Silver on the Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  None of them should have died. And yet she wished they all had, that she didn’t have to worry about them now. That guilt, too, weighed on her like exhaustion.

  The magician looked as though he would argue, then nodded once and gestured for the friar to follow him. Isobel turned her attention back to Gabriel. “We need to clean those wounds,” she said, her hand hovering over one of the bloody stains. “That thing’s claws, it might have been infected . . .”

  He started to laugh, batting her away from his injury even as he winced. “It was an otter, Isobel. Monstrous-sized, but an otter. I refuse to die from injuries caused by an otter. Do you think we could get its pelt? That’d be a story to tell, not that anyone would believe it. Not even with the pelt.”

  He was delirious. She pressed her fingers to his forehead, then on instinct pressed her palm instead. He sighed, the laughter running out of him the way a clock might run down, but his skin was too ruddy, his eyes too bright. Had infection already set in? She needed their kit; Rosa had taught her how to draw out a fever, and there was a slippery elm powder she could use. . . . She cast a worried glance at the spring, still quiescent. Dare she use water from there?

  “Don’t,” he said. She glanced at him, and he shook his head, a weak back-and-forth movement. “Too dangerous. Even I could feel it; you must . . .”

  “Shhhh.” His eyes closed and she sighed, brushing the hair away from his sweat-glossed face and wishing Farron would get back already, even though she knew that it would take longer, coaxing the horses up the steep trail.

  Her palm itched and she shook her hand once, briskly. “I know,” she told it. “I know, but not now.” She would worry about the spell-beast once the others were back to take care of Gabriel.

  There was a noise, and she felt her body snap to alert, because it was coming from the wrong direction, from the direction of the spring. Gabriel stirred, opening his eyes and trying to get up as well before she pushed him back down, her hand on her knife, wondering what fresh danger was coming.

  Rocks slid down the path and a figure appeared at the rise. It was Bernardo, making his way to join them. His robes were torn and his hands and face filthy with mud and blood, but there was a triumphant glow about him, his eyes too bright for comfort.

  “We gave it a terrible blow!” he cried, seemingly oblivious to the bodies of his brothers left on the ground behind him. “The foul beast could not withstand the might of—”

  “It took three men dying merely to wound it,” Isobel said sharply. “And your magic did nothing save enrage it.”

  “We knew our lives might be the cost,” Bernardo said, brushing off her words. “But we have wounded it, and my prayers—”

  “It’s wounded, not dead,” Gabriel said, pushing himself up on his elbows to glare at the friar from under heavy lids. “And your prayers and spells did nothing. Your men have died for nothing.” He winced and pressed harder on the bloody, sodden rags of his shirt. “Iz . . .”

  She met his gaze, seeing the worry there, the same as her own. Whatever Bernardo had been told, whatever the spell had been, the creature had not been cowed by it.

  Farron had been right; they had both felt it. Isobel remembered what she had seen again, the storm passing over the mountains, shredded into many ribbons by the peaks of the Mother’s Knife, falling to ground. . . .

  Falling to ground, into the ground. Her breath caught, something flickering at the edge of her thoughts, something important.

  It was waiting for us. The words echoed in Isobel’s thoughts, pushing away any others, keeping her from focusing on the plan she’d come up with, making it harder to breathe. It had known they were coming, the way they had known they were being watched, the way . . .

  It had changed, Farron had said. It wanted to grow.

  The magician had been able to sense it in the crossroads and in the spring. She had been able to feel it through the stone. But it had not attacked them, not until the magician had appeared. Yet it had killed those in Widder Creek, had done something to every creature in Clear Rock. . . . She needed time to think, to figure it out.

  Without this madman crowing uselessly over her.

  “Fray Bernardo, if you would be useful, fetch me some water from the spring.” She did not deny that she would feel a certain satisfaction if the creature were to return and finish its work, but when the man simply stared at her, she snapped at him. “We need to make a poultice. Surely your god will protect you long enough to scoop water from its edge?”

