it, thinking. When she had looked behind them, she had seen nothing. Ahead, the road had sung out of something wrong, something unwanted. But which of them was it, demon or Spaniards?

  She stood up, gathering the attention of her companions, although the friars still refused to look in her direction. She still had no idea what to do about the storm, no thought as to how she might stop it, but Devorah had said there was unease in the south, and southwest was where the ill wind had blown from. South and west, where Nueva España’s borders ran along the Territory. And now Spaniards—Spanish Churchmen—walked the same road?

  She had been raised to see what people wanted, what they needed, even if they would not speak it. And these men wanted something they would not admit to. Something that gave offense.

  “He has no authority over you,” she agreed. She thought of the boss, who never raised his voice, and of Miz Margaret, who ruled her household by sheer force of will, and shaped her tone after them. “But I do. Your safety depends on me.”

  Their leader looked her up and down then and scoffed, a low-in-his-throat noise. Because she was female or because she was young and—Izzy acknowledged to herself—road-worn, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. She knew, and they knew, that she had the better hand.

  “You?” one of the friars, a young one, burst out. “Una niña? Ja!”

  The mockery burned, but she pretended the boss was standing behind her, his hand on her shoulder, that familiar, comforting scent wrapped around her, and kept her gaze focused on the clear leader of their group. “You are in a place you do not belong, facing dangers you know nothing of and cannot defend yourself against. I may be female and young to your eyes, but I hold the authority to determine your fate.”

  Her words carried in the thin air, hanging there for all to hear, and she thought maybe Marie would be proud.

  “Why are you here?” she asked more quietly. “That is what we wish to know.”

  “I thank you for your assistance,” the friar said, and she could see that he was trying to be polite, even though he couldn’t seem to look at her face, instead directing his words into the ground at her feet. “But we owe you nothing save our thanks.”

  She glanced at Gabriel. He was staring at them with a grim look on his face, his unhappiness loud as a shout. Farron was nowhere to be seen: he had either left or made himself invisible, either equally possible.

  “That is your creed, no?” the friar asked, near mockingly. “That no man owes a thing not willingly given?”

  “It is,” she said. She could force them to stay; she suspected Gabriel and Farron both knew ways to get words from unwilling mouths. But they had given no offense that she could prove, and taken no agreement, that the devil had claim on them.

  “Then we will be on our way.” He gestured to his men, who scurried for their packs as though suddenly released from chains. The injured man moved more slowly, skirting around Izzy as though she carried the plague, and hid behind their leader as they turned to go.

  “It will only attack you again,” she warned them.

  “And now we know how to send it on its way,” the friar replied, as though he could accomplish that better than she, and turned his back on her with clear dismissal.

  Gabriel watched the Spaniards walk away, their habits and packs making them look ridiculous, but he had never felt less like laughing. Isobel rested her hands on her hips and glared at him. “What was that about?”

  “What was what?” He refused to feel guilty because a slip of a girl was glaring at him.

  “I’ve never seen you so angry.” Isobel’s voice was soft again, her eyes worried, and the sharply burning rage he’d felt since he first saw the robes and tonsured heads eased slightly.

  “He doesn’t like Churchers,” the magician said, appearing again as silently as he’d gone, his gaze watching the path where the dust left in their trail was beginning to settle again.

  “I gathered as much,” Isobel said dryly. “I’m asking why.”

  She had no idea, Gabriel thought. No idea that her entire tenor had changed, that she had stepped into the leadership of the party without hesitation, without doubt, and not let it go when the crisis was passed. He decided not to say anything; it was enough that she had done so, and done so competently.

  “Jesuits aren’t so bad,” he said finally. “They don’t like the Territory much but they deal with it, even if they do so by ignoring it or arguing it near to death. They never went far from their borders, like they knew this wasn’t their land.”

  “The devil had already claimed everything from the River to the Mother’s Knife,” Farron said. “Wasn’t like they had much choice, any more than that fool de Soto did back in 1541.”

  “The Spanish were the first ones to call him that,” Gabriel said. “The devil, I mean. They consider him the source of all sin in the world.”

  “Stopping men intent on glory and fortune will do that,” Farron said dryly. “A pity he didn’t send them straight to hell at the time.”

  Isobel didn’t seem to be listening to them anymore. “Do you think they have anything to do with all this, Gabriel? All of this, with what Devorah said, what I’ve seen, what Calls Thunder dreamed?”

  She asked the questions he couldn’t answer. “I only know that they’re here, and that’s never meant anything good before. The Church of Rome is no friend to the Territory, no matter what nation they use to ferry them here. They would see it stripped of its protections, and its protectors, if they could.”

  She blinked, then understanding dawned. “The boss.”

