The Cold Eye

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Wiser men than I have failed to understand what the devil knows or why he does as he does. No one even knows why he came here, Isobel, nor why he cares what happens to us. Let it be enough that he chose and trusted you to act in his stead. Trust that; it’s carried you through so far.” He paused. “Well, that and me.”

  “You have a high opinion of yourself, even for a rider,” she said, and had the pleasure of seeing a flicker of amusement on his face, fading into an expression that reminded her of the man she’d met that first night, wryly amused, his attention split between the cards in his hand and the girl bringing him drinks.

  Isobel still did not understand why he’d noted her, or what had driven a passing stranger to offer mentoring, or why the boss had decided to intervene after she had turned his original offer down, but she could not imagine taking the Road with anyone else —or worse, alone.

  That gratitude did not ease her unhappy sense of misuse. “But why won’t they speak to us? They know we’re here to help.”

  Gabriel slowed Steady down a pace so that the horses were side by side. His profile was the same as it ever was, dark blue eyes and dark-stubbled cheek, deep lines around his eyes, the narrow white scar from the spell-beast’s claws clearly visible in the sunlight. She still thought him a handsome man, card-slick when he chose to be, but he was Gabriel now.

  “Are we?” he finally said.

  “What?” She thought at first she had misheard him or he had misunderstood her.

  “Are we here to help?” He looked at her then and then looked away. “I’m here to help you, and you’re here because the devil sent you to ride, and we’re here because you’ve a feeling, but does that help them?”

  Isobel felt like she’d been slapped. “Jumping-Up Duck said . . .”

  “She said something shook the land from sorrow. Did she ask us to find the source?”

  “I . . . No.” Isobel forced herself to consider the words and motions of the adults at the table. They had refused to leave, had said Duck trusted the devil to protect them, but at the same time . . . they had never asked her to discover what it was. Almost as though they knew and were resigned to their fate.

  A growl echoed in her thoughts, that anyone should be so resigned. “We need to know what’s happening.”

  “Yes.” His voice was stripped of argument. “We do. But you need to consider why you need to know.”

  “Now you sound like the boss,” she said, petulant, and that got another chuckle out of him.

  “Then maybe you should listen.”

  When the boss said something like that, he didn’t mean for her to spout back with a sharp-tongued reply. So, Isobel shut her mouth carefully and paid full attention to the ground in front of Uvnee, the smell of the summer-warm air around her, the feel of the saddle pressing back against her seat, the feel of sweat slicking down her spine, and the weight of her hat on her head, the brim shading her eyes but not her chin. The feeling against the back of her neck, of being watched. And then she set it all aside and paid attention to what remained.

  This wasn’t like the kind of test Gabriel used to set, for her to identify a bird on wing, or the trail of an animal, or a plant by a single leaf. This was like what she used to do for the boss, to look at someone and tell what they wanted, what they were thinking. What they needed.

  Only, she thought she had. She’d studied Duck and the others. She’d seen their worry, their fear. And, a faint voice inside her said, she’d added that to what she was feeling, the push that had driven her there. The wrongness of the land there having been scraped clean, when they’d been there long enough for some power to have gathered.

  “It wasn’t wrong,” she said out loud. “Something is wrong.”

  “Yes.” Gabriel was solid in his agreement on that.

  But nobody had asked her to look. They’d given her supplies, hadn’t stopped her, but they hadn’t asked.

  A whisper of need had driven her there . . . but she hadn’t heard it since then. Hadn’t heard anything. What had changed?

  It started with the buffalo. The buffalo were none of the devil’s concern, outside the Agreement, and had no claim on her. But she had been drawn there, as had the Jack.

  The Jack had walked away. Isobel had not.

  What had drawn them there?

  The sigil told her when something needed caring for, when a Hand’s touch was called for. But the sigil had itched when the whisper was silent, and the whisper had called her when the sigil was still, and then both had gone silent when she rode into these hills.

  There was something about these hills.