  He drew himself up to argue with her, and Isobel stared him down. “Are you afraid?”

  A look of such disgust and hatred flashed on his face that even half-unconscious, Gabriel reacted, trying to reach for his knife. Her hand on his arm paused him. She stared at the friar a heartbeat longer, and he dropped his gaze first, turning to do as she had requested.

  “Isobel.” Gabriel made her name a command and a question, and yet she shook her head, not able to look her mentor in the eyes just yet. This was nothing he could help with.

  “Stay still,” she told him. “Farron will be back soon, and we’ll get you fixed up.”

  He leaned his head back, wincing at the cold stone, and laughed, a pained, coughing noise. “An otter. That would make a story to tell along the dust roads, how Gabriel Kasun died at the hands—paws—of a giant monstrous otter.”

  “That wasn’t an otter.” She had seen otter pelts before. They were sleek and brown and about the size of a small dog, not . . . that. And they assuredly did not have more than four limbs.

  She cast a glance back toward the spring, where the friar was carefully approaching. At his pace, it would take all day to scoop water and bring it back.

  “It was an otter,” Gabriel said. “Make sure you tell ’em how damned large it was, though, all right?”

  “You’re not going to die.” She turned back to him, trying to shove all her worry and anger back inside, to put on a reassuring, comforting face. But she knew she wasn’t very good at it. “You can tell them the story yourself, how you were attacked by a beast and survived.” He would have scars, no matter what. She could see them through the cloth now, jagged scrapes that were still bleeding, a pale green pus oozing out along the red. Where was the blasted magician? She needed her herbs, she needed—panic, desperation, a sense of utter helplessness filled her, and she pulled away from Gabriel, wrapping her arms around herself, heedless of her blood-covered hands or muddy skirts.

  He was going to bleed out in front of her or die of infection, and there was nothing she could do. She was the Left Hand, not the Right. She was the cold eye, the quick knife, the final word, the decider of protection and punishment. Isobel felt the urge to scrape at her palm, claw the sigil out of her flesh. She could not save, she could not heal; all that power, useless.

  “Pieces,” he said, his eyes fluttering closed. “All in pieces.”

  “No. Stop it. You’ll be fine, I swear. . . .” But his eyes had closed and his body slumped, the damp strands of hair clinging to his forehead, his mouth slack with pain, and something rattled in her throat, a keening noise she’d never made before.

  There was no warning before she felt Farron’s hand on her shoulder, his voice in her ear, pressing her down, placing her hand on the ground. “Listen,” he said, a command he’d never used on her before, and she fell into the sound of her own heartbeat, too fast, panicky, until a slower, deeper echo reached her, the thudthudthudding of her heart slowing to the thud thud thud of the road beneath her, the dry whisking and grinding of the bones deeper still. They held her, pressed against her, connected her. The panic didn’t fade but became manageable, a smaller part of something so much larger.

  Brother Zacarías moved her out of the way, gently, and stripped Gabriel’s shirt from him, tsking and muttering under his breath as he appraised the damage. “Brother, you have water?” he called over his shoulder, and wo
nder of wonders, that caused the older monk to hurry, scooping water into the hem of his robes and carrying it back. Zacarías sorted through the herbs, finding what he needed without Isobel’s aid, and mixing it with a handful of water to form a paste. “To draw the poison out,” he explained, and Isobel nodded her understanding, watching Gabriel’s face tighten with pain as the friar pulled the cuts open to apply the poultice, then bandaged them.

  “We wounded it, but the creature still rests under the water.” Bernardo ignored the others once he passed them the water, pacing up and down the small patch of ground. “I must finish this, must drive the evil back to its creator, else the stain will remain on our most noble viceroy and, through him, our King. Zacarías, leave off and assist me!”

  The other friar ignored him, intent on Gabriel’s wounds. What had Farron said? That there was madness, and then there was madness?