  He nodded. “Remember your friend back in Patch Junction? What the States do with the promise of ‘civilization,’ Spain attempts to do with faith. They feed stories elsewhere, urging people to venture here with tales of gold and silver in the hills, plentiful game, wide-open spaces just waiting for a strong man to come and hold . . . and of the danger that rides the land, the terrible witchcraft, the malicious shadow of the devil. . . . If they could have brought the auto-da-fé into the Territory, they would have, and Flood would be the first put to the flames.”

  Flood would have been first but not the last. For every soul who could flee, there was another like him, like Isobel. Bound.

  He had gone East never meaning to come back, desperate to be away from this land that whispered in his veins, laced around his own bones like the water he could sense the way others smelled dinner. But he had not been able to stay away, the distance tearing at him every breath he took. Two Voices, the Hochunk named him, but Two Hearts might be better suited, or Two Spirits, to yearn for a place and hate it so.

  The devil had promised him peace from that if he mentored this girl, allowed her the safety to learn what she needed to know. What he would have done first for her sake, he did now for himself, and the shame of that curled inside him. But the Spaniards would call him a witch for his water-sense and burn him alongside the devil and his people, if the
y knew. Him, and the girl back in Patch Junction, April, with the plant-touch, and how many others beside?

  “They’re as much a danger as the storm you’ve seen,” he said to Isobel. “Maybe even more.”

  “We have no proof they’ve done anything worse than be foolish.” Isobel’s jaw was stubborn, but her voice was uncertain; he could convince her if he tried.

  “Well, that’s a sure way to court death, foolishness,” Farron said. “No need for us to do anything but let them find it on their own. Let the demon come back for seconds. Hey-la, problem solved.”

  “And then their monastery comes looking for them?” Isobel wasn’t impressed. “The boss would prefer to avoid further trouble with Spain if we could, and if what you say is true, they’d only use the death as an excuse to prod further.”

  She was learning politics, however unwittingly. “No. No, you’re right,” Gabriel said. “Letting them die is not the answer.” Yet, he thought darkly, and the look in Farron’s eye suggested he and the magician were in agreement for once. “It’s uneasy coincidence that they’re here and something foul’s come across the border as well. We need answers from them, if only to know whatever they might know.

  “But short of chasing them down and putting them to the knife . . . I’ve been taught to win arguments, but I’m no match for any trained by the Church. They do not allow doubt, and they believe in a straight path, not the endless roads.”

  “I could put the fear of the winds in them,” the magician offered. “Give me the rising night air, and I could have them wetting their bedrolls before moonrise.”

  The magician’s grin was too gleeful, his eyes wicked, and had he been a horse, Gabriel would have turned him loose rather than get on his back ever. But the temptation was there: let the power the friars so feared and hated be the source of their undoing, send them scrambling and screaming for the other side of the border and ready to shrive themselves to the first soul they saw.

  Isobel considered them both for a long moment, and he could practically see her reaching for something, deep within herself. Finally, she nodded. “All right. Do it.”

  PART FIVE

  THE RISING WIND

  THE MOMENT SHE NODDED AGREEMENT, Izzy regretted it. But she did not call him back. “What do you think he’s going to do?”

  Gabriel met her gaze without judgment. “Do you truly want to know?”

  Izzy licked her lips and considered the question. She did. But another glance at the magician’s back where he stood, head tilted up toward the evening sky, his hair loose around his shoulders and his body absolutely still, made her think that she didn’t, too.

  Farron had proven himself an ally, if not a friend. But not even the boss could predict what a magician might do, and there was a cold wind inside him that only a fool wouldn’t fear.

  And she had set that upon the strangers.

  She let her fingers trace the map Gabriel had brought out, seeing the names inked in careful letters almost too small to be legible. She thought, maybe, now she understood what she had been meant to learn, sent away from the saloon, away from Flood. Everything that happened here, within the Territory, reflected on the boss. Those who’d taken bargain with him, those who’d settled there because he kept it safe, those who’d been there before and trusted him to keep his word.

  “The left hand moves in shadows, unseen, unheard. . . . It is the strength of the Territory, the quick knife in the darkness, the cold eye and the final word.”

  She was the quick knife, the cold eye, the final word. Unseen and unnoticed . . . She had spent so much time trying to be seen, trying to prove herself, and there had been nothing she needed to prove. Only to accept. The boss didn’t rule; he served. And so did she.

  She felt herself cracked open and hollowed out by the realization. The road and the ride had changed her, until she wasn’t Izzy any longer. Not in any way she’d recognize if she looked in a mirror. Izzy couldn’t do this.

  But Gabriel’s Isobel could, she thought. She could be Isobel.

  “Here and here.” Where Gabriel’s finger touched the map, a faintly glimmering dot appeared, marking the spot. “From Widder Creek to De Plata. I don’t know how we missed it; there’s a definite pattern. Far in, illness. Closer to the mountains . . . physical attacks.”