  She only realized she was holding the reins so tightly when Uvnee stopped, turning her head slightly as though to ask her rider what was wrong. “I’m obligated to look, to make sure nothing’s wrong. To deal with anything gone wrong.” That had been the terms of her bargain. To be his Hand where he couldn’t reach, to protect those who abided by the Agreement.

  And Duck’s people abided. They’d said so. They had children who were of both bloods, who belonged to the Territory. Isobel had felt that, and the feeling had not set her wrong yet. Yet . . .

  Doubt wriggled in her gut, like being water-sick.

  “Is there a difference between being asked to do something and knowing it has to be done even if nobody asks you to do it?”

  Gabriel blew out a breath. “There are some who’d say that’s the burden of leadership.”

  She closed her eyes, concentrating on the feel of the mare’s bulk underneath her, the dryness of the air, the familiar, steadying smells of leather and horseflesh, of dirt and greenery, the sound of hooves and the creak of saddle leather and the soft whuffling breathing of the mule, keeping pace at her heel. “What do you say?”

  “I think—”

  Both horses pulled up short, jolting their riders in the saddle and causing the mule to let out an indignant protest as he smacked his head against Uvnee’s side. Gabriel slapped his hand down on the stock of his carbine before realizing that there was no threat.

  Or rather, the threat was standing still in front of them, body turned so that it blocked their way, neck lowered so that it seemed to be staring directly at them from under the many-pronged antlers spreading like a crown over its head.

  “Wapiti,” Gabriel said, a hushed tone, as though afraid to spook the creature. Isobel took in the bulk of it, easily a match for broad-chested Steady, and the wicked-looking tines of its antlers, and swallowed hard, trying to make herself as small and still as possible. It was after rutting season, but you could never tell what might set a bull off. Underneath her, Uvnee let out a soft huff that sounded terribly loud, and the creature —wapiti, Gabriel called it—snorted at her in return, a louder, wetter noise.

  Then it shifted, the neck lifting until its head was level with theirs, and Isobel was caught by the intensity of its eyes: the head might look like a deer’s, but there was no dumb beast staring back at her but an intelligence, sharp as an arrowhead and just as deadly.

  Next to her she could hear the creak and rustle of Gabriel shifting in his saddle, the clink of a hoof against a stone, the soft breathing of the horses, but everything else was held silent, even the air around them.

  Then the great deer snorted again, louder, and shook its head, the rack of bone coming terrifyingly close to them, before it wheeled and bounded off, faster than she would have thought it could move.

  “That . . .” Her voice caught in her throat, stuck between fear and awe. “That wasn’t just an elk.”

  “Not just,” Gabriel said, his voice as hushed as hers and just a little shaky. “Isobel, in all my years, I’ve encountered a total of four spirit-animals, and three of them have been since riding with you. I can’t say it’s a change I welcome.”

  Four, Isobel thought, remembering the owl who had not spoken, then frowned, counting back. “Three? Two. The snake, and this . . .”

  “And a second snake, when . . . It doesn’t matter,” he said, cutting off wha
tever he was going to say. “Just that next time you ask if something’s watching us? Assume that the answer is yes.”

  He flicked Steady’s reins, and the gelding moved forward again, Uvnee following without her having to give a command. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the mule still standing there, its ears pulled back as though it weren’t convinced the elk wasn’t going to return.

  “Flatfoot, come,” she called to it as though it were a dog, and the mule shook its head briskly but followed, blowing hard through its nose in protest.

  “There’s something strange, though,” Gabriel said once they’d caught up with him.

  Isobel felt a giggle bubble up, deep in her chest. “Stranger than that?”

  “Look around you, Isobel. Your people back in the village, they said their animals had run off, yeah?”

  She nodded. “Not the dogs but their goats, yes.”

  “There’s grazing enough here for an entire herd of elk, and that should mean predators as well. But there’s no sign of elk or wolves, not for days, not even a curlhorn, and the last cat we’ve seen sign of was the one that attacked. We haven’t seen so much as a rabbit in days.”