  You had to be desperate to come to the Territory, abandon everything, take the devil on trust.

  “We don’t care about your king,” Isobel said, reaching for Gabriel’s hand and closing his cold fingers between her own. The sigil was silent, still, and she cursed it. Why would it point her at the creature but not tell her how to defeat it? The guilt she’d felt before rose again, and she tried to follow it, knowing that was the key. That was what she’d almost understood before Gabriel had been injured.

  “We need to—” Bernardo’s rising voice was suddenly cut off with a gagging noise, and Isobel looked up to see the man wide-eyed, his mouth open as though intending to speak, but no noise coming out. Next to him, Farron once again leaned seemingly against empty air, arms crossed over his chest, a disapproving look on his face.

  “He annoyed me,” the magician said, and the cold, unnerving sparkle was back in his eyes. “Do what you were created to do, Hand,” he said to Isobel. “There isn’t much time.”

  “But I don’t . . .” Her voice trailed off, the boss’s voice clear in her ears, the words of her oath, the Bargain, clear before her memory’s eyes. What she had been created to be.

  “Justice,” she whispered. “Be thou justice.” That was what she’d been sent here to do. The cold eye and the steady hand, to keep the Territory safe from without—and within. To ensure that all things followed the Law and the Agreement.

  But this thing was no part of either, no more than Farron. Like demon, it should be his fair prey . . . yet he now insisted she deal with it. It had shaken off the unspelling, ignored it . . . because it was no longer the spell that had created it.

  It had changed, Farron had said. It wanted to grow.

  The thud thud thud of the road beneath her was echoed in the thud thud thud of the creature’s breathing.

  The storm had blown over the Mother’s Knife and been shredded. Each piece had gone to ground. . . .

  Had gone to ground. Had gone to pieces. Had taken shape and form; the longer it stayed, the deeper it went. Whatever intent the Spanish king’s medicine-workers had shaped it to do, the Territory had taken it, claimed it.

  “Do you see now?” the magician asked. “Do you understand why you must destroy it?”

  She shook her head. “No.” She couldn’t. Wouldn’t. It was too much to ask of her.

  Farron sighed, exasperated, and stalked off.

  He couldn’t consume it; the wind could batter it but not take it apart, because, because . . .

  “Silver.”

  She opened her eyes, staring at Gabriel. “What?” He was still delirious, his eyes wide, the black center engulfing the blue.

  “Silver. Live silver. Throw you into the crossroads.” He coughed weakly, wincing as the monk tightened a bandage around his arm. “Could see it from the start, just didn’t know what it was. Shines in you now.”

  “Stop talking,” the friar said sternly. “Drink this.”

  “Silver, Isobel. ’S’important. Promise me you’ll remember.”

  “All right,” she said, and he sighed and drank, his eyes fluttering closed, and his breathing slowing to a scant rise and fall of his chest.

  “Will he . . .”

  Zacarías didn’t look at her. “It is up to God and his own will to live now.”

  “This is the Territory,” Isobel said softly, more to Gabriel than the friar. “His own will is what matters.”

  “And none of it matters if our wee water beastie gets hungry again,” Farron said, having stalked back. “Stop being a child, Isobel.” His jaw was tight, his eyes narrowed, and she realized that he was angry. At her?

  “I’m not . . .”

  He strode forward, brushing past Zacarías to grab her left wrist, yanking her to her feet by it, holding it so that her palm was in front of her face. His gaze was cold, the lines around his eyes no longer soft with humor or fondness. “You have two choices, little rider. Become what you are, or fail. And if you fail, I will consume you and everything else with power here and do what must be done.” His eyes glittered with red. “You do not want that to happen.”

  She stared at him, then back down at her palm. Black lines, looped around each other in a figure eight, encircled by a graceful swoop. She had seen it her entire life, had known what it meant, but she had never truly looked at it before.

  “Do you understand?” the magician asked again, cold burning in his voice.