  “Not Patch Junction? The way April spoke against the boss . . .”

  He chuckled briefly at that, although she didn’t see what was amusing about it. “People have pushed against your boss’s rules since the day he laid ’em down, Iz. Always someone thinking there’s more and better over the River, or under someone else’s rules. Or they just plain don’t like being told what they can and can’t do. And there’s always someone willing to stir it up some for their own amusement. I suspect that’s what those friars are here to do too.”

  “They give offense.”

  Izzy yelped, high-pitched and unashamed, twisting as she jumped, reaching for the knife at her waist before remembering that it was with the rest of her kit, close but not close enough to reach. Gabriel had his blade out already, though, crouched and staring at their unexpected, unwelcome visitor.

  Up close, facing them, the demon could not pass for human. Its skin was not flesh but dust, swirling constantly, thickly enough to seem solid, and to look into its eyes was to fall forward forever, the dizziness she’d felt when first touching the bones. Nothing compared to this, to—

  The demon looked away first, deliberately turning its head and closing its lids, to break the fall.

  “No offense meant done, no offense meant done,” it said. “Put away your blade; open your ears.”

  “I’ll open my ears,” Gabriel said, but kept his knife unsheathed, resting it flat against his knee, his fingers still curved against the bone handle. Izzy, on impulse, rested her left hand palm-up on her leg, the sigil clearly visible. But she suspected the demon knew full well who she was already.

  “I bring a story. Not a story of the time-before-fire nor a story of time-before-man.” The demon kept its eyes away from theirs, its gaze shifting over everything save their faces, a courtesy Izzy hadn’t expected but welcomed. “This is a story of the shaking of the bones, when the winds were used against themselves, and ants attempted to carry away the mountain.”

  Its hands were restless, too-long fingers scratching at the dirt, curling in on themselves, then stretching out again. “We do not know how this story ends. This story has no ending, only endless now.”

  “You do not travel alone,” Gabriel said when the demon seemed disinclined to keep speaking. “Where are your others?”

  “Watching,” it said. “Watching to see how the story is told.” It nodded its pointed chin at the map they’d left unrolled on the ground beside them. “All the places it is being told.”

  “The friars caused this?” Isobel asked.

  The demon looked confused—at least, she thought that might be confusion—then shook its head. “Ants. Ants each take a crumb, and many ants take many crumbs.”

  “And in the end, all that’s left is crumbs.” Izzy remembered Ree’s fury when ants had invaded his kitchen: he had smoked out the entire saloon, getting rid of them, but not even the boss had complained.

  “Smoke out the ants,” the demon said, and Izzy’s head lifted, catching its eye, and she was caught again, swaying forward before Gabriel caught her shoulder, pulled her back. Had it read her thoughts, or had she said that out loud? She couldn’t tell, too dizzy to tell.

  Demon were ancient. They had always been here. Like the boss. Before the boss.

  Like the snakes, she thought. They watched and gave meaningless advice, and then slithered away.

  “The problem with smoke is it gets everyone, not just the ants.”

  This time, the startled yelp came from the demon as it spun around to see the magician standing behind it, and they were all coughing dust a
s it disappeared again.

  “Oh. I scared it away?” Farron didn’t seem upset by that—or surprised. “Trusting a demon’s even less wise than trusting me,” he told them.

  “It’s all unhappy bedfellows,” Gabriel said. “Can we afford to ignore it?”

  “No more than you should ignore me,” Farron said. “But do not trust it behind you. Demon give no oaths, true or otherwise.”

  Isobel let them bicker without paying attention, the back-and-forth almost soothing, compared to everything else. They were all ants: the friars but also her and Gabriel, and maybe even Farron. How did one smoke out some ants but not all?

  “Have you made them piss their bedrolls yet?” Gabriel asked.

  “The winds are too quiet this evening,” Farron said, his eyes flickering toward the sky, then back to Isobel. “I need to get closer.”

  Farron hadn’t said they should come along, but he hadn’t stopped them from following, either. Or he hadn’t stopped her, at least; Gabriel had seemed content to stay behind, only at the last minute swearing, hobbling the horses, and following them.

  Along the way, a hand caught her own up, the warm press of Gabriel’s fingers against her palm an unexpected comfort.

  It took them until after dusk to catch up with the friars, who must have forced a fast pace to get so far. They had camped in a grassy hollow that might have seemed comforting, perhaps even safe, but even at a glance from around the boulder she’d pressed herself against, Isobel could see at least one way they could be surprised while they slept, and doubtless there were more. At least they weren’t complete fools: one man was awake, pacing the circuit of their campsite just within the circle. She didn’t know if they didn’t know what the circle meant in terms of hospitality, or simply didn’t trust it. Since she wasn’t sure demon would respect it, she thought the latter wise.