  Isobel looked around as though something would appear to prove him wrong, but all she saw was the same steep meadow, scattered with occasional scrub brush, with trees along the slopes, and beyond that, the flat-topped mountains. He was not wrong; even close to towns, there was more life than this—birds overhead, skittish rabbits and gophers underneath. . . . All they were seeing were butterflies; all they were hearing were the occasional bird and insects.

  “You said yourself they ran off when the ground shook. That would explain why the cat was so starved, if all its prey ran off and it was too sick to follow. And maybe why the hunting camp was abandoned.”

  “Likely.” Gabriel took his hat off and swiped his hand through his hair, then replaced the hat again, tugging it down over his forehead. “That’s why I had us take on extra supplies. But when people and animals both abandon an area, and there’s a wapiti guarding it . . . that’s never good news. Not ever.”

  If there had been good news, they wouldn’t be here, she thought but saw no point in saying. He knew that too. “You think we should turn back?”

  “I think a wise man would have turned back days ago. But the wapiti let us pass. If the spirits are upset, they’re not upset with us.”

  Isobel’s palm itched, and she glanced down at it as though there might be an answer there. But skin, grimed with sweat, told her nothing. No summons, no guidance, only the lingering memory of that echoing silence, of being pushed away rather than drawn in.

  Something in the hills didn’t want her there. And she might be a fool, but that only made her more determined to go.

  Gabriel took second watch, neither of them comfortable enough to trust circle or wards alone. As the night previous, it had been quiet—too quiet without the calling of coyotes or wolves, the snuffling of night-squirrels or foxes, the crackling branches of night-grazers passing wide around the fire. He felt himself begin to doze, eyelids slipping shut even as he fought against it, tension and exhaustion weighting them down. He would have traded his best knife for a cold rushing stream to dunk his head in, if only to wake himself up again.

  Half-awake, he became aware of something murmuring in the distance, as though someone spoke softly in another room. He held himself still, feeling the press of a rock into his thigh, the dampness of the morning air, the scratch of his blanket over exposed skin, and the press of his bladder where he needed desperately to relieve himself, and waited.

  The sun pulled itself over the horizon, but the sound did not come closer, nor did it resolve itself into distinct words, merely a susurration of sound replacing the liquid chirping of birds. He breathed deeply into his chest, eyes closed, and waited. He’d been dreaming in that half-awake state, he thought. A twilight dream was not to be ignored, but the details skittered out of reach, crumbling like old wood at his touch.

  Old Woman had been there, cross-legged on a rock. She had been ageless eleven years back when he’d stumbled blindly into a campement de nomades of the Hochunk, on his ignominious return to the Territory, and she had not changed since.

  “Be wary,” he thought she had said, looking down at the long pipe between her hands, unlit, unsmoking. “Be wary and step lightly.”

  Old Woman Who Never Dies had been the one to show him how to dream true, to not fear what the voices had to say but to listen. Not all dreams were true dreams, but there were threads that wove through them all recently, red like the quills in his pocket, catching his eye and drawing him back to them each time.

  “Be wary and beware,” the snake said months before. “Your enemies are not who you think. But then, neither are your friends. The land twists.”

  He had thought it referred to the magician, Farron—no friend, but no enemy either, at that time and in that place. Or Graciendo, the ancient bear, who might turn on him as easily as he aided. Or even the snake itself, wise but with its own purpose, its own concerns.

  Now, half-asleep and his brain filled with that susurration, he thought of the one he had not considered: Isobel.

  Gabriel rejected the thought even as it crept in, yet it lingered on the threshold, refusing to fade. Not that Isobel might be an enemy; he knew the girl, even if he did not always understand her, and she was faithful and true. But every soul in the Territory knew what the devil was, even if they never spoke it out loud, and she was bound to him, his Left Hand.