  She did. Power consumed power. It would duel until only one remained if it was not held in check.

  She was the check. She was the silver on the road.

  “You may not have it,” she told Farron. “It falls to me now.”

  He held her gaze, the hunger near overwhelming him, and she saw the moment when he tamed the winds within, held onto the façade of humanity, and chose to give way before the devil’s hold.

  “Well done, little rider,” he said, showing too many sharp teeth, and stepped back—but not so far she did not think he would surge forward again if she faltered.

  If you see a magician, run. There was good reason for that warning. But her obligations forced her to stand.

  “Whatever it was, whatever the intent . . .” She breathed the thought a moment, then stood and faced Bernardo. “Whatever ill intent your medicine man crafted, Fray Bernardo, once it crossed the border, fed on us, it became part of the Territory now. The viceroy has no claim on it. And thus, nor do you. Go home.”

  “You cannot . . .” He spluttered, taking a step forward.

  Isobel was tired. She was sore, she was tired, she had done a terrible wrong, and there were three men to bury, one of whom might have, over time, become a friend. If Bernardo challenged her one more time, her patience would not stand it.

  “We have had this discussion already, Fray Bernardo. Your time here is at an end.”

  “Our obligation is to wipe the stain of its creation from—”

  “Your time here is at an end, Fray Bernardo.” Isobel stood, and while she was a full head shorter than the man and half his width, she could feel the menace within her that caused the man to fall silent, although unlike the magician, he did not step back. “You will interfere here no longer.”

  “I don’t understand,” Zacarías said, his voice placating, questioning. “You said that the spell was damaging your land, harming people. Why will you not allow us to remove it?”

  “Because they are creatures of the devil himself, tools to spread his work. They wish to destroy us by tempting our noble King and viceroy into the darkest sin, confusing them—”

  “You’re annoying me again,” Farron said darkly, and Isobel almost laughed at how quickly the friar clamped his mouth shut. He might not fear her enough, but he feared the magician. She would use that.

  “Your spell did not work. It will not work, not on the creature in the springs, nor any other part of it. Not any longer.”

  “Part? There are more?” Zacarías’s eyes went wide.

  “They are not your conce
rn,” Isobel said. They were hers now.

  What she did with them remained to be seen.

  PART SIX

  SILVER ON THE ROAD

  ISOBEL WOULD NOT LET THEM LINGER at the spring any longer, despite Gabriel’s weakness. She trusted neither friar nor magician to test her words if the creature came to the surface again.

  They bundled Gabriel safely as far from the spring as they felt it was safe to carry him, afraid to jostle him and reopen his wounds. Zacarías settled at his side, Bernardo still silenced, the magician’s presence behind him enough to keep him still, although had his eyes been daggers, Isobel would have died of blood loss already.

  She didn’t care. The sigil still burned, a steady heat telling her that she was not yet done.

  A story without an ending, only a beginning, the demon had said. A deck of cards could be burnt once they were used, marked. But a thing of power, a medicine of such fierce intent . . . like the magician, it might not be so easily destroyed. But changed? She felt the weight of the sigil in her palm. Yes, everything changed.

  All the places it was being told, the demon had said. How many pieces had the spell been split into? Impossible to know. Until they caused illness or disappearances, or who knew what. Impossible to find until then. Impossible to know how they might change, how the Territory might change them.

  But this one, this she had. This one she knew.

  This one she was responsible for.

  “Farron.”

  He looked away pointedly, then sighed and looked back at her. “Yes, Devil’s Hand?”

  “Stop that. I have to go back to the spring. Alone,” she added, before he could say anything. “Stay here. Help Zacarías if he needs it. Sit on Bernardo if he needs it.”

  That made the edge of his mouth tip up.

  “What are you going to do, little rider?”

  “I don’t know yet,” she said.

  “Ah. That’s always the most fun way to do it.” But his eyes were clear of red, and she could read only exhaustion in him, not madness, so she only shook her head at him and headed back up the trail.