  The title alone should have chilled him. He thought of the woman who held the title of Right Hand: slender and dark, soft to the eye but with a voice of corded iron; when she suggested something, others made it happen. A woman to respect but never to fear.

  But the Left? Like any rider worth their salt, he knew his stories. The Left Hand dispensed justice, not favors. The Left held a fire that burned rather than warmed. He rode with the most terrifying thing in the Territory and called it a girl.

  “Gabriel?”

  Isobel’s voice cut through the near-constant murmur, silencing it.

  “Yeah.” His voice was sleep-rough, as shaken as his thoughts.

  “Did you hear it? The whisper?”

  He would not have called it that, but . . . “Yes.”

  He waited for her to say something else, but she was silent again. The noise did not resume.

  He lifted his hands to his face, feeling the scratch of bristle, the crust of sleep in his eyes. His hair was sweat-matted, and he ran his fingers through it, thinking his mother would sigh to see it at such a length. She would sigh to see him anyway. How long had it been?

  He forced himself into movement, throwing back the cover and reaching for his trousers, pulling them up over his flannels. Shaking his boots out, he could hear the sounds of Isobel doing the same across the fire pit. When he turned to face her, his lips already forming the suggestion that they not linger here, the sight of another body warming their hands on the remains of their small fire stole his words away.

  The man was ancient. Long hair hung loose over a round, wrinkled face, down to bony shoulders, the white strands thick but dry. The skin of his arms and chest was wrinkled with age and sun, patched with scars and burns. Well-worn moccasins rose to mid-calf, blue and yellow quills stitched into the hide. Gabriel did not recognize the pattern nor the paint design that ran up the man’s bare leg, a pale red arrowstick marked with irregular black slashes.

  The elk had been a guardian, but it might also have been a warning. There were haints in these hills. Old ones, ancient ones, bound by equally ancient wards. Harmless in the day, to those alert, but under moonlight, while mortals slept . . .

  Gabriel eased his breathing, opening his hands in a welcoming gesture. “Old father, welcome to our fire,” he said, first in French and then English, not wanting to risk using the wrong tribal language and possibly offending their visitor if he spoke in an enemy’s tongue. “We have not yet made coffee, but we will pour you s
ome when it is ready, if you wish it.”

  “Ha,” the old man said, which reassured Gabriel that he was in fact alive, and not a haint come to pester. “Coffee, oui. Ces vieux os aimeraient ça.”

  French, then. Gabriel flicked a glance at Isobel, who had stepped back from the fire, not in retreat, he thought, but to better study the newcomer. Her hair was unbraided, falling down over her shoulder in locks almost as long as the old man’s, and Gabriel had a moment to think that she could be the man’s granddaughter, with her sun-dark skin and her wide-boned face.

  The thought knocked against his earlier ones, and he pushed them all aside; he needed to navigate this carefully and not be distracted. Was this man another guardian? An ally? Or an enemy?

  “I am known as Two Voices,” he said. He waited to see if the old man would acknowledge it or look at Isobel expecting a name for her as well. He did not.

  Gabriel repeated his words in French, and the old man nodded acknowledgment then but still did not look toward Isobel, nor indicate any awareness that she stood there, barely a length from his knee.

  It was that way, then. Gabriel caught Isobel’s attention, then tilted his head toward the horses. She scowled at him but turned and walked off in that direction, leaving them to each other.

  Once she was gone, Gabriel sat down cross-legged next to the fire, the ground uncomfortably damp under his seat, placed his hands on his knees, and waited.

  Isobel felt rage quiver in her bones, anger born out of hurt and insult. To be sent away like a child, when she was the one who had brought them here, she was the one who could fix what was wrong? She bit the inside of her lower lip and stalked toward the horses, motionless shadows, their heads down as they dozed. Gabriel hadn’t even introduced her, hadn’t even acknowledged that she was there, and the old man . . .

  Putting her hands on Steady’s neck, the gelding lifted its head and whickered at her, hairy nostrils flaring wide as though to make sure she was who she smelled like.